Is the medicine working?

For three years, I struggled with a chronic illness. I’m not sure how many different medications I tried during that period of time. Too many, that’s all I know. One question needled at me as I bounced between different medications and dosages. “Is the medicine working this time?”
A definitive answer took time. Initially, I’d think the medicine was helping, and then I would realize it was just wishful thinking. Finally, we got the medicine right.

I’m going on my fifth year as a Catholic. I ask myself a similar question each night when I do a review of the day. Is this working? Is this Sacramental life making a difference? Am I becoming more holy? Am I looking more like a saint?

Prior to becoming Catholic, my spiritual life had flat-lined in the area of social justice. So, any improvement would be a positive sign that grace was working.

James 1:27 says that True religion that is pure and undefiled before God is to care for widows and orphans in their distress.

Before I became Catholic, I gave to the Salvation Army at Christmas, and I dropped money in the offering basket at church, but I was never aware of the poor. I didn’t think about them when I went to the grocery store. I didn’t think about them when I gave to the church offering. There was a serious disconnect between my giving and the poor who eventually benefited from my contributions.

Something has happened to me, though. I don’t have any idea when it happened. I don’t have a great epiphany to share. The change was more subtle than that.

I realized we had a St. Vincent de Paul food pantry at our parish. At first it was just an awareness of the location. For months, that’s all it was.

Then, I started noticing that the parish bulletin had a list of needs for the food pantry. (They’ve always had this section; I’d just always been oblivious to it.) I started bagging up a few items from my pantry at home and dropping them off before Mass. Sometimes they were items listed in the bulletin. Sometimes they weren’t.

Then, I began thinking about the food pantry list when I was at the store.

Eventually, I didn’t want to go to Mass without a bag for Jesus. The poor were Jesus to me! That was a big change – a definitive change.

That kind of change means something! It means the medicine is working. This Sacramental life is changing me.

There is still much that needs to change. Now I need to work on patience and kindness and self-control and a whole bunch of vices that I will keep between God, my confessor, and me. And yet, it is good to know that this life of grace is powerful.

Powerful enough to change even me.