I've Fallen and Can Get Up
One
Our Lord gives us a pretty high standard for our spiritual life: Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect! (cf. Mt 5:48). The Beatitudes reveal to us what this perfect life looks like. Early in my spiritual journey I remember thinking this Christian thing wasn’t right for me because I kept messing up! My life was so different from the one described by Jesus in the beatitudes! I was fallen and couldn’t get up! I figured I was just defective or that God was displeased with me and cast me aside. I had a very underdeveloped idea of what my Christian life looked like. I envisioned a plane taking off and leaving all of the bad stuff behind, yet here I was, stuck in a revolving door, same stuff, different day. I knew that given enough time the same sin would simply return again. I was stuck! What was wrong?! I thought that I really couldn’t go to confession and say I’m sorry when I knew that I was going to commit this sin again. I believed I was a shameful imposter and almost gave up my relationship with Jesus several times. Our Lady didn’t let me, fortunately, and taught me something essential. Oh, Blessed Mother, Holy Queen and Virgin, thank you for showing me this blessed fruit—persevering patience!
Two
In time, and with Our Lady’s help, I came to see the plane-taking-off analogy didn’t quite capture the nature of the spiritual life. Rather, our journey does seem to go around and around in a revolving door, but with this huge difference: so long as we persevere with trusting effort, God perfects us slowly with each revolution. The saints tell us that sanctity does not consist in never sinning; rather, sanctity consists in how rapidly we rise again and move forward with Jesus! Even the saints struggled and committed sin. St. John said, “If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and His word is not in us” (1 Jn 1:10). St. John, you understood your need for a savior because you understood that you, an apostle, and writer of the New Testament, were a sinner! To deny it is to lie! Show me the path to the truth, without convenient and vain deceits, so that even someone like me can become a saint like you!
Three
Shame and guilt are good things when we do wrong. These are the passions that let us know that we recognize we have a higher calling and can do better. Shame and guilt compel us to change. I have heard ex-Catholics say that the reason why they left the Church was because they ‘didn’t need all that guilt!’ Well, if I feel guilty, maybe it’s because I did wrong and need to change! That’s precisely why I AM CATHOLIC! I can go the Sacrament of Reconciliation and leave the reasons for guilt behind and begin again! The Lord allows us to sin again and again for two huge reasons: to humble us and show us our need for Him, and to experience His mercy. St. Therese of Lisieux expresses it well, “The memory of my faults humbles me; it causes me never to rely on my own strength, which is but weakness, but especially it teaches me a further lesson of the mercy and love of God”.
Four
God never tires of forgiving us, though we may tire of asking Him for forgiveness. If we tire of it, let us examine ourselves as to why, and we may find some dangerous culprits: our own unwillingness to forgive and pride. Maybe we don’t believe that God can forgive us because we have trouble forgiving others. Jesus teaches “Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give, and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you” (Lk 6:38). Our Lord’s forgiveness is only held back if we don’t open ourselves to receive it by forgiving others. If I forgive generously, I will be forgiven generously. To worry about how often I ask for it is to assume that I’m bigger than His mercy; or, that I don’t need it. Lord, teach me that my finite flaws, no matter how serious, are not bigger than your infinite Mercy.
Five
Pride prevents me from taking a true assessment of my own weakness. It fools me into living in the perpetual illusion of self-reliance. “I got this,” is the phrase of the fool. Growth in holiness corresponds to the level of complete dependance I place on God instead of myself. Humility is to see myself the way God sees me. Today, as a resolution, reflect on this quote of St. Francis de Sales throughout the day, “Don’t despair over your shortcomings. Start over each day. You make spiritual progress by beginning again and again.”