A BEGINNING AND AN END

A SERMON FOR THE 13th SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST

The first month of the Jewish civil calendar is the month of Tishrei, which corresponds partly with our own month of September.  This is the month when God created the world, with all its fruits ready for harvest.  But because the forbidden fruit was also ripe for the picking, we find that the Jewish New Year is a much more somber affair than our own festivities of January 1.  It is heralded in not with joy and hope and dancing and celebration like we do, but with the solemn sounding of the shofar, the ram’s horn, on the feast of Rosh Hashanah.    This central observance of Rosh Hashanah, this mournful cry of the shofar, is a call to repentance, for the Jews believe that Rosh Hashanah is also the anniversary of man’s first sin and his repentance thereof, and serves as the first of the “Ten Days of Repentance” which culminate in Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

For Catholics perhaps, these ancient Jewish customs may not seem much more than a quaint ethnic tradition, something that barely touches our own lives.  And yet, they do reflect that mysterious sense of gloom we often begin to experience at this time of year.  Why this sudden downturn in mankind’s general mood as September begins?  It is because we have just passed through a doorway.  This invisible barrier separates the long, hot days of summer sunshine, those comforting days of wine and roses, from the approaching cold and darkness of an entirely different season.  Even children and young people experience this metabolism as, with their return “back-to-school” they exchange their long and carefree hours of vacation fun for the even longer hours of study and the comparatively dull pursuit of learning.  For the rest of us it means making all those inner, as well as outer, adjustments as the days become shorter, the heat of the sun weakens and grows cold, and those golden late-summer evenings slowly turn into darkness.  There’s a definite sense that the whole earth is dying, and that our mortality is slipping slowly and inexorably away.

Every year we experience these feelings at this time, feelings which only increase during the months of September and October.  We try to play them down by entertaining ourselves with ghost stories, lighted pumpkins and Halloween parties, as if making fun of our own fears.  This year more than ever, thanks to the recent hurricane, the 100th anniversary of Fatima, the solar eclipse, and the warmongering antics of North Korea, the Internet is filled with a whole array of dire predictions from global warming to nuclear war.  We can almost hear for ourselves this September the solemn wail of the Jewish shofar calling us to repentance as the world comes to an end.

But apart from all this hoopla there is a very real cause for unease in this shift from summer to winter, heat to cold, light to darkness.  In a sense, it is the annual death of nature.   And why did God create nature this way, except to keep us mindful of our own mortality?  The bottom line is:  we fear death.  We fear the judgment that follows death.  And most of all we fear the fires of hell.

Holy Mother Church is very much aware of our malaise at this time of year.  And like a good mother, she does not attempt to minimize the reality of those fears but rather helps us deal with them.  She sets before us a liturgy which explains these things to us, so that our hearts may not be troubled.  She begins by taking us from the warm glow of August, the month of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, to September, month of the Seven Sorrows of Mary.  From the joyful mystery of Our Lady’s Immaculate Heart, with its inexhaustible love for us her children, to the sorrowful mystery of that same heart, which receives so little love in return, and instead, is pierced by a sword as foretold by the prophet Simeon.  While the veneration of our blessed Mother continues unabated from one month to the next, it is the aspect under which we view her which has now changed so dramatically.  Every year we make this change, feeling in our own hearts that sudden chill of sorrow.

As we turn our thoughts of Mary from her loving heart to her sorrowful heart, we are led by the Church into that awareness that sorrow follows joy, just as night follows day.  Last night at Vespers we exchanged our summer volume of the Breviary for the autumn volume.  No more Matins readings from the books of Wisdom; instead at Matins today we begin the story of Job with all his troubles and temptations.  And we are troubled also.  There is something in the September air that we did not feel in August.  We pass from one month into the next, through that invisible doorway, and suddenly we are reminded of what’s coming next.  Just as the harvest is gathered in, so too will the Grim Reaper come for us.  As the trees begin to fade, and the flowers wither, so too shall we wither and fade and grow old.  And we shall eventually fall like an autumn leaf.  Death is in the air, we can smell it, in those cool evenings where the wood smoke lingers in the evening darkness.  And our Holy Mother Church continues to try and comfort us through these times; while, certainly, she places before us the inescapable truths of our death and last judgment, she does so always with the tender reminder that these things are merely other doorways through which we must pass in order to reach our safe haven in the arms of a loving God.  This liturgy of the end times will finally culminate in the month of November, the month of the Holy Souls, the month of the dead.  At the end of that month, it will reach its awful climax during those last Sundays after Pentecost, where Our Lord prophesies the abomination of desolation, the Antichrist, and the end of the world with all its accompanying woes and terrible sufferings.

This new month of September is a new year for our Jewish friends, and a new year too for all our students.  So let us make an early New Year resolution today.  Let us in the dark days to come keep in mind the comforting words of today’s Gospel, placing ourselves entirely at the mercy of the God who loves us so much.  Whatever happens this year, no matter how much we may find ourselves mourning and weeping, let us send up our sighs, and place them gently in the sorrowful heart of our Mother of Mercy.  For yes, the days grow shorter and the nights darker.  And they will continue to do so until we arrive at the longest night of the year, the winter solstice, December 21^st.  Will that night be the end of all things—doomsday?  Of course not—“Of that day and hour knoweth no man, ” warned Our Lord.  So have faith in God’s loving care for us.  Never doubt the mercy of God!  When the temptation to doubt comes, pray to St. Thomas the Apostle, doubting Thomas, pray for an increase of faith and trust in God.  After all, his feastday is on December 21st! 

Remember that the darkest hour is just before the dawn Hold on to that trust in God, and you will get through this season of darkness.  Every year is a cycle.  Just as now we are passing into the night, so too after December 21^st, the days start getting longer again.  Spring will come again.  And to herald that new season, we will hear the sounding of another shofar, the angelic shofar, the Gloria in Excelsis Deo, as the Expectation of the Nations is born in that little stable at Bethlehem.  And the great prophecy of Isaiah shall be fulfilled:  “The people that walk in darkness shall see a great light: and they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them shall the light shine.”