Saints' Discussion Forums

I was discussing with a good friend over the past year who had taken counselling due to alcoholism in the home. He himself did not have that addiction but was advised to take the counselling due to the fact that he was living with alcohol abuse and would therefore be suffering (undetected by him) the "isms" of alcoholism.

He was telling me that people who live in such environments actually accept this life style as being normal and not knowing what normality is, they cannot discern that there could be anything better than their currant situation. However having gone through the counselling he now realises how abnormal things were and so is now able to have a vision of  a new way of life and strive towards that end.

This really got me thinking about the words of Our Lord, “Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.”  This perfection seems so far divorced from the way we live that it’s so easy to brush the thought aside as totally unattainable and therefore abandon the idea of ever reaching that stage (at least in this life), But from what my friend had to say concerning alcoholism I began to think that maybe I am suffering from the "isms" of sin, both personal and collective.

Living in a fallen world with all of us suffering from a fallen nature, it becomes quite easy to accept this as normal and by doing so we can then delude ourselves by the false presumption that nothing better than this exists.
I'm here talking about acceptance of a certain amount of sin in my life and believing that this is “normal” and just has to be put up with as such.

However, I'm beginning to see this now as being abnormal and the more I read the saints and through them see some little glimpses of what normality is, of how the blessed in heaven enjoy total freedom from base nature and the corruption of sin, I'm more inclined now to believe that our Lord wasn't asking for the impossible even in this life.  Sin is totally abnormal..
By viewing our currant plight as being the abnormal rather than the normal, it may go a long way in allowing progress to be made towards the perfection that our Lord is asking for.

My friend was told to make no compromises with alcohol or its isms but always to view it as totally abnormal and something to be despised and rejected as a way of life.
Using the same logic then, I should be making no compromises with sin in my life and instead be always confronting it and seeing it too as totally abnormal.

Baily,  I think in your profession you may know something of what my friend was talking about. This could probably apply in many situations and as I'm thinking, to sin also.  ???

It is certainly true that the more often a person goes to Confession, the more that person is sensitive to the sin in his life (I'm not referring to those who are scrupulous - religious OCD). The Grace imparted in that sacrament allow us to see normal for a short time leading us to see that the more often we go to Confession, the more we'll be experiencing normal.  :)