In My Only Friend is Darkness, Living the Night of Faith, Barbara Dent talks about St. John of the Cross's approach to the spiritual elements of the seven deadly sins. These obstacles to deeper spirituality often remain long after the sins themselves are gone.
As I was reading this chapter on Friday, I was a little dismayed as I read about the spiritual characteristics of the first of these, and found it uncomfortably applicable to me. Each sin's spiritual description was about a page long, and I moved onto the second one hoping to find that I only had the one weak area to work on. It took only a few sentences to realize that, no, I had entirely too much of this spiritual tendency remaining, too. I was hopeful, though, as I read through the third one, until about two thirds of the way through it when I saw that this one, too, was leaving its mark on my spirituality.
So it went through the spiritual roots of wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. So much for the last three decades having brought me any degree of spiritual maturity. But then I also suppose that trying to apply that concept to ourselves is inherently prideful.
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