The wrong kind of affection

If you've visited my blog for a while, you know that I'm a "fan" of St. Francis de Sales. He was a bishop, an author, an evangelist, and a spiritual director par excellence. One of the books for which he is well known is The Introduction to the Devout Life. In it, he firmly states that one doesn't need to be a monk or a nun to make progress in a life of devotion and dedication to the Lord. And he sets out a plan which average folks like me  (and perhaps you) can use to begin making just that sort of progress.

De Sales first speaks of the necessity of breaking free of "mortal sin". The Church outlines three characteristics of mortal sin:

1. An act of grave matter that is...
2. Committed with full knowledge and...
3. Deliberate consent.

After eliminating such sin from one's life, he next tells the reader that it is necessary to rid oneself of the affection for sin. Here is how he describes the person who retains this sort of affection:

...there are penitents who leave sin in effect, but do not leave it in affection. They resolve never to sin again, but it is with a certain reluctance that they give up or abstain from the fatal delights of sin. Their heart renounces and shuns sin but looks back at it just as Lot's wife looked back at Sodom.

They abstain from sin like sick men abstaining from melons. They don't eat them solely because the doctor warns them that they'll die if they do, but they begrudge giving them up, talk about them, would eat them if they could, want to smell them at least, and envy those who can eat them. In such a way weak, lazy penitents abstain regretfully  for a while from sin. They would like very much to commit sins if they could do so with out being damned. They speak about sin with a certain petulance and liking for it and think those who commit sins are at peace with themselves. A man who had resolved to take vengeance on another will change his mind in the confessional but a little later you will find him among his friends talking delightedly about his quarrel and saying, "If it wasn't for the fear of God, I would do this or that," "In this matter of forgiving people the divine law is a hard thing," and I wish to God it would let a man revenge himself." We all see that although this unfortunate man has been set free from sin he is still entangled by affection for it."

It's an image worth thinking about. Perhaps Jesus was saying something similar in Matthew 5:27-28:

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.