When we went with our children and grandchild for what would be our last visit to their godmother, she was confined to a hospital bed with her neck, broken in a tragic fall, supported by a cylindrical brace. Clearly in pain yet alert and attentive to us, she slowly asked every godchild about their lives and aspirations, seemingly oblivious to the precarious state of her own well-being. When we quietly left her room, each of us was absorbed in the sense that we had just been in the presence of a great soul about to pass. She always had been a faithful person, thoughtful and gracious. Yet we had just witnessed a reality beyond the sum of the parts of a lifetime, a summing up of profound goodness and attention directed at others. It was as if we had glimpsed the fullness of who God intended her to be.

In this Lenten turning, this anticipation of being washed and cleansed, of having broken hearts laid open to receive the unspeakable mercy of divine goodness, something goes well beyond what our senses can perceive: It is a slow growing into God’s own intent for each of our lives. We glimpse something of this mystery of fullness in Paul’s contrast between the creation account of Adam’s disobedience and Jesus’ obedience to God in his death. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, a second-century church father, developed that Pauline insight and called Christ the “Second Adam,” whose work undoes the work of sin wrought by the first man. The bishop’s insight was far-reaching. In his view, the reversal of Adam’s work was not merely a return to the original garden of paradise. Christ models the transformed human being, resplendent in the fullness of what God intends redeemed humanity to be. Thus we, women and men who turn toward the divine love that beckons us, gradually are remade into the unique fullness that God intends for each of us.