Friday, April 1, 2016

Completely unworthy and imperfect

THIS is to show how entirely gratuitous and tremendous God’s love for
us is. He created us out of pure love and goodness. There was no
necessity at all for him to create us and the whole universe.

    Besides, among all his creatures that can include very beautiful,
complex beings, we alone, together with the angels, have been chosen
to be created in God’s image and likeness. God took a big risk in
doing so, but that did not stop him.

    And when we freely and responsibly damaged the original plan he has
for us, by committing sin, by disobeying and rebelling against him, he
continues to love us, unrolling a very complicated plan of redemption
that involved nothing less than God becoming man himself, Jesus
Christ.

    And that God-man, our savior, did nothing less than to offer his life
on the cross, which is already the ultimate of love, for as Christ
himself said, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lays down
his life for his friends.” (Jn 15,13)

    We are floored by all this manifestation of divine love. No matter
what we do, even if we are the saintliest of all the saints, we can
never repay him fully. We can never equal what he does to us. We will
always find ourselves unworthy. And even in our best efforts to
correspond to his love, we will always find ourselves short, with
imperfections all over the place.

    This condition, however, should not sadden us nor put us into extreme
situations of tension and nervousness. Being a good father, God does
not want us to feel that way toward him. He wants us cheerful and
truly free.

    As St. Paul would put it: “Each one must do just as he has purposed
in his heart, not grudgingly or under compulsion, for God loves a
cheerful giver.” (2 Cor 9,7) This should be the standard of our life,
of our attitude and relation with God and with everybody else.

    We have to guard ourselves from the danger of perfectionism which is
nothing other than a sign of pride on our part. While it’s true that
Christ commanded us to love God with all our might and strength, and
to love everybody else as he has loved us, and we try our best to
follow these commandments, we should not forget that our unworthiness
of God’s love and the imperfections of our correspondence will always
be with us.

    We just have to understand ourselves and one another and not worry
too much about reaching that perfection that in the end can only come
more from our own idea of love than the gratuitous and tremendous love
of God for us.

    Christian perfection, or better said, the fullness of charity, is not
in never committing any mistake nor fall nor sin. It’s in having to
rise again after every fall, to say sorry often, and to move on, doing
as much good as one can, without unduly carrying the burden of past
mistakes and sins. Holiness is not so much about avoiding sin as it is
in loving and doing as much good as one can.

    That’s the reason why God’s mercy is infinite. Christ told us to
forgive one another not only seven times, but seventy times seven
times. In all instances in the gospel where he forgave sinners, like
the one of the woman caught in adultery, he did not make many
conditions before he gives his mercy. The repentant thief, we can even
say, had it easy.

    This is not, of course, trying to say that we should not be serious
with our repentance before we get forgiven by Christ. We should be
truly sincere with our contrition. But we just have to make sure that
our repentance does not end up being a tedious and inhuman exercise of
remorse.

    Our repentance should be a repentance of love, and not so much
because of the ugliness of our sin. All sins are ugly, always with
some uglier than others. But that ugliness should not be the prime
motive for being sorry. It should be love that comes as a result of
having offended one who loves us beyond all telling.

    At the moment, we have cases of sinners who are unduly traumatized by
their guilt feelings that are based not so much on God’s love but on
some distorted personal, social or cultural misconceptions about sin
and God’s mercy.

    We need to examine this issue more closely to know more about its
tricky nuances and to come out with appropriate remedies and
guidelines.

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