Buckets of Grace

Nov. 15, 2020 | By Ally Eidemueller BK ‘22

In the basement of my apartment complex, past the rickety stairs, dismantled sheds, and dusty corners, hangs, among other oddities, a note left by the landlord: “Who took my bucket? Bring it back!”

At the beginning of the semester, my basement was my least favorite place on campus. Before opening the door from the lobby and taking the plunge down the narrow staircase, I would utter a quick prayer for God to bless my journey through the basement and out the back door. The red stains ingrained in the cement floor and half painted sheds with missing wooden beams that could double as cells seem almost a world apart from God.

Sometimes, the most difficult place to decipher God’s grace is in the mundane but, paradoxically, nowhere is the grace of God more prevalent. Last week, I finished reading the book, Diary of a Country Priest, by Georges Bernanos, which follows the life of a young priest in an obscure parish in the 19th century countryside of France.[1] From the onset of the novel, he muses on the monotony of parish life: “My parish is bored stiff; no other word for it. Like so many others! We can see them being eaten up by boredom, and we can’t do anything about it. Some day perhaps we should catch it ourselves—become aware of the cancerous growth within us. You can keep a long time with that in you.”[2] He reflects on his interactions with the parishioners—most of which he deems as a failure due to his inadequacy. Constantly, he prays for God to help him in conversation with hardened sinners, children forced to grow up much too quickly, outwardly Christian families with inward struggles, a rebellious priest, and skeptics.

Throughout the book, we come to learn of the priest’s increasing stomach pains as he further delves into the struggles and hardships of the parishioners. In a way, he takes on their pain and suffering in their daily encounters. Nothing is sugar-coated in his interactions – much like the people we talk with in the day-to-day. In the banality and the hardships and the underlying prevalence of sin, it is easy to miss the influx of grace. As the final pages draw near, the reader begins to realize that the movement of grace is not in a grand finale of the priest’s accomplishments (which he believes are none), rather, the grace was found in each moment of his life because, through grace, God shares his life and friendship in “an habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that perfects the soul itself to enable it to live with God, to act by his love.”[3] Therefore, as we read the pages infused with the interior life of this country priest, we are struck by the simplicity of the priest’s prayer and actions: he writes of his communion classes with the children, his desire to start a sports team for the young boys, his schedule to visit each of his parishioners, his inability to stomach any food other than bread and wine, and the hours he spends walking the miles between his two parishes. Although simple, through grace, he joins his works to those of Christ on the Cross. 

The real triumph in the book is on the last page, when the priest, succumbing to cancer, breathes his last. In the midst of waiting for a priest to arrive to conduct Last Rites, he whispers in his companion’s ear, “Does it matter? Grace is everywhere…”[4] At this moment, we realize that while we had hoped to reach an end where this priest is celebrated by his parish and all the sinners undergo significant conversion, the true beauty lay in the hiddenness of grace. In the priest’s anguish, as he metaphorically took on the pains of those around him in the form of cancer and suffered and died for them as Christ would, there was grace. In the conversations, there was grace. In the tears shed on behalf of hardened hearts, there was grace. In the priest’s prostration on the cold empty church floor, there was grace. In every one of his “failures,” there was grace. In the hiddenness and humility of this priest, Christ resided. We were only able to decipher the cold exteriors of the characters. We were unable to see grace plant the hidden seeds of faith in their souls, and after the death of our good country priest, we hope beyond hope they will take root.

“Who took my bucket? Bring it back!”

Under the note are about forty identical buckets scattered in odd stacks, indistinguishable apart from several paint smears. To search for the lost bucket, let alone realize the lost bucket was missing, is a heroic act of virtue. In the forgotten recesses of my basement, my landlord reminds me of a modern-day good shepherd.

“What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them

would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert

and go after the lost one until he finds it?

And when he does find it,

he sets it on his shoulders with great joy

and, upon his arrival home,

he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them,

‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’

I tell you, in just the same way

there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents

than over ninety-nine righteous people

who have no need of repentance.”[5]

Suffice to say, this comparison makes me laugh. There is much separating a landlord on the hunt for his bucket and our Lord, the Good Shepherd. Regardless, my heart is softened by reading this note daily as I race out the basement door. Each day, as I cross the threshold, there are several things I hope for. I pray that when I step into the basement and feel absent from God that He is with me amidst the hiddenness, and the oddities, and the grime. I pray that, while I am surrounded by the chipped paint and empty sheds, the goodness that I am blind to bears much fruit. I pray that one day my landlord will find his lost bucket, and I know that, until then, he will continue to search for it. Because everything is grace.

[1] Georges Bernanos. The Diary of a Country Priest. Cambridge: Da Capo Press, 1965. Print.

[2] Bernanos, The Diary of a Country Priest, 1.

[3] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2018), 2000.

[4] Bernanos, The Diary of a Country Priest, 298.

[5] Luke 15:4-7 NAB

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