Daughter of Sodom, come not near me! But cover thy face with a veil, and scatter ashes upon thine head, and get thee to the desert and seek out the Son of Man.

Sin always splits the self to some degree, yes. You know that you have harmed yourself and others, but you probably are not going to come to terms with that because you're carrying on a charade of righteousness, even if you don't believe it. So confession is very deep in the process of discovering the soul.

Yet, without this realization of our utter ruin and without the genuine revisioning and redirecting of our lives, which that bitter realization naturally gives rise to, no clear path to inner transformation can be found. It is psychologically and spiritually impossible.

Prayer makes the soul tender.

We're more concerned about our own victory over sin than we are about the fact that our sins grieve God's heart.

It is true, as John Bunyan said, that God infinitely prefers a heart without words to words without a heart when we pray.

Your heart may be paltry compared with the heart of a great saint, but your heart is what God wants from you.

St. Thomas thus detects a primary source of presumption in seeking genuinely good things, like human happiness on earth, as if we did not need divine grace to attain them; and in the hope that we can obtain God's pardon and mercy without our confessing and repenting of sin.

Unworthy" does not mean "undeserving", for we are all undeserving! It means "incapable of receiving.

What if rather than avoiding brokenness we embraced it? Welcomed it? And even prayed for it? "God, break me.

Dependence, humility, simplicity, cooperation, and a sense of abandon are qualities greatly prized in the spiritual life, but extremely elusive for people who live in comfort.

Throughout the Bible, in fact, God shows a marked preference for "real" people over "good" people.