Sinners With A Profound Hope

Every now and then readers of these reflections write letters in which they object to something. Years ago, this Gospel of Luke 18 prompted such an email. A man wrote to me: “I find it deeply offensive that you suggest we are still sinners once we are God’s sons and daughters.” His objection stirred in me a profound awareness of the paradox at the heart of our faith. Are we sinners or beloved children of God? In this Gospel (Luke 18:9-14), a tax collector appears as one who has missed the mark. His sins have isolated him. His breast-beating is not an act of self-flagellation for pride’s sake but a heartfelt admission of his failure and unworthiness. Remarkably, Jesus honors the candid humility of the parable’s penitent. Why? Because we are always in need of mercy, always. But even more, perhaps because on the cross, Jesus will fully embrace a similar place of humiliation and rejection. He will enter into the most shameful, offensive place of the sinner so that we might “go home justified.” There is a sacred tension in admitting that we are sinners and yet have profound hope. We are beloved sons and daughters of God, growing precisely through our honest acceptance of failure. When we cry, “Have mercy on us,” during Mass or when we repeat the “Jesus Prayer” in quiet moments, or in the confessional, we embrace our imperfections as fertile ground for divine grace. In doing so, we follow Christ’s example — finding true exaltation in the humble acknowledgment of our human frailty. — Father John Muir @LPi