Hungry

A special place is reserved in my heart for people whose own hearts are hardened and ugly and black with sin. The reason is quite simple: Takes one to know one.

I thank God for the profound blessings He has given me in my life. I thank Him especially for the opportunities I have had to love and show compassion for others like me: the bums and derelicts, the haughty, the selfish, the lustful, the greedy and indifferent, the addicted and desperate, the lazy and morose, the liars and thieves. I am not set apart from these. I long for their fellowship with me in our saving, loving, forgiving Lord. I want them to know about the victory that can be ours, not of ourselves, but in Him.

I can’t help it and I can’t explain it, but I feel drawn to those who have cut themselves off from God’s grace. Somehow there’s an urgency inside me for them to know that I understand, I’ve been there; I’m there now; I know the struggle; there’s hope.

I don’t boast of sin. St. Paul says, “What, then, are we to say? ‘Let us continue in sin that grace may abound?’ Certainly not! How can we who died to sin go on living in it?” My boast is that God loves us sinners.

The sinners I find most difficult to love are the proud, the arrogant, the puffed up. The reason, again, is apparent. I find pride to be my most debilitating defect. Pride puts me at a distance from those most in need of my authentic concern. Pride blinds me to the beam in my own eye.

Once more, St. Paul: “…Every one of you who judges another is inexcusable. By your judgement you convict yourself, since you do the very same things. (People say) ‘We know that God’s judgement on men who do such things is just.’ Do you suppose, then, that you will escape His judgement, you who condemn these things in others yet do them yourself? Or do you presume kindness and forbearance? Do you not know that God’s kindness is an invitation to you to repent?”

I bring all this up today because I believe it’s important for me not to become smug or self-satisfied, to fail to recognize myself in the coal-blackest sinner. There, but for the grace of God, go I; and in my case – there I go.

As I bask in God’s favor in the Church and in the availability of the Sacraments, somehow hunger has become a growing part of that experience. A hunger for souls – not for the good guys, but for the bad guys.

God loves the poor and our hearts go out to those in need. But it strikes me that sometimes those in most need are the fat cats, the complacent, the stuffed. We sinners need more than a meal.

Whenever the subject of sin comes up these days, somebody always seems to fret about having a good self-concept. For my part, I have no trouble knowing that I am a person in love with God, longing to do His will, striving to follow Him, to obey Him, to love those He loves. I also know I fail in that. I’m aware that parts of me are revolting and embarrassing and dark. I deliberately choose evil. Al Capone had “My Jesus Mercy” chiseled on his tombstone. I wonder if people think, “Good thing Al prayed that prayer,” or if many don’t quietly pray it for themselves. I know I do.

Today, I don’t kneel and thank God that I’m not like the rest of men. On the contrary, it is my kinship with my brothers and sisters which stirs my soul to appreciation. This is why I am grateful: “It is precisely in this that God proves His love for us: that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Now that we have been justified by His blood, it is all the more certain that we shall be saved by Him from God’s wrath.” - T.R.

written by Thomas A. Russell
first published in the Lafayette Sunday Visitor on November 22nd, 1987