Our Shameful Ingratitude

One of the fruits which we are taught by St. Ignatius to draw from the consideration of sin, which leads us naturally to reflect on the miserable use which we have made of so much grace, our shameful ingratitude, the petty, shabby, niggardly return which we have made to so much tenderness and generosity, the silly way in which we have managed our lives, the disgraceful and discreditable motives of self-love on which we have often acted, and the like. 

Again, a great part of that for which, under this head, the souls which stand before the judgment-seat of our Lord will have to feel such intense shame, will be the indulgence of shame itself as a motive of action, which may so often have induced them to be afraid of men, to yield to human respect, to fear not only those who can kill the body but those who could laugh at them, or make them unpopular, or put them to slight inconveniences, or the company in which they found themselves, rather than bear witness to the law or the truth of God in word or in action. 

Then, again, there are a number of reticences which are the result of self-love as well as of human respect, as when persons have made a mistake and do not like to acknowledge it, or are ignorant of what they have been supposed to know and will not say so, or have done some one wrong or been guilty of some rudeness and will not apologise, or have had credit given them which they do not deserve, and will not disclaim it. This is another class of the pettinesses which are the result of a false shame. 

Much more dangerous are those which prevent us from being perfectly open in confession, in cases where there may not be an absolute necessity for it, but when it would be much more ingenuous, and gain us much more light and grace from God, to speak, as in the confession of deliberate small sins to which we have an attachment, 

or again, when to acknowledge the truth about ourselves, our persons, our antecedents, our families, and the like, will bring on us some humiliation in the eyes of men.

Link (here) to read the mentioned text in the fantastic book entitled, The Prisoners of the King, by Fr.  Henry James Coleridge, S.J.