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| Fr. Lawrence Oparaji |
One of my favorite stops on my way to and from the Twin Cities where I attended seminary is the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse.
If you have not had the pleasure of visiting there, I would greatly recommend it!
To get to the shrine’s main church, you will need to walk up a hilly path before arriving at the magnificent edifice.
But on your way back, it is a smooth jolly walk as you are now walking downhill!
The challenge of goodness and virtue
During my last visit, the upward journey to the church felt unusually long and hard.
I found this challenge inspiring, and I began to compare it to the life of goodness and virtue.
A life of virtue and goodness is hard to achieve; the upward battle towards attaining them is not especially easy.
If they were easy to attain, then there would be nothing to long for, no imperfections to be purified, and we would be in Heaven.
But look around you, and you will quickly find out that this place is not our home, and we are only journeying towards our heavenly home.
But back to the point: A life of virtue involves this uphill battle of constantly and consistently saying “yes” to God and “no” to our selfish inclinations.
This is not easy as there are some days that certain sinful habits want us to believe that they will satisfy every longing that we have, and we will be in a much better place by engaging in them.
Then we indulge, and we are left empty once again, feeling deceived and even feeling a sense of inner separation.
As infinite as our longing is for perfection, goodness, and virtue, so also should our level of readiness, our desire, and our preparedness be to cooperate with God’s grace.
Now, after my uphill inspiration, on my way down, it felt like I was flying; the downhill journey was lovely and almost heavenly.
This experience greatly mirrors the reality of all those who have strived, who have cooperated with God, and have climbed the mountain of the Lord.
Think about the saints, those holy men and women who we can never cease to praise God for their example and model of holiness.
They committed themselves to cooperating with God and climbing the hill of goodness, and the fruits of such a life brought about in them an interior peace and grace, but their lives also inspired many for centuries and continue to inspire many to date.
Goodness does inspire people, and people want to be associated with true and authentic goodness.
God and goodness
I think one of the many significant challenges of our modern-day society is that we often, or even most times, want to skip the uphill and just rush into the downhill.
We want to be good without encountering goodness Himself. We want to be good without God, who is goodness Himself.
The problem with that is when we try to be good without God, we limit goodness.
As a good Father, God wants to enter into every human heart through a loving relationship built on prayer, scriptures, and the sacraments.
Through that relationship, God wants to teach us in a radical way what true unselfish and undying love means, what goodness means, what virtue means, and how to live them out.
The problem with being good without God is that we limit the infinite goodness of God to what we are “good” at, which in the end, always falls short when compared to what God, who is goodness Himself, can do through us!
I cannot help here but think of the Apostles. These were “good” men.
It is interesting to note that they lived with Jesus, saw Him work miracles, professed Him as Lord and Master, saw the Transfiguration, and saw Him fulfill prophecies before their eyes.
After the arrest of Christ, these good men denied Him, then ran away and lost every hope.
If we now fast forward to the Pentecost event, immediately they received the power of the Holy Spirit, the power and spirit of goodness, they truly became “good” men in the fullness of the word, they took this “goodness” and the “good news” that came with it and spread it to the ends of the earth and would not be intimidated by any oppressor until ultimately most of them gave up their lives.
Goodness without God can be likened to the Apostles without the Holy Spirit — it is self-referential, limited, lacking in joy, lacking in true zeal.
However, once we open ourselves to God, there is an outburst of graces; there is nothing selfish about that goodness, that goodness is filled with so much joy — authentic joy — joy that does not complain behind the scenes while smiling on the outside.
With God, we are filled with a goodness that helps us recognize our imperfections and be humbled by them while also acknowledging that they are not the sum of who we are in Christ.
The need for good and holy people
Our world today needs more good and holy people.
Challenging times like these demand for the rising of good and holy people.
I often hear people say the news reporting is always so bad and so negative.
While this is mostly true (I have even thought of starting a news network that reports only good and positive news), the truth that we might be missing is that we and the world around us give the press its content.
If many more people began walking this uphill path to grow in goodness and holiness, then we will be actively making life difficult for the negative and bad news.
May we all be blessed with a true desire for goodness, with the grace of perseverance, to climb the hill of goodness and holiness and the generosity of heart to share the fruits (in words, thoughts, and deeds) of such a life with those around us.
Fr. Lawrence Oparaji is a parochial vicar at Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary Parish, Sun Prairie.