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A distinction must be made between "nice" people and "awful" people.
The nice people think they are good; the awful people know they are not. The nice people never believe they do wrong, or break a commandment, or are guilty of any infraction of the moral law. If they do anything that reason would call wrong, they have various ways of explaining it away. Goodness is always their own, but badness is due to something outside of themselves. Some say that it is due to economic circumstances: one will say, "I was born too rich," and another, "I was born too poor." Psychology also comes in handy to explain away their faults, for example, "I have an Oedipus complex," or an "Electra complex."
The awful people, on the contrary, generally are not rich enough to be psycho-analysed; they have never been introduced to their subconscious; and they think themselves just plain bad. Nice people, if they are guilty of intemperance, will call themselves alcoholics. Awful people just call themselves drunkards - sometimes just plain "bums". The nice people say they have a disease. The drunkards say, "I am no good." The nice people judge themselves by the vices from which they abstain; the awful people judge themselves by the virtues from which they have fallen...
Society has no place either for those who are too good or for those who are too bad. It is only the mediocre who survive. That is why on the Hill of Calvary Our Lord was crucified with two thieves. They were too bad for conventional morality; Our Lord was too good. Often during His lifetime, Our Lord always associated with "those awful people". He tells the story of the prodigal son who was preferred before his virtuous brother. He praises a son who rebelled and repented, rather than the one who professed loyalty and then failed. He rejoices in the lost sheep that was found and the lost coin that was recovered, because the Gospel that He preached was not a condemnation of obvious badness, but rather a condemnation of obvious goodness.
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The nice people do not find God, because, denying personal guilt, they have no need of a Redeemer. The awful people, who are passionate, sensual, warped, lonely, weak, but who nevertheless make an attemot at goodness, are quick to realise that they need another help than their own; that they cannot lift themselves by their own bootstraps. Their sins create an emptiness. From that point on, like the woman taken in sin, it is "Christ or nothing".
What surprises there will be on the Last Day when the awful people are found in the Kingdom of Heaven: "The harlots and the publicans will enter the Kingdom of Heaven before the Scribes and the Pharisees." The surprises will be threefold: first, because we are going to see a number of people there whom we never expected to see. Of some of them will we say, "How did he get here? Glory be to God, look at her!" The second surprise will be not seeing a number of the nice people whom we expected to see. But these surprises will be mild compared with the third and greatest surprise of all, and that surprise will be that we are there.
From Life Is Worth Living (Second Series).
