The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. I'd like to to say a few words of on this particular reading about our lord spending the whole night in prayer all by himself except that he was with his heavenly father. But I want to take up that theme that we had yesterday about Eutropelia, the daughter of justice, that virtue which we might in English call playfulness. Now, one of you was kind enough to look up a little bit about that use of Saint in Saint Paul's reading yesterday about the word levity or light language, and it turns out that its meaning is silly talk or suggestive or obscene language.
Well, that's exactly what Saint Paul was talking about if you take the context. I knew he couldn't possibly be talking about the virtue of playfulness. That was obvious. Now, I wanted they say one picture is worth the whole book. An illustration helps too.
And I don't I didn't have time yesterday to bring this in, so many things come to mind. But one of the best illustrations that I know of, this virtue of utropelia in action, was an incident that I picked up in Birmingham, in the oratory in Birmingham, England, that industrial city. In many instances, it's repulsed. What I saw of it certainly was it bore out everything I know about a dull, grim, cold, smoky, sodden, wet, chilly, gloomy place, enough to make anybody think of the Calvert Street Bridge, especially on Fish and Friday and Fog. You'll know, when you live in community, Friday and fog was no joke.
Now, in the Birmingham Oratory, there was a man named Newman, John Henry Newman. Century the closing of the nineteenth century, this this oratory had been founded by Newman, Saint Philip Mary. He was running a boys school there. The fathers were teachers in the school. It was a small community.
Some of the priests were had been his friends from Oxford days and who'd come over to Rome. It was a small community. And when I visited there in 1936, I met a very old priest who was stone deaf, but who had lived there with Cardinal Newman, who knew Newman. So, he gave me the cook's tour, and he gave me a whole morning and had me to lunch in the refectory where the community had its meal. I joined the community.
And in the course of our mornings wandering through this house and going through the memorabilia of Newman, look in his rooms, seeing the original handwritten manuscript, for example, of the second spring, the original document which caused the Apologia Provita Sua from Kinsley, that is the original publication from Macmillan. In the course of all this, father Balasys told me how Newman, when the morale of the community would be getting pretty low, I'm sure it was fish Friday in fall, How in the dining room he would play his violin. Newman was a pretty good musician. And he would go up to his room when he saw the situation was pretty bad, and he'd come down and play his violin for his confreres. That's what I mean by utropelium, by playfulness.
As I said yesterday, Aquinas bases this virtue on justice. It's the obligation I have in charity and in notice, Aquinas puts it on justice, not on charity, to ease the burden of life of others. Now, any of us I mean, whether you're living in a community life, whether you're living in a family, whether you're just associating with some friends, you understand what I mean, I hope. When you have a situation, when things are seem to be all closing in, You seem to be at the bottom of the barrel. You don't see any light at the end of the tunnel.
It's like when we went back to boarding school after the Christmas holidays, when we had nothing in all God's earth and world to look forward to except Easter. And Easter of course was an eternity. And days seem to have about ninety nine hours. And you had even in the great states, free and sovereign state of Maryland, we had days which are best characterized by fish, fog, and you need something. Now, it's the Christian who's alert to that need who can do something about it.
And that's not the time to get out your rosary and say, let's all kneel down and say some prayers. Cardinal Newman went upstairs and got his violin. So, that illustration from Newman's life, that brings home what I have in mind. Not just what I have in mind, but the meaning of this virtue of playfulness. It's edging into life.
It isn't something I do for myself. You see, this it isn't something I do for me. Newman didn't have to go upstairs and get his violin for himself. He may have felt fine. But he saw his community was in the dumps.
It was no time to have pious reading from the pulpit in silence. It was a time for a little bit of playfulness. So Newman got his violin and played it for his confreres. Now, this may seem a trifling thing, but I you see, I'm so convinced that it would take so little to turn our lives around. I have said time and again that a lot of marriages would be enormously improved, and I'm saying this seriously now, would be enormously improved if the husband and the wives went out and bought a copy of Emily Post or Amy Vanderbilt, who's more up to date.
And say, look, we're going to have relationship to each other based on Emily Post or Amy Vanderbilt. You will say, ye gods, that isn't even Christian. I know it isn't, but it would be a heck of a lot better than what they're doing. It at least be as polite to each other in their home as they are to strangers on an elevator. A little bit of politeness isn't bad, you know, for one's morale.
And so I say, as regards life in general, for the most part, we don't face great big crises. That's the plural. Our lives are humdrum. I don't care whether even if you're president of The United States or haven't arrived there yet, but there's a certain monotony to it. And there's a certain boredom.
I was talking to a friend just within the last twenty four hours and all she was talking about within the last three or four years was how she was going to enjoy her retirement. Okay, she's retired. Hasn't been retired for a year and she's bored to death already. And if you ask her, she said, I still am a young woman. She knows that.
So, this is life and this virtue of utopia may not be in the same category, although Thomas Aquinas treats it with just the same seriousness as prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance. Because it is a part of justice. But it's not something that you hear very much about. Well, you've heard about it for two days now and you'll probably hear a little more about it because when all is said and done, if a little bit of this virtue was injected into our daily lives in the very situations which we find ourselves, Not the artificial things, what we would do if this were true or if that happened or if this were yesterday or tomorrow or next year, the nitty gritty monotonous humdrum life that we have today, which can be transformed, can be transformed. The other I I don't know how I I got tuned in on a program in Spanish and it was throwing out the word metamorphosis.
Now, metamorphosis means change. That's all it means. You know, you remember that from your biology days. How the tadpole becomes the frog, you know. And then about the butterflies and all that.
This isn't about the birds and the bees, you know. We've already covered that. This is metamorphosis. And the thought struck me. See, it's a synonym for change, for radical change.
That that's what our lives need. A change. And it wouldn't take an earthquake to do it, or a terrible cataclysm of some sort, or a great revelation, or a mystical experience, whatever that is. That isn't likely to happen. All that our blessed Lord asks us to do is to follow him.
And in many ways his life was humdrum and monotonous. It was. There wasn't anything terribly extraordinary about it. And so, I think this virtue of utopia, the virtue of playfulness, I know has a place, an obligatory place in our lives. So let's wake up to it.
It does exist. Well, in theory, let's make it exist actually in our daily lives. It would be a great contribution to the joy of the world. In the name of the father, and the son, and the spirit. Amen.