Life and death and the cell phone
It was a regrettable mistake (some mistakes are happy). My cell phone requires regular updating, because of errors in its system called “bugs,” because from time to time the system itself needs perking up. Even so, on a regular basis I have to, as it were, rhyme the phone and the computer, use the words “link” and “sync.”
Anyway, the computer prompted me to click “Update,” and so I did, not knowing that—the advice came afterwards—the process would take two hours. Nonetheless, as per my watch, I thought I could afford it, though barely. After what seemed like an endless operation, the update was downloaded, and the installation began. But already it was closing time, and my people were putting out the lights and leaving the office. I decided to leave, too, and on a whim pulled out the cable. Immediately, the cell phone went dead, and would not revive no matter what key or button I pressed.
I panicked. The cell phone was my only line to the wife and daughter, whom I was to hook up with in order to go home. I was sure that already the wife was calling and wondering why she could not get through to me. What raised my spirits a bit was the thought that the wife and I had agreed to meet at our usual haunt, a coffee shop, where we would have a cappuccino before attending the evening Mass. There she would be. All I had to do was to take a taxicab and join her.
While I was on my way, the unthinkable made me think—of us not knowing each other’s whereabouts, and just guessing where the other would be and rushing there on a wing and a prayer. I’ve seen films about lovers being separated for life for missing either the time or the place of their meeting.
At the coffee shop, after showing the wife the evidence of my inaccessibility, I attached the cell phone to a laptop to continue the upgrading. The cell phone came alive, but the laptop flashed a caveat—the procedure would again take two hours. Having no choice, I just sat there, and, taking the advice of St. Ambrose (“Why do you not use the time when you have nothing to do for reading or for prayer?”), began saying the Rosary, unobtrusively, careful not to disturb the others (among them a group of shrieking high school girls).
All the while, I kept an eye on the laptop, which carried a running reminder of the time left, and, after the Rosary, seeing that an hour still remained, I read a passage from Matthew, which began: “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit upon his glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before him. And he will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”
What a different world Jesus described. Still, in a way, it is a world I was given a glimpse of when my cell phone went dead, a world unaffected by technology, by non-essentials. In fact, because it is in the dock, it is a world stripped down to its honor or lack of it.
The image that Jesus used to illustrate the way that the Son of Man would render judgment is of sheep and goats, the first representing those who are blessed and deserving of eternal life, and the second those accursed and destined for eternal punishment.
The only device the Son of Man used to separate the blessed from the accursed is compassion, whether help was extended to those in need—giving water to the thirsty, welcoming the stranger, clothing the naked, caring for the sick, visiting the imprisoned, all of whom the Son of Man identifies himself with.
At this point, I thought of the homeless woman with small children who occasionally stood outside the coffee shop, waiting for the wife and me to give her money, always claiming that a little one was sick. Someone told us that he had stopped giving her alms because a child of hers ran off with the cell phone of an important person.
I don’t know. I just feel that somehow the woman supplied the link between my cell phone, now slowly coming back to life, and the Last Day.
