Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy always leads those who cultivate it to a life of bitter and grudging mortification.

Herod said: “Go and enquire carefully for the child, and when you have found him, bring me back word, so that I too may come and worship him.” Faced by proposals such as this, let us ask the Holy Spirit to keep us from the “protection” or the “promise of good things” of people who appear well-intentioned.

—We will not lack the light of the Paraclete if, as the Wise Men did, we seek the truth and speak with sincerity.

Are there people who protest because you say things clearly? Perhaps they live with a troubled conscience, and they need to cover it up in that way.

—You should continue to behave in the same way, to help them to change.

While you continue to interpret in bad faith the intentions of your neighbour, you have no right to demand that people should be understanding with you.

You are constantly talking about the need to change and reform things. Good… Reform yourself! For you need it badly, and already you will have begun the great reform.

In the meantime, I shall not be putting too much faith in your proclamations of reform.

There are some who are so pharisaical that… they are scandalized when others repeat precisely what their own lips have let fall.

You are such a busybody that it seems as if your only concern were to dive into the lives of your neighbours. And when, at last, you stumble upon an upright man of good will and energy who has stopped you in your tracks, you complain in public as if he had offended you.

—Your shamelessness and deformed conscience…, have led you thus far. And that goes for many others.

In one move, you have tried to appropriate the “honesty” of the true opinion and the ignoble “advantages” of the opposite opinion…

—That, in any language, is called duplicity.

How good they are!!… They are ready to “excuse” what is only worthy of praise.

It is an old stratagem for the persecutor to say that he is being persecuted… Popular wisdom has seen right through this all along. In the words of the old Spanish saying: “They throw the stone and then bandage themselves up.”

Is it not true, unfortunately, that many people spread calumnies unjustly and then make their appeal to charity and honesty so that their victims cannot defend themselves?

It is a sad ecumenism indeed when Catholics who take part in it ill-treat other Catholics!

What a mistaken view of objectivity they have! They focus upon people or tasks through the deformed lenses of their own defects and then, with acid shamelessness, criticise or dare to offer their advice.

—Let us make a firm resolution: when we correct or give advice, let us speak in the presence of God, and apply our words to our own behaviour.

Never have recourse to the always deplorable method of organising slanderous attacks on anyone… It is even worse if it is done through allegedly moral motives, which can never justify an immoral action.

You can never give advice dispassionately or with a right intention, if you get upset or think people show a lack of confidence in you when they also listen to the advice of other people of proven formation and good doctrine.

—If you are really interested, as you claim, in the good of souls and in stating the truth, why are you offended?

Not even to Joseph does Mary communicate the mystery that God has wrought in her. —This lesson teaches us not to become accustomed to speaking lightly but to channel our joys and our sorrows correctly without seeking praise or sympathy. Deo omnis gloria! — all for God!