Me? A Saint.
I am a flawed individual. I have made so many mistakes. I will make many more. I have hurt others as well as myself by my behavior. I cannot entertain memories for long without encountering regret. At Mass it is no formality for me when I beat my breast while praying:
. . . through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault . . .
Nevertheless, it is self-defeating; it is soul-destroying for me to hold this idea without balancing it with the equally true and even more powerful truth that in Christ I have become a new creation.
I want to live as a new creation. I try but often I act just like the old guy I always was. However, by God’s design and effort through Christ and his Church I am new. This sinner is really God’s saint. A work in progress surely – but still. Henri Nouwen once wrote of the sinner who becomes a saint:
. . . but he will not despair when he does not see the result he wanted . . . (f)or . . . he keeps hearing the words of the One sitting on the throne: “I am making the whole of creation new,” (Rev. 21: 5).
This “throne” indicates to this struggling, doubtful saint that God has the power to enforce his will for me – to make me new. By the work of Christ, by God’s love, the core of me the old sinner has been dealt with. A new life, a new creation has begun. Father Ronald Rolheiser has written that:
When Saint Augustine was giving the Eucharist to a communicant, instead of saying, ‘the body of
Christ,” he would say: “Receive what you are.” This puts the thing correctly. What is supposed to
happen at the Eucharist is that we . . . should become the body and blood of Christ . . . we,
the people, are meant to be changed, to be transubstantiated.
This “old guy”, this flawed individual will continue in his struggle. This struggle is known as the walk of faith. It cannot be done successfully alone. It must be done in prayer and in community with other saints. I will bear with my many regrets by making today and tomorrow better. I can’t re-do the past but I can go forward into a different and better tomorrow.
Louis Templeman
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