Stu's Blog

Never Was Heard and the Skies Are Cloudy All Day

Couldn’t help myself… Today’s reading has Thomas à Kempis imagining a conversation between Christ and a disciple.

I shall teach you those things which are right and pleasing to Me. Consider your sins with great displeasure and sorrow, and never think yourself to be someone because of your good works. You are truly a sinner. You are subject to many passions and entangled in them. Of yourself you always tend to nothing. You fall quickly, are quickly overcome, quickly troubled, and quickly undone. You have nothing in which you can glory, but you have many things for which you should think yourself vile, for you are much weaker than you can comprehend. ¹

And so on, etc., etc., etc. I am determined to get to the end of this book, but this is pretty depressing stuff. I question how helpful it is to engage in extended self scrutiny and abasement. This is essentially omphaloskepsis in search of sanctification.