The Lord has also given us, for our consolation, these parables of the net with good and bad fish, of the field where wheat grows but also darnel. He lets us know that he has come precisely to help us in our weakness, that he has not come, as he says, to call the righteous, those who claim to be already completely righteous, those who do not need grace, those who pray praising themselves, but that he has come to call those who know they are lacking, to provoke those who know they need the Lord's forgiveness, his grace, every day to move forward.
This seems very important to me: to recognise that we need permanent conversion, we have never simply arrived. St Augustine, at the moment of conversion, thought he had arrived on the heights now of life with God, of the beauty of the sun that is his Word. Then he had to understand that even the path after conversion remains a path of conversion, that it remains a path where there is no lack of great prospects, joys, the lights of the Lord, but where there is also no lack of dark valleys, where we must go forward with confidence leaning on the goodness of the Lord.
[Pope Benedict, on his visit to the Roman Major Seminary 17 February 2007]