Status Updates From How to Profit from Your Faults

"The worse our misery, the greater the glory it will bring God's mercy."

"If God had not created man, he would still have remained truly good; but then he could never have been merciful, because mercy is shown to those who are miserable.

You see that the more we recognize ourselves as being miserable, the more opportunities we have to trust God, for we have nothing within us with which to trust ourselves. The mistrust of ourselves comes from the knowledge of our imperfections."

St. Francis de Sales has already been quoted several times stating that our mistakes should not leave us with a feling of helplessness and discouragement. The pain of having made these mistakes should always be coupled with a certain hidden confidence in divine goodness.

"I'll do my best to get the ulcer on my face removed, but if it remains, I will also love the scorn it brings me."

"The same rule must hold good in matters of sin. I flare up for this or that reason. This behavior hurts me, although I heartily welcome the abjection. And if we are to distinguish one from the other, then I will keep, affectionately, the abjection but reject the evil and sin."

"Similarly, it is a sign of the devil's work if, instead of loving our humiliations, we get agitated and disturbed by them. We should profit from our faults. Seeing something good in our failures will make up for our lack of willpower to act and put ourselves on the road to progress. Life is a series of falls; after each fall, we should immediately get up and say: I will not make this mistake again.'"

We should cooperate with the Redeemer's plans as revealed to us by the Church. We should combat Satan with his own weapons, turn his artifices back on him, and transform into a medicine the very wounds he inflicts on us. In this way, we will vindicate St. John Chrysostom's observation: "Often the devil himself is very useful to us provided we make him act for our good."

Manure is nothing but rottenness. And yet, as St. Bernard observes: A farmer and a gardener use it to make the earth produce better and more abundant fruits.

In the same way, God makes use of our imperfections to produce within our souls numerous fruits of virtues. God's goodness can always make use of our wills and dissolute actions to help the beauty of his divine plan. So he condescends to use our imperfections

"The distrust you feel toward yourself is good, provided that you use it as a basis for the confidence you ought to have in God. But if, at times, you are carried to dejection, to disquiet, disgust, or melancholy, I entreat you to reject it as the greatest of temptations."

"We ought not to feel confused with disquiet and sadness. This kind of confusion has its origin in self-love, because we are disgusted for not being more perfect, not so much out of love for God but because we love ourselves." We find such pleasure when we weep for our faults that we flatter our own self-love."

"We must not fret over our own imperfections. Although reason requires that we must be displeased and sorry whenever we commit a fault, we must refrain from bitter, gloomy, spiteful, and emotional displeasure. [...] these fits of anger, vexation, and bitterness against ourselves tend to pride; and they spring from no other source than self-love, which is disturbed and upset at seeing that it is imperfect."

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