I watched last summer’s movie INCEPTION this past week. It was interesting and will probably take at least one or more viewings before I start to understand it. I have an intuitive and insightful friend that I will enlist for the journey into this labyrinth story of dream and reality. One reality this week is how a new event triggered old memories that arte replaying constantly in my head. There was a line in the movie: “An idea is like a virus, resilient, highly contagious.”
Last Saturday morning at church there was a training session for altar servers when I returned for celebrating Mass in the chapel. It was the feast of St. Matthias, the Apostle, so I wearing a red chasuble. I entered the Church to greet the servers-in-training and asked them if they had any questions. A very inquisitive young man, who understood that liturgy was full of symbolism, asked me a question. “Father, why is that when you hold out your arms, you look like a butterfly?”
I was taken aback by his question, since the intention of holding my arms out and displaying my chasuble was not to emerge from a cocoon of solemn worship and ritual into a whimsical, free flying fluttering form of carefree joy and happiness. Of course being of a certain age his question pushed a replay button in my mind. Two thoughts start looping through my conscious. One is Mohamed Ali’s line: “FLOAT LIKE A BUTTERFLY, STING LIKE A BEE.” And the second was the opening tune of “THE SONG OF THE SOUTH”, ZIP-A-DEE-DOO-DAH. Yes, I have mixed bluebirds up with butterflies, but I am sure that the bluebird sitting on Uncle Remus’s shoulder had butterflies flying around. A happy carefree world was colorfully presented.
The Eucharist Celebration in which I which I wear the chasuble is celebrated in the remembrance of the wonderful salivfic act of Jesus dying for us on the cross and spending three days in the tomb so that we could rise with to new life. The joy of the promise of new life at the heavenly banquet should set us dancing as freely as Uncle Remus and the animals. But while we are floating like the butterfly we do have to be concerned about the sting of the bee, sin. Once set free in Baptism from sin when need to stay alive in God’s love. The butterfly metamorphoses from caterpillar to butterfly is short-lived, a few days, maybe a year, just like us freed from sin, only to die again to the sins of this world. They keep us from enjoying the eternal heavenly banquet. But God through His church foresaw this and gave us sacraments, Reconciliation and the Eucharist. These provide us with renewal that can allow us like the butterfly to come to new life until the day that God is ready to call us to the eternal banquet.
We have choices where we may dine. We can dress like the caterpillar and eat at the drive-thru at White Castle with no embarrassment or dress like a butterfly and dine at Bistro 157 or the Ritz. Another line from the movie says a lot: “Don’t you want to take a leap of faith? Or become as old man, filled with regret, waiting to die alone!”