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1 Corinthians 15:9 "For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God."

 

We may not all have persecuted the Church as Paul did, but pretty much all of us have reasons to feel unfit to be called an apostle. Personally, I feel this way often, especially when I think of the saints. This is why I especially love Saint Augustine and others like him, including Saint Paul, whose sin prior to their conversion is well known. Of course, every saint has a past and every sinner a future, but we often do not know too much of the saints' sins, rightly focusing instead on their good acts and holiness, just as God does. It is comforting to me, then, when a saint talks about his or her past, and admits to the same sense of unworthiness I often feel.

 

In the midst of our unworthiness, though, we also have to trust God's great, infinite, mercy. Saint Paul is not wallowing in his past, he is just acknowledging it. He knows he has been forgiven, is clearly grateful for the second chance he's been given, and is using it for a tremendous good, just as Jesus wants him to. A few days ago I wrote about discernment and the role our emotions play in that. The feeling of detachment from my anger that I discussed there is similar to how we have to view our unworthiness. We have to acknowledge it, feel it, and be sorry for our past misdeeds, but we can't let it take over and keep us from God's mercy, and therefore from doing what He wants us to do now.

 

I am wondering, too, if this is something that might come into play in the struggle at the moment of death. I am thinking, as Jesus pulls out all the stops to try and save our unworthy souls, His mercy may give us a taste of our particular judgment, seeing our sins with such clarity, knowing and feeling exactly how much we have hurt God, ourselves, and others. It will be intense. But we also see Jesus, offering His mercy and our cleansing in His blood in Purgatory if we are in need of it (and most of us are). We have to be somewhat detached from our guilt in order to accept God's mercy. If we see our sin and are so overwhelmed by it that we turn away from it, we also will be turning away from Him. We are, after all, seeing our sins so clearly because we are looking directly at the Light.

 

Turning away from God's mercy and wallowing in our unworthiness could then be one way of choosing hell. We would be choosing not to accept His invitation to cleansing because we are so dirty that we don't think we can be cleansed, or we don't want to undergo the pain of it. Saint Faustina said one of the tortures of hell is the worm of conscience, constantly reminding us of our sin without any hope of mercy. That is what we choose when we won't acknowledge our unworthiness while also accepting that Jesus knows all about it, and He loves us and died for us anyway. So yes, we are all unworthy, but we have to get over it, or we may risk losing salvation!