What sin has taught me

I'm a sinful Catholic. I am an orthodox Catholic who believes all the Magesterium teaches. That, however, has not preserved me from sin, or made me any better than anyone else on this earth.

I've fallen. Big time. And I'm trying to pick myself up. But every time I do, I seem to fall again.

I used to be prideful. It was my greatest sin. I was proud of being Catholic, of being an orthodox Catholic who went to church every Sunday. I was proud that I put more in the collection box than anyone else. I was proud that I went to mass when nobody else did. I was proud that I didn't practice birth control. I was proud that I was Catholic and not a Protestant. I was proud, period. I had no reason to be.

Okay, to be truthful there's still a nugget of pride within me. It's like a cancer. It's being slowly excised, but I am not sure that it will ever be completely cured.

I've been thinking of writing this blog for a long time. Today I came face to face with a person in my community who I've despised. He is an ex-priest. He left the priesthood when he fell in love with a woman who was the wife of another man. They live together now; or at least, they did last time I heard. I've hated him, resented him, felt vastly superior than him, snubbed him, slandered him. We were standing next to each other in line. He had to have recognized me as a former parishioner of his, yet I avoided his eyes, pretended I didn't know him, as I've done before, as I did when I noticed him standing in the back of the church during mass last Sunday.

Suddenly a thought came to be unbidden: "You are no better than him." It wasn't a put-down, it wasn't my low self-esteem talking, or the condemnation of the Lord. It was a simple acknowledgment...whether of my own, or sent from God, I don't know...that I have no right to feel any superiority. Or blame him or condemn him in any way. A recognition that he is my brother, and we are equals before the Lord. At that moment, I was humbled, and I felt great compassion for him, and love. I thought that his fall was probably much like my own...not black and white, but shades of gray, and fraught with questioning and confusion and pain and reasons no one could guess. After a few moments of processing this feeling, I timidly turned toward him, made eye contact, and said a few innocuous words, meaningless small talk.

I had forgiven him. And suddenly I knew that it was time to start this blog.

Somehow, my sin has taught me humility, and compassion, and the value of forgiveness. Not perfectly. But better. How can being a sinner make me a better person? This is a mystery to me, one I don't understand. I wonder how that can be the Lord's plan.

My mother always told me that when the Lord allows bad things to happen, it's because He will use it to bring about a greater good.