An Imperfect Story
Eli the Educator (1 Samuel)
The following is a translation of a section of the retreat for Communion and Liberation University (CLU) students, given in December by Father Francesco Ferrari.
Each of us may have experienced an imperfect father or mother, sometimes in painful ways, and I am not only referring to our biological parents, but to all those who in some way are or have been fathers and mothers, educators, teachers. These trials, this imperfect story, weaken our trust. And so the only possible salvation of our story is to discover that a true Father exists.
There is a story in the Old Testament that helps us understand all this: the calling of Samuel. The story takes place about a thousand years before Christ. Samuel’s mother, Hannah, could not have children, but thanks to her prayer receives the gift of Samuel. Following the custom of that time, she offers him to the Temple at his birth, as a gesture of gratitude, so that he might serve in the temple, live there, eventually become a priest. Samuel is educated by Eli, an old priest who lives in the temple.
While still a child, Samuel is called by God: “Samuel was sleeping in the temple of the Lord, where the Ark of the Covenant was. And God called him: ‘Samuel!’ [God says his name] and he answered: ‘Here I am’ [but he did not understand], then ran to Eli and said to him: ‘Here I am, you called me!’ Eli responded: ‘I did not call you, go back to bed!’ Samuel went back and laid down to sleep. But the Lord called him again: ‘Samuel!’ Samuel got up and ran to Eli saying: ‘Here I am, you called me!’ But Eli said again: ‘I did not call you, my son, go back to bed!’ For Samuel [the Scripture says] had not yet met the Lord, nor had the Lord revealed His word to him. The Lord called him once again: ‘Samuel!’ for the third time; he got up again and ran to Eli saying: ‘Here I am, you called me!’ And now Eli understood that the Lord was calling the young boy. Eli told Samuel: ‘Go back to bed, and if you are called again, say: “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”’ Samuel went to bed in his place. The Lord came, stood next to him and called him once more: ‘Samuel, Samuel!’ Samuel answered immediately: ‘Speak, for your servant is listening.’”
What does this fascinating episode teach us? Samuel, who is great even though he is still young, learned from Eli to respond to God. And this is ultimately the task of every father and mother, of every educator: to introduce others to the Father, the true Father, to the discovery of our sonship, our true sonship. To introduce others to their vocation, to respond to God in their life. But there is a detail we should not pass over. Who was Eli? Eli was mediocre priest, who wasn’t very aware and who was a bad father. When Hannah, Samuel’s mothers, who was not able to have children, comes to the temple to pray and to ask God for help, Eli does not understand her drama and at first treats her badly: “While she kept on praying before the Lord, Eli was observing her mouth. Hannah was praying in her heart and moving her lips, but her voice could not be heard; so Eli thought that she was drunk. He told her: ‘How long will you stay drunk? Get rid of your wine!’” And he kicks her out. Now, it is true that people used to pray in the temple out loud; but if some if someone is there in the temple moving her lips, it is more likely that she is praying rather than that she is drunk. Eli doesn’t seem to me to show much intelligence, but anyway, there is more. The priest had two sons named Hophni and Phineas (already their names show you that he was a terrible father!), who lived with him in the temple, but they stole the offerings of food that people brought to God and ate them, they took advantage of the young girls who came to serve the Lord, in short, they were lowlifes. And what did Eli do? Nothing. He is a weak father, he is not able to correct his sons, he puts them to the test, but then, overcome by fear of losing his relationship with them, he lets it go, even if this means sacrificing the honor of the temple—and he was a priest! God will reprove him with terrible words: “You have more regard for your sons than for me.”
Eli was weak, and yet it is precisely this man who is weak before God and before life who enables Samuel to respond to God and to become great. Scripture does not deny his limits and his weaknesses, but recognizes also that it is through him that God has made the life of his disciple great.
Each of us has a story, made up of light and shadow. We often seek peace in our story through a kind of balance, hoping that the light will be a little greater than the shadow, or trying to forget, to look away from the shadow. Otherwise we end up living with anger toward those who have wounded us, toward the shadows of our life. In sonship we discover a new way, the possibility for true peace, that is the discovery that behind everything (even if God is not the author of everything, because He does not will evil), greater than everything, there is a Father, a perfect Father, and that everything can become a path to this Father.
Our parents, with their gifts, at their best, lead us to God, to this Father, because they communicate to us, without even saying it sometimes, but they communicate implicitly that life is good, that it is a gift, that it is beautiful to exist. But they lead us to God, in some way, also with their limits, because they make us long for a perfect fatherhood, they make us thirst for fatherhood in its fullness, that they are not able to give us. In the discovery of God the Father even evil mysteriously finds a place, not because God wills evil, and not because everything clears up for us, but because we discover a greater power, a power that knows how to lead our story toward the good.
Entering into the experience of sonship, we can discover that all our story can find a meaning in so far as it leads to God, to the ultimate Father, to a Father great than history itself, and thus greater than our limits, victorious over evil, capable of using everything, of using the good how He wants, but also the evil that He didn’t want. Because the mistakes and sins that my dad made were not willed by God; they were done by my dad. But in the discovery of the Father it is as if I find a force capable of embracing everything, even those mistakes and sins, and turning them into a path. I think this is the meaning of that phrase from Saint Paul: “All things work for good for those who love God.” Everything is saved, everything is redeemed, is taken up again by this Father, and it becomes a path toward Him.
Of course, in order for evil (which is different from mere human limits), the evil that exist in our life and in the lives of others, to become a path toward God, there is only one way: we need a huge force, a force that is not ours, that is called mercy. This power belongs only to the One who made everything and so can give everything life again. Mercy is the victory of God’s Fatherhood, over every limit, over every possibility of being left orphans; it is the victory of the Father over every evil that can exist.
In sonship you discover that it is truly the good that defines life, not evil; you discover—in my experience, this happened above all in the Sacrament of Confession—that there is a good that is greater, stronger, more resistant. This makes us capable, in time, of forgiving ourselves and our whole story.
Even our companionship, which in some way expresses a paternity (in the sense that, within the Church, this companionship generates faith in us), is a part of this imperfect story, a story through which God calls us to participate in the hundredfold. All of us, even if we’ve only been here fifteen minutes, have begun to see the limits of our companionship. But they are the same limits we all have, because this companionship is all of us. And the more one is aware of himself, the less he will be severe in looking at the limits of others.
It is beautiful to learn over time to see our companionship as that path, albeit “imperfect” like Eli, that God has chosen to communicate to us the joy of our destiny, to make us encounter Christ, to make us His children. And that deep affection, not a sentimental affection, though, but an affection full of awareness, is born among us when we realize that this other person, that one right there, whoever he or she is, the one sitting next to me, is given to me by God so that I can discover more and more that I am His child, so that I can discover my vocation. And what humility is born within us when we recognize that even I am given to the other so that the other can discover himself as a child, so that he can walk toward his vocation. In the last few months, speaking with many of you, I understood that the meaning of this companionship is not to be perfect, not to be without limits, but for each of us to be able to say: “Father”, “my God”. The meaning of this companionship is for each of us to be able to say like Samuel: “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” The CLU, just like the movement of Communion and Liberation, exists for the vocation of each of us.