Human law reaches certain wrongs and punishes them; condemned persons can thus be said to bear the consequences of what they have done. However, the law does not and cannot reach every wrong; it touches mainly the wrongs that harm society and not the ones that harm those who commit them. God, however, wills the progress of all creatures, which is why God does not fail to punish any departure from the moral path. There is no wrong, no matter how small, or any infraction of the divine law that does not have powerful and unavoidable consequences that may be more regrettable or less so. Hence it follows that in both small and great matters, humans are always punished for that in which they have sinned. The suffering that is the sin’s consequence is a warning that they have erred. It gives them experience, enabling them to sense the difference between good and evil and the need to improve themselves so that in the future they may avoid what has been for them a source of bitterness; otherwise, there would be no motive for mending their ways, and trusting in their impunity they would delay their advancement and, consequently, their future happiness.

Experience, however, sometimes arrives a bit late, after life has already been wasted and troubled, after strength has already been spent and after evil no longer has a remedy. Then the person will say, “If only at the beginning of my life I had known what I know today, how many wrongs I would have avoided! If I had it to do all over again, I would do everything differently. But there is no more time left!” Like the lazy worker who says, “I have wasted my day,” he or she likewise says, “I have wasted my life!” Nonetheless, just as the sun rises the next day for the worker and a new day begins that allows him or her to make up for lost time, so also after the night of the grave, the sun will shine with a new life, making it possible to take advantage of the experiences of the past and make good resolutions for the future.