Why We Should Strive to Not Live in The Past

Too often, we live in the past. The "God could not love me because of what I have done" phrase sticks out to me. We allow this thinking to prevent us from becoming the saints we are meant to be. "Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future." The first pope, St Peter, denied Jesus three times. But that became his past. His future … a saint.

There are many examples of saints that were horrible sinners. St Paul was originally killing Christians. He went on to write most of the New Testament. And before you start saying that you are different, which you are, you are still capable of becoming a saint. To deny that you could become a saint is telling Jesus on the Cross that He does not love you. He does love you and He wants you to go to Heaven, which entails becoming a saint. (saint with little or big ‘S')

This also goes for each day though. "Oh man, I have been doing terrible today. I will do better tomorrow." We must stop thinking like that. Do better NOW! If we fail to live in the moment, we fail to live. We live moment to moment. The present moment is the only moment you actually can do anything. To wait until tomorrow is just a way of negating our responsibility for the current moment.

God's gift to us is the present. In this, we see God's love for us and also our ability to love. Having the present moment, we know that God loves us in that He holds us in existence. And with the present moment, we have the ability to return God's love. We should never wait until tomorrow to do so. We know that tomorrows eventually are gone and then God shows us His love by offering us His love eternally in Heaven. If we reject the graces of God's love and loving God in our lives on earth, we are likely to reject God's offer of eternal Love. So let us resolve to not waste a moment, but love God, in good times and in bad.

Jesus, You manifested God's love in every moment of Your earthly life. Help us repent in the moments that we realize we are not loving God and to begin loving God again in that moment. Amen.