There is no doubt that it is God’s will that we keep up a life-long effort quite deliberately to grow in holiness, to become more perfect. Our Lord even told us that we were to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect. These are truths that we must certainly accept and we must take them very seriously. Unfortunately it is quite possible to misunderstand what Jesus meant, and we may form an idea of perfection and of the way to achieve it which is not the right one. There are people who go about seeking the perfection they imagine they should seek and do it with methods and mental attitude that they think are correct and yet become less and less perfect as time goes on.
The first thing to notice is that when we are told to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect, Our Lord does not mean that we as human beings are to seek to have the perfections that God has. Obviously we cannot seek to have the fullness of God’s knowledge or power or glory. We cannot become infinite in perfection in any way. So that is not what Jesus meant. . .
We are not called to be perfect in the same way as God is perfect. God is perfect God. What we are called to become . . . are perfect human beings. . . The moral law we have received from God tells us what behavior is human and what is not, but there are some things that are perfectly human and good which some people seeking perfection wrongly tell us we must give up. If we pursue the wrong ideal of perfection, then the more effort we put into our quest, the more damage we do to ourselves. If we have good will about it and are not to blame for our mistaken idea about perfection, God may well bless us for our efforts, but they will not make us happy and peaceful and content as the path to true perfection will. . .
The fact is that your own perfection, if you achieve it with God’s help, will be the full realization as a child of God of the person God made you when He designed and created you. . .
So one thing to get rid of is the idea that in order to be perfect you have got to stop being yourself in some way. No, you have got to try to become exactly what God wants you to become, and what God wants you to become is your true self, since that is what He loves. . .
The real you is God-given, and if you despise that true self, you are despising a gift from God, and that displeases Him very much. We must accept ourselves and thank God for ourselves. We must not accept our self-seeking and all the other things that deform and damage us, but the basic self is God-given and is loved by God because what He made is very good. . .
The path to God, life with God, living with Jesus, even in our present imperfect state, is something peaceful and calm and joyful. The path to God . . . is a path of love and not a path of fear. Our use of the confessional itself should be out of love and not out of fear. Worry and fear in the spiritual life bring havoc to us. We probably shall have fears of one kind or another in life; they come from the child in us. But we must not have fear in our relationship with God. We must have confidence that we belong to Him and that He is not, because of our failings, going to cast us out when we come to Him.
So let us accept and love God’s holy will in all things and confidently know that He will keep us safe because He loves us. The only way to lose God’s love in your life is by turning deliberately away from Him, not just committing serious sin but by loving and choosing sin.
We are called to follow the peaceful and firm path towards perfection without any voluntary fear. “Fear not,” says Our Lord, “for I am with you.” And “I have loved you with an everlasting love.”
