C. S. Lewis notes that he once had considerable difficulty in the saying that one should "hate the sin but love the sinner." It didn't seem to make sense to him until one day it occurred to him that it was within himself that the saying showed its most certain truth. Did he not "love himself" while at the same time he "hated the sin" that so dominated his life? Is this not a reflection of the words of Paul we heard only recently when he speaks of the great distress created within himself when he did the things he did not really want to do while not doing the things he very much wanted to do?

St. Theresa of Avila prayed, "Oh, God, I don't love you. I don't even want to love you, but I want to want to love you." Do you not recognize yourself in reflections like these?

The great physicist Werner Heisenberg said, "Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wants to will." He spoke for all humankind, did he not? Is it not fearful to recognize that the weeds in our own lives threaten to suffocate the wheat of God's grace planted within us?