A priest hearing confessions or giving spiritual direction often hears a penitent say, with some embarrassment and shame, that he is not as perfect as he ought to be or that he is not living as good a life as he should. The tone of voice and the general impression given is that the person feels that he ought to be able to come to confession or seek spiritual direction with the statement, “I am living as good a life as I should, “ and so feel worthy of the attentions of the priest or of God even! . . .
The truth is that none of us is satisfactory before God; none of us lives as perfect a life as he should. We are all sinners. If we say otherwise, Scripture itself calls us liars, and that is a sin! The just man falls seven times a day. It is quite certain, therefore, that never in this life on earth will any one of us be able truthfully either to say or think, “I am as perfect as I ought to be,” or even, “I am as perfect as I can be,” or “I cannot do any better than I am doing.”
Since we are meant by God to live at peace with Him, with peace of soul, and, in fact, since we cannot advance or improve spiritually without peace of soul, it is obvious that we have to accept ourselves as sinners, keep on trying to improve, and nevertheless find peace with God long before we are anything like perfect. . .
. . . Now it is true that Jesus did tell us to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect, but if you had to reduce the Gospel to one single instruction, I do not think that you could say it could be summed up as “You are to be perfect.” If that . . . is the summary of the Gospel, we might with some justification feel that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is not for the likes of you and me. We must accept the whole of the Gospel, but if we had to pick out one direction from Our Lord as a summary of it, then I dare say the best one to pick would be, “Repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.”
The Gospel is not a description of a lot of perfect people . . .; it is really all about saving sinners. Jesus not only went as far as eating with publicans and sinners, but actually said clearly that He had not come to save the righteous, the perfect, but sinners. We must aim at perfection; we must try to improve very seriously; we must keep getting closer to perfection; but since we shall never reach that goal in this life, it is perhaps more necessary for us to be good at repentance than at perfection. We simply must be good at being sincerely sorry for our sins and wanting to amend our lives. . .
As you know, Jesus told a parable, a story, about a wedding feast. “The Kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a feast for his son’s wedding.” . . . Those who had been invited would not come. When pressed even more urgently . . . they made various excuses and still would not come. So the king sent out his servants to collect all the riff-raff they could find at the crossroads in the town and bring them in. That is us, of course. The parable is pleasant up to that point, but then the king takes a look at the guests and finds one of them not properly dressed in the wedding garment. The king speaks to him very gently and kindly. “My friend,” he asks, “how did you get in here without a wedding garment?” The man is silent, and the king says, “Bind him hand and foot and throw him out into the dark where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth.” . . .
. . . [S]urely the point of the condemnation of that man is that he was silent. He did not admit his fault; nor did he ask for pardon. He did not repent. The Gospel is about repenting. . . .
There is a persuasion about these days that sin is not as serious as we used to think or that least that its effects and outcome are not as terrible as we used to think. People will tell you that hell does not exist or, at least, that very, very few people go there. We are told that God is so kind and loving that He will forgive anyone. Yes, indeed He will, but He will not forgive someone who is not sorry. . . If a man freely choose to be a grave sinner and deliberately refuses to be sorry and change his mind, it would perhaps require more than omnipotence to make him do so. Perhaps if God forced a sinner of that kind to become good, it would necessarily involve either putting the infinite will of God into the man, which is impossible, or so forcing the man that he was no longer the person with free will that he had been created as. . .
There is no limit to God’s generosity or to His love for you, and so there is no reason for you to be afraid of anything or about anything except deliberate sin, and the fear of sin must be tempered by the knowledge of the mercy of God, which is overwhelming. God does promise to forgive us whatever we have done, whenever we have done it, as long as we are sorry and thus open to healing from Him. God does promise forgiveness to us whenever we repent. He does not promise time to repent. So let us never put off our return to God, but turn to Him at once, if ever we do anything wrong, even small things. Then, having asked His forgiveness, and having forgiven our own debtors, we know for certain that all is well with us again, and we are at perfect peace with God. Then, in our love for Him and in gratitude, we shall try to show how thankful we are by prayers and works of love and trust and joy in His presence.
