In this expectation, we see a curiously secularized echo of the Christian Tradition, which also teaches us to live in Hope. But for Christianity the object of Hope is not Progress, but Jesus Christ. We are called to “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Col. 3:2-4).

This means that our hope is not in the future, but in eternity with Christ, which is a whole ‘nother thing entirely. The future is part of this world; and this world is passing away. If you want the quickest and most accurate description of the Future, it is that time when you and all you know and love in this world will be dead.

Now that doesn’t sound nearly as appealing as the bright shiny Future promised in the glossy brochures of the Futurists with the Jetsonesque Flying Cars and the Star Trek interplanetary multicultural conflict resolution counselors in leotards, but it happens to be true. And taken together with the rest of the Christian revelation, it even happens to be Good News.

That may sound weird. But it’s why the Latin tradition of Christianity speaks of the Four Last Things—Death, Judgment, Heaven, and Hell—as the Novissima or the Four Newest Things. In other words, it’s why the Tradition combines the notion of our mortality with the notion of… well, what do we associate with the New: youthfulness, freshness, morning, vitality?

How can it do something so daring? Because the Christ of paradox is, after all, the one who said that if you try to keep your life you will lose it, but if you lose your life for his sake you will keep it to eternal life.

The world is all about trying to keep its life. So it prattles on as though you and I are not going to die but live forever in a sort of eternal dream of the Pepsi Generation. This is worldly hope and it leads inevitably to worldly despair. That’s what is fueling the present movement toward euthanasia. A post-Christian culture that gives up on God inevitably gives up on real hope. The world says, “If I can’t have eternal Pepsi Generation happiness then, by golly, I’m going to assert my power one last time and end it all on my terms!” That’s despair as old and weary as Adam.

But in Christ we “die before we die” as T.S. Eliot put it. We begin, in this life, to live out what the ancients knew: that “the love of wisdom is the practice of death”. So Christians practice wisdom by little acts of death to self and love for God and neighbor that we might receive, in little bites of living bread and little sips of the cup of life, the life of God who cannot die. We start clearing out the rubbish of selfishness that clutters the soul and furnishing our hearts with the furniture of our Father’s House. Of course, none of that is possible without the help of God in Christ. Indeed, the very ability to turn from self to Christ for help is, itself, a work of grace. But it is one that requires our cooperation and it is one which has to begin, in however small a measure, before we die.

For die we shall, sooner or later. This is one of the hard truths the Faith confronts us with out of the great mercy of God. Death is the devil’s greatest triumph, the fruit of sin. But it is also the key to the victory of Christ. Like a chess move in which Satan stupidly rushes in his pride and greed to take God’s best piece, so too the devil puts into the heart of Judas to betray Jesus and all the powers of darkness rush blindly to put the Son of God to death. And by his very concession to their will to power God triumphs by putting our sins to death with Christ on the cross and then raising him fr0m death to immortal life—and us with him. In the world, death is a hole. In Christ, it is a Door to everlasting joy.

Thou preparest a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
thou anointest my head with oil,
my cup overflows.

Most people don’t think of horror as a genre of literature or film that is particularly agreeable to Christian sensibilities. However, two of the great practitioners of horror on both page and screen consider their work to be an extension of the gospel. Stephen King, author of many a scary tale, says that he considers himself the spiritual heir of the great Puritan preacher, Jonathan Edwards (who preached the famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”). William Peter Blatty, who penned <i>The Exorcist</i> wrote the story precisely in order to show both the depths of demonic evil and to remind the world of the reality of Christ-like self-sacrifice. It is the depth of the darkness of the Enemy that paradoxically highlights the brilliance of the light of Heaven. Indeed, the word “monster” comes from the same root as the word “demonstrate” and “monstrance.” A “monster” demonstrates what we can and will be apart from Christ. A monstrance shows forth the saving Eucharist, and self-sacrificial power of him who underwent the worst horror the world has ever known to save us from the terrors of Hell. He has prepared a Eucharistic table for us in the presence of Satan himself — and deprived him of his prey. This Halloween, be not afraid.

Know that the LORD is God!

Much of what passes for art today is junk. What we see on television or at the movies or in pop music is increasingly about “pushing the outside of the envelope.” That is, it is about doing something more shocking and grotesque today than was done yesterday because the viewer is bored with mere titillation and now demands that chicken heads be bitten off or somebody be disemboweled in order to stab deadened senses to life with some fresh shock. At the end of that road lies not liberation but boredom and despair. In contrast, real art shows us, not new and more distorted cruelties and perversions for the sake of shock, but wonders in what is ordinary and everyday. C.S. Lewis said that one of the chief tasks of a good poet was to remind us that grass is green and water is wet and the sky is blue. Real poetry and real art is, in part, written to remind us of the strangeness and wonder of things that we encounter everyday. That is why today’s verse is real poetry. It is strange beyond telling that we live in a universe ruled by a God like ours. But it also happens to be true. The psalmist merely has to say “Know that the Lord is God!” and we are plunged into a bottomless mystery — if we think about it. In the words of G.K. Chesterton, “If you look at a thing nine hundred and ninety-nine times, you are perfectly safe; if you look at it the thousandth time, you are in frightful danger of seeing it for the first time.” Today, look at God and his world again and see it for the first time.

Thou hast led in thy steadfast love the people whom thou hast redeemed,
thou hast guided them by thy strength to thy holy abode.

Paul tells us that the things written in the Old Testament were written for the benefit of the Church.  That is, the event’s and people of the Old Testament are signs to us of the greater realities revealed by Christ in the heavenlies.  So it is with today’s verse.  God led Israel out of Egypt and into the Promised Land by his strength and steadfast love.  In an even greater way, God has led his people out of the grave and into heaven by his resurrection from the dead.  He has conquered sin as he conquered Canaan.  And he has led them to the Temple of his Body, that holiest of abodes, as he led Israel to Mt. Zion.  Today thank God for the way in which he has made history rhyme.

Why parodies? Because he cannot make, he can only mock. So instead of love, he offers lust. Instead of justice he offers merciless vengeance. Instead of dignity, he offers pride. Instead of contentment with the world’s goods he offers greed.

Why does he send errors into the world in pairs? So that, in fleeing one lie, you will embrace the opposite lie. And so, for instance, he ignores the Church’s ancient affirmation of both faith and reason and instead foments credulity and skepticism, which are to faith and reason as carob is to fine Belgian chocolate.

Halloween is an especially good time for the devil, for it annually introduces into our national conversation a good solid dose of both credulity and skepticism, while encouraging us to overlook both faith and reason.

Credulity encourages us to believe without thinking and skepticism encourages us to disbelieve without thinking. Both are folly. The credulous person accepts tales of the supernatural without bothering to find out if they are a) true or b) from God. The skeptic reflexively rejects the supernatural, not on the basis of the evidence, but on the basis of a personal dogma which rules out the supernatural in advance of and in the teeth of whatever evidence there may be.

Neither approach is the way of the Catholic faith. The Church is open to the reality that God made the world to be orderly and discoverable by reason. This fundamental faith statement is the basis of all the sciences. Without the basic (and scientifically unprovable) faith that the mind can grasp reality there would be no science. The dogmatic skeptic who believes that everything you cannot prove with reason should be rejected is sawing off the branch he is sitting on, because you cannot prove with reason that reason is reliable. We take that assumption on faith. A thorough commitment to skepticism means the end, not just of faith, but of reason.

Conversely, the credulous person who sees the miraculous at work everywhere and is ready to declare every water stain on a freeway underpass as an apparition of the Blessed Virgin is also acting against both faith and reason. Credulity will often race ahead of the Church to embrace loony seers and visionaries who announce all manner of non-Catholic rubbish. It will often cower in fear before such seers in anticipation of some terrible divine judgment or demonic spectacle. That kind of credulity is also frequently ready to see demons at work in every head cold or hangnail—with the result that the dogmatic skeptic feels vindicated in sneering at the supernatural.

The Catholic way is wedded to common sense. With respect to credulity Catholic common sense says, “Chances are the water stain is just a water stain and not a miraculous apparition. Chances are the cold is just a cold and not a manifestation of demonic power.” With respect to dogmatic skepticism, Catholic common sense says, “If a person with nothing to gain and a lot to lose reports seeing a miracle, odds are they are at least being honest. If that honest person’s report of a miracle has solid evidence backing it, then the sensible thing to do is praise God for a miracle.” So when the apostles and 500 witnesses report seeing the Risen Christ and live lives or suffering and martyrdom for it, the most reasonable (and faithful) thing to do is acknowledge that the thing happened. After all, nothing in science or the Catholic faith really makes it impossible since God, under carefully controlled laboratory conditions can do whatever he likes.

Both faith and reason are grounded in truth: the truth God has revealed about himself and the truth he has built into Creation. Both credulity and skepticism are grounded in personal prejudice: a person’s will to believe or disbelieve something based, not on the truth, but on one’s own personal preference imposed on the evidence. Both the credulous person and the skeptic are driven to arrive at conclusions that fit their personal prejudice. The Catholic is free to follow the evidence where it leads and even, when necessary, leave a mystery mysterious. A Catholic can look at the odd things of this world and say, “I don’t know what it means, so I will think about it and, God willing, form a conclusion based on the evidence.” The credulous person and the skeptic are committed by their philosophies to not think about it and leap to their conclusions. They must pretend they have knowledge and understanding when really they have only a prejudice.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.

The great thing about the “cloud of witnesses” Hebrews mentions here is that they are not schleps who are sitting in the stadium, lazily cheering for the team while they swill beer and wolf pretzels. They are the Team.  Every one of the witnesses in the cloud has been down on the field where you are now.  Everyone is a champion.  That’s why they are cheering.  They know you can run the race of holiness in the Spirit because they did it themselves.  Today, ask the heavenly witnesses, the saints of Jesus, to help you with their prayers and to join you in giving praise and glory to God, our heavenly Father.

The LORD is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul that seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly
for the salvation of the LORD.

Seeking God is an essential part of finding him.  Waiting for God is part of the process that leads up to his arrival.  It is during those times of waiting and seeking, as much as during the time of finding, that God is at work in our souls, albeit secretly.  Every prayer is heard before we pray it.  Every prayer is answered according to his timing and will, not ours.

For as the heavens are high above the earth,
so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him;
as far as the east is from the west,
so far does he remove our transgressions from us.

God, said the medieval theologians, is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.  Such mystical language is not far from today’s verse. We worship a God whose love reaches above the heavens and who can throw our sins an infinite distance away, never to trouble us or him again.  Today, love the God who loves you and give him all your sins.  He will get rid of them for you.

Some boast of chariots, and some of horses;
but we boast of the name of the LORD our God.

Not much has changed.  Ancients boasted of chariots, we boast of cars.  Ancients boasted of horses, we boast of horsepower.  But chariots, Mercedes, horses and horsepower all wimp out in the end.  God is the only eternal thing.  His name is Everlasting.

There are friends who pretend to be friends,
but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

Today’s verse is a favorite for greeting cards with gooey sentimental pictures of the Jesus with high cheekbones, blue eyes, and sob sister aspect that was so popular about 100 years ago. The real Jesus though, so far from being a sob sister, unfailingly tended to provoke either adoration, fear or intense hatred. The sob sister Jesus always looks like he’s sighing helplessly, surprised and taken aback by naughtiness. The real Jesus spent his time dealing with customers like foaming demoniacs, serious-minded people with serious questions about Life, the Universe and Everything, or bitter enemies. He was canny, sharp-witted and even funny. His talent for poking holes in the clever rhetorical devices of his foes was well-known. The sob sister Jesus wasn’t so much pretending to be our friend as pitifully hoping we would be his friend. The real Jesus sticks closer than a brother, not because he needs a thing, but because he has already faced down the worst we can dish out in our cravenness as a race and has resolved to love us no matter what. When somebody is that serious about us, he is a real friend!