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Q: Dear Father John, I am helping a woman in her spiritual growth (mainly through helping her come up with a program of life), and something came up that I wanted to ask you about. She has shared with me some of what she regrets, and some of what she is having a hard time forgiving herself for. Intellectually she knows that God forgives, but she hasn’t accepted His mercy into her heart. I am guessing that this resistance is a manifestation of spiritual pride. Is that correct? And what virtues would help her overcome this? Abandonment? Humility? Mercy?




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Root Sins in Perspective

That said, I think it is important to remember that when we identify our root sin (sensuality, vanity, or pride), we are not saying that we have ONLY that sin – all of us actually have all three tendencies: tendencies to base our life’s meaning on comfort, or other people’s opinions, or our own achievements. It’s just that, because of personality characteristics and formation experiences, one of the three is almost always more influential in our day-to-day lives.

Also, it’s always good to remember that a program of life is useful above all for finding ways to direct our intentional exercise of and growth in virtue. It helps us answer the question: “What is God asking me to work on in my spiritual life right now?” Especially in the early stages of spiritual growth, this approach will require us to identify specific and common manifestations of selfishness in our daily lives. In overcoming or changing those, we will have to intentionally develop counteracting virtues. But those specific manifestations of selfishness can be symptoms of more than one sinful tendency. So by overemphasizing our root sin, we can sometimes confuse ourselves. The real value of knowing one’s root sin comes in being able to recognize where the devil will more likely try to trip us up; if he knows where there is a structural weakness in the wall around our interior castle, he will try to exploit it.

Read more: http://rcspiritualdirection.com/blog/2013/06/08/how-does-a-person-accept-gods-mercy#ixzz2dw3illTL


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