282. Thirteenth Wednesday of Ordinary Time

Meditations no. 266 (unofficial computer-aided translation)

Examination of conscience is demanded by love.

Ego cogito cogitationes pacis, et non afflictionis, - I think thoughts of peace and not affliction, says the Lord. God our Lord looks upon us with thoughts of peace, and does not want us to be ill at ease. He does not want the sight of our failings to destroy our peace of soul, and therefore the examination of conscience ought to be a powerful weapon for acquiring serenity and proportion, for coming to know ourselves better and coming to know God better.

Why do we examine our conscience? Why ought we to have a spirit of examination? Our Father tells us the answer: The examination of conscience fulfils a need born of love and sensitivity. From the time our Lord called us to his Work, our whole life has been one of love, seeking love, and tending towards love. There are many occasions when our heart moves us to make a spontaneous act of love, and words of loving affection spring to our lips, rising up from the depths of our soul.

We do love our Lord, and we are full of the desire to love him more every day. But those desires are not enough. Love means deeds! Our love has to make sure that our soul’s desires are matched by our actions.

This is why we struggle, and this is why we need the examination of conscience. It is indispensable. I passed by the field of a sluggard, the Book of Proverbs tells us, by the vineyard of a man without sense; and lo, it was all overgrown with thorns; the ground was covered with nettles, and its stone wall was broken down. If we neglect our examination of conscience out of laziness, small infidelities, mistakes and evil inclinations multiply like weeds in our soul.

Take a long hard look at your life, our Father tells us. You will see that you are full of faults, which harm you and perhaps the people around you too. Remember that microbes are just as dangerous as wild animals. By your lack of humility, your lack of prayer, and your lack of self-knowledge, you are cultivating these faults and mistakes as microbes are cultivated in a laboratory; and then those microbes infect your surroundings. Catch us the little foxes that spoil the vineyards, we read in Holy Scripture. I don’t like to see souls who live in a fantasy world, hunting lions in the corridors of their home, while they abandon the effort to acquire Christian perfection in everyday life. Their imagination falls prey to foolish desires of spectacularly heroic deeds, which they don’t, and never will have, the opportunity to carry out. They make me very sad. What we have to do in order to carry out great enterprises is kill the little foxes that ravage our Lord’s vineyard: small failures in the areas of sincerity, or love, or sacrifice.

This is what we are aiming to do when we examine our conscience: to discover the small faults that hold us back from total service to God and souls. Father, you call your children to walk in the light of Christ. Free us from darkness and keep us in the radiance of your truth.

General examination of conscience.

Examination of conscience. -A daily task. Bookkeeping is never neglected by anyone in business.

And is there any business more important than the business of eternal life?

Our examination of conscience makes us see what God wants of us day by day. Our spirit of examination leads us to ask ourselves repeatedly: “Am I doing what God wants me to, now, and in the way he wants me to do it?” This attitude is a natural one, because it is love that motivates us. If we are conscious of being in God’s presence, and are trying to please him in everything, a spirit of examination is simply a manifestation of our love. Our spirit of examination reflects the sensitivity of our love, together with our ever-present concern to improve the way we do things, trying to have a pure intention in everything. Then we can really understand the words of Jeremiah: When men fall, do they not rise again? If one turns away, does he not return? Why then has this people turned away in perpetual backsliding? They hold fast to deceit, they refuse to return. I have given heed and listened, but they have not spoken aright; no man repents of his wickedness, saying, “What have I done?”

God asks us for a searching examination of conscience. We have to ask ourselves courageously whether we do fulfil God’s Will at every moment. And where we have gone wrong, we need to turn back, say sorry, and begin again, asking our Lord for more help. That’s a good time to make an effective resolution; to say “I believe”, to say “I hope”, and to say “I love”. It’s the moment to turn to our Lord’s Mother, who is Daughter, Mother and Spouse of God, and our Mother, to ask her to obtain more grace for us from the Blessed Trinity: the grace of faith, hope, love, and contrition. Cry out with St Peter: Domine, tu omnia nosti; tu scis quia amo te! Lord, you know all things: you know that I love you.

We spend time examining our conscience every day. At the end of each day we stop for a few minutes before God. We ask the Holy Spirit for light, and in a calm, humble dialogue with our heavenly Father we look and see what our service has been like today. How should we do the general examination of conscience? You can’t lay down rules, our Father told us. An examination of conscience that is good for one person isn’t good for another; and even with the same person, it may be good for a certain time and not afterwards. It depends on each person’s own circumstances. In the weekly chat we can get advice on the best way to do it, but what we must be convinced about is that we can never leave the examination of conscience undone, and that it needs to be a dialogue with our Lord, full of confidence and peace. Ego cogito cogitationes pacis, he tells us, my thoughts are thoughts of peace.

I always recommend souls who are going through a period of intranquillity to reduce their examination of conscience to this triple question, briefly and rapidly dealt with: “What have I done badly? What have I done well? What could I have done better?” And that’s it.

Particular examination.

With your particular examination you ought to go straight towards acquiring a definite virtue or uprooting the defect which is dominating you. The particular examination makes our ascetic struggle into a joyful and competitive sport. It is a weapon for attack -our Father called it a sword of Toledo steel - and is distinct from our general examination of conscience. Otherwise our interior life would be lacking in vigour and diligence; and since the bonfire of love of God, if it isn’t being constantly fed, will eventually go out, anyone who isn’t advancing starts falling back.

We have all the means we need in order to know ourselves, and to know the points where we have to fight particularly hard: some virtue we have neglected, some aspect of our self-giving that is not going well, or some habit which hinders us from progressing in our love for God. To win at these points, we have the particular examination. This tactic is nicely summed up in the king of Syria’s orders to his soldiers: Fight with neither small nor great, but only with the king of Israel. He knew that if he managed to kill the king, he had won the battle. That is what we are after.

We cannot stop at externals or symptoms. Ask for light. -Insist: until you can get to the root and can then get at it with your weapon of attack, the particular examination. Habitual carelessness, for example, in the way we treat other people, may be a symptom of not living in God’s presence. If we are only half-interested in the apostolate and don’t take advantage of every opportunity and seek all sorts of ways of strengthening our friendships, it may mean that our life of prayer is lukewarm and our piety feeble and sterile. It is enormously important to identify these causes, and the particular examination helps us to fight more effectively. It keeps us up to the mark all day long, and colours our day with the joyful hope of struggle and victory. It does us good to exercise fortitude, constancy and humility in keeping the particular examination alive, and we should ask for advice in the Confidence on how best to direct our efforts.

Let us ask our Lord for help to improve in our spirit of examination; for help to go a little deeper every day in this Norm in our plan of life; so that, as St John Chrysostom says, turning our attention to our conscience, we call it to account for our words, our actions, and our thoughts.

You, O Lord, know me; you see me, and try my mind toward you. After this dialogue with God there comes sorrow, the supernatural fruit of our examination of conscience. Set all your faults before your eyes, says St Bernard. Set yourself before your eyes, as though before another. Then weep. Out of this love-sorrow, a resolution is born. My child, you should think about your life and ask for forgiveness. Seeing your poor life, ask for forgiveness and make a specific and firm resolution to improve in this or that: in what you find difficult, in what you habitually don’t do as you know you should.

Our Blessed Lady, Stella maris, Star of the Sea, will grant us the light we so much need for our daily examination of conscience.