What breaks
Featured /articles

Por: P. Fernando Pascual, L.C | Fuente: Catholic.net

Things are breaking. By accident, by wear, for unforeseen reasons. What breaks, sometimes can be fixed. Other times it ends up in a garbage pail. 

A vase, a glass, a computer, a piece of the car, a mobile, a book, a finger: each rupture is different and provokes reactions according to our relationship with the object in question.

After the breakup, it's time to evaluate the damage. If there are possible arrangements, we calculate the costs and the expected result. 

If the rupture is irreparable, we analyze if possible a substitution, although for some unthinkable areas.

Why are things broken? Because of their fragility. And because we are not always prudent ourselves. Because of oneself or others, a poorly executed movement threw a screen or a picture of the wall on the floor.

Behind every broken object, we perceive a radical contingency of everything that is part of our world. Things, even people, are subject to erosion, to blows, to wear, to the uncompromising passage of time. 

So, it seems absurd to cling to an electronic device or shoes, when sooner or later can happen that we fear so much: the rupture.

Christ, in the Gospel, teaches us not to heap material goods, to recognize that moths or rusts threaten so many things, to fear thieves who pluck us what we thought safe (cf. Mt 6,19-21; Lc 12.33). 

When we look at what breaks, we detach our hearts from the land, learn to recognize that they serve only when they are used for good, and we simply trust, as children, in the Providence of the Father of heaven.