This is a personal anecdote that I experienced this morning, but thought I would share because of what it put into perspective for me.
The past couple of days we have been watching my wife’s parents’ dog. This morning he soiled himself in his kennel and then proceeded to lay in his own excrement as if nothing was wrong. He’s not the most intelligent dog. I was frustrated, cussed when I had to remove him and hose him off (because I am weak and imperfect), and proceeded to clean the kennel. My Angel reminding me to offer it up with a “Blessed be God.”
Later on this morning, while praying my Rosary, I realized something about that instance: it was a true-life allegory of the soul of a sinner. Why I say this is because the sinner soils himself with his own self-love and perverse will through his sins. He causes that soul which was once clean to become filthy with the disgrace of its own sins, and then, if he is unrepentant or ignorant of his sin, he proceeds to carry on in his own filth nonchalantly. This is what God sees in the sinner, a poor, stupid creature which subsists in his own filth in his tiny cage of his vices living as if nothing were wrong. It was a remarkable, and also repugnant, means of showing me the state to which the soul is brought through sin. And it made me that much more ashamed of my own sins I had committed out of my anger during the incident, as well as the many times where I have required the Blood of Christ to “hose me off” in order to cleanse my soul of this filth. The repugnance I felt while having to clean this dumb beast is not unlike the same repugnance Our Lord has when He sees us in such a state and cleanses us through Confession and the Blessed Sacrament. But while the dog has no understanding of his state outside of physical discomfort, I am even worse than the dog because I can realize the consequences of my own sins and prevent it through conformity to God's Will.
It's always amazing how God can show you great truths through the most mundane, and unfortunate, circuмstances.