Riders, Storms, and Salvation

One Friday afternoon, a patient was listening to music. "Riders on the Storm," by the Doors.

I talked to the man a little while and, in the midst of our interaction, I looked up some background on the song's composition and read him what I found. Apparently, the album's producer believed that the song was inspired by the modern philosopher, Martin Heidegger, and his theory of "thrownness" - as in the lyric, "into this world we're thrown."

There my patient sat in his wheelchair. Skeletal in appearance. Head involuntarily bowed. Grossly contracted. Demented. Enough sense memory to move his body to the music. Enough procedural memory to make familiar motions with his hands as if to play the drums. Enough recall to mouth some of the lyrics. A career broken. An estranged wife deceased. A college-aged daughter who thought that her father "might as well be dead" like her mother. That was all before COVID.

One purpose of John Paul II's philosophy of personalism and his theology of the body, I was always told, was to "baptize" philosophical and theological systems that were previously (rightly) judged incompatible with the Faith, simulating what St. Augustine did for Plato and what St. Thomas did for Aristotle.

Something that can be done should not always be done. What have personalism and the theology of the body done for this poor man? Not a damn thing. I don't mean to suggest that my patient was ever a religious man who tried to practice any Christian Confession, but he certainly had contact with Popular Christianity and Popular Catholicism - at least as it existed in the ambient air of his personal and professional life. Isn't it an implication of personalism and theology of the body that exposure and "the encounter" is really all that's needed for the seeds of conversion to be planted and take root?

Not for this poor man. As his days grow fewer, I cannot help but think that an intentional encounter with Catholic Tradition and Catholic Culture for its own sake might have done him a lot more good than whatever well-meaning encounters he may have had with their popular counterparts in the current situation. After all, wherein is his hope?

Hope lies in the God Who has manifested Himself in His Catholic Church in time. History may unfold, but Our Lord and the Tradition and Culture of His Church don't create contradictions from one century to the next, from this millennium to that. They constitute a sure norm of truth and a reliable guide for practice.

Into this world we're NOT thrown! Not by chance as Pope John Paul II would definitely agree, but not even by a loving God! We are PLACED deliberately here in specific times and curcumstances by a loving and provident God, Who wills that we know Him, love Him, serve Him in this life in the Catholic Church, and that we be happy with Him forever in the next. He has willed, and willed to develop, Catholic Tradition and Culture over the course of two millenia to give Him glory and to accomplish this very thing! It is NOT left to the chance encounter and the good will of individuals!

Anyway, I asked the man once if he belonged to a church, or if he'd ever been baptized, and he answered in the negative. Conversations we had since then cast doubt on what he said, but I haven't been able to shake the thought loose from my mind. The regular encounters I have with him - with all my patients - makes me desire for us to be with Him forever in the next life.

If he would confirm for me in a lucid moment that he is not baptized, or if I could know from his family, I wonder if he and they would be open to (conditional) baptism - THE encounter with Christ the King - which would eliminate all need for purgatory!

In this month of November, and always, please help the Holy Souls in Purgatory.