Have you allowed discouragement to get the better of you in your road to spiritual growth? - Daily Reflections October 25,2013

STAY ON THE ROAD

 

A womanizer attended a retreat and claimed that he had had a conversion experience. One day, he noticed his wife was lonely and so he approached her and professed: “Hon, do you know that you hold the key to my heart?” The wife responded, “Is that so? Who is this Mary that I read on your phone, sending you sweet messages?” The man replied, “Oh her? She’s the duplicate key!”

       Overcoming our weaknesses due to concupiscence is a struggle. In today’s First Reading, Paul pours his heart out, “For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do” (vv 18-19).

       But Paul ends his soliloquy with a confident note of hope: “All praise to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Even when we struggle, all is not lost. Even in our “unloveliness,” Jesus is there to meet us. The saints know this. It is this knowledge that transformed the greatest of sinners to the noblest of saints. Paul himself assures us: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

       How then do we understand then Jesus’ call to perfection: “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48)? The mystics say that the state of perfection cannot be achieved here on earth. That is the blessed lot of those already graced to be in heaven. The road to perfection is where we all are. It’s a long and arduous journey. The call to perfection is not so much the call to immediately reach the state as a summons to stay on the road to perfection. The good news is, Jesus meets us even while we are still on the road, struggling to be better. Wasn’t St. Paul himself met by the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus?

       This is why Paul can burst with confidence at the end of the letter: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (v25)! Fr. Joel O. Jason

 

REFLECTION QUESTION: Have you allowed discouragement to get the better of you in your road to spiritual growth?

 

You loved us, Lord, even while we were still sinners. Let this love transform us into the best of who we are and who we are called to be. Amen.