A pilgrim's reflection: from cares to caresses

 "Watch yourselves, or your hearts will be coarsened with [...] the cares of life." (Luke 21: 32)

So many gospel readings in the final days before the start of Advent focused on Jesus' prophesies about the end of the world, and here again today, on this first Sunday of Advent, we read once more the signs that Jesus associates with the end times. In some ways it is a curious insistence since if we bear in mind the vast numbers of Christians who live down the centuries, only a tiny minority of them will ever see that particular moment arrive during their own lives. So, why do the gospel readings remind us of this so frequently? 

I wonder if it is because while not everyone sees the end of the world, everyone sees the end of their own world sooner or later. Jesus' insistence on the end of the world is a reminder that every human being eventually closes their eyes for the last time. Death undoes us all. Nothing is certain except death and taxes. And if we ought to prepare ourselves for the end of the world and Jesus' return (which the vast majority of us will not see for ourselves), all the more should we prepare ourselves for the end of our own world. We all need to learn how to die.

But on reading this passage again today, what struck me most was Jesus' warning not to let ourselves be coarsened by the 'cares of life'. His injunctions against drunkenness and debauchery are easy to understand, but what about the 'cares of life'? Are they not more legitimate in some way that drunkenness and debauchery? Many of my own cares in this life are not ones I have chosen for myself but ones thrust upon me by my duties. If man has to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, it seems to put him in a corner even more to say that this burden is also a spiritual danger. 

Yet the dilemma is only on the surface. I don't think Jesus is here saying that those who are busy in the world at at greater danger than those who find themselves sequestered in a convent. Rather, I suspect that the 'cares of life' is a description of the way we do our duties - the manner in which we hold the world and relate to it. The challenge with the 'cares of life' is to seize on them with the right appetite: the love of God and neighbour. Experience teaches us that often enough our paper-thin resolve to follow the sentiments of the Morning Offering is torn apart by the desires that attend our daily actions: pride, vanity, selfishness, greed, laziness and all the rest of our worst selves. Some of these desires are distortions of legitimate needs in our minds and hearts, but many are also related to wayward needs that arise from the wounds of original sin and the wounds in our own characters and personalities.

All of this again brings us back to the importance of Colwelian docibilitas - our readiness to see the Father's forming action in everything that befalls us. Every wayward desire is a turning to ourselves. In contrast, docibilitas would have us turn back towards God to attend to what He is teaching us in every moment. If we could but practice docibilitas, we would then be developing the kind of loving attention that turns every 'care of life' into a caress of His providential love. If we met every duty with docibilitas, then the cares of life, far from coarsening us, would drive us forward into the caress of the Father where we hope the end of our world will bring us.