Our hidden faults and weaknesses

Fr. Roy Cimagala . 

EVEN while we try our best to know ourselves, we also would know that we can never know ourselves enough, much less, completely. Man is a great mystery. St. Augustine said as much:

“Don’t you believe that there is in man a deep so profound as to be hidden even to him in whom it is?” We just have to learn to live with this abiding predicament of ours and do something to deal with it as best as we can.

Of course, we are always encouraged that we make regular examinations of conscience so we can probe into the hidden parts of our mind and heart, of our conscience, and get to know the motives and spirit behind our thoughts, desires, words, deeds and negligences.

This is not an easy task, especially if we are burdened by tiredness and the many concerns that hound our mind. Just the same, the only thing to do is that we try our best, even if our best is never enough. We just have to go on and on, trying to know ourselves well.

We cannot deny that there are just too many temptations and all forms of evil for us to cope with. A psalm expresses this fact well: “For evils without number surround me. My sins have overtaken me, so that I cannot see. They are more than the hairs of my head, and my heart has failed within me.” (40,12)

We don’t have to look far to verify the truth of these words. We just have to look at our own experiences and see how many evils, in all kinds of forms and ways, visit us the whole day.

We therefore should pray a lot, putting ourselves as much as we can in God’s presence, so that whatever happens, we would still be with him. We can make use of another psalm as a prayer to go with our examinations of conscience:

“Who can discern his own errors? Cleanse me from my hidden faults.” (19,12) Still another psalm is helpful: “See if there is any offensive way in me. Lead me in the way everlasting.” (139,24)

We need to be humble to acknowledge this fact of life. Only the proud and the vain would ignore this, and thus neglect the needed action to address this universal human predicament. It is in this kind of uncorrected situation that we would be building up a moral disaster in a matter of time.

No matter how daunting the effort is in knowing more and more about our hidden faults and weaknesses, we just have to go on with that duty. It can be a way of showing the authenticity of our love for God and for others. And it will pay off tremendously.

We would become a better person, more able to handle the issues and challenges of our life. We would certainly make a better world for all of us, no matter how small our individual contribution may be. More importantly, we would be more able to discern God’s will promptly.

Our interest and motive for knowing more about our hidden faults and weaknesses is not because of a perfectionist mentality.

Rather it should be because of our love for God and for everyone. We are interested in this duty because we want to love God more and serve others better. We want to glorify God.

We need to be reminded of this motive quite often, because we can easily fall into a perfectionist trap, just wanting to improve ourselves simply for our own sake alone. This is when we can reinforce our pride and vanity, considering ourselves as superior to others.

That is why we always need to rectify our intentions. We should never forget that the danger of perfectionism is always around.

E-mail: roycimagala@gmail.com