Friday, July 14, 2006

The Interior Struggle and Failure

It is really true that how we treat failure in our lives is just as important as how we treat success.
In the interior struggle we will also meet with failures. Many such failures will be unimportant; other will be more serious, but our atonement and our contrition will bring us even closer to God. And if ever we smash into small pieces what we felt was most precious in our life, God will be able to mend that very thing if we are humble. He always forgives us and helps us when we turn to him with a contrite heart. We must learn to begin again many times; with new joy, with new humility, for even if we have caused serious offence to God and have done much harm to other people, we can still later come very close to God in this life and be happy with him in the next, as long as there is true repentance, as long as we make room in our lives for penance, humility, sincerity and repentance -- and begin again.

God allows for our weakness and always forgives us, but we need to be sincere, to repent and to struggle to rise up again. There is incomparable joy in heaven each time we begin again. Throughout our journey on earth we will have to do so many times, because there will always be faults, shortcomings, weaknesses and sins for us to recover from. May we never lack the straightforwardness to acknowledge this and to open our souls to Our Lord in the Tabernacle and in spiritual direction.

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