Life in Christ is a grand adventure in which even the most mundane things can become moments of extraordinary grace. Regular, daily prayer has been a habit in my life (though one not perfectly kept) for over twenty years and some mornings it truly does seem mundane, ordinary, and uneventful. But no matter how it seems to me, Jesus is always there, working, transforming my soul, and every once in a while I get a glimpse of the good work He is about.
St. Catherine of Sienna boldly proclaimed, “If you were what you were meant to be you would set the world ablaze!” Reading such quotes has often left me dismayed, discouraged, and disheartened, deeply aware that I am not in fact setting the world ablaze. I say with absolute conviction that I want to be a saint and yet every day I fail. I start the day ready to joyfully embrace God’s good and perfect will and then I see another eight inches of snow predicted in the forecast and that joyful acceptance quickly dissolves into reluctant resignation at best if not bitter resentment.
Awareness of my sins and imperfections has weighed heavily upon me and beholding the distance between who I am and the saint I desire to be has tempted me to despair. However, recently, in my ordinary, regular, mundane morning prayer time, God gave me the grace of transforming my response to this juxtaposition of who I am and who I want to be.
The reality that I am not yet a saint became delightful! This delight is not in the fact that I am imperfect and sinful, but rather in the fact that God is not yet done with me. God has transformed my despair into hope, for the theological virtue of hope allows us to desire Heaven and to trust not in ourselves but in the Holy Spirit to prepare and perfect us.
Over the years, I have grown in holiness but the fact that I am not yet perfectly holy is good news because God has so much more for me. My heart rejoices in the knowledge that I can be better and the promise that “God, who began the good work within you, will continue it until it is perfected.” (Phil 1:6) I am only midway through this adventure and I can expect to be transformed throughout it, each day progressing toward the sanctity I desire, until one day I can greet even the forecast with a joyful, “Amen, so be it!”
Prose for the sake of Poetry 