I shared an exchange with a friend regarding the importance of proper self-knowledge for spiritual growth.  It is much more than the realization we are sinners and God is loving, compassionate, forgiving, and omnipotent.  A brutal honesty must be engaged in order to grow in sanctifying grace.  If we do not properly identify who we are, our very foundation for living in accordance with Divine Will is toppled.  It is a grievance I find troubling with our current education system as it functions in the United States.  Somewhere in the last decade or so the education system has found it imperative to form children’s social conscious and self-identity, stripping the duty from the Church and family.  Of course, the disastrous results are only too evident in society, as well as the counter reformation movement through the preponderance and prosperity of home schooling amongst devout Catholic families and the rise in esteem of a Catholic education.  It is God’s will children are formed within a religious setting and family environment, so wonderfully laid out in the essential social justice encyclical, Rerum Noverum, by Pope Leo XIII.  The education system further errors by advancing their power over young minds by stressing the absolute need to pursue a higher education.  The pursuit of a college education by a vast majority has become a deplorable destruction of the ability to mature psychologically sound or within the confines of proper self-knowledge.  The over-emphasis upon politics (the manufacturing of disturbing social activist and agitators), sexual identity, pop culture (the extreme overabundance of artist and minds lost to watered down, intellectually immature, pop culture pursuits), just the wasteland of nonsense being perpetrated on college campuses is a blaring reality.  Then add in the immense amount of money being channeled into academia through grants and the burdens placed on the very individuals supposedly being advanced through student loans the whole mess proves impossible in growing through grace.  No matter how sincere in motivation and intelligent in scheming the profound improving of societal conditions cannot be accomplished; communal distress and individual deterioration is the inevitable consequence.  I did not mean for this to be so complicated, yet will continue.  The very ideas and examples presented through the Holy Family, the simplicity of vocation and being embodied by Mary and Joseph, as well as Jesus, are essential. It is not necessary for individuals to grow in intellectual pretense in order to grow in abundance within the plans of God.  In fact, to grow through a misguided, no matter how well intended, self-identity, believing one’s self to be something one is not through the encouragement of worldly standards and the accomplishments of advanced degrees amounts to individual enslavement and societal insanity.  The chance for spiritual blossoming on the individual level when ideas of intelligence, growth, and maturity prove impossible for penetrating self-awareness forces a vast proportion of young people away from the grace of a life embolden with enduring happiness and ultimate freedom.  Yet beyond a generalized societal view of modern conditions, I meant to steer this more towards intimate friends and the importance of knowing who we are on the deepest levels, able to free our lives from delusion.  If we live lives of delusion we place severe obstacles between ourselves and God’s ability, through Mary, to shower grace.  My mind goes to three friends who presently serve as lectors.  Without judgement, it is difficult to observe these three men read scripture during Mass when it obviously deters from spiritual growth.  The ultimate intent of Mass to transform and advance is lost.  No matter how strong the intent to pursue God exist within the mind, the heart and reality is usurped by pride and a concern for worldly advancement.  The loving grace waiting to pour forth from the hands of Our Heavenly Mother is rendered useless when an obsession upon reputation and the sensation of immediate gratification blinds.  Individual circumstances are created only through an overall approach and behavior arising from limited self-awareness.  To stop reading scripture during Mass for these three men would solve nothing.  An entire psychic change is necessary to grow in grace.  I am sure we can all easily identify such individuals within Church social environments.  The obvious importance is not to judge, yet to fortify one’s own self-awareness.  During yesterday’s Thanksgiving celebrations, another example of stunting spiritual growth, while employing the pursuit of God, lovingly presented itself.  A family member several years ago adopted two children under the auspice of a nondenominational church focused on evangelization.  Yesterday, the family member revealed the realization the adoptions were a mistake, conducted for improper reasons, while also demonstrating the strength and wherewithal to persevere.  The nondenominational church, a newly formed entity created by one couple and a wealthy core group, was encouraging members to adopt needy children, thus advancing in number their blessed flock through growth within worshipping families.  The participating family member, following the instructions, example, and competition set forth, preceded to adopt two children.  The individual and spouse were both in their fifties, already blessed with two of their own teenage children—blossoming wonderfully in grace.  God is good and all giving.  Now with the passing of years, the struggles with the adopted brother and sister, children removed at young ages from a drug addicted stripper mother and an imprisoned father, are driving a wedge within the family. It is a complicated situation, only properly understood through the eyes of God and love.  The point to be extruded is that good intentions (as well as the need for proper spiritual direction); the desire to do great things through the love of God, does not prove sufficient in meeting the demands to grow in grace, while the complications of self-imposed misdirection remain within the ever-expanding range of grace.  Grace always waits patiently within our mistakes.  Once again, God does not call for most of us to do great things.  Our dreams, fantasies, and reality must remain humble and simple in self-exertion.  The challenge to remain content and peaceful within a life of worship and prayer is enough to advance in grace.  As St John of the Cross presents the idea of ‘nada’, to do nothing, is profoundly a spiritual challenge.  The thought coalesces with an awareness emerging during my time with the Carthusians, an order dedicated to the non-doing of great things within the body of the Church.  There is an emptiness within my spiritual self-identity, bonding me with my paternal mother and father, an acceptance of mediocrity and struggle throughout my life, a life prone to the reality of failure, a life scarred and recovered from the ravages of severe alcoholism.  It is painful to accept, yet I am growing and nurturing the reality my life will never be glamorized through higher achievement.  I am mediocre at best and yet I comprehend God’s infatuation with my coming into acceptance with the fact, the understanding His love is enough, holding before me tenderly the images of Mary and Joseph.  Within the humbling fact of who I am is the birth of the immensity of who God is.  God is good and all giving.