You tell me you are weary with life. I will tell you …
We are all made for the stage. All grow up wanting to be a star – and rightly so! We grow envious of the actors, not because they are actors – nothing so vain – but precisely because they are not. To the child, there is no such man as Tobey Macguire, but the person Spiderman is most definitely real. Indeed, Spiderman is his destiny!
Everyone intuits that they harbor some hidden dynamism, some duty to burn fierce in this grey world growing cold with age. We sense that we are made for more.
I am among those fortunate few to discover as a man that my deepest cravings from the cot were not deceiving me. In the world’s eyes I am nothing; and I hope ever so to be. But “God has created me to do Him some definite service. He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission.”1
“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players” — that sentiment seems as Christian as the Cross. Indeed, God hung upon a Cross that we might know it: that our existence is not enwrapped with perfect disappointment, slowly suffocating us like a constrictor. Nor are we consigned to the airtight prison of our vain egodramas. No! We are all of us called to lift our heads and step onto the cosmic stage of the Theodrama, daring to disturb the universe.
Aristotle, our beloved pagan grandpa, found in good drama two vital components – recognition and reversal. The first, a shift from ignorance to knowledge, as when somewhere someone says, “Luke, I am your father,” or something to that effect.
The second, some action which upends things, veering them around to a new direction. Aristotle, poor pagan that he was, could only understand this reversal as a change in circumstance, as when King Oedipus’s glory is upended into perfect shame. Aristotle could not imagine that seismic shift, grander than any marvel of nature, which we Christians call conversion. It is this, above all, which distinguishes the pagan and the Christian drama: in the former, man is without agency, prey to the gods “as flies to wanton boys”; but the latter understands that true theatre is found in man’s heart, where he lies wrestling with His God.
What shall we say? Are these not the two essential ingredients of the Christian life? Do we not all know those terrible moments when our eyes are opened but a little and we see something of God’s wondrous work and how great is the salvation we have neglected? Moments that await a response.
In all human memory, there is no moment more dramatic than when the angel came to Mary and the whole earth, prostrate at her feet, awaited an answer.
But the angel comes also to us, today, every day – and do we greet him? The Desired of Nations stands knocking at our door also – and do we answer?
A monk and a dear friend of mine once expressed the conviction that God gives a signal grace at least five times a day, raising us above the swamp of ourselves, setting our freedom free and inviting us to sing some new song. These are the moments of recognition, if we don’t trample them; and these are the moments of reversal, if we dare take the divine hand outstretched to us. Such a one – who hardens not his heart at the hearing of the Word but vibrates at the Spirit’s touch – such a one will mount up from strength to strength, glory to glory, and the earth will tremble at his joyous touch. He shan’t grow weary as he runs in God’s own footsteps.
And oh, the glory when one runs with it! The thrill! Here: the sweet catharsis of being who we are. This: the glorious freedom. As when a hard-beaten convict’s heart cries ‘Another story must begin!’; or as at a grand council of great importance, a little Hobbit stands and speaks up: “Here I am, send me!” Then heaven is our audience and the world beneath our heel. There is nothing, I say nothing, more dramatic than when God comes to man and man, heart in hand, says ‘yes’. And that is the Christian life. That is conversion, the essence of true drama.
Brothers learn your steps! Sisters practice your song!
So we’ll shine, and stumble, and try to remember our lines.
Then some bright morning…