Glory to Jesus Christ. I'm Mother Natalia, a Byzantine Catholic nun from Christ to the bridegroom

monastery and this is Pines with Aquinas. Today I'm giving my second part of the two-part series

on That's Not the Point.

Last weekend, as I was already kind of having this topic in mind,

I spoke at a retreat for Roman Catholic women out in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, and I was

there on the day that for Romans was the Feast of St. Matthew, the evangelist.

So we had the readings for the day.

I was praying with them as I was preparing for my talk and this was, they just fit so well in with the topic that I was planning on

presenting which is the same topic that I'm I'm presenting today and the first the the epistle was from St Paul's letter

to the Ephesians it's from the beginning of Ephesians chapter 4. And I want to share just the first couple verses.

St Paul says, I therefore a prisoner for the Lord beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

With all lowliness and meekness, with patience, for bearing one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace.

And I was really, the reason I was struck by this as I was praying with it is because St Paul is talking about how we need to be lowly and meek to be patient and forbear one another in love.

But then we know from Jesus that the second greatest commandment

is to love one another as ourselves.

And so if St Paul is saying that we need to forbear one another with love, then we're called to do the same

with ourselves.

In other words, we can't expect ourselves to be perfect.

So I'm gonna make a statement now.

This is my That's not the point statement.

And I'm gonna really ask everyone to bear with me and hear me out as I go through this because what I'm going to say might sound extremely scandalous.

Not sinning is not the point.

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