I’m looking through all the questions from Confirmation Class this past week and it amazes me the questions that you guys have. Cheers! Well Done! One especially caught my eye. What is the worst possible sin? This caused me to stop and think for a few days. I think the way to go about this is to define what sin is and to apply it to a certain scriptural reference.
To begin, the Church, in its wisdom has defined two types of sin, Mortal Sin and Venial Sin. We must first understand Mortal before we can understand Venial. Mortal sin is defined with three conditions: GRAVE MATTER, FULL KNOWLEDGE, and FULL CONSENT. But what does this mean? Don’t worry, the Catechism of the Catholic Church has our back. CCC 1858 and 1859 is where you can find this. It defines grave matter as something that violates the Ten Commandments. More specifically, Do not kill, steal, commit adultery, bare false witness, defraud, an Honor your father and mother. Further, you have a hierarchy of sin, murder is worse than theft, and sins against your parents are worse then sins against a stranger. Full Knowledge means that you KNOW it is a sin. Complete consent means you do it knowingly and willingly, aka: Free Choice. The catechism is specific, fake ignorance and hardness of heart, do not diminish, but increase the voluntary act of sin.
Venial sin is any sin that lacks any of the three conditions mentioned above.
The biggest difference is that venial sins only wound our love but let it stay with us. Mortal sin on the other hand, ABSOLUTLY DESTROYS our love. If we are in Mortal Sin, we are unable to love. This is why we have confession. The only way to get rid of Mortal sin is by Confession to a priest.
Now this is great knowledge but I didn’t really answer the actual question… The reason is, there is no single answer. The closest thing that can be said is if we look in the Gospel of Matthew. In this passage, one of the Pharisees asked Christ what the greatest commandment is. It reads, “Teacher, what is the greatest commandment in the law? And He [Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest commandment. And a second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matthew 22: 36-39) In this reading we see the two greatest commandments, so if these are the two greatest commandments, it would make sense that a violation of them, would be the greatest sin. If we fail to LOVE, we are failing to live as GOD created us. So the greatest evil in the world is the world’s failure to LOVE ONE ANOTHER and to LOVE THE LORD OUR GOD.
A final note: When we sin, we are denying God. When we are in Mortal sin, we are completely separated from God. The worst thing that we can do is to constantly cut ourselves off from God with continually sinning. If we die in Mortal Sin, we are choosing to go to Hell. God is so Good that He gave us the sacrament of Confession for when we are in Mortal sin. I cannot stress this enough: THERE IS NO SIN TOO BIG FOR GOD TO NOT FORGIVE. All sins are forgiven in Confession NO MATTER WHAT! Never forget that and remember, the Church suggests that we go to confession even if we don’t have Mortal sin on our soul, we can still use the grace of the Sacrament!
Our Lady, Seat of Wisdom, Pray for US!
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