“Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
These oft-quoted lines from the Serenity Prayer are oft-quoted for a reason. Can anyone claim to have nailed down this wisdom? Instead, the quest of said wisdom is usually plagued by anguish and self-doubt.
If I speak, will I offer healing or reinforce the chasm between us? Is this a situation where I need to speak up and assert the truth or is this an opinion of mine that can stay unspoken for now?
In the Italian biopic Miracle Man, Padre Pio is tormented by his inability to decipher God’s will in moments of suffering especially. In one scene, the friar laments: “Everything is a sin!”
When we get closer to the Lord, our sin seems all the more ugly and complicated. And yet, on the outside, we are “doing everything right.” We are checking all the right boxes for holiness. We are like the rich young man who has followed every law from his youth but was ultimately unable to completely abandon his goods – and thus, his heart – to Jesus.
When Jesus heals the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath, he first turns to the scribes and Pharisees and says: “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it?” Meaning that if he does not heal the man with the obvious infirmity it would be akin to destroying his life.
How could choosing not to heal be the same as destroying? Jesus is showing us how to love from a deeper place rather than simply following the letter of the law and leaving it there.
We destroy life when we neglect to tell the truth to someone who is in grave error. We destroy life when we neglect to make peace with someone when we have the power to offer forgiveness or speak from the heart. We destroy life when we let someone suffer despair and we don’t tell them about Jesus and his love for them. We destroy life when we do not pray for healing for those who are in pain; be mental, spiritual, or physical.
This is what Padre Pio meant when he said, “Everything is a sin.” If we are able to better someone’s life and we withhold mercy, are we not destroying someone’s life?
It is easier to not change. Changing always means some degree of discomfort and effort. It’s always easier to opt out or to convince ourselves that it’s not our business. Difficult conversations aren’t for days like today. It takes less energy to emotionally remove ourselves and there is considerably less mess.
Or is there?
We learn from the writings of St. Thomas Aquinas that God is pure simplicity; there is no contradiction in him and no duplicity. We are the complicated ones. In fact, in our abstaining from giving people the healing they desperately need, we are the ones making the mess in the holy order of things.
God is perfect communion and unity; he cannot deal in half truths or empty “you do you” platitudes. He is also perfect charity. Life in Christ means living in the truth, with love. Anything other than this is disorder.
If we are not people of prayer with solid spiritual direction, we will most certainly struggle with healthy boundaries and scrupulosity. If the people in our charge are suffering because we are out “saving lives,” the odds are we are destroying life on the home front. God and our vocation should get the first fruits of our labours and the rest of it is for charity.
As Dorothy Day would say, “if you have two coats, the second one belongs to the poor.” Once our children have their daily bread, we can pray about where the excess emotional energy and missionary zeal should land.
Whose life will you save today?