A non sequitur reflection?

To those who are accustomed to living in a world turned upside down, setting it right cannot help but appear to be turning it upside down. With our first parents we reached for the power to name good and evil, thinking to assert control, but thereby we lost control. With the prodigal son we grabbed what we could and ended up impoverished and alone in a distant country . . . . because God is love, he sent his son to the far country to share our lot, to bear the consequences of our folly, to lead us home to the waiting Father. 
Such a way of love violates our sense of justice. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon

Well, of course it does, because our sense of justice is rooted in our decision to name good and evil for ourselves. Some parts of this we get right, when we judge actions that clearly do harm to others and embrace heroically altruistic actions that are free from immorality. Other parts we get completely wrong, such as when we promote the freedom that has been entrusted to us ahead of the holiness to which all are called. But there is nothing we get so wrong as our insistence on judgment when we ourselves have been so needful of mercy. So of course our warped, upside-down sense of justice is violated by God's insistence that love is mercifully selfless.

I read a sharing today from a dad who I know is getting things wrong, as we all do, so I don't conclude that his on-the-mark sharing is all that accurate a reflection of his reality. I share his desire to not wear a mask, but in my case it seems that even not-wearing-a-mask can be deceptive, as I seem to invariably apply it in ways that celebrate what I've been delivered out of yet still hide the things I struggle with, creating an illusion of openness that is often itself a lie.

My Lenten virtue stone continues to call me. Gentleness. I see the harshness that was too often a characteristic of my parenting carried forward in the lives of my daughters and their husbands as they raise their own children. I long for them to know how wrong I was in how I often dealt with them, how my motivation was so often how I thought they reflected on me or how to make my own existence easier. My heart breaks to see my grandchildren struggle to live up to what is expected of them while they also deal with their own emotional issues.

Gentleness. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. He prays gently for me, and I must find a way to receive this mercy.

There is more I hide behind my mask, of course. How love and judgment still clash within me. How I struggle to know how best to live the life to which I am called and whether simply going about doing so is itself deceptive. How recognizing my past brokenness sometimes causes me to question how I go about the things to which I believe I am now called.

The truth is, sometimes I am afraid that a mask is the only way to protect others from me.