Love’s Imperative

He looked passively out the window at something beyond the horizon which he alone seemed to see. The enterprise that we had nurtured with such care and enthusiasm had soured leaving us bewildered and silent. The more we struggled to understand what had happened, the more elusive insight became.

As I looked at him, I wanted to share some of the pain uniquely reserved for those whose dreams die, but how? In what way does someone enter another’s experience to share a burden only partially understood? Words so often seem inadequate. A touch, perhaps? A look? How?

It may be presumptuous, after all, to believe that anyone can bear another’s burdens. And yet, to try remains love’s imperative. To be present to another’s pain, to help shoulder another’s burden, to share another’s cross are the visible signs of love and sacraments of the holiness within each of us.

To be sure, failure is almost inevitably part of such efforts. No one can know completely the weight of someone else’s burden, but that does not soften the imperative nor should it weaken one’s resolve. We have been bound to each other since the first moment of creation, and whatever diminishes one, diminishes all.

There is a legend that Saint Francis once met two men on the road. One was blind and carried in his arms the other who could see but had no feet. As each bore the brokenness of the other, they had discovered their wholeness. In that living parable, the gentle Francis believed he had seen the face of Christ. Who will say otherwise?