COMMENTARY: April exposes the divide between a culture that fears death and a faith that finds life through it.
T.S. Eliot published The Waste Land in the year 1922 amid the ruins of World War I. The opening lines of this highly enigmatic poem are both disturbing and provocative:
April is the cruellest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain.
We are currently witnessing unrest on a global scale that threatens to bring about another World War. In our own troubling time, as we approach the month of April, Eliot’s poem has additional meaning for us.
The Waste Land is about life and death. It centers on two types of human beings: those who see life in death (the Christian type), and those who see death in life (the secular type). Why is April cruel? It is because it introduces spring, a time when things come alive. Winter cloaks people in forgetfulness, symbolizing a time when they did not need to meet the challenges of life.
We long for a happier understanding of April, such as the one Shakespeare describes in Love’s Labour’s Lost:
When daisies pied, and violets blue, and lady-smocks all silver-white, and cuckoo-buds of yellow hue, do paint the meadows with delight.
Eliot’s poem resonates with Pope St. John Paul II’s distinction between a culture of life and a culture of death. In both cases, man finds himself in a cultural situation in which he must choose between life and death.
Christ tells us that death is a prelude to life, just as the seed must die before it can bear fruit. It is a paradox that moved Francis Thompson to phrase it in poetic form:
The fall doth pass the rise in worth; for birth itself hath in it the germ of death, but death hath in it the germ of birth. It is the falling acorn buds the tree, the falling rain that bears the greenery.
Spring is as ambiguous as life and death. The challenges we meet on a day-to-day basis are so many opportunities of bringing life out of death. Failure to meet these challenges brings about the very death that people want to avoid.
The birth of a child confronts the parents with long-term responsibilities that appear to them as an unending series of small deaths. The refusal to accept these responsibilities, however, means the real death of the child in the womb. Abortion is finding death in life. Parenting is finding life in death.
The Danish poet Piet Hein was a scientist, inventor, and writer. He is best known, however, for his short, aphoristic poems called grooks. They have attained international popularity for their wisdom and thought-provoking nature. Two of these grooks shed light on how death can lead to greater life:
“Here is a fact that should help you to fight longer: Things that don’t actually kill you outright make you stronger.”
“The noble art of losing face will someday save the human race.”
Piet Hein has offered the world a sensible strategy for peace.
Pride is the great stumbling block in the way of people cooperating with each other. It is often extremely difficult for a person (or leaders of a nation) to admit being wrong. Saving face usually means losing the friendship or losing the battle. When we are humble enough to lose face when we know that we are wrong, we open the door to better human relationships.
G.K. Chesterton defined pride as “the falsification of fact by the introduction of self; the enduring blunder of mankind.” Insisting on saving face, no matter how wrong we may be, is a way of finding death in life. On the subject of life and death, the soon-to-be beatified Archbishop Fulton Sheen has made the following comment:
The power to find life through death makes the seed nobler than the diamond. In falling to the ground it loses its outer envelope, which is a restraining power of the life within it. But once this outer skin dies, then life pushes forth into the blade.
Life is not easy because we are confronted with no end of problems and difficulties. But we find the meaning of life when we overcome them. I go to an interview with the hope of getting the job, having overcome the fear of not getting it. If I do get the job, I will work diligently and overcome the fear of failure. If I become successful in my job, I will overcome any arrogance that might come with it. Life is a series of overcoming the little deaths so that one can achieve a larger life.
April is the “cruellest” month when it reminds us of the energy we need to gain the life that is waiting to be released from its hiding place. If we do not think we have the requisite energy we shrink back and say, “Oh no!” In this sense, death wins and life remains undiscovered.
For Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, by contrast, April is most welcomed because it prepares for a bounty of good things: “Sweet April! Many a thought is wedded unto thee, as hearts are wed; nor shall they fail, till, to its autumn brought, life’s golden fruit is shed.”
How we should view April is how we should view life. April, the dawn of spring, should awaken and mobilize us. It beckons us to uncover the many gifts that are to be won through patience, prudence and perseverance.
