St. Teresa of Avila on Venial Sin

"St. Teresa in Ecstasy"  Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598 - 1680)

In case you thought one venial sin was not a big deal, consider what St. Teresa of Avila, mystic and Doctor of the Church, wrote on that subject:

May it please His Majesty that we fear Him whom we ought to fear, and understand that one venial sin can do us more harm than all hell together; for that is the truth.  The evil spirits keep us in terror, because we expose ourselves to the assaults of terror by our attachments to honours, possessions, and pleasures.  For the the evil spirits, uniting themselves with us, - we become our own enemies when we love and seek what we ought to hate, - do us great harm. We ourselves put weapons into their hands, that they may assail us; those very weapons with which we should defend ourselves,  It is a great pity.  But if, for the love of God we hated all this, and embraced the cross, and set about His service in earnest, Satan would fly away before such realities, as from the plague,  He is the friend of lies, and a lie himself.  He will have nothing to do with those who walk in the truth.  When he sees the understanding of any one obscured he simply helps to pluck out his eyes; if he sees any one already blind, seeking peace in vanities, - for all the things of this world are so utterly vanity, that they seem to be but the playthings of a child, - he sees at once that such a one is a child, and ventures to wrestle him - not once but often.

from "The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila," by herself

If only bishops spoke like this

"St. Teresa of Avila" Francois Gerard (1770−1837)

From "The Life of Saint Teresa," by the saint herself:

I look upon it as a most certain truth, that the devil will never deceive, and that God will not suffer him to deceive, the soul which has no confidence whatever in itself; which is strong in faith, and resolved to undergo a thousand deaths for any one article of the creed; which in its love of the faith, infused of God once for all,  - a faith living and strong, - always labours, seeking for further light on this side and on that, to mould itself on the teaching of the Church, as one already deeply grounded in the truth.  No imaginable revelations, not even if it saw the heavens open, could make that soul swerve in any degree from the doctrine of the Church.  

St. Teresa of Avila, pray for us.

"It was very hot and the express from Barcelona would come in forty minutes."

Cool Cover

I wonder how that sounds in Chinese?