Saturday of Week 25 in Ordinary Time (Year II)
Ecclesiastes 11:9-12:8 | Psalm 89:3-6,12-14,17 | Luke 9:43-45
Our Catholic adventure yesterday was a perfect microcosm of today’s reading. Here’s what happened:
At Clonmacnoise, Ireland, we celebrated mass in a open glass chapel, built upon the spot where Pope John Paul II celebrated mass in 1979. A frigid gale was blowing, defying the chapel’s efforts to protect us, and as we celebrated mass while looking out of the open side facing east, all we could see were cold tombstones, marking the resting places where hundreds of faithful lie in wait for Jesus’ coming:
And the mourners are already walking to and fro in the street
before the silver cord has snapped,
or the golden lamp been broken,
or the pitcher shattered at the spring,
or the pulley cracked at the well,
or before the dust returns to the earth as it once came from it, and the breath to God who gave it. (Ecclesiastes 12:5-7)
Then we drove back to Dublin to catch a flight to Glasgow for the Scottish leg of our Catholic tour. I was seated in front of three loud, brash young men, who were talking up a hedonistic storm for the entire flight, liberally sprinkled with vulgarities (if I understood their thickly-accented words correctly). I wish I’d enough courage to say to them:
Rejoice in your youth, you who are young;
let your heart give you joy in your young days.
Follow the promptings of your heart
and the desires of your eyes.
But this you must know: for all these things God will bring you to judgement. (Ecclesiates 11:9)
Our first stop in Scotland was Carfin Lourdes Grotto; its name should explain why. There, we braved the frigid gale that could almost have followed us from Clonmacnoise, walking the Stations of the Cross at a somewhat less sedate pace than normal. All we could hear around us was the roar of the wind:
when the voice of the bird is silenced,
and song notes are stilled,
when to go uphill is an ordeal
and a walk is something to dread. (Ecclesiates 12:4-5)
And then I discovered an obscure gate in the middle of the Carfin grounds, leading to a dark tomb:
There, in the holy darkness, I was alone with my Lord, and finally found a measure of peace:
There, I could shut out the noise of the worldly wind, singing its cold siren song of secular indulgence and spiritual turmoil. There, I could remind myself:
Vanity of vanities, the Preacher says. All is vanity. (Ecclesiastes 12:8)