On the Examination of Conscience

“Without memory, each night is the first night, each morning is the first morning… A world without memory is a world of the present.” ~ Alan Lightman, Einstein’s Dreams

Dear ________.

“What I meant was that strict or orthodox (particularly pre Vatican II) training intrinsically binds one to the past by the rituals, obligations and duties of each day. (This I think is actually a good and healthy thing, provided it does not get out of hand). Take as just one example the “examen” or “examination of conscience” which all Catholics are, or at least were, obliged to undertake in order to facilitate spiritual progress.

A brief (relatively speaking) quote from the current Catholic encyclopaedia should suffice to illustrate how each deed, each minute, each day, each week, month and year is linked to the one that came before it and the one that will follow it simply by performing this essential and yet at times dubious exercise:

“…For the general examination a good method is laid down by St. Ignatius of Loyola in his “Spiritual Exercises”. It contains five points. In the first point we thank God for the benefits received; in the second we ask grace to know and correct our faults; in the third we pass in review the successive hours of the day, noting what faults we have committed in deed, word, thought, or omission; in the fourth we ask God’s pardon; in the fifth we purpose amendment.

Of the particular examination of conscience St. Ignatius is generally considered as the author, or at least as the first who reduced it to system and promoted its practice among the faithful. It concentrates one’s attention on some one fault or virtue. On rising in the morning we resolve to avoid a certain fault during the day, or to perform certain acts of particular virtue. About noon we consider how often we have committed that fault, or practised that virtue; we mark the number in a booklet prepared for the purpose, and we renew our resolution for the rest of the day. At night we examine and mark again, and make resolutions for the following day…

St. Ignatius further suggests that we impose upon ourselves some penance for every one of the faults committed and that we compare the numbers marked each time with those of the preceding day, the total sum at the end of the week with that of the preceding week, etc.”

This is not calculated to be a grim and paralysing activity, but it is designed to keep the past alive — if only the recent past. In this manner, it is difficult to let the past go, akin to Marley’s chain, as it is— each link lengthens the consciousness of what has gone before (indeed we bear it within us) and it may, as it gets heavier, impede rather than enable our spiritual progress.

You must not think me against these practices — I am not. I think they should be undertaken regularly by everyone who strives to think and act morally, and even more frequently by those who do not. I merely point out that they can have negative effects on that perfect silence which in other (even Catholic mystical) traditions, one sits empty before God in a moment that has nothing in it but the receptivity of an empty vessel.

Even the post-concilliar examination of conscience guidelines posted at CIN [http://www.cin.org/avatar/examcon.html] (and these are much abbreviated from the list I knew as a child and young adult) bind us to our past selves and our past deeds mercilessly, unless we take great care to use them as a source of measurement, succour and encouragement — and not as a scourge. This requires both moral and social maturity — and requires it at a very young age.

On the other hand (and this is the point of the Lightman quote) we have within us all the great and good acts we commit as well as their counterparts and it would be well and good, healthy in fact, to reflect on these as well, “in principio et nunc et semper.”

———

-an extract from a letter to a friend.