The Veritas & Caritas Group

Was Sunday not awesome?  Saturday night we're watching boxing and hearing our associate pastor yelling, "Finish him!" "Knock him down!" People are walking off with shoes and on the television a guy sits in the ring for 10 minutes bleeding like mad while officials determine whether the bout is a knockout or a disqualification.  As a pro wrestling enthusiast, by the way, I never saw a steel chair, interference from a manager/valet, brass knuckles, or thrown fire, so I saw no grounds for a disqualification.  Oh, but there was blood.  Wow!  I thought the guy's eyeball had been punched out.  And that wasn't even the main event! But I digress.

Sunday's SCC meeting was a treat.  I look forward to our meetings each week, and I know my children do as well.  It would have been easy for me to remain in conversation into the wee hours of the morning because I am at such ease with our friends.  

You all know I would never divulge anything of our conversations on something as public as our blog, but there is something that I didn't get to say last night that is easy enough to share here.  It's relevance is universal, AND I GET TO USE GRAPHICS! Joy!

Look at this chart.  It has become for me an illustration of our growth as Christians.  As I studied models of sanctification, I saw many models that postulated that there were immediate and sudden "conversions" after which a person was, for lack of a better word, "perfect".  I tend to think that those cases are rare, though by manipulating the definition of holiness or sin, one could easily broaden the list of those who claim perfection.  That, however, is a talk for another day.  What conversion looks like for most of us is the chart above.  If you were to zoom out on this chart, the lines would smooth and you would see a steady progression "upward".  Yet, zooming in you see the many pits of the stock market.  Translate that into our spiritual lives and the struggle of fighting against sin, learning detachment from the things of the world and conforming ourselves to the will of God.  We rise, we fall, we rise again, and we fall again, but the continuing trend is an upward progression.

That is what growth looks like.  We have times, I'll call them "mountain top experiences", when we experience great growth.  Other times are slow and steady.  Still others are downright failures because we lapse into sin and self-centeredness.  Yet, when we sin, we are reconciled to God and to each other through the Sacraments, and we dust ourselves off and move forward.  There are millions of people in the world who "go through the motions" of Christianity, but who are oblivious to the relationship with God that they are neglecting.  Those of us who are aware, by the grace of God, notice when things are not right.  We see the struggle.  We are frustrated.  We know where we want to be, and sometimes we know that we just aren't there.  We are not unlike St. Paul (this is now the year of St. Paul, by the way), who struggled with sin, with his own ambitions, and with persecution.  Yet, at the end of his life, St. Paul tells St. Timothy that he has finished the course and that he has fought a good fight.

The saints show us that growth is possible, that it comes by submission and sacrifice, and that it is not easy.  No wonder Jesus says that the way is narrow that leads to eternal life and that the path is wide that leads to destruction.  Our growth by cooperating with God's grace is how we will become saints, and that is the goal.  It has nothing to do with feelings.  It has nothing to do with popular trends or opinions.  It has nothing to do with the charisma of our leaders.  It has everything to do with the objective reality of God's grace acting in our lives. So we stick it out and fight the good fight, knowing that all we experience in this journey is strengthening us as we grow.

I hope everybody has a great week.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 30th, 2008 at 10:13 am and is filed under Our Group is Awesome. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.