“Sin is not only a foolishness and vileness, but considered in relation to God it is also the blackest ingratitude, the greatest injustice, and the gravest outrage. God is a father who has given us all: existence, life, intelligence, a conscience to distinguish good from evil, a will to choose the good, and a heart to love it. To show us His love He gave us His Son, who died for us on the Cross; he restored us again to grace making us His friends; He has called us with a special vocation to live even here on earth in the intimacy of His love; and He calls us daily to Communion and surrounds us with a thousand interior graces. Instead of thanking Him, we put ourselves at a distance. We even come to the point of deliberately despising the graces He offers us, even His friendship itself. Sometimes we forget that we have received all from Him. Instead we boast of our intelligence and puny talents; we deliberately prefer ourselves to others; we abandon ourselves to a friendship that is based too much on feelings, thereby offending the divine friendship and saddening our adored Friend. This wound inflicted on the heart of Our Lord leaves us cold and indifferent. What kind of gratitude is this?
“It is also injustice because the gifts that God gives us remain His. God, the Creator, has full rights over our life. As supreme overlord He has the right of possession over our mind and our heart, and this right, more absolute than any of our property rights, remains binding even if we forget it. He possesses this right in such an absolute manner that He would cease to be God if He renounced it. For example, He has the right to demand that we do not tell conventional lies, slander anyone, or commit even a small breach of modesty; but we wish to possess this right.”
