Christian life -- Fiction; Conduct of life -- Fiction
"III.-I wish to know if it is best to record, on my tablets, the
faults and the sins I have committed, in order not to run the risk of
forgetting them. I excite in myself to repentance for my faults as
much as I can; but I have never felt any real grief on account of
them. When I examine myself at night, I see persons far more perfect
than I complain of more sin: as for me, I seek, I find nothing; and
yet it is impossible there should not be many points on which to
implore pardon every day of my life.
"REPLY.-You should examine yourself every night, but simply and
briefly. In the disposition to which God has brought you, you will
not voluntarily commit any considerable fault without remembering and
reproaching yourself for it. As to little faults, scarcely perceived,
even if you sometimes forget them, this need not make you uneasy.
"As to lively grief on account of your sins, it is not necessary. God
gives it when it pleases Him. True and essential conversion of the
heart consists in a full will to sacrifice all to God. What I call
full will is a fixed immovable disposition of the will to resume none
of the voluntary affections which may alter the purity of the love to
God and to abandon itself to all the crosses which it will--perhaps--be
necessary to bear, in order to accomplish the will of God always
and in all things. As to sorrow for sin, when one has it, one ought
to return thanks for it; when one perceives it to be wanting, one
should humble one's self peacefully before God without trying to
excite it by vain efforts.
"You find in your self-examination fewer faults than persons more
advanced and more perfect do; it is because your interior light is
still feeble. It will increase, and the view of your infidelities
will increase in proportion. It suffices, without making yourself
uneasy, to try to be faithful to the degree of light you possess, and
to instruct yourself by reading and meditation. It will not do to try
to forestall the grace that belongs to a more advanced period. It
would only serve to trouble and discourage you, and even to exhaust
you by continual anxiety; the time that should be spent in loving God
would be given to forced returns upon yourself, which secretly
nourish self-love.
"IV.---In my prayers my mind has difficulty in finding anything to
say to God. My heart is not in it, or it is inaccessible to the
thoughts of my mind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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