Signs, symbols and reality →

“As the deer longs for streams of water, so my soul longs for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, the living God. When can I enter and see the face of God?” (Ps 42:2-3).

The deer, I learned from St. John Climacus in “The Ladder of Divine Ascent,” was seen by Christians up through his time (the seventh century) as a symbol of virtue, in part because people believed that a deer could suck a snake — a symbol of vice and of demons — up out of its den in the ground and swallow it whole.

That deer don’t actually do that is beside the point. In the modern age, men have come to view natural phenomena in the most materialistic of terms. Even if deer did suck snakes out of the ground and swallow them whole, we’d find video of the event on YouTube or the National Geographic channel to be fascinating, but our minds would never go where St. John’s, and the minds of hundreds of thousands of Christians before him, went.

‘What you are now, we once were’ →

Going a little stir crazy after a week or three at home? Feeling the need to get a little sunshine and fresh air, and to stretch your legs? Looking for something that can take the place of television and video games for children who complete their e-learning in record time?

Go visit a cemetery. No, really.

‘Help my unbelief’ →

In the traditional Lectionary, there is no three-year A-B-C cycle, and those who attend the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite or any of the Eastern Rites hear the same readings in the same order every Lent, just as their forebears did from the fourth century on. That builds among the faithful a comforting familiarity with those readings, and I came, in our 20-plus years at an Extraordinary Form oratory, to look forward to particular selections, which always seemed to arrive at just the point in Lent when I needed them most.

Christ in our midst →

At the Easter Vigil, after weeks of Lenten Masses without the Gloria, the priest intones the opening words: “Gloria in excelsis Deo.” Then, as the choir and the rest of the congregation join in, every bell in the church is rung, and, if the church has a bell tower, those bells are tolled, too. The return of the Gloria is a glorious thing (no pun intended), and the ringing of the bells invites all who can hear them, both inside and outside the Church (in both senses of both words), to join in the joy of Christ’s resurrection.

About two weeks ago, I wrote that “In times like these — but not only in times like these — we need more bells in our lives,” to remind us both of our mortality (“It tolls for thee”) but also of our hope in the Resurrection.