Este Año

“Whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12).

The sky is blue and bright this morning in Cochabamba as I sit on the southern balcony overlooking the cloister garden and, beyond the convent, the mountains. My enjoyment would be perfect if not for something in the air irritating my eyes. Is it something in the grass, something flowering, pollinating now? Brother Leo was explaining to me last night that it is humo, or smoke. As the nights grow slightly colder, many a household burns wood and other combustibles for heat. Contaminants get into the air. It’s a regular feature of life in Cochabamba, and it only gets worse in winter. Well, whatever the case, I will have to get accustomed to it, sooner than later, I hope. I may need eye drops and allergy medicine to deal with the redness and irritation. Being awake, I wish to keep my eyes open all the time to what God, my vision, presents to me.

The quotation from Saint Paul has an ominous ring to it at first hearing. It sounds a little menacing. Bitter medicine and tough love. But I hear humility and wisdom in the warning. I hear Paul saying, Who has not fallen? Who has ever been made secure, truly secure, by their own effort? Who has not lost their way? Who has not come up short? Who has not done wrong, and in fact done grave wrong once or more than once? Here in Paul’s words I hear a bracing declaration of equality: we are equal in weakness, equal in sin; hence, equal in dependence on grace, equally in need of forgiveness. Do you think you are special? I hear Paul say (maybe with his characteristic sneer). Well, do you want to be so special as to exempt yourself from the human condition and thereby exclude yourself from the holy mystery of God embracing and exalting the human condition, and all of creation that cradles it? Do you want to be special? Then let yourself be seen as you really are and let yourself be sought by the one who loves you the murderer, you the thief, you the arsonist and destroyer, you the cheater and the taker, and you the accomplice, and you the enabler, and you the indifferent, you the ignorant. Everybody loves the lovely! Let God love not only the lovable you but also the unlovable you. Everybody loves the innocent. But for some reason God really likes those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death—and also those who throw dark shadows; and God delights in pulling them into the light. Blessed are those who know that they dwell in the darkness; who know they have not changed the world; who know the world has changed them; who know they have fallen and do not know how to rise. How wonderful it is when the dawn from on high breaks upon them and they see the light. How wonderful it is when the down and out are spoken to and both given the command to rise and a hand to help them up.

How blessed are we to be the survivors of sin, our own sins and the sins of others that bring serious suffering. This is what I hear in Jesus’ troubling words in Luke 13 about the tragedy of the Siloam tower collapse or the torture of the Galileans by Pilate. You are still here. You have lived to tell. You are not special because you survived. You are special because you are loved. You are special because you can be changed. You are special because you can still say Yes. Will you say Yes? God’s choice has already been made; it is the difference. Your choice has not been made yet; it makes the difference, it makes the difference of God real here and now.

There still is time to make the difference. This is the hope, hard and costly, held out in Jesus’ parable of the fig tree. The barren tree gets one more year of life. So do we. Our lives are always lived in the last times, I am convinced. Every generation lives in its own last times, its own final age. Our lifespan, our generation, is the one more year given, the year left alone. The three barren years, the old ages, are past. All we have is this life, this year left alone. It comes with the fortification of grace and fresh soil and fertilizer for withered roots and exhausted earth. And we can grow. Our limbs, our bodies can ascend, bear life, touch life itself.

“Whoever thinks he is standing secure should take care not to fall.” This admonition applies everywhere, in the places I have loved, like Boston and where I am now; and in the places where I have had to struggle to find a way home, like Baltimore and New York City. My home is God. My way is Jesus. My compass is the Holy Spirit.

If there is any security, it is in the faith that I have been accepted, not in the false pride that tells me I am special because I am still standing. I will not stand forever. I will fall. Everyone falls, everyone has fallen, everyone will fall. And everyone is mortal. But that doesn’t have to matter if we fall into God or stand up into God. And God is here today. Somewhere, God is taking off the murderer’s shoes. Somewhere, God is blinding the persecutor. Somewhere, God is magnifying her greatness in a frightened girl. Somewhere, God is sparing a fig tree. Somewhere, God is still speaking. And if we see a little more and hear a little more, then we can say Yes a little more. Because we don’t want to fall away into nothingness. We do not want to fall into fate like those with no hope. The future is not fated. The future is still being born and will never cease to be born. We can from this year, this day, this very day, go into that future, fall into and rise into that future.