The Spiritual Media Series – Self-Reflection
The sermon discusses self-examination as a means of grace and explains the importance of examining one’s spiritual and moral life with honesty and accuracy.
A person should, especially at the end of one year and the beginning of a new year, review how the previous year passed, whether he benefited from it spiritually, remember God’s blessings toward him, and consider how he responded to those blessings.
The sermon emphasizes that every deed has an account before God, and therefore it is better for a person to examine himself before he stands before God’s judgment.
Self-examination does not mean merely knowing one’s mistakes; it includes blaming oneself for them and seeking to treat them and repent from them, so that self-examination may lead to real change in life.
Self-examination also leads a person to know himself, to humility and contrition before God, and helps him prepare to confess his sins clearly and honestly.
Spiritual Message
The sermon calls for self-examination to be based on truth, honesty, and openness, without indulging oneself, flattering oneself, or offering excuses to justify mistakes.
A person should examine his thoughts, words, actions, senses, feelings, and habits, as well as his relationship with God, his prayer, fasting, confession, communion, connection with the Church, and reading of the Holy Bible and spiritual books.
He should also examine his growth in virtues and see whether he is growing in love, humility, meekness, calmness, and the other virtues, or whether he is remaining in the same place.
The sermon warns against two wrong extremes: a broad conscience that minimizes sin and justifies it, and an over-scrupulous conscience that exaggerates wrongdoing and blames the person for what does not deserve blame; therefore, self-examination must be carried out with a sound conscience and an accurate measure.
Self-examination should not turn into despair, because its purpose is correction, healing, and repentance, not the destruction of the person.
Educational Lesson
The sermon explains that the best self-examination is the one that takes place before the action and not only afterward, because through it a person can prevent sin before committing it and weigh his words and actions before they produce consequences that cannot be taken back.
For this reason, self-examination is connected with self-control, controlling the tongue, senses, and thoughts, and being careful about impulsiveness, recklessness, and haste in judgments and actions.
Self-examination should also be continuous: after a mistake, at the end of the day, before confession, and at the end of the year, so that the end-of-year examination becomes a comprehensive review of previous examinations rather than the only examination.
The sermon emphasizes that examination must move from discovering the illness to treating the soul, because knowing the mistake without seeking to treat it does not accomplish its spiritual purpose.
Practical Application
A person is asked to sit quietly with himself, examine his life without flattering himself, and identify recurring and persistent sins and habits that have become character traits requiring correction.
He should also examine his relationships with others, be firm with himself in judging his own mistakes, compassionate in judging others, and avoid becoming occupied with condemning others while forgetting himself.
At the beginning of a new year, it is not enough for the number of the year to change; there should also be a correction of the soul and a change in character, morals, spiritual life, activity, service, and longing for the Kingdom.
Thus, the new year truly becomes new when a person replaces negligence with carefulness, error with correction, and wrong habits with sound spiritual conduct, while accompanying his self-examination with prayer and asking God to lead him to repentance and correction.
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