I was sitting on a screened-in porch in Wisconsin during my yearly retreat. I was listening to the delicious, drenching sounds of a huge rain, splattering, slapping the earth.

But why so huge? It surely must have been well intentioned, but then why so able to hurt? Without question such a storm would beat us down if we dared to go outside. If its violence was caused mainly by the need to bring water out of the skies and into the earth as fast as possible, did it have any intention of harming anything?

I feel a twinge of fright, especially for St. Louis, where immense rain has been causing flooding.

That night, the rain ignored my question. In fact it redoubled its efforts. Its huge sound got more huge, like a swell of applause. Nice going, it was saying.

I knew something was trying to give goodness for the hitherto tough earth. Comfort sighed deep within this tender, rough pounding. Huge branches bowed their heads to receive the cleansing and nourishment.

Why so furious? If sweetly intended, then why so able to hurt? Is “tough love” what keeps our planet in bloom? How long will this poor planet last?

Hopkins addressed God as

Father and fondler of heart thou hast wrung:
Hast thy dark descending
and most art merciful then.*

Jesus headed into such a “dark descending” in this Sunday’s Gospel. He was heading toward Jerusalem. He loved her and her people, and wanted to shower abundance upon them, in the same way that the rain desired that night. But he knew with increasing certainty that Jerusalem would place him—not merely down a cistern as the soldiers did Jeremiah, not just outside the gates and walls—but right straight into the jaws of death. It will be a baptism, he says, and he wants it. He shouts to his disciples that he has come to set the earth on fire, blazing like lightning!

  “How great is my anguish until it is accomplished,” he says. He is filled with the Spirit of God and he cannot wait to let it flow.

But at the same time this Spirit knows that he must stand inside the horrible downpour. He must not run away. He will walk relentlessly into a storm that had by no means reached its peak.

No wonder he was distraught. Love, rather than being just sweetness and light, consists also of the dark and pounding rain. The people will say a vigorous NO to him.

Alright, think of the First Reading. There, Jeremiah was quite explicitly “stuck in the mud.” He had foretold events too truly and too many times. The princes threw him into an empty cistern with just enough mud into which he would sink. How could he prophesy from there?

And how could Jesus speak God’s Word from a criminal’s cross?

Down it rained, rained, that night. Suddenly I saw a single lamp across the lake, shining through it all. A porch-light of welcome! My soul found some relief. But as I concentrated, the lamp surrendered itself as just an old, white piece of leaf that had caught itself on my screen. Its light came from my lamp. So I played a game. I shifted my eyes up on the screen and it was a lantern. I looked down and it was only a remnant of leaf-life. Back, forth. Which was it really?