The Restoration of Innocence

A language teacher loves to bring on hot topics for discussion in order to create some controversy in class so students talk with passion using the language being learned. This week there was a discussion about pessimism and optimism. Each one of us had to give our own opinion on the matter. One of them made a comment on these quotes: “a pessimist is just an optimist with experience” and “a pessimist is what an optimist calls a realist.” He expanded his comments bringing up a study that showed that pessimists are realist but optimists are happier in life. I felt my happiness being challenged. To this I replied without hesitation: so, do you mean that optimists live in a fantasy? But it was not my turn to talk yet. I had a little more time to elaborate my opinion. What I said resounded over and over in my head. When it was my turn I said: “if the pessimists are realist, then I am an optimist who lives in fantasy relying on the reality of faith.” Yet, there are some that believe that faith is just wishful thinking.

Fantasy, optimism, faith; what are they but attributes of a child, aren’t they?  And a child is the best version of innocence. Isn’t it holiness the restoration of innocence? That was what Christ accomplished for us in the Paschal mystery. We sing in the Exsultet in the happy night of Easter: 

 The power of this holy night dispels all evil. Washes guilt away, restores lost innocence. Brings mourners joy; it cast out hatred, brings us peace, and humbles earthly pride.

Don’t we have to become like a child to enter the Kingdom of Heaven? Yes, says the Lord (Cf. Lk 18:17). How do I become like one? Well I was one once. How do I go back to it? Riding a Ferrari. Yes, I went back to boyhood yesterday for 2 hours. I met Alex in the language school. We have been together there since the beginning of this experience. He was kind enough to take me with him to Maranello in Emilia Romagna. There are the headquarters and museum of the Ferrari Company. He rented one and invited me to ride with him through the city and country side. Sometimes he reached 140 mph.

What is it with us men about this passion for cars?  I don’t know. I am not writing to answer that question. It is not a problem. What I know is that I felt so nervous of excitement when I started seeing Ferraris everywhere I looked. I couldn’t help myself but going back to the back yard of my house in Colombia where I had a real fantasy world of roads, tracks and model cars. I felt so boyish to the point of buying a little model.

But on our way back to Siena, Saint Paul hit me with what he says in 1 Corinthians 11-13:

When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things. At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known. 

Well this doesn’t fit with what I experienced. Then, how do the restoration of innocence and being like a child again look like? It looks more like what St Paul says. I can’t be like a child in the sense of being immature, but in the sense of fully knowing. It may sound contradictory since we experience the loss of innocence precisely by knowing more and more about things and life. But the loss of innocence knows what is false. The world deceives us by saying that everything is gray and insipid. There are not colors and not flavors. That’s authentic hopeless pessimism. Thanks God there is red for Ferrari and yellow for orange juice. And friends, you know that there is more than that in this beautiful planet, or is it a fantasy? The restoration of innocence is to fully know the true, to know as I am fully known by my Creator.

What I experienced in Maranello, to feel a boy again, is what the Lord invites us to become. But only to the degree of being totally involved and engaged in searching Him, just as a child is engaged playing. Everything else that I really had there was a manifestation of my own vanity and my sometimes concerns with frivolity. I am just a simple, poor, sober man with the power of bringing God down to a host and some wine. What else should I ask for?

Blessed be God forever for letting me share the priesthood of Jesus Christ and for letting man being so creative with his beauty and Ferraris.



No, I am not that monk that sold it

I am the priest who rode one

I had also the privilege of Bishop Rojas visit this week. We celebrated Mass together in the chapel of the Crucifix in Saint Catherine's shrine. Sister Giussepina looks very serious about what she wants to tell the bishop. I am just atentevely "overhearing" the conversation.