Last month, I
quoted something from Madeleine L’Engle’s The
Irrational Season. Actually, that’s
a special book for me. I got a copy of
it many years ago, and later gave it to Banu, the one who was to be my wife!
It’s a truly
wonderful work, filled with heart and wisdom.
Here is the way L’Engle finishes her book (with a nod to St. John of the
Cross “in the evening”):
“We have much
to be judged on when [Christ] comes, slums and battlefields and insane asylums,
but these are symptoms of our illness, and the result of our failures in
love. In the evening of life we shall be
judged on love, and not one of us is going to come off very well, and were it
not for my absolute faith in the loving forgiveness of my Lord I could not call
on him to come.”
At various
times, I’ve seen tee shirts and stickers commenting on the Lord’s return. “Jesus is coming back, and boy, is he going to
be p*ssed off!” Remove love from the equation,
and I suppose that might be a possibility.
Still, L’Engle
concludes, “But his love is greater than all our hate, and he will not rest
until Judas has turned to him, until Satan has turned to him, until the dark
has turned to him; until we can all, all of us without exception, freely return
his look of love with love in our own eyes and hearts. And then, healed, whole, complete but not
finished, we will know the joy of being co-creators with the one to whom we
call.”
St.
Paul says God has given Jesus the name above all names, so “at the name of
Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth.” Maybe he really means it.
Imagine
joining every creature—every
creature—in “freely [returning] his look of love with love in our own eyes and
hearts.” And when all is said and done,
we will be “healed,
whole, complete but not finished.” We
will not be finished: love always makes room for more love.
