“The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass,” St. Cyril warned. “Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon.” Lent is not an occasion to pass the dragon, but to prepare for the confrontation.
In the first week of the New Year, I wrote that “weather is big in Wyoming.” This winter, the local weathermen tell us, has already been the worst in forty years, and our area usually gets about half its snowfall in March and April. On Tuesday night and Wednesday, the big storm moving rapidly eastward dropped more than a foot of snow. Schools and daycare facilities in Lander closed because of the unsafe driving conditions, and many other businesses shut down. Unfortunately, the hundreds of canceled flights and the uncertainties of driving up from Denver after the storm also made it necessary to cancel our Founders’ Competition—a major Admissions event, this one slated to be the largest ever. Our Admissions team has taken this setback in stride, and they are working to contact each participant to rearrange this major event for April 13-16.
We did not cancel classes at Wyoming Catholic College. Our students (trained in the wilderness) can walk to class. Most of the faculty live close by, as do most of our staff. It was bracing to be talking to sophomores with the 8th century Beowulf (in Seamus Heaney’s translation) open on the table, the temperatures dropping outside (eventually to about 18 below zero), and the snow still falling hard.
The hero’s last fiery trial after 50 years as king of the Geats gave an ancient poetic resonance to Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. With the help of one faithful retainer, Wiglaf, Beowulf confronts and kills the great dragon ravaging his kingdom, but at the cost of his life. The monster’s bite and his outpourings of fire and venom overcome the old warrior, whose trusted weapon fails him in this final encounter. I am reminded of a quotation from St. Cyril of Jerusalem which I first encountered as a freshman in college as the epigraph to Flannery O’ Connor’s stories: “The dragon sits by the side of the road, watching those who pass. Beware lest he devour you. We go to the Father of Souls, but it is necessary to pass by the dragon.” St. Cyril does not say that we can slay the dragon (a deed even Beowulf could not manage alone), but that we will not get to the Father without passing him. The dragon, ancient as time itself, full of malice, threatens the whole of what we are, both as individuals and as institutions, and we do not have the privilege of setting the terms of the trial. He might come at us from any direction at any time.
Lent is not an occasion to pass the dragon, but to prepare for the confrontation. Consider Catharine de Houck Doherty’s approach in an Ash Wednesday meditation published in Magnificat:
Lent is a corridor that leads us to the face of the Father, the face of God. You cannot come heavily laden—you were born naked, and when you die you will come naked before God. His Son died naked. So, do not carry anything. You will take before God only that which you have given away. But you are not dead yet! So meanwhile, let things drop, really drop. Then you will enter Lent with a fantastic joy.
She does not mention the dragon, but she does suggest the way past him, which is to “let things drop” instead of confronting the monster “heavily laden” with all the accumulated habits and acquired needs that constitute the soul’s baggage. We simply drop what might hinder us in the escape (the same advice as for burning houses or crashed airplanes) instead of laboriously and self-consciously “giving things up.” Our Roman chaplain, Fr. Godfrey Okwunka, emphasized on Wednesday that Lent should be an occasion of greater joy and generosity through prayer, fasting, and alms-giving.
Prayer, fasting, alms-giving: prayer to open ourselves up more fully to the help that will clarify the good and sustain us in seeking it, regardless of the peril; fasting to suspend our subservience to necessity and open us to the granularity of hunger for the spirit; alms-giving to shatter our possessiveness with our gifts, which exist for others and not for our own pride. Lent should make newly unfamiliar what we think we know, even this: the way past the dragon is the way of the Cross.
Republished with gracious permission from the Wyoming Catholic College Weekly Bulletin.
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