The Power of the Pencil
An analogy for the Christian life.
Consider the pencil.
To be honest, I never did. Until I read an obscure line in Pope Benedict XVI’s Last Testament, which says:
As a young lad I wrote in pencil and then stayed with it. The pencil has an advantage in that one can erase things. If I write with ink, it is written.1
The pencil is a humble writing tool when you think about it. Its markings can always be erased, corrected, rewritten, or redrawn. With a pencil, everything can be formed and reformed. It has humility written into it, so to speak. So too, the human being, formed from humus (i.e., dust, earth) and given the breath of life from God himself (cf. Gen 2:7), is at home in humility. We are most ourselves when we are fully aware of our radical dependence. Fully aware of our proximity to nothingness and that life is sheer gift.
A pencil, like a candle, fulfills its purpose by giving itself away. As the pencil spends itself, it reaches the heights of its purpose. Similarly, as Gaudium et spes says, the human being “cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself” (§24). Jesus says, “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit” (Jn 12:24). And “whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Mt 16:25).
To begin giving itself, the pencil must first be sharpened to a point. It needs to be cut deeply before it can give itself away. It must be given a gift, so to speak—a gift that hones it and prepares it to fulfill its purpose. And even then, as the pencil gives itself away, need for further refinement arises. It needs to be resharpened to overcome its dullness, thus making it capable of giving itself all over again. The need for initial and ongoing sharpening reminds me of the gift of Baptism and the constant conversion that comes about through Reconciliation, prayer, and penance.
Regardless of the degree to which a pencil needs to be sharpened, it cannot do so by itself. A pencil cannot sharpen itself. Sharpening necessitates outside assistance. The pencil needs its writer to turn it in the sharpener, with even force and care, to achieve the point necessary for etching pure lines on paper once again. Analogously, Christian conversion is no self-help effort, but a humble surrender to God’s help, to his grace that transforms.
Amid its lifetime of self-gift, the pencil’s length shortens—a sure sign of its finitude. It will not last forever, though its strokes will live on, if only for a time. Indeed, the life a pencil is temporary, as is each of ours. We only have so much time on the face of this earth, and we do better if we dispose ourselves to God’s providence in our lives and to participate in his mission.
Finally, all of this reminds me of a line from Mother Teresa. In a 1989 interview, Mother said that God shows his greatness by using our nothingness. When asked a clarifying question as to if she really has no special qualities, she said:
I don’t think so. I don’t claim anything of the work. It is his work. I am like a little pencil in his hand. That is all. He does the thinking. He does the writing. The pencil has nothing to do with it. The pencil has only to be allowed to be used.
The power of the pencil can be found precisely in its humility, in its weakness, in its finite nothingness. At this point, we can queue up St. Paul for a nice closing:
“The Lord said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ I will rather boast most gladly of my weaknesses, in order that the power of Christ may dwell with me. Therefore, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong.” — 2 Cor 12:9–10
A Note: We are trying to celebrate sabbath as a family by cutting out screens for about 24 hours. Consequently, I can’t sit down at my laptop as I usually would. So, I’ve been putting the pencil to paper. It’s a throwback to my childhood. The sound of the pencil, the shavings of the sharpener, and the smell of the eraser got me thinking about Benedict XVI and deeper things.
Benedict XVI, Last Testament, 109.