In the musical Les Miserables, there’s a particularly haunting song, sung by a dying woman (Fantine) who has been crushed by virtually every unfairness that life can deal a person.
But there are dreams that cannot be
And there are storms we cannot weather
I had a dream my life would be
So much different from this hell I’m living
So different now from what it seemed
Now life has killed
The dream I dreamed.
Fr. Rolheiser writes that despair has all too often been understood as the one unforgivable sin, the absolute worst state within which one could die. The Psalms tell us that God is particularly close to those who are crushed in spirit and that God will save them. Jesus makes this central to his teaching and ministry. Not only does he have a special affection for those who are broken in spirit, he identifies his presence with their brokenness and assures us that they will enter the Kingdom of Heaven before the rich, the strong, and the powerful. For Jesus, the broken are God’s specially loved little ones. Given that truth, do we really believe that God will send someone to hell who dies crushed in spirit, seemingly without hope? Do we really believe that God would send Fantine to hell? What kind of God would do this? n Mark’s Gospel, just before he dies on the cross, Jesus cries out, My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? Then he hands over his spirit to his Father. In our classic understanding of this text, we generally explain what happened there in this way. Jesus was tempted towards despair, but he found the strength to resist and instead, in hope, surrendered himself to God’s mercy. I suspect that in the end this is what most people who die (seemingly having given up hope) also do, that is, crushed in spirit, they surrender to the unknown – which is God’s embrace. We need to be far more understanding in the judgments we make vis-a-vis despair.