An Invitation to Transform: A Reflection of the Misshapen Will
Image taken from https://www.college.columbia.edu/core/content/augustine
“For what am I to myself without You, but a guide to my own downfall?”
– Saint Augustine of Hippo, Confessions
In an effort to seek the Truth and understand how I ought to live in this created order, I find myself referring to St. Augustine’s Confessions almost every day. I find comfort in the fact that St. Augustine sinned, yet ascended, and shared his journey toward God with a transhistorical audience.
St. Augustine invites us to transform ourselves after enduring a pilgrimage himself. His pilgrimage started with considering himself as a creature, pondering the tendencies he acts on, and reflecting on both those qualities in regards to his relationship with God. Our transformations would look similar: to embark on a journey that would reshape our will.
We are creatures with misshapen wills. This conviction is not to be mistaken with the inherent goodness in our creation –our creatureliness. However, because we are creations navigating by imperfect and finite capacities for reason and free choice of the will, we are bound to choose wrongly sometimes. We cannot extract ourselves from temporality and see the consequences of our actions. In this way, sin is the mode of living in our creatureliness that disrupts our relationship with the divine. This is due to a disintegration of the self. We exist as creatures before we act, and because we are free to choose our action, we have the space and capacity to will. And so, sin is the deviance from good will and divine command that we choose.
With that, we are desirous beings. It is in our nature that we want to orient ourselves to something greater than ourselves. Our hearts want to come to rest, but there is confusion as to where they ought to rest. Our hearts are at rest with God, and it is only through revelation and ascent that individuals come to know that Truth. Those who are without God are sentenced to the downfall that St. Augustine writes of. There is no possibility for an ascent for the individual who turns his back to God. For who are we if we do not connect with our creator?
We find solace in the divine because God is eternal and infallible. We need a beacon to save us from our fallibility. We have fallen from perfect excellence, but we have an incredible opportunity for redemption. We are creatures living a life with an innate felix culpa. We will fall and fall again, led by our misshapen will, but we always have the choice to rise again and be steadfast in our pursuit to know and love God. That is the happy fall.
Our life is an occasion for soul-shaping. I believe that the first step in accepting our invitation to transform is through an act of confession. Confession never ends so far as we are finite and fallible beings. We need help to orient our desires. And there is never perfect comprehension. God is at work always calling us to re-shape our desires. We are responsible for answering that call.
And so, I invite you all to confess. Make a confession of praise, confession of sin, or a confession of love. Confess that without God, we are all just a guide to our own downfall, misled by the disintegration of our will. But, with the right choice and re-orientation, we can choose redemption. Through confession, come to know yourself in union with God.