I've Fallen and Can Get Up

Our Lord gives us a pretty high standard for our spiritual life: Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect! (cf. Mt 5:48). The Beatitudes reveal to us what this perfect life looks like. Early in my spiritual journey I remember thinking this Christian thing wasn’t right for me because I kept messing up! My life was so different from the one described by Jesus in the beatitudes! I was fallen and couldn’t get up! I figured I was just defective or that God was displeased with me and cast me aside. I had a very underdeveloped idea of what my Christian life looked like. In time, and with Our Lady’s help, I came to see our journey does seem to go around and around in a revolving door, with the same sins returning again and again, but with this huge difference: so long as we persevere with trusting effort, God perfects us slowly with each revolution. The saints tell us that sanctity does not consist in never sinning; rather, sanctity consists in how rapidly we rise again and move forward with Jesus! Today, repeat this helpful quote of St. Francis de Sales throughout the day, “Don’t despair over your shortcomings. Start over each day. You make spiritual progress by beginning again and again.”