“If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.

It is better for you to enter into life maimed

than with two hands to go into Gehenna,

into the unquenchable fire.

And if your foot causes you to sin, cut if off.

It is better for you to enter into life crippled

than with two feet to be thrown into Gehenna.

And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.

Better for you to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye

than with two eyes to be thrown into Gehenna,

where ‘their worm does not die, and the fire is not quenched.’”

As a young man, I experienced the profound love of God for me and my faith burned intensely with the fire of that love. I desired holiness and yearned for a life free from sin. I sprinted toward perfection and the ideal of pure love lived consistently and coherently. My flesh, however, was weak and I failed to reach the goal. Not that there was no improvement, but try as I did for holiness, I would nonetheless commit the same sins time and time again. I had wanted an instant transformation of my life and was disappointed and shamed by my lack of freedom to be good. Paraphrasing St. Paul, I didn’t do all the things I wanted to do and did many things I didn’t want to do. This led me to the edge of despair, questioning my very belief in God and Jesus’s call to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. I questioned my capacity to live a good life and to love God and love my neighbor as I loved myself. Was it just a hopeless endeavor?

I encountered, again, God’s profound love in the midst of my weakness. Admitting my imperfection, God forgave me. The Sacrament of Reconciliation assured me of God’s infinite mercy. A new danger arose in my heart, however, and I verged on presumption, committing sin with the expectation of God’s forgiveness. Even worse, I began to be comfortable with my sins and justify my actions as unavoidable. My desire for holiness waned and my ambition for being better diminished. I gave myself a lot of slack and deadened my sensitivity to the painful consequences of my sin. I wasn’t “that bad” after all. Maybe my sin wasn’t really all that sinful. If God wanted more from me, why did he make me this way in the first place? I discounted my need to be better. How could I be accountable for sin that is unavoidable? 

God’s love, again, drew me back to his mercy, especially in the Eucharist. God hates sin because he loves us. He wants to be fully united, in communion, with each of us. Our sin, my sin, prevents us from being able to offer our full love in return for God’s gift of himself to us. In some sense, this is a marathon, not a sprint. The finish line is still the finish line, but getting there takes a lot more time. Perfect love is what we were made for. It is what we truly desire and it is our home, where we belong. God loves us without condition, but our sin puts conditions on how fully we can love in return. To be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect is too love without condition, without limit. My hand, foot, or eye don’t cause me to sin. If they did, I should cut them off or pluck them out. No, it is my heart that can’t love freely, my selfishness that limits my love. I don’t need a heart transplant, to cut my heart out, per se, I need a heart transformation. This is the journey of a lifetime to perfect freedom and pure love. We can’t do that on our own, we need God’s grace each step of the race.