I Am a Work in Progress: Or, The Perpetually Under Construction Catholic (Mind the Dust, Please)

Let us begin with this: no one who wears socks that do not match, who has ever burned the toast or gossiped about a coworker (not you, of course, reader, for you are likely an angel in woolen disguise), or who has ever muttered “for Pete’s sake” in traffic, is finished. We are all works in progress, the paint not yet dry, the scaffolding creaking, our holy hard hats generally askew.

If the old hymn is right, and “Just as I am” is how God meets us, then it must follow that “Just as I am becoming” is where He asks us to stay, perched in that odd, thrilling, exasperating place where the blueprints are smudged and the architect keeps showing up with new supplies and a curious grin.

Catholic spirituality, with that sideways Irish grin and French mystic frown, insists that holiness is both mysterious gift and epic homework. Imagine the greatest surprise party of all time, divinity bursts in with armfuls of presents (grace, anyone?), but also hands you a broom and a paintbrush and says, “Your turn.” Saints are, by and large, people who said yes to both, and then tripped repeatedly while trying to wrap the gifts for others. The Catholic, therefore, kneels between divine generosity and the old “get your act together, sport,” called forth by every retreat director with a knobby stick.

François Fénelon, a French bishop whose eyebrows, one suspects, prayed constantly, whispered in his Letters of Spiritual Direction that surrender is strategic, not passive. He urges gentle abandon to the purifying work of God, a kind of inner yielding that is as much about dropping the pretense of control as it is practicing faith. “Let God do God’s thing,” says Fénelon (admittedly with more eloquent Gallic melancholy), “but remain attentive, responsive; don’t be spiritually inert, like a lost sock behind the dryer.”

Dom Jean-Baptiste Chautard, in his resounding holler from The Soul of the Apostolate, interrupts every frantic church volunteer’s illusions with the warning that even the choicest projects, the bake sale, the food drive, the late-night youth group lock-in where you learn the true measure of Christian charity, cannot substitute for the interior life. Here, Chautard, with the kindly menace of someone who has witnessed too many pious train wrecks, insists: it is God who builds the house. Woe to the stressed project manager (me! you? us?) who mistakes frenetic activity for spiritual progress. “Pray,” he mutters, “and then find the presence of God in your neighbor’s complaints about the coffee.”

Then we have Blessed Columba Marmion, who beams down from his bench in the communion of saints and waves his treatise on divine adoption like a proud godfather: “You are God’s children, not God’s employees. Stop trying to earn your keep. Learn what it is to receive.” Marmion’s spiritual secret is scandalous in an age of hustle: we must first discover ourselves as beloved, not as achievers. But here, too, there’s a call to mature joy; it’s not a free pass for spiritual laziness, but an invitation to the delighted obedience of children aware they are cherished.

Mother Mary Francis, Poor Clare and cheerleader for continual conversion, lands the tough blows with a wry smile: “Holiness is not for the faint of heart, sugar.” If you think you’ve arrived, you probably just slipped on a banana peel of self-satisfaction. For her, conversion is audacious, never-ending courage, a willingness to let God upend your carefully constructed hiding spots. Her wisdom suggests that the spiritual life is less about achieving untouchable perfection and more about risking another day of loving, repenting, and forgiving.

And then, the venerable Servant of God Catherine Doherty, she of the holy Russian accent and no-nonsense apron, arrives to insist that every mop, every spoon, every hallway conversation matters. “The duty of the moment,” she chirps (but with mystical gravity), is where grace meets grit. So, if you are folding socks (yes, even those), you are halfway to heaven, provided you do it with love and one eye open for the kingdom.

What, then, does it mean to stand in that honest, holy gap and claim, “I am a work in progress”?

It means, reader, owning that the soul is a construction zone, emotional, spiritual, intellectual, moral, ringed with hazard tape. It means taking up the old hammer (asceticism), swinging it with trembling hope (virtue), while knowing that the foundation (grace) was laid before you ever laced your boots. It is admitting to tears in prayer, slip-ups in virtue, doubts at three in the morning, and yet cracking open the Catechism or a battered copy of Fénelon’s letters, asking, “What’s next, Lord?”

Catholic teaching, in its infuriating, liberating clarity, says both/and: grace is first, absolutely, unconditionally, surreptitiously, yet in that gift is a call. Free will is not canceled by holiness; it is supercharged. God shapes, we cooperate; God acts, we respond. Sanctification, in the grand drama of Catholicism, is choreography: God the lead, us trying not to step on His toes.

The underappreciated Catholic voices above each probe modern assumptions with divine mischief. Fénelon’s surrender mocks our addiction to control. Chautard’s interior focus undercuts the cult of busyness. Marmion’s divine adoption skewers spiritual meritocracy. Mother Mary Francis shatters stagnation with the call to unceasing conversion. Catherine Doherty, perhaps, is the gentle anchor, reminding us that holiness is ordinary, or it is nothing at all.

As for this shambling essayist, bespectacled, prone to gentle despair on Mondays, I feel the need to be “worked on” most wherever pride narrows my sympathy or laziness dulls my spiritual appetite. When impatience crops up in meetings, when prayer becomes stale duty, when charity is more theory than muscle, there I sense God awkwardly but persistently rearranging the furniture.

And when the call comes to “do the work”, to apologize, to keep vigil with a struggling friend instead of retreating to comfortable solitude, to offer an encouraging word when sarcasm beckons, there my will partners, however clumsily, with grace.

The habits that ground this slow sanctification? Worn-out prayer books, silent walks, candlelit Mass on a Thursday, the minor mortifications of forgiveness and self-offering, the endless beginning again.

You, too, are a work in progress. Take heart. God rarely hires demolition crews. He prefers gardeners, slow and persistent, rooting out the rocks, feeding the soil, waiting for the awkward little shoots to reach for sun. The miracle is not that we are unfinished; it’s that, despite ourselves, we are always being remade.

So, let us tip our mugs (blessed be caffeine), make much of small beginnings, and walk on, half-graced and half-bumbling, toward that country where all scaffolding will one day disappear.

(With affectionate gratitude to Fénelon, Chautard, Marmion, Mother Mary Francis, and Catherine Doherty, who never argued about the color of the paint, but only insisted the house was, indeed, God’s own.)

References

Chautard, Dom Jean-Baptiste. The Soul of the Apostolate. Trappist, KY: Abbey of Gethsemani, 1946.

Doherty, Catherine. Grace in Every Season: Daily Wisdom from Catherine Doherty. Madonna House Publications, 2001.

Fénelon, François. Letters of Spiritual Direction. Translated by Sister Gertrude Von Le Fort. St. Louis: B. Herder Book Co., 1948.

Marmion, Columba. Christ the Life of the Soul. Leominster, UK: Gracewing, 2009.

Mother Mary Francis, P.C.C. A Right to Be Merry: A Catholic Guide to the Spiritual Life. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2003.