change - 24th week Wednesday 2017

This is always our dilemma.  How do you change people who feel they do not need to change?  How can you convert people who feel there is nothing wrong with them? This is the dilemma of Jesus with regards the Pharisees.  There was no need to change, there was no need to convert, there was no need to be saved from something, thus, 'We played the flute for you, but you did not dance. We sang a dirge, but you did not weep.'
This is the reason why we begin the mass by getting in touch first with our unworthiness, with our shortcomings, with our failures and faults. “Lord, we fall short of what you want us to do and become.”  Only by getting in touch with what needs to be saved in us, only by getting in touch with what needs to be redeemed in us, only by admitting what needs to be changed in us, can the Lord begin to do his work in us.  Without this admission however, without this admission of vulnerability and incompleteness, God cannot do anything for us. 

It is always difficult to change something that we have been so used to. I for one grew up thinking that I can only do so much.  I never thought or imagined myself as somebody who can give something more for the church until I was forced and pushed to do so by my superiors.  That is why St. Therese said that the quickest way to know and discover your gifts is to obey your superiors.

We can never become what God wants us to become when we remain content and satisfied with what is.  The penitential rite of the mass, where we present and acknowledge our shortcomings to the Lord, is a recognition that we can still become better, we can still become holier, that we can still become more loving, more self-giving.  And so always remind yourself of that reality, a reality by your own admission at the start of every mass, what you can still become as a person, with God’s help.