Eugene acknowledges that his conversion has to be an on-going process – he is not yet “immersed in God.”
…Thus I went against all his plans, by my fault; I had even rendered the attainment of some of them an impossibility for the future. If I am to believe what my teachers tell me, I was quite talented, and if I had wanted I might have become a very accomplished person; I did not so wish and I shall never be more than a mediocrity. May God pardon the consequences of this fault that persisted right through my youth and will survive in its effects throughout my lifetime and after.
Since my conversion there has been, it is true, a certain change, but I have nothing to be complacent about in my actions; how far I am indeed from bringing to them the purity of intention God demands. I am not yet, – indeed, far from it – immersed in God. Always I find self where I should count for naught. I strip my Master, but alas, my petty larcenies, far from enriching me, impoverish me, the gold as it passes through my hands ends up in smoke, or rather worse still, I am left with nothing but filth.
Retreat Journal, December 1814, O.W. XV n.130
I do so struggle with Eugene’s language sometimes – it seems so ‘extreme’. And yet when I reflect on how I write in my journal I realise that I am a little bit similar – in the privacy of that particular type of conversation it does not seem at all extreme because of all that is behind/beside/wrapped-up in those words.
Eugene does not seem to be complaining or guilty of what “he could have done or where he could have gone” in life – he is simply stating a truth about himself as a human. And he talks of his ongoing struggle – in fact his life-long struggle to be anything more than that. I hear him saying that ‘outside’ of God he will always be mediocre and of little value.
It is tied in somehow with what Richard Rohr has been writing about the last few days (months and more). We hold ourselves separate from God (the ego/mind) – this is natural but of itself is not healthy or ever good enough. In a sense we try to make ourselves worthy. We can never ever do that – and we don’t have to because God has made us worthy. Rohr writes: “We cannot create our union with God from our side. It is objectively already given to us by the Holy Spirit who dwells within us.” Eugene was constantly having to let go (of the ego) in order to be able to live out his “all for God”.