The Gray Period

Trying not to prolong our purgatory on earth

03/03/2019

1 John 2:29–3:6 If you consider that God is righteous, you also know that everyone who acts in righteousness is begotten by him. See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God's children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure.

Christmas vacations often offer an opportunity for fascinating conversations with family and friends. I enjoyed one such discussion with my brother’s family that started with the West Point Military Academy and ended in purgatory. My nephew Isaac (who attends West Point) described how the cadets call the months after Christmas “the gray period.” He said sadly: “Everything is gray: the sky is gray, the river is gray, the snow is gray, the buildings are gray, and even our uniforms are gray!” It is a gloomy and depressing period for most West Pointers. But Isaac was looking forward to going back because he would get to experience skiing training for several weeks. He was trying to find a silver lining in all the gray clouds.

The gray period at West Point reminded me of how C. S. Lewis described purgatory in his classic book The Great Divorce. He characterized purgatory as a “gray town.”  In the gray town, it is never as dark as midnight nor as bright as midday, but always a gloomy gray. The people are likewise gloomy, depressed and argumentative, probably like some West Pointers in January. But the Gray Town also gives people an opportunity to take a bus to heaven, and embrace God’s will rather than their own; literally a silver lining in the clouds of heaven. God’s will is the ticket out of the town, but it is very expensive. Lewis explains in chapter 9: “There are only kinds of people in the end: those who say to God ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, ‘Thy will be done.” As we learn in the rest of the book, most people cannot say to God “Thy will be done,” but rather choose to keep doing their own will, which prolongs purgatory. The common thread between the Gray Period at West Point and the Gray Town of purgatory is the choice to do someone else’s will or your own will. You find the silver lining in all the gray when you embrace and even enjoy another’s will for you.

St. John is also writing about a two-fold stage of development and growth in our Christian journey, our own gray period. He writes: “Beloved we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is. Everyone who has this hope based on him makes himself pure, as he is pure.” That is, thanks to the grace of baptism we have become the adopted children of God, but that is not the end of the journey. Through the others sacraments – confession, confirmation, Communion, marriage, holy orders, and anointing of the sick – we are slowly purified to become like God himself, we become “pure as he is pure.” And what is the proof of being God-like? Simple: doing his will rather than our own. St. John suggests that the whole world is like the Gray Period or the Gray Town, where life is good but it can also be gloomy. And John offers us the silver lining of embracing and even enjoying doing God’s will in order not to prolong this earthly purgatory. Every step we take in our earthly journey we are turning into one of two kinds of people: either those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” or those to whom God says: “Thy will be done.”

Folks, I believe the point where the Gray Period become the most intense is when we encounter suffering, any set-back of any sort. We may experience a “great divorce” in our own marriage and shattered family life. How many Catholics tragically stop going to church after a divorce? But if they accept the agony of an annulment, they start to say to God, “Thy will be done.” I think of many parishioners who live daily with chronic pain. When they continue to live cheerfully with little complaining, they say to God, “Thy will be done.” When we grow older and even grayer ourselves, we face limitations and loss of personal freedom and power. When those who are older relinquish driving, when they move into assisted living centers, when they lean on a cane or walker, and when they accept the process of aging with a smile, they say to God, “Thy will be done.” All these agonies make earthly life feel like purgatory, the Gray Period, where we choose to do either our will or God’s.

I’m praying for my nephew Isaac as he returns to the gloom and gray of West Point, that he keeps his eyes on the silver lining. I am praying for all of us, too, especially when we feels like we are residents in Lewis’ Gray Town of purgatory. May we pray fervently each day the Our Father, and say sincerely, “Thy will be done.” So that one day God does not have to say to us, “Thy will be done.”

Praised be Jesus Christ!