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John
Macallan Swan. The Prodigal Son.
1888.
Tate Gallery. London.
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I
would like to place on the table a few words about the broader Catholic moral
imagination. An aspect of our contemporary Catholic culture is the increasing
difficulty we have picturing how providence manifests itself. I do not mean
giving a theological account of God’s governance, I mean shedding a little
light on how everyday Catholics live and pray it. God’s governance in history
expresses itself primarily through human agency. This is for a Catholic
something so deep in our theological tradition and in our habitual awareness
that in a memory-blocked age, we can forget where it comes from.
I
had it taught to me by my Grandmother, who used to rise early in the morning to
pray several Rosaries. And when I would ask her what she prayed for, she would
tell me that she prayed for all her grandchildren, especially the ones far
away. She said simply that she prayed that if ever they are in trouble, God
would put a kind and generous soul in their path to help them. She was a
realist, that is to say, she knew her grandchildren, my older cousins, were
quite capable of finding all sorts of trouble. But she was a woman of faith,
and trusted to God that He would find ways to help them. Mostly, that meant He
would put the right people in their path.
The
mirror image of that kind of perception, available to anyone with faith and a
little imagination, is that we are also all potentially answers to some
grandmother’s prayer in some place far away. Indeed, the generosity God
inspires in each one of us today is his answer to someone’s prayer.
This
imaginative perception communicated to me by my grandmother is an echo of the
lived transmission of the faith, and of many a hagiographical account. Perhaps
most famously in the tradition is the account of Saint Francis and his encounter
with the Leper. Surely the Leper prayed for a touch of human compassion, and
surely God inspired something in Francis to respond in the way he did.[1] But
Francis also prayed to know Christ most intimately, and in the Leper found
Christ waiting. This awareness is present also in the stories told today among
immigrants of the mysterious figure of Santo Toribio Romo, who is said to
emerge from the desert to assist an immigrant who has lost his way and is in
danger of perishing.
The
daily perceptions of providence exist principally within the ethos of charity;
that is to say, within an imaginative vision of life that sees cohesion in the
grace God gives to a generous human heart, and the care for those who are in
trouble. Even in a wounded world, people find themselves crossing paths with
someone who will not abandon them to disaster. The parable of the Good
Samaritan is prototypical of this perspective maintained in faith
And
one could imagine the Father of the prodigal son praying in the way my Grandmother
described, asking that someone be placed in his son’s life to render him aid in
the moment of need. It is doubtful that the older brother bothered to pray this
way, and indeed, the older brother’s unwillingness to go seek his younger
brother is one of the “indictments by absence” present in the parable. I say
this because a Christological reading of the parable takes note of how it begs
for the sending of the “first born” to the aid of the younger sibling.
A
couple of years ago I met a young man in Honduras, 16 years old. His parents
were either dead or gone, he didn’t say. He had recently been summarily
deported from Mexico. He told me he had tried 5 times to get the United States,
because there was nothing for him at home; the gangs would kill him if he stayed. He said he would try again. He wanted
to have a life, he said, a job, maybe a little house and get married. And if he
didn’t make it to the US, he would try to live in Mexico. At least there, he
said, you can have a life. I
think of this young man often.
I do
not tell you about him to stir your sentiments. I tell you because there are
thousands like him, who live at the edge of human society, They are the ones
told there is no room for you here, and there is no room for you anywhere else.
A world without charity or compassion says "it is not our concern what happens to you".
He
is just one young man. Maybe he is still alive, maybe he is in Mexico; maybe he has a grandmother somewhere
praying for him. And maybe someone will respond to him. But our political activity as Catholics
must keep faith with him if we are to keep faith with Christ. We can't do
everything, but neither can we pretend
he is not out there. Our response to him is not unrelated to the question of
our own salvation.
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