Sin, confession, justice, and mercy

Thinking a bit more about confession in light of the scene from the television show Copper I referenced in my last post it occurred to me, once again, how important evangelism is to catechesis and how important catechesis is to living a Christian life. The two characters, Kevin "Corky" Corcoran and Francis Maguire, both of whom, as Irish immigrants and NYC police detectives in the city's roughest section, have done and seen evil acts, muse, a bit like Protestants, about how easy it is to turn to the sacrament of mercy, confess your sins, say an Act of Contrition, receive absolution and then fulfill your penance. If I understand the scene correctly, they are puzzled by what they see as a lack of justice in that schema. Here's how Corky stated it: "Confession, penance, grand reconciliation between man and God. See Father Burke, say a few Hail Marys, and you're free." There is no doubt from the scene that both men have deep regrets, they are contrite, sorry for what they've done and the pain it has caused others and themselves. Among the effects of their actions is the ruination of their lifelong friendship.

Indeed, to make a good confession, one must be sorry for his sins and be committed to not doing what is wrong again. Of course, especially in areas of weakness, we need God's grace to keep that commitment. Receiving the grace necessary to overcome weakness is one reason to make recourse to the Sacrament of Penance and then the Eucharist. What is removed in and through this sacrament is the eternal punishment due to sin, namely hell. What is not removed is the temporal punishment due to sin. It occurred to me that this is the part they were missing in their dialogue. It is not as though all the effects of sin are erased once they are confessed, absolved, and satisfaction (which can never by given or received as if one is redeeming himself) is made.

In his Apostolic Constitution Indulgentiarum doctrina, promulgated on New Year's day 1967, that is, after the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, Bl Pope Paul VI wrote of temporal punishment:

These punishments are imposed by the just and merciful judgment of God for the purification of souls, the defense of the sanctity of the moral order and the restoration of the glory of God to its full majesty. Every sin in fact causes a perturbation in the universal order established by God in His ineffable wisdom and infinite charity, and the destruction of immense values with respect to the sinner himself and to the human community

It seems to me that this is a fitting reflection for the month of November.

How interesting it would be for a television series to have a well-catechized character who, in a situation like this, discussed temporal punishment and maybe even made reference to seeking indulgences. "An indulgence is the remission before God of the temporal punishment due sins already forgiven as far as their guilt is concerned, which the follower of Christ with the proper dispositions and under certain determined conditions acquires through the intervention of the Church which, as minister of the Redemption, authoritatively dispenses and applies the treasury of the satisfaction won by Christ and the saints" (General Norm 1 from Bl Pope Paul VI's Apostolic Constitution Indulgentarium doctrina). In this context, such an understanding would provide a sound explanation as to why Maguire has been sitting in the Church night after night.

Confession: longing for freedom

I have been "binge watching" the BBC America original series Copper. It is a compelling drama about the Irish set in the Five Points section of New York City in the 1860s. I heard about this series in, of all places, Gilbert magazine. One scene, that is a climax of the first season, but not yet a catharsis, takes place in the parish Church between two NYPD detectives, Kevin Corcoran and Francis Maguire. Two great friends with some dark secrets that are about to gush forth in a confession (Season 1, Episode 9 "A Day to Give Thanks").

After returning Maguire's police badge that the parish priest found on the floor underneath one of the pews and that he, in turn, gave to Corcoran under duress. "Corky" was looking for Francis in order to settle scores. Here's the relevant bit of dialogue:

Corcoran: Churches are the only places in Five Points that are unlocked day and night. Even the taverns close eventually. I guess that means a man can go without a drink for a few hours, but not without the chance to repent. I haven't been to a proper Mass since before the [Civil] war. But, if you're Irish and Catholic, the teachings are in your head, inside you, forever, right? Confession, penance, grand reconciliation between man and God. See Father Burke, say a few Hail Marys, and you're free.

Maguire: It's what they taught us.

Corcoran: Indeed it is. (Repeating himself) Indeed it is.

At least for me, the beauty (yes, beauty- true beauty is an awesome/awe-full experience, which is why, to borrow from Don Giussani, it leaves us wounded) of this scene is how the masks fall off and both men, in their confrontation with each other, are forced confront themselves. Maguire, who, it turns out, is guilty of several murders, all related to the matters they discuss, confronts himself more honestly than does Corcoran, the show's protagonist.

I am always struck by these words from the Act of Contrition, when, after I make my confession, I say to God, "In choosing to do wrong and failing to do good I have sinned against you, whom I should love above all things." I am struck because I realize in that moment how distorted my heart is. I hope one day to make a truly a good confession because I long to be free. Of course, it is in and through the Sacrament of Penance that the same sanctifying grace that God, in His infinite goodness, infused into our souls in Baptism, is given us anew: amazing grace, indeed.

As St Thomas Aquinas noted- grace builds on nature. More accurately, grace builds on fallen, deformed nature. It is through grace that God sets about reforming nature. The Sacrament of Penance is where grace confronts deformed nature, but only in order to reform it. Before being confronted by God, I must confront myself with the Truth.

It is by judging myself now and asking for God's mercy that I hope to survive God's final judgment. There one who accuses me "before our God day and night" (Rev. 12:10). I do not believe that this accuser accuses me of false charges. He only accuses me of things I have done. As difficult as it is to believe at times, I have an Advocate before God's throne and another one, the Parakeltos, who walks beside me. I also have my brothers and sisters who comprise the communion of saints, along with the angels, to intercede for me.

I cannot live more than a few hours without the chance to repent. We have a one word name for that: hope.

Faith, experience, ideology

Given that today Roman Catholics throughout the world observe the Feast of the Dedication of St John Lateran Basilica in Rome, which is the Mother Church of Christendom, I went in search of something I posted on a different blog a number of years ago only to find that I copied it over here to Καθολικός διάκονος shortly after I posted it there (see "Faith and memory on the universal Feast of the Dedication of St. John Lateran"). Prior to Morning Prayer today I prayed the Office of Readings, something I don't do very often. The second reading for the office for today's feast is from a sermon by St Caesarius of Arles.

My fellow Christians, do we wish to celebrate joyfully the birth of this temple [the Temple of the Holy Spirit that is our bodies after Baptism]? Then let us not destroy the living temples of God in ourselves by works of evil. I shall speak clearly, so that all can understand. Whenever we come to church, we must prepare our hearts to be as beautiful as we expect this church to be. Do you wish to find this basilica immaculately clean? Then do not soil your soul with the filth of sins

That, indeed, is what we might call a good, old-fashioned sermon that gets to the heart of the matter by taking seriously the mystery, that is, the Paschal Mystery, we are called to live. In other words, St Caesarius made a judgment according to the criteria of divine revelation, which is what makes what he said then relevant now.

For those who might be unaware, St John Lateran is the Roman Pontiff's cathedral church as Bishop of Rome. It is the oldest of the four major papal basilicas in Rome (the other three being St Peter's, St Paul Outside the Walls, and St Mary Major).

St John Lateran Basilica

The other post I came across that seemed more than fitting for today's feast, as well as for my forty-ninth birthday, which is coming up on Tuesday, the feast of that glorious saint and holy bishop St Martin of Tours, I entitled "each of us knows in his own experience when he judges it." I wrote this reflection more than five years ago (18 August 2009) in light of the Spiritual Exercises for the year of Communion & Liberation: From Faith, the Method. This explains why some of the references are a bit dated. So, with just a little editing, here it is:

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There is a difficult passage near the end of the final Assembly at this year's Exercises [2009 Exercises], the one about following the experience of a person and not of the person per se. It is not difficult to comprehend. Rather, it is difficult because it is all too clear and runs counter to my inclinations. I have had the experience of a person saying, doing, being a certain way that moved me, that changed me and who has turned around and become very off-putting to me. This confuses me because it causes me to call the authenticity of my experience into question. I remember when Ted Haggard's sins were revealed, his meth use and consorting with a male prostitute. It made many question whether their being moved through him toward Christ was real. So, the question remains: Is it the person, or the Spirit? This is not a question that someone can answer for anyone else. This is what Carrón had to say about the charism given to Giussani and our experience of it:

Father Giussani communicated an experience that he had to us, and this is true even if tomorrow I betray it. It is true and will always be true, because what makes for a correspondence or not is not what I say or what Father Giussani says, but is what each of us knows in his own experience when he judges it. This is why one follows the experience of another, which he communicates to you as best he can, gropingly. We do not follow the person because of [his personality] [the translation as it appeared in the English booklet of the Italian word "personalismo", was "a personalism"], because the boss said so. This is not human; it is not human! But if he is communicating an experience to you that he is having and if you are interested in learning, following that person means following the experience that he is having, in such a way that you can make it your own. And it will remain yours even if he would betray it. I do not want us to repeat Father Giussani’s sayings (or mine), but I want that this be our experience, that it become ours, because when we want something we want it to become ours, as we wanted what the mathematics teacher taught us to become ours. Do you not want this? Father Giussani says this when he explains obedience: obedience is following until, at a certain point, one is following himself, struck by the experience that another has had, because he is so entirely one with himself that, in the end, he follows himself, struck by another’s experience. If we do not do this, we keep on repeating the sayings of Father Giussani, but we will not have the experience that he has (italicizing emphasis mine- From Faith, the Method, pg. 64)

Papal cathedra in St John Lateran

It was interesting to watch the dynamic at the Green Day concert I went to the other night [16 August 2009], it made me think about what Alice Bag wrote about her discussions with Darby Crash regarding music and fascism. Green Day is certainly not fascist and I saw Billy Joe Armstrong as having an awareness of the potential and not pushing it too hard- the potential is there, just as it is in CL, or in the church writ large, it seems to be an all too human tendency to drift toward ideology, which I employ to mean wanting a pre-conceived system of iron clad certainties all packaged up and ready for purchase, like everything else in our consumer society. This is an emotivist reduction: I have my ideology and you have yours and our choosing them is just a matter of preference and/or pre-disposition having little or nothing to do with my experience or yours and certainly nothing at all to do with correspondence. I guess my point here is that to follow the charism given to Giussani is not to follow Giussani, but the experience communicated to me through him, through Carrón, through Albacete, through Fred, Sharon, Suzanne, Alex, Greg et al., making it my own through my experience, which is my unique path to destiny.

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In light of all this, it bears noting that it was 25 years ago today, 9 November 1989, that the Berlin Wall was breached and torn apart. In his still relevant book, A Turning Point for Europe?, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, writing in the wake of that momentous event, noted, "The Church's first task in this area is to keep alive in fidelity to her holy tradition, the basic criterion of justice and to detach it from the arbitrariness of power" (60). This fidelity to holy tradition is the faithfulness to the experience that not only spawned, but continues to constitute, that is, make, what we revere as "holy tradition," which, in turn, makes us.

I know He holds my life, my future, in His hand"

I'm afraid that my fervent blogging in October left me a bit exhausted. Well, it's November now, the month we pray in an especially fervent manner for the souls in Purgatory. We cannot ever lose sight of the reason we do this. This reason is summed up well by St Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians: "If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all" (15:19).

The Resurrection of Christ, the right wing of Matthias Grünewald's Isenheim Altarpiece

Keeping it simple and spare, our traditio for this first Friday in November is Matt Maher's new song "Because He Lives." It is the answer to the question, "Why do you we pray for the souls in Purgatory?"

Because He lives
I can face tomorrow
Because he lives
every fear is gone
I know he holds my life, my future in His hand

The Sixth Circuit Court and sanity

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, located in Cincinnati, ruled today to uphold the constitutional amendments and statutes passed in four states (Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee) that legally uphold marriage. It seems now the Supreme Court will be forced to do what it has assiduously avoided doing for the past several years, make a ruling on this issue.

The way I see it, there are two ways to approach this question. The first is from what, for the sake of brevity, I will call the moral viewpoint. The second is from the constitutional/legal viewpoint. Ideally the two overlap, especially from a Christian point-of-view, or any point-of-view that arises from a natural rights perspective. What has become so troubling and divisive is that the moral and the constitutional/legal have, over time, drifted further and further apart as our nation has become more and more secularized. It seems to me that the rate of divergence has increased exponentially during President Obama's presidency.

According to the Sixth Circuit Court ruling, the major concern of the two judge majority (it is a three judge panel) in the ruling was on constitutional/legal grounds: "the question whether to move the nation toward same-sex marriage in every state is for the people or the states, and not for judges applying the national Constitution." But this is only mentioned after establishing the pedigree of marriage, which, it is noted, "has long been a social institution defined by relationships between men and women. So long defined, the tradition is measured in millennia, not centuries or decades. So widely shared, the tradition until recently had been adopted by all governments and major religions of the world."

The majority opinion went on to note:

Of all the ways to resolve this question, one option is not available: a poll of the three judges on this panel, or for that matter all federal judges, about whether gay marriage is a good idea. Our judicial commissions did not come with such a sweeping grant of authority, one that would allow just three of us—just two of us in truth—to make such a vital policy call for the thirty-two million citizens who live within the four States of the Sixth Circuit: Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee. What we have authority to decide instead is a legal question: Does the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibit a State from defining marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman?

This reminds me of a question, posed by Justice Scalia to Ted Olson during oral arguments in Windsor v. United States, which challenged the constitutionality of the congressionally-enacted Defense of Marriage Act (one of those bills that President Obama would not defend), When did it become unconstitutional for states to hold that marriage is only between one man and one woman? Implied in Justice Scalia's question is the historical fact that the prohibition of same-sex marriages, polygamous marriages, marriages within defined degrees of consanguinity, etc., have not been understood as unconstitutional for most of the history of the republic.

While perhaps not implied in Scalia's question, but something that is certainly relevant, is that among the most compelling reasons for such an understanding of marriage one will not find rank prejudice. This is not to say such prejudice did not and does not now exist and sometimes manifests itself. If this were the case, then we'd be wise to simply broaden what marriage means. In other words, those of us who hold to traditional marriage are not simply big, biased meanies, as many erroneously and uncharitably suppose. One way of attempting to demonstrate this erroneous supposition is by comparing so-called same-sex marriage with interracial marriage. In reality, this is a classic comparing of apples to oranges. Same-sex marriage can in no way be equated to interracial marriage (see "On marriage: refuting a stupid argument"). The best reasons show us that such a broadening is simply not possible and is certainly not without serious consequences for everyone.

It was Chesterton who wrote, "Tradition means giving a vote to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead called tradition."

In any case, I was encouraged to read the Sixth Circuit majority opinion because it shows that some judges understand that our country was not constituted to be ruled by black-robed oligarchs. In these matters, especially in light of the minority opinion, which invoked "an independent judiciary" to justify legislating from the bench, I am reminded, yet again, of the First Things, "The End of Democracy? The Judicial Usurpation of Politics," published back in 1996. Fr Neuhaus, who started and oversaw this journal, was lambasted (literally) left and right for publishing it. I imagine many who took issue with it then see things more clearly now.

I believe that there is a discernible difference between adjudicating and legislating. I also believe that the idea that matters of huge importance to our nation are to be exclusively decided by judges would be utterly repugnant to our nation's founders. Hence, I find it heartening that Judge Sutton, author of the Sixth Circuit's majority opinion, and hopefully other federal judges, understand this point.

All Souls: a reflection on death

Death can be scary. If nothing else, death is a mystery. Even in the blinding light of revelation life after death has its awesome (awe-filled/awe-full) aspects. Hence, it is understandable that in the face of death we are tempted to sidestep the reality that confronts us. It seems to me that the Dies Irae from the Requiem Mass helped Christians for centuries face the reality of death in a hopeful and yet unsentimental way. In light of that, I am always puzzled when, during funerals the deceased is raised to the altar, that is, canonized. I am even more puzzled when the celebrant then, via the liturgy, which is theologia prima, or "first theology" (thus showing is theology is concrete and not a mere abstraction), implores prayers for the one who has passed. If s/he is heaven, there is no further need to pray for them, right? At least to my mind, this discloses how frequently incoherent our understanding of last things has become. I am going to go out on a limb and insist that nothing impacts how we live more dramatically than our understanding of Last Things: Death, Judgment, Heaven, and hell.

Let's be clear. For the human person, looking at death from the perspective of Christian revelation, death is the most unnatural separation imaginable. God never intended death to happen. Hence, death is not, as many aver, "The most natural thing in the world." Death is the least natural thing in the world, which is why it fills us with awe, if not downright fear. For Christians, death is a temporary dislocation/dissociation. This is confirmed by St Paul in the fifteenth chapter of his First Letter to the Corinthians: "The last enemy to be destroyed is death, for 'he subjected everything under his feet'" (verses 26-27a). This gives me the chance to draw attention to something written recently by my friend, the brilliant young scholar Artur Rosman: "FACT: Christians DON’T Believe in the Immortality of the Soul."

All Souls Day, by William Bouguereau, 1859

In an article he wrote back in 2000, "Good Grief and Bad", Msgr Lorenzo Alabacete, who passed into eternity just last week, gave beautiful expression to the inevitable questions that arise in the face of suffering and death, questions that do not lend themselves, at least not ultimately, to facile answers:

I suspect that today we are not supposed to expect that much of life. We are supposed to settle for less. What, then, do we expect of grief counselors? To help us suppress these embarrassing expectations of the heart? Is consolation after all a lowering of expectations? If anything, I am consoled by the Book of Job, which derides those who tried to explain Job's suffering to him. God does not seek to console him; He just shows up, and this is enough. It was not explanations Job wanted, but solidarity, compassion, love

By sending mixed signals, even though done with the very best of intention of giving comfort to those in grief, succeeding perhaps only temporarily, one chooses to simply set aside the deep and inevitable questions, thus causing cognitive and spiritual dissonance by approaching mysteries in a superficial manner. Do we no longer trust, or believe, what Scripture and Tradition tell us about Last Things? The specter of death coupled with any grasp of the awesomeness of God is something we all prefer to utterly avoid, which is why I found this observation of Von Balthasar's, made in his short book Who Is a Christian, so comforting: "But the Word of God holds us ineluctably and is so clear in what it states that it can at any time withstand the sorry amalgams into which people mix it."

In this context it's a bit ironic that what Balthasar is probably most famous for are some the "sorry amalgams into which" he (at least seemed at times) to mix Last Things. In the view of many, he did this in his provocative book Dare We Hope That All Men Be Saved?: With a Short Discourse on Hell,. While I think what he wrote is understandable and within the bounds of orthodoxy, many argue that he pulled back at the last minute from embracing the heresy of universalism (i.e., the belief that, in the end, everyone will be saved and/or that hell is temporary, not eternal- the latter postulation has its Christian source in the theological speculations of that great theologian of the early Church, Origen, and is known by its Greek name apokatastasis).

In the view of some, especially theologian Alyssa Pitstick, Balthasar, in his theology of Holy Saturday, also mixed a sorry amalgam. In her doctoral dissertation, which was published as a book entitled Light in Darkness: Hans Urs von Balthasar and the Catholic Doctrine of Christ's Descent into Hell, Pitstick called into question Balthasar's assertion that Christ, between His death and resurrection, actually suffered the pains of hell (in the Apostles Creed we profess that Christ "descended into hell"), instead of descending into what is known to Tradition as the "limbo of fathers," where the souls of the righteous went to await Christ's resurrection. In his doctoral dissertation, published recently as Will Many Be Saved?: What Vatican II Actually Teaches and Its Implications for the New Evangelization, Dr Ralph Martin sought to clarify these issues in light of the teaching of the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council.

It seems to me that as Christians we can do nothing other than commend those who die to God. This sounds easy, but it is not. In commending those who have died to God we are forced to acknowledge that judging them, one way or the other, is not up to us. Commendation of the dead to God is a huge act of trust, which is what makes it an act of hope. So, when we auto-canonize or auto-condemn (something I am pretty sure never happens at a funeral these days, which is good), we seek, wittingly or unwittingly, to steal God's prerogative. This is why through St Faustina Kowalaska, the Lord taught us to pray, "Jesus, I trust in You."

Since I invoked the saints, it is necessary to note that there may well be instances in which the holiness of the deceased person seems evident. But in even in such cases, before we proceed off-the-cuff, we need to know more in order to judge better, which is why there is a formal canonical process. There is no harm in noting the good qualities a person may have possessed, or even some of the good things s/he did that are memorable, or even exemplary.

Fr Anthony Paone, S.J. observed in a reflection that is published in the popular daily devotional My Daily Bread:

Death, Judgment, Heaven, and hell --- these are the four last things toward which we are moving each hour of the day and night. They will never frighten us if our conscience is clear. If we love God in our daily life, that is, if we are sincerely trying to know and follow His holy Will, we have no reason to fear.

By keeping this eternal goal ever before us, we shall think straight when life’s problems and difficulties face us. In making the following meditations, we must strive to become *eternity-minded*. We must seek to guarantee to ourselves, as far as is in our power, the unending success and unmarred happiness of Heaven (p. 25)

We call this, living sub specie aeternitatis, that is, "under the aspect of eternity."

All Saints: "love lived out to the end"

After reading late last night about the serious implementation of the New Evangelization, which strikes me as slippery a concept as ever existed, effectively meaning what anyone wants it to mean, I was struck by the witness and effort of the the current archbishop of Malines-Brussels, André-Joseph Léonard, who was appointed that venerable see by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010. What I read was a short piece that appeared in the on-line version of First Things under the title "In Belgium, Two Types of Bishops," by Filip Mazurczak. In his piece Mazuczak mentioned Fr Michel-Marie Zanotti-Sorkine, after whose priestly and pastoral witness Archbishop Léonard established a priestly community at the center of Brussels, in a Church that was to be de-consecrated and used as a fish market, Eglise Sainte-Catherine, rightly calling Fr Michel-Marie "a French luminary of the new evangelization."

What struck me in my reading and re-reading is how serious Pope Benedict was about the New Evangelization, which he saw, at least throughout the West, as a re-evangelization. This is precisely why he chose the papal name "Benedict." It bears noting that a similar effort is underway in the Netherlands, where the majority of bishops were selected by Pope Benedict. It strikes me as more than a bit sad that Archbishop Léonard is nearing retirement age. I pray that he will be able and willing to serve a few years beyond 75 and that his successor will continue his efforts on the model set forth by St Paul: "I planted, Apollos watered, but God caused the growth. Therefore, neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God, who causes the growth" (1 Cor 3:6).

In his final book-length interview prior to becoming the Roman Pontiff (he did one after becoming Pope: Light Of The World: The Pope, The Church And The Signs Of The Times), God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald, then-Cardinal Ratzinger, commenting on Seewald's observation that the Church teaches "man is not capable, by and for himself, of giving a meaning to the world or to his own life," said, in part- "Meaning is not something we can simply manufacture. What we manufacture in that way may be able to grant us a momentary satisfaction, but it will not serve to justify the whole of our existence or give meaning to it... What the Church says, that meaning is not created by us but is given by God, should be understood in this fashion: Meaning is something that carries us, that goes ahead of us and beyond all our ideas and discoveries - and only in this way has it the strength to sustain our lives" (184-185). He went on to say, "our life tends in the end toward a discovery of love, toward receiving love and giving love. And the crucified Christ, who presents us with love lived out to the end... lifts this principle up into the realm of absolute reality. God himself is love. In this sense, love is indeed both the fundamental rule and the ultimate aim of life" (185).

The above merely echoes the answer to a question posed in the Baltimore Catechism, "Why did God make you?" The answer to which is, "God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him forever in the next." While existence certainly introduces complexity, the truth, at least as far as grasping it in order to live it, is beautifully simple. It is this simplicity that the saints grasped and held onto as they experienced the inevitable complexities of human life in a fallen world. Rather than despairing, they chose to cooperate with God in the redemption of the world, which is only possible because of Jesus Christ. Pope Benedict's episcopal motto, chosen in 1977, when he was ordained a bishop, is Cooperatores Veritatis (i.e., "Co-workers of the Truth").

In his homily for this Solemnity back in 2006, Pope Benedict XVI observed

Today, the Church is celebrating her dignity as "Mother of the Saints, an image of the Eternal City" (A. Manzoni), and displays her beauty as the immaculate Bride of Christ, source and model of all holiness. She certainly does not lack contentious or even rebellious children, but it is in the Saints that she recognizes her characteristic features and precisely in them savours her deepest joy

Venerable Solanus Casey- pray for his beatification

Dear friends, on this All Saints Day let us remember that in the end the Church Triumphant, Christ's spotless Bride, will only consist of saints, as He will separate the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats. Let us keep always before us this deep insight made by the French writer Léon Bloy: "There is only one sorrow: not to be a saint."