A Sermon On Dust

Dust robs us of sight and dust restores it. In the Holy Land, the acrid and sandy earth raises up a very fine and white dust, which on one hand reflects the vivid, burning light of the eastern sun, and on the other hand, when the wind lifts it up in blinding clouds, it causes ophthalmia and even blindness. When you read the Gospels, you notice how many times this terrible misfortune is mentioned; how many blind people the Lord cured; the sign he gave to St. John the Baptizer to indicate that the Messiah had arrived: “The blind see”; the comparison he used in the parable : “If a blind man leads a blind man, they both go to the pit.”

The Lord cured one of these poor wretches at the gates of the Temple, as the ninth chapter of the Gospel of John tells us, by putting some mud on his eyes. He spat on dust and made some mud, put it on his eyes and told him: “Go and wash in the pool of Siloam.” Lord, what did you do: dust to cure a blind man, spittle to cure blindness? Lord, caustic saliva and abrasive dust robs someone of sight rather than restoring vision to the blind. 

Allow me, allow Him to act who is the Light of the World. As Saint John says: “So he went and washed and came back seeing.”

Dust is in our eyes, the dust of the earth blinds us. Dust are riches, dust are honors, dust are pleasures; blinding dust that prevents us from seeing. But the Church, our Mother who is anxious to heal us, the Bride of Christ so powerful to heal us, throws a handful of dust in our face today, and in imitation of her Divine Master says to the poor blind man: With what made you sick, I can heal you. But not by itself, because dust alone, the dust of the earth, does not heal, but will make you sicker, if God’s saliva, the word of God, is not mixed into it. And the Church mixes this dust of the earth with the word of God, a word taken from the Book of Genesis, a simple, true and caustic word. “Man, remember that dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return.”

If she were to put only ashes on our foreheads to remind us of the death that will reduce us to dust, the Church would not heal our wounds, but rather increase our sadness; and sadness is not the remedy for our ills. There has been enough sadness in this restless century! To this haven of peace, to this haven of prayer amidst the din of the street, we sometimes come to flee from the sadness of the world. And well, friends, do not fear, because the dust that makes us sick outside, heals us here inside. The dust that the Church puts in our eyes restores our sight, even if it is caustic when applied. He who sees, friends, is not saddened. This is because when can see, he knows where he is going and walks safely. He who sees, does not stumble on a stone or fall into the pit.

Therefore, Our Lord Jesus Christ in today's Gospel commands us to fast, but also forbids us to be sad. “And when you fast, be not as the hypocrites, sad.” And how are we not to be sad, having to suffer in the body? By not putting our treasure in the body, which is dust, nor in the things of the earth, which are dust, but in those that are above. And your Father who is in heaven will repay you there. “Lay not up to yourselves treasures on earth: where the rust, and moth consume, and where thieves break through and steal,” he says. “But lay up to yourselves treasures in heaven: where neither the rust nor moth doth consume, and where thieves do not break through, nor steal.” The moth and rust are the miseries of this life; the thief is death, and the treasure is what we seek and desire: our ideal and our ultimate end.

Friends, the modern world has exalted man too much and has disparaged him too much; it has flattered and slandered him, and alternatively, set him against the Church, which says to him: “You are dust.” The world says: “You are as a god,” and then it says, “You are corruption.” The world lies, friends, and it is a condition of liars to correct a lie with a bigger lie. The century of the philosophy of the superman is the century of the philosophy of pessimism; the century of comfort and pleasures is the century of Bolshevism and pauperism. The century of great scientific discoveries is the century of the great moral miseries. The pacifist century is the century of the Great War. The century of lights is the century of religious ignorance.
  
I leaf through our magazines, our newspapers, I listen to your doctors and your universities.... And what do I see? 

‘Man,’ cries the world, ‘you are free: do not  be a subject. You are king: do not obey. You are beautiful: enjoy, all is yours. Sovereign people, you must not be governed by anyone, but govern yourself. King of creation, science and progress place in your hands the whole earth. Upright and white animal, your body is beautiful, do not hide it. Your body is the source and the vessel of a world of pleasures: imbibe them. Money is the key to this world: procure it. Honors, dignities, and power are the ambrosia of gods. Fame is the ideal of great souls. Science is the aristocracy of the soul. Fight! Grab your share! Triumph! Cast down the others! If you are poor: assail the rich! If you are rich: crush the plebians!’

Friends, what about the moth and the rust? The demigod, the superman, meets with the moth and rust. Diseases of the body, the tyranny of sin and instinct, weariness of pleasures, fears of wealth, lack of understanding, displeasure in power, miseries of conscience, limitations of the soul, family differences, social failures, great national disasters, moths of human dust, how many there are! And how many we all carry concealed and how they have increased since faith has diminished and sin has increased! And then, friends, when the idol of dust on which the treasure and the heart have been placed begins to crumble, when the hard reality sooner or later undermines the castles based on lies, ah! Then, friends, the masters of lies will sing you a very different song: they will console you with the song of hatred, disenchantment, and despair.

Man: you are an absurdity, an enigma, a misery. Your birth is grubby. Your life, ridiculous. Your end is unknown. Deceived by the phantoms of beautiful things promising happiness, you run without knowing where, stumbling through life, until you take the great leap from which no one returns into the night of the unknown. Your brother, next to you, is a wolf to you. Your superior, above, is a tyrant. The apostle who preaches: deceives and exploits you. You know nothing at all. You can do nothing against your destiny. Your greatest ideals, your most beautiful dreams: love, religion, art, holiness.... do you want to know what they are deep down? They are but sublimation of the sexual instinct that you carry in your subconsciousness. Life is not worth living.  

These are the two great lies of the world. But there is no lie that does not have something of truth - a pure lie cannot be sustained. The world preaches two truths to man: the greatness of his soul and the misery of his body. But it ignores two truths: the misery of his soul, which is original sin, and the greatness of his body, which is the final resurrection. “And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath of life…” says the Book of Genesis. Therefore, friends, Man is made of two things: body and soul. He is made of a bit of clay and a breath of God: a lower thing taken from the earth and a higher thing brought down from heaven. Let the superior dominate the inferior, let the soul command and the body obey: here you have the order, the harmony, the happiness. Here you have the first divine plan, the original state of innocence of Adam and Eve, the first portrait of demigods that the world makes us.

But the Faith teaches us and the world ignores that man subverted this order by sin, undid this harmony, lost this happiness, and then the body revolted against    intelligence, the flesh broke free from the hands of the spirit, matter oppressed the soul. “And they knew that they were naked; they were ashamed, they feared the voice of God and hid themselves among the leaves.” That is to say: Man felt the punishment of his disobedience, in the disobedience of the members of his body and the faculties of his soul, in the terrible disorder, war, sadness that had no remedy, friends, but in the mercy of God, because the guilty Man, wounded in nature and stripped of what had been given freely, could not redeem himself.

This is called the fallen state, the second state that the world describes for us, when we ask for a second portrait of Man. The first portrait is of a demigod, the second portrait is of a worm. And behold, gentlemen, how the blind guide of the blind lies. These two states, the demigod state and worm state, the state of original righteousness and the state of the Fall, are two historical states of Man; for, indeed, there was a moment when the first man was innocent and a moment when he was irreparably guilty. But these are two moments that no longer exist and will never exist again, two past states, for the present state of man involves fall and redemption and is the state of man lapsus-reparatu: fallen and redeemed, fallen in Adam and redeemed by Jesus Christ Son of God and our Lord.

To free us from the deceptions of the world, from the seduction, the fascination, the attraction of the dust of life, the Church throws the dust of death in our faces. What shall I do, says the Church, so that Man does not honor himself too much and does not despise himself too much, so that he does not become arrogant and discouraged? What shall I do so that during Lent, that he may be abased and raised: abase the body by fasting, raise the soul with prayer, so that he may despise the treasures of earth and place his treasure in heaven? It is so irresistible the seduction of what is seen, of what is touched, of what is felt! Well then, I will make him see, touch, feel what it is that he loves inordinately. I will call death to my aid. Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris. Here is what prevents you from loving God, here is what endangers your eternal happiness! Dust!

In an old auto sacramental – a morality play – of the Spanish theater, Death appears armed with a sword and dagger to preach a sermon to men. What a great preacher is Death, such a sermon, friends! Enter Beauty, a great lady dressed, adorned, beautiful: all is silk and gold, jasmine, and roses. All is grace and gentleness. Men are mad about her and she is mad about herself. Death touches her with his sword, and she becomes a bloated and disgusting corpse. The thief was not necessary, the moth was enough. Death was not necessary, time was enough, quiet and implacable time: the witherer of all flowers, time with its bald head, its wrinkles, its hunched back, its aches and pains. But as today paint and wigs have been invented to kill the moth and make war on Time, let us go to the thief, to Death. Lift the slab and look at beauty touched by death: it is a heap of corruption, a thing that has no name in any language.  Here everything has stopped: it was, then, an expired thing, passing, and accidental. It passed away and took away my treasures, the libertine will say; the happiness of my soul in the other life, the peace of my soul in this life, the health of my body, the firmness of my character. O Death, how bitter is your lesson for him who places his end in Pleasures!

Then come Riches, friends, strutting, looking tall, elegantly dressed, and with a great retinue of servants, friends, and parasites. Death touches him, and the Rich man becomes a skeleton. Friends flee, flatterers disappear, and the relatives, with one eye weeping and the other peeping, hasten to cover with dirt the one who departed so opportunely. He went away alone, with the injustices he committed to gain them, with the iniquities he committed to keep them, and with the sins he perpetrated to enjoy them. Verily I say unto you, that the rich are hardly ever saved: O death, how bitter is thy remembrance to him that places his trust in riches!

Enter Power, friends. Enter a King and his court, soldiers, wise men, politicians, spears, clarions, a hundred banners in the wind. Death touches him, and all turns to dust: the dust that was Memphis, the dust that was Nineveh, the dust that was Carthage, the dust that was Rome. Death, gentlemen, rules more than kings and is more enduring than the nations. But glory - you tell me - glory remains. Yes, friends, the eternal glory with which God will glorify the poor and humble of heart, the eternal glory remains. “No,“ you say to me, “earthly glory, even earthly glory remains.” Ah, friends! What is earthly glory?

One day I was visiting the Tomb of the Scipios in Rome. It is a pile of bricks half buried in a field beside a dusty and lonely street. A guard accompanies the visitor through some dark and damp cellars and explains that in the Middle Ages, peasants took the marbles to build houses and in modern times some vintners made a cellar to store wine, where rested Ennius the poet, Scipio Emilianus, Scipio Africanus the elder, and Scipio Asiaticus. This piece of bone, that piece of humerus, is probably from Scipio Africanus. This is worldly glory, friends. A name in history: a piece of bone shown to tourists.  

None avoid the Great Thief of the night. He waits for everyone, and reaches everyone, and conquers everyone. He has defeated Beauty, Power, Riches, Nations, and Fame: let's gather everyone against him, to see if he can be defeated. Individuals may die, but the species remains. Men die, but the human race remains. Nations die, but the World remains. The World against Death. 

Friends, look at what the world is. We are ants compared to the whole world, the seas, mountains, and stars. The millions and millions of men with their riches and possessions, their inventions, wonders of art, of letters, science, monuments, ways of communication, machines, great organizations and the great eternal buildings, the work of centuries accumulated patiently make a tower that reaches to the sky. The World Universe against Death. Death touches it, and what happens? We know what will happen down to its smallest details. The sun darkens, the moon turns to blood, the stars fall from the sky like ripe figs, the sea roars, men flee in terror who gather to make war on God and his Christ, and in the midst of the greatest tribulation that there has been since the beginning of time and after a tremendous though brief agony, this world and all its glory passes away and becomes nothing.

Friends, in this century of indefinite progress, of creative evolution, there are many people, tired of waiting for the Second Coming of Christ, say: “He is coming no more” while they doze and sleep. What reason suspects, faith assures us: this world, which had a beginning, will also have an end. We do not know the day nor the hour, but we know that we have to be vigilant. We do not know if there is still a long way to go, but we know that the Great Thief will come when we least expect him.

I have made for you a great spectacle of desolation and ruins. I have taken Death and have reduced the flesh of man, the works of man, and the whole world of man, to dust. Upon this heap of ruins, what is left but sorrow and despair? So it is, friends, if we were philosophers of pessimism. But we are children of the Church, not worshippers of Death, but children of Life. Friends, the author of the Book of Ecclesiastes, inspired by the Holy Spirit, after having bitterly shown the vanity of earthly things, does not conclude in despair, but concludes in moderation. After having traversed the vanity of pleasures that leads to weariness, the vanity of knowledge that increases suffering, the vanity of riches, power, renown, fame, and beauty, the sacred author bursts into conclusions of common sense, of moderation and temperance: “We must despise everything that is temporary, we must use life moderately, we must also use pleasures and remedies that make it serene and bearable, and above all we must fear God, keep his commandments and remember his judgment.” He says in conclusion, “Fear God, and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.”

It is curious that it does not say: "Keep the commandments of God, for that is the soul of man. The body is dust; keep the commandments to save your soul." No, friends: “Keep the commandments, for that is the whole man, body and soul.” Friends, he that is saved, saves his body and soul: he sends his soul to heaven, and sends the heap of dust of his body to the earth, as the seed of resurrection.

The truly wise, prudent, and judicious man, my friends, is the one who is saved. It is not forbidden to us to desire riches, but to desire false riches. How can riches be kept safe from a thief? By sending them to a safe deposit box. That is what Christ advises: through almsgiving, send your riches where there are no thieves, so that they will wait for you there. How can the grain of wheat be insured against the weevil? It must be sown. This is the advice of Christ: ‘Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.’ Thus our bodies, sunk in humiliation, undone by mortification, pulverized by death, will sprout one day with new life and will blossom like roses under the sun of Immortality.

Rev. Leonardo Castellani (1899-1981) was an Argentine priest, theologian, novelist, poet, and essayist. Among his works is a commentary on St. Thomas Aquinas’ Summa Theologica. One of his best known works is a collection of poems and fables titled Camperas.