Autumn on the Ramapo River, Jasper Francis Cropsey

“NOW, children, it is very necessary that we should thus practice self-examination; for man has many a little nook within, which covers up the ground of the heart, and is so overgrown, that it hides the truth from the man himself; so that, though he knows many other things, he does not really know himself. These sins surely resemble thirty or forty skins or hides, like those of an ox, which cover up the ground, lying one upon another, and so thick and hard that ye can neither confess them nor rid yourselves of them as ye imagine. What are these skins? They are all those things that thou hast in thyself, that thou thinkest of, and that thou usest, but of which God is neither the true beginning nor the end. They are all idols, images of things, such as self-will, self-pleasing, and the enjoyment of things pertaining to the senses. Man clings to these, as Rachel did to her idols when she sat upon them. Presumption, heedlessness, want of resignation in divine things, all these sins help to form the skins. They should not be all confessed outwardly, but man should examine his own heart about them, and acknowledge them humbly before God, meekly falling down in self-abasement at His Feet. If man will only thus fully acknowledge that he is guilty, all will be well with him; that is, if he seeks diligently to turn away from them, as far as he is able, with help of Almighty God.

— Fr. John Tauler, The Inner Way

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