You ask me if a great number of venial sins can ever make up a mortal one, and consequently cause us to lose the grace of God.
No, indeed! Not all the venial sins which ever existed could make one mortal sin: but nevertheless, not many venial sins are needed to dispose us to commit a mortal one, as it is written that he that contemneth small things shall fall by little and little,[1] and that he who loves danger shall perish in it.[2]
For, according to the maxim of St. Bernard, received by all spiritual writers, not to advance in the way of God is to fall back, not to sow with Him is to scatter, not to gather up is to lose, not to build is to pull down, not to be for God is to be against Him, not to reap with Him is to lay waste. Now to commit a venial sin is essentially a not working with God, though it may not be a positive working against Him.
"Charity," says our Blessed Father, "being an active quality cannot be long without either acting or dying: it is, say the early Fathers, symbolized by Rachel. Give me children, she said to her husband, otherwise I shall die.[3] Thus charity urges the heart which she has espoused to make her fertile in good works; otherwise she will perish."
Venial sin, especially when the soul clings to it, makes us run the risk of losing charity, because it exposes us to the danger of committing mortal sin, by which alone charity is driven forth and banished from the soul. On this subject our Blessed Father, in the chapter from which we have already quoted, speaks as follows: "Neither venial sin, nor even the affection to it, is contrary to the essential resolution of charity, which is to prefer God before all things; because by this sin we love something outside reason but not against reason. We make too much and more than is fit of creatures, yet we do not positively prefer them before the Creator. We occupy ourselves more than we ought in earthly things; yet we do not, for all that, forsake heavenly things.
"In fine, venial sin impedes us in the way of charity, but does not put us out of it, and, therefore, venial sin, not being contrary to charity, never destroys charity either wholly or partially."
Further on he says: "However, venial sin is sin, and consequently it troubles charity, not as a thing that is contrary to charity itself, but as being contrary to its operations and progress and even to its intention. For, as this intention is that we should direct all our actions to God, it is violated by venial sin, which is the referring of an action to something outside of God and of the divine will."
[Footnote 1: Eccle. iii. 27.]
[Footnote 2: Id. iii. 27.]
[Footnote 3: The Love of God. Book iv. chap. 2.]
UPON COMPLICITY IN THE SINS OF ANOTHER.
There are some scrupulous minds which are perplexed by everything and frightened at shadows. In conversation, and in mixing with others, a faulty word which they may hear or a reprehensible action they may witness, however much they may in their secret hearts detest it, is at once charged upon their own conscience as a partaking in the sins of others.