In the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, Paul ends a long, challenging admonition by stating: You must never grow weary of doing what is right. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul virtually repeats the Norwegian proverb: Let us not become weary of doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.

This sounds so simple and yet it cuts to the heart of many of our moral struggles. All of us experience tension in our lives: tension in other people, tension in the church, tension in our communities and tension within our conversations around other people, politics and current events. Being good-hearted people, we carry that tension with patience and respect, graciousness, and forbearance - for a while! Then, at a certain point, we feel ourselves stretched to the limit; we grow weary of doing what is right, feel something snap inside us and hear some inner-voice say: "Enough! I’ve put up with this too long! I won’t tolerate this anymore!". Then we let go, unlike the little boy clinging to the ice and waiting for rescue. We let go of patience, respect, graciousness and forbearance, either by venting and giving back in kind or simply by fleeing the situation with an attitude of good riddance. Either way, we refuse to carry the tension any longer.

However, that exact point, when we have to choose between giving up or holding on, carrying tension or letting it go, is a crucial moral place - one that determines character: big-heartedness, nobility of character, deep maturity and spiritual sanctity often manifest themselves around these questions. How much tension can we carry? How great is our patience and forbearance? How much can we put up with?

Mature Christians put up with a lot of tension in helping to absorb the immaturities and sins of their churches. Men and women are noble of character precisely when they can walk with patience, respect, graciousness and forbearance amid crushing and unfair tensions; when they never grow weary of doing what is right.

Yet all of this will not be easy. It’s the way of long loneliness, with many temptations to let go and slip away.

The Gospel points out that, before his conversion, Zacchaeus was a short man, someone lacking in height but that, after his conversion, the tall man gave back what the small man had stolen. Meeting Jesus, it seems, made Zacchaeus grow bigger in stature.

That’s what goodness does to us, it makes us grow taller.

Our days are divided up between those moments when we are big-hearted, generous, warm, hospitable, unafraid, wanting to embrace everyone and those moments when we are petty, selfish, over-aware of the unfairness of life, frightened and seeking only to protect ourselves and our own safety and interests. We are both tall and short at the same time and either of these can manifest itself from minute to minute.

Yet, as we all know, we are most truly ourselves when what’s tall in us takes over and gives back to the world what the short, petty person wrongly takes. St John of the Cross made this insight the centre-piece of his theology of healing.    

We heal not by confronting all of our wounds and selfishness head-on - which would overwhelm us and drown us in discouragement - but by growing to what he calls “our deepest centre”. For him, this centre is not first of all some deep place of solitude inside the soul but, rather, the furthest place of growth that we can attain; the optimum of our potential. Thus, if John of the Cross were your spiritual director and you went to him with some moral flaw or character deficiency, his first counsel would be: What are you good at? What have you been blessed with? Where, in your life and work, does God’s goodness and beauty most shine through? If you can grow more and more towards that goodness, it will fan into an ever larger flame which eventually will become a fire that cauterises your faults. To walk tall means to walk within our God-given dignity. Nothing else, ultimately, gives us so large an identity. That’s useful, too, to remember when we challenge each other: Gospel-challenge doesn’t shame us with our pettiness, it invites us to what’s already best inside us.

We are here to day because Mother Millicent and her disciples have walked tall, have persevered. What will the next hundred years hold for this place? We do not know but we are called to persevere, to continue growing tall like Zacchaeus.