Irreproachable

(Found here)

“In the liturgy, the great poet of the Advent, Isaiah, speaks to us with the words that God put on his lips when he says, ‘Though your sins be like scarlet, they may become white as snow. Though they be crimson red, they may become white as wool’ (Is 1:18). God will do this for us when we live in the truth, when we come humbly to beg pardon in acknowledging the truth about ourselves.

This begins with our faults. …when we come knowing that we have nothing to plead for us except our misery, acknowledged in the face of God’s mercy, we shall receive the fulfillment of this remarkable, almost incredible, Word of God through his prophet that, yes, he can make us irreproachable: white as snow, white as wool. Not if we pretend that it is not so scarlet, not so crimson, or maybe it is someone else’s fault, or maybe it is situational, or maybe it is circumstantial. If we come full of excuses we, so to speak (if I may dare use such a phrase), paralyze God.

Surely this is what is meant when the Apostle says he wants God to find us irreproachable at his coming—that we are not reproaching anyone else, or anything else; but that we are humble, without excuse, blameless in the sense of not blaming anyone except ourselves. Then, and then only, can God make us irreproachable and perfect in holiness.”

~Mary Francis