It's still Christmas, please don't take down that tree!

This is the day when discarded trees begin to litter the curb, awaiting trash pick-up. Admittedly, Christmas begins to wear thin after awhile. The presents have all been unwrapped, the warm cider drunk, and the cookies eaten. The guests have all gone home, and today most of us are probably back at work. As regards the tree itself, at least if it's the real thing, the needles are probably beginning to fall off. From a practical standpoint, it's totally understandable that we're ready to move on to New Year's with resolutions and fresh starts and all.

But for the love of God--seriously, for the love of God--please make a resolution right now not to follow the horde!

A Christmas tableau from the Christmas Vigil Mass at St. Peter's, Middle Ridge, Wis.

The problem, of course, is that our secular, consumerist-oriented society has started turning the wheels of Christmas too early, and we've been madly spinning like hamsters ever since in order to keep up the frenetic pace. There is a collective groan every year following Thanksgiving, when the Christmas sales begin. Actually, in recent years I've seen Christmas sales as early as Halloween. The lights have been up since the beginning of the month. I've learned the hard way that you can't show up at tree farm and expect to get a tree after mid-December. There simply aren't any trees left by that point.

There are economic forces at play here that don't need to be belabored. But most of us are at least vaguely aware of how the ever-earlier Christmas has robbed us of Advent, that period of expectation and anticipation. Have you ever tried to avoid hearing Christmas carols, even to the beginning of the octave prior to the Lord's Nativity? The distinction would be between Joy to the World, the Lord has come, which implies Christmas is here, and O come, O come, Emanuel, which signifies that we are still awaiting the Savior's birth. Don't turn on the radio or visit a Christmas market if you're trying to avoid the early celebration.

Of course, we're too late for these warnings. Yet somehow we need to live in the world even as we strive to live the distinctiveness of our faith. I'm actually serious: Continuing to celebrate Christmas is striving to live our faith, the very sort of counter-cultural example that we Christians are called to be. I can't think of a clearer instance in our culture where one consciously declares, "I am a Christian," than in continuing to celebrate with earnestness at least through Jan. 6, Epiphany, the traditional twelfth day of Christmas.

So how exactly does one continue to celebrate, especially if one is already experiencing Christmas "fatigue"? Here are a few practical examples from our own family efforts:

-- First of all, do keep the tree up. Add water to the base and vacuum up those needles. With LED lights, there really is little fire danger, even if the tree is dead. You simply need a visible symbol of Christmas in your house, and in our American culture that's principally the tree.

-- We also continue to illuminate our outside Christmas lights through Epiphany. After New Year's, we're practically the only ones with lights still on, but again, that's the counter-cultural example that I mentioned above.

-- Keep things fresh. We do little things, like gradually moving the Wise Men from one side of the room to the other as they make their way toward Bethlehem. Of course, you have to keep the Nativity set up, too. But that's the point. You can also keep things fresh from a culinary point of view. Christmas cookies keep very well in the freezer. We make a huge batch before Christmas and continue to enjoy them all through the season.

-- Commit to attending a few daily Masses. With our move to the country and with the overall busy-ness of farm life, we've attended fewer daily Masses than we used to. But even if you can't make it to church, you can still follow the liturgical cycle and the special feasts of the Christmas octave--the martyrdom of St. Stephen today, the Feast of St. John the Apostle tomorrow, the martyrdom of the Holy Innocents the day after that, and so on. The liturgy is a tour de force of the events surrounding the Nativity and the early Church, and participating in it can rekindle the Christmas spirit.

So, just a few practical examples. It's true that there can be too much even of a good thing. Nonetheless, we need to extricate ourselves from the hyped, consumerist version of Christmas and reclaim it for ourselves. Really, we haven't experienced the "good thing" yet. We're missing out if we quit now. Again, I'm not saying that we can't live in the world and enjoy Santa Claus and presents and all. But our faith calls us to so much more than this world offers, and continuing to celebrate Christmas is a practical, hands-on way to live our faith and be a light to the world

The Domesticity of the Sacraments

Many of you already know that I'm a liturgical curmudgeon, a traditionalist, a lover of solemn ritual, of the Latin language, and of older form of the Mass. I firmly believe that many--not all, but many--of the liturgical changes following Vatican II were emphatically not for the better, and that the plummeting church attendance of the past four decades is ample evidence that I am right.

So I've become a liturgical radical in my own small way, most recently as the sacristan at our small, rural Wisconsin parish. I made some first moves for Advent, introducing the "Benedictine" altar arrangement of six candles and a crucifix. I veiled the chalice, and I polished and returned to regular use a beautiful, shining ciborium that had been tucked away in a dusty cupboard in the sacristy. We're still a long way from ad orientem, or a Latin-language canon, or even the purchase of cassocks and surplices for the altar servers, but even these first small changes have lent a degree of solemn reverence to our liturgies, a hint at the full beauty of our Catholic liturgical tradition.

I was thinking about what is attractive in traditional Catholic liturgy this past Sunday after the baptism of my newborn son, Cornelius Michael Ambrose. I had convinced our temporary parish administrator, a good, faithful priest in his eighties, to conduct the solemn ritual using the older liturgical books. It was his first baptism using the Rituale Romanum since the early years of his priesthood, and there were many stops and starts as we made our way through the ceremony. There were pages lost and then found, mispronounced Latin words, rambunctious children peering over the rim of the baptismal font, chattering and running about, tugging on sleeves, and even on this patient priest's alb.

Yet somehow, through all the missteps, and the noise, and the children's chatter, Sunday's baptismal ceremony moved inexorably forward, with the full force of its majestic symbolism. Thankfully the salt hadn't yet been exorcised and blessed when a youngster tipped the bowl off the table and broke it. A quick trip to the sacristy for a replacement took care of that matter. And it didn't matter that there were children running ahead up the aisle as the priest protectively draped his violet stole stole over the newborn baby and led him, carried by his grandmother, into the church while everybody recited the Creed and the Our Father. Symbolically, this was Cornelius Michael Ambrose's entrance into the Church, an entrance to be ratified in the saving waters of baptism, and the symbolism of that literal entrance, step by step up the aisle, was beautifully clear.

There is something about traditional Catholic liturgy, with its regularity, its repetitiveness, and its symbolism, that preserves reverence in the midst of the distractions of everyday life. It actually begins with the structure of the church building itself, with its steeple and cross rising above the surrounding houses, a constant reminder of sacred, unchanging things in the midst of the secular world. It continues as one enters a church and sees the statues, the stations of the cross, and the ubiquitous flickering red of the tabernacle candle, a reminder of the real presence of Christ and his promise to remain with us always. It is seen in the division between the nave and the sanctuary, where the priest and the servers carry out sacred actions according to set formulae, no matter what is occurring in the pews, be it the dozing of elderly people or the cries and chatter of a discontented children. There is a predictability in the priest's "The Lord be with you" and our response "and with your spirit," a familiarity that the believer can focus on, something that is constant and unchanging, to which we bring our ever changing needs and petitions.

The beauty of Catholic liturgy is that, in it, the sacred reaches down and touches the world with the eternal, unchanging promises of something more than what the world can provide. The unchanging nature of heaven's promises is mirrored in unchanging language, ritual, and symbolism, all comforts to the mind that there is also something unchanging in God's promises to us, no matter how much change there might be in our fickle life circumstances. The sacred meets us where we are at and accepts us as we are, distractions and messiness of everyday life all, and then elevates us out of ourselves, at least for a moment providing a foretaste of where we are headed and what we are to become. Sometimes, sacramentally, the touch of the sacred has enduring effects, as a newborn is born yet again, indelibly marked as a child of Christ, or as bread and wine become Christ's body and blood, his real presence in our midst. The appearances remain, but the transcendent, unchanging reality veiled behind mere appearances gives joy to the believer's heart.

We had invited parishioners to stay after Mass for Cornelius' baptism and reception. Not many took us up on the offer, but among those who did was a young couple visiting from another parish. They remarked to me afterward that the ceremony had seemed so welcoming, so much "like family." That comment made me happy, for in the sacraments we become one family of faith, gathered together in the one house of God our Father, for sixty minutes, or for ninety for those who can bear it that long, to experience a foretaste of our eternal heavenly home before we head back outside into the world, back to our many, varied, temporary abodes.

Of holyday obligations and mortal sin

Recently, the priest who is serving as temporary administrator of our little country parish mailed off a rather strongly worded letter to all parishioners, urging us to return to the sacrament of penance during Advent and reminding us of the importance of attending Mass. In this letter he even made that statement that one so seldom hears these days-- that failure to attend Mass on days of precept is a mortal sin.

He is an older priest who actually grew up in this particular parish, and I have a feeling that when he looks out at the sparse congregation on Sundays, he wonders what went wrong. Where are all the people who filled the pews when he was young? Where are all the young families who used to pack into church for every Sunday and holyday Mass, for Stations of the Cross during Lent, for adoration and benediction every Wednesday throughout the year, for manifold devotional practices and daily Masses whether attendance was mandatory or not? This beautiful country church, majestically overlooking the verdant, rolling hills of God's country, even used to boast of its own school, a school which has sadly been closed for decades. These days, CCD classes feature perhaps a half-dozen kids at most. Indeed, what has gone wrong?

Of course, it is partially demographics. Simply put, there are fewer people out here in the rural Wisconsin countryside. Small farms have been shuttered and sold off, leading to bigger operations and fewer farming families. Even if they still live out here, many people choose to drive into Cashton, Bangor, or La Crosse to attend bigger parishes with a parochial school and more modern facilities. The families themselves are smaller than they once were, but that, too, is a matter for another post.

It's undeniable from the ebb and flow of attendance, and from manifold anecdotal evidence, that very few Catholics believe what this good priest had the courage to write--that missing Mass on a day of precept is a mortal sin, that is, the type of sin that deprives us of the life of grace and leaves us in danger of hellfire and eternal damnation. Unlike in previous generations, people simply do not come to Mass on every single day of precept. My guess is that many people, even if they're good, faithful, Mass-going Catholics, would probably say that they just don't believe missing Mass is a mortal sin, or at least that it's very often not the case.

Yes, yes-- there is plenty of nuance to missing Mass being a mortal sin. Missing Mass is a grave matter, but like with any other grave matter it doesn't become a mortal sin unless one is fully aware that it is a grave matter and nonetheless freely chooses to go through with it. Obviously there are numerous impediments to freely choosing to miss Mass-- personal ill health or the ill health of someone in one's care, genuine lack of transportation, severe weather, multiple-week shifts on an oil rig (really, this is the situation for a relative of mine!), etc., etc.. Generally we're pretty good at discerning what constitutes an impediment, but most priests don't mind parishioners asking for a dispensation if there's any lack of clarity, especially since canon law leaves the granting of a dispensation to the pastor's discretion.

Again, I think the matter is not so much people's confusion about what constitutes a true impediment to attending Mass, but a deep-down feeling that missing Mass isn't really such a serious matter after all: Surely God knows that I'm a good person. Surely God knows how little I get out of this or that priest's sermons and out of the other people in the pews whom I hardly know and whom I don't really like very much anyway. If you haven't felt these things yourself, my guess is that you at least know people who've expressed them. Of course, they display a total lack of understanding of what is occurring at Mass and why we're there. But how do you convince people of that without starting catechesis all over again? For my own part, I haven't had much success.

Additionally, I think that many people have a problem being "told" what to do. After all, the only reason missing Mass on a day of precept is a mortal sin is because the Church, by her authority, has designated a particular day as a day of precept under pain of mortal sin. Some days make more sense than others--like Sunday, the commemoration of the Lord's resurrection. Even if Christmas occurs on a Monday--as it does this year--at least secular society pays heed and considers it a holiday. But what of a holyday like tomorrow, the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception? On such a day requiring attendance at church seems capricious and arbitrary, an inconvenient intrusion into one's normal Friday evening routine after a hectic work week. Why attend church that night? Sure, church is important, but I've got other things to do, and I'll be there on Sunday anyway. It just doesn't seem reasonable, and personal judgment is more important than authority in our modern, secular culture.

Apart from love of God and devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary--things that can be quite insufficient impetus if one has numerous rambunctious children, for example, or important dinner plans, or if one was just to Mass a day before, as will be the case on Christmas this year-- all that is left is the fact that the Church has decreed our attendance. Do we truly believe that the Church has the authority to decree church attendance on a random Friday in December under pain of mortal sin? She does have that authority, from Christ Himself, but I don't think most people are convinced of this.

Or perhaps it's a general feeling that hell isn't real, or that even if hell is real, that a loving God surely wouldn't condemn me to eternal hellfire for skipping Mass due to my rambunctious children or that important dinner date on a random Friday in December. 

How to untangle this mess, of that I am unsure. But I feel for this good priest, because someone of his age has been witness to a cultural transformation where so much more than demographics has been lost. Alas, his letter of a few weeks ago has not led to a dramatic uptick in attendance at our little country parish. But he's speaking hard truths. That's at least a start. Pray God he's not too late for a little jewel of a parish with far too few regular Mass attendees in the rolling hills of God's country.

'What I say to you, I say to all: 'Watch!''

The past several months, I've been bringing Holy Communion to an elderly woman in a nursing home on First Fridays. This past Friday, I showed up at the nursing home, only to learn that she had been admitted to the hospital the previous evening after experiencing difficulty breathing-- the beginnings, I was later told, of congestive heart failure. So, after a quick mental note to inform our priest as soon as possible, I was off to the hospital in search of this dear woman, so that she could receive Jesus in the Eucharist if she was physically able to do so.



Soon enough, I was making my way through the labyrinthine hospital corridors to the proper room. There she was, dozing upright in a chair with oxygen tubes, a ventilator, and the flickering lights and regular blips that are part-and-parcel of a hospital room.

There was also the ubiquitous hospital television set blaring God-knows-what cable infomercial programming at a high volume.

To me, there was something so jarringly out of place in that flickering television screen and its perky, artificial liveliness. There was a relative in the room, and I was able give the elderly woman Holy Communion in a brief moment of wakefulness. To me, her folded hands and attempted sign of the cross made the visit infinitely worthwhile.

But as I drove back to the farm, empty pyx in the seat next to me, my mind kept wandering back to that television set and its banalities. Really, what goes through someone's mind as he or she sits there immobilized, helpless, knowing that their earthly sojourn is nearly at its end, listening to an anonymous suit-and-tie attempt to market the latest cosmetic cream, or blender, or vegetable parer?

Is it agonizing to observe the world passing one by with whatever modicum of conscious thought remains? Or is it, perhaps, the Devil's way of lulling a person into an eternal embrace, keeping his weakened cognitive processes occupied with whatever first reaches the senses, focused on unimportant trivialities until it is too late to think about what truly matters?

Before our Catholic culture collapsed, a dying person would be listening to the recitation of the rosary at times like this. But really, we fallen human beings are awfully adept at keeping busy, with avoiding life's big questions and the life-changes that acknowledging these questions would entail, whether we are in a hospital room or still in the full vibrancy of youth or middle age. I think that the Devil too often manages to keep us asleep and in thrall, lurching our way from day to day, from purchase to purchase, from entertainment to entertainment, until this world passes us by. Too often, we fail to wake up, to live intentionally the one life God has given us in which to know, to love, and to serve him, so that we can be happy with him forever in the next.

The antidote, from today's Gospel reading:

Watch, therefore; you do not know when the Lord of the house is coming, whether in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at morning. May he not come suddenly and find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to all: "Watch!"

Farmer 'What-a-Waste'

In my years as a seminarian, I encountered the label "Father What-a-Waste." Women applied it to good-looking young priests or priests-to-be who would make great husbands. How could they possibly give up the chance for marriage, a family, and success in the world? With my dashing good looks, I'm sure that the title was often applied to me during my seminarian years. No matter that I never heard it in reference to myself in my seminary years, but still... surely...

More to the point, I was thinking about that silly old label in regard to a few comments I've gotten since quitting my full-time teaching job at a prep school last spring to try my hand at farming. Am I sure that I will be able to support my family? Am I using the talents that God gave me? What about writing? What about teaching? How can I give it all up to shovel manure and pull weeds?



Farmer 'What-a-Waste,' I guess. Ironically, a few of the more worried queries have come from priest-friends from my seminary years. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

To emphasize, this is not a paean to my abilities as a writer or a teacher. I'm sure that there are many former students of mine out there with ready complaints about my heavy-handed grading and often scatter-brained, tangential lectures. But the fact is, I did give up a secure, salaried position in a profession that I loved in order to throw myself upon the vagaries of an unstable climate, a heavy-clay soil, and the fickleness of the free market.

Oh, there are the practical responses that I've used to deflect these queries in the past few months: We returned to the support of family back in Wisconsin. I continue to teach part-time, and I've easily found free-lance work writing and translating, just as I had expected. Really, it's not as radical a transition as it sounds, and I'm continuing to use my talents, whatever they might be.

But I wish that I would cease and desist with these practical responses. At least implicitly, many people view farming as something one gets stuck with when nothing else pans out. In my own family, on my father's side, after emigrating from Poland my great-grandfather farmed for a few years in rural Hull, outside of Stevens Point, before raising enough money to open a hardware store in town. My grandfather continued the hardware store, and my father is a lawyer--with nary a farmer in sight.

Given the farm crash of the '80s, it is understandable that many people understand farming to be a last-resort profession. Financially, it has become impossible to farm as past generations have. A 35-cow conventional dairy farm, as the farm my wife and I have inherited from her parents once was, is now a financial impossibility. Yet for those who remain, farming is not, per se, an impossibility.

A few of my farmer-neighbors thrive by buying up shuttered small farms and increasing the size of their operation. Personally I'm not a fan of mega-farms--but that's a subject for another post. Other farmers--Rosemary and myself included--have embraced the organic label, where premiums are higher and the market continues to grow. We firmly believe that there is a future in organic farming as people become more educated and concerned about their food, where it comes from, and how it was grown.

So, there is a practical response to be had as to farming being an exciting, cutting edge profession. Part of my hesitation in offering the practical response, though, is that people get lost in its complexity and detail. But another pat of my reluctance comes from the fact that it's not really the main reason I switched professions to farming.

The main reason, put simply, is the search for contemplatio. It's not that contemplation is impossible in other ways of life and other professions. But I am convinced that living close to the land and elemental things--the raw, inexorable life-force of plants and animals; the life-giving richness of the soil; the harsh embrace of brisk ridgetop air-- is especially conducive to thinking deeply about the ends of things more broadly. What are things for? What are we for?

Whatever it is, it isn't to be exciting or cutting edge. It isn't to be rich, or to make a lot of money.

I was thinking about all that the other day, during deer hunting, as I sat shivering in my stand and looking over my fields. There is an impermanence to the alfalfa that has browned and died with the hard frosts of the fall, an impermanence that matches the impermanence of life. It was deeply humbling to think over the failures that occurred in those fields--the frustration of constantly broken machinery; the banality of mulching hour after hour, day after day; the meager squash harvest that barely covered expenses.

To be sure, there is a humbling helplessness to throwing oneself upon the land. But vagaries--that's the word I used before--is perhaps not the right word after all. The right word, rather, might be providence, which is an altogether different thing.

Whatever it has been, it has been quite the first growing season. I've learned a whole lot, and I'm grateful to God, for the one thing that I'm more sure of than ever is that it has not been a waste.

Valedictory

On the occasion of my departure from St. Thomas More Academy, Raleigh, North Carolina

Every year, newly minted St. Thomas More Academy alumni disembark for colleges and universities near and far. Every year, at least for those who continue to sail in this sea of contrary tides, there are new faces to recognize, new names to memorize.

Through all the change, STMA remains the same. Ask any alumnus, and he will confirm that it’s true. Yes, the hallways are paneled now; yes, the chapel looks spectacular. Yes, the courses are streamlined. Every four years, the students are all new, and even the faculty come and go. Yet STMA remains the same Catholic, classical, college preparatory academy, and all graduates need to do, no matter how long they’ve been away, is walk the hallways for the memories to come flooding back.

The enduring nature of this fine institution is worth reflecting on, especially as seniors prepare for commencement. The yearbooks have been distributed, and everybody is depicted—at least twice, I’m told. There will be a valedictorian and salutatorian whose names will be engraved on the plaque that hangs in the hallway. Some senior’s thesis will bring that student praise and renown. Indeed, at graduation every single senior’s name, regardless of class rank or academic prowess, will be read off for everybody to hear, to mark down, to remember.

Everybody wants to be remembered; everybody wants to endure. Everybody wants the goddess to sing of his or her brilliance for all generations to come. Really, though, who will remember that you walked these hallways? Who will page through the old yearbooks in the center, point out your picture, and reminisce about the years when you were filling these hallways with joyous noise?

Goodness, even teachers want to be remembered. Some of us have taught at STMA for a year, others for a few years. Still others have invested their professional careers into making this school the institution that it is, and especially that it is becoming. But, God willing, this institution will outlive even the longest teacher tenure. Not even teachers are immune from the ravages of time.

If you’ve made a mark that will endure, it has not been, nor will it be, on the sports field, neither by having your name engraved on one of those plaques up front, nor by being singled out for praise at commencement. Indeed, if my fellow teachers and I have made a lasting impression, it will not be in the A’s, the B’s, and the C’s, or in the little Luddy Lecture yearbook blurbs, as finely written as they surely are.

If any one of us, teacher or student, has made a mark that will endure, it is in each other’s souls, and in the soul of the school, for Cardinal Newman says that even institutions can have souls. Students come and students go; goodness, as I prepare for my own next adventure in Wisconsin, I know well that even teachers come and teachers go. Yet to this day, I have fond memories of my own high school—of the teachers who challenged me and of my fellow students, and friends, with whom I grew and matured during those four formative years.

Memories are not ephemeral. Though the details fade, they are an indelible impression upon the soul. You are different for having walked these hallways, for having sat in these classes, for having been challenged day in, day out, in company of these teachers, these fellow students, these friends; these happy few, this band of brothers.

So take STMA with you whenever you leave, whether it be next week, next year, or, for a select few, at the end of a long, happy, and prosperous career. As the years pass, let it be with flowing cups freshly remember’d, for such happy remembrance is the lifeblood of the soul. So shall it be with me; so should it be with you, too.

 Published in the Chancellor Quarterly, May 25, 2017

'Thou art dust'

Memento, homo, quia pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris. Remember, man, that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.

I've been thinking about dust quite a lot these days. Dirt, that is. The fine stuff that trickles through one's cupped hands or cakes them with clinging clay. The elemental stuff in which plants grow, flourish, and live, which incorporates back into itself things that have themselves ceased to be alive.

The USDA has a remarkable interactive map incorporating soil survey data for most of the United States. I've been poring over it eagerly these past few days. Our little homestead here in North Carolina is sandy loam. Our new farm in Wisconsin, at least according to the USDA, is comprised of various types of silty loam (Brinkman, Valton, Elbaville--not that I really know the difference between these). I'm actually a little skeptical as regards the silty loam classification, though, because my own experience mucking around in that soil harvesting garlic last summer has left me empirically certain that it's more accurately ridge-top clay than silt.

At creation, man was formed from the dirt: "And the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul" (Genesis 2:7).

That man's name, of course, is ha-adam, simply the Hebrew word for man, a word etymologically linked to ha-adamah, the word for dirt. My vague recollection from class years ago is that the word is also linked to the word for the color red, making hah-adamah not only dirt, but red dirt, something people down south, say in Georgia, would immediately identify with clay.

Not only was man formed from dirt, but specifically from clay. Why clay? Is it significant? That's what I am pondering today, Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, when the priest traces the sign of the cross on our foreheads with ashes, murmuring, "Remember, man, that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return."

The three main components of soil are sand, silt, and clay. They are all important, and all liabilities without the presence of the others. Sand allows for drainage, silt contains the organic matter on which new life feeds, and clay--what does clay do? My basic understanding is that clay helps soil to retain its moisture. Obviously retaining moisture can cut both ways. Midsummer here in North Carolina, for example, I was adding mulch in order to emend the soil. In Wisconsin last summer, on the other hand, a lot of the garlic that I pulled from the ground was already beginning to rot from an overabundance of moisture. It was fine for seed, but it wasn't really saleable.

So what of us human beings, clay-people, retainers of moisture? Again, just scattered musings composed in a bit of a rush, so take them for what they are worth:

We immerse ourselves in the saving waters of baptism, dying to ourselves in order to be born to eternal life. We are called to become vessels of God's mercy, pouring out the saving waters through our words, deeds, and actions in our lives as Christians. Historically, Lent was a time to accompany catecumens on their journey toward baptism at the Easter Vigil, a time to recall and renew the promises of our own baptism, an opportunity to immerse ourselves anew in Christ.

Prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are the three-fold traditional means of that reimmersion. Clay-people that we are, perhaps we can soak up the sweet rains of God's grace during this Lenten season, storing them for the periods of spiritual drought and dryness that are sure to come.

I don't know, maybe my simile breaks down: Surely an abundance of grace doesn't rot the soul like water rotted my garlic. Then again, grace is something that by its very nature needs to be shared. Clay-people though we are, we need the irritating sand of difficult situations in which, of difficult people to whom, we can share the grace, love, and mercy that Christ has shared with us.

So the difficulties of daily life are like the sandy component of soil, giving us the opportunity to drain God's mercy into the lives of those who need it; silt is our daily death to ourselves, from which new life in Christ springs.

And we ourselves? Again, we are clay-people, specially formed from the clay of the earth to soak up the sweet rains of God's grace.

Thou art dust, but very special dust indeed.