We Must Deny Ourselves

The first of these faults is intemperate ardor, impetuousness, and excessive self-assurance.  We take fire like gunpowder, or we tend to be impatient, not knowing how to bide our time, to hope, and to wait.  We impose ourselves on others in conversation, taking for granted that what interests us interests everybody else....  We talk too much, and too loud, we enjoy recreation to the point of dissipation.  In short, our ego is cumbersome.  This fault is only too common, and each of us has certainly been guilty of it many times.

Real mortification in this instance consists in setting limits to our enthusiasms, in knowing how to be silent and how not to attract attention to ourselves, in learning the art of listening and of being interested in others, in encouraging others to talk and to shine while we retire quietly into the background.  And more than that, it consists in doing all this simply, graciously, as a matter of course.  It is a question of refusing to salve our ego, and of forgetting ourselves.  "Delight in being unnoticed and esteemed as nothing."

[Another] fault against which mortification must be directed is much more dangerous and insidious.  It is timidity, based at least in part on self-love, on fear of failure and of being slapped down, in short on cowardice.  This fault has a thousand faces, or lather a thousand masks, including the masks of modesty, reserve, humility, and simplicity.

Mortification in this case consists in acting against our timidity by forcing ourselves to come out of our shell, exposing ourselves to blows, and speaking as if we had some self-confidence.  We must be ready to risk small failures; to step forward when it is fitting; to let others know our faults (which is far better than hiding them).

Above all, the mortification of timidity is a matter of cultivating a great, courageous, apostolic soul, so that Christ may reach his full stature within us and not be circumscribed, as it were, by our pettiness.  The secret of success here is to think less of ourselves and more of God and of his glory, of Christ and of his Mother.