Fr. Don's Daily Reflection - June 29, 2024
Psalm 62: “In you alone is my soul at rest. My help comes from you.”
There are good reasons for waiting some time after death to officially proclaim someone a saint. Most of us have had the experience of idolizing some public figure or acquaintance and then being embarrassed by some disclosure about him or her. I suspect that if I looked carefully at previous writings of mine I would find examples of people whose subsequent behavior contradicts my citation of them.
But a bit of self-scrutiny would probably make us more understanding of such failures on the part of our idols. The kind and good things people say about us are often embarrassing because they are based, we know, on inadequate knowledge. If our friends and admirers knew us as well as we should know ourselves they'd probably have more qualifications to make about us too.
Possibly bigger-than-life movie heroes and holier-than-humanly-possible saints have this in common: both give the impression that there are people who lack human failings. (That we need, of course, idealism is a subject for another day.) Taking heroes down a notch can be a mean-spirited exercise but, on the other hand, it is important to remember that we all have failings.
Recognition of this can make us more compassionate toward our fellow travelers on the planet. The old saw says: “There go I but for the grace of God.” And the Latin playwright, Terence, wrote; “Nothing human is really foreign to me.” Accomplishment and failure, sin and virtue are part of each one of us.
Psalm 27: “I believe I shall see the Lord’s goodness / in the land of the living.
Wait for the Lord; be strong; / be stouthearted, and wait for the Lord!”
