Sunday, August 24, 2008

Entry for July 06, 2007 ~ Starting over and over again...

I am aware that I am a sinner...perhaps one of the greatest (not anything to be proud of, for sure). I seem to make very little progress in my spiritual life; sometimes I may be thinking that I have gotten better at avoiding a certain sin, bad habit, practiced virtue just a little more than I did before...and then it hits me! I am not any better than I was yesterday, I still commit the same faults, I neglect the same prayers, I do it all.
I am so grateful for the Divine Mercy devotion. If it were not for this revelation of our Lord in His great Mercy, I would be plunged into the depths of despair...and woe to me then!
Every time I fall, I can be likened to a beautiful butterfly that emerges from its cocoon.
It starts out as the lowly caterpillar, spins a place of rest, wakes up as this gorgeous creature...talk about starting over!
But for the butterfly, there is only one chance. What species it belongs to ~ that's it! There is no going back into the cocoon and deciding, 'I want to wake as some other breed! I don't want to be this or that species, I want to be something else.'
O, no! One chance, my friend ~ that's it for you!
We, on the other hand, find ourselves with all the chances in the world. What do we do with them? Do we try until we overcome any faults we have, or do we go blithely on our merry way, unconscious of the wrongdoing we have committed? Do we take advantage of the Mercy that is offered to us?
As a Catholic, I have the greatest gift of the Sacrament of Confession...and I try to make the best of that gift. I have been trying to go more often than I ever used to, even if I have to tell the priest the same things over and over again...and then I start over and over again, always trying to get better, get past the same sins.
The one way to make any progress is to constantly have my worst faults ever in the forefront of my mind. That way I can never forget that they are there, ready to pounce on my soul. I cannot let that happen!
It's probably another example of God's mercy that the humble but stunning butterfly has no idea of the choices it would have been able to make if it had been born as anything else. But it goes on, day after day, just being what God created it to be.
How much more did He create me to be? Am I going to live my entire life striving for that perfection that is so impossible to attain, without His Mercy? Am I going to go on, depending on my own self? Or am I going to go to Him, humble and contrite, and say to Him: 'I know I don't deserve it, dearest Lord God ~ but can I please just have another chance?'
I know in His Mercy, He is always ready to give me that one more chance...and I take full advantage of that, as well.
I know that I may be one of the world's biggest sinners, but I also know something else. I know how to start over and over again...

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