I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong. Saint Paul’s powerful words in today’s second reading help us to appreciate the weakness of our faith and spiritual life. Saint Paul asks that his temptations and failures, which he calls the “thorn in his flesh,” be removed. The answer he receives to his prayer is that the grace of Christ is sufficient for him. So often we are discouraged by our failure to overcome the same temptations. We are embarrassed because we seem to commit the same sins over and over again. While it is our desire, and the Lord’s, for us to overcome our sinfulness and to experience true conversion, it may not happen when we want it to, or perhaps, ever. In a strange...