May 18, 2022

“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:8)

This from the brilliant Czeslaw Milosz: “When I was, as they say, in harmony with God and the world, I felt I was false, as if pretending to be somebody else. I recovered my identity when I found myself again in the skin of a sinner and nonbeliever. This repeated itself in my life several times. For, undoubtedly, I liked the image of myself as a decent man, but, immediately after I put that mask on, my conscience whispered that I was deceiving others and myself.”

Being in harmony with God (and the world) is dropping the dogged quest for “spirituality” and inhabiting the creaturely skin you were given by God at your birth. And it is to recognize that God has already dealt once and for all with your fruitless, feckless and fallacious quest for perfection by forgiving you lock, stock and barrel.

As Jesus told the paralytic – “Look here, fellow, your sins are forgiven. Just pick up your mat and be on your way. Go peddle your papers elsewhere.”

“All glory be to thee, Almighty God, our heavenly Father, for that thou, of thy tender mercy, didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the cross for our redemption; who made there, by his one oblation of himself once offered, a full,
perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world.” (Holy Communion – BCP)