NOT a Good Person!

I am NOT a good person! I am like my old Honda CRV before it died: it would stall out, randomly, unexpectedly, uncontrollably at every 7th or 12th or 19th red light. It was not a "good car"...it was unreliable, unfaithful, fickle, embarrassing, dysfunctional, pathological and annoying. So am I. My wife, mother, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters...not a "good person" among the seventeen of them. We are, all of us, miserable sinners, desperate for God's pardon, mercy, and help. That is the single most important fact of our existence. We NEED God, desperately! We need a Savior! We need Jesus Christ! It is not that I lack goodness. On the contrary, goodness flows into and through me, constantly, miraculously, inexorably. But the goodness comes from beyond me...it comes as gift...it is not my doing. The marvel is that despite the overflow of love, grace and gifts I have received, I remain helplessly prone to infidelity, cowardice, malice, fear, and distrust. Like my old CRV, I am fickle, unreliable, disordered, pathological. You can see that I am an Evangelical Catholic, not a liberal. Words like "He is a good person!" flow easily from the lips of a liberal. "He doesn't go to Church, but he is a 'good person.'" This apparently means: he is not a militarist, a capitalist, a rapist, or a preacher. This apparently means: he is originally and actually innocent, un-wounded by sin, in need of neither a Savior nor the pardon and grace of the sacraments. "Why do you call me good? One alone is good!" were the words of Jesus himself. As Catholics, we know that Jesus is a good person...even though he denied it. Mary is also. So are all the saints in glory, the Church triumphant. But we are the Church militant...still fighting the war daily...each of us an unstable dynamic of good and bad...the best of us infected by badness, the worst of us influenced by goodness. But I am not...a good person!