Oct
15
Our Way to Perfection
October 15, 2007 |
Can we achieve perfection? Should we even try? Or is the effort itself enough?
Today, the Church celebrates the life of St. Teresa of Avila, who lived in the 16th Century. She wrote prodigiously on church doctrine, reformed the Carmelite Order, and was named the first female Doctor of the Church (i.e. 33 learned men and women known for their genius and exceptional spiritual writings).
One of her best known treatises is The Way to Perfection, a guide she wrote for her nuns so they could walk down the path that leads to spiritual perfection through prayer, love and living life in accordance with Christ. I don’t think she ever expected herself or anyone else to reach that perfection, but she provided some incredible guidance on how to lead our lives better.
But how many of us strive for perfection? In our jobs, families, golf game? How many of us demand perfection? From our wives, children, parents, in-laws, coworkers, priests, friends, relatives, public officials, fellow travelers, sports teams and so on?
Men can be pretty demanding of themselves and others. I know that I want things done right - whether it’s done by me or someone else. But I sometimes wonder whether I allow my search for perfection to get in my way of enjoying life and those around me. I too often fail to understand that we are all human - especially me - and that we all need to forgive each other’s failings more than we do. We don’t need to excuse failings or believe they are ok, we just need to have a little more forgiveness and cut the people in our lives some slack.
I ran a 5K yesterday. My training has gone horribly the last few weeks. I haven’t even come close to getting in the mileage needed to approach my recent times. In any case, I ran the race and did well enough, especially considering I am still a relative novice at running. But, the first thing I thought of after I finished was that I had to slow considerably at Mile 2, that the hill leading up to Mile 3 almost killed me, and that my usual kick at the end just wasn’t there. And then I realized that I did better than I should have considering my rather imperfect effort in training. I didn’t even approach running the perfect race but who was I to set expectation that I would do so. I ran a good race and, hopefully, I’m back on track for my training for the half-marathon I’m doing in January.
I guess we just need to remember that there have only been two perfect people ever born - Christ and his blessed mother. The rest of us, no matter how saintly, have had our faults. No matter how perfect someone seems or how perfect we try to make ourselves seem, we are not perfect and can never acheive perfection in this life.
But we can do the things that show we love Christ; we can lead good, prayerful, humble lives; we can try our best to help others; we can be more forgiving; we can make the right choices - and in the end, we will find ourselves on the Way to Perfection, i.e. our eternal heavenly reward.
