September 24
Daily Gleanings of the Saintly LifeTenth Tuesday after Trinity
The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness! S. Matthew 6:22.
THE great test of sincerity is awfully enforced in these words of our Saviour's. To know one's own weakness, to know that this weakness involves sin, and yet to shrink from the needful effort, from cutting off the dangerous occasion, what is this but hypocrisy. To confess one's weakness, and the fall it caused, to seek for absolution and peace, and yet no change to follow, what but the hypocrite's false anodyne? To be honest with God is, alas! one of the rarest gifts. There is a subtle dishonesty, which is one of the most frequently besetting sins of the devout. Convictions of sin are not wanting. Tears are not wanting. Resolutions are not wanting. The vision of righteousness and of judgment is ever present to the mind. What is wanting is the honest dealing with one's own weakness. Even as it is the triumph of the revealing power of the Spirit to show to the soul its real self, to show selfishness its special character of selfishness; so it is the triumph of the transforming power of the Spirit to save the soul from the consequences of its own characteristic weakness, constraining it to turn away from the ensnaring object, to refuse to yield to the seductive sweetness.
Where Thou art, Lord, there is no ill,
For evil's self Thy light can kill:
O let that light upon us rise!
Lord, heal our wounds, and cleanse our stains,
Fountain of grace, and with Thy rains
Our barren spirits fertilize.