Categories: spiritual-writings
Date: 25 September 2008 10:40:00
From Step 9, On Malice.
The holy virtues are like the ladder of Jacob and the unholy vices are like the chains that fell off the chief apostle Peter. The virtues lead from one to another and carry heavenward the man who choose them. Vices on the other hand beget and stifle one another. ...Remembrance of wrongs comes as the final point of anger. It is a keeper of sins. It hates a just way of life. It is the ruin of virtues, the poison of the soul, a worm in the mind. It is the shame of prayer, a cutting off of supplication, a turning away from love, a nail piercing the soul. It is a pleasureless feeling cherished in the sweetness of bitterness. It is a never-ending sin, an unsleeping wrong, rancor by the hour. A dark and loathsome passion ...
p. 152
I do not think much needs to be added. The vivid descriptions in the second paragraph are hard to read when I know I fall into this sin -- the images conjured up as well as the direct and to-the-point descriptions of them are hard to take on as reflections of myself. The personification, the metaphors used, all help to show what a destructive influence 'remembrance of wrongs' can be. The first paragraph's contrasting of Jacob's ladder and Peter's chains is an image that communicates clearly to me the stifling and binding nature of vices, all vices.
If after great effort you still fail to root out this thorn, go to your enemy and apologize, if only with empty words whose insincerity may shame you. Then as conscience, like a fire, comes to give you pain, you may find that a severe love of your enemy may come to life.
A true sign of having mastered this putrefaction will come not when you pray for the man who offended you, not when you give him presents, not when you invite him to share a meal with you, but only when, on hearing of some catastrophe that has afflicted him in body or soul, you suffer and lament for him as if for yourself.
p. 153
Again, St John shows his practicality and his awareness of the struggle to attain to mastery over the passions and vices. It takes time, and it takes an extraordinary effort from oneself, to allow the grace of God to shine forth in our lives, to truly love our neighbour as ourself -- so much so that if some trouble should befall him or her, we weep over it and furthermore weep for them as thought it was happening to us.
Forgive quickly and you will be abundantly forgiven. To forget wrongs is to prove oneself truly repentant, but to brood on them and at the same time to imagine one is practicing repentance is to act like the man who is convinced he is running when he is in fact fast asleep.
...
Never imagine that this dark vice is a passion of no importance, for it often reaches out even to spiritual men.
p. 154
Echoing Christ [cf Matthew 6:15], St John reminds us of the need to forgive, so that we will be forgiven our wrongdoings by our heavenly Father. And he produces a humorous image of the sleeping man thinking he is running to show the futility of saying one is practicing repentance, which is our life's work, when one us holding onto and remembering wrongs.