Make Room

Today, Tuesday of Holy Week, while surfing around on Facebook, this irreverent and flippant (and funny) meme popped up:

And, well... it got me to thinkin'. Scripture is neat that way: often even a sidelong and casual glance at it will burns a reflection into the mind. Is not my word like fire? (Jer. 23:29).

You see, it is Holy Week, and someone thought this was an appropriate post for the occasion. And that is because, in all of the synoptic accounts of the events of Christ's final entry into Jerusalem and His passion and death, this event - the "Cleansing of the Temple" - is placed in the very days leading up to the climax of the story.

But what is interesting is that, in John, the incident is placed quite early - in chapter two, in fact.

So, what gives?

Well, of course, details in the narratives, and particularly timing - and especially in John, who includes weighted little descriptors like "and it was night" - can be theologically significant. Anyhow, though, we won't digress into debates of the synoptic problem and all that. After all, it is as likely as not - in the present case - that the placement of the synoptic accounts of this particular event corresponds to the historical fact: indeed, the ruckus caused in this scene not only provide motive for those who would petition Christ's death, but also a rationale for the Roman government to quell a known rabble-rouser.

What's interesting to me, though, is that this scene comes in the narrative of this week - and what it might mean for each of us.

Of course, it's always worthwhile in these matters to consult The Fathers.

Jerome reminds us why this exchange trade was going on in the Temple in the first place [emphasis added]:

It should be known that in obedience to the Law, in the Temple of the Lord venerated throughout the whole world, and resorted to by Jews out of every quarter, innumerable victims were sacrificed, especially on festival days, bulls, rams, goats; the poor offering young pigeons and turtle-doves, that they might not omit all sacrifice. But it would happen that those who came from a distance would have no victim.

 The Priests therefore contrived a plan for making a gain out of the people, selling to such as had no victim the animals which they had need of for sacrifice, and themselves receiving them back again as soon as sold. But this fraudulent practice was often defeated by the poverty of the visitors, who lacking means had neither victims, nor whence to purchase them. They therefore appointed bankers who might lend to them under a bond.

Now, Jerome's interpretation of this passage, as with most Patristic commentators, seems basically to be that it contains a moral for priests and bishops and others who minister in God's sanctuary.

But, if I may, I find something fascinating in the background Saint Jerome chooses to give here - how potentially packed with meaning it is! Think about it: people too poor to provide a victim to satisfy... and laid upon them, by those supposed to help them gain atonement, a kind of double-debt on top of the first debt of the Law.

This is all of us: for humanity, on its own, is so impoverished, and also so doubly-in-debt: we need both a true Victim and a true Priesthood. And in the events of the same week in the Gospel, Christ presents Himself as both, and initiates in the same Last Supper the two sacraments that shall re-present Him as Victim and Priest to all the baptized until the end of time: the Eucharist and Holy Orders.

On top of this, Origen saw in this passage even more meaning still, applying it equally to us all and not just to our ministers:

Mystically; The Temple of God is the Church of Christ, wherein are many, who live not, as they ought, spiritually, but after the flesh; and that house of prayer which is built of living stones they make by their actions to be a den of thieves.

Yes, other reflections on this wonderful scene have been offered, and will continue to be. Of course, it has also to do with issues of avarice and greed, and the relative blessedness of the poor - after all, immediately after we see iniquity chased from the Temple, we see the lame and the crippled invited in to be healed. But I offer that we shouldn't press any social justice reading of this too far: after all, of all the Gospel accounts, the tersest and in some ways least interested comes from Luke, who is usually identified as the Evangelist most concerned with the plight of the poor.

Instead, I offer that the central motif here is one of MAKING ROOM: making a space ready for a new thing to be ushered in. Therefore, it is somewhat incidental to us whether this historical event happened in that first historical Holy Week or earlier in Christ's ministry - (or, as Augustine and others suggest, it happened twice). For us, in any case, there is a great spiritual merit to making it part of our Holy Week now.

We are the Temple of God. Indeed, beyond what Origen here observes, we should also be reminded that each of us is  "A Temple of the Holy Ghost". (I might also commend to your reading this week, along with this passage, Flannery O'Connor's brilliant story by that title.)

In order to "make room," as it were, for His Victimhood, His Priesthood, and His Rites of Atonement, Christ first had to clear out what only foreshadowed these, and imperfectly. Furthermore, He made it clear clear that the New Covenant demanded a break from all worldly thought: no hedging bets and conniving would have any place. Christ's rebuke to Peter - "You are thinking as man does, but not as God" - comes back to us here this same aspect of meaning as Christ's demonstration in the Temple. This was a merciful act, and an act of love: these things had to be cleared out, for they were passing away: the animal sacrifices and the dealings and the calculations were all to fade away under the shadow of The Cross. That Cross was the one and only payment that could be made, and we must bind ourselves over to it and to no other debt.

Holy Week provides us a last and urgent opportunity to "make room," even if all of our Lent has been squandered. It gives us a chance to clear out the old ways from our life, to abandon our compromises and our bets, and to cancel all our debts to falsehood.

We are the Temple of God. And we might find ourselves sometimes very much a den of thieves. But the True Victim and the True Priest, He Whose Temple it is... well, this is what He does. He rebuilds and restores the Temple. He cleansed the Temple once (or twice) upon a time. He restored the Temple (of His body) after three days following its destruction. And He rebuilds us, however broken from sin we may be, each and every time we fall - indeed, each and every day, with His Grace. We just need to make room for Him to do what He does.

Practice in Full Gear

I dream of a "missionary option," that is, a missionary impulse capable of transforming everything, so that the Church’s customs, ways of doing things, times and schedules, language and structures can be suitably channeled for the evangelization of today's world rather than for her self-preservation

 - Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium 27

Try as I may to put a limit on my own admitted tendency toward reading too much of the momentous into something that may be purely mundane, I just cannot break the habit. It's been with me a long time, a kind of quixotic playing-at-prophecy, which I really do think a fundamental kind of silliness about my worldview. On the one hand, I'll admit, it does have a certain charm and helps me to sustain the Chestertonian habit of wonder at the world and seeing old things new. And perhaps sometimes it genuinely is a conduit of graced insight, an exercise of the gift of prophecy contained in my sharing in Baptism through Christ Jesus. But I fear that most often it's a bit of tilting at windmills, a spur that is a useful and quick expedient to avoid acedia but not a true virtue rooting out the underlying problems. But then sometimes I figure - so be it. If I play the fool, I might as well play boldly and thoroughly.

The thing is, I've been sitting with Pope Francis's new exhortation Evangelii Gaudium since it first hit the internet, and the whole time I've only been able to feel like this is a really important moment for the Church.

Then I started, as I am wont to do when I think I've felt that vibration, that twitch on the thread, to try to trace and to follow that thread, to pick it up in what's come before. This is where I usually play the fool like I said. This is where I'll try to explicate the phenomenon, to try to explain why this is so momentous, where the ripples can be seen in, say, the former papacy or in the culture or - whatever. The habit, which serves well for maybe certain kinds of research or scholarship, is probably annoying from someone trying to comment on culture, though: and that's all that this blog is supposed to be about doing. And it is fighting this temptation, often enough anyway, that ends up keeping me away from bothering to blog at all.

So I'm not going to do that this time. Because something else has occurred to me recently, in study and prayer over this document: that there's something akin in this tendency of mine to a sports team that never practices in full gear before suiting up for the real game. Of course I need to theorize about culture - about how to restore Catholic culture and Western culture generally, about how to recover so much that's been lost, about the challenges that our milieu offers that may be unique and unforeseen, about which philosophies (like Distributism and Personalism) are best suited to meet those challenges - but the problem is that mere theorizing never gets me into gear and begins to test, to experiment, with those hypotheses. Tracing the thread of why this "moment" is here is one way of working out my vocation in the world, sure. But then, maybe there's another way: another kind of practice. Practicing in full gear. Getting in some hits. Maybe taking a few. And then reviewing the film. (Okay, you get the metaphor, sorry.)

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So, here it is: I'm issuing a challenge, for myself and for anyone who wants to undertake it along with me, to take Pope Francis's words to heart in a really practical way.

The idea for this experiment arose for me when considering the season. At this time of year you will hear maybe more often than at other times of year snide remarks about "the Christmas and Easter Catholics." You know who I mean: those people who only come to Church on the major holidays.

"They should be ashamed of themselves," the Church Mice say. And I won't deny it at all: the Church Mice are right. They should. All sinners should, for their sins. But year after year the disputes arise over practical and pastoral approach in this regard: sure, they should feel ashamed of themselves, but is it any good for them to feel like we think they should be ashamed of themselves? Will that be liable to make them, in fact, ashamed of themselves, or just to think we're jerks and give them another reason to not want to come to Church the rest of the year? But if they do feel that way, is that our problem? ... and on and on. [And I hope that the presentation of the debate here registers my ambivalence and isn't mistaken as favoring one side over the other(s) - because I really don't know.]

It's a tough question, to be sure. But I don't want to raise that debate here, much less settle it. I don't want to address it at all. That's just running drills. I want to put on some gear and call a play. [And as a note aside here, I can't claim this idea as my own: it was actually urged by the Bishop of my own Diocese, the Diocese of Allentown, as a practice for Catholics of the Diocese to mark the Year of Faith. I'll admit that I didn't take his advice, and that's a shame. But now I want to try out what he proposed, but with a spin in the spirit Pope Francis has commended in his exhortation (and by his example).]

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So here's the play:

We all know somebody who doesn't attend Mass despite the obligation to do so. Or at worst, if we don't know somebody in that predicament, maybe we know (or in the absence of totally knowing at the very least have a pretty shrewd idea about) somebody who hasn't been to the sacrament of Reconciliation in a pretty good while.

We tend not to make these things our business. But I think Pope Francis is challenging us to be missionaries in precisely this way (and so many more). And this is the easiest thing I can think of that puts the spirit he's advocating to the test: let's make it our business. Pray about, discern how, and then approach one person who needs to be 'evangelized' this way and do the work: make the suggestion, have the conversation.

But beware: don't just rush out to the first person you think of. Think of anyone you can, first; but then (a) pray for all of them but (b) try really hard to narrow it down and to figure out who the easiest 'target' is. Too often in spiritual endeavors we set ourselves up for failure, especially early on. We should make a practice when trying to grow in virtue of picking achievable goals. So don't pick the person most likely to fly off the handle. Don't pick the person for whom it will likely leave a weird mark on your relationship for the rest of time and render things never the same again. No. Pick the person who in the worst case scenario says, "Nah, bro, I'm just not really feeling that right now," such that - in that event - you'll be okay (at least for the time being) letting it drop there and you'll both be "cool" with the outcome.

See, it's the last bit of the plan there - about picking the easy target and what identifies that - that I couldn't really work through to last time I thought about doing this (when the Bishop of Allentown recommended it). But it is a key component because it isn't the last step.

Because the last step... well, second to last, really... is praying again. Regardless of the outcome: praise God, thank Him, and give Him glory. I'm not going to tell you how to pray, of course - that's a sub-plan that I'm keeping private in my own case as well. The point is, though, we need to return from this encounter to prayer, realizing that if it was a positive outcome it was God's work and that if it was a negative outcome it's still in God's hands anyway and we need to chill out. [And, although I did say I wouldn't tell you how to pray, I will make so bold as to add this as a, shall we say, 'practical necessity': don't forget Mary, especially if it has been a positive trial. She is the help of Christians, present at any conversion, and deserves recognition because if not Baby Jesus cries, the end.]

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So, I said that wasn't really the last step, and here's why:

Because we need to share our experience and discuss our trials. This, in a sense, is really the most important part of the test. Well, that is to say, from my vantage point, considering it as a test. Obviously, yes, the conversion/recovery of a Christian soul and prayer and, well, all of that is of greater importance.

But I want this to be a proof of concept and that requires us to communicate and, well, 'commune.' I am firmly convinced that in a way we have been issued 'marching orders' by our Holy Father - but it's up to us to figure out how to deploy and some other tactical nuances. This is my proposed way of doing that.

Who's with me?

Happy Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God!

A short post today, to wish everyone a very happy and blessed Feast of the Most Holy Mother of God, Mary Our Hope.

Today is the Octave of the Feast of Christmas, the culmination of that Feast which celebrates the manifestation of God as Man (a mystery upon which we nevertheless continue reflecting through Epiphany and even so far as the Presentation of the Lord).

The Christmas Mystery is not simply the celebration of the Incarnation: that was already underway from the other Feast of the Incarnation nine months previous, the Annunciation to Our Lady. But at Christmas we intensify our reflection on this mystery, seeing for the first time fully manifest the Lord's plan of salvation. This is why the season is so rich in the writings of the Prophets of the Old Testament - for we are told, in John 1:45 (where Nathanael is called by Philip), that this Christ is "Quem scripsit Moyses in Lege et Prophetae" - the one written in the Law and the Prophets (notice, not merely the one written "of" or "about" - He is, in John's kerygma, the Word Himself).

The saving plan which has been underway since the beginning of Creation comes to its final and consummate chapter now, with Christ made manifest to the nations. It is therefore only fitting that the fulfillment of the Feast of this Manifestation directs us toward Mary, the human person most instrumental in that plan, from the very beginning. Mary is "the woman" of Genesis, included in the proto-evangelium which first announced God's saving plan in crushing the head of the Serpent who brought sin and its sting, death. This mysterious prophecy is recapitulated in the Apocalypse, where the woman returns, shown in childbirth and still engaged in her ancient enmity with the dragon.

Mary is not an incidental player on the stage of the drama of salvation: she is essential, a sine qua non. It is significant in this regard that the Gospel visitors to the manifestation of Emmanuel at Bethlehem do not merely find the God-Man alone. The Shepherds find "Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger" (Luke 2:15); and - more emphatically - the Magi, representative of the nations of earth to whom Christ's birth promises salvation, "went into the house and saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him" (Matthew 2:11).

Such was the plan from the beginning, and so it remains as it is made manifest to us in this Christmas mystery. Jesus was to be born of a woman, born of the woman of promise, the new Eve, the woman preserved from sin like no human person had ever been: not merely created sinless as Adam and Eve, but conceived already perfected by Grace, emphatically preserved from every stain and fault.

And this Jesus, who has been made known to us in this last age, whom all the prophets promised, is to be worshiped indeed, but it is the will of God that He be worshiped - always and everywhere - with Mary his mother. In the ineffable wisdom of God, He willed to come to us through Her - not just once, but in each and every coming, in every instance of Grace, in every sacrament. And it His will, further, that we return to Him through Her as well - no other way. Ad Jesum, per Mariam.

So it is that the Church points us in the fullness of Christmastide to Mary, so that we can find Christ where He may be found, and worship Him as He wills. Let us do so this day, and every day.

Ora pro nobis, Sancta Dei Genitrix.

More Thoughts on Yuletide (of My Philosophy of Decking the Halls)

Lo, the day is coming, blazing like an oven, when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire, leaving them neither root nor branch, says the LORD of hosts.

Malachi 3:19

"The day is coming..." - these words from the first reading of today's Mass present a good jumping-off point for yet another discussion of due seasonal awareness in our existential encounter of the meaning of the Christmas season.

In the Church, for some weeks now, we have been looking toward the prophetic day, the adventus of Christ the King. Next week, we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ the King - the final Sunday in the Novus Ordo calendar of the ordinal Sundays following Pentecost. It is a celebration of arrival as well as of expectation: it is, in a sense, a nice microcosm of the whole meaning of the season of Advent which we enter the following week. We are at once joyous, but also restrained - penitential, sober, alert, watching. Watching for Christ to come again, in the consummation of time and the fulfillment of the Kingdom, and also watching with a different emphasis of attention Christ's daily arrivals in our lives as Baptised members of His Holy People.

Now, so far I am very much in agreement with the sort of philosophy propounded by many good Christian apologists on the correct posture of religious experience at the ending of the Church year: see, for example, this excellent resource. But I part ways - really, just a bit, although it might seem more pronounced - in terms of how we should approach the day-to-day experience of this restrained joy and anticipation.

I have taken a bit of flack this week for having already put up my Christmas tree. Now, it should be noted that, while I have placed the tree (a fake one, but nicely made) and hung it with lights (actually, they came pre-arranged on the branches), I am not going to regularly light the tree just yet. But while I'm easing into that, I will be lighting it before the recommended date given by FishEaters, December 24th. I want to deal with that recommendation here, as well as address some of the objections that I've taken against my having put up my tree "so early" - and I apologize if some of this will seem redundant to those who have read my other ruminations on this subject, but I will try to cast the matter in more precise terms here than I've done before.

So, on to the objections:

It's not even Thanksgiving yet!

Well, this can be dispatched with rather easily, I think. What is Thanksgiving, anyway? And why should it have any bearing on our understanding of the cosmic realities surrounding the revelation of the Son of God as Man? Thanksgiving is, in a sense, a Hallmark Holiday. It is a secular celebration tied in some ways to the tradition of harvest festivals, and useful insofar as that goes. But it is, on the other hand, an observance of an American heritage - largely imagined - of making friends with our displaced aborigines. In fact, there's something ironic in hearing people who disparage the secularization of the Christmas observance appealing to Thanksgiving as some sort of meaningful time-marker that ushers in the appropriate time of anticipation. It is, to say the very least, question begging: for those who object that I've put up my Christmas tree before Thanksgiving, I reply, "Why do you put up your Christmas tree after Thanksgiving? Or, more to the point, why do you put it up at all, whenever you do put it up?" And there's the rub. The why is the heart of the matter, so let's get at that, shall we?

It's not even Advent yet!

Now, we're getting a little closer to a meaningful discussion, as Advent does at least relate in a meaningful way to the matter at hand, a way that Thanksgiving does not. So, let's look at this one more closely. A first approach here is the same Socratic question with which I ended the last paragraph: "So, when do you put up your tree, and why? What does it mean?" Now, to this, there is the answer of FishEaters first of all, which situates the question in the meaning of the season of Advent:

The mood of this season is one of somber spiritual preparation that increases in joy with each day, and the gaudy "Christmas" commercialism that surrounds it in the Western world should be overcome as much as possible. The singing of Christmas carols (which comes earlier and earlier each year), the talk of "Christmas" as a present reality, the decorated trees and the parties -- these things are "out of season" for Catholics; we should strive to keep the Seasons of Advent holy and penitential, always remembering, as they say, that "He is the reason for the Season."

And so it is that FishEaters recommends putting up the tree on Christmas Eve - certainly not lighting it before that night. But, here, the argument is all non sequiturs: we haven't really identified why the trees go up at all, what lighting them is meant to symbolize to begin with. After all, any conclusions we derive about propriety of time-frame will depend upon this information. Thus, if the Christmas tree is somehow part of the commericalized secular abuse of Christmas, then we should want nothing to do with it at any time. There is, on the other hand, the notion of the Christmas Tree as a "baptized" symbol representative of Christ Himself: the tree anagogically associated with the Cross, the evergreen with His eternity, the lights with the kerygma directed to the conditions of the poor and lowly. But penitential preparation and expectation doesn't mean we hide Christ from our experience: we don't pretend during Advent that He's never come. [Indeed, the first half of Advent - and the foregoing weeks in the liturgical cycle - aim to prepare us for and focus on the Second Coming at the end of time. What does the tree have to do with that?]

But the symbolism of the tree, while indeed representing truths about the Person of Christ, has even richer meaning. The symbol includes its pagan connotations before the baptized meaning: the Norse and Germanic celebrations of Yule, the winter ritual of warding off death with symbols of life (the tree's vitality) and warding off dark and cold with warmth and light (the candles hung upon the boughs). Not just the symbol itself was baptized and given new meaning, but the Christmas event transforms these earlier associations as well. These pagan ideas - as symbolized in a tree - in a sense recapitulate the entire pagan ethos of pre-Christian expectation: those seeds of the Gospel that were implanted through natural law and the experience of nature. The tree here is meaningful not in its similitude to Christ, but in its difference: it represents our wants and desires for light in darkness, warmth when we are cold, life that escapes or cheats the ever ominous threat of death. We lose this meaning somewhat in our technological age, when winter doesn't mean the threat of starvation or exposure, the testing of our harvest and our hearth against the ferociousness of a fallen world. G.K. Chesterton's reflection from The New Jerusalem puts this meaning quite nicely: "Anyone thinking of the Holy Child as born in December would mean by it exactly what we mean by it; that Christ is not merely a summer sun of the prosperous but a winter fire for the unfortunate." The effect of all this is that the tree becomes part and parcel of our expectation, our anticipation, even our somberness: the tree reminds us of Christ, but it is not Christ. The lights combat the darkness, but they do not conquer it as He will do when He comes. It is a species of logical fallacy to suppose that the tree must necessarily distract us from this difference. The notion of holding off on the use of the tree as decoration ironically gives it more power than it deserves, rather exalts it instead of "putting it in its proper place." It all depends on what the tree means and why we put it up when we do. If we see the tree only as an embodiment of Christ and as some sort of panacea for the winter blues, then I agree that it has no place in Advent or before. But if it is, instead, a reminder of our own feebleness, a symbol of the futility and fragility of our battle with darkness and death, then it can very truly have a proper place throughout the entire darkening part of the year. In the one approach, the culmination of the tree's meaning is when its lights are hung on the night of Christ's arrival, demonstrative of the light he brings; in the other, the culmination is when the tree's lights fade and our attention redirects to the child in the manger that was once empty, His own ethereal light and power making a joke in the darkest time of year of our own weak dwimmer-craft.

But... the department stores! The commercialization of it all! Doesn't this give in to that cheapening of Christmas, and shouldn't we as good Christians fight against that trend of secularism?

Once again, this is typical of the approach that FishEaters seems to take along with many well-meaning preachers. I reiterate here that we run the risk of mistaking, a la post hoc ergo propter hoc, a common result for an inevitable one - or, in the terms of philosophy, we give perhaps sufficient cause the more potent meaning of necessary cause. As my defense against this objection, I'll appeal to the secondary players in the Christmas drama: John the Baptist, Herod the Great, and the Oriental Magi. As a preliminary, though, I present another Socratic question: "What should we do?" It's all very well and good to grumble about the commercialization of Christmas and determine that we will not participate, but all our efforts and words spent upon this determination can sometimes distract us from the pressing question of what we ought to be doing instead. Many people I speak with on this issue have very good reasons for rejecting the culture's observances at this time of year, but they're much less salient about having reasons for their own practices. Don't we concede too much to the culture, don't we let them have their way with Christmas, by simply stopping our ears and closing our eyes and running around all gloomy and disgruntled, "tsk"-ing in the check-out aisles and frowning at the office decorations?

Enter the Gospel players. John the Baptist is the figure of knowledge about the meaning of Advent and Christmas; Herod the figure of missing the point; and the Magi the figure of those who half-understand, who are charmed by the signs and search for meaning. Take any one of these away, and you lose something of the power of the drama. There are plenty of Magi in our world today who are, as the Biblical Magi did, running into Herod and being put on a wrong track. Who will announce, as the Angel did, the error of Herod's ways? Who will warn them off the mistaken path and usher them into the true recognition of the mystery? It must be we who do so, taking John the Baptist as our model.

To put it succinctly, it is precisely because Christmas has been commercialized and demeaned by our culture that we must become more knowing, more articulate, more robust in the manifestation of its true meaning and power. If we don't do it as a sign for the world, we must at the very least do it for ourselves and not succumb to pride. We can't think we're unaffected by all of what's happening around us from mid-November until December 25th, and then suddenly ending. When we return home after a saccharine-soaked swim in our cultural soup, we must have cures for it. On the one hand, we can drive past the decorated trees on mainstreet and pass the Salvation Army Santa Clauses and retreat behind our door with a grumbled "Bah humbug," seeking to purify our minds entirely from all this untimely joy. But it seems to me to be just as effective to put up our own tree, with our own meaning and intent, and to allow ourselves to be struck by the difference of it all. The tree can serve as a true herald who disabuses us of Herod's lies. We should keep the season robustly and vitally within our own homes, very aware of the meaning behind all that we do. Doing so will at once highlight the vapidness of the culture's indulgences and soberly remind us what is being missed - it might even spur us on to find ways of expressing the distinction to the world (such as writing a blog post, for example). Are we giving in to the culture more by maintaining our own observance with added vitality rather than by simply retreating from it all?

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And so goes my attempt at justifying my seemingly untimely tree. I welcome discussion, even debate, on the matter. Because, for me, what we do and when we do it are less important questions than why we do them at all. I respect the person who puts up his tree on Christmas Eve, provided he has good reasons for it. It puts Christmas ornaments and decorations in the proper place to realize them as manipulable symbols that have meaning according to their use. They are not ex opere operato fixtures that necessarily add to or detract from our religious awareness. Rather, they are expressions of our awareness - or of our ignorance - to the extent that we use them deliberately and use them well.

Watch Out for the Goose Droppings

It's been a too-long hiatus here at the blog for me, and I'm going to make an attempt at a comeback of sorts. I've too often made myself a liar by promising levels of consistency and subsequently failing to live up to them, so you will have no such oaths from me today. I'm going to try, that's all.

I'm back today to riff on an old theme with a new variation: cheap, maybe, but the same thoughts preoccupy me this year with the same intensity as in autumns past, and there's something to be said for that. I've written on this same matter in other places: here and here. Personally, I quite like what I wrote there, so you should go read those earlier thoughts if you have the time. Or do not, that's just as well. Anyway, on to the matter at hand...

I stepped in goose droppings today.

In the past week or two, Marquette's campus has been invaded by a flock - maybe several flocks, I don't know (how can one tell these things?) - of geese. Now, I'll admit straight away that I don't know about geese. I don't know why they're here, where they've come from, where they are eventually going. I don't know whether they're flying south from climes that are growing colder to places where it's warm, or whether they're flying north from... well, as I said, I don't know where the hell geese come from. But for my purposes, it doesn't really matter. It is enough for me that there are here, now, on my campus, geese - geese that weren't here before, that were someplace else. The point is that they are here - and they're here n o w. Since I've been at this campus, I've been able to walk its breadth without having to watch out for goose droppings. I could cut across a space of lawn as easily as take the pavement and had not to worry about a suspicious smell lingering around me for the rest of the day. But I can no longer. Now is different than before.

Now is different. I might have noticed, what with it getting colder and darker and leaves falling off trees. In fact, I have noticed - I picked apples a few weeks back, and I've lit a pumpkin pie candle in my apartment because it seems fitting now. Fitting now in a way that it was not before.

But today, I stepped in goose droppings, absenting my attention for just long enough from the treacherous trek to class so that the calamity caught me unawares. I sorted it out quickly enough with a spot of wet turf and what probably looked from afar like a serviceable impersonation of a chicken sorting through a cow-pie for worm larvae. But the event piqued my attention: the change that has been happening all around, that I've noticed but not really attended to became suddenly very real and very important. Where did all these geese come from? Why are they here? What does it all mean?

In ancient times, seers and prognosticators examined the droppings of birds to find cosmic importance. Today, I joined their company. I had been inattentive this autumn to the "end times" manifestation that the Church rather heavy-handedly observes in these days of the liturgical cycle each year. As I wiped the bottom of my shoe today I thought of a line from the Gospel for the coming weekend: "And awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky" (Luke 21:11b). Now, surely our Lord had something other in mind than goose droppings. The meaning attains, though. The ancient augers weren't a scientific bunch, but they noticed that birds migrated and that the patterns of their travel meant patterns in their diets (and thus in their droppings). And they tried to make sense of these patterns and to forecast important events. They were inspired by birds' adaptive nature and the way that they modify their lives to fit the seasons. We should have some of the same inspiration.

Now is different than before, but we might not live as though it is. We might not even think differently. But the Church - She who reads the signs of the times so much more reliably than the ancient bird-watchers - the Church wants us to think differently in these days. She wants us to tune in to the eschatological meaning breathed by the Creation surrounding us. Things are here that weren't here before. And things that were here have gone missing.

We tread daily over leaves dead on the ground, but how often does it spur us to think of the bodies that are the dust beneath the leaves: the bodies of loved ones passed on to judgment, who may suffer now in purgation for the sins of their flesh and for want of our prayers? We step around goose droppings, but do we stop to reflect on what it means that such things have suddenly come - out of the clear blue sky - as were not here just a few weeks ago?

Now, it may be objected that this is a fine reflection of the aptness of the seasons of the year to the calendar of the Church, but what about those living in different climates? Well, for those folks - as well as for us who are lucky enough to have nature's help - the Church and culture have provided other ways of marking time. [Of the parishes that elect to decorate their sanctuaries at this time of year with pumpkins and cornucopias, I will not speak for fear of opening a can of worms. Come to think of it though, I think a can of worms could very effectively enhance the sorts of decoration we see so much of during this season: a rotting pumpkin, perhaps, next to a skull, seated nicely in a basket of dirt near a side altar?] But for those of us who wish to attend more deeply to the import of these times, there's plenty to go around: the ember days of September, the building apocalyptic vision of the readings throughout October, the Dies Irae and other mementi mori during November. And from Culture, we have ciders and mulled drinks and other harvest foods, and the hanging of lights and greens in our homes. The point is that, whether we can observe the trajectory of the death of the year in our climate or not, we do well to enhance our experience however we can of the immediacy and immanence of the eschaton.

Finally, one might ask why it's good to notice these things? Why the attention to change, to the ephemeral quality of life, to decay and death? Why the gloom and doom? Well, simply: because it's the only way to understand Christmas. And that is what the Church, in her wisdom, has set this pattern in place to do: to help guide us gradually and consistently into a deeper experience of Christ's arrival in our lives: in the past, in the present, and at the end of time. Unless we appreciate the cold, we cannot feel the warmth he brings; unless we enter into the darkness, we cannot see the brilliance of his light; unless we witness the harvest, we will not feel so compelled in our labors to bear fruit for the gathering that will one day force us to give a full account of our profitability.

Now is different than before. These days are not entirely like the ones that have preceded them: much has passed away from them, and some things have arrived unexpectedly. And the whole importance for us is that those days before and these days now are all leading to a point: that day - that day of the prophets, the day of reckoning, the day of wrath, the day that will dissolve the world into ashes - the day when Our Lord appears. Ecce, venit.

Watch where you step.