DAY 9 The Shadow in the Mirror
from 2 Minutes with the Lord Hosted by Fr. Dominic Veigas SVD
DAY 9 — THE SHADOW IN THE MIRROR “Temptation Reveals What We Don’t Want to Face” A young man cleaned the mirror in his room every morning. He wiped it until it shone perfectly — not a smudge, not a fingerprint. One day, as the sun streamed in, he noticed something strange: a dark streak behind the mirror, inside the frame itself. No matter how much he scrubbed the glass, the shadow remained. Frustrated, he finally removed the mirror from the wall. Behind it was a long mark of dust and mildew slowly spreading across the plaster. He stared at it and whispered, “All this time… I was polishing the outside while the real problem was underneath.” The shadow wasn’t on the mirror — it was in the wall. This is temptation in our lives: it points not to what is dirty on the surface but to what is wounded deep within. Many of us try to “polish the mirror”: appearing good, behaving well externally, looking prayerful on the outside. But Lent is not surface cleaning. Lent is removing the mirror and facing the shadow beneath it. Temptations show us where our wounds live: envy reveals insecurity, anger reveals fear, lust reveals loneliness, impatience reveals exhaustion, pride reveals unhealed shame. God is not asking you to polish the glass. He is asking you to clean the wall. To acknowledge what lies beneath, to face the truth courageously, to let Him heal what you hide. Temptation is not a failure — it is a diagnostic tool of the soul.
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