By what boundless mercy, my Savior,
have you allowed me to become a member of your body?
Me, the unclean, the defiled, the prodigal.
How is it that you have clothed me
in the brilliant garment,
radiant with the splendor of immortality,
that turns all my members into light?

Symeon the New Theologian, trans. by John Anthony McGuckin,
The Book of Mystical Chapters:
Meditations on the Soul’s Ascent from the Desert Fathers
and Other Early Christian Contemplatives

Faced with the grandeur and goodness of God, it is normal to feel unworthy. However, the feeling that we are worthless is not from God. There is a big difference between unworthiness and worthlessness. Each one of us is of infinite worth. “You were bought with a price,” says Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians 6.

Where worthiness is concerned, there are, as I see it, at least three stances that are not what we are called to as Christians.

• The “I’m worthy, but it’s doubtful that you are” stance. This is the self-righteous position. I’m afraid that this false sense of worthiness too often raises its head among church people, especially where there is finger-pointing at those we don’t think are quite orthodox enough in their worship or their beliefs—all the while being assured that we ourselves are totally correct with no possibility of error.

• I may not be worthy now, but if I work really hard I can make myself worthy. If I just pray enough and discipline myself enough and do enough good works, I can make myself worthy. This is actually a form of an ancient heresy called Pelagianism, which says, basically, that human beings have the ability to choose the good apart from any movement of God in us, and therefore to save ourselves by our own efforts.

• Despair. The problem with thinking that we have to make ourselves worthy is that no matter how hard we try, we find it’s never enough. We can never be good enough. We can never be unselfish enough or generous enough or forgiving enough or attend enough masses or go to confession often enough or pray well enough to be worthy. So trying to make myself worthy can easily lead to discouragement and eventually to giving up. I can never be worthy, so why try?

But wonder of wonders, we don’t have to be worthy!

In Christ, we are offered the grace to entrust all to the heart of God, and there we are accepted — with our sins, our neuroses, our emotional quirks, our inadequacies, our divided heart — and in the spacious and welcoming heart of God we are shown that peace lies in the handing over of all to God who is always sufficient.

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast.
For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

Ephesians 2:8-10

The captions started me thinking about which human needs can rightfully be withheld if they are are not earned.

Is food, for example, something that one must deserve in order to receive?

What about housing?

Or health care?

And these questions inevitably bring up others.

Does having money make a person more worthy of food, housing, and medical care than someone who has none?

Does having millions of dollars that you have earned by the sweat of your brow make you more worthy than someone who has earned only a few thousand, or a few hundred thousand?

Does having millions of dollars that you have not earned, but inherited, make you more worthy than a struggling school teacher with a burdensome debt – or a homeless person with nothing?

Is a person who is unable to work for one reason or another less worthy than someone who holds down two jobs to make ends meet – or than someone who with one relatively unburdensome job earns more than enough to pay for the necessities and the superfluities of life?

When you get right down to it, no one is worthy of God or of God’s gifts. We are all unworthy, but we are all of infinite worth.

Our value lies not in what we possess, or how much we earn, or whether or not we have a job, or whether we are even capable of holding a job. Our worth is not calculated according to whether we are sober or blind drunk, illiterate or highly educated, fortunate or unfortunate in our genetic makeup. The truth is that our value resides in the fact that we are beloved of God, infinitely treasured, infinitely cherished.

Rejoicing in the love of God, we must also be humble, for as Saint Paul says,

What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?
(1 Corinthians 4:7)

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a poem on this very point less than a year before he was executed by the Nazis. Here are a few lines:

Who am I? This man or that other?
Am I then this man today and tomorrow another?
Am I both all at once? An impostor to others,
but to me little more than a whining, despicable weakling?
Does what is in me compare to a vanquished army,
that flees in disorder before a battle already won?
Who am I? They mock me these lonely questions of mine.
Whoever I am, you know me, O God. You know I am yours.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from the poem, “Who Am I,”
written in prison, June 1944.

Whoever I am, I am yours. It is crucial to hold onto this fundamental reality of our life, because whatever is opposed to God, whether inside us or outside us, will try to deceive us into believing the contrary. The following quotation from Acedia and Me, by Kathleen Norris, offers an example of one form this deception can take:

I appreciate the writer Jeffery Smith’s observation that it is all too easy to succumb to the dangerous notion that only our despair truly knows us as we are, even as it mocks any desire we may have to improve our condition.

Our despair may tell us that we are worthless, that no one who really knew us could love us, that we are mired too deep in sin to be forgiven. Our despair, lying through its blackened teeth, whispers that only its voice tells us the truth about ourselves.

It can be very difficult, when we are feeling the worst about ourselves and about life, to tell this inner voice to shut up.

In fact, a sense of unworthiness before the grandeur and goodness of God is normal.  Consider the experience of Isaiah when God called him (Isaiah 6:1-8) or Peter (Luke 5:1-11).  We are all unworthy of the living and loving God.

But there is a big difference between unworthiness and worthlessness.  A spiritual warning bell should sound when we begin to think we are worthless.  Sometimes, though, our interior noise drowns out the warning of danger, so we have to remind ourselves over and over of the truth.

The truth is that we are of infinite worth, and we are infinitely loved. “You were bought with a price,” Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 6:20. Jesus Christ has paid the ultimate price of his own blood for us.

I may not know myself inside and out, but I can be sure of one thing: I am God’s.

We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves.
If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord;
so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.

(Romans 14:7-8)

This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future’s
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.

This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.

And this was the moment
When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.

U. A. Fanthorpe, “BC:AD”

I am convinced that most of us stumble into the reign of God, not because of our sterling virtue or our skill in prayer, but in spite of ourselves,

Sandro Botticelli, "The Mystical Nativity" (detail showing an angel pointing out the Christ child to the shepherds), National Gallery, London

thanks to a loving guidance of which we may be totally unaware. And sometimes where we find ourselves – what turns out to be filled with grace and glory – is not at all what we would have expected.

You might enjoy listening to Paul Simon’s song “Graceland,” which is ostensibly about a trip to Elvis Presley’s house in Memphis.  As the song goes on, however, one realizes that it is really about something far bigger and infinitely deeper. Here is one verse:

There is a girl in New York City,
Who calls herself the human trampoline,
And sometimes when I’m falling flying
Or tumbling in turmoil I say
Whoa, so this is what she means,
She means we’re bouncing into Graceland…

The shepherds and the Magi “walked haphazard” or bounced into Graceland. And so do we bounce — usually awkwardly — into the glory of God where we are expected, longed for, and welcomed.
In the words of Paul Simon:

Maybe I’ve a reason to believe
We all will be received
In Graceland

First, Jesus never says, I’ll wait until your faith is perfect before loving you.

Consider the distraught father in Mark 9:17-29, who brings his son to be healed. The boy has been having convulsions, even falling into the fire. The disciples of Jesus have not been able to heal him, and when Jesus himself arrives, the father pleads,

“If you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.”

“If you are able!” Jesus says. “All things can be done for the one who believes.”

Then we hear the father cry out, “I believe; help my unbelief!”

And Jesus heals the boy.

The father didn’t pretend that his faith was any greater than it was; and Jesus didn’t require perfect faith of him.

According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church (153), “Faith is a gift of God, a supernatural virtue infused by him.” In other words, faith is not something that we can give ourselves. However, it is our responsibility to nurture it. Even when we are plagued with doubt, we can still walk in faith and nourish faith, for faith and doubt are not mutually exclusive.

Second, Jesus never ever says, I will wait until you no longer need forgiveness before forgiving you.

In truth, what makes us qualified for forgiveness is being sinners. We are forgiven precisely because we are unworthy, not because we have been able to make ourselves perfect.

“Is your being thirsty a hindrance to your getting water?” asks Horatius Bonar (1808-1889)? Of course not. Indeed, Bonar titles his essay, “How Shall I Go to God?” – and answers the question in the first paragraph. “It is with our sins that we go to God, for we have nothing else to go with that we can call our own. This is one of the lessons that we are so slow to learn…

After all, “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners,” says Jesus (Matthew 9:13 ).

Mercy surrounds us at every moment of our lives. Amazing grace, without any doubt!

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
his mercies never come to an end;
they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,
“therefore I will hope in him.”

(Lamentations 3:22-24)

 

There was always something just slightly mysterious about his presence – a mystery which I felt obliged to respect. One day, after a week or two of absence, he was back. I told him I had missed seeing him there.

“I got picked up,” he explained.

For what? I wondered – but did not feel free to inquire.

Another day I did ask him where he was from.

“Mississippi,” he replied.

“I thought you must be from the South.”

“Yes,” he said, “I’ll always have the accent.”

I didn’t tell him — though I realize now that I should have — that it was not his accent that made me suppose he was from the South, but his courtesy. For he was indeed supremely courteous. Even with his begging cup, there was a gentility about him, and a natural hospitality.

Then suddenly he was no longer there. I had no idea what happened to him. Had he found a better spot to beg? Did he have a job? Had he come into an inheritance?

But I did see him one more time before I moved away from Chicago. He was with a group of men walking along Fullerton Parkway, near the Cenacle. When he saw me, he stopped.

“Sister!”

You would have thought we were long-lost friends. (I can’t imagine what his companions thought of this unlikely association.) He was not asking for money, simply greeting me with pleasure. And this was typical of him, for his welcome and his obvious delight in seeing you were unrelated to what you could do for him. In this he was not only a model of disinterested kindness, but he was also a sign of the welcome of God and of God’s delight in us, which is not dependent on our worthiness.

Welcome one another, therefore,
just as Christ has welcomed you,
for the glory of God.
(Romans 15:7)

There was no small number of runners, and they were a whole microcosm of humanity — every age and shade, including a baby in a stroller being pushed by his father. Some were obviously athletes. Others, out of shape, had given up running and were trudging along. Some were really dragging.

No spectators were in evidence on our street, but on the corner stood an official-looking woman who turned out to be the source of the clapping and cheering.

“Whoa! All right!” she called to one.

And to others, “Look at you go! Not even breaking a sweat! Good job!”

Everyone was cheered, no matter whether they were Olympics material or barely able to make it to the next block.

The cheering woman reminded me of God. In her voice it seemed as if I could hear God rooting for each of us as we travel our life’s path: “Yeah! You’re going to make it! Good job!” or “Whoops, try again! All right!”

Whether we are sailing smoothly along or whether we are stumbling and bumbling in our journey with and toward God, I could picture God clapping and cheering, encouraging us when we become discouraged, lifting us up when we fall.

In this race, being in the lead is no cause for boasting, and there is no cause for despair if we are slow or stumbling. What matters is that we are on the road with God our companion and headed toward God our destination.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God.

(Hebrews 12:1-2)

Now I am not what you would call athletic. This never bothered me, except on those days in elementary school when the class had to divide into teams for kick-soccer. The two captains took turns picking children for their teams. Small and poorly coordinated, I was always one of the last chosen, along with a little girl who had birth defects which left her rather handicapped. She and I would wait and watch as the others heard their names called and moved to one side or the other. Finally each of the unlucky teams was forced to receive one of us, hoping we wouldn’t cost them the game.

On the other hand, in my own neighborhood, the ball games in the street were warmly inclusive. Everyone was welcome, including the athletically challenged like myself. In the first place, it didn’t matter who won or who lost. And in the second place, I had my own special gift. When the ball rolled into the storm sewer, my father would pry open the manhole cover with his crowbar; and then my small size made it easy for me to be lowered into the sandy depths to retrieve it. This was my favorite moment of the game.

God always welcomes us, and the welcome is never grudging. Whether or not we are gifted in prayer, knowledgeable in theology, or morally strong, God loves us totally. In fact, there is nothing we can do that is so terrible that God would turn us away. We will never find ourselves standing around, waiting despondently for our name to be called — because God has already called us by name, and will continue to call us closer and deeper. Each of us is a favored member of the family, with our own special place in the divine plan.We have been welcomed into life, we are welcome in the world, and we will always be welcomed into the loving arms of our God.

Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away. (John 6:37)

When I was a small child, she would greet me in one of two ways. Sometimes she would hold out her arms and exclaim, “Come to the one you love best!” Other times she would hold out her arms and say, “Come to the one you don’t love!”

I never figured out what prompted one or the other of these invitations, but the welcome was the same either way. She always opened her arms to me whether I loved her best or not at all.

And so it is with God and me. Now that I am an adult, God knows that my love is not constant. However, no matter the intensity or purity of my love, the call is, “Come!” And whether I am coming to the One I love best, or to the One whose love I am relegating to third or fourth or even last place in my heart, the divine arms are always open.

“Come to me, all you that are weary
and are carrying heavy burdens,
and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me;
for I am gentle and humble in heart,
and you will find rest for your souls.
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
(Matthew 11:28-30)

She expresses this first by sitting in front of you and gazing at you politely. If you do not respond appropriately, she raises a paw and offers it to you. Then if you are the kind of hard-hearted creature who can ignore the paw, she will eventually sit back on her rear and offer you both paws. Few people can resist this last-ditch effort at friendship.

We too need to be loved and to have our existence validated. However, the fundamental authentication of our lives is something amazing: the Incarnation of God in Christ. The God who created all things loved us enough and considered us valuable enough to become one of us. What is more, God doesn’t wait for us to reach out a paw, but on the contrary, always reaches out to us first, even before we have become aware of our need and desire for God.

Like Raven, we may have been abused by life, bruised by the voices of society that tell us we are worthless (because our body is not the right size or shape or color, because our cell-phone does nothing except make phone calls, because we are not perfect, …). Through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, we find our true place in the world and in the family of God as we are drawn into the very life of Christ.

In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us
and sent his Son to be the expiation for our sins.
Beloved, since God loved us so much,
we also ought to love one another.
(1 John 4:10-11)