Jesus said: (Taken from: Diary of Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska, 1488) My child, know that the greatest obstacles to holiness are discouragement and an exaggerated anxiety. These will deprive you of the ability to practice virtue. All temptations united together ought not disturb your interior peace, not even momentarily. Sensitiveness and discouragement are the fruits of self-love. You should not become discouraged but strive to make My love reign in place of your self-love. Have confidence, My child. Do not lose heart in coming for pardon, for I am always ready to forgive you. As often as you beg for it, you glorify My mercy.
First we notice that Jesus always gives His blessing, before any healing, any teaching or guidance there are His blessings through His love; simple, direct, without division or confusion, he simply says, “my child.” If we couldn’t wrap our minds around anything else, there would always be His authority and His sovereignty in our lives, made manifest through His love for us, His children. Glory and praise to You, our Lord, Christ Jesus. He is God, his name is Lord.
Why do I return to the models again and again? Because His words point to His spiritual truth. Whereas, our minds make observations and draw conclusions. His attention is focused on what is spiritual; while our minds contend with what is psychological. In His Oneness, everything is singular. In our brokenness everything is dualistic or plural. Christ Jesus tells us the greatest obstacles to holiness; holiness being His focus, are two aspects of our psychological brokenness, one being discouragement and the other anxiety. Through our examination we realize what hinders our holiness are not spiritual considerations rather psychological ones. In His holiness, His Oneness, He effortlessly makes the connection between what is spiritual and what is psychological which points to the correct examination for us. If we are listening, we hear Him tell us; these things of the mind, the discouragement and anxiety keep us from the application of His spiritual concern, virtue. Now notice, in His genius, that virtue spans both models, the spiritual and the psychological. Because of our experiences in this world of people and ideas we are forced to contend with ourselves before entering His domain of holiness. Since the Lord knows us better than we know ourselves, he shows us how these models work without calling attention to them.
Notice how He returns to the examination again and again. Next, He tells us all temptations, even all temptations of the world ought not disturb our interior peace. In this example, the internal peace, is His presence. Again, we see the psychological depicted as any and all temptations and His spiritual presence as peace; these models show the singularity of His domain and the duplicity of ours.
The Lord continues the inquiry for us by demonstrating how interchangeable our fragmented parts and pieces are, by introducing, sensitiveness. Here, He shows us how we decide what to consider. In our ego driven world, we take the lead, we pick and choose the obstacles, we decide what’s bothering us whether it be actual events or displaced energies is not important, only that we are deciding, holds any weight for us.
The next step in His carefully structured analysis, is to turn our attention to the root cause of our dilemma. He calls this, “self-love”; what we might commonly refer to as our pride. Call this feature what you will, the impact is to show us what happens when we put ourselves before Him, our Lord. We reinforce our brokenness, fortify our vanity and ignore the obvious. John the Baptist knew this well when he proclaimed, “I must decrease, and He must increase.” This process is not so simple. On closer examination, we see two words used which points to the spiritual and psychological model. Christ Jesus tells us, we “ought” to not let the world disturb His presence in us. “Ought,” is meant to focus our attention on Him in His perfection. “Ought,” expresses a condition of being perfect in a world of imperfection. Again, in His genius, He separates what is from what cannot be. Knowing full well we will never live in a world of what “ought” to be, He encourages us to “strive” to replace our human condition with what He has given us as our human nature. This nature is the likeness and image of Him, as He created in us and for us. The message is clear, this nature is unattainable but approachable; a reflection of God Himself being unattainable yet approachable.
The final element in my prayerful discernment of this timely discourse to us is the intensity of mind and spirit with which it demands. Christ Jesus tells us His pardon, His forgiveness, His love and His mercy is always available to us, as long as, we beg for it…..for the time for praying has ended, the time for begging has begun.