Stir up [O God] the heart when people read and hear the confessions of my past wickednesses, which you have forgiven and covered up to grant me happiness in yourself, transforming my soul by faith and your sacrament. Prevent their heart from sinking into the sleep of despair and saying ‘It is beyond my power.’ On the contrary, the heart is aroused in love of your mercy and sweetness of your grace, by which every weak person is given power, while dependence on grace produces awareness of one’s own weakness. Good people are delighted to hear about the past sins of those who have now shed them. The pleasure is not in the evils as such, but that though they were so once, they are not like that now.

A brotherly mind will love in me what you [God] teach to be lovable, and will regret in me what you teach to be regrettable. This is a mark of a Christian brother’s [or sister’s] mind, not an outsider’s. [The Christian brother or sister] will take heart from my good traits, and sigh with sadness at my bad ones.

—Augustine, Confessions 10.3.4-5

Here is a little self-check for you. How do you react when you hear of others’ sins and misfortunes? Do you take delight in them, especially when it is someone you do not like, or do they make you sad for the person? Are you happy when you read or hear stories of people overcoming their sins and hardships, or do you resent it? What about people who are overcome by their body of sin? Are you sad for them or do you take secret satisfaction over their misfortunes, especially when you think they deserve it? If you need a concrete example to help you with this exercise, take the sad story of Ted Koppel’s son or Al and Tipper Gore’s separation. What is your reaction to them (and to the level of detail in the articles themselves)?

Augustine here reminds us that the very nature of Christian love is to desire the best for the other, where “best” is determined by God’s Truth and holy commandments. We are to rejoice when we see anyone, but especially a Christian brother or sister, overcome a dimension of his or her brokenness or body of sin with the help of Christ, and grieve with and for those who fail to do so. We do this because we remember that we are just like them. This is surely one of the reasons Paul wrote what he did in Romans 12:14-16.

If this is not your reaction when you read or hear about the fortune/misfortune of others, especially Christian brothers and sisters, you might ask the Lord to help you see whether you have an issue with that pride thingy going on with you. Because if you do, for one thing, you will never really be able to appropriate the Good News that is in Jesus Christ. Do you know why?