• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 2172 0

a consideration of the intentional relation to the object, the same is even truer with respect to the overcoming of faults even if they be envisaged from a medical rather than from a moral point of view. What matters most, however, is the complete inability of this method of approach to provide us with any knowledge of a really decisive kind concerning the question as to whether or not a quality, a disposition, or an attitude is positive in value and can stand the test of confrontation with God. That neutral way of looking on things presents to us a shadowy counterpart of the real situation, devoid of the latter’s inherent gravity. The awful problem, with its immense burden of responsibility, as to whether our conduct offends God or conforms to the divine order, is degraded to a psychologically interesting affair. Such a sterilized self-knowledge, empty of repentance and guilt-consciousness, is absolutely unfit for invigorating our endeavor to weed out our vices and debilities.

Fruitful self-knowledge calls us to a confrontation with God

The only fruitful self-knowledge, and the only true one, is that which grows out of man’s self-confrontation with God. We must first look at God and His immeasurable glory, and then put the question: “Who art Thou, and who am I?” We must speak with St. Augustine: “Could I but know Thee, I should know myself.” It is only in recognition of our metaphysical situation, only in awareness of our destiny and our vocation that we can become truly cognizant of ourselves. Only the light of God and His challenge to us can open our eyes to all our shortcomings and deficiencies, impressing upon us the discrepancy between what we ought to be and what we are. Contemplation of one’s own self in this light is animated by a profound earnestness; it is vastly different from all species of a neutral and purely psychological self-analysis.

He who seeks for self-knowledge in that true sense of the word regards his own nature, not as an unchangeable datum or a curiosity to be studied without any implication of responsibility, but as a thing which demands to be changed, and for whose qualities and manifestations he is accountable. Self-knowledge in this sense presupposes the readiness to change. We take an interest in what we are because we are determined to become new men in Christ. Here is no place for idle curiosity, nor for the egoistic fixation on oneself as a paramount theme. It is for the sake of God that we would become better men; and because we would become so we inquire about our present state and condition. That basic attitude of a solemn confrontation with God—the motif which in a unique way pervades the Liturgy of the Church—is fitted, better than any other, to make us sensitive to values and to present us with a picture of our defects stripped of any illusions. It is an attitude which we cannot maintain while playing, at the same time, the part of unconcerned spectators. It presupposes a penitent disposition; and, in its turn, necessarily gives birth to contrition: in the Confiteor it finds its supreme expression.

Readiness to change renders self-knowledge fruitful

Self-knowledge thus understood, as contrasted with its false counterpart, is not destructive but fruitful. Because it is founded in our readiness to change, it implies the discovery of any defect of ours to be the first step towards its elimination. However painfully the revelation of the patches of darkness in our soul may affect us, it will always lack the discouraging and depressing effect which in the context of mere natural self-knowledge would attend disagreeable revelations. For, referring all truth to God Who is the prime source and the epitome of Truth as such, we shall derive happiness from the knowledge of any important truth, however painful its content may be, since by the very fact of its possession we progress one step nearer towards God. Our illusions about ourselves are dispelled. We no longer deceive ourselves with fanciful beliefs concerning our character; we master our proud reluctance to take account of this or