The Effects Of Small Sins

"Do not despise [underestimate] your sins because they are small; be afraid because they are so numerous. Truly, drops of rain are small, but they fill rivers, drag along heavy weights, and lift up trees along with their roots. I would like to know whether you who say that it is a small sin, as often as you commit such sins would want to suffer slight blows on your body, spots or rents in your clothes? If you do not agree to the blows on your body and the rents or spots on your clothes, with what kind of a conscience do you not fear to do the same thing to your soul?" (Caesarius of Arles, Mary Magdeleine Mueller, trans., St. Caesarius: Sermons, Volume I [1-80] [Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2004], Sermon 44:6, p. 224)