"It is only we who brood over our sins.
God does not brood over them.
God dumps them at the bottom of the sea."
St. Benedict
As All Saint's Day and All Soul's Day approach (November 1st and 2nd) it is a good time to pause and reflect on the lives of all those who have gone before us, successful in running the race to eternal life. At times it can seem like a stretch that someday we could be included in this list of saints. Whether or not we are canonized, we desire to get to Heaven, and if we make it there we are a saint.
Do we believe we can be saints? Sometimes our past seems too great or too burdensome for us to be saints. But "every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future" (Oscar Wilde). Are we brooding over our sins? Is that what is keeping us from seeking forgiveness and mercy through the Sacrament of Reconciliation? Or if we have been reconciled, are we continuing to brood over our sins as if mercy had not wiped us clean?
St. Benedict had it right - God does not brood over our sins. He dumps them at the bottom of the sea. If we still feel burdened and weighed down, it's because we choose to pick that weight back up. Mercy can be a hard thing to accept. All too often we are harder on ourselves than God is on us. Mercy is a completely free gift of love that God gives us, no matter how much we do or don't deserve it. The more miserable we are, the greater right we have to God's mercy.
God forgives us because He loves us. Can we forgive ourselves? Can we allow ourselves to forget the past as God does and choose only to look ahead? The saints didn't become saints because they were born perfect. They became saints because they chose to rely on God's mercy and to get up one more time than they fell. It doesn't matter if we fall a thousand times as long as we get up a thousand times.
Brooding over our sins only causes discouragement and despair. If we've been holding ourselves back from the mercy of God because our sins are "too great", now is the time to leave them behind, to dump them at the bottom of the sea, and to be reconciled to God and with ourselves.
Written by Catherine
