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SMUG " ... you say, ‘I am rich and affluent and have no need of anything,' and yet do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked."
It really is a matter of perspective --- and taste. From God's point of view we have merely succeeded in blinding ourselves. We do not see that what we have gathered to ourselves are the very things so distasteful to God that He is prepared to spew them out as something vile. A more profound dimension remains often untouched: our lack of poverty, not in things material, but in things spiritual. How many of us realistically consider ourselves in terms of the poverty of our spirit? Few. Most often, we are, as it were, the fourth, as yet to be acknowledged person in the holy quadrinity. Next to God, we are inerrant, often impeccant (without sin). Do you doubt this? Count the number of people who go to Holy Communion (really, it would be easier to count the number who do not go ... most often a cipher) --- then count the number of people lined up for Holy Confession ... We have amassed to ourselves a spiritual and often garish grandiosity that speaks eloquently of our complacency. Sin is a phenomenon that occurs in "others" --- not in our parish, maybe not even in the Catholic Church. Perhaps not in Christianity itself. We have become our own "redeemers", and the very people who should be admonishing us against this, our bishops, priests, catechists, "ministers-of-this--that-and-the-other" --- are the people who are most eager to place the laurel of victory on our proud heads ... even if the race is not yet finished.
Were we just tepid, we
would --- or at least should --- fear being spewed from the
mouth of God Who sees our hypocrisy. But we are worse than tepid ...
we are arrogant, unwilling to acknowledge our wretched, pitiable
poverty. We are naked ... and do not even know it. Or what is worse
yet, know it, and pretend that we have no shame.
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