As I live more, I am more aware of human sinfulness.  Just last week, I was confronted with three situations where people have acted harmfully.

 Agripina, a little old lady from our parish, passed away last Monday after years of living in extreme poverty and ill health.  Her condition was so precarious that at one point her little shack literally fell to the ground.  When she fell for the last time on her way to the shared bathroom across the alleway on Monday night, the church and her neighbors immediately started making all the arrangements for her wake and funeral, because these people who had known her well for years were convinced that she had no family.  We were surprised when two complete strangers showed up and took her documents from the police doctor who had officialized her death.  They turned out to be her nephews, and they explained that they had enough money and connections to take care of the burial without our help.  As the Jesuit pastor later explained to me, this is a typical occurrence in the neighborhood:  people leave their aging family members completely abandoned, and then promptly show up after their death to claim their inheritance (in this case, the little wooden house that the parish had built Agripina after her shack had crumbled down).  Why didn’t they use some of their money and connections to help her live her last years with a little more dignity?  Why had they never even visited their aunt?

 In the middle of the week, three women approached me at work to claim that one of my co-workers had swindled them by charging them money for a free service that we provide.  Two of us interviewed them separately and it quickly became apparent that they were lying.  The three stories didn’t match up on several key details.  Had we not realized this, the slander could have cost my co-worker her job and reputation.

 Friday, I ran into a friend, and he told me how the other day he had called his uncle’s cell phone, and the stranger who picked up said “Oh, so-and-so?  We just killed him.”  His uncle had indeed been shot three times in the head.  The uncle had recently won a legal case against some powerful people who had stolen money from him, and this was revenge.  Since the people who orchestrated the murder are so powerful, everybody is scared to talk, even though everybody knows who it was. 

 The fact that we hurt each other by what we fail to do, what we say, and what we do is nothing new.  The twist for me has been the coincidence that I happen to be in the middle of a great time of consolation, and I am learning to contemplate our sinfulness lovingly.

 Facing these moments while being in such consolation, I’ve been surprised at how the sinful acts themselves don’t shock me out of it — rather, they’re put in a larger context and become relative to a greater fact of love.  At Agripina’s death, I noticed the negligent and greedy nephews, but also how the entire neighborhood snapped into action to prepare the wake:  the women dressing her body and getting the coffee going, the men moving furniture around and rigging light bulbs by the benches they had placed outside her shack.  When we confronted the slander case at work, I noticed the evil intentions of the three women, but also the respectful way one of my co-workers dealt with them while I was too angry to speak responsibly.  When my friend told me about his uncle’s death, I faced the cold reality of premeditated murder and impunity, but I also felt the power in being able to share that moment of grief with a friend.

 At an even deeper level, being able to contemplate sin with God’s love in my heart changes what I see in the hurtful acts themselves.  I see their roots and connections to a broken world:  to histories of violence and exclusion that go so far back, I am starting to understand something about original sin; to insecurities that run so deep that I can understand why we are tempted to hold on to false gods of money, self-image and power.  From this perspective, sin is still real, but rather than wanting to judge people for it, I am moved to want to liberate people from it.  And then I am consoled even more, because we have Good News.

Related posts:

1. Contemplating Careening