Do you ever feel as if you struggle and struggle and struggle against your faults and shortcomings, and never get anywhere? I once heard a priest say that we are not asked to win, we are asked to fight. We must keep fighting those little sins, but we may never fully conquer them.

But why? Why don't we win, when we try so hard to be perfect, as our Heavenly Father is perfect? Why do we still keep losing our temper, or gossiping, or boasting, or committing whatever other faults we battle?

These consoling words are from a life of St. Gertrude, who had numerous visions and great mystical experiences from Our Lord:

"Scrupulously careful herself about observance of the Rule (of the order of nuns to which she belonged), negligence on the part of others would bring down on them a reproach, sometimes severe. Then she would humbly beg her Sisters to implore God to grant her the grace of gentleness and meekness. She endeavored to obtain from Our Lord complete deliverance from these faults, but learnt from Him that He leaves these defects to His chosen souls so that they may bear in mind the weakness of their nature and realize that all their purity is only an effect of His free mercy."

~ Wilfred H. Woollen, B.A., St. Gertrude: A Saint of the Sacred Heart, imprimatur 1927.

Of course Our Lord wants us to keep trying to do the right thing, but He may be letting us slip sometimes so that we may remain humble and remember that we are nothing without Him. Every good deed we are able to do is only by His grace and His mercy, and every bad deed is through our own weakness (or, God forbid, our own malice).

So let us pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off (as St. Francis de Sales tells us), and bravely take Our Lord's Hand again, knowing that we are weak and helpless without Him. But we can do mighty things in Him Who strengthens us!