There is a priest known
simply as Brother Andrew, who co-founded the Brothers part of the Missionaries of
Charity with St. Teresa. In one of his books about his experiences, he begins
by saying: ‘Few people would believe the weakness on which the Missionaries of
Charity are built.’ He writes a lot about his own weakness, although he doesn’t
say exactly what it was, but that he suffered from some kind of addiction. But
this weakness, which frustrated him so much, was also one of the things that
made him holy. He doesn’t say that, but you can see it from his writings. The
reason why God did such great work through him, through St. Teresa and through
so many others, was not because they were extraordinarily talented, but because
they totally relied on God for everything. The reason they totally relied on
God was because they came to see that without him they are nothing.
In St. John’s Gospel Jesus
says, ‘I am the vine you are the branches… cut off from me, you can do nothing.’
(Jn 15:5).
The path to growing closer
to God involves us becoming more and more aware of what we are like at the
deepest level. Humility is not pretending that you are not good when you know
you are, but seeing ourselves as we really are. It is easy to get a false
impression of what a holy person is. Books can often give us the impression
that the saints were people who did almost no wrong and just floated along
loving God. The truth is that the saints are weak people, with just as many
weaknesses as any of us, but they continually turned to God for help and as a
result God was able to work through them in such an amazing way. To understand
that is key to growing in the spiritual life. If the saints were perfect people
who never did any wrong, then few of us could relate to them. But if they were
weak people just like any of us—which they were—then not only can we relate to
them, but it can help us to see that the exact same path is open to us. It
doesn’t depend on us being good enough, rather it depends on us continually
turning to God. That is the key.
When Sr. Briege McKenna—who
gave us a mission here a few years ago—was a young nun, she was about to go for
training in theology, but the Lord clearly told her not to. He then showed her
that she had a particular ministry to priests, so she began her ministry to
priests. The first time she was to share in giving a retreat with another
Jesuit priest, the priest called her on the morning of the retreat and told her
that he was sick and so she would have to go on without him. She said she was a
nervous wreck. Here she was about to give a retreat to priests, all of whom had
theological training and she had none. She knew she would have to totally
depend on God and that is exactly what God wanted her to do. You can imagine
how humbling it was talking to a room full of priests, when she was so young.
She said that one elderly priest said to her, ‘What could you possibly have to
tell us?’ The Lord deliberately allowed this to happen, so that she would learn
to completely depend on him.
There is no one here who
doesn’t have weaknesses of one kind or another. It could be some kind of
addiction, it could be a need to control, an emotional dependency, whatever. We
all have something and as you well know, it can be extremely frustrating. Our
thinking is usually, ‘How can I possibly pleasing to God when I struggle this
way?’ God could take away these things, but He doesn’t, because in a paradoxical
way, they help us come closer to God. When we are aware of our own sinfulness,
we are also aware of how much we need God’s mercy and that’s how it should be.
I find it comforting that two
thousand years ago, St. Paul writes about the exact same thing (2 Cor 12:7-10).
Paul was a very intelligent man, well educated and obviously very talented and
even though he had a vision of Jesus which converted him and many more visions
after, he too suffered from some kind of weakness, although he doesn’t say what
it was. In this second reading you can hear his frustration:
…‘because of
these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from
becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to
torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me, but He
said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in
weakness.”’ (2 Cor 12:7-9)
You can imagine how full
of pride he could have become, since he had received all these visions from God
and because the Lord was continually working extraordinary miracles through
him. Whatever weakness it was, it kept him humble, which meant that he
continually needed to turn to the Lord and ask for his help and that is why he
and so many other men and women were such powerful instruments in God’s hands,
because they came to rely totally on God and not on themselves.
In Romans 7:15 he writes:
‘I do not understand my
own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.’ You
wouldn’t believe how many times I have heard people say that in confession,
word for word.
I have no doubt that all
of us probably feel we would be more pleasing to God if we could overcome our
weaknesses. But perhaps these readings will help us to see that the Lord knows
what He is doing when He allows us to struggle with them. They are frustrating yes,
but they can also be a gift in the sense that they make us rely on the power of
God more than on ourselves. It also reminds us that it is not a question of
being ‘good enough’ for God. We will never be good enough by our own strength,
but that doesn’t matter. It is God himself who makes up the difference.
‘So I shall be very happy to make my
weaknesses my special boast so that the power of Christ may stay over me.’ (2
Cor 12:9)
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