There are times, so common, when a promise is broken not for the first time but repeatedly, when the heart fails again. And though we have done it before, though we know it leaves us battered, we fall. It is the flaw which so many of us bear with us: a chronic failure which accumulates in the darkness, waiting to leave us stumbling once more.

It’s a sobering consideration that no matter how far along we’ve come or how much we understand, there is still that one thing—desire, addiction, or blind spot—that brings us back down to our previous defeat. For some, it is pride that can’t be overcome. For others, it is attention, validation, or belonging. These aren’t always great, but they can result in tragedy or scandal. They’re much more likely to be tiny, aggravating, and cunning. They’re hiding behind our strengths, just waiting to be able to topple us at the appropriate moment. And the worst thing? We can normally spot them coming, but we are powerless to prevent them.

It has nothing to do with smarts or drive. Even the brightest are susceptible. The brain knows better, but the heart, the old heart, is still bent on its own undoing. This is the sour irony of humanness: our old selves are not really gone; they lurk behind better suits and kinder words. And when the hour is opportune, they leap back into power. It doesn’t take much—just a familiar scent, a voice, a crack in the armor—and the slide begins.

The reason these chronic weaknesses continue to be such is that they are not merely attached to the mind, but to the heart, to memory. You don’t fight a vice; you fight the warmth it gave you once, the promise it made you once, the illusion it sold you once.

That’s why the mind is not necessarily a match for them. You can tally up the wreckage, quote back the collapse, and still be walking into the same inferno. There is sadness in that loss. Not because we lost, but because we can see ourselves in the loss.

Worse is the shame that comes after. We wonder if we ever actually changed, if we are forever stuck the same way, even when we don’t seem to be. Some give up. They justify the weakness, legitimize it, and make jokes about it. Others become excessively self-critical, believing that perfection is the only evidence that change is occurring. Both reactions miss the reality—that we are not measuring development on if we never fall, but on how we rise, once more and again, regardless of how many times we have fallen.

You’d think, having finally reached adulthood, that we would’ve ended all these personal wars by now. But time doesn’t always go hand in hand with wisdom; consciousness does. And it takes harsh honesty to confess the very essence of one’s continued failing. The first act of courage is to name it. The second is to identify its patterns, its triggers, and its lies that honey-talk us into coming apart. Primarily, it’s remembering what the previous fall cost—and what we vowed to ourselves then.

I do not think people become mired because they enjoy it. I think they just become tired. Tired of trying to mend what only breaks. But maybe that is exactly what makes the fight heroic—because it is not easy, because it is tiring. After all, it is old. And yet, against all odds, some do battle. In silence. With no cheer. In the silence of their minds. At the edges of their desires. Those small victories count.

Perhaps the solution is not to proclaim we have no weaknesses, but to become able to work with them like a cranky neighbor—one we dislike but can somehow have to live with. Establish boundaries. Seek help when needed. And when the trap swings out once more, at least this time we know where not to tread. Or if we fall, we fall with eyes open wide—and recover faster than previously.

TREMENDOUS words of Christ addressed to Peter! (cfr. Mt 16,19) If we would just pause for a while and savor the implications of those words and consider the person to whom they were addressed, we can only think that there is no way these words can be true. This must be a joke!

Imagine the power and authority handed to a person like Peter who denied Christ 3 times before he repented, and who received that stinging rebuke from Christ who told him: “Get behind me, Satan,” (Mt 16,23) for trying to prevent Christ from consummating his redemptive mission by offering his life on the cross.

A number of times, Christ would castigate his disciples, including Peter, for their lack of faith, and yet Christ still counted on them as his disciples. Even more, Peter, for all his weaknesses, was made the rock on which Christ would build his Church where “the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”

It surely would require a deep act of faith for us to believe that these words can be said to Peter. Not only that, we are told that “the keys of the kingdom of heaven” is handed over to the successors of Peter and shared in varying degrees by those who we now call as the clergy. We can never tell if these successors and sharers would be better or worse than Peter.

Indeed, we can only say, if we have faith, that God can write straight with crooked lines. That’s what St. Teresa of Avila said when she referred to the fact that in spite of all our human weaknesses, God can still achieve his purpose. Another saint also said that God can write perfectly even with a leg of a table. So, we should not worry so much!

And St. Paul has something to say along this line: “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong…” (1 Cor 1 27)

On our part, we should try not to overreact when we notice the weaknesses and even the mistakes of our Church leaders. What we have to do is to first of all pray and offer sacrifices, and then slowly but seriously and charitably exert the effort to resolve whatever issues are involved.

Our Church leaders are also human beings who have their own share of the woundedness of our human condition here on earth. No matter how well selected they have been, it’s a fact of life that this condition of human woundedness would always be around.

Let’s not be easily scandalized by what may cause us consternation, disbelief and worry due to some actuations of our Church leaders. We should just tackle the issues involved calmly and in the presence of God, so we can manage to handle them and resolve them properly.

We should not be surprised that the ways of God can go beyond or even break our usual mold of thinking and understanding. It’s in these instances that God would be trying to bring us to another level of thinking and understanding. The spiritual and supernatural ways of God often defy our human ways.

When we find it hard to accept certain things that our Church leaders would tell us, let’s pray harder, asking for more grace, and do whatever pertinent human effort like further study and consultations would be called for. Let’s avoid the temptation of separating from the Church because of our disagreement with some of our Church leaders.

Sad to say, that’s what happened with some men and women who put up their own churches, inflicting cracks on the only Church Christ founded.