A priest reminded me, after hearing my confession, that this life is a vale of tears.
I have always thought of God's mercy being distributed over this continuum of suffering, here and there, providing relief at crucial junctures, keeping us from completely losing hope: A job found just when the bank is about to foreclose, a sick child recovering after a long illness, a couple reunited with just enough love left to keep going into the unknown future. I never thought of it as an overflowing cup. I never thought of it as a horn of plenty. God's mercy, while always welcome, seemed like stale bread rationed meagerly amongst starving prisoners.
I realized, praying at mass last night, that someday I would see this cornucopia of mercy. Someday I will sit at a full table of salvation. Someday the last tear will be wiped away. My scars will no longer ache. I will never fear for my children again. I will be able to hear with both ears again. I will see with both eyes.
Someday, after I die, the greatest mercy will be revealed to me and given to me. At that point, the horizon will stretch out to eternity and there will be no suffering along the rest of my path. And my path will be everyone's path and the presence of so many people on this one narrow path will result in no jostling, no maneuvering for position, but only inexplicable harmony. And we will be ever filled with wonder that a greater joy, a greater harmony, waits always before us and all suffering is left behind for ever.
What a mystery this life is: seeming so momentous, so significant. Yet the greatest moment is always ahead. And the significance of our eternity is infinitely greater than even those moments of greatest inportance in life: birth, marriage, sex, victory, defeat, death.
Mercy, which seems to have been apportioned with such miserliness, will be revealed as infinite when all our sins of the past and all our fears for the future are erased and the present becomes an unceasing surfeit of joy and love.
1 comment:
Very well said. Fully eloquent, pious, and beautiful.
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