Victory Over Vice

By Fulton J. Sheen and Rachael Underhill

Victory Over Vice (1939) is one of several books by Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen exploring the Seven Last Words of Christ during His Crucifixion. In this short work, Archbishop Sheen considers each of the final utterances of Christ from the perspective of one of the capital sins. He demonstrates how each phrase proves the purity of Jesus

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mockingbird Press
• Release date: Apr 13, 2022
• ISBN: 9781684930418

Fulton J. Sheen

The life and teachings of Venerable Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen anticipated and embodied the spirit of both the Second Vatican Council and the New Evangelization. A gifted orator and writer, he was a pioneer in the use of media for evangelization: His radio and television broadcasts reached an estimated 30 million weekly viewers. He also wrote more than 60 works on Christian living and theology, many of which are still in print. Born in 1895, Sheen grew up in Peoria, Illinois, and was ordained a priest for the diocese in 1919. He was ordained an auxiliary bishop in New York City in 1951. As the head of his mission agency, the Society for the Propagation of the Faith (1950–1966), and as Bishop of Rochester (1966-1969), Sheen helped create 9,000 clinics, 10,000 orphanages, and 1,200 schools; and his contributions educated 80,000 seminarians and 9,000 religious. Upon his death in 1979, Sheen was buried at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. His cause for canonization was returned to his home diocese of Peoria in January 2011, and Sheen was proclaimed "Venerable" by Pope Benedict XVI on June 28, 2012. The first miracle attributed to his intercession was approved in March 2014, paving the way for his beatification.

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Introduction

This book is the fourth in a series on the Seven Last Words in which the Crucifixion of Our Divine Lord is used as the basis of spiritual med itation.

In the first book, Calvary and the Mass, a correlation was made between the Sacrifice of the Cross and the Sacrifice of the Mass; in the second book, The Cross and the Beatitudes, each word from the cross was used as a background for the Sermon on the Mount; in the third book, The Rainbow of Sorrows, the Seven Words, like the seven colors from the rainbow, illumined the problem of suffering. In this book, Victory over Vice, each of the Seven Words is considered from the point of view of one of the seven capital sins, which might be rightly considered the seven pallbearers of the soul.

There is no claim made that the reparation for the capital sins was made in these Seven Words, but only that they do offer a convenient meditation-point for the soul and its advancement in the love of Christ Jesus, Our Lord.

The First Word: Anger

"Father, forgive them for

they know not what they do."

The one passion in man which has deeper roots in his rational nature than any other, is the passion of anger. Anger and reason are capable of great compatibility, because anger is based upon reason which weighs the injury done and the satisfaction to be demanded. We are never angry unless someone has injured us in some way—or we think he has.

But not all anger is sinful, for there is such a thing as just anger. The most perfect expression of just anger we find in Our Blessed Lord cleansing the temple. Passing through its shadowed doorways at the festival of the Pasch, He found greedy traders, victimizing at every turn the worshippers who needed lambs and doves for the temple sacrifices.

Making a scourge of little cords He moved through their midst with a calm dignity and beautiful self-control even more compelling than the whip. The oxen and sheep He drove out with His scourge; with His Hands He upset the tables of the money changers who scrambled on the floor after their rolling coins; with His finger He pointed to the vendors of doves and bade them leave the outer court; to all He said: Take these things hence, and make not the house of my Father a house of traffic.

Here was fulfilled the injunction of the Scriptures, Be angry, and sin not, for anger is no sin under three conditions: 1—If the cause of anger be just, for example, defense of God’s honor; 2—if it be no greater than the cause demands, that is, if it be kept under control; and 3—if it be quickly subdued: Let not the sun go down upon your anger.

Here we are not concerned with just anger, but with unjust anger, namely, that which has no rightful cause—anger which is excessive, revengeful and enduring; the kind of anger and hatred against God which has destroyed religion on one sixth of the earth’s surface, and which recently in Spain burned 25,000 churches and chapels and murdered 12,000 servants of God; the kind of hatred which is not only directed against God, but also against fellowman, and is fanned by the disciples of class conflict who talk peace but glory in war; the red anger which rushes the blood to the surface, and the white anger which pushes it to the depths and bleaches the face; the anger which seeks to get even, to repay in kind, bump for bump, punch for punch, eye for eye, lie for lie; the anger of the clenched fist prepared to strike not in defense of that which is loved but in offense against that which is hated; in a word, the kind of anger which will destroy our civilization unless we smother it by love.

Our Blessed Lord came to make reparation for the sin of anger, first by teaching us a prayer: Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and then by giving us a precept: Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you. More concretely still, He added: Whosoever will force thee one mile, go with him another two . . . if a man . . . take away thy coat, let go thy cloak also unto him.

Revenge and retaliation were forbidden: You have heard that it has been said: an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you, Love your enemies. These precepts were made all the more striking because He practised them.

When the Gerasenes became angry at Him because He put a higher value on an afflicted man than on a herd of swine, Scripture records no retort: And entering into the boat, he passed over the water. To the soldier who struck Him with a mailed fist, He meekly responded: If I have spoken evil, give testimony of the evil, but if well, why strikest thou me?

The perfect reparation for anger was made on Calvary. We might also say that anger and hate led Him up that hill. His own people hated Him for they asked for His crucifixion; the law hated Him, for it forsook justice to condemn Justice; the Gentiles hated Him for they consented to His death; the forests hated Him for one of its trees bore the burden of His weight; the flowers hated Him as they wove thorns for His brow; the bowels of the earth hated Him as it gave its steel as hammer and nails.

Then as if to personalize all that hatred, the first generation of clenched fists in the history of the world stood beneath the Cross and shook them in the face of God. That day they tore His body to shreds as in this day they smash His tabernacle to bits. Their sons and daughters have shattered crucifixes in Spain and Russia as they once smote the Crucified on Calvary.

Let no one think the clenched fist is a phenomenon of the twentieth century; they whose hearts freeze into fists today are but the lineal descendants of those who stood beneath the Cross with hands lifted like clubs against Love as they hoarsely sang the first International of hate.

As one contemplates those clenched fists, one cannot help but feel that if ever anger would have been justified, if ever Justice might have fittingly judged, if ever Power might have rightfully struck, if ever Innocence might have lawfully protested, if ever God might have justly revenged Himself against man—it was at that moment.

And yet just at that second when a sickle and a hammer combined to cut down the grass on Calvary’s hill to erect a cross, and drive nails through Hands to render impotent the blessings of Love Incarnate, He, like a tree which bathes in perfume the axe which kills it, lets fall from His lips for the earth’s first hearing the perfect