Care for ourselves

I keep on reflecting on the remark (see a previous blog) that sin often is about injuring and hurting others without us even being aware of it.

We normally argue exactly the opposite: we think we sin only when we consciously hurt someone. To think that sin can also be seen as acting destructively even without us being aware of it. It, as I wrote, cautions us to be really sensitive to the consequences of what we think and do.

We should not think that we cannot be that evil. We have little light in us, writes Thomas a Kempis in his book 2.5 and we neglect the little light which resides in us. We underestimate the darkness in us and find easy excuses for our evil deeds. We are indeed able to act destructively - often not even aware of it.

I also keep on reflecting on the thought that we can be unforgiving towards ourselves when we have done something wrong. We often refuse to accept that we made mistakes and are fallible.

What does all this mean? It practically means that we must care for our inner being just as we look after ourselves by cleaning our house and our body. Our interior live must be clean, a place where love lives, where destructivity cannot catch root. We should not neglect ourselves.

What then? On the one hand we underestimate evil in us, whilst, on the other hand, we become victims of the evil and mistakes we did in the past.

Something special happens when we realize how frail we are, how easy evil invades our interior life and gets a hold on us. Something happens to us when we care properly for ourselves.

To our amazement we then often see how weeds come up where we have thought the garden is clear and beautiful. And then we realize that every one of us, all of humanity, are involved in this struggle against evil in its overt and covert forms. And this brings us to act gently and not to act in any way to allow evil to invade our interior life. There is enough evil in this world. Let us be doves and snakes in the words of Jesus - that is extraordinarily careful about what we do and what we harbour in us.

It is then that we understand how we need to reach out to others as fellow pilgrims in our struggle against evil. We fail. We are by times not even aware that we are destructive in our actions. The more we seek to care for ourselves, to strive for our inner being to be pure and constructive, the more we shall resist becoming instruments of evil who destroy the lives of others. We shall then become servants who are trustworthy in ths smallest of small tasks.