The following is a reflection given by a friend and fellow AI student, Br. Dominic McManus, OP. Br. Dominic is currently on his pastoral year serving at St. Paul Catholic Center at Indiana University. His reflection left such an impression in my mind that I asked him if I could share it with all of you. I’m glad he agreed! If you like this reflection, he has additional reflections on the Archdiocese of Chicago’s website for their Office of Evangelization: Spreading the Holy Fire. (Click on the Advent 2008 link.)
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Eric Clapton, the Confessional, and Angels at the Bookstore
From a Communal Penance Service–Advent 2008
In those days John the Baptist appeared, preaching in the desert of Judea (and) saying, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand!” It was of him that the prophet Isaiah had spoken when he said: “A voice of one crying out in the desert, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his paths.’” John wore clothing made of camel’s hair and had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. At that time Jerusalem, all Judea, and the whole region around the Jordan were going out to him and were being baptized by him in the Jordan River as they acknowledged their sins. When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees 7 coming to his baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? Produce good fruit as evidence of your repentance. And do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones. Even now the ax lies at the root of the trees. Therefore every tree that does not bear good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire. I am baptizing you with water, for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is mightier than I. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fan is in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
Once upon a time in a faraway land which we now know as Azerbadjan there lived a dashingly handsome young man called Qays who fell in love with a beautiful young lady whose name was Layla. When the two met it was as though the sun had collided with the moon. Their love was immediate and unsurpassed and Qays naturally enough asked Layla’s father for her hand in marriage. Her father refused and forbade the two from seeing one another. This rejection sent Qays into such a tailspin that he ran away into the desert where he tried to rid himself of his broken heart. First he tried to satisfy his love with anything but Layla, and then he simply tried to stop loving so to stop longing for Layla, but in the end he was seen to wander around the wilderness singing poems of love and longing for his lost one. His love lyrics were so lovely that the people used to come from far and wide just to hear him recite his poetry, and they say even the wild beasts would sit at his feet just to hear the words of his mouth. Some people wrote down his poems, which became known, as did Qays himself, as Majnun Layla, or The Madman of Layla, for he had gone crazy with love. Eight hundred years later another young man, also deeply in love with a woman whom he could not have, read Majnun Layla. His name was Eric Clapton, and he too understood the restless, anxious longing of love.
Friends, this is our story. Each one of us has glimpsed our own true Love, which is why we’re here tonight. And yet, each of us has likewise turned away from that Love, looked for that Love in all the wrong places, tried to satisfy our longing with anything but, and in the end discovered that you never quite get enough of what you really don’t need. That’s why we’re here tonight to ask forgiveness. To say, “I’m sorry”, “I screwed up”, “I didn’t mean it”, or even, “I did mean it and I wish I didn’t”. And we make our pleas not before some ferocious and bloodthirsty judge, but as we would to a spouse, a parent, or a best friend. We stand this night not as criminals into the courtroom, but as lovers anxious to please the Beloved.
But we are not the only restless lovers here tonight. This is God’s story too, for He is nothing if not a restless lover. From the very beginning, both of creation and of our lives, God has been chasing furiously after us. He called out to Abraham from the dark of night, showed His light to Moses in the bush, made known the shape of that love at Sinai, and even wrote us a whole book of love poems which we too often ignore. Then, in the fullness of time, He came to us Himself; to live with us, to die for us, and to rise for us, so that in dying to ourselves we too might rise with Him for all eternity. That’s what we celebrate at Christmas, and why we prepare for a whole month ahead of time. God stands even here and now, ready, waiting, and wanting to forgive.
But this is not the only story which, turned on its head, can get at what we’re doing here tonight. The words of the Baptist tonight are hard, and rightly so. The Four Last Things: death, judgment, heaven and hell are real. They’re really real. In fact they’re more real than any of the real things which we think we know so much about. But tonight there shines no harvest moon. What we do tonight is a lot more like detasseling corn than threshing wheat. Tonight we get to decide which bits of ourselves ought to be cross-fertilized, and which are best left to the wind—or cast into the fire. So if there is a harvest this night it is we who are the harvesters, and the fire into which the chaff is thrown is not the everlasting fire of judgment but the refining fire of God’s love. Once passed through the fire our characters, now tested, will be shown to be more precious and pure than the gold tempered in the furnace. The Fuller’s lye is waiting to make us clean. And we are here because we want to scrub up; we want a spit, shower, and shave before Christ comes—at Christmas or anytime, because that’s the hottest date in the history of the world.
Let us stand tonight as restless lovers and plead on bended knee for the comfort of our Beloved. Let our hearts grown, not for fear of hellfire but for loss of love, and let our prayer be that of the English rocker some forty years ago:
Layla, or for us, My true love,
You’ve got me on my knees, Dear One,
Darling, won’t you ease my worried mind.
