Everyday a water bearer in India carried two large pots on the end of a pole across his neck.
One of the pots had a crack, while the other pot was perfect and so always delivered a full portion of water after being filled in the stream to the masters house. The cracked pot however arrived only half full.
The perfect pot was proud of its accomplishments, perfect to the end for which it was made. But the poor cracked pot was ashamed of its own imperfection, and miserable that it was able to accomplish only half of what it had been made to do.
After years of feeling itself a bitter failure, the cracked pot said to the bearer “I am sorry I am very ashamed of myself”
Why?” asked the bearer.
“Because of my crack, everyday after being filled with water from the stream, I lose half the water which leaks out before we arrive to the masters house”
My flaw prevents me from giving you the full value of your efforts.”
The water bearer was surprised to hear this.
“I am sorry you feel this way. Today as we return to the masters house, I want you to notice the beautiful flowers along the path. It will make you feel better”
Indeed, as they went up the hill, the old cracked pot took notice of the sun warming the beautiful wild flowers on the side of the path, and this cheered him up a little.
At the end of the trail, however he was half empty and felt bad still felt bad and apologized for his failure.
The bearer said to the pot, “Did you notice that there were flowers only on your side of the path, but not on the other pot’s side?
“That’s because I have always known about your flaw, and I took advantage of it. I planted flower seeds on your side of the path, and every day while we walk back from the stream, you’ve watered them.
“For all these years I have been able to pick these beautiful flowers to decorate the masters table. Without you being just the way you are, he would not have this beauty to grace his house.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said “There is a crack in everything God has made”
That is of course more than just another way of saying we’re all cracked pots, but rather an acknowledgement that we all share human shortcomings and limitations. While this truth may seem pessimistic, the God News reminds us that God can uses faults and failings and works in and through brokenness.
I was reminded of this truth last month on my mission trip to Africa, when we stopped off at the Poor Clare Monastery in Lusaka, Malawi. Using Pope Francis’ latest exhortation Gaudete et Exsultate (Rejoice and be Glad), I offered a retreat based on his fresh “re-proposal” on living the call to holiness in our every day lives.
To begin the reflection, I invited the sisters first to share what they thought holiness was. I asked them how they would explain holiness to a six year old boy.
They gave several beautiful responses including having a heart full of love, bringing our nothingness before God, depending completely on Him, accepting ourselves as we are, and even being a fool for God. One of the sisters however responded in a surprising way by saying
“I would take the child out into the bush.” I was of course intrigued to see where she was going with this. She said she would then show the boy a tree and ask him how tall it was. After he offered a guess, she would explain the following to him. “What you can’t see is that the tree is growing underground, where the roots are. Neither can you see how high it will be in the future. The two are related however. The deeper and stronger the roots, the higher the tree can grow. If your humility is rooted deeply enough, you can conquer even Satan.” Her profound and insightful answer resonated with me in light of Pope Francis’ definition of holiness in his exhortation as “an encounter between our weakness and the power of God’s grace.”
This definition reveals the very first step of holiness is opening ourselves up to receive God’s grace through acknowledging and honestly admitting our own weakness and brokenness. In this way, holiness is not so much a struggle for perfection as it is a journey of humbly accepting our own poverty. In fact, the two errors the Pope identifies, Gnosticism and Pelagianism, are temptations which try to make us think we can “know it all” and “do it all” by ourselves. He points out these two heresies are rooted in our attachment to a distorted self image and inflated ego which imagine we can save ourselves through our own efforts.
As the Poor Clares’ lives attest, embracing our own poverty not only frees us from a false sense of self sufficiency but invites us into a greater dependency and trust in God. Their vow of poverty, which prevents them from succumbing to the distractions of material attachments, places them in some way more in touch with their own incompleteness, insecurity and imperfections; all of which create a place of greater dependence and trust in the love God.
It is often only in experiencing the cracks and limitations of our own humanity and the emptiness of our utter powerlessness that we can come to discover the paradoxical truth of St Paul’s insight “It is when I am weak then I am strong” Jean Pierre Caussade went as far as saying we should “rejoice every time you discover a new imperfection.”
Why? He explained:
“The time will come when the sight of this wretchedness, which horrifies you now, will fill you with joy and keep you in a delightful peace. It is only when we have reached the “bottom of the abyss” of our nothingness and are firmly established there that we can “walk before God in justice and truth“……The fruit of grace must, for the moment, remain hidden, buried as it were in the abyss of your wretchedness underneath the most lively awareness of your weakness”
For in weakness, strength is discovered; in wretchedness joy; in the abyss of nothingness, the fruit of grace.
How else but through our failures, brokenness and woundedness can the Lord enter into us? In fact God offers his mercy precisely to those who avow their defects to Him. It is those very cracks in our heart that we are often ashamed of and make us feel unlovable and so try to hide which are in fact what attracts Him to us in order that He may heal and transform us.
It is only after 26 years as a Franciscan (19 years of priesthood), and continuous failing in my own self willed attempts to be perfect, that I can admit “it didn’t work” and am beginning to learn that my weakness, far from being an obstacle to growth in holiness, is a means toward that end. It is precisely in and through our wounds and brokenness, opened up to God, that He can enter into our lives.
The first beatitude reminds us that the awareness of our need for God makes us more receptive to God’s reign. More than His teaching however Jesus’ kenosis (self emptying) is a lesson to each of us to embrace our own poverty. Rather than fall for the empty false promises of consumerism to fulfill us through a never ending grab of goods, we are invited to trust and receive everything as a gift from God.
In some ways the poor we encountered during our mission all seemed to reflect this same poverty of spirit which opens them to a trusting posture toward the Father. In this way they witness to the truth that there is a deep joy that comes from a confident dependence on God.
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