Every person has a little corner in his heart he never wants anyone to venture into, even with a candle. That is why we can deceive ourselves and why our neighbors know us better than we know ourselves.
The examination of unconsciousness, if it is used as a substitute for examination of conscience, only intensifies this deceit.
We often justify ourselves by saying that we are following our consciences, when we are only following our desires.
We fit a creed to the way we live, rather than the way we live to a creed; we suit religion to our actions, rather than actions to religion.
We try to keep religion on a speculative basis in order to avoid moral reproaches on our conduct.
We sit at the piano of life and insist that every note we strike is right - because we struck it.
If each man is his own judge and standard, then who shall say he is wrong?
Not only will a good examination of conscience cure us of such self-deception - it will also cure us of depression. Depression comes, not from having faults, but from the refusal to face them.
There are tens of thousands of persons today suffering from fears which in reality are nothing but the effects of hidden sins. The evil conscience is always the fearful conscience. The greatest worries come from our failure to face reality. (That is why a pain which is present is more bearable than an equal worry which is yet in the future.)
Morbidity increases with the denial of guilt, the explaining it away or the covering up of the ulcerous partP Whence comes the depression of selfpity, if it be not a total unconcern with the interests of others, which is a sin? A soldier on a battlefield does not heed the wound if he loves his cause, and the soul that can cast its anxiety and worry upon an all-loving God is thus saved from self-pity.
Many souls are like persons with boils, who could be cured by lancing, which would allow the pus to run out.
Their suppressed sins give rise to this form of sadness. There has never been in the history of the Church a saint who was not joyful: there have been many saints who were great sinners, like Augustine, but there have never been sad saints. This is understandable: perhaps there could not be anything in life more depressing than the knowledge that one has been guilty of a grave sin, without the chance Christians enjoy of starting all over again.
St. Paul wisely distinguishes between the sadness of the guilty who know Redemption and the depression of those who deny both their guilt and the possibility of forgiveness. "For the sorrow that is according to God worketh penance, steadfast unto salvation; but the sorrow of the world worketh death" (II Cor. 7:10). "For know ye that afterwards, when he desired to inherit the benediction, he was rejected; for he found no place of repentance although with tears he had sought it" (Heb. 12:17).
The examination of conscience not only relieves our sadness, not only gives us a second chance when forgiven; it also restores us to Love.
In the examination of conscience a person concentrates less on his own sin than on the Mercy of God - as the wounded concentrate less on their wounds than on the power of the physician who binds and heals the wounds.
The examination of conscience develops no complex because it is done in the light of God's justice. The self is not the standard, nor is it the source of hope. All human frailty and all human weakness are seen in the radiation of God's infinite goodness, and never once is a fault separated from knowledge of the Divine Mercy.
Examination of conscience pictures sin, not as the violation of law, but as the breaking of a relationship. It develops sorrow, not because a code has been violated, but because love has been wounded. As the empty pantry drives the housewife to the bakery, so the empty soul is driven to the Bread of Life.
Nor is examination of conscience a concentration on one's own disordered consciousness in the way an Oriental mystic contemplates his navel. Excessive introspection leads to immobility and morbidity.
No minds or souls are more helpless than those who say they will "work the thing out alone." The Christian soul knows it needs Divine Help and therefore turns to Him Who loved us even while we were yet sinners.
Examination of conscience, instead of inducing morbidity, thereby becomes an occasion of joy. There are two ways of knowing how good and loving God is. One is by never losing Him, through the preservation of innocence, and the other is by finding Him after one has lost Him.
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Archbishop Sheen explains in this book that "anxiety cannot be cured by a surrender to passions and instincts; the basic cause of our anxiety is a restlessness within time, which comes because we are made for eternity. If there were anywhere on earth a resting place other than God, we may be very sure that the human soul in its long history would have found it before this."
Selected excerpts from Peace of Soul,
by Archbishop Fulton Sheen, New York, 1949
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