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Fourteenth Thursday after Pentecost
- caelidomum
- Sep 17
- 4 min read
Fourteenth Thursday after Pentecost. Vanity.
Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation.
We will meditate to-morrow upon another in ordinate vice which is the opposite of humility, which is vanity, and we shall see: 1st, what vanity is; 2d, how we render ourselves guilty of it. We will thence deduce the resolution: 1st, never to speak of ourselves or of anything that will tend to obtain for us praise and esteem; 2d, to propose to ourselves God alone, His good pleasure, or His glory as the end of all our actions, thoughts, or words. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of St. Timothy: “To the only God be honor and glory” (I. Tim. i. 17).
Meditation for the Morning.
Let us adore Our Lord reproving the scribes and Pharisees for doing all their actions in order to be seen of men and to be more esteemed (Matt, xxiii. 5). He strongly counsels the people and His disciples not to imitate them if they desire that their best actions should not be in this world or in the next without recompense (Ibid. vi. 1). Let us admire the aversion He shows towards vainglory, and give Him thanks for testifying to us that He desires us to avoid it.
What Vanity is.
Vanity is not, like pride, an inordinate idea of our own excellence; it is an inordinate desire for honor and praise, even when we know that we do not deserve either. It is a kind of vice which is so great, that in order to procure the object of our desires, we lie to our own conscience. We wish to obtain elevated and brilliant positions, of which we feel ourselves to be perfectly unworthy, and we have recourse to all kinds of means which may enable us to occupy them, to become noticed, praised, and applauded. In order to carry out our desires, we descend to the lowest species of base ness, we turn everything into vanity: vanity in regard to our clothes, which we desire should be rich, splendid, and well made; vanity in the very smallest details respecting our dress, to the extent of making a serious affair of it, and sacrificing to it a great deal of time and a great deal of money, even becoming irritated and imbued with dis content, if fashion, taste, and caprice are not fully satisfied; vanity in regard to furniture, which we desire should be handsome; vanity respecting the table, which we wish should be richly served; vanity in our language, which we endeavor to render clever and to distinguish ourselves by being original in what we say; vanity with regard to our talents: instead of making use of them with a view to the glory of God, we make use of them with a view to our own glorification (John xii. 43); vanity in our conduct and deportment, which reveal affectation and a desire to attract notice; vanity in regard to society: we like to frequent the great and the rich; we blush at having relations with the insignificant and the poor: vanity with respect to our virtue: we are more desirous to induce people to think us virtuous than really to become so; we are assiduous in going to church, but we do not pray when we are there; we frequent the sacraments, but without being changed; there is vanity even in out humility: we say that we are miserable and sinners, that we do not know how to conduct ourselves, that we have no intelligence, no talents, but we should be very angry to be taken at our word; we only desire to insinuate that we are very humble, in the hope that we shall not be taken for what we say that we are; and at the bottom, however false may be the praises which are addressed to us, we are delighted to listen to them, caring less for what we are really and in the presence of God than for what we are in appearance and in the opinion of the world. Alas ! is not this our history ? Let us thoroughly sound our heart
How we Render ourselves Guilty of Vanity.
We render ourselves guilty of vanity: 1st, by all that we have just said; 2d, by addressing praises to our own selves; we speak of ourselves and of all that we foresee will be to our advantage; we publish the graces bestowed upon us, and also our good works, often in an exaggerated manner and at the expense of truth; 3d, by speaking of our condition, of our birth, of our fortune, of our employments, and we are careful in revealing the least circumstance which may be the means of our obtaining- esteem; 4th, by praising others in order to oblige them to pay us in return by some tribute of praise; 5th, by bringing the conversation upon public undertakings in which we fancy we have succeeded, and about which no one says a word to us; we make use of stratagems and cleverness to enable ourselves to snatch at praises; we beg our hearers to say wherein we have failed; we say that we are not satisfied with what we have done, and we blame ourselves for not having done better, in order that we may force others to speak advantageously of us; 6th, by ourselves confessing our own faults, when we cannot hide them, for fear lest others should reproach us with them, and we exaggerate them, that others should at any rate say of us that we are very humble. What does our conscience say to us in respect to all these things ?
Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.
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