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November 5, 2019 | The Valley Catholic
COMMENTARY
The Grace within Passivity
By Rev. Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Theologian, teacher, award-winning
author, and President of the Oblate
School of Theology in San Antonio, TX
A friend of mine shares this story. She grew up
with five siblings and an alcoholic father. The effect of
her father’s alcoholism was devastating on her family.
Here’s how she tells the story: “By the time my father
died, his alcoholism had destroyed our family. None
of us kids could talk to each other anymore. We’d
drifted apart to different parts of the country and
had nothing to do with each other. My mother was
a saint and kept trying through the years to have us
reconcile with each other, inviting us to gather for
Thanksgiving and Christmas and the like, but it never
worked. All her efforts were for nothing. We hated
each other. Then as my mother lay dying of cancer,
in hospice, bedridden, and eventually in a coma, we,
her kids, gathered by her bedside, watching her die,
and she, helpless and unable to speak, was able to
accomplish what she couldn’t achieve through all
those years when she could speak. Watching her die,
we reconciled.”
We all know similar stories of someone in their
family dying, when they were too helpless to speak or
act, powerfully impacting, more powerfully than they
ever did in word or action, those around them, pour-
ing out a grace that blessed their loved ones. Some-
times, of course, this isn’t a question of reconciling a
family but of powerfully strengthening their existing
unity. Such was the case in a family history shared by
Carla Marie Carlson, in her book, Everyday Grace. Her
family was already closely-knit, but Carlson shares
how her mother’s dying strengthened those family
bonds and graced all the others who witnessed her
dying: “Those who took the opportunity to be with
my Mom during that journey have told me that their
lives were forever changed. It was a remarkable time
which I will always treasure. Lessons of acceptance
and courage were abundant as she struggled with the
realities of a dying body. It was dramatic and intense,
but yet filled with peace and gratitude.” Most anyone
who has ever sat in vigil around a loved one who was
dying can share a similar story.
There’s a lesson here and a mystery. The lesson is
that we don’t just do important things for each other
and impact each other’s lives by what we actively do
for each other; we also do life-changing things for
each other in what we passively absorb in helpless-
ness. This is the mystery of passivity which we see,
paradigmatically, played out in what Jesus did for us.
“The lesson is that we don’t just
do important things for each other
and impact each other’s lives by
what we actively do for each other;
we also do life-changing things for
each other in what we passively
absorb in helplessness.”
As Christians, we say that Jesus gave his life for us
and that he gave his death for us, but we tend to think
of this as one and the same thing. It’s not. Jesus gave
his life for us through his activity; he gave his death
for us through his passivity. These were two separate
movements. Like the woman described earlier who
tried for years to have her children reconcile with each
through her activity, through her words and actions,
and then eventually accomplished that through the
helplessness and passivity of her deathbed, so too
with Jesus. For three years he tried in every way to
make us understand love, reconciliation, and faith,
without full effect. Then, in less than 24 hours, in his
helplessness, when he couldn’t speak, in his dying, we
got the lesson. Both Jesus and his mother were able,
in their helplessness and passivity, to give the world
something that they were unable to give as effectively
in their power and activity.
Unfortunately, this is not something our present
culture, with its emphasis on health, productivity,
achievement, and power very much understands. We
no longer much understand or value the powerful
grace that is given off by someone dying of a terminal
illness; nor the powerful grace present in a person
with a disability, or indeed the grace that’s present in
our own physical and personal disabilities. Nor do we
much understand what we are giving to our families,
friends, and colleagues when we, in powerlessness,
have to absorb neglect, slights, and misunderstanding.
When a culture begins to talk about euthanasia, it’s
an infallible indication that we no longer understand
the grace within passivity.
In his writings, Henri Nouwen makes a distinc-
tion between what he terms our “achievements” and
our “fruitfulness.” Achievements stem more directly
from our activities: What have we positively accom-
plished? What have we actively done for others? And
our achievements stop when we are no longer active.
Fruitfulness, on the other hand, goes far beyond what
we have actively accomplished and is sourced as much
by what we have passively absorbed as by what we
actively produced. The family described above rec-
onciled not because of their mother’s achievements,
but because of her fruitfulness. Such is the mystery
of passivity.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, in his spiritual classic,
The Divine Milieu, tells us that we are meant to help the
world through both our activities and our passivities,
through both what we actively give and through what
we passively absorb.
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