Dar Vida

“ ‘It is not that which gives you life’ ” (Luke 12:15). 

It is strange to admit this, but right now I wonder what this Bolivian journey has been all about. What has happened, and what is next? 

I am thinking of Jesus’ parable of the foolish rich man and his dream of bigger barns in the Gospel of Luke. I am thinking of Jesus’ stern words of God: “This very night your life will be taken from you” (Luke 12:20). What I could give while living in Cochabamba has been limited by my language skills and lack of social capital, but more than that it has been limited by my love or lack of it. I have a greed for my own place, my own time, my own way. I have a greed for having it my own way and changing the way when it no longer suits me, even though I elected it. Basically, I want to be my own dictator. I want to rule myself, and in so wanting I become a tyrant to everyone else. That is not right. But Jesus interrupts these machinations to tell me, as he tells the avaricious brother seeking property, “It is not that which gives you life.” Most of the time, all I do is seek to save or safeguard this life. Protecting life is not the same as creating life or sharing life. It is not the same as giving life. And all God does is give. All I ever do is take; that is, take by force more than I receive in peace. Certainly, I take more than I give. But I know I can give, for I have done it before. But to give more constantly, more fully, in prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, I hesitate to do or I ignore entirely. Not the right place, not the right time, or so I say. This is not the way of Jesus Christ. It is my wayward way. 

What has this Bolivian journey been all about, and what is next? Learning a language was not the end, but a means to an end. But many times I feel that I have forgotten what the end is. Or if I knew it, I chose not to pay mind to it. I am a religious brother with the Capuchin Franciscans by the grace of God for the sake of Christ and the kin(g)dom of heaven. That is the end. Is that all there is? What it is to be a brother in Jesus and Francis is less clear to me now than it was before I came to Bolivia. How I am to live a life of discipleship as a consecrated brother is also less clear to me today. Finally, both my love and God’s love, my desire and God’s desire, are a mystery more obscure to me today than it was six months ago. What is God’s love that it gives me life? And how (and why) should I give that life over to God’s love? I am not asking to be clever or to test Jesus. I am seeking.

It is almost eleven o’clock, late morning on a sunny Saturday, another beautiful day in Bolivia. Why is it that I have come here? I have been dipped into love, but now I feel dried up and dried out. It does not make sense to me. I do not know what has happened, but something happened here in Bolivia. God is doing things. God is giving me life. And God wants all of it back, transformed—transubstantiated. How strange it is.