Self-Deception and The Messiest Room in My House

If you are like me, you have at least one room in your house that visitors never see. For me, that would be the master bedroom. Every horizontal surface, excepting our bed but including much of the floor, is cluttered - with books, an ironing board, clean laundry, a busted vacuum cleaner, manila file folders, you name it. When visitors come,  I simply close the door. 

My pastor, Fr. Jeff Calia, C.O., recently told me that if Christ were visiting, that's just the room He would want to see. In fact, He already knows all about it. 

To extend this metaphor, sometimes I shut the door to that room for so long, I don't visit it. I forget it's even there. Then, I end up where I am: deceiving myself. 

SELF-DECEPTION: The moral failure to recognize one's own limitations and failures or to see the real reasons for one's behavior.   

- Modern Catholic Dictionary

It is a blessing, really, a humbling blessing, when someone visits my home, and opens the door to that hidden place in my soul, and all the clutter, all the mess, all the sin tumbles out for me to see. There is no room for deception, for self-denial now.  It is time for prayer, penance and humility.

"Search me, O God, and know my heart;

try me, and know my anxious thoughts.

And see if there be any wicked way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting."