We had the Feast of
Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, the Archangels, recently; and the
celebration of the Guardian Angels shortly after that. I want to pause a moment to
reflect on this. If we are thinking about the angels, let us try to remove from
our minds whatever popularized or sentimentalized images may be pasted on them.
Recall how the first reactions of persons in Scripture when confronted by angels
are often of fear, and one of the first things the angel often says before
delivering whatever message it brings is “Do not be afraid.” (Some links and
references about angels are listed below.) I try to imagine an unexpected
meeting with an angel by imagining being suddenly met with a person of imposing
presence, striking appearance, and an air of authority, addressing themselves
unexpectedly and directly to me and plainly expecting a clear and definitive
response. As if before you can even say “Can I get back to you on that” the answer
is “Respond, or not. Come with me, or stay where you are” Not that they are in
a hurry, or that they are going to force me to go anywhere. And angels exist in eternity, so "later", as we understand it, is not even an option. Rather, I always
have a choice to make about whether I am with the Lord, or not. Faith is not a
matter of what I feel about God but about the relationship I have with Him.
Jesus became flesh and walked the dusty, treacherous roads of 1st century
Palestine so that the Ancient of Days, the Triune God, could be approachable in
form and spirit: fully human, and fully divine.
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| The Ancient of Days William Blake, 1794 Public domain, Wikimedia art |
In Luke 9:57-62, Jesus strongly urges that
we follow him without delay. “And another said, ‘I will follow you, Lord, but
first let me say farewell to my family at home.’ Jesus answered him, ‘No one
who sets his hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the
Kingdom of God.’” (Luke 9:61-62) Of this passage, Pope Benedict XVI writes, “There
is the time of being called in which the decision is present, and it is more
important than what we have thought out for ourselves and what is in itself quite
reasonable. The reason of Jesus and his summons have precedence: they come
first.”[i] As I said above, I always have a choice to
make about whether I am with the Lord, or not. Impatience, sloth, resentment,
fearfulness – even duty– or the Lord? Maybe that approach to the passage is
scrupulous, or legalistic, or even trivial. Jesus was always teaching, and here
He deliberately sets adherence to Him against another good thing, duty to
family. He calls us to recognize not so much a hierarchy of values, but the
greatest good. Remember that He said “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Since
that is so, other goods flow from that; they cannot be separate. The course of
the river is below the source, never above. Grace flows downhill, as it were.
Pride by nature is uphill of grace. You’ve heard that you can’t go home again;
you can’t get to grace from pride, either. Doesn’t any preference I have for my
own way, over against the truth, have a taproot in pride?
If I am scrupulous (prideful) regarding
sinful shortcomings, I might miss a harmful attachment to something good of
itself. It is harmful if I cling to it in favor of God, the greatest good. An
attachment to home, for example; especially if in some period in my life I felt
like I didn’t belong wherever I was, and then I found a place to call home, I
might place a high value on that, and I would have to find ways to detach
myself from it.
Fisherman’s Rest Revisited
After I wrote
the post Fisherman’s Rest a couple of months ago, I talked to a man who grew up
in the countryside relatively near to there. He told me that when he was a kid
he would ride his bike the twelve-mile distance from his home to Fisherman’s
Rest, to fish, while wearing his waders to boot. That would be hip waders or
chest waders, I presume. He’s a strapping figure of a man now and about half my
age; I can imagine his stalky adolescent self, peddling along Hwy 63 and the
county roads, up and down some steep hills, in the waders, with fishing gear
somehow attached. Not something you saw every day fifteen or so years ago and perhaps
even less now, as the young become more detached from reality in virtual
reality. He was determined, on a mission, and he is on a mission still as a
priest of the Church. May the river of grace overflow for him.
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| The Red Shed, 11 x 14, oil on panel, Peter Bougie Copyright 2018 |
That man has
left this area, and he might be interested to know of some changes at his old fishing
place. Man and nature have both been at work. The decaying building I painted is
now gone. It is no surprise. On the day I painted that picture, a backhoe was
parked on the opposite side of the building. Demolition was scheduled then and
is now completed. Where the building stood a slope is now graded out. Standing
near where I painted that picture, and looking through the space which the old
ruin once occupied, I did a painting of a shed located a hundred yards or so to
the north. It is also a building in decay although not as advanced as the
other. The attraction here is the color red, intense in some areas and
weathered in others; the bold angled shadow of the projecting eaves, the shadows
within the openings of the shed (thick with ghosts that would flee,
unsubstantial, should you enter), and the broad sunlit green grass before it,
trimmed by the ample shade of a towering cottonwood. Some might find it
nostalgic; for me it is more a matter of a combination of color, form, bright sun
light and shadowed interiors (the heat of the day, a shaded resting place), and
some subdued but evident indications of the near and the far.
We had heavy rains late in August and early in September, and
the fallen tree trunk spanning the water in Below the Chute is gone now, too. It
was a big log and high above the stream and I am sure it took some real water
to move it out of there.
So the summer has passed, and it’s subjects along with it. The
season, all blooming, all growth; such things remain as the rings that were
added to the girth of each tree and the dry rattle to the end of each uncommon rattlesnake;
some new paintings stacked up here in my home, among some from past years that
still remain here, and the many remnants elsewhere I will never know about. “For
the fashion of this world passeth away” (1 Corinthians 7:31) and we enter the
dark time of the year.
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| The Red Shed, detail Copyright 2018 Peter Bougie |
Links:
Professor Peter Kreeft on angels:
The Catechism of the Catholic Church on angels:
[i] Ministers of Your Joy:
Scriptural Meditations on Priestly Spirituality, Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, 1989, an imprint of Franciscan
Media, 29 W. Liberty St., Cincinnati, OH
