Our hidden faults and weaknesses

Even while we try to know ourselves, we also would know 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 and deal with it as best as we can.

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

This isn’t easy, especially if we are burdened by tiredness and the concerns hounding our mind. Just the same, we should try our best, even if our best is never enough. We just have to go on trying to know ourselves well.

There are just too many temptations and evils to cope with. A psalm expresses this 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 this. We just have to look at our own experiences and see how many evils 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. Only the proud and vain ignore this, and neglect the needed action to address this predicament. It is in this kind of uncorrected situation that we would be building up a moral disaster.

No matter how daunting the effort is in knowing 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 others. And it will pay off tremendously.

We would become a better person, more able to handle issues and challenges. We would certainly make a better world for all, 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 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 the danger of perfectionism is always around.