Seasons of our Life

Learning to long for the harvest season

Revelation 14:14-16

I, John, looked and there was a white cloud, and sitting on the cloud one who looked like a son of man, with a gold crown on his head and a sharp sickle in his hand. Another angel came out of the temple, crying out in a loud voice to the one sitting on the cloud, “Use your sickle and reap the harvest, for the time to reap has come, because the earth’s harvest is fully ripe.” So the one who was sitting on the cloud swung his sickle over the earth, and the earth was harvested.

             Yesterday a friend asked me, “What is your favorite time of year?”  She went on to explain that fall was her favorite time because of the colorful leaves and the changing of the season.  Other people love spring or maybe summer, and some even love winter.  I agreed that fall was nice, but what I really wanted to answer was: “My favorite season is football season!”  And my favorite month is November, when we enjoy not only college and professional football but the start of basketball season and NFL hockey season!  Is this heaven?  Then there are also “liturgical seasons” in the Church calendar, like Advent (which begins Sunday) and Christmas, or Lent and Easter.  Each season has its unique purpose and pleasure, and we all look forward to our own favorite season.

             In the first reading we see what the angels would answer if my friend had asked them, “What is your favorite season?”  They would answer in one chorus: “Our favorite time is the harvest season!”  In Revelation 14, John sees 3 angels wielding sharp sickles and they shout to each other: “Use your sickle and reap the harvest, for the time to reap has come, because the earth’s harvest is fully ripe.”  The harvest season is, of course, the end of time, when all other seasons will come to an end, even football season!  You see, that’s the season all the angels long for, and that season, too, has its own particular purpose and pleasure.  John’s point in Rev. 14 is that we, too, should adopt the attitude of the angels and learn to love the harvest season, to see its purpose and to desire its pleasure.

            Do you know the one thing that holds us back from loving the harvest season like the angels do?  It’s this “little thing” called death; it’s anything but “little.”  In Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet said that contemplating death makes cowards of us all; death overwhelms us.  As much as we may love the fall season, we know that’s also the season when nature herself seems to die, and we shudder at the thought like we shudder at the cold November wind.  Here’s a little poem that may help us not to be overwhelmed by death, and help us start to look forward to the harvest season like the angels do.  It’s called “Death, be not proud” by John Donne.  Here are a few lines:

            “Death be not proud, though some have called thee

            Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,

            For, those, whom thou thinkst thou dost overthrow,

            Die not, poor death, nor canst thou kill me.”

Then, Donne concludes:

            One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

            And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.”

            And that’s why the angels rejoice at the “harvest season,” not because it means our death, but because it means that is when death itself shall die.  And, who knows, that may be even better than football season.

            Praised be Jesus Christ!