The Autumn of Mercy
Simone Riva - The fleeting beauty of autumn is a sign. Its transience suggests the attitude of the tax collector described by Jesus: only Grace saves.
"I would like, autumn rain, to be a leaf / that soaks you up into its fibers / that unite it to the branch, and the branch to the trunk, / and the trunk to the ground; and you pass through its veins, / and spread, and quench such great thirst. / I know you herald winter: that soon / that leaf will fall, turning the color / of rust, and will be mixed with the mud; / but it will nourish the roots of the trunk / to sprout again from the branches in spring. / I would like, autumn rain, to be a leaf, / to abandon myself to your roar, certain / that I will not die, that I will not die, that only / I will change my face until the earth / has its seasons, and a tree has leaves" (from Ada Negri, Pioggia d'autunno, 1936).
These days, it is impressive to observe the annual change in nature. Those who have the opportunity to spend time in our parks are literally overwhelmed by the moving shades of autumn. The sun, reappearing after the rain, enhances the thousand colors of the leaves, so much so that you want to ask: “But where were you a few days ago, colors that can never be admired enough? Where do you come from?”
It is as if, before going to rest, nature wanted to throw us that last provocation: “I will not die, I will not die, I will change my face” and, taking off the vigorous clothes of summer, show the beauty written even in what decays.
It is not a cycle that repeats itself inexorably without interruption, because the leaves are all new and will all be new. There is always something new that discreetly dominates everything that changes: this is what we desire for our lives as well.
Sometimes we can feel a kind of love for what ends, and we go about our daily lives with a desire to end things, experiences, relationships, the past... so that we can free ourselves from them. We believe that, once finished, any issue will finally no longer concern us. But reality, which is never a deception, always leaves a mark—even if it is a wound—which is ultimately the finger of God who conceived it, wanted it, and allowed it.
What a relief it is when one begins to look in this way at all the challenges we are not spared. One begins to desire, in fact, to be “a leaf abandoned to the roar of the rain” without the need for defenses, precautions, and protections.
The beauty we can contemplate in autumn is the most effective reminder to examine how we are facing reality. With its transience, it corrects that intimate presumption of being righteous that Jesus speaks of in today's Gospel. The presumption of always being on the right side, of being able to decide from whom to learn and from whom absolutely not, of being able to set ourselves up as judges, decreeing who has the right to be there and who should disappear, of being justified in organizing all possible plots so that our project can finally be realized.
The transience of existence on earth stands as a great provocation to such a way of life, suggesting the attitude of the tax collector described by Jesus: “He did not even dare to raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘O God, have mercy on me, a sinner’” (Lk 18:13). His prayer is reduced to the essential, to the only thing that matters: that God give us the grace of his pity, his preference, his mercy.
And God, who has already responded to this plea by creating in us a heart capable of questioning and wonder, has filled reality with signs that speak of this ever-possible rebirth “as long as the earth has its seasons and a tree has leaves.” If we do not lose sight of the details of these days, we will rediscover the beauty of even the rain.
