Pride -- the Great Downfall

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This week I have been guilty of spending too much time on activities that are unnecessary to my vocation (mostly too much computer time). I think occasionally we all slip a little beyond our personal boundaries and we have to yank the rope to get back in line.

I find it funny that when I am "straying," I often see little reminders telling me to pull it all together. Maybe those reminders are always there, but when I know I need them, they flash like neon lights.

My mother-in-law recently gave me some spiritual reading and I've been enjoying one book in particular each morning with my Magnificat and coffee -- Divine Intimacy, Meditation of the Interior Life for Every Day of the Year. I enjoy the meditative reading every day because it is written in such a positive manner -- in the spirit of love of God, instead of fear.*

Anyway, the meditation that I read on Monday should have had neon highlighting. It took me until today to realize it was still screaming at me. That the words nagged at me all week was a message from the Spirit. Monday's passage, written on Mary's Humility, describes how God perfected this virtue in our Blessed Mother and that we should imitate her in this regard (among others). It was a very good passage for me to read, but one statement in particular really got my attention: "Lucifer was pure but not humble and pride was his downfall."

Yikes!

So, off I am to attend to my vocation, and work on humility. I'll also be painting a bathroom, and there's nothing like paint on your face to bring on the state of abjection.



*From the preface: "Precisely because Teresian spirituality is the spirituality of divine intimacy, the spirit impregnating the exercises by which we hope to attain this lofty ideal must be spirit of love. We have tried to keep in mind this special mark of the spirit of Carmel. Not all meditation books are adapted to souls thirsting for divine intimacy, simply because they are imbued with a spirit of fear. Not, indeed, that fear is not profitable for certain souls, but since there are so many books of this type, we judged it timely to publish a collection of meditation in which love would be united to filial, reverential fear, instead of servile fear, while not denying that this latter can be very salutary."
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