Overcoming a defect is no easy task, and very often even little quirks are as difficult to overcome, even though they seem insignificant.
Newsroom(31/08/2022 9:15 PM, Gaudium Press) We have so many problems! We often get upset when dealing with them, as if they were unprecedented in history, and we feel that we are the first human beings to face them. It is, at the very least, naïve of us not to consider that those who preceded us also walked through this vale of tears and were made of the same flesh as we are – weak, prone to error, and insufficient. The same or similar problems that beset us were also problems that they encountered.
Similar problems call for similar solutions
This is why we decided to start the series: “Self-help or help from on high?”
Gathering ideas from various authors, we underline the correct adage that “truth, no matter who says it, comes from the Holy Spirit”… and therefore, from on high. And we desire to help our readers with problems, doubts and worries that, far from being new, have been felt, lived, and overcome long before we existed.
“He who grasps too much, grasps little”
Overcoming a defect is not an easy task and, most of the time, even small faults are as difficult to overcome as they may seem insignificant.
It is generally said that “he who grasps too much, grasps little”. If we want to overcome our defects, it is often more effective to take them one by one and put all our effort – always accompanied by much prayer, (for after all, strength comes from God) – into eradicating that defect. This is the method that the Lord recommended to the people of Israel when they were faced with enemy nations: “Do not be afraid because of them, for the Lord your God is among you, a great and fearful God. He will drive them out before you, little by little; you will not destroy them all at once” (Deut 7:21-22).
This is also why the author of “The Imitation of Christ” states: “If each year we eradicated a vice, we would soon be perfect.”[1]
Compiled by Sandra Chisholm