S
springbreeze
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Dear friends
I thought I would post this meditation that I recently read just so anyone who wants to can have a read at it.
**Love’s Greatest Stumbling-Block!
By the late Father Kilian McGowan, C.P. Used with permission, from the Passionist Priests, to help spiritually guide the layman.
The greatest roadblock to the love of God is pride. For pride is excessive desire for our own excellence; whereas, charity seeks out God as the Supreme Object of our strivings. Pride is wrapped up in self; whereas, charity fixes the mind, heart and will on God. Being directly opposed to the First Commandment, pride is therefore the greatest sin of all.
Pride is the root-cause of the tendency to make our ego, rather than Christ, the center of our lives. That’s why our Blessed Lord demanded self-denial as the first characteristic of His followers. In a certain sense, the only mortification we need is the denial of that self that is contrary to the law and love of God. Nothing sabotages the Christlife in us as much as does pride.
Pride is actually a kind of false religion, for it places the false idol of self where the image of God belongs. It is an exaggerated worship of self, for it makes self one’s beginning and last end. It causes us to make headlines of the good we do, and it buries our defeats and failures. It can cause us to cut down and debunk others lest they detract from our imagined excellence.
It closes its ears to objective criticism and suggestion, but has them open for the applause it ever seeks. It closes its eyes to virtues that are very obviously-to everyone else-lacking, yet pride calls attention to every least accomplishment. Most tragic of all, it can make us lead our lives for our sake and not for God’s. It is truly a false worship of self.
Pride also makes ingrates of us. Why is this? Because fearful that we lose the credit for our successful efforts and the applause for our achievements, we are reluctant to trace them to their source in God. And yet, the only thing in our lives in which God has no hand is our sins. What else is there that has not been received from Him? Pride seems blind to this basic truth.
Pride makes a cancer of a cell in the Mystical Body of Christ. A cancerous cell is a self-willed runaway, living for itself, refusing to work with the healthy cells of the body. The cancer of pride in anyone damages the life of the Mystical Body impeding the circulation of life and love from Christ the Head to His members.
Finally, pride can turn us into thieves because it steals the glory that belongs to God alone. IN the providential ordering of our lives everything is ultimately directed to the glory of God. But the proud man spares no effort to construct a cathedral wherein he enshrines his own excellence. He is therefore, a thief of the Power, Wisdom and Love of God.
Undoubtedly, the saddest effect of pride is that presumption that makes the proud man think he is so important that God couldn’t possibly exclude Him from the Vision of God in Heaven. He thinks he can save his soul without true self-denial, and storm heaven without true hope. He has forgotten that God must be in his heart before his heart can be in Heaven!
Is it any wonder that God resists the proud man. God cannot help the proud man, for he is beyond helping-that is, until he sees and experiences his need for God. His conversion will begin when he sincerely prays: “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.” And so will ours!**
God Bless you and much love and peace to you
Teresa
I thought I would post this meditation that I recently read just so anyone who wants to can have a read at it.
**Love’s Greatest Stumbling-Block!
By the late Father Kilian McGowan, C.P. Used with permission, from the Passionist Priests, to help spiritually guide the layman.
The greatest roadblock to the love of God is pride. For pride is excessive desire for our own excellence; whereas, charity seeks out God as the Supreme Object of our strivings. Pride is wrapped up in self; whereas, charity fixes the mind, heart and will on God. Being directly opposed to the First Commandment, pride is therefore the greatest sin of all.
Pride is the root-cause of the tendency to make our ego, rather than Christ, the center of our lives. That’s why our Blessed Lord demanded self-denial as the first characteristic of His followers. In a certain sense, the only mortification we need is the denial of that self that is contrary to the law and love of God. Nothing sabotages the Christlife in us as much as does pride.
Pride is actually a kind of false religion, for it places the false idol of self where the image of God belongs. It is an exaggerated worship of self, for it makes self one’s beginning and last end. It causes us to make headlines of the good we do, and it buries our defeats and failures. It can cause us to cut down and debunk others lest they detract from our imagined excellence.
It closes its ears to objective criticism and suggestion, but has them open for the applause it ever seeks. It closes its eyes to virtues that are very obviously-to everyone else-lacking, yet pride calls attention to every least accomplishment. Most tragic of all, it can make us lead our lives for our sake and not for God’s. It is truly a false worship of self.
Pride also makes ingrates of us. Why is this? Because fearful that we lose the credit for our successful efforts and the applause for our achievements, we are reluctant to trace them to their source in God. And yet, the only thing in our lives in which God has no hand is our sins. What else is there that has not been received from Him? Pride seems blind to this basic truth.
Pride makes a cancer of a cell in the Mystical Body of Christ. A cancerous cell is a self-willed runaway, living for itself, refusing to work with the healthy cells of the body. The cancer of pride in anyone damages the life of the Mystical Body impeding the circulation of life and love from Christ the Head to His members.
Finally, pride can turn us into thieves because it steals the glory that belongs to God alone. IN the providential ordering of our lives everything is ultimately directed to the glory of God. But the proud man spares no effort to construct a cathedral wherein he enshrines his own excellence. He is therefore, a thief of the Power, Wisdom and Love of God.
Undoubtedly, the saddest effect of pride is that presumption that makes the proud man think he is so important that God couldn’t possibly exclude Him from the Vision of God in Heaven. He thinks he can save his soul without true self-denial, and storm heaven without true hope. He has forgotten that God must be in his heart before his heart can be in Heaven!
Is it any wonder that God resists the proud man. God cannot help the proud man, for he is beyond helping-that is, until he sees and experiences his need for God. His conversion will begin when he sincerely prays: “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.” And so will ours!**
God Bless you and much love and peace to you
Teresa