The sounds are odd, echoing in my mouth! I am not used to the way they are strung together! My mind stretches, and I slowly sound them tirelessly out.
I am no baby, perhaps it would be easier if I were. It takes such thought for every vowel! How can I speak fast like them, as I'm still at the beginning though ages past in.
How can they speak so speedily. I sound out again.
The experience is that of learning the beauty of a new language. Understanding- easy enough. Latin is a basis, all else we build on it, and the language I learn is Latin based.
Yet, pronunciation- accent, these are hard as I desperately sound out foreign sounds- thanking God I am not American- least I called z ("zed") "zee", at least there the languages are the same.
I pronounce and break. I think and rest! I listen! I rest, I may break for weeks, but then I'm back- insisting to learn, to comprehend and speak as a native would, as I would had my ancestors not left Europe.
Faith is likewise. When you convert or revert, or realise a vice. You sin, you confess, you sin. There seems no way out. No matter your strength- it folds. It folds. It folds. You may cry, but as though a foreigner in the bushveld, you cannot find your way about.
In fact, it is as though learning a new language- and as you break habits, the brain rewrites, as though with a blunt pencil, or a knife through steel. Everything is so very hard.
Jesus knew it was. Here is the secret- humility, and faith: perseverance to sum the two.
Go to confession as often as need. Try and try and try. In this world- we know little virtue. We learn it like language- we all may find it hard. I still do.
Should sin approach you- ignore it entirely- do not take this or that action, keep doing exactly what you were, or if a physical temptation- flee it: it may save you!
Do not presume you will repent. Fight- however hard. Ask why you want what want- ask why you want, desire wantonly whatever sinful manifestation... and trace it back- until you know the real desire- focus on that until you can manifest it rightly once and again.
I sin... I have my vice, however unnoticed, however much I am blessed in its lack of extent! But should I not confess and try- I might find it starts to grow, and death the toddler grows into death the adult.
And the end of that adult is death.
The more life in the world the better! Likewise with true virtue. Do not appear good- that is the aim of the Devil and what Jesus warns of in the beatitudes. Truly become good!
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