Reading The Imitation of Christ, Book II, Chapter 5, as part of my Consecration to Mary. It is so important that we build up our personal relationship with God alone, examine the state of our soul daily, by Examination of Conscience, spend time in conversation with God. ‘What does it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and suffers the loss of his own soul. Mathew 16:26. Makes sense doesn’t it? If we get involved too much in the affairs of others and of the world, we neglect our own soul. To a certain degree, things around us happen, someone needs help, we need to attend to working a job, paying our bills, cooking our food to sustain us, to clean our homes and care for family around us. But we need to devote some time of the day to God alone, even if it for a few minutes early morning and late night. If we spend some time examining our day and what happened, how did we respond to certain things, how we felt about it and what feelings it evoked within us, we ask God to shed His Light on that situation and to help us grow and change, so that next time it happens, we will respond in a charitable way, which is good for our souls and the good of other souls. This is how we grow positively and change the world a little at a time!
Ourselves
We must not rely too much upon ourselves, for grace and understanding are often lacking in us. We have but little inborn light, and this we quickly lose through negligence. Often we are not aware that we are so blind in heart. Meanwhile we do wrong, and then do worse in excusing it. At times we are moved by passion, and we think it zeal. We take others to task for small mistakes, and overlook greater ones in ourselves. We are quick enough to feel and brood over the things we suffer from others, but we think nothing of how much others suffer from us. If a man would weigh his own deeds fully and rightly, he would find little cause to pass severe judgment on others.
The interior man puts the care of himself before all other concerns, and he who attends to himself carefully does not find it hard to hold his tongue about others. You will never be devout of heart unless you are thus silent about the affairs of others and pay particular attention to yourself. If you attend wholly to God and yourself, you will be little disturbed by what you see about you.
Where are your thoughts when they are not upon yourself? And after attending to various things, what have you gained if you have neglected self? If you wish to have true peace of mind and unity of purpose, you must cast all else aside and keep only yourself before your eyes.
You will make great progress if you keep yourself free from all temporal cares, for to value anything that is temporal is a great mistake. Consider nothing great, nothing high, nothing pleasing, nothing acceptable, except God Himself or that which is of God. Consider the consolations of creatures as vanity, for the soul that loves God scorns all things that are inferior to Him. God alone, the eternal and infinite, satisfies all, bringing comfort to the soul and true joy to the body.
I wish you God’s peace and may you find God’s Grace to grow from strength to strength in the virtues that God has promised us!
~ Mary
A Journey of Faith 
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