From Here To Holiness

A humanly unbridgeable wide and deep chasm separates the here and now from the somewhere up there and a time not yet here.  It is wide because of the countless permutations of Sin; it is deep because of the repetitive and the injurious nature of such sins.  In other words, the larger the variety of sins one commits, the wider the chasm, the more often one commits such sins and the more serious the harm that result from their commission, the deeper.

Man alone cannot bridge the chasm because he is naturally predisposed to Sin and all its variations.  Sin is like an opportunistic virus that seeks man as Its host, taking over his entire being when he is weak and unable to resist It.  Man is always defenseless against the lure of Sin.  Only when man attaches himself to God and prayer is he able to inoculate himself against Sin.  Like all inoculations, man's belief in God and prayer does not mean he will be free from the influence of Sin and will no longer suffer the consequences of Its manifestations--it merely lessens the intensity of his suffering when he contracts Sin.

For man to avoid Sin entirely, God has to intervene in an extraordinary way.  When God became man, Jesus was able to resist all temptations Sin had to offer because He was conceived by the Holy Spirit.  The Mother of God, the Blessed Virgin Mary, was made pure by God and led an undefiled and inviolate life.  No one else before Jesus Christ and the Blessed Virgin Mary had anyone received the full grace of God to live a sinless life, and no one since.  Only by the extraordinary grace of God can one resist Sin and all Its manifestations.  Certainly, no one at present has it.

Indeed, many live their lives today in Sin and totally oblivious of the chasm between them and God.  They are smug--self-righteous without a scintilla of humility or charity.  Smugness itself is a sin and in my opinion, one of the very serious, for it is a self-ordained perfection that rests entirely on one's self-serving pride and flaunts the need for God, if God is even in the periphery.

For the smug ones, bridging their chasm will be difficult. Almost as challenging, albeit in a different way, will be for those who are scrupulous, for holiness is at the intersection of Truth and Perfection at a place somewhere up there that is not and cannot be found here.