Meditation by Fr. Henry Kowalczyk, SHM - Silent Retreat 2018

We must ask the grace to have sorrow for our sins and also ask for the light to see ourselves the way God sees us. "You, O Lord, turned me toward myself, taking me from behind myself, where I had put myself while unwilling to examine myself. And now you have set me face to face with myself, that I might see how ugly I was, how decomposed and sordid, stained and ulcerous. And I looked and I loathed myself; but could not find a place in which to flee from myself. And if I sought to turn my gaze away from myself, you would again face me to myself, and thrust me before my own eyes that I might discover my iniquity and hate it. I had known it, but acted as though I knew it not -- overlooked it and forgot it." (Confessions of St. Augustine, Book XIII, Chapter 7)