A Homily for the 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time
“Old men ought to be explorers
Here and there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion.
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation:
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
of the petrel and the porpoise. In the end is my beginning.”
The Young explore, travel, go on voyages because they are driven to do so. They are built to do so. It is necessary in order to discover both Who I am and Where I belong. The Young seek place after place driven by the deep unspoken sense of The Place, that is yet nascent within them. The Place on which they will stand. The Place which they will discover within their very selves. The Young explore, travel, and go on voyages because they are driven to do so… it’s what the Young do. Some will find what they most desire while too many perhaps will give up way too soon; sinking their roots in too shallow soil.
But what about The Old? The Old ought to be explorers, as T. S. Eliot reminds us. Why? Because we know The Place! We explore because we choose to and we know it doesn’t matter “here or there” because we’ve learned that in the stillness is movement; in the stillness is the dancing and everyone is going to have to learn the dance for which they were created to dance. The Place isn’t out there somewhere. It’s in here.
The Old have a responsibility to explore. Everything in us may say: It’s time to stop! But we must seek another intensity. We voyage for “a further union… a deeper communion,” which we know is worth the passages of “dark cold” and “empty desolation.” Another intensity that can withstand the piercing but transient “wave cry” and “wind cry” across the empty waters. Because The Old know the secret: In my end is always my beginning. So…
“Fare forward, travelers; not escaping from the past
into different lives, or into any future;
You are not the same people who left the station
or who will arrive at any terminus…
Not fare well,
But fare forward, voyagers.”
“The Lord upholds my life.” When you’ve lived long enough you not only know that is true, but that is everything. And if the Lord upholds my life then I need never cease exploring and taking the risk of launching out… because the world desperately needs to know a “fuller union” and a “deeper communion.”
A fuller union and a deeper communion which people caught in a constant battle to define themselves and grab hold of their place in the world cannot know. People caught up in the Fear our reading from Wisdom points to or the inconstancy and insincerity resulting from unresolved internal conflicts, as St. James points to. They long for it but they can’t effect it. Only people who know the secret about the movement in the stillness can live it. And if we don’t live it others won’t believe it is true or that it is even possible.
The Young must go on voyages to discover what The Old already know: We must be still and still moving. We know the fearlessness with which one must engage to live the kind of backward life that Christ invites us into. Where servants are leaders and leaders serve. Where the end is our beginning. Where in the stillness is the only dancing that matters.
That fearlessness, no matter how dark and cold the empty desolations, can’t be taught it can only be caught from those who have lived through the empty desolations and yet choose to keep exploring and discovering The Place where we started and the joy of knowing it for the first time.
The Young are driven to explore so they might learn what The Old already know. And The Old must never cease exploring because the world is desperately in need of that fuller union… that deeper communion that can’t be spoken but can only be lived. So..
“Fare forward, Voyagers!”
Chiaroscuro Spirituality 