The narrow way

Dear Director,

Apart from the obvious things, I must admit to unhelpful habits of thought, around those obvious things. There are the maxims that float around, of the form "such is the cure for sich" --- and so I fall to thinking at God things like "See? You have to give me this-priceless-good, because otherwise I'll just keep falling into this-mortal-sin"; I become like the ersatz suicide holding himself hostage against God's mercy.

Each visit to God's Minister Through the Grille, I'm given an antidote against the deadliest part of this poison to which I seem to keep returning, and I'm prescribed a short course of purgatives --- or, sometimes, the chain of repeated forms makes me think of stitches; a row of sutures on my heart. I rejoice in the promise of health and healing. It hasn't, in the past, ever taken very long to play with the poisons again, to pull out the stitches. I read once that, outside the world of metaphor, if you DO need stitching in the same place twice in short order, it's better to use glue the second time, because the living tissues do something weird when they've been pierced mid-scarring. I wonder if that isn't somehow reflected in these human trials against temptation...

But today the stitching --- or however the patching is done --- today, it is fresh; I hear the echoes of temptations still, but now in this Day, let us rejoice. In this desert, my too-often too-parched soul, may I make a straight and level road for the Saviour to enter by; if I can see Him coming, perhaps then I shall see also the narrow way into Heaven.

in prayerful union