My father and I have a long-running minor disagreement about which is the worst month. For me, it’s January. You’re back to work after Christmas. It’s still dark 16 hours a day. Spring is a long way off. Gooch père, meanwhile, awards the wooden spoon to February. It’s dank and grim and although it’s beginning to get a bit lighter, it’s been a very long time since you had any decent warm weather. I rather fancy he envies the swallows, who head off to Africa for the winter.
Occasionally I feel bad for finding the opening of the year rather depressing. Should I not, as a Catholic, take joy in all the seasons of the Church, even that brief window of Ordinary Time between the end of Christmastide and the start of Lent? Should my mood not be impervious to mere weather and the patterns of the secular year? I console myself with that glorious passage from Ecclesiastes, imploring us to remember that there is a time for every purpose under heaven. “A time for tears, a time for laughter, a time for mourning”. There is no religious obligation on Christians to maintain a forced upbeat cheeriness. If we’re feeling a bit lacklustre in the deep midwinter – the media often label the second Monday in January “Blue Monday” – then that’s all right.
Indeed, a striking criticism that I have often heard levelled at some branches of Christianity is that they project an artificial image of success, fun and excitement as the normal state of the life of faith. Catholics don’t tend to face this particular charge; as is well known, we prefer to sit unhappily in gloomy old Gothic churches, miserably naming our sins in dark confessionals while candle-blackened statues glare down. It is normally our Evangelical and Charismatic brothers who get it in the neck for their forced jollity.
While I don’t think it’s an entirely fair accusation, there is undoubtedly a danger in giving the impression of a faith that has no room for difficulties, for depression, for seasons of uncertainty and unhappiness. One beauty of Catholicism is our endless variety of spiritual resources to match every temperament, every type of person, every kind of situation in which a person might find themselves. There are devotions and forms of prayer which suit more outgoing individuals, like those associated with the Catholic Charismatic Renewal, and there are others which work better for more introverted or reflective believers. Some of our great saints, like Mother Teresa of Calcutta, are known to have a so-called dark night of the soul, experiencing long periods of spiritual dryness. Many of us will know people who are undoubtedly devout and committed believers who nevertheless experience painful or onerous trials.
We should not regard the tough times as a sign of failure or lack of progress. Quite the opposite, in certain respects. The metaphor of the desert is often employed in Christian thought. It is seen as a place of loneliness and aridity, where we are cut off from the normal distractions and consolations of communal life, and thrown back on our own resources and, crucially, divine assistance. This can be an opportunity for growth and strengthening. The man traditionally regarded as the founder of monasticism, St Anthony the Great, spent many years as a hermit in the Egyptian wilderness, becoming a great spiritual master through a life of austerity, prayer and combat – occasionally physical combat – with demons. He does not seem to have been an especially jolly or entertaining chap; he is once said to have chased away people who came to him for counsel because they were distracting him. He might have struggled to be approved as a candidate for the priesthood in the modern Church. All the same, he undoubtedly deserves to be regarded as a hero of the faith.
Perhaps one way to make appropriate use of melancholic feelings is to process them via our spiritual life and disciplines. It may seem like a long way off, but Lent will soon be upon us. In a season of penitence, almsgiving and self-denial we can and should learn to focus less on ourselves and our own needs and feelings, and to look upwards to God and outwards to our fellow men. If I meditate on my blessings, and on the needs of the many people who are less fortunate than me, then the minor dissatisfactions of my otherwise comfortable and privileged life are likely to seem a good deal less important. Being a bit glum because it’s January seems almost absurd when set beside the real suffering and poverty in the world. And my looking forward to the coming of spring amid the bleakness of winter should prompt me to reflect on the great Christian hope: the Resurrection of the Lord at Easter.
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