Our Integrity

The very depth of our Integrity towards God

When we speak of integrity it is how much trust one can have in a person.  Do you really trust that companion who claims to be a close friend?  Can you lay your deepest secrets at their feet assured no one else would ever know your weaknesses?  Will you go to your grave knowing these immense privileges were never revealed without your permission?

Its not as though we are living under a microscope that any revelation would open the door to something about us exposing  a deep and dark background of cloak and dagger scenarios.  Take the Sacrament of Reconciliation kept between yourself and your confessor.  It is closeted in  walls of privacy known only to you, the confessor, and God.  

Those of us who may be privileged to share, when asked, another person’s deepest cross that is too heavy to publicly share to hold these dark secrets in our hearts.  My past ministry while in Texas was in a recovery facility for alcohol/drug addiction.  The Lord sent me there via my parish, to bring God to the residents.  Ten of the people who were recovering using the twelve step system chose me as their 5th step confidant.  To this day that trust humbled me as they found my integrity to be real.  That had to be a promise I made to God, holding their very trust in my position as a confessor.  You do not have to become a priest to be a confessor.  Any person who has received grace for this level of trust is fit for that title.  Like a priest, however, I share that level of secrecy and to this day would never relate what was spoken to me.

During some of my diaconal ministry there were some who came to me confessing a problem.  After explaining I could not absolve them, I was told by one man it was ok since he’d already been to Sacramental Confession.  Again, events such as this can only show confidence in sinners who are willing to share their deepest secrets with a trusted person.

This is what the essence of God is all about.  Of course, when a most adverse incident is perpetrated by any of us the spiritual reality of a Triune God reaches beyond the separation of Divinity and humanity becoming the very integrity we find, now on earth and the heavenly structure of our final journey to be shared with God.  

Every moment we stand in the place of trust with someone’s deepest secrets we become the presence of God being the strength in an integral manner that may be the lifeline for them to reach God.  At least sharing a trust is the closest one can have to be called God’s integrity.

Ralph B. Hathaway