Quote from Letter 9.148 to Secundinus, an anchorite monk. May 599
And a deceived mind often recovers with delight from the state in which it has toured itself with regret, so that i can truly say with the palmist:' Foul and festering are my scars because of my folly' [Ps 38:6]. For indeed a scat is a sign of a wound, but one cured. And so a scar becomes infected again when the sound of sin, already cured through penitence, rouses the mind to give itself pleasure. Often what we have never done, we see with our mind's eye through the traps of the cunning enemy, and when pleasure steals in insensibly in this, although it may now lament what it has done, yet it disgusts an unlucky mind that we have done some things which it should lament. There are the shadows of our heart, which we endure in this life whether we want to or not. Who should be sought against this, other than an opportune helper in tribulation?
And a deceived mind often recovers with delight from the state in which it has toured itself with regret, so that i can truly say with the palmist:' Foul and festering are my scars because of my folly' [Ps 38:6]. For indeed a scat is a sign of a wound, but one cured. And so a scar becomes infected again when the sound of sin, already cured through penitence, rouses the mind to give itself pleasure. Often what we have never done, we see with our mind's eye through the traps of the cunning enemy, and when pleasure steals in insensibly in this, although it may now lament what it has done, yet it disgusts an unlucky mind that we have done some things which it should lament. There are the shadows of our heart, which we endure in this life whether we want to or not. Who should be sought against this, other than an opportune helper in tribulation?
Cited from: The Letters of Gregory the Great, trans. John R.C. Martyn (Toronto: PIMS, 2004), II, 630.
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