If all the sins a person can commit is described as a single tree, this mighty tree of sin has only seven roots, says Venerable Louis Granada (16^th century Dominican). The soul which is able to find and destroy these seven deadly roots will be free from the slavery of sin. This was the firm belief of the saints and the Desert Fathers (as Cassian records). Remember the words of the Master: whoever sins is a slave (Jn 8:34).

Listen carefully Immortales. This mighty tree we may also call (false) self-love. Self-love is the enemy of love of God from which all sins come. Each time you committed a sin, it was because you chose what you wanted instead of what God wanted. A saint is a person who loves God more than himself in all things (that is in thought, word deed and action); and does the will of God in all things. Obedience is doing the will of God; disobedience is doing our will or the devil’s. To obey is to say you love the one you obey; to disobey is precisely to say you love yourself or something else more than God. Jesus tells us in John: The Father loves me because I obey Him (I lay down my life for my sheep!” Therefore, Immortales, you must learn at once that to root out self love is the same thing as to root out the seven deadly roots of sin.

What are the Seven deadly roots of the tree of sin? Louis of Granada calls them the mighty giants which prevent our entry into Heaven. These are the seven vices or capital sins. Foulton Sheen calls them the seven pall bearers (coffin carriers) of the soul. But because of the way they operate in everyday life, we shall call them the seven grave diggers of the soul, or better still, the seven prisons of the soul. In the Chronicles of the Leper King they are called the “seven soul killers”. 1 John 2:16 (KJV) gives us three sons of self-love: The  lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. These are love of pleasure, love of riches, and love of honours. Love of pleasure produces three deadly roots, lust, gluttony and sloth. Love of riches produces covetousness or greedy. Love of honours produces pride. That root of sin we call anger (and hatred) is produced when something prevents us from satisfying self-love. The root of sin called envy or jealousy grows into the soul when we see others with something self-love wants to claim. These then are the seven deadly roots of sin, the seven capital sins, the seven pall bearers (coffin carriers) or for operational reasons, the seven grave diggers of the soul: pride, covetousness, lust, anger, envy or jealousy, and sloth. Louis of Granada warns, “we must violently attack these mighty giants who prevent our entrance into the Heaven.”

These then are the mighty deadly and rebellious seven and what they mean: pride (false love of honour, excellence, etc), covetousness or greed (love of money and material things), lust (wrong desire for sexual pleasure), anger and hatred (feeling of bitterness against a person and love of revenge), jealousy or envy (feeling of sadness or sense of loss when something good happens to a person), sloth (unwillingness to do our duty) and gluttony (a wrong love of drinking and eating). They are the seven killers of the soul. The killers described by the Lord and Master in Mt 8:14 (parable of the sower) as thorns which strangle (choke)  the tree of life, sucking it dry until it is dead and useful only as firewood (gathered and burnt up). By filling the soul with the poison of self-love ( just as the snake poisons a body), they slowly kill the love of God in the soul. Accordingly a contemplative has called them the “seven soul killers.”

Sadly, this handout deals with only pride, jealousy, anger and lust; covetousness, sloth and gluttony  are left out. This will be included in the book however.

BECAUSE THESE ROOTS OF SIN ARE HABITS, THEY ARE ESPECIALLY DEADLY

Each root of sin is a habit; that is why they are called the seven vices. St Thomas Aquinas teaches correctly that a vice is a bad habit in operation (negative operational habit); and a virtue is a good habit in operation (positive operational habit). The soldier of Christ (the combatant spirit) is the person who without tiring, and without rest works hard to root out the vices and to plant the virtues at the same time. The seven virtues which battle against the deadly roots of sin are, humility (poison of pride), generosity or liberality (killer of covetousness or greed), chastity (destroyer of lust), meekness (killer of anger), brotherly love (enemy of jealousy), diligence or hard work (enemy of sloth), and temperance or control (destroyer of gluttony).

It is important to note that fasting, abstinence, works of self-denial are also very important and strengthen the will in dealing with the vices.

           

THE METHOD OF THIS WORK

In uprooting the roots of sin, we shall use the method of the doctor. Treating each deadly root of sin as a disease, we shall diagnose (describe, and say what it is and how it kills the soul); Next, in the style of Venerable Louis of Granada (in his work “The Sinner’s Guide”, Chapters 30-38) we shall provide the medicine or remedies just as the doctor does.

The mighty tree spoken of earlier is the tree of vice or sin. The man is you, Immortal. The axe is virtue. The sea is the time given us in this life—in which we must bring down the tree of (the slavery of) sin. We begin next with pride.