One more lesson from the traitor Judas, may be usefully noted by you. When a man cannot endure to be alone with his own thoughts, he may be said to be deserted by himself. This is another consequence of sin and of evil association. There is a very terrible self desertion when conscience is aroused, and a man's own thoughts become intolerable from the sense of his own evil, and when his conscience does within the work of the handwriting on Belshazzar's palace wall. It may be seldom in this world that any one is brought to such blackness of darkness; but every sin a man consciously commits makes him less capable to keep company with himself. All association with evil tends to the coming on of the result of making him who gives in to it try to escape from his own thoughts. And after this association has made man so that he cannot bear to look steadily into his own soul, then his enjoyment of that for which he has sold all that was real, good, and divine, has passed away. He is as a field over which a totally destructive blight, killing all, once fair, verdant, promising, has passed. It was so with Judas. Having denied his master, forsaken his godly companions, despised and rejected by his ungodly tempters, and unable to bear the reproaches of his own conscience, casting down the pieces of silver in the temple, he went and hanged himself. Men can put evil friendships and many worldly occupations in God's room so as to forget Him. But when they pass, as pass they must, and the soul is compelled to look on eternal realities, then will be felt that of which the Saviour speaks: What exchange shall a man give for his soul? Never then give place to any thing that will cloud your clear filial view of God, weaken your humble yet firm trust in Christ, or grieve that Holy Spirit for the loss of whose dwelling in you there is no conceivable equivalent. Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption. Watch and pray that ye enter not into temptation.
- text taken from Daily Bread - Bring a Few Morning Meditations for the Use of Catholic Christians by Father Richard Waldo Sibthorp