So I was in the yard, wielding the pitchfork, hefting piles of leaves into a bin, when a nice-looking young man called out from the sidewalk, “I could help you!”

“Thank you, but no,” I replied. “I’m getting my exercise.”

He walked over and persisted, “I could do that, and you could give me a couple of dollars. I need a beer real bad.”

I tried to explain that since the city no longer accepts leaves in plastic bags, and we have only two plastic cans, there wasn’t a lot that could be done in one day.

“I’ll do two bins, and you can give me three dollars!”

“No,” I said again. “The doctor wants me to exercise.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he responded, looking sympathetic, evidently commiserating with whatever grave medical condition would inspire doctor-ordered exercise. “But I need beer,” he added pleasantly. “I drink a lot.”

“Why do you drink a lot?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I guess I’m an alcoholic.”

“That’s not so good,” I said.

“Yeah, man. The stuff’ll kill you.”

“Yes, it can. It killed an uncle of mine.”

“For real, man?” (He sounded surprised, as if he had not seriously believed the danger up until now.)

“Yes, he got cirrhosis of the liver and died.”

After a few more moments of conversation, we shook hands, and he headed off toward downtown.

“Have a nice day. God bless you,” he called out.

“You have a nice evening,” I said. “And don’t drink too much beer!”

When I recounted the conversation to Sister Betty, she pointed out that he needs some lessons in marketing, if he really wants to be paid for yard work. I agreed that his sales pitch left something to be desired, but at least he didn’t claim that he needed the money to bury his dear grandma.

All of us are broken in one way or another. Most of us are just better at hiding it – or at least we think we are better at hiding it. And we are all helpless to mend ourselves.

Fertile powerlessness

The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are very spiritually sound. Here are the first three:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol [or substitute here another addiction]—that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

(For the rest of the Twelve Steps, click here.)

Some of us not in AA or other Twelve-Step programs still suffer under the illusion that we can manage our lives by ourselves. Saint Paul, though, knew that he could not.  He heard God telling him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

My power is made perfect, God says, not in your strength, but in your weakness.

Whether we are raking leaves or longing for beer or managing a Fortune 500 corporation, we stand in need of the powerful and tender mercies of the God who loves us.

The fallen spring leaves witness to the new life already emerging on the oaks, which will look scraggly and unkempt for a few weeks. Our own unkempt, ragged hearts, stripped of what we thought was our strength, offer the fertile weakness through which God’s grace brings new life — both for us and for the blessing of the world.

By what boundless mercy, my Savior,
have you allowed me to become a member of your body?
Me, the unclean, the defiled, the prodigal.
How is it that you have clothed me
in the brilliant garment,
radiant with the splendor of immortality,
that turns all my members into light?

Symeon the New Theologian, trans. by John Anthony McGuckin,
The Book of Mystical Chapters:
Meditations on the Soul’s Ascent from the Desert Fathers
and Other Early Christian Contemplatives

Faced with the grandeur and goodness of God, it is normal to feel unworthy. However, the feeling that we are worthless is not from God. There is a big difference between unworthiness and worthlessness. Each one of us is of infinite worth. “You were bought with a price,” says Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians 6.

Where worthiness is concerned, there are, as I see it, at least three stances that are not what we are called to as Christians.

• The “I’m worthy, but it’s doubtful that you are” stance. This is the self-righteous position. I’m afraid that this false sense of worthiness too often raises its head among church people, especially where there is finger-pointing at those we don’t think are quite orthodox enough in their worship or their beliefs—all the while being assured that we ourselves are totally correct with no possibility of error.

• I may not be worthy now, but if I work really hard I can make myself worthy. If I just pray enough and discipline myself enough and do enough good works, I can make myself worthy. This is actually a form of an ancient heresy called Pelagianism, which says, basically, that human beings have the ability to choose the good apart from any movement of God in us, and therefore to save ourselves by our own efforts.

• Despair. The problem with thinking that we have to make ourselves worthy is that no matter how hard we try, we find it’s never enough. We can never be good enough. We can never be unselfish enough or generous enough or forgiving enough or attend enough masses or go to confession often enough or pray well enough to be worthy. So trying to make myself worthy can easily lead to discouragement and eventually to giving up. I can never be worthy, so why try?

But wonder of wonders, we don’t have to be worthy!

In Christ, we are offered the grace to entrust all to the heart of God, and there we are accepted — with our sins, our neuroses, our emotional quirks, our inadequacies, our divided heart — and in the spacious and welcoming heart of God we are shown that peace lies in the handing over of all to God who is always sufficient.

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast.
For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

Ephesians 2:8-10

Two years ago, with the help of Sister Elizabeth, the county housing authority, and a number of generous people, Carol — the mentally ill homeless woman about whom I have written before — finally moved into her own apartment.  One day shortly before Christmas we drove her to sign forms and take care of assorted bits of red tape.  The real estate agent is a compassionate woman who treated Carol with the same courtesy that she would have shown a millionaire.  She took obvious delight in handing over to her the key to the apartment.

Stopping for lunch

After leaving the real estate office, we stopped for lunch at a fast-food restaurant. Carol was too excited to sit still and eat.  She half-danced among the tables, raising her hands and praising Jesus for all to hear.

A woman working there asked if we were from a church group.  I told her that we were Catholic Sisters, and she asked if we were from Saint Augustine parish.  I replied that we do indeed attend Saint Augustine .

“I’m Lulu,” she told me. “I’m on work release.”

“Good for you!” I replied, not knowing what the proper response would be, as being on work-release meant that her place of residence at the moment was prison.  (Should I have said, “Oh, I’m so sorry”?  Or simply, “Oh…”?  On second thought I decided that “Good for you” was appropriate after all, because she is working hard to prove herself a responsible citizen and to take her place in the community.)

“I’d like to be going to Saint Augustine’s,” she added.

“I’ll hope to see you there one day,” I said. And we agreed to pray for each other.

After lunch, Sister Elizabeth, Carol (key in hand), and I headed for Carol’s new home.  In the car she was singing,

O holy night, the stars are brightly shining,
it is the night of the dear Savior’s birth.

Moving in was uncomplicated, as she had few belongings.  Though devoid of furniture, the apartment was warm and clean, with a real bathroom, and a kitchen to prepare the food that she buys with food stamps.

However, while Carol is streetwise, she is not house-wise.  She does not know some of the simplest things most of us take for granted.  She has to be taught the necessity of putting the garbage can out at the curb on the designated day.  Or that you don’t turn the thermostat up as high as it will go to warm the apartment, then turn on the air conditioning when it heats up too much — unless you want to run up a bill impossible to pay and have your electricity turned off.

Getting there in spite of ourselves

Those of us who have been more fortunate than Carol and Lulu — in our parents, in our economic situation, in our mental or physical health — are not for all that closer to the reign of God.  Neither are we more worthy of the Christ who comes, just because we have never been in jail or in need of food and shelter.  All is gift for each of us, including what we imagine we have merited.  We have not earned the good things in our lives any more than Lulu, who is for the moment not even free to come and go as she pleases – or than Carol, who must be approved for SSI if she is to stay in her new lodging.

This is how the British poet U. A. Fanthorpe describes the events surrounding Jesus’ birth:

… a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.

“BC:AD,” Christmas Poems
(Enitharmon Press, 2003)

Are we not walking haphazard into the kingdom of heaven along with Carol, Lulu, shepherds, Magi, and the kind real estate agent?  Or, to borrow the words of Paul Simon, are we not all more or less “bouncing into Graceland”? There is no AAA TripTik to show us ahead of time each step of the journey, and most of us do meander, sometimes on track and sometimes off.

If we are really paying attention, we will be struck with wonder at finding ourselves there in spite of ourselves.

We may be walking beneath a starlight that seems no different from yesterday’s light, in a world where war still rages, where the hand of oppression lies heavy on the poor, and where earthquakes and hurricanes and mental illness leave ordinary people homeless.  What has changed, we say?  The grip of evil is still unbearably strong.

Nevertheless, through all the sorrows and joys and anxieties and tedium of our lives, we are bouncing into graceland.  Held by a hand stronger than sorrow and evil, we stumble into the kingdom of God.

And unlike the shepherds and the three wise men, we know how the story ends.

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

(Matthew 5:3)

I thank you for the blessings I recognize
and also for the ones that don’t look much like blessings.
I thank you for your promise to work in everything for good.

I thank you for your constant love
to me, a sinner,
who will never be perfect, no matter how hard I try –
and for your faithfulness during the wretched times
when, feeling I must earn your love,
I despair of your transforming grace.

I thank you that you make my life and my home
the gate of heaven,
opening to you through work and play, sleeping and rising,
family and friends, pots and pans, lawn mowers and mops,
dust, laundry, books, and computer.

Most of all, I am grateful that no matter how often I fall,
I can never fall out of you.
You wrap me about whether I am sad or jubilant or sinful,
and even when I am pulling away from you.
When I grope in darkness, with no sense of your presence,
you grip me by the hand.
When fear constricts my mind,
you lure me into the broad plains of your peace.
When I thirst in my heart’s desert,
Your living water sustains me, though I may not know it.

Whenever I raise my eyes toward heaven,
it is because I am already found in you.
And whenever I fall,
I fall into your everlasting arms.

The eternal God is your dwelling place,
and underneath are the everlasting arms.
(Deuteronomy 33:27 RSV)