God Always See Who We Are
We Know Who Truly We Are
God gave us our own mirror to do that
- So we can see our soul -
Only when we are in front of our mirror we can see ourselves. And what we see is how others do.
Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Yet a book cannot be judged by its cover.
Our eyes are the windows of our souls. When we are happy, our eyes will be beaming and radiating our inner feeling of peace and happiness. When you are sad, one can tell you are because your eyes will show your sadness within so when you are weary or worried as well. And when you are angry, your eyes will be spewing with madness people can easily see.
The mouth can lie but the eyes cannot. Your words and actions would reflects who you really are and you'd be judged. But when you judged you too have already been judged.
The evils in the heart of men easily can be seen through their very eyes.
People when asking would say to someone, "look at me, or look me in the eyes" for they would want to know if you would be truthful or nice. And they would perceive if you are lying or not for with your shifty eyes they would know outright.
Yes, deep inside you would know who you are. And that is exactly how God would see you are.
Can You See Yourself?
Can one measure or evaluate own soul?
Yes! God gave us our left hand and right hand. Each hand can do things separately with varying results but if they are used together for the same purpose surely the results are much better and pleasing. And our eyes can lead the hands to accomplish that task. And so with our hearts and minds. There should be oneness in purpose otherwise there will be separations within us.
At times we would say "am I doing it right?" or perhaps "where did I go wrong?" For us to know the conditions of our souls, we should first examine ourselves. Do we want to go to heaven or to hell? There should only be one answer. But we have an option, to be good or be bad. We can only serve one master, ourselves or God.
Where are we heading to? Heaven or Hell?
Do we have an option? Yes we do. Do we have a choice? Yes we do. So let's do our own self-evaluation. First let us divide a piece of white blank paper into two columns by drawing a line in the middle from the top to the bottom. You should write in large bold letters 'THINGS I DID WRONG' on top of the first column on the left side of the paper, then on top of the column on the right 'THINGS I DID GOOD'. (e.g. below).
So let's start with the following Seven Capital or Cardinal Sins. You check only the once that applies to you on the left or on the right.
THINGS
I DID WRONG
|
THINGS
I DID GOOD
|
1. Pride
(Vanity or ego)
2. Anger
3. List
4. Envy
5. Gluttony
6. Avarice
(Greed)
7. Sloth
(Laziness)
|
1. Humility
2. Patience
3. Chastity
4. Meekness
and kindness
5. Fasting
and abstinence
6. Generosity
7. Diligence
|
The above is a general example to which you can actually yourself on daily basis. We evaluate ourselves daily. When you have checked the ones on the left then you are not doing the will of God. When you have checked the ones on the right then you are not far from the kingdom of God.
God equipped us with a conscience plus he gave us the ability of common sense and the gift of free will to do the right thing or the wrong one.
First of all, what is conscience? It is an inner feeling or the voice of our soul viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one's behavior.
"He had a guilty conscience about his desires".
A lot of times we hear people says "use your common sense." Or "whatever you do just do it right."
Everyday always examine your conscience. Always when you examine your conscience, based it on the Ten Commandments and remember the Sermon of the Mount.
Did you obey God's Ten Commandments or did you offend God by having offended any of your neighbor. Did you lie? Did you steal or cheat? Did you insult anyone, call him names? Where you so proud that you accuse anyone falsely? And many more....
1) Pride: The inordinate love of self — a super-confidence and high esteem in your own abilities also known as vanity. Pride fools you into thinking that you’re the source of your own greatness.
Liking yourself isn't sinful. In fact, it’s healthy and necessary, but when the self-perception no longer conforms to reality, and you begin to think that you’re more important than you actually are, the sin of pride is rearing its ugly head.
Pride is the key to all other sins, because after you believe that you’re more important than you actually are, you compensate for it when others don’t agree with your judgment. You rationalize your behavior and make excuses for lying, cheating, stealing, insulting, ignoring, and such, because no one understands you like you do. In your mind, you’re underestimated by the world.
Humility is the best remedy for pride. Catholicism regards humility as recognizing that talent is really a gift from God.
2) Envy: Resenting another person’s good fortune or joy. Catholicism distinguishes between two kinds of envy:
3) Lust: Looking at, imagining, and treating others as mere sex objects to serve your own physical pleasures, rather than as individuals made in the image and likeness of God.
The Catholic Church believes that it’s normal and healthy to be attracted to and to appreciate the opposite sex. That’s not lust, and it’s not considered a sin.
Chastity, the virtue that moderates sexual desire, is the best remedy for lust. Chastity falls under temperance and can help to keep physical pleasure in moderation.
4) Anger: The sudden outburst of emotion — namely hostility — and thoughts about the desire for revenge. You have no control over what angers you, but you do have control over what you do after you become angry. Even if someone does you wrong — robs you, for example — to avoid the sin of anger, you don’t go after the thief yourself, you desire for the police to catch the thief and for a court to sentence her to a fair punishment.
Patience, the virtue that allows you to adapt and endure evil without harboring any destructive feelings, is the best countermeasure for anger.
5) Gluttony: Choosing to over-consume food or alcohol. Enjoying a delightful dinner isn’t sinful, but intentionally overeating to the point where you literally get sick to your stomach is. So, too, having an alcoholic beverage now and then (provided that you don’t suffer from alcoholism) is not sinful in the eyes of the Church. But drinking to the point of drunkenness is.
Legitimate eating disorders, such as anorexia and bulimia, aren’t gluttony. They’re medical conditions that require treatment and care. Gluttony is voluntary and merely requires self-control and moderation.
Periodic fasting, restricting the amount of food you eat, and abstinence, avoiding meat or some favorite food, are the best defenses against gluttony.
6) Greed: The inordinate love of and desire for earthly possessions. Amassing a fortune and trying to accumulate the most stuff is greed, sometimes called avarice. Next to anger, envy, and lust, more crimes have been committed due to greed than any other deadly sin.
Generosity, is the best weapon against greed. Freely giving some of your possessions away, especially to those less fortunate, is considered the perfect antithesis to greed and avarice.
7) Sloth: (sometimes called acedia) is laziness — particularly when it concerns prayer and spiritual life. Sloth is always wanting to rest and relax, with no desire or intention of making a sacrifice or doing something for others. It’s an aversion to work — physical, mental, and spiritual.
The Church says that the evil habit of being inattentive at religious worship services and being careless in fulfilling your religious duties is also a sin of sloth.
Spiritual laziness can only be overcome by practicing the virtue of diligence, which is the habit of keeping focused and paying attention to the work at hand — be it the work of employment or the work of God.
Understanding the Seven Deadly Sins
1) Pride: The inordinate love of self — a super-confidence and high esteem in your own abilities also known as vanity. Pride fools you into thinking that you’re the source of your own greatness.
Liking yourself isn't sinful. In fact, it’s healthy and necessary, but when the self-perception no longer conforms to reality, and you begin to think that you’re more important than you actually are, the sin of pride is rearing its ugly head.
Pride is the key to all other sins, because after you believe that you’re more important than you actually are, you compensate for it when others don’t agree with your judgment. You rationalize your behavior and make excuses for lying, cheating, stealing, insulting, ignoring, and such, because no one understands you like you do. In your mind, you’re underestimated by the world.
Humility is the best remedy for pride. Catholicism regards humility as recognizing that talent is really a gift from God.
2) Envy: Resenting another person’s good fortune or joy. Catholicism distinguishes between two kinds of envy:
- Material envy is when you resent others who have more money, talent, strength, beauty, friends, and so on, than you do.
- Spiritual envy is resenting others who progress in holiness, preferring that they stay at or below your level instead of being joyful and happy that they’re doing what they’re supposed to be doing. Spiritual envy is far worse and more evil than material envy.
3) Lust: Looking at, imagining, and treating others as mere sex objects to serve your own physical pleasures, rather than as individuals made in the image and likeness of God.
The Catholic Church believes that it’s normal and healthy to be attracted to and to appreciate the opposite sex. That’s not lust, and it’s not considered a sin.
Chastity, the virtue that moderates sexual desire, is the best remedy for lust. Chastity falls under temperance and can help to keep physical pleasure in moderation.
4) Anger: The sudden outburst of emotion — namely hostility — and thoughts about the desire for revenge. You have no control over what angers you, but you do have control over what you do after you become angry. Even if someone does you wrong — robs you, for example — to avoid the sin of anger, you don’t go after the thief yourself, you desire for the police to catch the thief and for a court to sentence her to a fair punishment.
Patience, the virtue that allows you to adapt and endure evil without harboring any destructive feelings, is the best countermeasure for anger.
5) Gluttony: Choosing to over-consume food or alcohol. Enjoying a delightful dinner isn’t sinful, but intentionally overeating to the point where you literally get sick to your stomach is. So, too, having an alcoholic beverage now and then (provided that you don’t suffer from alcoholism) is not sinful in the eyes of the Church. But drinking to the point of drunkenness is.
Legitimate eating disorders, such as anorexia and bulimia, aren’t gluttony. They’re medical conditions that require treatment and care. Gluttony is voluntary and merely requires self-control and moderation.
Periodic fasting, restricting the amount of food you eat, and abstinence, avoiding meat or some favorite food, are the best defenses against gluttony.
6) Greed: The inordinate love of and desire for earthly possessions. Amassing a fortune and trying to accumulate the most stuff is greed, sometimes called avarice. Next to anger, envy, and lust, more crimes have been committed due to greed than any other deadly sin.
Generosity, is the best weapon against greed. Freely giving some of your possessions away, especially to those less fortunate, is considered the perfect antithesis to greed and avarice.
7) Sloth: (sometimes called acedia) is laziness — particularly when it concerns prayer and spiritual life. Sloth is always wanting to rest and relax, with no desire or intention of making a sacrifice or doing something for others. It’s an aversion to work — physical, mental, and spiritual.
The Church says that the evil habit of being inattentive at religious worship services and being careless in fulfilling your religious duties is also a sin of sloth.
Spiritual laziness can only be overcome by practicing the virtue of diligence, which is the habit of keeping focused and paying attention to the work at hand — be it the work of employment or the work of God.
Are you in the right direction?
The Sermon at the Mount
The Sermon at the Mount
The significance of Jesus' sermon with profound meaning. He was telling us who are blessed.
They are simply stated, but are profound in meaning. They guide. They point. They teach. They show us the values that Christ cares about. These values if followed, can not only bring a believer into a state of peace and happiness, but also right into the Kingdom of God after our journey on this earth is over.
The Latin word for blessed is beatus, from which we get the word beatitude.
The beatitudes are found at Matthew 5: 3-12
As you read about each of the beatitudes you might look into your own heart and examine your feelings towards them. Are you trying to follow each one of them? I think you will find that you need a rather humble, almost a childlike attitude towards each one of them if you are to be successful in following them. In fact Our Lord mentioned many times about how we needed to become more like children in our attitude and in our thinking towards many of the things in this life.
Two verses in the eighteenth chapter of Matthew are good examples.
Matthew 18:3 "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven."
Matthew 18:4 "Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child, will be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."
The Latin word for blessed is beatus, from which we get the word beatitude.
The beatitudes are found at Matthew 5: 3-12
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they who mourn,
for they shall be comforted.
for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they shall possess the earth.
for they shall possess the earth.
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they shall obtain mercy.
for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure of heart,
for they shall see God.
for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they shall be called sons of God.
for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice sake,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
As you read about each of the beatitudes you might look into your own heart and examine your feelings towards them. Are you trying to follow each one of them? I think you will find that you need a rather humble, almost a childlike attitude towards each one of them if you are to be successful in following them. In fact Our Lord mentioned many times about how we needed to become more like children in our attitude and in our thinking towards many of the things in this life.
Two verses in the eighteenth chapter of Matthew are good examples.
Matthew 18:3 "Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven."
Matthew 18:4 "Therefore whoever humbles himself as this little child, will be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."
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