SERMONS OF ST. JOHN VIANNEY PART 20

This is a series of the sermons of St. John Marie Vianney. Click the link below for part 19.

http://smcdefense.blogspot.com/2022/09/sermons-of-st-john-vianney-part-19.html

ALL THAT YOU SAY OVER AND ABOVE THESE IS OF EVIL

It is indeed surprising, my dear brethren, that God should have had to give us a commandment forbidding us to profane His sacred name. Can you imagine, my children, that Christians could so hand themselves over to the Devil as to allow him to make use of them for execrating God, Who is so good and so benevolent? Can you imagine that a tongue which has been consecrated to God by holy Baptism, and so many times moistened by His adorable Blood, could be employed in vilifying its Creator? Would anyone be able to do that who truly believed that God had given him his tongue so that he might bless Him and sing His praises? You will agree with me that this is an abominable crime, one which would seem to urge God to overwhelm us with all sorts of evils and to abandon us to the Devil, whom we have been obeying with so much zeal.

It is a sin which makes the hair stand on end in anyone who is not entirely lost to the Faith.

And yet, in spite of its enormity, its horror, its blackness, is there a more common sin than swearing, than the uttering of blasphemies, imprecations, and curses? Do we not all have the sorrow of hearing such language coming from the mouths of children who hardly know their Our Father, horrible words which are sufficient to draw down all sorts of evils upon a parish? I am going to explain to you, my dear brethren, what is understood by swearing, blasphemy, profanities, imprecations, and curses. Try to sleep well during this period so that when the day of judgment comes, you will be found to have committed this evil without knowing what you were doing-though, of course, you will be damned because your ignorance will all be your own fault! For you to understand the enormity of this sin, my brethren, it would be necessary for you to understand the enormity of the outrage which it does to God'a thing which no mortal can ever understand. No, my dear brethren, only the anger, the power and the wrath of God concentrated in the inferno of Hell can bring home to us the enormity of this sin. No, no, my children, let us not run this risk-there must be Hell for all eternity for this sin. All I want to do is to make you understand the difference which exists between swearing, blasphemy, profanity, imprecations, curses, and coarse words. A great many people confuse these things and take one thing for the other, which is the reason why they almost never accuse themselves of the sins they should, why they lay themselves open to the danger of bad confessions and therefore of damnation.

The Second Commandment, which forbids us to use false and unnecessary oaths or to perjure ourselves, is expressed in the following words: 'Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. This is as though God told us: I order you and command you to revere this name because it is holy and adorable. I forbid you to profane it by employing it to authorise falsehood, injustice, or even-without sufficient reason-the truth itself.

And Jesus Christ tells us not to swear in any way.

I tell you that badly instructed people often confuse blasphemy with swearing. If things have gone wrong with him, a man may, in a moment of anger, or rather of fury, say: 'God is not just to make me suffer . . . .

Although by these words he has thus spoken profanely about God, he will confess his sinby saying: 'Father, I accuse myself of swearing. Yet it is not an oath but a blasphemy which he has uttered. Someone is falsely accused of a fault which he has not committed. To support his protestations he will say: 'May I never see the face of God if I did it! This is not an oath but a horrible imprecation. These are two sins which are every bit as bad as swearing. Another, who will have told his nextdoor neighbour that he is a thief, a scoundrel, will confess that he 'has sworn at his neighbour. This is not swearing; it is using insulting language. Another will say foul and unseemly things and, in Confession, will accuse himself of 'having spoken wrongly. He is wrong; he must say that he has been uttering obscenities.

Reference:

https://www.ecatholic2000.com/cts/untitled-627.shtml