Karah Mickaella Alferez

10 - Patience

Journal #3: Conscience

Imagine this scenario: You are a student whose final exams are upcoming in a week.
Determined to pass, you start planning your study schedule for the weekend. After several
days, it’s finally the weekend! You are about to grab your textbooks and highlighters when
suddenly your friend, whom you haven’t seen in a long time, messages you and asks to meet
up. You would feel guilty if you declined the invitation, so you reluctantly go out to meet
them instead of studying. You both end up having fun, and agree to meet up again the next
day. Caught in excitement, you forgot about studying.
It is now the day of the exams. You scratch your head upon looking at the first
question; how can you answer this when you haven’t studied at all? But then you realized:
your smart friend who always gets perfect scores is sitting beside you. Suddenly, you feel an
urge to look at her test paper for the answers, to cheat. However, something inside you makes
you resist that temptation. In order to pass, you have to cheat, but you know that cheating is
not the right thing to do.
This feeling that overcomes us whenever we experience situations wherein we are
faced with a struggle to resist temptation is called “conscience.”

Biblical Sources About Conscience

“Now the Spirit expressly states that in later times some will abandon the faith to
follow deceitful spirits and the teachings of demons, influenced by the hypocrisy of liars,
whose consciences are seared with a hot iron.”
This verse from 1 Timothy 4:2 talks about conscience. Paul’s usage of “whose
consciences are seared with a hot iron” can be interpreted as the “cauterized” conscience
present within a no-longer moral person. Because of their accustomation to committing sin,
their consciences have been desensitized and they do those immoral things without feeling a
sense of guilt. Their conscience no longer functions properly.
Church Teachings About Conscience

"Deep within his conscience man discovers a law which he has not laid upon himself
but which he must obey. Its voice, ever calling him to love and to do what is good and to
avoid evil, sounds in his heart at the right moment. . . . For man has in his heart a law
inscribed by God. . . . His conscience is man's most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is
alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths."
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1776, focuses on what conscience is. According to
the church teaching, conscience is the man’s “core” which God uses to speak to him alone.
When man does evil without actually having any intentions, the voice of God speaks to him
through his conscience. It is the law God implemented in our hearts in order to guide us to do
the right things.

Conclusion

Each and every person has their own conscience, which is God’s way of providing
guidance to us. We are not the source of our conscience; we cannot control, manipulate, or
silence it. Rather, it is God’s voice speaking to us. It is the place where God meets the person
as a free and intelligent being who has the power to make a choice for or against good.
Without our conscience, we would have no inner guide to help us distinguish what is right
from wrong.