On Hashtags in General, and One in Particular

This is my first blog post of the new year, patient reader, mostly because I am undisciplined. True to form, I am publishing it on Ash Wednesday, among the busier days in a priest's year. There was a sizable window between the noon service and the 5 PM Confessions (followed by 6:30 PM Mass and subsequent Stations of the Cross) to cut-and-paste this article from the upcoming parish bulletin. 

This Lent I have chosen to refrain from social media, but I think I'll refine that to "not scrolling or checking notifications on social media," which enables me to post and scram. So be kind and decent! No lewdness, profanity, or unkindness. Contact me on messaging apps, email, phone, or in person.

Last November the outdoor parish sign declared, By Death He Trampled Death, and below it #mementomori. By now many of you know that the eight-pointed character technically called the octothorp (no relation to Jim) has in more recent years been called the number sign or the pound sign. Music calls it the sharp sign, to raise the note a half-step (as the character itself shifts). Online parlance dubs it the “hashtag” (perhaps resembling hash browns? You got me).

The hashtag is a kind of organizing tool for social media. Posting persons will share a word or phrase (characters uninterrupted either by spaces or punctuation), beginning the content with a hashtag. Then, whenever one wants to search for that sort of content elsewhere, one simply would enter or click on that hashtag and examples would appear. Hashtagged items, inside or outside the online context, tend to be considered trendy or important.

They say that death and taxes are the two universally unavoidable realities. Both merit our attention this time of year. We should pay the latter by 15 April, while the due date of the former is not known to us. We “prepare” taxes by gathering forms, receipts, and other relevant information, and entering many personal numbers into formulae that determine how much we owe Caesar. How do we “prepare” for death? What’s the schedule for debts to God?

We know God deserves worship and respect, on His terms outlined by the Church. We know our fellow human beings deserve honor and respect in relation to God, their creator and ours. “Pay to all their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due, toll to whom toll is due, respect to whom respect is due, honor to whom honor is due. Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law” (Romans 13:7-8). 

While we may either pay our taxes incrementally during the year based on what we know we should pay, or we may wait until the end, the debt of love is ongoing and merits attention well in advance of the accounting day.

Dying humbles us, as does aging. We find ourselves able to do less than we could before. People often transition to a point of not knowing what to do, or how to communicate. That’s the incremental tax payment. Some people unexpectedly must render life’s lump sum, when everyone might have thought there was more earning and achieving ahead. From our perspective it might look too random, and who could fault our frustrations?

One of Lent’s best purposes is to draw these realities before our eyes. If they’re already before our eyes, we don’t necessarily get a pass, but here we recall the divine economy offers various opportunities: now to assist fellow sufferers, now to be assisted. The hashtag of remembering death becomes once again the pound sign: the sign to pound the pavement in service of life.

The morbid nature of the #mementomori movement need not sour us. Some people admittedly are drawn to it more than others for how cool it looks. Maybe not cool, but authentic: the realities of death remind us to live, and to do so eagerly. The need to live is always before us, as are the needs of living. God help us to stay sharp.

Anointing of the Sick: Send for Me

The experience of illness is that of a privation (lack) of a good that ought to be present but is not, viz., wellness, integrity of body and soul. In particular areas, or even in general, we know that ”something’s not right!” Every illness is a prelude to death, the total and final dissolution of the body (CCC 1500).

What happens in the body has its inevitable effects on the soul, and vice versa. An unusually high level of attention to bodily ailments can translate into self-absorption, despair, or revolt against God, or it can promote a more mature appreciation of life’s essentials (1501). Suffering can make us bitter, or better! 

At any point on life’s journey, while we still have our faculties, we can decide in what we call “redemptive suffering” to unite our physical, emotional, and spiritual hardships with Christ’s own—which included ours and everyone else’s anyhow. It is good to make a point of connecting those hardships repeatedly and prayerfully, even when tears and shouts accompany our prayers. We can pray that someone, somewhere, somehow might be assisted by our offering, though we may never get to learn of it on earth.

One of the most noteworthy developments since the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) occurred in the practice of the Anointing of the Sick. No longer is this sacrament intended solely for the deathbed: when a person is beset by serious illness or the frailty of old age, the time is ripe for anointing. It is also generally indicated before any serious surgery that requires general anesthesia.

Everyone used to call the Sacrament “Last Rites,” and many still do. The pedant in me sometimes gently corrects the misnomer, because I think of opportunities for instruction like a drunk drinks: never pass one up. I often hear talk of having people’s Last Rites “read to” them, as if we were police officers reading Miranda Rights to someone we’ve just arrested. It’s a curious confusion. Since the Sacrament can be repeated when illness returns or intensifies, I say it’s their “Last” Rites only when it’s the actual last time they’ve received it.

But then there’s CCC 1525, which makes a poignant comparison:

Thus, just as the sacraments of Baptism, Confirmation, and the Eucharist form a unity called “the sacraments of Christian initiation,” so too it can be said that Penance, the Anointing of the Sick and the Eucharist as viaticum constitute at the end of Christian life “the sacraments that prepare for our heavenly homeland” or the sacraments that complete the earthly pilgrimage.

Since the Church’s coup de grace (literally, “blow of mercy,” used here in that gentle sense) is said here with convincing pedigree to include Anointing, the precedent for retaining the term “Last Rites” is not bad after all.

In the case of the terminally and gravely ill, Anointing of the Sick ideally takes place alongside Confession and Viaticum (the final reception of Holy Communion). The unfortunate trend has been to wait until the patient/family member is “actively dying,” at which point he or she is often unable to make even a general Confession or ingest the Eucharistic species. While I say the sooner, the better, there is no better time than the present.

I do very much appreciate that families, especially those personally opposed or indifferent to religion, respect the religious and spiritual practices of their elders enough to request Anointing for their loved ones. It’s a spiritual work of justice, and who knows what good it will effect.

As for the Anointing of the Actively Dying, we proceed with the faith that the God Who knows and loves us better than we ever could know or love ourselves can sort out their interior state. The Communion of Saints is on high alert whenever someone “sends for the priests of the Church” (Anointing ritual; cf. James 5:14); it’s like the airing of the bat symbol that moves the Caped Crusader to a dude or damsel in distress. Yes, even at 2:17 AM.

Although the topic of death can be difficult to broach with anyone, let alone a gravely ill person, it can lead to valuable self-reflection (presuming that hasn’t been going on already) and, when necessary, interpersonal healing and reconciliation. Don’t allow fear to unduly delay this graceful activity.

“Their sins will be forgiven” (James 5:15): Anointing of the Sick does forgive venial sins when the recipient is properly disposed to that forgiveness (i.e., sorry). In this life, the forgiveness of mortal sins is reserved to the Sacrament of Penance; amid the need of that forgiveness, Confession is an appropriate complement to Anointing. Be not afraid to do the work of self-examination and to be open to the grace of repentance that Confession requires!

Powerful Amidst Peers

FELIX RANDAL the farrier, O he is dead then? my duty all ended,
Who have watched his mould of man, big-boned and hardy-handsome
Pining, pining, till time when reason rambled in it and some
Fatal four disorders, fleshed there, all contended?
Sickness broke him. Impatient he cursed at first, but mended	5
Being anointed and all; though a heavenlier heart began some
Months earlier, since I had our sweet reprieve and ransom
Tendered to him. Ah well, God rest him all road ever he offended!
This seeing the sick endears them to us, us too it endears.
My tongue had taught thee comfort, touch had quenched thy tears,	10
Thy tears that touched my heart, child, Felix, poor Felix Randal;
How far from then forethought of, all thy more boisterous years,
When thou at the random grim forge, powerful amidst peers,
Didst fettle for the great grey drayhorse his bright and battering sandal!

Portrait of the Laborer as a Young Man

When my father Joseph died in 2004, a priest-friend and mentor told me that he thought of "Felix Randal" upon hearing of my father's death.  This priest helped Dad to complete the annulment process and make his first confession in God-knows-how-many years.  Everyone should get to know a priest who is heaven-bent on reconciliation and familiar with the Hopkins corpus.

The stories of Felix Randal and Joe Zelonis are somewhat similar.

Although my father never seemed to lose his wits (nor his wit), at least two if not three disorders ravaged his body.  As a young lad he lifted weights and had a scrappy swagger.  Both qualities were helpful for living and working in the eastern Pennsylvania coal region.  Though never a bowler (but a pin-setter!), he eventually developed a "beer frame."  A week-long hospitalization in 1998 prompted him to quit drinking, and the initial result encouraged him to make more dietary changes, to good effect.  His heartier days (lifting fabric rolls, dumbbells, and 12-ounce bottles) were over.

To my earliest recollection, Dad wasn't much of a church-goer beyond Christmas and Easter, although he was raised to fear Christ, the Church and priests.  I was not privy to Dad's meetings with my priest-friend*, but I sensed that Father's winsome earthiness began to melt his fears and develop a brighter perspective on his faith and moral life.  Oh, and having a son who was increasingly closer to ordination--and eventually ordained, called Father just like all the others he'd known--this could have played an auxiliary part.  Talk about someone who "knew him when"!

*Given the sensitive nature of the material of their discussions and its personal irrelevance to me, I did not merit a part in them.  I would like to have been a fly on the wall "for instructional purposes," but my motives would nonetheless be severely tainted with curiosity.  I knew my father well enough to know his need for redemption; moreover, years after his death, I've been coming to know him more in myself.  I am my father's son!

Taken broadly, sacraments are events of divine-human synergy.  The human encounters with this priest precisely conveyed the divine life, as Hopkins' encounters did for Randal.  It is typically humble, and theologically accurate, of Hopkins to place more emphasis on the divine power of the sacraments than the priest's own personal contribution.  His first sacramental ministration was the Eucharist ("our sweet reprieve and ransom," line 6), but the Anointing of the Sick waited until Randal's final hours and days, as the traditional "Last Rites" or "Extreme Unction."  We may presume that Hopkins heard Felix's Confession.  With the fortification of the sacraments Hopkins can wish Felix the "sabbath rest that awaits the people of God" (Heb 4:9; cf. line 8).

In teaching a course on the Sacraments for a diocesan adult catechesis program, I happened upon paragraph 1523 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  It gives quite the nod to the "Extreme Unction" concept, one of the many things that Vatican II allegedly did away with:

If the sacrament of anointing of the sick is given to all who suffer from serious illness and infirmity, even more rightly is it given to those at the point of departing this life; so it is also called sacramentum exeuntium (the sacrament of those departing). The Anointing of the Sick completes our conformity to the death and Resurrection of Christ, just as Baptism began it. It completes the holy anointings that mark the whole Christian life: that of Baptism which sealed the new life in us, and that of Confirmation which strengthened us for the combat of this life. This last anointing fortifies the end of our earthly life like a solid rampart for the final struggles before entering the Father's house. (loc. cit.)

I particularly enjoy the "trinitarian" series of anointing: Baptism, Confirmation, and Anointing of the Sick.  In the course of a person's life, all three holy oils can be used.  While the purpose for the first two focuses more on the disciple's identity (as "character sacraments"), the last touches upon "identity" only obliquely: a suffering person may question the reality and the relevance of God in his or her life.  As the saying goes, suffering can make a person bitter, or better.  Our resistance to hardship is natural, but the choice is ours to press on with greater trust in Providence: an investment in our divine sonship.

In the third stanza, Hopkins shows appreciation for the necessary personal dimension of his sacramental encounters with Randal (actually a pseudonymous surname; but Felix was the given name of the inspiration for this poem).  A caregiver's verbal and tactile expressions mean so much to the patient, and the benefit of such outreach is undoubtedly mutual, as I recently noted.  "My" tongue and touch brought Felix comfort, and "Thy tears" touched Hopkins' heart.  It may seem patronizing for a man of thirty-six (Hopkins at the time of the pastoral relationship and the poem; as I currently am) to call a thirty-two year old Randal "child"; I picture an old Irish priest in the confessional saying, "Yes, go on, my son."  A priest is Father to everyone, regardless of age or status, though he does not "lord it over" his charges (Lk 22:25).

I had the providential opportunity to tender the sacraments to my Dad on a few occasions, as his debilitation grew more acute.  Like many things, this is something that I have cherished more as the years rush by.  When I came home for the day, Dad used to jokingly greet me, "Hello, Father" (and I him, "Hello, Son").  I'm glad Dad lived long enough to witness my ordination, with a year and three months to spare.  He continues to father me, I trust, from a better vantage point.

Nobody ever gets a blueprint of his life before it unfolds (and thank God for that!); nobody knows how it will unfurl.  Dad's "boisterous" years were long gone by my time.  His siblings could attest to them!  Early days at the glass factory and the textile plant would have witnessed a man "powerful amidst peers."  Felix Randal shod horses so that they could transport goods in Britain's industrial Lancaster region.  The respective occupations of Felix and Joe required a great deal of physical strength.  Both men needed that strength, and I could imagine that they did not deal well with its diminution.  But their vigor lives on in every faithful laborer who in his own day will rise and fall.