During the 4th week of Lent in 2010 my heart returned to God from a stint of a dozen years or so of thought that was far more humanist than Christian. In May of that year I made a general confession, then went for a few days to Shenandoah National Park. It was an exquisite time of walking trails in spring woods while literally being immersed in the clouds.
Perhaps that is why Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken,” came to mind this week as I matched today’s readings with where Lent is taking me. “The Road Not Taken” is a well-known poem. Perhaps you, too, can recall some of its lines:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood/ And sorry I could not travel both/ and be one traveler, long I stood/ And looked down one as far as I could/ To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,/ And having perhaps the better claim,/ Because it was grassy and wanted wear;/ Though as for that the passing there/Had worn them really about the same,”
Lenten Studies
Through Lent I am weekly inspired by the conversations in four Fratelli Tutti discussion groups, three of them made up of A Catholic Moment readers. What is emerging for me from the discussions is the importance of Pope Francis’ call to expand the horizons of our hearts, and the value of deep conversation to bring this about. Before these discussions began, I was drawn to the concept of hearts without boundaries, but I was unsure about its practicalities.
As people share their wisdom and questions each week, the plethora of opportunities for us to live out love without borders becomes clear. Further, as I research, I see how Fratelli Tutti rests solidly on Catholic Social Teaching and Vatican II.
One thing that has been especially true of these groups is a willingness to become vulnerable within the conversation. The dialogues have been marked by willingness to listen to others, willingness to speak from vulnerability. These are conversations that lift up–and soften–hearts, so that God may write on them. As hearts soften, people’s words go deep with both Truth and Compassion. They pull me toward God and greater goodness.
As another part of my Lent, I have been reading St. Pope John Paul II’s Veritatis Splendor (The Splendor of Truth). This encyclical explains the foundations of Catholic moral teaching so I can understand them. St. Pope John Paul begins with “People today need to turn to Christ once again in order to receive from him the answer to their questions about what is good and what is evil.” (paragraph 8) He goes on to say, “Only God can answer the question about what is good, because he is the Good itself. To ask about the good, in fact, ultimately means to turn toward God, the fullness of goodness…Goodness that attracts and at the same time obliges man has its source in God, and indeed is God himself.” (paragraph 9)
Veritatis is an answer to questions I have had since college. It traces Catholic moral theology from God’s goodness–to natural law and the Ten Commandments–to human freedom with its call to love—to the importance of seeing God’s standards AND God’s mercy as two sides of the same coin of God’s inherent goodness.
Reading both Fratelli Tutti and Veritatis Splendor has created for me a “Road Not Taken” experience that is integrating what before I saw as opposites. This is Jesus Way of Truth AND Love, Justice AND Mercy. It is a single Way–not a polarity that divides.
Yet I have still been asking, “HOW does this integration happen? How is it happening in me?
This Sunday morning, God answered that, triggered by the St. Meinrad homily I heard.** God has to soften our hearts to write on them, and that softening happens when we become vulnerable to God and others.
Today’s Readings
Today’s readings demonstrate this vulnerable convergence. The first reading is the story of Susannah, a woman wrongly accused of serious sexual sin. The Gospel is the story of a woman caught in the act of serious sexual sin. Both come to God in their vulnerability.
In Veritatis Splendor, St. Pope John Paul II says of Susannah, “In reply to the two unjust judges who threatened to have her condemned to death if she refused to yield to their sinful passion, she says: ‘I am hemmed in on every side. For if I do this thing, it is death for me; and if I do not, I shall not escape your hands. I choose not to do it and to fall into your hands, rather than to sin in the sight of the Lord.’ Susannah, preferring to fall innocent into the hands of the judges, bears witness not only to her faith and trust in God but also to her obedience to the truth and to the absoluteness of the moral order. By her readiness to die a martyr, she proclaims that it is not right to do what God’s law qualifies as evil in order to draw some good from it. Susannah chose for herself the ‘better part’: hers was a perfectly clear witness, without any compromise, to the truth about the good and to the God of Israel.” (Paragraph 91) And, through Daniel, God saved her.
Today’s Gospel speaks of the importance of the other side of God’s way. This woman has done what is forbidden. Yet Jesus shows her mercy. “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and sin no more.” This story of Jesus tells of the mercy of God when evil is faced with vulnerability. This scene occurs during Holy Week. Jesus enemies may slink away quietly today, but, like the evil-intending judges in the story of Susannah, their intentions do not go away. Their hearts do not soften. They return in Gethsemane on Holy Thursday night.
However, in this case it is God Himself who chooses to make himself vulnerable for Goodness. Jesus saves the woman from being stoned, but he takes her place. Jesus, too, upholds the good—even though the woman is guilty. God chooses to be martyred—rather than accept as inevitable the evil in the woman or in her accusers.
This tells me something very important about God and God’s standards: they create goodness and flourish when we are vulnerable, open–to the “you shall nots” as well as to the “you shalls,” to cultivation of the good in us, and to the good in others. And that “we” is everyone.
As St. Pope John Paul says (and Pope Francis quotes), God’s standards are “the unshakable foundation and solid guarantee of a just and peaceful human coexistence, and hence of genuine democracy, which can come into being and develop only on the basis of the equality of all its members, who possess common rights and duties. When it is a matter of the moral norms prohibiting intrinsic evil, there are no privileges or exceptions for anyone…In the end, only a morality which acknowledges certain norms as valid always and for everyone, with no exception, can guarantee the ethical foundation of social coexistence, both on the national and international levels.” (paragraph 97 in Veritatis Splendor, in Fratelli Tutti, paragraph 209)
In this way, too, the social doctrine of Fratelli Tutti joins with the moral doctrine of Veritatis Spendor. They form one seamless garment of God’s love.
Back on the Road
Perhaps you remember the last verse of Frost’s poem: “I shall be telling this with a sigh/Somewhere ages and ages hence:/ Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–/I took the one less traveled by,/And that has made all the difference.”
In a sense, for me this week, it is more accurately “Two roads CONVERGED in a wood:” The wood of the cross. The wood of God’s choice to be vulnerable, rejecting sin, yet accepting and loving all of us who sin. Jesus took that road less traveled–to lead the way for us.
Prayer:
Lord, I do not know where this converged-in-the-wood-of-your-cross road leads. It seems to turn quickly into the undergrowth. It is a “BOTH-AND” road. The BOTH-AND of it makes it a road less traveled. The BOTH-AND of it leads me to prayer and a yearning for more softness of heart. Thank you! Lead me, guide me, Lord.
**The homily I heard by Fr. Thomas at St. Meinrad can be heard here. It begins at minute 18.
