Four Degrees of Evil

About a dozen or so baby alligators showed up at a pond that Janet and I visit occasionally. Mama alligator kept watch nearby because the pond is also home to some otters, and otters love little alligators! But she allowed her 8 inch long offspring some freedom to enjoy the fall day.

When we visited the pond a week later, however, the baby alligators were gone. Perhaps mama alligator moved them, or perhaps the otters had their way with the little alligators. When an otter, which has very sharp teeth, captures a baby alligator, the alligator cannot get loose. The more it struggles, the more the teeth dig in, and the more painful it becomes.

As I thought about the fate of these baby alligators, I couldn’t help but reflect on something that St. John of the Cross said back in the 16th century, something about how the world grabs us, and once it does, how our fate is sealed.

St. John of the Cross has been described as a mystic. He was born in Castile, Spain in 1542 and died in 1591. He was imprisoned for his writings (as many visionaries seem to be), but later in 1675 he was beautified by the Catholic Church and canonized (sainthood) in 1726. He was eventually named A Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius XI in 1926.

This is what St. John had to say:

“Although worldly blessings do not necessarily of themselves cause sin, yet, through the frailty of the affections of the heart of man, man habitually clings to these worldly blessings and fails God. Christ described riches in the Gospel as thorns. Those who touch them become wounded. David said, ‘let us have no envy when our neighbor becomes rich, for it will profit him nothing in the life to come (meaning that we should have pity on him). Christ said: ‘If a man gain all the world, he may yet lose his soul.’

“Wherefore even though all things turn out prosperously for a man regarding wealth, status, and family, he ought to have misgivings rather than to rejoice, for these things increase the likelihood of his forgetting God. The heart of a fool, it is said, is where there is laughter, but of the wise man where there is sorrow. Laughter blinds the heart and allows it not to consider things and ponder them, but sadness makes a man open his eyes.

“It is therefore a vanity for a woman or man to set their hearts on each other instead of God, or on their children or on worldly things. If the soul sets its affections of the will on worldly things, the evils are uncountable . . .

“The first degree of evil, when the soul rejoices in creatures instead of God, results in the blunting of the mind and darkening of the judgment.

“The second degree of evil is when the soul is now swollen with worldly desires and causes the soul to withdraw itself from things of God and holy practices and take no pleasure in them anymore and lose their concepts of truth and justice and become lukewarm and careless in practicing truth and justice. They practice spiritual things from habit and formality, not conviction.

“The third degree of evil is a complete falling away from God and a relapse into mortal sin from covetousness for he forsakes God. The faculties of the soul are completely absorbed into the world and in riches and business and commerce and has great shrewdness as to things of the world and a great love. They have such an affection for worldly things that they cannot be satisfied — on the contrary, their desire and their thirst grow all the more because they are further from God, the only source that could satisfy them. And thus it is with the covetous man who finds nothing among the creatures that can quench his thirst, but only that which increases it. These men fall into countless kinds of sin through love of worldly things and the evils which afflict them are innumerable.

"And the fourth degree of evil that comes from joy of worldly things is: And he departed from God, his salvation. This man has made money and things of the world his God, and David said, 'Be thou not afraid when a man shall be made rich, for when he dieth, he shall carry nothing away, neither riches, nor joy, nor glory."