Frustration:
Unless souls are saved, nothing is saved; there can be no world peace unless there is soul peace. World wars are only projections of the conflicts waged inside the souls of modern men and women.
Modern man is impressed less with the order of nature than he is with the disorder of his own mind.(p.1)
The old theological division, of those who are in the state of grace and those who are not, has given way to the political separation of rightists and leftists. The modern soul has definitely limited its horizons.(p.3)
Modern man is characterized by three alienations: he is divided from himself, from his fellow human beings, and from his God.(p.7)
Nothing is more tragic in an individual who once was wise than to lose his memory, and nothing is more tragic to a civilization than the loss of its tradition….Once a person ceases to be of service to neighbors, he or she begins to be a burden to them.(9)
Peace of soul cannot come from the person, any more than the person can lift himself by his own ears. Help must come from without; and it must not be merely human help, but Divine help.
Modern man has locked himself in the prison of his own mind; and only God can let him out, as He let Peter out of his dungeon. All that a person must do is contribute the desire to get out. God will not fail; it is only our human desire that is weak. There is no reason for discouragement. It was the bleating lamb in the thickets, more than the flock in the peaceful pastures, that attracted the Savior’s heart and helping hand.
The PHILOSOPHY OF ANXIETY:
In other days people were anxious about their souls, but modern anxiety is principally concerned with the body; the major worries of today are economic security, health, the complexion, wealth, social prestige etc.(15)
The philosophy of anxiety looks to the fact that a human is a fallen being composed of body and soul. He is in a constant state of suspension between mater and spirit ….the anxiety underlying all modern anxieties arises from someone’s trying to be himself without God or from his trying to get beyond himself without God.(17)
The basic anxiety of life is transcended in three ways, each of which brings a peace of soul that only the God-loving enjoy: 1. By controlling desires,2.by transferring anxiety from body to soul; 3.by surrender to the will of God.
Peace of soul comes to those who have the right kind of anxiety about attaining perfect happiness, which is God….the fundamental anxiety of the soul cannot be cured by a surrender to passions and instincts; the basic cause of our anxiety is a restlessness within time that comes because we are made for eternity.(31)
The origin of Conflicts and their Redemption:
Humanity’s conflict is deep-seated; psychology touches only the shallow part. It springs not only from a revolt against the moral law but, more fundamentally, from the unwillingness of man to accept his position and role in the order of being.
When a person is tempted to evil, he must not think there is anything abnormal about him. A person is tempted, not because he is intrinsically evil , but because he is fallen man.(47)
Is God hard to find:
The added tragedy of sin is that after we do wrong we may not let God help us do what is right and good. We smash the bow so that He cannot play on our violin. We keep him at arm’s length because we refuse to be loved….The truth of the matter is, not that God is hard to find, but rather that we are afraid of being found.(54)
The world is full of scholars who speak about extending the frontiers of knowledge but who never use the knowledge that has already been acquired; who love to knock at the door of truth but would drop dead if that door ever opened to them.(56)
Persons who say, “ I will serve God in my way, and you serve God in your way,” ought to inquire whether it would be advisable to serve God in God’s way.
Morbidity and Denial of Guilt:
There has been no single influence that has done more to prevent man from finding God and rebuilding his character than the denial of personal guilt.
Some psychiatrists would make all people nice people, complacent in their freedom from guilt or sin. By one magic stroke, the world would be rid of nasty people , or those who recognize they are sinners.(68)
And the people who chose to make war against Our Lord were never those whom society had labeled sinners….Why did they hate him? Because, all His during his life, He had been tearing the masks of false goodness from nice people, exposing the evil of men and women who lived in accordance with the conventional standards of His time.(74)
Because sin is the breaking of a relationship with Love, it follows that it cannot be treated exclusively by psychiatry….Sin is not in the understanding alone, nor in the instincts; sin is in the will….If the sense of guilt is an estrangement from God and sorrow at having wounded someone we love, if the ache of self-reproach is a symptom of our rejection of love’s invitation , then our emphasis must be not so much on the guilt as on the way to remove it and find peace. Nice people must see themselves as nasty people before they can find peace…. The nasty people are the convertible people, aware of their own imperfections…(82)
Examination of Conscience:
There is a profound difference between Freudian psychoanalysis and the Christian examination of conscience. For psychoanalysis is supposed to reveal or unveil something not even the most searching examination of conscience could discover….There may be times when it is necessary to analyze unconsciousness to find out whether an idea has been suppressed or repressed; but it is always necessary for us to examine conscience to find out whether the motive that prompted an action was right or wrong.(92)
Sinners may need self-analysis; but they surely need help from beyond themselves to make them well. In the examination of conscience, one gets outside self by letting the light of God shine in….There are thousands of patients on their backs who would be made better today if they were on their knees instead.
There are many people suffering from physical disorders, finding it difficult to maintain normal relations with one another, nervous and unstrung at home and in the office, simply because they have a repressed guilt.(102)
The examination of conscience brings to the surface the hidden faults of the day; it seeks to discover the weeds that are choking the growth of God’s grace…
We often justify ourselves by saying that we are following our consciences, when we are following our desires. We fit a creed to the way we live, rather than fit the way we live to a creed; we suit our religion to our actions, rather than actions to religion.(108)
In the examination of conscience a person concentrates less on his own sin than on the mercy of God—as the wounded concentrate less on their wounds than on the power of the physician who binds and heals the wounds.(109)
Repentance is not self-regarding , but God-regarding. It is not self-loathing ,but God-loving. Christianity bids us to accept ourselves as we are…It bids us stop worrying about ourselves, stop concentrating on our faults and failings, and thrust them upon the Savior….Every soul that examines itself looks at a Crucifix and sees a personal relationship between itself and our Divine Lord….the figure upon the Cross is a Divine Physician, who only asks that we bring our wounds to Him in order that He may heal them.
Psychoanalysis and Confession:
A few decades ago , nobody believed in the confession of sins except the Church. Today every one believes in confession, with this difference: some believe in confession their own sins ; others believe in confessing other people’s sins.(118)
Sex and Love of God:
The principal reason for sex deification is loss of belief in God….the modern tragedy is not that human beings give way more often to their passions now than in previous ages, but that , in leaving the right road, they deny that there is a right road.
The Church does, of course, speak of sin in the domain of sex, as it speaks of sin in the domain of property or sin in the area of self-love. But the sin does not lie in the instinct or the passion itself. Our instincts and our passions are God-given; the sin lies in their perversion. Sin is not in hunger, but in gluttony….Sin is not in the love or the use of the flesh, but in lust, which is its perversion.
To use sex as a substitute for the absolute is a vain attempt to turn the copy into the original , to make the shadow become the substance, and the conditioned the absolute….Sins do not become virtues by being widely practised. Right is still right if nobody is right, and wrong is wrong if everybody is wrong.(163)
They who would separate the earthly sound from the heavenly harp can have no music; they who believe that love is only the body’s breath soon find love breathes its last and they have made a covenant with death.(167)
Repression and Self-Expression
Christianity says that repression of evil thoughts and desires… is good for the soul. And it states that the repression of actual graces and the urge to sacrifice self for neighbor is bad for the soul(176)
The truth of the matter is that humanity has lost control over itself at he very moment when it has gained control over nature. …Every gain in mastery of the forces of nature becomes a potential danger unless it is matched by an equal gain in man’s mastery over his animal impulses.
The principal cause of all unhappiness is unregulated desire –wanting more than is needed… Our desires are infinite; the supply of any good on earth is finite.
Christian self-discipline is really self-expression –expression of all that is highest and best in self…Our passions , instincts, and emotions are good, not evil; self-control; means only curbing their inordinate excesses.
It is not the wrong things one has already done that keep one from God; it is present persistence in that wrong.(185)
The secret of peace of soul is to combine detachment from evil with attachment to God, to abandon egotism as the ruling., determining element in living and to substitute Our Divine Lord as the regent of our actions.
Fear of Death:
The Christian begins his life by contemplating his death; knowing that he will die, he plans life accordingly, in order to enjoy eternal life.(217)
The Christian principle for conquering death is twofold:1.Think about death 2. Rehearse for it by mortification now….meditation on death has something of that effect on the spiritual system. It breaks the spell that made us think that pleasure is everything….Death can be robbed of its greatest fearfulness if we practice for it. Christianity recommends mortification, penance, and detachment as a rehearsal for the great event….When we die to something, something comes alive within us. If we die to self, charity comes alive; if we die to pride, service comes alive; if we die to anger, loves comes alive.
The basic spiritual principle is this: Death must be conquered in every thought and word and deed by an affirmation of the eternal. Spiritual writers advise us that everything should be done as if one were going to die in the next moment. If we treat the living as though as though they were dying, too, then the good in them will come to the surface….Death is meant to be our true birth, our beginning.
(In the last three chapters , Sheen speaks about the different aspects of conversion: the psychology, theology and the effects of conversion.)
According to Sheen , “ true conversion has nothing to do with emotional uplift or with a moral veneer of social action; it is a hard game, an arduous battle, a travail of soul from which emerges a new dedication of self.
“Curiously people fear how grace will change and improve them and it is that fear that keeps many souls away from God. They want God to take them as they are and to let them stay that way. They want him to take away their love of riches, but not their riches—to purge them of the disgust of sin , but not of the pleasure of sin. But the things they ask are the marks of a false religion: it promises salvation without a cross, abandonment without sacrifice, Christ without His nails.
He alone is our way. Flee Him, and we are lost. He alone is our light. Depart from it, and we are blind. He alone is our life. Leave Him we must die….But if we cannot bring goodness to Him, we can bring Him our sins.(244)
Conversion brings the soul out of either chaos or the false peace of mind to true peace of soul….the true peace that follows conversion is deepened, not disturbed, by the crosses, checks and disquietudes of the world, for they are all welcomed as coming from the hands of the Loving Father. This true peace can never come from adjustment to the world, for if the world is wicked, adjustments to wickedness make us worse. It comes only from identification of one’s own will with the Will of God.(p.276)
The peaceful soul does not seek, now , to live morally, but to live for God; morality is only a by-product of the union with Him. This peace unites the soul with his neighbor, prompting him to visit the sick, to feed the hungry and clothe the naked; for by loving another soul one gives to God.(276)
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