May We Hate More...

May we HATE more…
#NewYear's resolution 2026

There's so much talk and preaching on love, loving God and others, and rightly so. To live is to love, first God, then others in God. This is the sole purpose and meaning of our life; everything else are just secondary, or else a useless complication. Therefore this ought to be our default motivation and attitude in life.

However, the other side of the coin is often neglected, that is, the need to HATE MORAL EVIL/SIN. Hatred of sin and anything that will offend God empowers us to love God more, and to attach ourselves to Him.

Our weak human nature will always experience the pull of the world, the lure of temptation, unless we see the horror of sin, even venial sin, and detest/hate it.

We ought to remember that [“SIN is the greatest of all evils. It is a rebellion against God's most holy will, the only true measure of our actions; a contemptuous defiance of, and an insult to our thrice Holy God; an act of INGRATITUDE towards God who is so infinitely good to us; a mockery of Christ and an attempt to crucify Him again (Heb 6:6); an assault on our own soul; a surrender of true interior liberty and peace.”] (from “Catholic Morality”, by Fr. John Laux, MA, Tan books)

Without a strong hatred for sin there will be a danger for us to minimize it as being normal, even with its capacity to drown us into untold miseries, darkening our intellect and weakening our will; most of all killing God's life in our souls, making us spiritual zombies. This can start our slow or gradual rotting from the inside.

No wonder the Catechism includes as an important element in genuine repentance the hatred and detestation of our sins. We may be sorry for the evil we've done, but if we don't strongly hate it, then there will always be the tendency to relapse into sin.

The Catechism also teaches us that Jesus could have saved us with the slightest chill in the cold, for the least of His sufferings are of infinite value, more than enough to atone for all our
sins; He is the God-man. Yet He went to the extent of enduring unimaginable torture and dying on the Cross, to impress upon us the horror of sin, and His infinite love for us.

Therefore, we ought to arouse in ourselves a deep hatred for sin, even the slightest sin, in thought, word or deed. We ought also to hate and avoid all occasions of sin, even the slightest immodesty in speech, vain curiosity, idle talk, over-indulgence in entertainment, or any other dangerous preoccupations. Saints and martyrs have exemplified this, verbalized or not: DEATH RATHER THAN SIN (St. Dominic Savio). Without such a deep hatred for evil we are in danger of COMPROMISING, making excuses and justifications of our infidelities to God, leading to mediocrity in our spiritual life, and endangering our soul.

May we practice detesting, at the outset, in the concrete instances of our day, anything that may cause us to sin. The grace of God will never be wanting in anyone committed to loving Him wholeheartedly. And we have our Blessed Mother, who ‘crushed the head of the serpent’ (cf Gen 3:15) to aid us in this spiritual battle. She always wins, and so will we, if we cling to her.
It is not too late to add this to our list of New Year's resolutions.