The Second Sunday in Advent
The weekend was a mild one, foggy and rainy for the most part, but with a three hour sunbath this afternoon. We sat out on the front porch and read for a good long spell, enjoying the fresh air and watching the battalions of birds as they ate and visited. Methuselah, the ancient white-faced squirrel who has lived on this land longer than we have, scampered in his deliberate, arthritic way across the driveway. How many winters has he seen?
Jinx and I climbed to the top of a high ridge yesterday and enjoyed a rest up where we could peer down to our place and for quite a ways in all directions. Had it not been for the fog, we probably could have seen into the next county. I found an old horseshoe, worn and caked in rust, atop a car-sized flat rock. Birds were drinking from a natural depression in the rock’s surface and they retreated into an oak, leafless limbs and watched the dog and me while we explored. At one point, I began saying the Our Father aloud, and the tone-muffling mist closed in around me. I could hear the birds chattering, and I know they could hear me, but for about a minute, I expected something to happen. Nothing did, though, and soon afterwards JInx and I began picking our way down the damp slope to return home. On the way back, I stopped at a sileage pit and lifted a fistful of the stuff to my face. The sharp, ciderlike tang smelled so good to me in the clean air. I wanted to take a bite. Jinx did take one.
The rain will return later tonight and is supposed to be with us most of the week. I know that the people at my work will use the word “dreary” at least a dozen times tomorrow, and I will attempt to keep from feeling annoyed at this. Most people I know complain bitterly about the weather unless it is 72F and sunny with a light breeze. How wretched to be unable to enjoy the other 360 days of the year, and how sad to be unable or unwilling to find gratitude for the life-giving rain and buffering clouds.
In this Lenten season, I have been focused and diligent in my prayers, helped greatly by the little breviary my wife bought for me, The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary. When I began to take my tentative steps towards embracing Roman Catholicism, the Marian doctrines were some of the steepest obstacles, and only recently have I begun to understand in a small, small way why so many faithful Catholics have developed a special devotion to the Blessed Virgin. My understanding is indeed small, but the spark of comprehension is sharp and hot and clear. I see this as a direct work of the Holy Spirit within me.
At the same time, my devotion to and affection for St. Joan of Arc continues to grow and deepen. Not long ago, I watched one of our granddaughters, who is thirteen years old. It struck me that when the Maid first began to hear her voices and see her visions from God, she was about the same age. I looked at that little girl and marveled again at Joan’s life, her faith, her strength, her courage, her constancy, her relentless pursuit of her duty to God. I find that whenever I am around young women and am told that one of them is nineteen, without fail I think, The same age as St. Joan of Arc when those churchmen read out her sentence in self-assured tones and nodded at the soldiers who took her — this little girl — out and chained her to a pole and lit faggots beneath the same feet that once roamed the hillsides with her father’s sheep. When I think of this, my throat tightens up and my eyes close and I ask Joan, who is now more fully alive than I am, to pray for me, to strengthen me.
And when I look at the small statue of Our Lady that hangs on the wall next to the crucifix above my little altar, I think of that little girl and her fiat and the suffering she endured while she watched her only Son as He was mocked, cursed, spat upon, beaten, tortured, killed, and torn down to lie in the bloody mud beneath the cross He carried on His shoulders.
Son, behold thy mother.
It is night now, and the just-past-full moon is obscured behind the cloud-veil, and in two weeks Daylight Savings Time will return, and a week after that, spring will arrive. I have known we would have an early spring since two weeks ago when Jinx and I saw a bear making his way across a pasture. Today we saw red-winged blackbirds in the yard, and by the time the first day of spring arrives, the hummingbirds will be starting their migration back up to these parts. Holy Week will come, and again I will watch it from a distance, not able to participate bodily but gripping all the ritual and beauty with the fingers of my mind and heart and spirit.
Sometimes I look over at my wife while she is reading, and I think She loves me. This is not speculation. She loves me…me. And these days, when I bow my head over the small black volume and stumble through the Latin and cross myself and gaze up at the crucified figure on the small silver cross, when I ask the Mother of God to pray for me and those like me — now and at the hour of our death — there is no speculation. Faith truly is a gift, and my heart is spilling over with gratitude tonight, tonight as I prepare to take my little book back to the altar and light the candle and say the office of Compline. Tonight the fog obscures nothing. All things are clear, just for right now, and right now is enough.
God, come to my assistance.
Lord, make haste to help me.
~ S.K. Orr
