Out of death, into life...
T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Wasteland” begins with the, now, famous line:
April is the cruelest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
April can be a month of strong contrasts: the cold of winter gives way to the warmth of spring; the austerity of Lent is transformed into the joy of Easter. The Earth, which in our part of the world has appeared barren or dead for months, now seems to spring to life again, or at least it tries to, but if you have spent much time in the Northeast, then undoubtedly you have seen snow fall on or around Easter. April can be a tease that way: offering us the promise of a warm and sunny spring, and then immediately taking it back again. Perhaps that is why Eliot saw April as the cruelest month: because it offers us the hope of a beautiful new world, but doesn’t allow us to live in it completely, at least not yet. Human nature frequently makes us want to skip over many of the less pleasant aspects of life, which is perhaps why many of our religious traditions force us to look at life’s more painful moments: so that we may know the true cost of joy, and the true value of it. The Jewish festival of Passover and the Christian observances of Holy Week both encourage their participants to remember a painful and traumatic time in the history of their people (for Jews being slaves in Egypt, for Christians witnessing the execution of Jesus), so that they may view their present joys in the light of those traumatic events: to understand freedom, we must know slavery; to understand life, we must know death. Ritual and tradition are how one generation communicates this understanding with the next.
On April 21st thousands of young people will gather together in Poland to make a very special journey. This special event, called “The March of the Living,” is a silent walk between the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau which takes place on Yom Ha’Shoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. For over twenty years young Jews have gathered together to take this walk, which for many of their relatives and ancestors would have been a march to their deaths. Participants must take a close look at one of the most horrific moments in human history in order to truly appreciate what it means to walk away from that place alive and free. It is no accident that Yom Ha’Shoah occurs shortly before Israeli Independence Day: again to understand freedom, we must first understand slavery. “The March of the Living” is not just a solemn remembrance though; it is a call to awareness. While the march may be symbolic of one people’s victory over a force bent on destroying them, it is also a warning that the battle is not completely over yet. Anti-Semitism, intolerance and prejudices of various kinds still exist and still must be fought, not just in other people, but also in ourselves. Christians likewise witness Christ on the cross year after year saying “It is finished,” and yet somehow they realize that the story is far from over. We live in that perennial April, where, like Moses, we have been allowed to see the Promised Land, but not live in it. April is very much about the journey from where we have been to where we hope to be. Perhaps that is why another English Poet, Geoffrey Chaucer, saw April as the month that inspired his pilgrims to begin their sacred journey to Canterbury:
When in April the sweet showers fall
That pierce March's drought to the root and all
And bathed every vein in liquor that has power
To generate therein and sire the flower;
When Zephyr also has with his sweet breath,
Filled again, in every holt and heath,
The tender shoots and leaves, and the young sun
His half-course in the sign of the Ram has run,
And many little birds make melody
That sleep through all the night with open eye
(So Nature pricks them on to ramp and rage)
Then folk do long to go on pilgrimage,
And palmers to go seeking out strange strands,
To distant shrines well known in distant lands.
And specially from every shire's end
Of England they to Canterbury went,
The holy blessed martyr there to seek
Who helped them when they lay so ill and weak
Blessings,
Fr. Kevin
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