What Has Happened to Our Holidays?

Last updated on: October 28, 2024 at 4:49 pm By Gene Veith

The season of holidays is upon us. Halloween is soon followed by Thanksgiving, which is soon followed by Christmas, which is soon followed by New Year’s. So it’s fitting to reflect on what has happened to these and all the rest of our holidays.

Earlier this week we complained about how Halloween has been corrupted. Reformation Day, which occupies the same chronological space, is now mostly ignored by Protestants, except for Lutherans and Calvinists, though we marked the day at this blog. Today is All Saints’ Day, which in many nations in Europe, both Catholic and Lutheran, is a national holiday–a time to honor the memory of loved ones who have died–but in America few people, except for Catholics and Lutherans, seem to celebrate it anymore.

But those are not the only holidays that are diminished. Some Americans have stopped celebrating some holidays, and even those that Americans do celebrate are often distorted beyond recognition, with elements that used to accompany the celebration becoming the main point of the celebration, with the true significance of the day forgotten or ignored.

In our Halloween post, we drew on Fr. Donald Planty’s point that secularism just ruins holidays, showing how this applies not only to Halloween but also to Christmas, Easter, and lesser once-religious observances such as Mardi Gras and St. Patrick’s Day.

I would add that the very word “holiday” comes from “holy” + “day.” If you don’t have a concept of the holy–a term which includes the sense of being set apart as God is, as Christians are, and as things devoted to His service are–it’s impossible to have a sense of holy days.

But it isn’t just that religious holidays have become secularized, secular holidays too have lost their meaning.

For example, Congress has formally recognized 11 federal holidays, on which government employees, as well as those of private companies that have adopted the list, have a day off. Only one derives from Christian observance, Christmas. Another has broader religious overtones, Thanksgiving. Another has a connection to the Christian calendar, New Year’s Day. (There are, of course, other holidays celebrated by other religions and cultures, but I’m going to concentrate on these federally-recognized holidays.)

The other eight were intended to commemorate events, individuals, or groups of people important in our history. They were originally set to the mark specific dates when the individual was born or when the event or an associated event happened. Today, though, only two fall on a certain date: Independence Day (popularly known as the “Fourth of July”) and the newest federal holiday, Juneteenth Day (June 19, when Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was enforced to end slavery).

While Labor Day was set to be a Monday from the beginning, the others were moved so that they would fall on a Monday to give employees a three-day weekend: Washington’s Birthday, Memorial Day, Columbus Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and Veterans Day.

I don’t begrudge anyone their time off from work, but the effect was to shift attention away from what was being commemorated. The celebration was reduced to the good feeling that comes from getting a day off from work.

Furthermore, some of the holidays became generalized so that they lost their particular significance. George Washington was born on February 22, 1732, so February 22 became a national holiday. Another of our greatest presidents, Abraham Lincoln, was born on February 12, 1809, and some states honored his birthday as well with a local holiday, or, because their birthdays were just ten days from each other, added celebrations of Honest Abe to those honoring the Father of Our Country. After Congress made the day a movable feast in 1968, states changed the holiday to Presidents Day (sometimes with either a singular or a plural-indicating apostrophe), honoring all presidents. But what is there to honor about all of our presidents? The holiday became watered down beyond recognition.

Another factor is that some of the historic individuals and events that the secular holidays commemorated have been reinterpreted so that many Americans find them not worth celebrating. Washington, after all, owned slaves. Columbus discovered America for the Europeans, but that entailed taking it from the indigenous tribes that were already there. So Columbus Day in a number of jurisdictions became Columbus Day/Indigenous People’s Day, a rare holiday that encourages the simultaneous emotions of both celebration and guilt. Most Americans today, though, ignore it completely, except for Italians, who use it for their St. Patrick’s Day as a festival of their ethnicity.

As for the others, their secular observance has all been diminished:

Thanksgiving, increasingly called “Turkey Day” means mainly a big meal.
Christmas: the giving and receiving of presents, plus nostalgia.
Easter: candy
New Year’s: stay up past midnight
Independence Day: fireworks
Memorial Day: grill out. What we are supposed to remember (those who gave their lives in military service for their country) has slipped our memory. Now we’re mostly celebrating the beginning of summer, when school is out and people take their vacations.
Labor Day: grill out. Few people want to celebrate labor unions, as originally intended. It was decreed to always fall on the first Monday of September instead of the originally proposed May 1, to distinguish American workers from their Communist counterparts who celebrate Mayday as International Workers’ Day. But today it mainly just signifies the end of summer, when school starts up again and vacation time is over.

Christians, though, have a sense of the holy, and the church year gives significance to the rhythms of time. We still have something wonderful to celebrate in the birth and the resurrection of Jesus, helped to do so by the seasons of Advent and Lent, and by other holy-days, such as Ash Wednesday and Good Friday that the secularists know nothing about.

And we can celebrate the secular holidays too, not because they are holy as such, but because we have someone to be grateful to, so that we can thank God for our blessings on Thanksgiving Day and thank Him too for the blessings He has given us through the vocations of the people who made our history, even when their legacy is mixed, as well as for the sacrifices of those who gave or offered their lives for our nation. When we memorialize them, we cannot help but remember the ultimate sacrifice of Christ for His world.

Illustration: Hallothanksmas by Pinke via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0

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The Masons in History and in the Church

Last updated on: October 12, 2024 at 4:25 pm By Gene Veith

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Pope Francis is usually on the liberal and tolerant side of things, but he raised eyebrows last year when the Vatican with his approval issued a stern warning against Catholics joining the Masons, saying that “active membership in Freemasonry by a member of the faithful is prohibited, because of the irreconcilability between Catholic doctrine and Freemasonry.”

We Confessional Lutherans agree with the Catholics on this, at least, as do other Christians–though some see nothing wrong with the Masons and become active members and participants in their rituals.

“But aren’t Masons those old guys who wear fezes, drive those funny little cars in parades, and run free children’s hospitals?” many people wonder. “What’s so bad about them?” Well, those are Shriners, who constitute one of many orders within Freemasonry, but most people today see all Masons as nothing more than members of a social club. But in their heyday, Masonic Lodges and Temples, which are commonplace even in small town rural America, played a major role in American–indeed, world–history with important religious ramifications.

Baylor historian Philip Jenkins has been posting about the Masons on Anxious Bench, the Patheos blog run by Christian historians. See his posts American Empire: Take Up the White Mason’s Burden and Freemasons, Catholics, and American Religious Politics.

Freemasonry had its origins in the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries. Jenkins said that Catholics considered it a “deistic cult,” and that’s a good description. Whereas the “Age of Reason” version of Deism was a rationalistic purging of religion of its supernatural elements, leaving only belief in a deity who created the universe but then left it alone, Freemasonry added to that conviction the mystery, commitment, and ritual that every genuine religion needs.

Masonry is devoted to God as the “Grand Architect of the Universe.” Human beings, in turn, can be the “masons” who, like bricklayers, build the edifice according to the architect’s design. In line with this deistic theology, “Freemasonry” is open to all monotheists–to every variety of Christians but also to Jews and Muslims.

The mystery comes from elaborate rituals, a complicated mythology, and the organization’s rigorous code of secrecy. The commitment comes from oaths, which call down upon the oath breaker hair-raising threats of violence and mutilation, as well as pledges to pursue virtue, philanthropy, and–significantly–the Enlightened “liberal” ideals of liberty and equality. Another commitment was loyalty to one’s brother Masons.

Professionals of every stripe flocked to the Masons, Jenkins says, especially Protestant clergymen. I can see why. Masonry constituted a religion superimposed upon traditional religions. We have a need for mystery and ritual, elements driven out of many churches by rationalistic and anti-sacramental theologians. Of course, liturgy-starved Protestants would join the Masons, which promised that you could keep your religion intact on Sunday mornings, while also enjoying the ecumenical fellowship and clandestine mystique of the Lodge in its monthly meetings.

The Masons became a source of both social order and social revolution. The Lodge unified men–and, later women, with the founding of the Eastern Star in 1850–of different backgrounds and religions. Jenkins points out that it became a major factor in the integration of Jews. He also described its importance on the American frontier, with Western pioneers who were Masons finding ready support in the Lodges found in virtually every frontier settlement.

The Lodges also had a cross-cultural and international dimension. Jenkins tells about the Battle of Minisink during the Revolutionary War in which an alliance of Loyalists and Mohawks defeated a Patriot militia. As the Tories and Indians were slaughtering the captives, the Mohawk chief thought he saw one of them give the Masonic distress signal. The chief responded by giving the captive the Masonic handshake, which he thought was reciprocated. The chief was a Mason! He would not murder a brother Mason!

It turned out, the captive was not a Mason and was just making random gestures, but in light of his survival, he soon joined up! Jenkins tells a similar story about the Battle of San Jacinto, in which Texas general Sam Houston defeated the Mexican forces of Santa Anna in a surprise attack that secured the independence of Texas. I had always wondered why Houston spared the Butcher of the Alamo when he captured him. Jenkins says that Santa Anna flashed the distress signal, which Houston, as a brother Mason, felt obliged to honor!

Masons, pledged to support the ideals of Enlightenment liberalism, played important roles in the French Revolution, the European-wide liberal revolutions of 1848, the independence movements in Italy, Mexico, and other countries. That includes the American Revolution. Many of the American founders, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin were Masons (but not Thomas Jefferson or Alexander Hamilton).

Masons became bastions of anti-Catholicism–what with the anti-clericalism of the French Revolution, the Italian republic’s battles against the papal states, and American anti-immigrant sentiment. As Jenkin shows, Masons were prime drivers of American anti-Catholic sentiment. They pushed for the Blaine Amendment, which forbids tax money from going to religious schools, and advocated a strict separation between church and state.

Some Masons became organizers and members of the Ku Klux Klan. Originally, says Jenkins, “the KKK was at least as heavily devoted to anti-Catholic and anti-immigration causes as to anti-Black racism.” According to Jenkins,

The Klan found its local leadership in Masonic lodges, and especially among local Protestant clergy: “The Old Rugged Cross” was a main Klan anthem. In order to appeal to Masons and other fraternal organizations, the Klan offered a rich mythology and heraldry, with all the mystique implied by its hierarchy of “Hydras, Great Titans, Furies, Giants, Exalted Cyclops, Terrors,” its distinctive secret language, and an elaborate system of progressive initiations, of signs and countersigns.

The “mystique” of Masonic rituals, secrets, and initiations, influenced the practices of other organizations, including the Mormons.

From a Christian perspective, Masons are not only a cult, but with their dark oaths and idolatrous invocations, they partake of the occult. I just read an article about a researcher who claims to have identified Jack the Ripper by studying the DNA left on a scarf found on one of his victims. By comparing it to that of the descendants of the original suspects, the researcher found a match with one of them, a Jewish man known to have been a Mason. The researcher saw parallels with the way the Ripper mutilated his victims and the punishments called for in the bloody oaths of Masonic ritual.

Why do confessional Lutherans reject Freemasonry and forbid their members from joining a lodge? In short, in the words of the Rev. Dr. Richard P. Bucher,

Because the Masonic Lodge is held to be a deistic religious organization that requires belief (members must swear an oath) in a god that is not the triune God, and a god who is accessible apart from Jesus Christ through any religion that believes in god as Creator. In addition, they teach that entrance to the life to come is gained by following the precepts and morality of Freemasonry, that God will let them into heaven merely because they have been faithful Masons.

Bucher goes on to examine Freemasonry in detail, showing why it is incompatible with the Christian faith. See also the evaluation of the Commission on Theology and Church Relations (CTCR ) of the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod.

What I don’t understand is how any church can consider Masonry to be compatible with the Christian faith. And yet, some do. See this article for the various churches’ positions.

Photo: Shriners from Kena Temple riding miniature cars at Fairfax City 4th of July Parade (2015) by Jarek Tuszyński, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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“Reformation Begins with Ourselves”

Last updated on: October 9, 2024 at 8:38 am By Gene Veith

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Yesterday I blogged about Abraham Kuyper’s political program, drawing on Jordan Ballor’s article for Religion & Liberty The Faithful Christian and the Politics of the Tao.

But what struck me most from the article was a quotation from Herman Bavinck (1854–1921), another Dutch Reformed theologian who worked with Kuyper in the Anti-Revolutionary Party. He urges Christians seeking to reform society to begin by reforming themselves. He makes an excellent point, but I have some reservations.

Here is what he said (my bolds):

All good, enduring reformation begins with ourselves and takes its starting point in one’s own heart and life. If family life is indeed being threatened from all sides today, then there is nothing better for each person to be doing than immediately to begin reforming within one’s own circle and begin to rebuff with the facts themselves the sharp criticisms that are being registered nowadays against marriage and family. Such a reformation immediately has this in its favor, that it would lose no time and would not need to wait for anything. Anyone seeking deliverance from the state must travel the lengthy route of forming a political party, having meetings, referendums, parliamentary debates, and civil legislation, and it is still unknown whether with all that activity he will achieve any success. But reforming from within can be undertaken by each person at every moment, and be advanced without impediment.

That’s good advice for Christians concerned about the state of their country. Political activism is fine, but that takes time and involves working with groups and institutions that are outside of your immediate control. In the meantime, start with yourself.

Here is the base level of “subsdiarity,” the most immediate sphere over which we have at least a measure of “sphere sovereignty”: our own sweet self.

Are you worried about the state of the family in America? Work on your family.

Are you concerned about the decline of marriage? Make your marriage really strong.

Are you worried about young people, the decline of education, and the prospects for the next generation? Equip and build up your own children.

Are you dismayed by the fruit of the sexual revolution? Stay away from pornography and check your own fantasies.

Are you frustrated with the polarization and mutual hostility of our online and political discourse? Be civil in your own conversations and interactions.

Do you think social media has become toxic? Get off social media.

The principle applies across the political spectrum. Are you worried about the environment? Watch your own consumption. Do you want world peace? Cultivate peace in your own relationships. Do you have a heart for the poor? In addition to demanding the government do something about the plight of the poor, help actual poor people in your own community with your money and service.

To be sure, though, some issues are social in nature, beyond the reach of individual improvement. Still, there might be ways we can start with ourselves. Being pro-life? Fixing the economy? Addressing transgenderism? Challenging big tech and other corporations? I would welcome your ideas about how we could personalize these and other issues.

Having said all of this, though, in support of Bavinck’s exhortation, I have some reservations about it. I suspect that with the best intentions, our efforts at personal “reformation” will fall short or fail spectacularly. Calvinists get a lot of criticism for their doctrine of “total depravity,” but I think their doctrine of sin is not nearly pessimistic enough. They can easily imagine that they can fulfill God’s Law. Thus, despite their commendable emphasis on God’s grace, in practice they often end up being quite law-oriented.

One way this manifests itself is in the Reformed tradition’s interest in reforming not just the church, but society as well. In many ways, this is commendable–the society certainly always needs reforming–but Calvinists are sometimes too confident about the extent to which they can reform it.

Actually, Bavinck’s exhortation demonstrates why social evils are so intractable: because they ultimately rest on each person’s “heart and life.” Our hearts and lives are sinful and unclean. We are not sovereign over our own sphere because our wills are in bondage to sin. This is true not only of unbelievers–Calvinists strongly agree with Lutherans about that–but it is also true, in a different sense for Christians. Our hearts and lives constitute a sphere not of firm resolution but of conflict between the Holy Spirit and our fallen human nature. And often our fallen human nature has its way. This is why, in the words of the Catechism, we are to “consider [our] place in life”–that is, our earthly vocations– “according to the Ten Commandments” and then every Sunday we confess that we are “sinful and unclean.” Whereupon we are absolved by the pastor’s word of the Gospel.

Bavinck talks about “reformation,” a term of great significance for both Calvinists and Lutherans. But the Reformation was not about solving social problems through a new political order but about bringing the church back to life through faith in Christ. The Reformation was a recovery of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, who atoned for our sins by His death and resurrection. That Reformation, though “good and enduring,” did not begin “with ourselves,” but with the grace of God, and it did not take ” its starting point in one’s own heart and life,” but in the gift of Jesus Christ.

And so it is today. The Reformation of our hearts and lives can only happen by and through the Gospel of Christ. Faith in the free forgiveness granted by Christ does transform us, and it does bear fruit in good works, and as we struggle against our sinfulness with the help of the Holy Spirit, we are increasingly sanctified, but in a process that never ends until the death of our flesh and our reception into our everlasting life. Meanwhile and to make that happen we continually need Christ–not just at our conversion, or our election before the foundation of the world, but constantly–hearing the Word of the Gospel again and again, receiving Christ over and over in Holy Communion, all to increase our faith and to keep it alive and fruitful.

As for our lives in the world, God places us in vocations, which are multiple spheres in which we can live out our faith in love and service to our neighbors, spheres that also require us to bear the Cross in trials and sufferings, driving us to an ever-greater dependence on Christ and deepening our faith.

These vocations include our citizenship, and this entangles us in politics and the affairs of our nation. Here too we are to love and serve our neighbors and bear our crosses. Kuyper, Bavinck, and other Christians can give us some ideas about how we can do that. But we should have limited expectations.

I actually think Kuyper and Bavinck would agree with me that Christians must always keep the Gospel of Christ–not a social gospel–central. In fact, the slogan of their Anti-Revolutionary Party was this: “Against the Revolution, the Gospel!” Properly understood–after all, the Gospel is itself a kind of revolution–that’s not a bad maxim.

Photo: Herman Bavinck by Atelier Prinses – http://proxy.handle.net/10648/6a24ebd0-1ad9-102f-a76c-003048944028, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4249272

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The Anti-Revolutionary Party

Last updated on: October 8, 2024 at 8:54 am By Gene Veith

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As Christians are trying to figure out how they should pursue politics and cultural influence in our secularist world, it is helpful to consider models from the past.

Jordan Ballor does that in his Religion & Liberty article The Faithful Christian and the Politics of the Tao. In it, he looks at the political activities of the Reformed theologian Abraham Kuyper (1837–1920), who not only started a successful Christian political movement in the Netherlands but actually rose to the position of Prime Minister.

In 1879, he founded the Anti-Revolutionary Party. An odd name for a political party, perhaps, describing what it was against rather than what it was for, but its focus was to oppose the legacy of the French Revolution, which continued to manifest itself in ever-more radical but mostly unsuccessful revolutions in Europe throughout the 19th century, from the widespread liberal revolutions of 1848 to socialist riots that in the next century would culminate in the Russian Revolution.

I was somewhat familiar with Kuyper, mainly from back when I was influenced by Francis Schaeffer, especially with his emphasis on “world views.” His political efforts I chalked up to the Calvinist “one-kingdom theology” that stresses the rule of the saints on earth, with the theocratic goal of ruling earthly societies with God’s law, which even Christians–let alone non-believers–are unable to keep.

But Ballor’s article showed me that I had misjudged Kuyper’s project. He didn’t start a “Christian Party,” much less a “Calvinist Party” designed to set up a millennial Christian utopia. Rather, his “Anti-Revolutionary Party” was oriented around a negative goal of opposing the anti-clericalism, the attacks on the family, and the undermining of other institutions that the spirit of revolution encouraged. At the same time, the “Anti-Revolutionaries” sought to offer more positive alternatives to the genuine problems–the exploitation of labor, poverty, inequality, etc.–that the revolutionaries were trying to address.

You couldn’t say that the “Anti-Revolutionary” party was conservative, at least in the old European sense of trying to build up the power of the monarchies, restoring the aristocracy, and imposing controls on the lower classes. Rather, Kuyper presided over what was, in effect, a populist movement. Says Ballor,

A distinctive feature of Kuyper’s emphasis was on the importance and dignity of the kleine luyden, the “little people.” In this way the ARP was fiercely and deeply democratic, grounding its principles in the dignity of all human beings, each with a vocation before God and a service to provide for others. “Everything can be a spiritual calling,” wrote Kuyper, and everyone should be respected and represented in the political order. This meant a focus on expanding the franchise more broadly (although not universally in a revolutionary fashion), even as it also meant focusing on the family as the basic unit of society.

Central to Kuyper’s political and theological convictions was the concept of “sphere sovereignty,” the notion, in Ballor’s words, that “God has given direct authorization to various social institutions, or ‘spheres,’ which operate according to their own logic and laws and ultimately are accountable to God.” The state has its sphere of sovereignty, but so does each family. Also the church, local governments, schools, businesses, workshops, and many more.

It follows that Kuyper believed in limited government and the decentralization of authority. So what is the role of government in all of these spheres? Ballor explains (my bolds):

While authority and legitimacy were not delegated by the state or through the government to the various spheres, the state did have a unique responsibility to be the forum of last resort for public justice. When conflict arises between the spheres, or there is corruption within an institution such that it needs aid to restore its proper functioning, the state can act in a remedial capacity. The purpose of state intervention, however, is always to restore spheres and institutions to health and self-sufficiency.

The purpose of the state is to protect and build up the other spheres–the family, the schools, economic institutions, local governments, private organizations, and, yes, the church–which strikes me as a principle that Christians interested in politics could apply today. This is a Christian model that is not Catholic “integralism,” with its dreams of papal and imperial rule, nor is it a “post-liberal” model that downplays democracy and individual rights. Rather, it is a Christian kind of liberalism as an alternative to the revolutionary kinds of liberalism.

Kuyper saw that his concept of sphere sovereignty was similar to the Catholic teaching about “subsidiarity,” defined as “the principle that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed at a more local level.” In 1891, Pope Leo issued the encyclical Rerum Novarum, which applied that principle in many ways, including affirming the dignity and rights of workers while rejecting socialism. The arch-Calvinist Kuyper loved that proclamation from the Pope, to the point that his Anti-Revolutionary Party allied with its Catholic counterparts. According to the politics of this unlikely alliance, the Calvinists and the Catholics would vote for each other’s candidates on second and subsequent ballots in jurisdictions where their party would fall short. This tactic, which would work better in a multi-party parliamentary system rather than a two-party system like ours, led to a coalition that would enact many of the ARP’s policies and make Kuyper Prime minister.

And yet, Kuyper was voted out of office in 1905, and his political program did not survive the two World Wars. The Anti-Revolutionary Party did persist until it merged with other Christian-related parties in 1974 to become part of the Christian Democratic movement, which is another but related approach to Christianity and politics. (See my posts from years ago: Conservative Theologically, but Liberal Politically and Kuyper and Christian Democracy; and my posts on the American Christian Democratic party that may be on your ballot, the Solidarity Party. Check out the party’s website to learn about its presidential candidates, Peter Sonski and Lauren Onak, the thoroughly pro-life alternatives.)

My impression is that “sphere sovereignty” and “subsidiarity” accord well with the Lutheran doctrine of the Estates and the doctrine of vocation. And yet the Anti-Revolutionary Party’s ultimate demise is also confirmation of the Lutheran pessimism about the ability of sinful human beings to establish a consistently moral and Godly society on earth. Christianity is not a political program but the good news of our salvation through Christ. Still, though, God reigns in a hidden way in His temporal kingdom, so we must never reject that temporal kingdom, but rather do what we can in our various vocations, including that of citizenship, to love and serve each other.

So what can we learn from Kuyper?

Photo: Abraham Kuyper by Unknown author – https://josdouma.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/kuyper-75.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43933631

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The Poet of Joy

Last updated on: September 23, 2024 at 12:10 pm By Gene Veith

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I write about all kinds of things, but by vocation I am a retired English professor whose academic specialty is 17th century Christian poetry. So Paul Butler of the “World and Everything in It” podcast with World Radio wanted to do a feature on Thomas Traherne, this being the 350th anniversary of his death. My former student Chelsea Boes, now editor of World Kids, put him onto me, so Paul interviewed me on the topic of Traherne and the value of Christian poetry. (Here is the podcast and a transcript.)

Traherne is probably the least known of the so-called Metaphysical poets, and no wonder. He was an Anglican parson of a village church and then served as the private chaplain to a nobleman, but he was little known during his lifetime. His writings–his poetry and some meditations–weren’t even discovered until 1898, and they weren’t published until 1903.

The early 20th century was when the metaphysical poets were first being seriously studied and Traherne was lumped among them, though he would seem to be quite different from the others. Unlike George Herbert and John Donne, Traherne’s verse is easy reading, not particularly complex or multi-leveled. His main similarity with the others is that he, like them, each in his own way, is so fresh and innovative.

Traherne is the great poet of joy. Or, to use his term, “felicity.” We should awaken to the joy that is ours as Christians, knowing that everything we perceive around us, no matter how ordinary, is a wondrous creation of God who loves us and who has redeemed us through Christ.

Traherne is great to read when you are feeling down. His joy in simple existence is infectious. Here is my favorite. Most of his poems rhyme in the conventional way, but this one is in free verse, a form that he is inventing centuries before modern poets got their hands on it.

I love this poem for its lugubrious-sounding title, which is in contrast to the exuberance and excited happiness of the actual poem. It consists mainly of just a list of common things that God has created, moving to a contemplation of our senses and our minds that can perceive such amazing gifts. And then come the final two lines, with their staggering turn:

A Serious and Pathetical Contemplation of the Mercies of God

For all the mysteries, engines, instruments, wherewith the world is filled, which we are able to frame and use to thy glory.

For all the trades, variety of operations, cities, temples, streets, bridges, mariner’s compass, admirable picture, sculpture, writing, printing, songs and music; wherewith the world is beautified and adorned.

1 Much more for the regent life,

2 And power of perception,

3 Which rules within.

4 That secret depth of fathomless consideration

5 That receives the information

6 Of all our senses,

7 That makes our centre equal to the heavens,

8 And comprehendeth in itself the magnitude of the world;

9 The involv’d mysteries

10 Of our common sense;

11 The inaccessible secret

12 Of perceptive fancy;

13 The repository and treasury

14 Of things that are past;

15 The presentation of things to come;

16 Thy name be glorified

17 For evermore.

….

18 O miracle

19 Of divine goodness!

20 O fire! O flame of zeal, and love, and joy!

21 Ev’n for our earthly bodies, hast thou created all things.

22 { visible

23 All things { material

24 { sensible

25 Animals,

26 Vegetables,

27 Minerals,

28 Bodies celestial,

29 Bodies terrestrial,

30 The four elements,

31 Volatile spirits,

32 Trees, herbs, and flowers,

33 The influences of heaven,

34 Clouds, vapors, wind,

35 Dew, rain, hail and snow,

36 Light and darkness, night and day,

37 The seasons of the year.

38Springs, rivers, fountains, oceans,

39 Gold, silver, and precious stones.

40 Corn, wine, and oil,

41 The sun, moon, and stars,

42 Cities, nations, kingdoms.

43And the bodies of men, the greatest treasures of all,

44 For each other.

45What then, O Lord, hast thou intended for our

46Souls, who givest to our bodies such glorious things!

Let that sink in. God is so generous to our bodies, what does He have in store for our souls? If this physical existence is so glorious, how much more glorious is Heaven going to be!

Illustration: Detail of the Thomas Traherne stained glass windows in the Cathedral at Hereford, where he was born. The windows were made by Tomm Denny and installed in 2007. Photo by pam fray, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13158581*

*There seem to be no authentic portraits of Thomas Traherne. The ones online, including an animation of a 17th century gentleman with big hair reading his poetry, are either misattributed or are modern renditions. This one is a modern stained glass window in Traherne’s honor in the cathedral of the city in which he was born, the son of a shoemaker. It presents him as a visionary transfigured by the light of God in him and in the world. It is an interpretation of the meaning of his work rather than a physical likeness.

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“What Does It Matter in Light of Eternity?”

Last updated on: September 14, 2024 at 6:24 pm By Gene Veith

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A high-powered lawyer learns some things about vocation in light of eternity from a rental-car shuttle driver. . . .

Charlotte attorney Mike Kerrigan tells about it in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal (behind a paywall) entitled St. Bernard on the Hertz Shuttle. He had just flown into Denver and got on the rental car shuttle, his mind racing with his responsibilities and the things only he could do. He was on his phone responding to messages when over the shuttle speaker came the cheerful strains of “A Groovy Kind of Love” that the driver, Dave Moller, was playing.

I’ll let Kerrigan tell it (my bolds):

Looking up from my iPhone was good fortune. It allowed me to see festive bunting reading “Cheers to 45” that adorned the bus cabin. Mr. Moller has driven airport shuttles for Hertz for 45 years, a fact he shared with pride moments later over the public address system.

The announcement drew applause. Humorous observations of a man comfortable with his place in the cosmos followed, making the journey pleasant. Based on how swiftly he moved luggage from bus to curb, Mr. Moller appeared to be as light of foot as of heart.

As his shuttle pulled away, a thought occurred to me. Mr. Moller had performed the morning’s repetitive tasks multiple times a day for more than four decades, yet still he did them with the purposefulness and lightheartedness of an applicant looking to land the job.

The admirable marriage of consistency and mirth got me thinking about this bus driver’s job, and the one to which I was returning. All things being equal, work done joylessly is work done less effectively, for nothing ever happens in a vacuum.

Someone is always watching, whether it’s an office colleague or a bus passenger, and influenced accordingly. This means that whatever a man’s vocation in life happens to be, what he does is scarcely more important than how he does it.

To be sure, our vocations will not be joyful all the time. But I think he is right that “how he does it” can be more significant than a person’s specific economic calling, whether it be that of a high-powered lawyer or a shuttle driver.

Then Kerrigan, out of the blue, made a connection to something else, a quotation from St. Bernard of Clairvaux: “What does it matter in light of eternity?”

Kerrigan concludes ,”Asking this frequently of oneself reminds that all earthly tasks, from bus driving to lawyering, are comparatively small. All that matters in the end is the love with which we do them.”

He comes to the purpose of all vocations–whether in the workplace, the family, the state, or the church– according to Luther: loving and serving our neighbors! Many treatments of vocation stop short of this, focusing instead on things like personal fulfillment or serving God, which are true enough, but they leave out the third element. God has so designed and governs human life so that each vocation brings specific neighbors into our lives who need the specific work of our vocations. And thus, all of our vocations are arenas for carrying out the Great Commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” (Luke 10:27).

I am haunted by the quotation from St. Bernard of Clairvaux, whom Luther cited as believing in sola fide (“faith alone”). What does it matter in light of eternity?” That question can give Christians much-needed perspective today.

What does politics matter in light of eternity? Not much.

What does legalized abortion matter in light of eternity? A lot.

What does having a successful career matter in light of eternity? Not much.

What does the way I treat people in my vocations matter in light of eternity? A lot.

What do family squabbles matter in light of eternity? Not much.

What does my relationship with my children matter in light of eternity? A lot.

etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc., etc.

Illustration; St. Bernard of Clairvaux by El Greco, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

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