A reader asks

How does mood play into particular judgment or salvation?

For instance, say I’m driving home one evening, feeling particularly annoyed at the day, no – the week. Say the last week has been a long series of trials or at least of chaos. I’ve faced trying circumstances (my car needed to be fixed $$, the baby’s been sick, the dog ran away) while also dealing with irritations at several people (boss didn’t notice my hard work, neighbor’s been partying too loudly at night), nothing earth shattering, but enough to put me in a sour mood.

So I’m thinking of all of this, driving home. I’m just hot under the collar mad at world, I’m half praying, half complaining. No, actually I’m just complaining under my breath – when suddenly — I am struck by a truck who runs a red light, and I die facing God there in that moment. I died having been a devoted Catholic, faithful to Her teachings, and seeking reconciliation via sacraments every few months, etc.

Will my mood at that moment dictate my fate?

How much weight does it have? Does it really point to a bigger “heart issue”? Though we strive for holiness daily, we often find ourselves in a bad mood, not that we glorify that, but it is indeed part of being human. How does this tie into the moment we face God?

The person you really want to talk to here is a moral theologian or spiritual director, of which I am neither. So take my answer with a very large grain of salt.

Speaking merely as somebody who has been a sinner all his life and a Catholic for close to half of it, my answer would be “Mood has nothing or virtually nothing to do with salvation. Mere moods and emotions are simply the weather in your inner world. What you feel comes and goes. It is only when you enflesh your emotions in specific acts of the will that you begin to enter on to the turf of sin and virtue. The Church tells us that part of the lingering effect of original sin (even after baptism takes it away) is “concupiscence”.

Here’s what the Catechism says about concupiscence:

1263 By Baptism all sins are forgiven, original sin and all personal sins, as well as all punishment for sin.66 In those who have been reborn nothing remains that would impede their entry into the Kingdom of God, neither Adam’s sin, nor personal sin, nor the consequences of sin, the gravest of which is separation from God.

1264 Yet certain temporal consequences of sin remain in the baptized, such as suffering, illness, death, and such frailties inherent in life as weaknesses of character, and so on, as well as an inclination to sin that Tradition calls concupiscence, or metaphorically, “the tinder for sin” (fomes peccati); since concupiscence “is left for us to wrestle with, it cannot harm those who do not consent but manfully resist it by the grace of Jesus Christ.” Indeed, “an athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.”

Here is a little reflection on concupiscence based on the Catechism and Romans 7 that I co-wrote with Scott Hahn a few years back.

Concupiscence and the Christian Struggle

As we discussed in our last lesson, Romans 7:7-25 is an extended meditation on the Christian struggle and constitutes one of the most hotly disputed chapters in the entire Bible. In Romans 7:9, Paul makes the mysterious remark, “I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived and I died.” A little further on, he tells us in Romans 7:14, “I am carnal, sold under sin.” Given that Paul has just written an extended treatise on the sacrament of baptism in Romans 6 which declares that we are not slaves to sin any longer, this is quite jarring. What can he mean? Who is he talking about? Is he referring to himself (and, by extension, all the non-baptized) before baptism? Is he, by a similar extension, making himself a sort of figure of all Old Testament Israel before Christ? Is he, as some Protestant interpreters say, referring to the “carnal” or backsliding Christian? Is he talking about the typical Christian? At various times and places, Christians from both Catholic and Protestant perspectives have proposed all of these approaches.

Noting that the Church has not offered any dogmatic interpretation of this chapter, we hold that each of these interpretations can be fruitful but that, given what Paul has already said in the previous chapters of Romans, one particular interpretation probably comes closest to Paul’s meaning: namely, that Paul is discussing the typical Christian’s struggle against concupiscence and using his own struggle as the typical model of what all Christians go through.

Recall, first of all, that Paul has begun this discussion of the Christian struggle with an argument aiming to show that sin, not law, is the source of our troubles. As we saw in our last study, Paul is again arguing with his imaginary Jewish interlocutor and showing that the law, which is itself “holy and just and good” was the instrument whereby sin put him to death. His point, restated in verse 13, is that “sin, working death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure.” In other words, the law, though it is the occasion of sin, does not make us sin. Our own corrupt and fallen Adamic nature naturally does so before baptism, when we are under the law.

But Paul has just said that the baptized are “not under law but under grace” (Romans 6:14). What then does Paul mean by saying, “I am carnal, sold under sin” (verse 14)? Does the “I” refer to the non-Christian before baptism who is still under the law? Does it refer to the so-called “Carnal Christian”, the baptized believer who is indulging a life of wilful sin? Or does it refer to the average Christian?

Reading further, we see Paul expressing a struggle with which all Christians can, at any rate, relate: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (verse 15). Likewise, Paul accurately captures our struggle with the good demands of the law when he says (verse 16) “If I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good”. For, of course, if we did not know in our heart of hearts that the law is good we would not feel inner torment when we break it.

Finally comes the crucial clue as to what Paul is talking about: “So then it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me” (vv. 17-20).

It is as vital to understand what Paul does not mean here as much as what he does mean. Paul does not mean to take back everything he has just said in Romans 6 concerning the regenerative power of baptism or the freedom from sin and our Adamic nature conferred thereby. When he declares to the baptized that “our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin” (Romans 6:6), he means it. So he cannot mean, in Romans 7 that, on second thought, the baptized are still slaves to sin. Similarly, he cannot and does not mean that “the devil makes us do it”. Rather, in Paul’s crucially important words “it is no longer I that do it, but sin which dwells within me” (verse 17). In other words, Paul’s “inmost self”, the “I” renewed by Christ in baptism really has been freed from original and actual sin. However, even after original sin has been destroyed and the grace of the Trinitarian life has been poured into his heart of the Holy Spirit, Paul finds that, in some sense, sin still “dwells within me” and discovers “another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members.” (Verse 20, 23).

This mysterious phenomenon of an inclination to sin which remains even after baptism has taken away original sin is known in Catholic theology as “Concupiscence.” Concupiscence is the lingering weakness of will, darkness of intellect, disorder of appetites, and affliction of body which results from original sin, but is not itself a sin. So, for instance, the heroin addict who receives baptism will have all his sins forgiven and original sin wiped away in the sacrament but he will also, barring a miracle, finds that his addiction to heroin remains and must be fought against after baptism. Likewise, very frequently the weaknesses, temptations, angers, fears, and other failings which beset us before baptism continue to do so after baptism. None of these weaknesses are themselves a sin. Rather, they are what Catholic tradition refers to as the “tinder for sin.” We find that even in the state of grace there is an inclination to sin against which we must struggle our life long. It afflicts not just the body and not just the sex drive but all the aspects of our being. Snoopiness, gossip, toying with the occult, reluctance to do what is good, forgetfulness of God’s will, factionalism, and many other failings are as much manifestations of concupiscence as disordered sexual impulses.

Because it is not sin itself but a mere weakness or inclination toward sin, concupiscence, though it can be lead to actual sin, need not. Indeed, in God’s Providence, concupiscence becomes, by the grace of God, the battlefield whereon the moral struggle is fought and we become participants with God in our own perfection and sanctification in Christ. Resistance to concupiscence becomes the occasion of virtue and a means whereby we shall hear from God on Judgement Day, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.” This moral struggle is precisely what the book of Revelation refers to when it declares a blessing on “him who conquers” (Revelation 2:7, 11, 17, 26, 3:5, 12, 21, 21:7) and it is exactly what Paul has in mind when he declares that we are “more than conquerors through him who loved us” (Romans 8:37).

Bottom line: in most cases, moods and such are simply expressions of concupiscence and are not, themselves, sinful. How we respond to them over the long haul is vastly more important. Just as habits are not cultivated in a moment, so a momentary mood is not the criterion upon which your salvation will be measured. Emotions have no moral value. It is the center of the person, the heart or will, that is where the real drama of sin and virtue is played out. Many people may judge themselves as sinners because of a particular emotional state and yet, in fact, they are heroically choosing to live virtuously despite whatever they may be feeling. Such people will hear, not condemnation, but “Well done, thou good and faithful” from our Lord on That Day. If you have trouble with mood swings, don’t take it as a sign that there is something specially sinful about you. The arena of your emotions may be the battleground where the Holy Spirit is fashioning you into one of his greatest saints and warriors.