Our falls can humble us when we are puffed up with pride, demonstrating God’s power to save. They can become milestones on a personal journey of salvation, which we remember with gratitude.

However, we cannot afford to be naive. Not every fall ends in exaltation. Some falls exhale a hellish stench, bringing destruction to the guilty and leaving ruin in their wake. This trail is often wide and long, reaching many innocent people. We will need strength to approach, with Bernard, the verse from Psalm 90 that begins: “A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand.”

Nothing has caused the Church more tragic harm, nor compromised our witness more, than the corruption that has arisen within our own house. The Church’s worst crisis has not been provoked by secular opposition, but by ecclesiastical corruption. The wounds inflicted will need time to heal. They cry out for justice and for tears.

When faced with corruption, especially when it involves abuse, it’s tempting to look for a root cause. We hope to find early warning signs that were overlooked: some failure in the discernment processes, an initial pattern of deviation. Sometimes such clues exist, and we are right to reproach ourselves for not having detected them in time. However, we don’t always find them.

We can acknowledge the great, even joyful, good that was often evident in the beginnings of communities now linked to scandal. We cannot assume that there was structural hypocrisy from the outset, that the founders started out like whitewashed tombs. At times, we find signs of inspiration, even traces of holiness. How can we simultaneously explain these elements and the distorted developments that followed?

A secular mindset simplifies: faced with calamity, it designates monsters and victims.

Fortunately, the Church possesses, when it remembers to use them, more delicate and effective instruments.

Bernard reminds us that wherever people undertake noble works, the enemy’s attacks will be fierce. He observes that “the spiritual men of the Church are attacked far more terribly than the carnal ones.” He considers that this is what the Psalm  Qui habitat  means by its language of “left” and “right”: the left represents our carnal nature, the right our spiritual nature. The casualties are more numerous on the right because it is there, on the spiritual battlefield, that the most lethal weapons are employed.

Although he took the demonic reality very seriously, this doesn’t mean he attributed all spiritual illness to villains with horns and tridents. He maintains that men and women are responsible for how they use their sovereign freedom. His point is that human nature is one. If we begin to delve deeply into our spiritual dimension, other depths are necessarily revealed. We will face existential hunger, vulnerability, a yearning for comfort. Such experiences can arise in the form of an assault.

Progress in the spiritual life requires aligning our physical and emotional dimensions with contemplative maturation; otherwise, there is a danger that spiritual expression will seek a physical or emotional release, and that such releases will be rationalized as if they were somehow “spiritual,” higher than the faults of ordinary mortals. The integrity of a spiritual teacher will be demonstrated by their conversation, but not only by it; it will also be evident in their online habits, their behavior at the table or in a bar, and their freedom from the flattery of others.

The spiritual life is not an add-on to the rest of existence. It is its very soul. We must guard against all dualism, always remembering that the Word became flesh so that our flesh might be permeated by the Logos. We must be vigilant both to the left and to the right, and, as Bernard insists, not confuse left with right nor right with left. We must learn to feel equally serene in our carnal and spiritual nature, so that Christ, our Master, may reign peacefully in both.

Bishop Erik Varden of Trondheim, Norway, has been invited to preach the 2026 Spiritual Exercises for Pope Leo XIV, the cardinals residing in Rome, and the heads of Dicasteries of the Roman Curia, which will be held from Sunday, February 22, to Friday, February 27.

1. First meditation
2. Second meditation
3. Third meditation
4. Fourth meditation
5. Fifth meditation
6. Sixth meditation
7. Seventh meditation