The following column was written, as he mentions, on New Year's Eve. We have since learned that Father Rutler has had two major heart surgeries in the past five weeks. We are appending the following column with a message from Father Rutler to all of his many friends. Please keep this valiant and powerful servant of the Lord in your prayers. We know you join us in wishing Father Rutler a full and speedy recovery.
Because of the demands of the calendar, I am writing this in
the last hour of the year 2015. To procrastinate is to delay
until tomorrow, so I suppose we could coin a word,
proannuate, but to put a thing off until next year is easy
to do on New Year’s Eve. In these dark days of the
year, the contrast with light is more dramatic, and it
always is the case that in moral darkness virtue is more
luminous. The Visitation of the Magi and the Baptism of the
Lord were about thirty years apart, but both are celebrated
close together on the liturgical calendar as
“epiphanies” when the Light of Christ was
displayed to the world. At the start of the Third
Millennium, St. John Paul II said: “. . . the Church
respects the measurements of time: hours, days, years,
centuries. She thus goes forward with every individual,
helping everyone to realize how each of these measurements
of time is imbued with the presence of God and with his
saving activity.”
John the Baptist was bewildered when his cousin
who was sinless asked to be baptized. John said it should be
the other way around. According to human logic, he was
right, but Jesus came into time to turn the whole world
around. This was to “fulfill all righteousness,”
which means he who “takes away the sin of the
world” plunges into the water with sinners, just as
his divine nature plunged into history with a human nature,
the two being perfectly united yet not compromising each
other. The water was a symbol, but the divine intention was
a fact. Long before, Naaman could not understand why he had
to make a long trip from Damascus to wash in the Jordan when
there were better rivers back home. He learned that what
cured him was his obedience to God’s will.
The Holy Spirit came down on Christ “like
a dove.” Artists portray this as best they can, but
one can get the impression that the Holy Spirit actually was
a bird. That he “came down like a dove” explains
that the divine love between the Father and the Son made
this the moment that the Son accepted the commission to save
the world. Immediately after the Baptism, Christ went into
the desert to challenge the Anti-Christ. In January of 2014,
our Pope had two children release doves from his window, and
immediately they were attacked by a large crow and a
seagull. Feathers flew and no one knows where the doves
went, but the image of one white dove struggling against the
black crow was worthy of an icon, and it is in fact
replicated in all the “hours, days, years,
centuries” of human existence. Baptism begins a fight,
but it is a good fight. Chesterton said: “I believe in
getting into hot water; it keeps you clean.”
and the following is Father Rutler's recent message to his friends:
Dear Friends,
Please excuse this broadcast letter, but it is the quickest way I can reply to all the kind messages and inquiries I have received these days. Yesterday I was released from Lenox Hill Hospital after my second heart surgery in five weeks. I am now under orders to be housebound for the rest of the week. All went very well. I am grateful to the team of surgeons and physicians and other medical staff and nurses. They were extremely skilled and considerate to one who has never had a serious illness and was humbled - if annoyed - by the necessity of the experience. I have always been the visitor to hospitals rather than the one lying in bed. I am told that I shall be able to resume my regular schedule soon, and exercise, although my boxing gloves must be put away for ever, and I am not to let anyone punch me, which is not very helpful advice on the streets of New York. My confinement was to be confidential, but word got out and I do not think it was mere coincidence that during the time I was under the knife the Dow Jones average dropped 400 points. - I am grateful to the Lord that I have not missed a single Sunday Mass, and I thank my friend St. Elizabeth Ann Seton on whose feast day my heart was fixed, and I rejoice in the prayers of so many. And I am indebted to the Magi that I am able to stand at the altar on their holy day, for this is their generous gift to me.
Faithfully,
