During the last year of her life, Therese of Lisieux corresponded regularly with a young man named Maurice, who was preparing to become a missionary. He was always afraid to tell her about his moral failures. Eventually, though, he did muster up the courage and trust needed to share his weaknesses with her, though only after first expressing his fear: “I was afraid that in love you would take on the prerogative of justice and holiness and that everything that is sullied would then become an object of horror for you.” Therese’s response to this comment is most noteworthy: “It must be that you don’t know me well at all if you are afraid that a detailed account of your faults would lessen the tenderness that I feel for your soul.” Our problem, given the fear that what is wrong in us will somehow lessen God’s affection, is that we rarely really lay bare what is actually inside of our hearts. Instead, we treat God as we would a visiting dignitary, namely, we show God what we think God wants to see in us, tell God what we think God would want to hear about us, and hide all those things that we feel will lessen God’s affection. Silly as it sounds, we, like Adam and Eve after the fall, try to hide our faults from God, worrying that if we really bared our souls, God would be displeased. The same is true in our church lives: Invariably, when we most need God and the support of the community of faith, we stay away from church and community. As Therese says: “You must not know me very well if you think that a detailed account of your faults would in any way lessen the tenderness I feel towards you.” In fact, on this score we might well learn a lesson from Adam and Eve. After they sinned, they too did what comes naturally, they hid and tried to camouflage their shame by their own efforts at clothing themselves. But their shame remained until God found them and gave them real clothing with which to cover their guilt. We do not know God very well at all when we fear coming into God’s presence replete with all that is within us, weaknesses as well as strengths. Nothing we do can ever lessen God’s tenderness towards us.[1]
[1] Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “On Not Hiding From God,” August 1999.