No one doubts the reality that we all fall. I don’t mean the physical stumble, the falling to the ground. I take it in the moral sense of guilt, error, sin. Every day we stumble and we see others stumble. And so it happens that we let slip an angry word that hurts the other; or we hurt ourselves for that inability to cut at once an addiction that chains us; or we catch ourselves lying out of shame; or being too intransigent in unimportant things, or selfish, or authoritarian, or moody without reason, or screwing up…. Why do we tend to be miserly in our spending and stingy in helping those who ask us? How often, even unwittingly, do we fill ourselves with thorns that end up sticking, like pins, in someone’s heart? Bernanos was even more radical when he asserted that “our hidden sins poison the air that others breathe”. The examples can be multiplied. Each of us has a painful memory of our mistakes, even if we find it difficult to recognise them and even more difficult to show them.
This confirms, without the need for proof, that the fall is part of the weakness of our freedom, of the fragility of our will, of the guilt of so many of our decisions. The fall shows that the shameful mark of our vulnerability is imprinted in our DNA. Others suffer from it. We suffer from it too.
But with a difference. There are those who, after a stumble, fall into evil and stay there as calm (or not so calm). Theirs is an attitude of capitulation, or a choice of comfort. They remain splashing in the mire, forgetting the heaven from which they have fallen. This is precisely the vice: “to err and not be corrected”. Mark Twain recognised how hard it is to break free from its chains: “No one gets rid of a habit or a vice by throwing it out of the window at once; it has to be taken out by the ladder, rung by rung”.
However, there are others who have also stumbled, fallen into sin, sunk in the quicksand of error; but they do not resign themselves… That is why they cling to a firm rock, the most secure one, to pull themselves up, with difficulty and humility. These are the ones who try to get up after every fall. They know that falling is inevitable and getting up is optional. They do not give up and try to get back on their feet. Their noble decision makes it easy for them to hear Christ’s own forgiveness of the adulteress: “Neither do I condemn you. You may go and sin no more” (Jn 8:11).
Juan Carlos cmf
(PHOTO: Connor Jalbert)
