in the evening

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.

“Amen.  Even so, come Lord Jesus.”