Phil: Do you ever have déjà vu, Mrs. Lancaster?
Mrs. Lancaster: I don’t think so, but I could check with the kitchen.
~ Groundhog Day (1992)
Intervals matter. Like when I return to the hospital every January for clinicals with my nursing students after an eight-month absence. I look forward to the levity and celebratory vibe as the staff and I reconnect. “Haven’t seen you for a while!” the nurses and aides will say, and “Where’ve you been hiding?” Then the catching up begins: who’s new, who’s got a new title, who’s moved on to different floors or facilities, and baby pictures – always new babies to ooh and aah over. Pretty soon, the novelty of my return with new students wears off, and it’s business as usual week after week – until the end of April and the semester’s conclusion, when we disappear again and the whole sequence repeats the following January.
Birthdays are like that as well, aren’t they? We anticipate our special day, it comes – we’re feted and pampered – and it goes, and the rest of the year we’re just regular schlemiels. But what if your birthday came around less frequently? What if you were born on Leap Day, February 29th – like my college buddy Terry’s first-born, Winslow. I remember calling Terry way back when to offer my congratulations – and my wit. “Poor kid,” I offered, with mock sympathy, “he’ll only get birthdays every four years” (yuk-yuk). Terry actually concurred, and then said something like, “We’ll have to make them count.”
That’s a sentiment that should also apply to the feast we celebrate today – St. Oswald of Worcester, also known as Oswald of York. “St. Oswald is the only Saint whose feast is celebrated on this date,” writes Fr. Alban Butler, “which only recurs every fourth year.” It’s what I call the Brigadoon feast – like the Scottish village that appears only every 100 years in Lerner and Loewe’s popular musical. The time-bound mortals that stumble across Brigadoon when it does show up are understandably jolted in a variety of ways. Similarly, St. Oswald’s quadrennial re-emergence provides for a reckoning of time’s forward march that fosters both reflection and conversion – which is especially appropriate when it shows up in Lent as it often does.
So this elusive Leap Year saint – who was he anyway? Oswald was an erstwhile English religious who lived in the 10th century. Born a Dane (and probably to Vikings), he was raised a Christian in England by his uncle, St. Odo, the Archbishop of Canterbury. The young saint gravitated to a leadership position among the secular canons of Winchester, but the corruption and lax morals there caused Oswald to flee to the continent and take up the Benedictine habit at Fleury.
Eventually, his devotion and commitment to reform led to his installation as Bishop of Worcester, and he went about promoting monastic revival in addition to caring for his flock. Oswald’s successes in Worcester brought him another promotion – this time as Archbishop of York, although he also retained authority over the see of Worcester.
Despite having two dioceses to contend with, Oswald was a tireless servant and spent himself visiting his charges. In keeping with his earlier monastic aspirations, he was particularly keen on reforming religious life in the areas under his influence, especially the priests who served in his cathedrals.
What’s more, Oswald was eminently mindful of the poor, and some sources have it that the Archbishop made it his daily custom during Lent to wash the feet of the poor – an activity he was undertaking on February 29, 992, when he passed away. However, Butler indicates that Oswald engaged in the practice all the time. “The saint,” he writes, “to nourish in his heart the sentiments of humility and charity, had everywhere twelve poor persons at his table, whom he served, and also washed and kissed their feet.”
My guess is that both traditions are correct, and that what had been an exclusively Lenten habit became Oswald’s constant routine. It’s another example of the saint’s association with intervals – in this case, the way that Lenten disciplines, when taken up soberly and with an attitude of receptivity, creep into the rest of our year and become constant parts of our lives instead of simply intermittent penitential practices.
Even these tidbits of information about Oswald’s life are edifying enough – and what Christian wouldn’t want to breathe his last while engaged in a corporal work of mercy? But there’s at least one more lesson associated with Oswald’s feast that’s noteworthy – at least for me. Since it crops up outside of the regular rhythm of the liturgical year, it’s a quadrennial wake-up call that God requires us to join him in redeeming time itself along with the rest of Creation.
Minutes and hours are consecrated to God through the Liturgy of the Hours, and days and months are redeemed throughout the liturgical year, with its seasons and sanctoral cycle. Beyond these annual cycles, there’s the Lectionary’s biannual weekday readings and triannual readings for Sunday, and even greater intervals represented in jubilee years and the like. As the Congregation for Divine Worship puts it, the Church “never ceases to offer prayer and makes this exhortation its own: ‘Through him (Jesus) let us offer to God an unceasing sacrifice of praise’ (Heb 15:15).” Even so, our human penchant for distractedness means that we frequently end up simply going through the motions: Mass and prayer border on rote, and the cycles of the liturgy, mundane.
But a Leap Day feast? It’s very oddity and singularity catches us off guard, and St. Oswald’s reappearance every four years seems to be just the right interval for shaking me out of my religious routine. “Watch out!” St. Oswald shouts, shattering my indolence, “God reaches everywhere – no escape!” Every nook and cranny of the universe is within his grasp, and he won’t rest until every day, every moment – every interval – is replete with his glory. “Recapitulation” is what Irenaeus of Lyons called it, and Pope St. John Paul II took up the theme as well. “This coming together of all being in Christ, the centre of time and space,” he wrote, “gradually takes place in history, as the obstacles, the resistance of sin and the Evil One, are overcome.” There’s no stopping him – we surrender!
So, yes, today is the feast of St. Oswald – it won’t be back for another four years! And what better way to observe this whimsical holiday than by imitating St. Oswald’s penchant for washing feet – either literally or figuratively. In fact, if we can make it a habit, then in 2020 when St. Oswald rolls around again, we’ll have even more to celebrate!
