Merton goes to church at the start of World War II:
The nights dragged by. I remember one, when I was driving in from Long Island where I had been having dinner at Gibney’s house at Port Washington. The man with whom I was riding had a radio in the car, and we were riding along the empty Parkway, listening to a quiet, tired voice from Berlin. These commentators’ voices had lost all their pep. There was none of that lusty and doctrinaire elation with which the news broadcasters usually convey the idea that they know all about everything. This time you knew that nobody knew what was going to happen, and they all admitted it. True, they were all agreed that the war was now going to break out. But when? Where? They could not say.
All the trains to the German frontier had been stopped. All air service had been discontinued. The streets were empty. You got the feeling that things were being cleared for the first great air-raid, the one that everyone had been wondering about, that H. G. Wells and all the other people had written about, the one that would wipe out London in one night...
The Thursday night before the first Friday of September I went to confession at St. Patrick’s Cathedral and then, with characteristic stupidity, stopped in at Dillon’s, which was a bar where we went all the time, across the street from the stage-door of the Center Theater. Gibney and I used to sit there waiting for the show to end, and we would hang around until one or two in the morning with several girls we knew who had bits to play in it. This evening, before the show was out, I ran into Jinny Burton, who was not in the show, but could have been in many better shows than that, and she said she was going home to Richmond over Labor Day. She invited me to come with her. We arranged to meet in Pennsylvania Station the following morning.
When it was morning, I woke up early and heard the radios. I could not quite make out what they were saying, but the voices were not tired any more: there was much metallic shouting which meant something had really happened.
On my way to Mass, I found out what it was. They had bombed Warsaw, and the war had finally begun.
In the Church of St. Francis of Assisi, near the Pennsylvania Station, there was a High Mass. The priest stood at the altar under the domed mosaic of the apse and his voice rose in the solemn cadences of the Preface of the Mass—those ancient and splendid and holy words of the Immortal Church. Vere dignum et justum est aequum et salutare nos tibi semper et ubique gratias agere, Domine sancte, Pater omnipotens, aeterne Deus...
It was the voice of the Church, the Bride of Christ who is in the world yet not of it, whose life transcends and outlives wars and persecutions and revolutions and all the wickedness and cruelty and rapacity and injustice of men. It is truly meet and just always and in all things to give Thee thanks, Holy Lord, omnipotent Father, eternal God: a tremendous prayer that reduces all wars to their real smallness and insignificance in the face of eternity. It is a prayer that opens the door to eternity, that springs from eternity and goes again into eternity, taking our minds with it in its deep and peaceful wisdom. Always and in all things to give Thee thanks, omnipotent Father. Was it thus that she was singing, this Church, this one Body, who had already begun to suffer and to bleed again in another war?
She was thanking Him in the war, in her suffering: not for the war and for the suffering, but for His love which she knew was protecting her, and us, in this new crisis. And raising up her eyes to Him, she saw the eternal God alone through all these things, was interested in His action alone, not in the bungling cruelty of secondary causes, but only in His love, His wisdom. And to Him the Church, His Bride, gave praise through Christ, through Whom all the angelic hierarchies praise Him...
I knelt at the altar rail and on this the first day of the Second World War received from the hand of the priest, Christ in the Host, the same Christ Who was being nailed again to the cross by the effect of my sins, and the sins of the whole selfish, stupid, idiotic world of men.
The world is falling apart around Merton, and he turns to the rituals of the Catholic Church for some kind of solace or meaning. To makes sense of the selfish, stupid, idiotic world of men. How do you find meaning in a world where Adolf Hitler is possible? Where the Holocaust happened? You kneel, I guess. Bow your head. Wait for some action of grace to take place.
Three days ago, Mardi Gras was celebrated, with paczkis and king cakes. Two days ago, ashes and the beginning of Lent. But, really, it seems like we have lived an entire Lenten year. Since last March, I feel like ashes have been dusting our heads every day. So, this transition into the next 40 days of the Christian calendar doesn't seem all that difficult to me, aside from the fact of not eating meat on Fridays. We've all been fasting for a very long time.
Of course, everyone knows what comes after the fasting and sacrifice and darkness. Renewal. Rebirth. Redemption. That is what we're all waiting for. For the last several days, snow has fallen overnight. Every morning, when I take my dog for a spin around the house, I step into a world that's been erased, filled with palimpsest cars and trees and buildings. Everything paper white and new, waiting for the pencil of day.
Nobody who knows me would say that I'm an optimist. In fact, I have been categorized by more than one therapist and counselor as a pessimist. I don't see the glass as half-full or half-empty. I see it as coated in a virus that could wreak Armageddon on my compromised immune system and wind me up on a ventilator. I have a Lenten disposition.
While I love eggs and ham and chocolate, I am not a big Easter person. Never have been. I don't know why. Perhaps it's because I was raised by really hard-working Catholic parents who taught me about Purgatory and penance. Nothing is free. Therefore, the marshmallow eggs and peanut butter bunnies of Easter were hard-earned. As a young kid, I thought that Jesus died on the cross so that Easter Bunny could hop across the globe and deliver baskets. Christ paid the price for our candy. Of course, I now know that the Easter Bunny is much less Old Testament than Santa, who delivers coal to the naughty of the world. There is no threat of chocolate-coated dung beetles in the Easter Bunny gospel. Yet, the notion of earning grace persists in my being.
Since this pandemic began, there have been groups of people who have forwarded the idea that the human race is somehow being punished for its collective transgressions. Certainly, when the entire planet shutdown in March and April of last year, the environment benefitted. Air pollution lifted. Mount Everest could be seen clearly from 120 miles away in northern India for the first time in decades. All of the sins that we've committed against nature were abruptly curtailed or ceased altogether for a few months. The result? The world took a deep breath of fresh air.
Now, I know that plagues have been with us since the beginning of time. Moses had plagues. Back in the day, the bubonic plague wiped out 75 to 200 million people, that's almost 60% of the population of Europe. Cholera. Flu. AIDS. Pandemics happen and have been happening forever. I don't buy into the idea of widespread divine retribution. God doesn't work that way. I think we as a group disappoint God every day. However, She isn't some holy Mommie Dearest waiting to whip us all with a wire coat hanger. She has more in common with Carol Brady than Joan Crawford.
So, I enter Lent this year with my eyes focused on what's coming. Because after times of great struggle and pain come times of celebration and joy. Spring times. One hundred and seventy trees survived the bombing of Hiroshima and are still thriving, over 75 years later. Panic grass and feverfew flourished and greened the blighted Hiroshima landscape in the weeks following the bombing, filling survivors with hope. Nobody earned these symbols of resilience. They were there. Period. To lift a people who had experienced a great horror.
All this knowledge doesn't change me. I will still work hard to feel as if I've earned the goodness that comes my way. Because that's who I am. I think that we are placed in this universe for a reason. To be instruments for peace and happiness and compassion and love. That's the point of the entire Jesus narrative. It's the point of life. When it's my time to shuffle off this mortal coil, I sincerely hope that I will leave this place a little better than when I entered it.
Instead of a plague of sickness and despair, I want to spread a plague of kindness, understanding, and wonder.
For the possibility of that miracle, Saint Marty gives thanks.
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