Working for the Parish

For those of us who are adults (or at least wannabe adults!) we all know that working amongst other professionals is often a challenging and sometimes frustrating task. However, it is always very edifying when someone is human enough to recognize their faults and asks for forgiveness.

I think this is one of the most beautiful things about Confession in our Catholic Tradition. What human person can honestly deny that they don't respect someone who takes responsibility for their offenses to others, or what we call as Catholics - their sins. No one of us is free from sin. The great Catholic writer G. K. Chesterton once said that sin is the only Catholic doctrine that we can actually prove - just look at the world and even at your own life! We know, as St. Paul says, that our body often does not do what our mind would like to - and sometimes vice versa.

G.K. Chesterton also wrote: "[Modern philosophers] essentially deny human sin, which they can see in the street. The strongest saints and the strongest sceptics alike took positive evil as the starting-point of their argument. If it be true (as it certainly is) that a man can feel exquisite happiness in skinning a cat, then the religious philosopher can only draw one of two deductions. He must either deny the existence of God, as all atheists do; or he must deny the present union between God and man, as all Christians do. The new theologians seem to think it a highly rationalistic solution to deny the cat."

For us Catholics, especially as a parish of St. Jude, we must ask ourselves what do we believe? If we believe there is sin, then we must know that God has sent a redeemer from that sin - Our Lord Jesus Christ. If this is so, then, in justice, Jesus must have told us how to live in order to overcome that sin - and so He has! However, we must be docile enough to hear what He tells us, for this new way of life is not a merely a simple choice, but a true lifestyle. This perhaps is the hardest of all things for adults & professionals: "Amen I say to you, unless you convert and become like little children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven (Mt 18:3)."