Patience Vis-à-vis Our Own Faults and Imperfections (Part 2 of 4)

(The Calm after the Storm - found here)

“. . . The third reason is that the trouble, the sadness and the discouragement that we feel regarding our failures and our faults are rarely pure; they are not very often the simple pain of having offended God. They are in good part mixed with pride. We are not sad and discouraged so much because God was offended, but because the ideal image that we have of ourselves has been brutally shaken. Our pain is very often that of wounded pride! This excessive pain is actually a sign that we have put our trust in ourselves—in our own strength and not in God. Listen to Dom Lorenzo Scupoli whom we have already cited:

‘A presumptuous man believes with certainty that he has acquired a distrust of himself and confidence in God (which are the foundations of the spiritual life and therefore that which one must make an effort to acquire), but this is an error that we never recognize better than when we have just experienced a failure. Because then, if one is troubled by it, if one feels affected by it, if it causes one to lose all hope of making new progress in virtue, this is a sign that one has placed all his confidence, not in God, but in himself, and the greater the sadness and despair, the more one must judge himself guilty.

Because he who mistrusts himself greatly and who puts great confidence in God, if he commits some fault, is hardly surprised, he is neither disturbed nor chagrined because he sees clearly that this is the result of his weakness and the little care he took to establish his confidence in God. His failure, on the contrary, teaches him to distrust even more his own strength and to put even greater trust in the help of Him who alone has power: he detests above all his sin; he condemns the passion or vicious habit which was the cause; he conceives a sharp pain for having offended his God, but his pain is always subdued and does not prevent him from returning to his primary occupations, to bear with his familiar trials and to battle until death with his cruel enemies....

It is, again, a very common illusion to attribute to a feeling of virtue this fear and trouble that one experiences after a sin: because, though the uneasiness that follows the sin is always accompanied by some pain, still it does not proceed only from a source of pride or from a secret presumption, caused by too great a confidence in one’s own strength. Thus, then, whoever believes himself affirmed in virtue, is contemptuous toward temptations and comes to understand, by the sad experience of his failures, that he is fragile and a sinner like others, is surprised, as if by something that never should have happened; and, deprived of the feeble support on which he was counting, he allows himself to succumb to chagrin and despair.

This misfortune never happens to those who are humble, who do not presume on themselves and who rely only on God: when they have failed, they are neither surprised nor chagrined because the light of truth which illuminates them makes them see that it is a natural result of their weakness and their inconstancy.’ (The Spiritual Combat & A Treatise on Peace of Soul, William Lester and Robert Mohan, trs., TAN Books & Publishers, 1993, chapters 4 and 5) . . .”

~Jacques Philippe