April 16: Concern for Your Future, Boston, Saint Apollonius

"Do you feel absolutely no concern for your future, boy?"

"Oh, I feel some concern for my future, all right.  Sure.  Sure, I do."  I thought about it for a minute.  "But not too much, I guess.  Not too much, I guess."

Old Spencer tries to get Holden to think about his future at the beginning of the book.  Holden, however, has very little interest in what his teacher has to say.  Like most teenagers, Holden regards the future as some kind of foreign land he will never have to visit.  He doesn't think of himself as a grown man.  He thinks of himself as the catcher in the rye, saving children who are about to fall off the cliff into adulthood.

I've been thinking about the future a lot since yesterday afternoon, when I first heard the news of the bombings at the Boston Marathon.  Last night, my twelve-year-old daughter looked at me and said, "Why would anyone do that, daddy?"  And I had no good answer for her.  I sort of feel like Holden right now.  I want to catch my daughter before she falls off the cliff into a world where bombs kill people on street corners.  Residents of the Middle East deal with this reality every day of their lives.  The world is full of terrible, frightening people.

I tried to make my daughter feel safe.  I tried to calm her worry.  I tried to make her not fear the future.  I'm not sure I succeeded.  I think I said something like, "There's a lot of crazy people out there, sweetie, who want to hurt others.  But there are a lot more good people in the world, who want to keep you safe and happy."  It was the best I could do last night, when hope was in short supply in my heart.

Saint Apollonius, whose feast day is April 21, was condemned to death for being a Christian.  Before being martyred, he had a few words to say to the Roman Senate about the future and hope:  "We have hastened to honor [Jesus] because we have learned lofty commandments from Him. . . . Yet if it were a delusion (as you assert) which tells us that there is a judgment after death and a reward of virtue at the resurrection, and that God is the Judge, we would gladly be carried away by such a lie as that, which has taught us to lead good lives awaiting the hope of the future even while suffering adversities."

To face a present filled with bombs and senseless death, there has to be a future filled with hope for forgiveness, salvation, and love.

That's what Saint Marty should have said to his daughter last night.

There has to be hope...