Liminality

Pastor’s Epistle—October, A.D. 2016 C

There’s something inherently spiritual, and indeed a bit spooky, about liminal places. Areas of transition—from light to dark, from east to west, from civilization to wilderness—have fascinated every human culture. America is no exception, given our national obsession with “the frontier,” wherever that happens to be in a given generation. Crossroads and doorways, graveyards and twilight, all thrill us with their ambiguity, their in-betweenness. Unseen things, things just beyond the veil, seem that much closer, that much realer. And October is basically one big liminal space.

Autumn is perhaps the most dramatic of seasons, replete with pungent aromas, spices and woodsmoke and decaying vegetation. Leaves erupt in one last great riot of color before they wither and fall. In comes the harvest, transitioning from summer’s plenty into winter’s scarcity. The winds shift, heralding the frost and ice that, while not yet arrived, are now well and truly on their way. The days grow shorter; the darkness lengthens. It is a time of anticipation and transformation and apprehension. October is innately spiritual, and innately spooky. Change is everywhere on the breeze.

Little wonder, then, that we take this time to remember the dead. Nature herself seems to be transitioning from youth to age, from life to death. From her earliest days, the Church has embraced the ambiguity of liminal spaces: celebrating the Eucharist in catacombs during times of persecution; venerating the bones of saints who died as martyrs for the faith. Christians inherit a double promise of mortality. We are taught, with unflinching realism, that we will all diminish and die. Death is real. But we are also taught that because Christ has preceded us into death—harrowing hell and conquering the devil—we need no longer fear the grave. Our souls will continue on, praising God and praying for the Church on earth, while our bodies await the end of the age, when all shall rise imperishable at the resurrection of the dead.

This is why St Jerome kept a skull upon his desk while he studied and prayed: on the one hand to remind himself always of his own mortality, of the fleeting nature of mortal pleasures and mortal cares; while on the other hand holding to the promise that our bones will one day live again, that death itself will die. To ignore death, to pretend that we’ll be young and fit forever, is a sickness and delusion; we must accept the limits of our lives, being both mindful of and grateful for the time given to us. Yet as Christians we are made bold to proclaim that death shall not have the final word, that indeed our real death occurred years ago when we were baptized into Christ’s own Crucifixion and Resurrection in the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Our culture is one of terrible extremes. We tend either to ignore death, or to cower in fear of it. Neither is appropriate for the Christian, let alone healthy. We are called to embrace our mortality, to live with gratitude in every age: childhood, adolescence, adulthood, middle age, and seniority. And we are called to proclaim that death is not the end, that our loved ones live on in God, and that someday darkness and death and sickness and lies will all vanish like shadows before the sun.

October reminds us that our very lives are liminal, dancing on the border between youth and age, sickness and health, matter and spirit, time and eternity. Christ has died; Christ is Risen; Christ will come again. And so shall we whom He has claimed as His own.

Happy Halloween. In Jesus. Amen.