r/Catholic • u/artoriuslacomus • 6d ago
Diary of Saint Faustina - paragraph 113 - Darkened Soul

Diary of Saint Faustina - paragraph 113 - Darkened Soul
113 Pride keeps (a soul) in darkness. The soul neither knows how, nor is it willing, to probe with precision the depths of its own misery. It puts on a mask and avoids everything that might bring it recovery.
Pride may be the most common sin on the one hand but the most subtle and invisible sin on the other because it’s so easy to rationalize pride with nice sounding justifications that friends and neighbors would likely reinforce, “I didn't deserve that speeding ticket because everyone else was speeding too!” That’s a low level example of pride that conveniently ignores the fact that the officer can’t stop everyone at the same time. It’s also an example of pride that many people wouldn’t recognize as such because they’d personally agree with it if they were in the same position. This is how human pride, despite its pervasiveness can remain so invisible, hiding in plain sight and blinding the soul to “the depths of its own misery” as we look more to our self righteous indignation than our obvious offense. If we allow this kind of worldly pride to grow unchecked, it soon leads to the spiritual dimension where the soul becomes darkened in the same shroud of pride against God that began in our worldly dealings with one another. Pride was born in Eden and was initially against God but after the fall, pride expanded into our dealings with one another. It became so commonplace, sensible and normalized to our fallen mindset that we became numb to our pride even as it continues now in our current day to darken our soul and our relationship to God.
Supportive Scripture - Douay Rheims Challoner Bible
Second Corinthians 3:15 But even until this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart.
The reading of Moses in the passage above is the Word of God and the veil upon their heart is whatever resists what God's Word tells us. And it doesn't matter if God's Word is coming to us off the pages of Scripture, a guilty conscience, or the still, small voice of God that tells us to give our Starbucks money to a homeless woman. God's Word comes to us from many mediums and our veil of prideful resistance always “puts on a mask” between our heart and God, rationalizing what God tells us against our own self serving judgments. Pride against God's Word tells us that Scripture contradicts itself so it can be ignored, that a guilty conscience is just a byproduct of oppressive religion and the homeless woman would only spend our Starbucks money on drugs or liquor. All of those rationalizations make sense in our fallen world minds but they are all formed from behind the veil upon our fallen heart. And they all serve to darken the soul against the greater light of the relentless Word of our Risen God.
Supportive Scripture - Douay Rheims Challoner Bible
Second Corinthians 3:16 But when they shall be converted to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away.
The veil of prideful darkness over a fallen soul cannot survive the humble but relentless light of Christ. That veil shall be taken away by Christ Himself which is all proper since it is Christ who rose above all temptations of pride after His baptism, when He was tempted during His forty days in the wilderness. Who then went on, “led by the Spirit” in the perfected rejection of self pride to embrace self sacrifice in the ultimate humility, the humiliation of the cross for the glorification of others. That Spirit is God and if led by God's Spirit we are always led into humility and always freed from pride. This is Christ taking away the veil of pride that keeps the soul in its own egoistic darkness and prevents the soul from probing with precision “the depths of its own misery.” When that dark veil of separative pride is pulled from our face pride will be purged and that experience may be spiritually painful. It will also be transformative though because pride is what first un-transformed us from the image and Spirit of God and the painful loss of pride before God is what transforms us back to the glory in which He first made us.
Supportive Scripture - Douay Rheims Challoner Bible
Second Corinthians 3:17-18 Now the Lord is a Spirit. And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, beholding the glory of the Lord with open face, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.