Chapter 34

Photo:  Under the Streetlight
Location:  Montmartre (Sacred Heart Basilica) Paris, France
Date:  1963
Photographer:  Alfred Eisenstaedt

I'M AFRAID I CANNOT BE 
A GOOD CATHOLIC

Nor should you say as some do:  "I'm afraid I will not be able to live up to the high standard of morality that shall be expected of me."  If that were true, God would not be calling you.  For he would not be calling you if it were impossible for you to live up to the morality of the Catholic Church with His grace.  God expects the impossible from no one.  There is no excuse that is a valid excuse for not answering His call.

Christ came as the divine physician.  He came as a physician comes, not to those who were well and needed Him not, but to those who were sick.  He came to save sinners.  It is true that the Church like Christ condemns sin, but it is also true that the Church like Christ, loves the sinner.  And in the Church you will find those plentiful helps that Christ left us, precisely for this, that we might be enabled to rise above our sinning.  God, as we have said, does not expect the impossible from any one of us, but He does expect that each one of us, with the help of His grace, will make a sincere attempt to live up to His commandments and to follow His inspirations.  

To embrace the Catholic faith means, of course, a certain amount of investigation and study.  But life in the Church means much more than the mere cold study of its doctrines.  It means the everyday practice of religion.  It means prayer and union with God.  It means the reception of the sacraments.  It means worship and sacrifice.  It means the fulness of the Christian life, such as you in your heart at this moment aspire for.  Christ, your Savior, living again upon your altar,  will also live again in your heart, so that you can then say with the great convert St. Paul:  "I live now, not I, but Christ liveth in me."  And all this is not only possible but relatively easy with the grace of God.