Losing your balance and falling down can happen at any age, though it is more common among the very young and the very old. I recently saw a little girl, no more than two years old, following her mother on a leading string. She was so mesmerized by the sight of a nun that she kept walking while looking back at me, ran into the arm of a seat, and fell plump on her diapers. She was so small that it was no more than a six-inch fall, and the diapers cushioned her bottom very efficiently. Her mother stopped to reprove her, but the toddler got up unhurt and went on her way.
I want to share two incidents in my life of falling as a child — one of which I remember and the other that I only know from my mother’s telling me about it. That last one happened when I, too, was a toddler. My mother and I were both on our lawn, my mother sitting in a lawn chair and me toddling around on the grass. I suddenly fell down and started to howl. My mother looked at me, saw that I wasn’t at all hurt (was I also wearing cushioning diapers?), and she calmly called out, “Come over here and I will pick you up.” Since I am still alive and untraumatized, I assume that I did indeed pick myself up and go on living.
The other incident was quite different. It happened when I was eight or nine years old. My mother was trying to park our car in a very small space, so she told me to get out and leave the passenger door open so that she could see how close she was to the curb. I did so, and as she was maneuvering the car, I skipped back and forth on the sidewalk, then suddenly slipped and sat down hard on the concrete, with nothing to cushion me. I sat there gasping, unable to move. This time my mother didn’t say anything about me going over to her. She parked the car as fast as she could, got out, picked me up, and took me straight to our doctor, who fortunately was on the next block. He picked me up under the arms and jiggled me up and down until he was sure that I hadn’t suffered any compression of my spine.
Two similar incidents, two very different responses on the part of my mother. In both situations, she recognized what was needed, and she met me where I really was. In the first case, I had a slight bump, and in the second I had what could be a serious injury. What if she had reversed her responses? What if she had rushed to pick me up from the grass, but had told me to get myself up from the concrete and had not taken me to the doctor?
“Come over here and I will pick you up” is an amusing response in an amusing situation. “Come over here and I will pick you up” given as a response in a serious situation is not in the least amusing. It is a shocking expression of indifference to a person in need.
Unfortunately, while such a response is hopefully rare in physical accidents, it is far too common in moral and spiritual matters — more politely phrased, of course. “You are divorced and remarried? Get your marriage regularized, and then we can discuss any participation in the life of our parish.” “You are attracted to members of the same sex? You have a gambling compulsion? You have had an abortion? You have a drug addiction? Repent and overcome these temptations, and then you will be welcome at our Masses.” “You entered this country illegally? Get out — we will make sure that you do — and then we may arrange for you to live here, especially if you are a white South African.”[i] Such replies can hardly be described as meeting people “where they are.” They are, at best, statements of the requirements set by one party for any possible interaction.
Requirements are necessary for any social organization. That is simply an obvious fact. Any organized group has its parameters — parameters that describe its reality in cultural, religious, or legal phraseology. It is perfectly valid that the members of the group can decide who does and who does not qualify to become members. It is simply a matter of law and order. Once the laws of the group are established, seeing that they are maintained is part of a well-ordered life of the group.
But that is where Catholicism differs from other groups. The Catholic faith does not exist to establish a well-ordered society of any kind. It is not aimed at “order” at all. It is aimed at communion, which goes far beyond any kind of law and order. This is obvious from the first pages of the Bible. Adam and Eve broke the only commandment they were given. God could have simply deported them from paradise forever and left it at that. Instead, he asked them why they broke the law. Without any expression of regret, they each blamed someone else. He realized that they had in effect been tempted and had succumbed to the temptation. Again, he could have left it at that. He could have said that they had been weak and they would have to live with the effects of their weakness, and that was all there was to it.
But he didn’t. True, they and we, their descendants, have had to live with the results of their weaknesses and their decision, but that was not all there was to it in God’s view. Living with the results of their wrong decision was just as far as justice goes, but God intended more than justice in his creation. He intended his creation to be a sharing in his own communion, and he would not allow anyone to cancel that intention. Instead of choosing the justice of letting us endure the results of our own decisions, he became himself our justice[ii] and he not only paid for our transgressions, he became our source of communion with God. Jesus entered our world and became one with us in order that we might become one with him and the Father in the Holy Spirit. He met us where we were so that we might meet him where he is.
The Catholic faith will always challenge every human being and every human organization because humanity lost the capacity for communion in the garden of Eden. It is only on the hill of Calvary that communion again became possible — not just communion with God but even communion with one another. “The closer people come to God, the closer they come to one another.”
But this demands more than laws and government action. Communion demands going out to actual people and seeking to find what we can do to live in unity with them — to meet them where they are and to do what we can to help them to be all that God wills them to be.
Law and order are necessary in every society, but they are not enough. The Catholic Church will always be a challenge to every government and every organization because the Church reminds them that every social entity is called to be an organ of communion. Unless a government can bring about communion, it is not governing a country; it is only directing an organization. Only communion makes a group of people a living reality. Jesus looked up to heaven and said, “Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one… I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”[iii]
Notes
[i] See the eligibility requirements for the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for South Africans.
[ii] See 2 Cor 5:21: “For he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”
[iii] Jn 17:11, 20–21.
Photo by Matt Collamer on Unsplash
Sr. Gabriela of the Incarnation, O.C.D. (Sr. Gabriela Hicks) was born in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, in the Gold Rush country of California, which she remembers as heaven on earth for a child! She lived a number of years in Europe, and then entered the Discalced Carmelite Monastery in Flemington, New Jersey, where she has been a member for forty years. www.flemingtoncarmel.org.
Popular Posts