In The Details

I was presenting Fr. Barron's Catholicism series at the local parish in the weeks leading up to Lent.  One of the questions which arose was about his discussion of the saints.  How could saints think that they were such sinners?  Isn't it unhealthy to have such a negative self-image?  His explanation--that saints are oriented toward the light of God, and so their flaws are clearly illuminated just as the flaws and dirt on a windshield of a car are illuminated when it faces the sun--made a lot of sense to some people.  But some seemed to still struggle with the idea that small sins could be such a big deal.

We're a culture that's been taught, "Don't sweat the small stuff."  And really, quite often, that's good advice.  Who needs absolute precision all throughout their day?  Who really needs to worry about every last little detail in most things in life?  We can live without absolute accuracy, with a bit of dust in the corners and the dirty clothes stuffed in a corner on the floor--right?

Only if we know what the small stuff really is.  There's a difference between "small stuff" and "significant details," between "small enough not to count" and "apparently small, but the key to the whole thing."  The saints knew the difference between a messy house and a messy soul, between the dust of the earth and the dust of a deadened heart.  They were experts, you see, and so they knew what small stuff to sweat.

It's the same with experts across the board.  Their discussions with each other often seem consumed with minutiae, technical beyond bearing to the innocent layman caught between them or the student embarking on a course in their field.  Why does it matter whether I get the answers to the math problems all right or not?  Why does it matter whether I'm subtly sharp or flat?  Why does it matter whether or not I meet every demanding little specification of my teacher?  And we often have no idea why it matters until we're designing the bridge, or performing the solo, or having to do the thing we'd studied all those years.  It matters when the little details are the difference between success and failure, between life and death, between heaven and hell.

So we have Lent, now, beginning on this Ash Wednesday, in order to learn which details we're overlooking in our lives and our hearts, which sins we've thought venial for too long, and which sins have long since deadened the voice of our soul.  We apprentice ourselves to Mother Church and listen to her expertise once more.  We test ourselves against her standard, discover what's wanting (we're all wanting), and open ourselves to the graces unleashed in the first Holy Week to be made right again.