Process become Peace

Our ancient Church calls recovery from sin ‘conversion’. Conversion moves faculties that are incomplete or unordered, to healthy and sound.

‘Many falls’ produce much misery. If you’ve struggled long enough, the question may come: “Am I going to overcome this weakness?”

The devil works both ends of the picture; at the front, goading us into stupidity and then from the other, persecuting us for stupidity.

Reactions to failures to avoid sin can go from impatience to frustration to despair. All of them emanate from a sense of personal culpability: “I have to get this right.”

“But I can’t actually do it… I can’t figure it out.”

“If you are going to do something great, you are going to fail.” - Fr. Mark Goring

The conquering is not the creatures. Grace - Divine Assistance - is the agent of overcoming and transformation.

God has to “take care of it”. Recall the Surrender Novena: “Jesus, I surrender myself to You, take care of everything.” And His explanation back to the powerless one: “My Will be done, not yours”. It’s God’s work to free us, though we cooperate with Grace.

Through St Leonard, we learn that God knows that we will need His help to make His grace work in us.

The peace in the process appears when there is no longer the frantic white-knuckles toward freedom, but resting in calm prayer, greeting triggers and arousal simply with the same “Jesus, You take care of it.”

Prayer there must be. St Alphonsus Liguori: “Who does not pray, will not be saved.” Saved from what? Saved from: the misery of sin, the intangible invisible rebellion of original sin, the flesh having the upper hand over spirit. Don’t stop praying!

So when we fall, we no longer freak out, or harangue ourselves or God. But being entirely familiar with the slope of failure, we recognize it and leave the devil’s negativity commentaries out of the process, remaining inwardly silent and giving our whole being, weakness and all, back to Jesus.

Conversion is living no longer in the grip of negative reactions to errors, mistakes, no matter voluntary or involuntary. But reacting calmly and “letting Jesus”, Who will get us to confession quickly, restore us to grace and add more strength and desire to commend weakness to Him. Immediate acts of spiritual contrition, a confession of the sin, awaiting the confessional, is a sign of grace, a desire to oppose flesh.

God will probably not sterilize the problem out of us. He gives us increased trust in His grace, to operate the escape from sin, or the recovery after a fall. If there remains peace even when the vice appears yet again, there is the awesome hope that the sinner is successfully giving it to God.

Conversion gets away from monitoring the clock and calendar and human will, and enters the flow of the eternal now of freedom in the Divine Will.

The compulsive and addict are not doing anything different than sinners on earth - searching for sanctity, slowly reducing to nothing the operation of human will, pre- and post-sin, and letting the Divine Will possess all. We do not do the recovering. Our all-Holy all-powerful God does!

There remains only the stout-hearted courage (faith) to wait on the Lord.

Who says, I AM going to set you free.

Jesus, through the intercession of St Leonard, give us the help we need to cooperate with grace. Allow us to enter battle fearlessly, going out to the tempting demon with courage and confidence. Give us all what we need, to pray exactly where and when we ought. St Joseph, Terror of Demons, protect us. Jesus, I trust in You.