Spiritual Vanity

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Lady_Love

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I once heard a sermon on spiritual vanity. The priest gave us an image of a woman examining herself in a mirror and saw that she had a pimple. She left the mirror and returned five minutes later to see that she STILL had the pimple. She repeated this over and over.

He said that with spiritual vanity we see a certain flaw in our character and we keep looking in the mirror every five minutes to see if it is still there and obsess about it. He explained that this is spiritual vanity. Humility requires that we accept our flaws and forget ourselves and not be so self-obsessed.

Humility draws our attention away from ourselves and puts it on seeing what Christ is up to. So many of us have weak relationships with Jesus because we are too busy looking at ourselves. We end up knowing very little about Him. While we are looking at our own image in the mirror we are not looking at His face and missing the loving glance with which He is looking at us.
 
What about obsessing over the fact that you have committed a mortal sin, and you can’t make it to confessions? Would that be spiritual vanity?

Personally, I feel that falls right into spiritual vanity.
 
nfreak141 said:
What about obsessing over the fact that you have committed a mortal sin, and you can’t make it to confessions? Would that be spiritual vanity?

Personally, I feel that falls right into spiritual vanity.
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Well, I think it would be hard to go about business as usual with a knife sticking out of your chest, which is my analogy to mortal sin. There is a big difference between a knife in your chest and a pimple on your face.

Getting to the doctor ASAP would definitely be an appropriate obsession for a knife in the chest. Obsessing over getting to the doctor for a pimple is misplaced and inappropriate concern.
 
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