“Ah, you poor thing!”

thought-for-sundayFrom the desk of Fr. Ignatius Waters, cp

Sunday, 19th November 2017

  

 

   

Last May when I fell and fractured my elbow, I was surprised how many people said things like “Ah poor thing!” or “You poor thing!” I wasn’t used to be called a ‘thing’ and yet, it was strangely comforting. I did feel like a small broken thing that was foolish enough to fall and get broken!  And then I remembered that in Isaiah, God comforted his people with similar words: “Do not be afraid, Jacob, poor worm; Israel, puny mite. I will help you.” (41:13-20) I’m sure we mightn’t like to be called a ‘worm’ or a ‘puny mite’ but in Isaiah this was the language of tenderness and intimacy. It was the language of a mother comforting a small child. The people were shivering with fear, shrinking from troubles on every side, but were held fast by God’s right hand. Our struggle is that while we know and believe that we also are in God’s hands, we often don’t feel it. Or we feel it when we’re healthy and strong, but we don’t feel it when we need it most, when we’re feeling small, weak and helpless. We’ve to live a strange paradox, knowing how weak and fragile we are but knowing also that we are in God’s hands; that the God we can’t see, or touch, is closer to us than we are to ourselves because his Spirit dwells within us.

All this is not easy even for those who take God seriously, who love Jesus and want to follow him. When we find that after all the years we’re still so weak and sinful, we can be discouraged and feel like giving up on it all. I’ve known so many good people (priests, sisters, brothers, parents and single people) who suffer like this. It is good people who suffer like this. The gospel ideals are meant to be like beacons encouraging us to keep quietly working towards them. But they can have the opposite effect! St. Bernard said, “The greatest enemy of the good is the perfect,” meaning the high ideals we have can so discourage us that we don’t even achieve the good that we could if we weren’t so depressed about the whole thing!

I heard Tom Murphy, the playwright, say in a radio interview, that when he was a young man, he had to rid himself of the idealized image he had of himself that was crucifying him; and filling him with guilt when he failed! I feel many of us were like that. And it can have little to do with God at all. It can be a cult of self- perfection and we’re just upset and annoyed with ourselves when we fail. I’m not the good holy person I thought I was and wanted to be!

St. Therese was so young but so wise when she said, “Resign yourself to stumbling at every step, even to falling; love your powerlessness. What a grace it is when in the morning I feel no courage, no strength to practice virtue.”  That’s the opposite of what we want, isn’t it? We want to be spiritual successes! But she said: “Those who are living in the spirit of the gospel are not anxiously looking to see the results, are not concerned about how much progress has been made. They live by faith and confidence, giving themselves completely over to God’s mercy.”