All Wound Up


I like time. If I wake up in the middle of the night, the first thing I do is check the time to orient myself. I am consistently early to events. I place a (probably unhealthy) meaning upon numbers and dates and cycles. Time is such a beautiful way of organization.

So I find leap day a little annoying. First of all, 29 is a prime number. I can’t do anything with that. February should be regularly getting 30 days anyway; take one back from July and August. Second, it’s embarrassing that we can’t have a more accurate calendar have to insert “make up days” every few years. It feels very sloppy.

It’s actually anything but that, however. When Pope Gregory XIII began his calendar reform in the sixteenth century, it was because the calendar we were using (the Julian calendar) had drifted far off from the solar observations. The Roman calendar followed a mix of lunar and solar observations. Intercalary days or months would occasionally be called to adjust as needed. In 45 BC, Julius Caesar established the Julian calendar which consistently treated a year as 365 days. However, a solar rotation is 365 days, 6 hours. Over the centuries, that difference adds up, so he also included a rule for leap years: one leap day every four years.

Monday Motivation: Thomas Merton

“My great obligation is to God, and to seek His will carefully with a pure and empty heart. Not to try to impose my own order on my life but let God impose His. To serve His will and His order by realizing them in my own life. This mean certainly a deep consent to all that is actually and manifestly His will for me.” – Thomas Merton

Seeing what is Hidden

Three times in today’s Gospel reading Jesus says, “And your Father who sees in secret will repay you.”

It’s a warning to not be showy about faith, to not be a hypocrite. So often, if Christianity is the dominant culture, Christian faith can either be rote or performative. The outward motions and signs are there. But God sees the heart, the intentions, Jesus warns. He can tell the hypocrites from the pious. You may be checking off everything on the checklist of “good Christian,” but how and why are you doing it?

Don’t broadcast your charity or seek attention in your prayers or bemoan your fasting. The spiritual life is about the interior. It doesn’t matter if others see or know or understand. Sometimes the interior spiritual work takes you out of the noticeable, social routines. Will people think I’m praying less if they don’t see me praying as much? Wait, why does that matter?