At last, at one year and four months old, our daughter is learning to walk. While she trucks along, she giggles like a mad woman; I coo, “Look at you go! You’re so good at walking!”
Dear reader, I hope you won’t be too upset if I tell you she’s not so good at walking. Some days, she manages three or four stumbling steps between Mama and Papa. Usually, though, she likes to toddle around in the grass, her little hands gripping my pointer-fingers. (Not that I’m in a hurry for her to let go.)
Every parent will know what I mean when I say that, to me, it’s not a lie. It’s not even an exaggeration. To me, she is very good at walking. I’d rather bumble around the living-room with her than hike Mount Washington with Teddy Roosevelt.
“Love covereth a multitude of sins,” as St. Peter wrote. Of course, not being able to walk isn’t a sin. Not even at sixteen months. Still, I think the quote is apt—not for what it says about sin, but for what it says about love.
Love is overwhelming. It’s so pure, so sweet, that it tends to distract from everything else. That’s why parents lack all sense of proportion when it comes to their kids. Your son’s faults seem tiny, and his achievements enormous. He’s the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen, even if he looks like Steve Buscemi. He’s the cleverest boy in the world, even if he’s dumb as a brick.
That, of course, can be dangerous. My wife and I spoke to a couple the other day who were complaining about all the noisy children at Mass. Meanwhile, their children were screeching like banshees and biting each other’s ankles. Still, that isn’t love’s fault. It’s ours. Love is perfect; we’re not.
What does perfect love look like in the hands of a perfect Father? Let’s ask St. Paul. In his letter to the Colossians he says:
You, being dead in your sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, hath he quickened together with him, having forgiven you all trespasses; blotting out the handwriting of ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to his cross. . . .
This idea of blotting out is everywhere in Scripture. In the Book of Isaiah, God says, “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.” In the Book of Acts, Peter tells the crowds at the Temple, “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord.”
What does it mean to blot out? We hear the expression so often we really don’t consider its literal meaning. But it’s really a beautiful image. Think of blotting pads, blotters, ink blot tests, etc. Basically, it has to do with being soaked in liquid, generally ink.
So, according to Scripture, it’s as if God has been keeping a register of all our wrongdoings. Any single one of them might land you an eternity in Hell. That includes the time when you were ten, when your brother accidentally pulled the arm off your favorite Batman action figure, and you called him an idiot (Matthew 5:22). Yet, when we’re contrite, God takes His inkwell and pours it all over the ledger. Not only does He forgive us: He destroys the evidence.
That’s why, when we get to Heaven—as I pray that we do—God doesn’t say, “I really should send you to Hell, you know, but I’m feeling generous so I’ll let you off.” No. He says, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”
To be clear, He doesn’t say this because we’re all such pious, holy people. As the psalmist cries, “If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?” He says it because He erased the record of our sins. God’s greeting says nothing about us as children and everything about Him as Father. It’s not about our virtue: it’s about His love.
By the time you read this, it will be Good Friday. How’s your Lent going so far?
I haven’t keep any of my resolutions 100 percent. A couple I completely gave up on. And yet, despite all that, it’s still a record best best for me. It certainly wasn’t my worst. That was two years ago, when I was finishing up The Reactionary Mind. I did nothing but drink, smoke, and type. “The worst Lent since Judas Iscariot,” as I called it. Maybe that’s an exaggeration but, if so, only a small one.
If you failed at Lent this year—or any year—I’m not going to give you an excuse. (I haven’t found one.) But I think we should put things in perspective.
The gold standard of Lents was set by Jesus Christ circa 30 A.D. That was the year He spent forty consecutive days and nights in the desert. For over a month, He did nothing but pray. He didn’t eat. He didn’t drink. If He slept, He slept on rocks and sand. By day, He baked in the sun. By night, He froze in the wind. At the end of it all, He still managed to shut down the Devil. And then what did He say? “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
That was a good Lent. The rest of us are like turtles trying to outrun a bullet train.
The good news is that God doesn’t expect us to match His Firstborn. He holds us to the same standard, of course. We’re called to imitate Christ in all things, at all times. But God is perfectly ready to forgive us if we fall short, as we must. That’s why Henry Adams spoke of having to bear his “baby load”. Even then, God gives us all the help we ask for.
That isn’t to say that you don’t have to put in your effort because He’ll just drag you over the finish line anyway. Of course, none of us would make it at all if He didn’t drag us. But He won’t do it just because you’re too lazy to run the race yourself. He certainly won’t help you if you’re presumptuous—if you feel entitled to His help. He’ll only drag you along if you’re totally exhausted, literally dead tired. As always, C. S. Lewis put it best:
Now we cannot . . . discover our failure to keep God’s law except by trying our very hardest (and then failing). . . . Thus, in one sense, the road back to God is a road of moral effort, of trying harder and harder. But in another sense it is not trying that is ever going to bring us home. All this trying leads us up to that vital moment at which you turn to God and say, “You must do this. I can’t.”
That’s our baby load. That’s the point at which we take the Father by His fingers, squeeze as tight as we can, and let Him walk us around the living-room. All the while He coos to us, “Look at you go! You’re so good at walking! Well done, my good and faithful servant.”
That’s God’s love. When we see it for what it is, we can’t help but feel a flash of embarrassment. “Really,” we mumble, “it’s nothing.” And we’re right: it is nothing. But don’t we think God knows that? And yet He couldn’t love us more.
Seeing that, all the shame disappears. It’s blotted out. And there’s nothing left for us to do but to marvel at His goodness—His “unfathomable unselfishness,” as George MacDonald called it.
That, I think, is what Our Lord meant when He said, “Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Heaven is where we can do nothing but bask in God’s fatherly love for us, and bask Him in our little baby love, and we never grow up, and He never lets go.
Friends, that anecdote about Henry Adams is from a book called Delightful People by my friend Stephen Schmalhofer. It’s about those Catholics who influenced the upper echelons of American “society” during its golden age—everyone from Theodore Roosevelt to F. Scott Fitzgerald. You’ll learn about the artist John La Farge, the adventurer Wintie Astor, the churchman Father Cyril Fay, and… well, you have to read it and see.
Also, at the Easter Vigil, we’ll be welcoming our friends Steve and Tommy into full communion with the Catholic Church. Please say a prayer for them, and know that I’m praying for all of you.
Have blessed Good Friday—and, since we won’t speak before then, a happy Easter.
Peace and the Good!