No one can review his past life without finding therein motives enough and to spare for humbling himself before Almighty God. "We have sinned, we have committed iniquity, we have done wickedly, we have revolted; to us belongeth shame and confusion of face." (Daniel 9:5,7) If ever we are inclined to think much of ourselves, we have only to look back on our past years. Look upon the deliberate sins against charity, against truthfulness, against purity. Look upon the pride, the selfishness, the self-will, the neglect of God. Look upon the sins that have stained our lives.
Besides actual sins, how many infidelities to grace have we committed! God has been so liberal with His graces, and I have been so negligent in availing myself of them. How many I might have earned if I had been faithful and had not willfully turned aside from what God asked of me to follow my own will and pleasure. What cause for humiliation of myself! If others who have perhaps lived and died in sin had had my graces, would they not have made a far better use of them than I have made? To me, O God, shame and confusion of face! I must throw myself on Thy mercy and humbly beg forgiveness.
When, moreover, I look at what I now am, I find fresh cause for humbling myself. I might have been a saint if I had been more faithful and now I am one of the vilest of sinners. My soul in the sight of God is disfigured by sin, as a body is by the ulcers and sores that spoil its natural beauty and comeliness. I abound with faults innumerable. I am unworthy to appear in the presence of God. "O hide Thy face from my sins, blot out all my iniquities!"
- text from Humility, Thirty Short Meditations by Father Richard Frederick Clarke, SJ