Easter Thoughts

Today, I got on the Internet, and I saw a Senator from Georgia say that he was worried that Guam would tip over.  I saw more woes foretold as a result of the Obamacare bill; I watched some episodes of the Jamie Oliver Experiment, in which a cook tries, and barely manages, to reform one district in one city in one state in one country's schools away from feeding their children what, in such quantities and ingredients, basically amounted to a slow and gruesome poison that tasted good.  I saw various stories about sexual abuse by priests, stories about the media targeting the Pope with allegations that are patently false, stories about what amounted to gross miscarriages of journalistic justice even in portraying the state of those sex abuse cases, and stories of the ninety-eight percent good priests who have had their good names besmirched by the actions of two percent of the priestly number.

Looking to my own case, I see a situation whose hopes are, to most, idealistic at best.  I have to spend two more years in school to get my Master's degrees; I have, to my name, no money of my own and a Bachelor's degree in an unemployable major.  God be praised and my parents be thanked, I have no loans, which is surely a blessing.  But I will confess that every year I add to my time in school makes me chafe at the bit of my student's occupation.  I want to teach, badly.  And in this recession, such jobs can hardly pay for themselves; I am best off simply pursuing my education as it stands.  This is itself a difficult enough prospect, though if I focus I needn't worry about the peripheral bits so much.  And, of course, there is the perpetual meta-discernment of my vocation.  That's between me, my spiritual director (thank God I have one!), and God.

Things are, not to put too fine a point on it, terrifying in nature.  And yet, I am not afraid.  How could I be?  Today is Easter Sunday!  Beginning in the Annunciation, which was just recently (March 25th), we were told to "be not afraid."  There was a place and a time where, perhaps, all the forces of evil conspired to bring the world to fear.  That conspiracy was dashed to pieces, never to recover, on Holy Saturday, and brought forth today.  Death has no sting!  How could this be?

I sometimes, in my more morbid (I should say, more mortal) moments, consider the situation in which I am found.  I could die at any minute.

At any time, a stray meteorite might just manage to get past the layer of atmosphere which burns off most of its matter in transit and pop! go right through me, leaving a blast crater and probably no traces of my body.  There would be a funeral, my family and friends would be very sad, and sure, I'd be remembered, but beyond that, I'm no-one of much consequence, to my knowledge.  I haven't taught hundreds to teach thousands, nor would I have given my life that others might life, except in the little ways in which we are called to give ourselves each day.  If I have hope in any saint right now, it's the Little Flower, because I don't think I am given the basis to bear the larger blooms of the Garden.  Whatever the case, though, I have confessed the sins of which I'm aware, and if there are any I've missed or that have slipped my mind, I'm sorry for them.  If that meteorite hit me now, it'd be but a moment, after which comes Life itself.  And that's nothing so unimpressive that I should worry I missed out.

Or perhaps, perhaps, I might go on, and no such meteorite has my name on it; perhaps I must soldier on in love.  Perhaps I will get my degree, and become a teacher, and perhaps I'll be no good at it.  Who knows; maybe sin will keep me from bearing fruit (may it not be so!) or maybe it'll just be being in the wrong place at the wrong time, like an elementary school teacher who cannot teach ten year olds.  Maybe I'll get married, and maybe, for whatever reason, I'll have my heart broken, or I'll break someone's heart; maybe I'll get old, and write poetry about the joys of youth, while longing for that youth to be returned to me.

I don't know.  No-one does.  I can hope, certainly; I have faith, and therefore hope and love; but the particulars of the future and of beatitude or perdition are unknown to me.  I am no mystic; I have to soldier on like everyone else, and read my Eliot longing for the resolution, and my Dante longing even for the taste.  But I know this: that two thousand years ago God Himself became man, died for me, and rose again so that I, contrite, broken, a sinner, might have eternal life.  And no matter how small I am in this universe so large, a mite on a speck on a mote in God's eye, yet He loves me most.  He died for me, after all, gave Himself totally for me; Pure Act Himself became man, Eternity Himself united himself in Person to mutable humanity, lived in our temporality, and gave Himself up for me.  I apologize if I say anything that sounds heretical here; it is fully unintended.  But I cannot wrap my mind around how beautiful this is; every faculty fails in daring to drown itself in it.  One is left only in tears of love and joy.

And this is how I see the Sacraments: not as "mere ritual", as so many seem to think of them, but as real expressions of love through the Body of Christ.  We are born into that Body of Christ through the Sacrament of Baptism.  We are given a way to reconciliation with the Body of Christ, a way back into the unity of his love between God and man, in the Sacrament of Penance.  We participate in the most intimate act of love of the Church, becoming what we eat, Who is our Husband and Maker, in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, and so on.  These three Sacraments, especially, are celebrated on Holy Saturday's Easter Vigil Mass in particular, because it is on this day, Easter, that our Lord conquered death and took us to Himself.  We may lose the world, but in His Love, through the Sacraments, we gain eternal life.

Accordingly, though, there are a few dissonances which cannot but arise to the one seeing this and knowing the tradition of the Church.  If the Sacraments are the very acts of love of Our Lord, where the Eucharist is His Real Presence under the accidents of bread and wine, then how important must it be that the liturgy is not just the most solemn procedure we may imagine, but that anyone may imagine?  We do not worship an idol, but God Himself.  Why, then, do we relegate him to the side of our chapels, not the central position which he minimally deserves?  Why do we subject him to cheapening rally music which lacks intrinsic gravity (where, here, the term is understood even very broadly)?  Why do we steadfastly refuse the dignity of the ancient Rites of the Church, even as an option alongside the current Rite?  Wherefore do we have the audacity not to offer the Sacrament of Penance more than once a week, or even once a month in some parishes?  From whence do we derive the authority to delegate more and more of the priest's duties to "extraordinary ministers" as though they were ordinary?  For what reason do our parish councils, and our Bishop's councils, and our diocesan appeals focus, not on the theological impact of our actions but on exigencies which could only very broadly be considered "practical", such as pseudo-socialist "social justice" initiatives?  Why must these initiatives be give rampant reign, while even the addition of a prayer rail or a chansel screen is fought with the bitterest of opposition, and often with no theological justification?

These are all questions which, I think, are most connected to our identity as Catholic Christians.  And they are all most timely, because to mis-portray the fundamental mission of the Church, the salvation of souls, in these seemingly unconnected externals is to lead the lost further into the dark.  And in this respect, we do have to fear; because while the continued prosperity of the diocesan appeal seems to matter, it only does so insofar as it is dedicated to this mission of the salvation of souls.  Without this as our mission, our purpose and the root of all our choices as Christians, we will fail; we will not be the good and faithful servant, but one who buries his talent in the ground, never letting it bear fruit.  "For what doth it profit a man to gain the world, but lose his soul?"