Sanctity is All About Holy Gap Management (HGM)

love, cross, Lent, sanctity

Scripture tells us that we grow closer to God to the extent that we are content with what we have and realize that God is always with us (Hebrews 13:5).  And Scripture reminds us that God is always with us, both when things go well and when they do not go as well as we hoped!

It seems that as imperfect humans we all have what might be called gaps in our lives.  These gaps are those chunks of time between how we expect things to go or how we expect to be treated, and how things actually go or how we are treated.  How we react when these gaps play out can determine our relative satisfaction, contentment, temperament, response, perception, and peace.

Our ultimate holiness and sanctity will be determined by our response.  After all, even Our Lord, perfect and sinless, often faced such gaps as well. Given this, we, imperfect and sinful as we are in an imperfect and sinful world, should expect to face many gaps on our journey.

Two Responses

When things go better than we expect them to go, we often “thank our lucky stars.”  We smugly smile, feeling that, after all, we deserved a break or two.  When people treat us better than expected, we tend to label the experience a positive one.  It becomes self-affirming evidence that everything is okay.

All too often, the common human response to a positive experience is to bask in our own perceived good fortune or deserved favorable treatment. Unless we are careful, we may easily slip into making such good results and treatment all about what we deserve.

Favorable results and treatments may lay the foundation for the sins of pride and vanity. In fact, left unchecked, we can come to believe that things should always go so well, or that people should always treat us as well. When that does not happen, we may often be so immersed and intoxicated in our own glory that we respond the opposite way.

When things do not go as well as expected, or we feel that people have mistreated us, we label that a negative experience.  We either respond with resentment or retaliation or go off and mope or gripe in victimization. All too commonly, we point fingers of blame.  We blame the situation or others and stew in anger, hurt, humiliation, and any other assortment of counterproductive thoughts and feelings.

Left unchecked, a negative response following these gaps will lay the foundation and roots for the sins of ingratitude, greed, dishonesty, and harming others.

HGM is Rooted in Everything Christ

So, whether we face a positive gap or a negative one, how we respond is critical.  Our response determines whether those gaps will bring us closer to the holiness and sanctity God wants for each of us, or drags us farther from that sacred destiny.  For the sake of simplicity, I call the first response Holy Gap Management (HGM).  The second response is merely the lack of HGM.

Our Lord has given us the blueprint for HGM.  Christ embodied and exemplified sinless perfection in obedience, love, and conformity to the Will of God. He also embodied and exemplified loving service to others.

As both fully Divine and Human, Our Lord faced many gaps between how He would have preferred things to go and how they actually went.  Likewise, He was not always treated as one would have preferred to be treated.  He faced temptation, hunger, thirst, and frustration. He certainly faced sorrow, rejection, criticism, mockery, sarcasm, condescension, ignorance, and arrogance.

Yet, Our Lord, the Master of HGM, exemplified at every turn precisely what HGM is.

While He pointed out injustice, ingratitude, hypocrisy, self-righteousness, and corruption, He did not respond to these evils with retaliation or revenge.  And while He faced stubbornness, rejection, and mockery, He did not respond to these evils in kind.  While He certainly faced setbacks and struggles, He put his trust and faith in God’s Will and ultimate plan.  At every turn, Christ responded to each gap He faced by turning to God in loving trust and obedience.

The Saints on HGM

In one way or another, many of our great saints spoke of HGM as the path to holiness and sanctity.

  • Rose of Lima cited the ability to turn the crosses in our lives into ladders toward heaven as the key to holiness and sanctity.
  • Alphonsus Liguori asks us to unite our will to the Holy Will of God and see all that comes to us as opportunities for our sanctification.
  • Teresa of Calcutta grew to see her despair as a connection to the Cross of Christ.
  • Teresa of Avila knew that the highs and lows of life both reflect one’s proximity to Christ and challenge us to grow in sanctity through each rise and fall.
  • John of The Cross saw the fiber of holiness and sanctity as wrapped in how one manages to see God in both one’s joys and one’s sorrows.

St. Philip Neri exemplified the holy ability to turn lemons into lemonade in the name of Christ.  Faced with gap after gap, Neri managed and overcame each challenge with faith and trust that God was found in both the highs and the lows along the way.  And St. John Paul II exhorted us to reject fear of the gaps facing us in the knowledge that God is always with us offering these gaps as opportunities for solidarity, sanctity, and love.

The list of saints who have given us the benefits and reasons for HGM is endless.

The Three Gifts or Benefits of HGM

While there are many benefits of HGM, they can be summarized in three basic ones.

First, HGM unites us with the Cross of Christ in transcending human struggle and suffering. It converts earthly pain into the opportunity to participate in redemption. When we practice and embrace HGM, we embrace the Cross and turn to that Cross, a ladder to our own sanctity.

Second, the more we immerse ourselves in HGM, the more easily we will overcome the gaps we face.  We will realize that we are not alone in our effort and that God assists us with His loving grace. The realization that our success is due to God’s grace prevents us from self-love, vanity, and pride.  Conversely, the realization that we are not alone in our suffering and struggles prevents us from the sins of despair, hopelessness, resentment, bitterness, and surrender to our human weakness.

In general, it makes no difference whether we face a positive gap or a negative one.  How we manage that gap determines if we will grow in holiness and sanctity or fall farther from God.  Seeing Christ as with us in any gap helps us to grow from our gaps rather than fall into them.

Third, it is only through our ability to manage our gaps that we truly transcend our human weakness and imperfection.   The correct response fulfills our destiny of sharing in the sacred destiny God wishes for each of us (John 15:1-52 Peter 1:3-11).

As we grow in our ability to embrace and reflect HGM, we will help others to do the same. Conversely, to the extent that we lack HGM, we may encourage others to never realize it as well. That solidarity in the necessary struggle toward Christ is what John Paul II often wrote about.

We are Destined for Sanctity

We see in each of these reasons, especially in the third one, that we are all destined for sanctity.  A loving God offers us this sanctity and only awaits our acceptance of that challenge.

God never gives us more than we can handle. And we know that God only wants what is good for us.  As such, we know that God has given us the tools to overcome the valleys and not let the mountains get into our heads.

Conversely, the evil one does not want us to overcome those valleys. He certainly wants the mountains to make us drunk in the belief that we are our own gods.

Taken as a whole, then, we see that HGM is truly the gift and secret to fulfilling the sacred destiny God offers each of us.

A Brief Example of HGM in Action

Say, for instance, that Jerry applies for a ministry position in his parish which will enable him to benefit many people with his many talents.  And suppose that Jerry obtains this great position, far beyond his wildest expectation.  If he is not careful, Jerry may come to believe that he obtained this position through his own talents and skills.  Ironically, he may become full of pride and arrogance.

Jerry may even come to believe that he was the most qualified and deserving of this position. He may even come to believe that he alone knows what is best for his parish.  He may become less tolerant of others’ views and opinions and more stubbornly hold on to his views and plans.

In this scenario, Jerry has not managed this positive gap well.  Not including Christ in his success, he filled this positive gap with himself alone.  He has fallen farther from God despite a golden opportunity to grow closer to God and to help others do the same.

Suppose, instead, that Jerry had been rejected for this position despite his good intentions and various talents. Further suppose that Jerry discovers that there was corruption in the selection process. He now sees himself as an undeserving victim.

Such a view, even if accurate, may instill feelings of resentment, bitterness, sorrow, rejection, humiliation, and abandonment by God.  Jerry may stew in these feelings until they consume him.  He may even publicly lash out at the parish or those in the selection process.  Ultimately, these feelings may prevent Jerry from offering the gifts God has given him to parishioners in some other capacity intended by God. Worse still, despite his initial good intentions, Jerry may fall farther from God and even leave the Church altogether.

Either Or

In the first instance, if Jerry stays Christ-centered, he will practice HGM by always trying to stay true to his initial good and noble intentions.  He will grow closer to God and help others to do the same. He will be far less likely to see himself as some parish god finally recognized to save the parish. Jerry will also be far more likely to be charitable and open-minded, as well as inclusive in his position.

In the second instance, if Jerry had stayed Christ-centered, he would be more likely to accept what happened as the Will of God. He would embrace the experience as a humbling one rather than a humiliating one. And he would seek other ways to apply his many gifts to the parish.

Conclusion

Life is nothing if not a series of gaps between what we expect and what we get, both positive and negative.  Following Christ is certainly no guarantee that there will be no valleys along the way. In fact, if we merely look at the life and example of Christ and the saints, we should expect thorns along with the roses along the way.

It is foolish to expect few gaps much less no gaps when following Christ.  We should probably expect more.  The difference is that if we rely only on ourselves, and see ourselves as the center of everything, we will take both the highs and the lows too personally and lose Christ in the process.

We should neither expect no storms nor expect storms at every moment.  In either case, we should never be too immersed in ourselves to see Christ waiting for us to walk on water toward His waiting hand.

Ultimately, God offers all of us a sacred destiny with Him.  And He gives us the tools to achieve that destiny.  It is how we manage the gaps in our lives that will determine if we fulfill that beautiful gift from our Loving God.

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