St. Anthony the Abbot Catholic Church

It is hard for us to believe that we could ever become as despicable as the scribes, but we can. When Jesus appeared to St. Margaret Mary, giving her the famous revelations of his Sacred Heart, He told the saint many interesting things. He told her, for example, the greatest source of pain for His sacred heart: is the indifference and ingratitude of priests and religious who had fallen into a scribe-like, self-centered life. If priests and religious can fall into the trap, all of us can.

 

One of my favorite saint stories found in Butler’s Lives of the Saints: Is St. Christina the Astonishing. A remarkable story about St. Christina the Astonishing illustrates this truth in a vivid, though uncommon, manner. St. Christina lived in Belgium during the high Middle Ages. As a young woman she fell into a catatonic state and was pronounced dead. During the funeral Mass, while the open casket was inside the Church, she suddenly awoke and rose to the church rafters like a bird, astonishing (and frightening) the assembly – which fled in panic. Later she explained that she had taken refuge in the rafters because she couldn’t stand the smell of the sinful people – the ability to smell sin was a special grace God had given her after her near-death experience.

 

After the rafter incident, she continued her astonishing behavior, climbing into ovens and diving into freezing rivers to escape the smell of sinners, and saying her prayers while balanced on fence posts or curled up into a tiny ball. She only calmed down after a priest had her sit for a while in the water of a baptismal fount. Then she entered a convent, where she became a model nun and spiritual consultant for the whole town. The ability to smell sin is, without a doubt, an extraordinary grace. But St Christina’s story should remind us that even if we look like model Catholics on the outside, we are still capable of falling into scribe-like self-centeredness on the inside.

 

It's clear why we should "beware of the scribes": if we become self-righteous, as they did, God's grace will have no room to redeem and transform our hearts and minds. But it's not so clear how we can avoid this pitfall. The scribes were the smartest and most respected class of people in ancient Israel: how can we succeed where they failed?

 

One effective spiritual weapon that God has given us is a tested devotion that spiritual writers call the daily examination of conscience. It consists of five or ten minutes of prayerful reflection at the end of the day, in quiet and silence. During this brief time of prayer, you look back at the day that is past, and speak to our Lord about how you lived it.

 

You can go through the commandments and see if you were faithful to them. You can examine your key relationships and responsibilities and see if you lived them with maturity and true Christian purpose, or if you were overly self-centered. You can also simply replay the major activities of the day in your mind's eye, and see if your friendship with Christ was alive or dead during those activities.

 

Whichever method you choose, the Holy Spirit will help guide your thoughts and give you insights. At the end of the examination of conscience, you can thank God for the day's blessings, ask pardon for your sins and failings, and make a personal resolution to live more Christ-centered and less self-centered (preferably in some specific way) the next day.

 

This kind of daily attention to our spiritual progress is something we can do to avoid the pitfall of self-deception and self-righteousness. If we make an effort to do our part, we can be assured that God will have more room to do his part.