Self-knowledge and Confidence in God as helps to inner growth, according to St Jane Frances
Sister: How do we come to understand ourselves and develop that confidence in God?
Aug 19 2012, 6:57 PM
C: I read the excerpts you so kindly posted. What does St Jane mean when she speaks of mortification?
Sister : St Jane means the normative religious concept- of self- renunciation and penance as well
Aug 19 2012, 7:03Sister : To us today it sounds pretty heavy
C: Okay, she is not speaking of things like the flails and hair shirts?
Sister : Oh yes they used the discipline etc
Sister : But also the internal mortifications- getting away from judgemental thoughts
C: oh, judgemental thoughts are my downfall right now
Sister : Why downfall? Hard to move beyond them?
Aug 19 2012, 7:06 PM
C: sometimes it is hard to banish them. mostly it’s because they just keep coming.
Sister : Like flies! Brush them away. Use insect repellant
Sister : Watching our self- will and willfulness is another practice of mortification
Aug 19 2012, 7:08 PM
Sister : Judgements vs evaluations
C: oh, okay, that makes sense–judgement vs eval
Aug 19 2012, 7:09 PM
Sister : If we can get into the habit of distinguishing we might have a better chance
I think St Jane talked about it so much because it is so prevalent
Aug 19 2012, 7:10 PM
C: I think having to curb self will might be a challenge too, after living on my own so long, it might be hard at first to not do whatever comes into my head right when the thought occurs
Sister: were you taking up the thought that mortification and prayer lead to self knowledge and confidence
Or was it just a comment on St Jane?
C: I might have been headed in that direction, but I don’t think I’d quite made it that far
Sister : Prayer can certainly lead to self-knowledge
Along with other helps
C: yes, because when I spend time in contemplative prayer, I get a sense of where things are not going to well, and that I must improve
Sister : That’s good- because we really can’t move if we don’t have a solid base of the truth of who we are and how we are
Sister: Other feedback helps too- friends, community, spiritual directors. counselors, co workers- sometimes
Sister : How does blame/shame, which many of us experience, relate to Confidence in God?
C: if I am playing blame/shame that means to me that I am treating God as if He has made a mistake in forgiving me, and that I know better than He does. Either that, or that I never submitted the problem to Him to begin with
Sister : That’s a great way of explaining it-
In St Jane’s terms, also can be called self-love I think
J: pride causes us to not trust in God fully and his forgiveness
R(guest): blaming others maybe, but blaming ourselves and not forgiving ourselves I’m not too sure about
C: which is really kind of a paradox, because then self love is actually causing you to harm yourself
Aug 19 2012, 7:40 PM
J: yes I think that is pride also…a false pride
Sister : also need to distinguish between self-love and love of self- sounds funny I know
J: pride keeps us from forgiving ourselves because we don’t have the humility to trust in God’s mercy
C is selflove more like narcissism?
R (guest): maybe it’s just the fact that we offend God and hold ourselves accountable even after God has forgiven, it seems to me that that would not always be pride, I guess it would depend on the motives inside of a person, and that only God and the person really know
Aug 19 2012, 7:42 PM
Sister : Narcissism-yes
We are to love others as we love ourselves, but we need to love ourselves in humility
Aug 19 2012, 7:43 PM
C: so a narcissist tendency is to refuse to forgive yourself, and then try to draw unending forgiveness from other people?
Sister : The second means of reformation is to exercise ourselves in prayer and in mortification, for these are the two wings for flying to God; one sustains the other.
Aug 19 2012, 7:51 PM
Sister : That is St Jane
Sister : Let’s look at the “flying to God” piece
Aug 19 2012, 7:52 PM
Sister : That’s the part we are aiming for; if prayer and mortification are the wings
Sister : How do we find ourselves “flying to God” in our lives?
C: receiving the Sacraments, the prayer of the Church-the Liturgy of the Hours
R (guest): detatchment
Guest663 (guest): Perhaps it is also, just stopping and changing focus. Placing one’s focus upon God and letting Him take over
J: Faith on one wing…reason on the other