Catholic Review

Inspiring the Archdiocese of Baltimore

The Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed into Patapsco River in the early morning hours of March 26 following a support column being struck by the container ship Dali while leaving the Port of Baltimore. (Kevin J. Parks/CR Staff)

‘The Bridge is love’


By
Special to the Catholic Review Filed Under: Amen, Bridge Collapse, Commentary

All of my life I’ve had recurring dreams of attempting to crawl across bridges that were either so low that churning waters lapped over them or so high that a fall meant certain death.

Only once did I dream of being in a car that came to a precipice overlooking a huge body of water. But there was no bridge. So I pulled to the side of the road. To my amazement, five other cars came along, not hesitating to drive directly across what must have been an invisible bridge.

I am convinced that this dream was about faith, about trust in God’s presence, albeit unseen, and his provision for my life going forward.

I recalled my dreams about those bridges over troubled waters when I heard of the March 26 collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge here in Baltimore. I also tortured myself with images of what six bridge workers likely endured before succumbing to death in the murky Patapsco River.

Why that bridge? Why those workers who were from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico?

Perhaps we cannot resist trying to make sense of it all, not unlike Thornton Wilder’s fictional character Brother Juniper in the author’s 1927 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Bridge of San Luis Rey.”

The traveling monk was so captivated when he witnessed the collapse of the 1,000-year-old bridge, the finest in all of Peru in 1714, that over the next six years he took copious notes while investigating the lives of five victims who were crossing the bridge when it fell. He wanted to find meaning in their deaths.

But Brother Juniper never found the answers he sought. Worse still, his book was deemed heretical and ordered burned in the square – along with him!

Only God knows precisely why things happen. For our part, we will always have the privilege of offering comfort to those who grieve great losses and even livelihoods.

Here I offer food for thought from William Kent Krueger’s award-winning novel “Ordinary Grace.” It is an exceptional coming-of-age story irreparably impacted by the death of a gifted 18-year-old young woman whose body was discovered in a river by a younger brother.

Her father, the town’s highly respected minister, not only had to deal with his daughter’s murder, but also the disdain of his wife who left him because he advocated trusting God one time too many for her.

He said to his packed congregation:

“It isn’t Easter, … but this week has caused me to think a lot about the Easter story. Not the glorious Resurrection … but the darkness that came before. …

“I confess that I (too) have cried out to God, ‘Why have you forsaken me?’ …

“When we feel abandoned, alone, and lost, what’s left to us? …

“Three profound blessings: … faith, hope and love. These gifts, which are the foundation of eternity, God has given … us complete control over them.

“Even in the darkest night, it’s still within our power to hold to faith. We can still embrace hope. And although we may ourselves feel unloved, we can still stand steadfast in our love for others and for God. …

“God gave these gifts and he does not take them back. It is we who choose to discard them.”

Faith. Hope. Love. These are indeed our bridges into eternity.

Concerning love, Wilder concluded: “Soon we shall die and all memory of those five will have left the earth and we ourselves shall be loved for a while and forgotten.

“But the love will have been enough; all those impulses of love return to the love that made them. Even memory is not necessary for love. There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning.”

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