In the words of the singer Peggy Lee…
The window she is broken and the rain is comin’ in
If someone doesn’t fix it I’ll be soaking to my skin
But if we wait a day or two the rain may go away
And we don’t need a window on such a sunny day
Mañana, mañana, mañana is soon enough for me.
“Tomorrow” might work when it concerns household chores, but it’s dangerous concerning your spiritual chores.
Holy Church puts a question to this Sunday right out of the gate: What is keeping you from doing what belongs to God?
The Collect asks the Almighty and merciful Father to remove whatever stands in our way, so that mind and body together may be free for His service. The Epistle tells us what must be cast off and what must be put on. The Gospel takes us into a wedding hall, where the king looks upon his guests and finds one man without the garment he ought to be wearing.
The Collect is eloquent and dense:
Omnipotens et misericors Deus,
universa nobis adversantia propitiatus exclude:
ut mente et corpore pariter expediti,
quae tua sunt, liberis mentibus exsequamur.
Do you see those “ex-”s along the way?
LITERAL VERSION
Almighty and merciful God,
graciously shut out all things that oppose us,
so that, equally unencumbered in mind and body,
we may carry out with free minds the things that are Yours.
The Church asks for freedom because there is something to be done. The oration addresses both mind and body, since both are involved in our obedience. There is an ascending progress in those exclude… expediti… exsequamur. Exclude (“put out”) remove what opposes us is the first step. The next step is in expediti, that is, an eagerness to go after godly things (quae tua sunt). Finally, we fall into step with God’s will and follow Him in exsequamur.
Whenever this Collect comes around, I am reminded of the 4th c. martyr St. Expeditus, a Roman centurion. He is depicted in his soldier’s armor holding a martyr’s palm branch and raising high a sign with the Latin word HODIE, “today” while as his feet a black crow onomatopoetically croaks out CRAS “tomorrow”. Moreover, in Latin military terminology, the expediti were soldiers unencumbered by baggage and ready to move swiftly. That is the force of expediti in the Collect: freed from what hinders us, we are ready to carry out God’s will. That gives us an image for the Christian life, especially as the days of the liturgical year grow shorter. We must put off what holds us back and put on what aids us.
Pius Parsch observes in The Church’s Year of Grace that this Sunday opens a sequence concerned with Christian hope. Hope has its eyes on the destination. It keeps a man moving toward it. The Collect asks God to make us fit for the journey. Hence, we of the Church Militant have sins to confess, habits to amend, people to forgive, duties to perform, and so forth. A soldier who means to march forward cannot remain forever occupied with packing and unpacking his burdens.
Have you been to confession lately?
Hodie, non cras: today, rather than tomorrow. God gives us the present in which to respond in freedom to grace.
St. Paul’s Lesson from Ephesians 4:23–28 tells us what such freedom looks like. “Be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature (RSV, Greek ánthropos “man”), created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.” He writes to Christians, many of them Gentiles, and tells them that their former, pagan manner of life can no longer control them. They have learned Christ. Their baptism gave them a new identity. That identity must be manifest in their conduct. Paul therefore writes at once of interior renewal and also of things a neighbor can observe: truthful speech, anger kept within bounds, honest labor, and generosity to someone in need.
Paul’s command to “put on” the new man/nature uses the imagery of clothing. The Greek verb endúo means to clothe or invest oneself. At Baptism, the white garment makes outwardly visible what Christ has done inwardly for the soul. We were washed in His death and Resurrection have been given a new life. That white garment also gives and implicit charge: keep it clean. Paul writes similarly to the Colossians:
“Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old nature with its practices and have put on the new nature, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” (Col 3:9–10).
The old man is bound up with the inheritance of fallen Adam. The new man lives by grace in Christ, the new Adam. While the struggle against sin continues, baptism truly changes us. We must return again and again to the life we have received, through repentance, the sacraments, prayer, and acts of charity. Paul does not leave “renewal” floating out there in theory. He grounds it in the conversations we have with our neighbor, the work we do with our hands, and how we behave when provoked.
If expediti reminds me of the soldier saint, Paul’s clothing image reminds me of the prayer which Mother Church places on the lips of clerics and altar boys alike when putting on a surplice:
Indúe me, Dómine, novum hóminem, qui secúndum Deum creátus est in justítia et sanctitáte veritátis. Amen.
“Clothe me, O Lord, with the new man, who was created according to God in justice and holiness of truth. Amen.”
The white surplice over the cassock recalls the liturgical alb and, through it, the pristine baptismal garment. Before the priest, seminarian or server reaches the sanctuary, he has prayed to wear inwardly what he puts on outwardly. Or perhaps ought to have.
One might at this point spill several thousand words about the magnificent prayers to be recited by bishops, priests, deacons and subdeacons while putting on their liturgical vestments, and, even before that, washing one’s hands and, even before that, donning the cassock. They are a fathomless resource for priestly identity. I am often driven to ponder, with sorrow and anger and yearning what the knock on effect would have been in the Church over these last decades were all or at least most priests and bishops saying their vesting prayers. Would there be so much disfunction in the Church were a bishop reminded every time he put on his ring praying: “Adorn with virtue, Lord, the fingers of my body and of my heart, and place upon them the sanctification of the sevenfold Spirit.” Praying every time he put on a miter, “Place upon my head, Lord, the mitre and helmet of salvation; that I may go forth unhindered against the snares of the ancient foe, and of all my enemies.” Not only bishops, but priest are under attack by the Enemy. Would more of our priests now be bolder and stand taller after daily reciting while putting on an amice, “Place the helmet of salvation, Lord, upon my head, to overthrow all the deceits of the devil, prevailing against the cunning of all enemies.” How cunning is the Enemy? These days, priestly “alb”, which is from the Latin word for “white”, are off-color something gunny sacks with snaps or velcro at the neck to supplant the use the warrior helmet amice. That’s not all, since I’m deep into this digression. The modernist alb often has that execrable sewn in belt-like thing which usurps the cincture. And what was the priest’s vesting prayer for the cincture? “Gird me, O Lord, with the cord of purity, and quench in my loins the the humor of lust, so that the virtue of continence and chastity may abide in me.”
Get where I’m going with that?
But I digress.
If putting on the new man also through vestments is part and parcel of priestly identity, it also applies to all the baptized. Ordinary dress for Sunday Mass can express something of the same regard. Decent, decorous clothing honors the sacred place and the sacred liturgical action and shows consideration for those who worship beside us. Paul joins “putting on” the new man to love of neighbor. The Gospel from Matthew 22:1-14 is the parable of the king at the wedding banquet of his son who spots a guest not clothed in the proper wedding garment. He says, “Bind him hand and foot, and cast him into the outer darkness; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.”
Outward signs, inward reality.
St. Gregory the Great asks, “What, then, must we understand by the wedding garment, if not charity?” (Homiliae in Evangelia 38.9). Faith has brought the guest into the hall, but charity is lacking. Gregory’s question reaches those of us already in the Church, nourished by Scripture and accustomed to her worship. We can know the way to the banquet and still need to examine the state of our hearts. Do we love God and our neighbor? Do we guard a resentment, envy another person’s good, pretend not to see when action is needed?
The outward signs we display express our inward choices and aspirations.
Paul illustrates. His first example is falsehood: “Let every one speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.” A lie injures a particular person, and it damages the trust proper to members of Christ’s Body. Truthfulness requires more than avoiding a statement that can be caught out. We can mislead by carefully chosen silence, by passing along what we have not checked, or by giving an account designed to protect our pride. There is plenty of lying in the world and, sadly, in the Church. The new man has reason to speak plainly and to correct a falsehood he has spread.
Then comes anger. “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil” (Eph 4:26–27). Paul recalls Psalm 4:5: “Be angry, but sin not; commune with your own hearts on your beds, and be silent.” Anger may rise before we have deliberately chosen it. What follows asks something of us. We may have encountered a real wrong that calls for correction, perhaps even a forceful one. Our Lord drove the sellers and money changers from the Temple. Yet wounded vanity can present itself to us as zeal, and anger over a genuine wrong can grow beyond justice. We must examine what we seek: the good of souls and the honor of God, or the pleasure of striking back?
“Sunset” gives Paul’s counsel a measure of urgency. “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil” (Eph 4:26-27). A quarrel can grow in the hours we spend rehearsing it. Resentment that we welcome and feed may become hatred. When someone’s actions in the Church make us angry, let us pray for him by name, including for his conversion if that is needed. Such prayer may be hard to begin. It helps us to desire his good before God, which is precisely what charity requires.
Paul’s instruction to the thief is equally searching. “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his hands, so that he may be able to give to those in need.” The Apostle moves beyond simply ceasing an evil act. Hands once used to take are now to earn and give. Grace makes room for a new habit (which is both a virtue and a garment) and gives it a purpose in charity. That is what Christian “putting on” looks like.
Today, not tomorrow. We still have time to act. We do not know the hour or the manner of our soul separating from our body in death. Once separated we no longer will have this earthly opportunity of repenting and amending. Our particular judgment follows death (Heb 9:27). We ought to hear this with sober hope. Today, confession is available. Today, an injury can be put right. Today, we can ask for the grace to abandon a sin. Expediti we can still come swiftly before the King and beg Him to restore our garment.
Propitiatus exclude, Father prays in the Collect. Graciously remove what opposes us. We cannot give ourselves the initial grace of conversion, nor make ourselves clean by determination alone. Christ puts that garment on us. Moved by the subsequent indwelling Holy Spirit, we can cooperate with it, grow in charity, and perform works pleasing to God through Christ. We should strive always to be thoroughly honest about ourselves and consider well the gift of our “new man” in baptism into the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. We might, in our frequent examination of conscience place ourselves before Our Savior as He pointedly asks, “Are you putting me on?” and “Are you putting me on?”