Brian Smith's Posts - JUST GRATEFUL
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Know Thyself..... (some good advice)
tag:stayblessed.ning.com,2010-02-25:2917072:BlogPost:38024
2010-02-25T07:17:57.000Z
Brian Smith
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<tbody><tr><td align="middle" valign="top"><div class="text-align:center;margin-left:0px;text-indent:0px;"><span class="textstyle1"><strong><font face="Verdana">We Can Never Be A True Friend<br></br><br></br></font></strong></span><span class="textstyle0"><font face="Verdana" size="2">Fulton J. Sheen…<br></br></font></span></div>
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<tbody><tr><td valign="top" align="middle"><div class="text-align:center;margin-left:0px;text-indent:0px;"><span class="textstyle1"><strong><font face="Verdana">We Can Never Be A True Friend<br/><br/></font></strong></span><span class="textstyle0"><font size="2" face="Verdana">Fulton J. Sheen<br/></font></span></div>
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<tbody><tr><td valign="top" align="left"><div class="text-align:left;margin-left:0px;text-indent:0px;"><span class="textstyle1"><strong><font face="Verdana">W</font></strong></span><font face="Verdana"><span class="textstyle0"><font size="2">e can never be a true friend of anyone whom we do not know unless we know ourselves. Few of us really know <br/>ourselves, and few ever want to know. We imagine ourselves to be very different from what we are. We wear a <br/>mask in public but seldom take it off when we are alone. Hence we think that our critics always misjudge us. We <br/>believe our friends are right when they praise us, and wrong when they criticize us. Most of our acquaintances could <br/>tell us faults about ourselves which we would deny most vociferously, and yet they might be only too true.<br/><br/></font></span><span class="textstyle1"><strong>Know Thyself</strong></span></font><font face="Verdana"><span class="textstyle0"><font size="2">--For a good reason, therefore, the Greeks inscribed on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, the <br/>injunction: "Know thyself." Plutarch added: "If the ‘Know thyself’ of the oracle were an easy thing for every man, it <br/>would not be held to be a divine injunction:’ The Divine Savior, in telling the story of the Prodigal Son, marked the <br/>moment of the latter’s conversion with the words: "Coming to his senses". <br/><br/>Self-knowledge is not intellectual, but moral. It falls not within the domain of psychology, but theology. It is <br/>concerned not with what we think, but with our motives and the hidden springs of life and action.<br/><br/>Self-examination must be done in the presence of God. We must compare ourselves not with our neighbor, nor with <br/>our own subjective ideals, but with the Perfect. How often in life we stand self-revealed by coming in contact with a <br/>noble life. In self-examination, it is God and not man who makes us enter into ourselves. As Simeon said when he <br/>held the Babe: "This child is set ... that out of many hearts, thoughts may be revealed." (Luke 2:34, 35) In that <br/>wondrous Presence there can be room neither for hidden pride nor barren hopelessness.<br/><br/></font></span><span class="textstyle1"><strong>Bewilderment</strong></span></font><font face="Verdana"><span class="textstyle0"><font size="2">--The neurotic, the bewildered, and the disillusioned are today flocking to psychoanalysts to have <br/>their minds analyzed, when what they really need is to go to God to have their sins forgiven. There can be no health <br/>of soul or body while there is a moral conflict within. The modern mind thought it got rid of hell but found it within. A <br/>psychoanalyst can sublimate; God alone can give peace. As Dr. Jung, the celebrated psychoanalyst, admitted: <br/>"About a third of my cases are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and <br/>emptiness of their lives. This can be described as the general neurosis of our time. A considerable number of patients <br/>came to see me, not because they were suffering from neuroses, but because they were finding no meaning in life."<br/><br/>Lives are disordered and unhappy because they are multiple. Like broken mirrors, they reflect a hundred different <br/>objects, but no single purpose which could give unity to life. Our Lord asked the name of the devil who possessed <br/>the soul of the young man, and the devil answered: "Legion." He had lost his unity.<br/><br/>One of the reasons of this tension within is because we have never settled absolutely for ourselves whether our <br/>body or our soul should dominate. If we concentrate on the pleasures of the body, we surrender the joys of the soul. <br/>If we concentrate on the soul, we make the body its servant, and therefore a sharer in the joys of the soul. So long <br/>as we are without a goal of living, we are like a radio tuned in to two different stations, getting no harmony but only <br/>static, no enjoyment but only a feeling of irritation.<br/><br/></font></span><span class="textstyle1"><strong>Goal of living</strong></span></font><font size="2"><font face="Verdana"><span class="textstyle0">—What is the goal of human living? That question has already been answered: To attain Perfect Life <br/>without death, Truth without error, and Love without hate or satiety—which is God. A man is happy when he fulfills <br/>the end for which he is made. Creatures of all kinds-gold, food, machinery, flesh, money-are means to attain God. It <br/>is making them the ends of life which constitutes selfishness and causes sin and disorder. This comes so easily to our <br/>fallen natures, that we must constantly be on our guard. To this end, a self-examination should be made every night <br/>before retiring and should be followed by a prayer expressing sorrow for our sins, asking God for forgiveness, and <br/>resolving to amend our ways and to do penance for the sins we have committed. This examination can be very brief. <br/>It should revolve around the seven capital sins, the seven pallbearers of the soul:<br/><br/></span><span class="textstyle2"><strong>Pride</strong></span></font></font> <font size="2"><font face="Verdana"><span class="textstyle0">is an inordinate love of one's own excellence and, as such, it dethrones God from the soul and enthrones "I." <br/>"No God, no Master. I am God. I am my own Lord." Every proud person takes himself too seriously. Human beings are <br/>like sponges. Each human being can stand so much honor, as a sponge can hold so much water. Both quickly reach a <br/>point of saturation. When a sponge passes that point, it drips; when a man passes that point, the honor wears him <br/>instead of him wearing the honor. Do I ever practice humility or recognize the truth about myself ? "Take up my yoke <br/>upon you, and learn of me, because I am meek, and humble of heart: And you shall find rest to your souls." <br/>(Matthew 11:29)<br/><br/></span><span class="textstyle2"><strong>Avarice</strong></span></font></font> <font size="2"><font face="Verdana"><span class="textstyle0">is the inordinate love of earthly goods. Undue love of money gives a man a "heart of gold,"cold and yellow. <br/>Do I seek wealth regardless of the rights of others? Do I realize that on the day of my death the only possessions I <br/>really will have will be those I gave away, for their merit will still be with me? "Seek first the kingdom of God..."<br/><br/></span><span class="textstyle2"><strong>Envy</strong></span></font></font> <font size="2"><font face="Verdana"><span class="textstyle0">is discontent with another’s good, a mentality which is cast down at another’s good, as if it were an affront to <br/>our own superiority. Do I assert my envy by "running down" others by innuendo, half-truths, fault-finding, or by <br/>attributing to them false motives. "But if you bite and devour one another: take heed you be not consumed one of <br/>another." (Galatians 5:15)<br/><br/></span><span class="textstyle2"><strong>Anger</strong></span></font></font><font size="2"><font face="Verdana"><span class="textstyle0">—unjust anger is a violent and inordinate desire to punish others, and is often accompanied by hatred which <br/>seeks not only to repel aggression, but to take revenge. Do I realize that being quickly aroused to anger is a sign of <br/>selfishness, and that my character is known from the things I hate? If I love God, I will hate sin; If I love sin, I will <br/>hate religion. "Judge not that you may not be judged." (Matthew 7:1)<br/><br/></span><span class="textstyle2"><strong>Gluttony</strong></span></font></font><font size="2"><font face="Verdana"><span class="textstyle0">, the abuse of the lawful pleasure God has attached to eating and drinking, which are necessary conditions <br/>of self-preservation. It becomes sinful when it incapacitates us for the fulfillment of our duties, injures our health, <br/>endangers the interests of others, or when, for Catholics, it breaks the laws of fast and abstinence. "Therefore, <br/>whether you eat or drink, or whatsoever else you do, do all to the glory of God." (1 Corinthians 10:31)<br/><br/></span><span class="textstyle2"><strong>Sloth</strong></span></font></font> <font size="2"><font face="Verdana"><span class="textstyle0">is a malady of the will which causes us to neglect our duties. It is physical sloth when it manifests itself in <br/>laziness, procrastination, idleness and indifference. It is spiritual sloth when it shows a distaste for the things of the <br/>spirit, a hurrying of devotions, a religious luke-warmness and a failure to cultivate new virtues. "And withal being idle, <br/>they learn to go about from house to house: and are not only idle, but tattlers also, and busybodies, speaking things <br/>which they ought not." (Timothy 5:I3)<br/><br/></span><span class="textstyle2"><strong>Lust</strong></span></font></font> <font size="2"><font face="Verdana"><span class="textstyle0">is an inordinate love of the pleasures of the flesh. Lust is not sex—for sex is purely biological and is a God-given <br/>capacity; nor is it love, which finds one of its lawful expressions in sex. God also attached great pleasure to the <br/>marital act in order that social life and the Kingdom of God might be preserved.<br/><br/></span><span class="textstyle2"><strong>Pleasure</strong></span></font></font> <font size="2"><font face="Verdana"><span class="textstyle0">becomes sinful when used as an exclusive end rather than a means. Lust, for that reason, is perverted <br/>love. It looks not to the good of the other, but to the pleasure of self. It breaks the glass that holds the wine, and <br/>smashes the lute to snare the music.<br/><br/></span><span class="textstyle2"><strong>Honesty</strong></span></font></font> <span class="textstyle0"><font size="2" face="Verdana">is a burden only to those who have lost the sense of others’ rights, and purity a burden for the same <br/>reason. "Know you not, that you are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelt in you?" (I Corinthians 3:16) <br/>"I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercy of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, <br/>pleasing unto God, your reasonable service." (Romans 12:1) <br/><br/></font></span><span class="textstyle3"><em><font size="2" face="Verdana">Condensed from Love One Another by Rt. Rev. Fulton J. Sheen, (1895-1979). ©1944 P. J. Kenedy & Sons, N.Y. <br/>Books by the late Archbishop Sheen still in print include: From the Angels Blackboard , Isbn # 0892439254 and Life is <br/>Worth Living, Isbn # 0385145101. A topical compilationof the wit, wisdom, and satire of Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, <br/>read The Quoteable Fulton Sheen Isbn # 0-385-26226-4>1095</font></em><br/><br/></span><span class="textstyle0"><br/></span></div>
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