In Heaven, faith ends and becomes sight, hope ends and becomes possession, but love is eternal. We have faith in God for His truth and hope in Him for His goodness, but we love God simply because He is God. When we sin, we betray that love. Venial sin causes spiritual sickness and can be forgiven without Confession, but mortal sin causes spiritual death and can only be forgiven through Confession. St. Bonaventure once described venial sin as inordinate attachment to a creature though not to the point of placing it above God, whereas mortal sin places a creature above the Creator. On the first Easter Sunday, Jesus breathed on His apostles and gave them the power to forgive sins. Through Confession, we can have our sins forgiven. In the Second World War, the Polish priest St. Maximilian Kolbe was imprisoned in a concentration camp by the Nazis. Although he was not permitted to, he continued his priestly duties and listened to Confessions late into the night. Once, a prisoner escaped and the authorities selected ten prisoners to be starved to death as a warning. A married man with children was chosen, but the unmarried and childless St. Maximilian volunteered to go in his stead and was martyred. He taught that the opposite of love was not hatred but indifference and that indifference was the worse of the two because one cannot both love and be indifferent to someone.
【Spiritual Talk】 Fr. Ho talks about the virtue of love
