VIII
Always Set Against You
The soul confesses a life of negligence, sacrilege, and wasted time, then names its true posture: lifelong opposition to God.
Lord, though my past life has been free of great crimes—occasions you kept far from me—it has nevertheless been utterly hateful to you through its continual negligence, through the misuse of your most sacred Sacraments, through contempt for your word and your inspirations, through the idleness and total uselessness of my actions and my thoughts, through the complete waste of the time you had given me only to adore you, to seek in all my occupations the means of pleasing you, and to do penance for the faults committed every day, faults that are ordinary even among the most just; so that their life must be a continual penance, without which they are in danger of falling from their righteousness.✦1 So, my God, I have always been set against you.
Read the original Latin
Seigneur, bien que ma vie passée ait été exempte de grands crimes, dont vous avez éloigné de moi les occasions, elle vous a été néanmoins très-odieuse par sa négligence continuelle, par le mauvais usage de vos plus augustes sacremens, par le mépris de votre parole et de vos inspirations, par l’oisiveté et l’inutilité totale de mes actions et de mes pensées, par la perte entière du temps que vous ne m’aviez donné que pour vous adorer, pour rechercher en toutes mes occupations les moyens de vous plaire, et pour faire pénitence des fautes qui se commettent tous les jours, et qui même sont ordinaires aux plus justes ; de sorte que leur vie doit être une pénitence continuelle sans laquelle ils sont en danger de déchoir de leur justice. Ainsi, mon Dieu, je vous ai toujours été contraire.
Scripture echoes
- ↩1John.1.8-1John.1.10;Prov.24.16 — If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 1John.1.9 — If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1John.1.10 — If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. Prov.24.16 — For the righteous person falls seven times and rises again, but the wicked stumble into calamity.
Notes
- 1 ↩French justice here names the state of being right before God (righteousness / the state of justice), not civil justice; déchoir de leur justice = fall from that standing.
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