Feeling as sinners

“See, I am the God who blots out your sins and will not remember them (Is 43:25 Vg). Do you see? ‘I will not remember them,’ he says, and this is typical of clemency; but you should remember them, so that you take the opportunity to admonish yourself. Paul, knowing this, always recalled those sins which God would not remember, so that he would say: I am unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God (1 Cor 15:9); and Christ came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost (1Tim 1:15). He did not say ‘I was’, but ‘I am’: before God his sins had been forgiven, but Paul persisted in recalling them. What God had blotted out, he himself proclaimed (…). God calls him a chosen vessel, and he calls himself the first of sinners. If he did not forget his sins, reflect on how he must have remembered the kindness of God.”²³

St Paul considers himself the least of the Apostles, but he also feels the urgent mandate to evangelise. Like you and like me. You know how you are. As for myself, I can only say that I am a poor thing, a sinner who loves Jesus Christ. By God’s grace we don’t offend him more, but I feel capable of committing all the evils that anyone has ever committed.

Humility when praised

So, if the Lord in his goodness prevents others from seeing our weakness, and they regard us as better than they are and praise us and act as though we were not sinners, we should think and meditate deep in our heart, with true humility: tamquam prodigium factus sum multis: et tu adiutor fortis (Ps 71[70]:7); I have been as a portent to many; but I know that you my God, you are my strength.