How can it be a good thing when something beautiful comes to an end? To find out, I would ask any of the dozens of people who have told me they can’t wait for the autumn.
Summer is beautiful, fruitful and lush. This year’s summer was especially marvelous, with startlingly few of its weeks given over to the deadly Triple H – hot, hazy, and humid – and remarkable stretches of, well, perfection. We had enough rain that the trees and even the grass stayed green, but no shortage of sunny days and mild evenings and even fresh breezes. Habitual complainers were frustrated by the privation of grounds for complaint.
August is the most wonderful month of the year, as you have heard me assert on many prior occasions, but already weeks ago even I began sniffing for that dry smell in the air that indicates that the fall has commenced. Why would a lover of summer like me be eager for the indicator that it is ended?
Was Mae West correct when she said Too much of a good thing is wonderful? Or is the very goodness of a thing enhanced by its own finitude? Or, perhaps, is every truly good thing by itself unsatisfactory and eventually wearisome?
My life is blessed by full engagement with people at every stage of life. Fifth graders and fifty-year-olds; couples awaiting the birth of their first child, and couples watching their youngest child’s graduation; brash teenagers and cautious elderly. All of it, all of it is beautiful, and that beauty is enhanced by being so freely and generously mixed together here at the parish, especially when we worship. But every beauty and all that beauty is bound to end, and we remind ourselves of that, especially when we worship.
The very goodness of our earthly life is emphasized and even enhanced by its finitude, and, like every truly good thing, by itself unsatisfactory and eventually wearisome. Our eagerness for the change in seasons is a reminder that we can and should look forward to a change in our lives as well.
Every season has its beauty, and every season is necessary for the nurturing and preparing of the seasons that follow it with all their differences. But our lives transcend this cyclical reality wherein each beauty returns in due season; no, our days progress with unrepeatable originality toward an unexperienced completion. At every stage of our lives a hidden beauty, a glory all our own, is being shaped and strengthened by God’s grace and our cooperation with it.
When we look back at a lifetime like we look back at a summertime, we are able to see and appreciate not only the visible beauty that marked its days and has now faded. We detect also the hidden beauty that was nurtured and prepared, hidden at the time but manifest when the seasonal splendor has fallen or faded. We recognize what was always present but only now shows its value, the unique beauty of a human life fashioned and lived in anticipation of the life that neither changes nor ends. Though we never noticed, it was always there; though we never would have asked for it, it is the only thing that satisfies.
How can it be a good thing when something beautiful comes to an end? When the end is the beauty it was meant for all along.
Monsignor Smith
