September is a getting ready month. But its preparations are funerary, even when they are merry. Like the wakes of old Ireland. The best of the year is over, and we are setting down to the last sweet swill before the dregs of death-soaked November. It feels different than the preparation of Lent, of Advent. The whole great liturgical year is an undulation, between triumph and sorrow. We can't have one without the other.
The council mows the common laws for the last (or second-to-last) time, and the smell of cut grass in autumn is distinct, yellower somehow. The window-washers in the town centre swipe the glass gleaming in the mild sunshine. Heat has a different quality. Each year, I forget how much kinship I feel with September. I like all seasons, each in their turn, but when September comes around I think, I wish to live in September forever. In the countryside, farmers prepare to harvest corn, and the creeks run cold after the brusk, impatient showers. It is a bustling month, when apples ripen, flowers bloom to encourage the hardworking bees, and conkers fall from the horse chestnut trees -- always the first species to tell autumn oncoming.
My son asked me yesterday morning, "Does it hurt to die of old age?" I tried to console him without drifting into falsehood. I told him there are good doctors to help make people comfortable as they pass.
"Everybody dies," he said later, resignedly, and I wondered what brought on this somber mood.
"Even God," I agreed, "but then He came back to life again."
A conversation followed about Thomas, who, naturally, didn't believe. He said he must touch the dead-turned-living Man for himself if he were to confess such strange news. I don't much blame Thomas. He had to touch Jesus's wounds to know Him. There's something to that -- that touching someone's hurts and being touched by them, is the only way to be fully known. Thus we enter into the mystery of the Cross in order to be called His. All things in their proper order, in their kairos.
The Exaltation of the Holy Cross and Our Lady of Sorrows follow in succession, and we look toward ember days. Getting ready. That's all penance is, really. Readying ourselves for the work in the world to come.
My son asked me yesterday morning, "Does it hurt to die of old age?" I tried to console him without drifting into falsehood. I told him there are good doctors to help make people comfortable as they pass.
"Everybody dies," he said later, resignedly, and I wondered what brought on this somber mood.
"Even God," I agreed, "but then He came back to life again."
A conversation followed about Thomas, who, naturally, didn't believe. He said he must touch the dead-turned-living Man for himself if he were to confess such strange news. I don't much blame Thomas. He had to touch Jesus's wounds to know Him. There's something to that -- that touching someone's hurts and being touched by them, is the only way to be fully known. Thus we enter into the mystery of the Cross in order to be called His. All things in their proper order, in their kairos.
The Exaltation of the Holy Cross and Our Lady of Sorrows follow in succession, and we look toward ember days. Getting ready. That's all penance is, really. Readying ourselves for the work in the world to come.
+JMJ+
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