On Being Holy And Being Good

Beginning in my teen years, I had a religious conversion of sorts, probably as a result of something that I read or a sermon I heard at the mandatory, yearly retreat that we were required to attend by my Roman Catholic high school superiors. I began attending daily mass at 6:30 in the morning at an Ursuline convent within walking distance of my home.

I wanted to be holy - holy in the sense of being close to God and desiring to do his will, but I thought that I was not "good" enough and that, very likely, I would never be "good" enough in the context that I understood "being good". While I was present at those early morning masses, I felt holy for half an hour or so, and I kept my feeling of being close to God for a time afterwards - but not for very long - only until I did something "bad". For a teenager in the RCC in those far-away times, trying not to "be bad" was like walking through a minefield. The "bads" were lying in wait.

After high school perhaps, and definitely after college, my fervor diminished, and, although I still tried to follow the rules, I had much more of a sense of going through the motions, knowing I was falling short, but hanging on to the rituals anyway.

Then in my early forties, I had another spiritual awakening that took the form of a sureness of the presence of God in my life - a God who would always love me and always be with me, whether I was "being good" or not. That certainty has remained for 30 years now, thanks be to God.

I won't say that I have not had periods in my life when I cried out, "God where are you? Have you abandoned me?" But deep down, I knew that he had not.

Sometime after the consecration of Gene Robinson as a bishop in the Episcopal Church, I was drawn more and more to reading the Gospels with closer attention to the words and actions of Jesus, with the result that I made a 180 degree turn from thinking that it was wrong for Robinson to have been consecrated to believing that it was very right. In a sense, this was another spiritual awakening that I believe has drawn me even closer to God, with a stronger desire to follow the way laid out by Our Lord Jesus Christ, sinner though I am.

To make this not too long, I'm telescoping the story and glossing over periods of preparation of the ground and planting of the seeds that took place before the seemingly abrupt transitions in which the love of God flowered and bore fruit. I'm probably not even aware of much of the the work of God in my life before the reality of his love and his presence became sure.

I have come to a new understanding of "being good". It is God who makes me (and you) good. He is my Creator, and he has declared that his creation is good. My new understanding of holy has not so much to do with "being good" - I'm already good. God has declared it to be so - but with being close to God, with being a friend of God. That is the desire of my heart, and however awful some of the things that I do may seem to me, or to others, I want to be holy in that sense, and I pray to God to make me holy and to keep me holy.


Upon my bed at night
I sought him whom my soul loves;
I sought him, but found him not;
I called him, but he gave no answer.
"I will rise now and go about the city,
in the streets and in the squares;
I will seek him whom my soul loves."
I sought him, but found him not.
The sentinels found me,
as they went about in the city.
"Have you seen him whom my soul loves?"
Scarcely had I passed them,
when I found him whom my soul loves.
I held him, and would not let him go
until I brought him into my mother’s house,
and into the chamber of her that conceived me.

Song of Solomon 3:1-4