Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The Church is filled with good Catholics, bad Catholics, hypocritical Catholics, fallen away Catholics, lukewarm Catholics, heretical Catholics, ignorant Catholics, Catholics who make politics more important than their religion, and Catholics who use religion for personal gain. Which of them are weeds and which are wheat?

Time will tell, and in the end God will judge. In the meantime, ask God to give you the grace to strive to be a good Catholic, to strive to become a saint.

One of the reasons why some people do not take Christianity seriously is because of hypocrisy within the Church. The presence of sinners in the Church does not prove that the Church’s message or the Church’s sanctifying power is lacking. God allows each of us the opportunity for repentance. Since God is patient, we all must be patient with each other. St. Jerome once said, “We should not hastily cut off a brother, since one who is today corrupted with erroneous dogma, may grow wiser tomorrow, and begin to defend the truth.”

As Christians, we are called to pray actively for sinners, even for those society writes off. It is our task to hold to the Truth: Christ, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. By our baptism, each of us is called to seek the perfection of our souls, and to assist others in that pursuit. Part of our call to holiness is to not scandalize others and to make reparation for those times when we have led others astray.

Personally, I know I have sinned and I grieve the fact that I have given people reasons not to believe in Christ and His Church. May God have mercy on me. The truth is that all of us have made sinful decisions that have hurt others. But our decisions to sin doesn’t mean that we are to give up on our mission. We’re all imperfect, and we all have wounds, old habits of thinking and speaking and acting, that aren’t always pleasing to Christ. But Christ calls us always to repentance, conversion, and faithfulness.

Pray for someone that you may have been a bad example to or that you may have led into sin. Call to mind those people whom you gave reason to disbelieve in the importance of belonging to Christ. We are called to pray for the people we have scandalized throughout our lives. Then trust. Trust that despite our feeble evangelizing efforts, despite our bad example, God’s grace may work. Trust that others may see the goodness, the eternal life available to them through the Church, the mustard seed of faith, the bit of sanctifying grace. May this trust help us all to become the saints that God created us to be.

God Bless.

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