Father Robert Barcelos, OCD: Lent – the second mansion: spiritual pride

In the Second Mansion, a peace of soul, the correction of our faults on a more refined level, is sought after. We become more aware of our faults on a different level. We become more conscientious about the need to detach ourselves from things that are holding us back from growing spiritually. We begin to really consider organizing a certain kind of plan, if you will, for our spiritual life, wanting to put our spiritual life in order and really examining our conscience.

Before, we were just going through the motions and not really being aware even, or taking time to examine our conscience. Now, these actions are starting to be kicked into gear.

On the other side of the proverbial coin, in the second stage of this active life of friendship, when the spiritual life and a personal relationship with Jesus is developing, the soul in its prosperity, can tend to easily become pompous, spiritually pompous.

Spiritual pride is dominant here, as our Holy Father Saint John of the Cross talks about in The Ascent of Mount Carmel. As result of the new lush experience of the spiritual life, we can easily look down on others who don’t know what we’ve come to know. The soul tends to attribute a great deal to itself and it presumes that it’s we ourselves who have gained this victory, as if we’ve earned it, deserved it, or as if we’re more special than others.

In this second stage, the soul believes it is very far advanced and it desires to make converts of everybody, so that everyone can be where the soul believes it’s at. This is a normal thing. Whenever we experience something wonderful, we want others to share it.

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave (Wiki Commons)

Whenever we, as Plato said in that beautiful analogy of the cave, have come out of the darkness of the cave that we thought was the whole reality, once we’ve come to see the lights outside of the cave- or in postmodern terms, once we come out of the matrix – we want to show other people. We want to lead other people, we want to share it, and a person can tend to become almost pushy in wanting to share our faith and wanting to make converts of everybody.

The classic example of this is for Christmas or Easter, we give people their ‘salvation kit,’ putting in a scapular, a rosary, and a prayer book; all these things are good and it’s typical of a new convert. This is a normal stage of transition and growth.

SOURCE: Teresa 5, Copyright 2018, Father Robert Barcelos, OCD

4 thoughts on “Father Robert Barcelos, OCD: Lent – the second mansion: spiritual pride”

  1. Wow, I feel exactly like this. How does one overcome spiritual pride or at least gain humble self control?

    1. Father Robert will have more to say on this 🙂 TL But I would respond – keep in mind that ultimately, the state of our souls is between the individual and God alone. Our job is to simply love everyone as they are.

  2. Pride and “perfect” and virtuous….self-centered….when this leads nowhere one needs to finally let go….let God live your life…a turbulent shift….a new life….

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