A Path Through . . .

( Ronald Knox - found here ) “Most of us, in our moral lives, shoulder the cross of duty very much in the spirit of the Penitent Thief . . . . We accept the moral law as God’s will for us; we admire it in the abstract; we applaud holiness and mortification in the lives of others. But when it comes to the point, duty always presents itself to us, doesn’t it, as something disagreeable—generally, too, as something negative; there is something we would like to do if only God’s Law wasn’t there telling us not to do it—we should like, for example, to do an unkind turn to somebody who has annoyed us, and then, just when we have got it all mapped out in our minds, conscience comes in and warns us that the action we propose is wickedly malicious. All right, then, we won’t do it after all. But we don’t love conscience any the better for it—a drag, an encumbrance, that’s what we feel about conscience. And then, after a time, the pressure seems to grow too strong, and the cord snaps. The temptati...