Examination of Conscience I

One

Pride  

Pride is not one of the seven deadly sins. All sin is pride. Pride is like ice cream, it comes in a variety of flavors – vanity, envy, sloth, anger, greed, gluttony, and lust.  

Pride is to say, “I don’t need God and His plan. I can do it on my own. I can do it my way.”

But God is the foundation of existence. If you remove Him as your foundation, then you become the foundation. But you are not wise or strong or big enough. That is why you feel overwhelmed, anxious, and angry. Because you are trying to be the Atlas of the universe. Atlas was the Titan condemned to hold up the universe forever. He’s got the weight of the world on Him. Your Universe rests on your shoulders now and that is overwhelming and unmanageable. 

So Pride is a break with God’s order. Pride says, “I don’t need this boat (God and His plan). In fact, I’m getting out of this boat into the ocean.” Then Panic sets in and you say, “I can’t deal with this!” Because you can’t!

Then we try to soothe or escape the pressure, the feeling of being overwhelmed, and the pain with addiction to busyness, entertainment, food, alcohol, drugs, porn…

Humility overcomes pride because to be humble is to live in reality. God is the Atlas of the universe. The weight of the world rests on His shoulders, not mine. Now, here is the remedy for anxiety and worry, with God as my Father, no matter what happens, I will be okay. My loved ones will be okay. Because He works all things for good for those who love Him. 

The following list compiled by St. Josemaria Escriva is a good criteria for locating your dominant form of pride, “Thinking that what you do or say is better than what others do or say; always wanting to get your own way; arguing when you are not right; arguing when you are right but with bad manners or insisting stubbornly; giving your opinion without being asked, when charity does not demand you to do so; despising the point of view of others; not being aware that all the gifts and qualities you have are on loan (from God); not acknowledging that you are unworthy of all honor or esteem, even the ground you are treading on or the things you own; mentioning yourself as an example in conversation; speaking badly about yourself, so that others may form a good opinion of you; making excuses when rebuked; being hurt that others are held in greater esteem than you; refusing to carry out menial tasks; seeking or wanting to be singled out; dropping words of self-praise in conversation, or words that might show your honesty or wit or skill or professional prestige; being ashamed of not having certain possessions.” 

Two

Vanity

Vanity is the disordered concern for self-image. It’s the vice of caring too much about what other people think. Especially people who aren’t close to us. So many of us care more about what strangers think of us than the people who really know us. 

We are tempted to give more energy to being liked or esteemed by colleagues or competitors or strangers or posting on social media instead of putting real effort into talking and listening to our spouse or our kids, our elderly parents, or getting a coffee with a friend. 

Why do we care so much about what other people think? Because praise is supposed to be directed to some excellence, it’s natural for us to praise, to esteem excellent things and excellent people. But to receive praise just for the sake of praise is completely empty. 

So, it is not praise that we should seek. We should strive to become excellent humans. People who are virtuous, who excel in their duties and responsibilities. 

We should strive for what is honorable rather than honor. Then, if we are praised, we say thank you and thank God. That’s why Aquinas says that the truly virtuous person, the magnanimous person, doesn’t care about doing what will get praised, but about doing what is praiseworthy.

Three

Envy

We can use achievements and attributes of others to spur ourselves on to pursue them (e.g., St. Mother Teresa’s joy can be an inspiration for me to work at being cheerful in all circumstances), but envy is “sadness at the sight of another’s goods and immoderate desire to acquire them for oneself, even unjustly.”

Now there are two sides to the envy coin: a) sadness at someone else’s good. If the success or blessings of your friend, family member, neighbor, or even competitor displeases you, it is clear you suffer to some degree from envy; b) pleasure at someone else’s evil. A lot of people may act like well-wishers, but they seem to really thrive on bad news, and they certainly delight in repeating any misfortune – especially scandals – that happen to their friends and families. If you’re in that camp, then you definitely have an envy problem.

If we love our neighbor, we’ll be united with him in love, and then we’ll see every good thing for him as a good thing for ourselves. As C.S. Lewis wrote, God “wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another.” This is a difficult ideal, but it is the ideal we have to reach for if we want to avoid the unhappiness of the green-eyed monster.

Four

Sloth otherwise known as Acedia

God created and redeemed us so that we could be like God, sharing in his divine life as his adopted children, and so that we could live like God, and act like our Father in Heaven. 

Sloth is more than laziness. It’s most powerfully represented by acedia, which is “boredom or sadness regarding spiritual or interior good.” As Pieper says of the slothful man, “He would prefer to be less great in order to avoid the obligation of greatness.”  The person who suffers from sloth wishes that God hadn’t asked him to be a child of God, because of the effort it demands, “Why couldn’t God have left me alone? Holiness/virtue/heroism/excellence is really hard!” 

Sloth is a sorrow or boredom with the spiritual life. It’s being bored with the things of God which results in a spiritual apathy or complacency. This is when you don’t like spiritual things like prayer, rooting out vice and practicing virtue and talking about God and ultimate things like heaven – basically of everything that matters most. And it results in the effort escape the invitation to become god-like through busyness, workaholism, entertainment, news, sports, drunkenness, drug use, pornography, or sex.

From the writings of Joseph Pieper, “Acedia is a sadness or sorrow that lacks courage for the great things that are proper to the nature of the Christian. It is a kind of anxious vertigo that befalls the human individual when he becomes aware of the height to which God has raised him. One who is trapped in acedia has neither the courage nor the will to be as great as he really is. He would prefer to be less great in order thus to avoid the obligation of greatness.”

Five

There are two symptoms of sloth: Busyness and Distraction.

Both are a kind of restlessness. 

When you are restless it means you are not a peace with the state of your life which is supposed to be an image of God destined for glory, to become a saint. And if you are not on that track you are going to be restless. And the way you cope with being restless is that you try to take your mind off it either by busyness or distraction or entertainment (Netflix, binging or the constant need for new experiences through travel).

Sloth results in the effort to escape the invitation to become god-like through busyness, workaholism, entertainment, news, sports, drunkenness, drug use, pornography, or sex.