Annotatio CCXLI

”Thus saith the Lord: If perhaps they will hear, and be quiet,” etc. — Ezekiel 3:11

Gregory, in homily 10 on Ezekiel, cursorily running over that saying of Amos chapter 4, “I rained upon one city, and upon another I rained not,” etc.,¹ seems to hint that to penitents one sin is sometimes remitted, another not remitted. For thus he speaks: “When the very [man] who hears the preachers corrects himself of some vices, and disdains to amend of others, one and the same city is partly rained upon and partly remains dry — [that part] in which it repels from itself the rain of preaching. For there are certain [men] who do not at all hear the words of exhortation: these utterly refuse to receive the rain. And there are certain who hear, but nevertheless do not follow this marrow [inwardly]: because they cut off some vices in themselves, but in others [vices] they grievously persist.” St. Thomas, in the third part of the Summa, question 86, article 3, thus writes: “The word of Gregory is not to be understood as to the remission of the fault, but as to the cessation from the act: because sometimes he who was accustomed to commit several sins deserts one, [but] not however another — which [desertion] is indeed done by divine help, which nevertheless does not reach unto the remission of the fault.”