"The heart is perverse above all things, and unsearchable: who can know it?" - Jeremiah"The heart is perverse above all things, and unsearchable: who can know it?" - Jeremiah
By these words, "the human heart," we mean that depth of malignity, of perversity, and of self-love, which is in every one of us, and the venom of which extends over all our actions, even the best of them: for there is scarcely any action we do that is not spoilt by self-love and deprived of all its goodness.
This perverse and corrupt element in our nature is a consequence of original sin, which has led astray the primitive uprightness of our hearts, and has concentrated upon our own selves that affection which ought to be given to God alone. If we observe ourselves carefully, we shall find that we love everything in proportion as it affects ourselves, that we judge of everything according to our own view of it, and solely with regard to our own interests: instead of which, we ought to love everything, and even ourselves, only in God and for God's sake; and we should judge of everything according to the judgment of God, and solely with a view to His interests. And the source of all our vices those of the mind and those of the heart, is that we will reverse this right order of things: this is the root of all our sins, and the sole cause of our eternal ruin.
If we study quite young children even, we shall perceive in them the first seeds of this disorder, and the germs of all the evil passions of our nature. These germs develop from day to day, and have already made serious progress before reason and religion can do anything to check them. And the saddest thing about the whole matter is that the first effect of this disorder is to blind us as to our own state: we can see the faults of others plainly enough, but we cannot and will not see our own; we are angry with those who try to make us see ourselves as we really are, and we will never allow that they are right; and the principal cause of our trouble when we do fall into a fault is a secret pride which makes us vexed and irritated at being obliged to acknowledge our fall even to ourselves. We do all we possibly can to hide what we really are from ourselves and from others. We do not always succeed with others, who easily find us out; but, unfortunately, we succeed only too well with ourselves: and the knowledge of our own hearts, which is the most necessary of all knowledge, is also the most rare, and that which we take the least trouble to obtain. We live and die without really knowing ourselves, without doing anything to acquire that knowledge, and almost always after having laboured all our lives to disguise ourselves in our own eyes. What a terrible mistake, when we have to appear at last before the God of truth, there at last to see ourselves as we really are! Then it will be too late; there will be no help and no hope then; we shall know ourselves but for our own misery and our eternal despair!
It is necessary, therefore, to try in this life to attain to a right knowledge of ourselves, and to judge ourselves with a just judgment; and above all, we must try to be firmly persuaded not only of the importance, but of the absolute necessity of this self-knowledge, and also of its extreme difficulty. But how shall we set about this, when from our earliest childhood we are so profoundly in the dark on this subject, and when increasing age only increases the darkness and obscurity? We must have recourse to Him Who alone knows us perfectly, Who has fathomed the most secret recesses of our hearts, Who has counted and followed all our footsteps. We must implore the light of His grace, and by the help of that light we must incessantly study all our actions and the secret motives of those actions; all our inclinations, our affections, our passions; above all, those which seem the most refined and the most spiritual. We must be inexorable in condemning ourselves whenever we see we are guilty, and never try to excuse ourselves either in the sight of others or in our own sight.
If we are in this good disposition of uprightness and sincerity, if we acknowledge humbly before God our own blindness with regard to ourselves, most assuredly He will enlighten us; and if we will only make good use of these first rays of His Divine light, we shall see more and more clearly, day by day, into our own hearts; we shall discover by degrees all our defects, even those that were most imperceptible; even the cunning deceits of self-love will not be able to escape from our vision; and, aided by the Divine assistance, we shall pursue this enemy relentlessly until we succeed in banishing him for ever from our hearts.
Now God, Who is infinitely wise, only gives us this knowledge of ourselves gradually and by degrees; He does not show us our misery all at once such a sight would drive us to despair, and we should not have strength to bear it but He shows us first of all our most glaring faults, and as we go on correcting these, He discovers to us our more subtle and secret faults, till at last He lays bare to us all the innermost recesses of our hearts. And this goes on our whole life long; and too happy shall we be if before our death we attain to a perfect knowledge of ourselves and an entire cure of all our evils! This grace is only granted to those souls who are most holy, most faithful, and most generous in never forgiving themselves anything.
The most important point is, therefore, always to walk under the guidance of the Divine light; to be quite sure that, if we wander away from that light, we shall lose ourselves; to mistrust our own intellect, our own judgment, our own opinions, and to be guided in everything by the Spirit of God; to wait for His decision, and to hold our own in suspense until He decides for us and directs us. How rare is such a practice as this, and what great fidelity in mortifying ourselves it requires! But also, by it, what errors we avoid, what falls we escape, what progress we make in perfection!
What errors we avoid! It is quite certain that whenever we judge of the things of God by our own judgment, we are at fault; that we deceive ourselves in everything respecting the nature of holiness and the means of attaining it; that we are as incapable of judging of our own actions, our own motives, our own dispositions, as we are of the actions and dispositions of our neighbour; that in him as in ourselves we condemn where we ought to approve, and approve where we ought to condemn, on slight grounds and without any knowledge of the true state of the case. And as our judgments on such matters are the principles of our conduct, into what errors do not we fall when we take the promptings of our own spirit for our guide! We construct our own ideal of sanctity; we are quite delighted with it, and adhere to it most obstinately; we will listen to no one else's ideas; we judge ourselves and we judge others by this rule, and we thus make terrible mistakes of which every one but ourselves is conscious!
What falls we escape! All our faults come from leaving the Spirit of God to follow our own spirit. We are not sufficiently careful about this in the beginning; ws do not mistrust ourselves enough; we do not always consult God with the deepest humility; we lean upon our own spirit until insensibly it takes the place of the Spirit of God; we do not perceive this; at last we deceive ourselves completely, and fall into all sorts of delusions; we think we are following the Divine light, and we are only following our own imagination, our own passions; this blindness goes on increasing day by day; the wisest advice cannot bring us back; we are no longer in a state even to listen to it: and I am not afraid to say it with the best and most upright intentions in the world, we find ourselves incessantly in danger of committing the greatest faults unless we are really interior, and unless we are always on the watch against the artifices of self-love.
There is only one way of making a real advance in the way of perfection, and that is, never to guide ourselves, but always to take God for our Guide, to renounce ourselves in all things, to die in all things, to our own judgment and to our own will. Whatever progress we may have made in this way, the moment we attempt to guide ourselves we go back. The farther we advance, the more absolutely necessary is the Divine guidance for us; and if the greatest saint on earth were to think for a single instant that he could guide himself, in that instant he would be in the greatest danger of being lost for ever.
Since then it is quite impossible for us to know our own heart since self-love can always lead us astray and blind us since pride, which is the greatest of all sins, is all the more to be feared the farther we are advanced in the ways of God, let us never rely on ourselves; let us always keep ourselves in God's sight and under the guidance of His Hand, and let us beg of Him to enlighten us always and without ceasing.
The true knowledge of ourselves consists in believing that, however far advanced in perfection we may be, we are always of ourselves incapable in this supernatural life of one good thought, of one right judgment, or of one just action; and that, on the contrary, we are capable of falling into the greatest sins, and even of being hopelessly lost, if we turn away from God and His guidance ever so little. Whoever knows himself in this manner, and acts accordingly, will never go astray. But to know ourselves like this, and to act on our knowledge, we must be really interior, given to recollection, to prayer, and the constant thought of the presence of God.
- taken from Manual for Interior Souls, by Father Jean Nicolas Grou