Truly Awesome

Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator

The former high school English teacher that still haunts my being sometimes causes me to utter my dismay at the shrinking vocabulary of so many people. For instance, I have been heard to muse that we have lost most of the descriptive adjectives of our language and have been reduced to describing things as "awesome" and/or "amazing." Lately, nothing seems to be pretty, beautiful, lovely, attractive, cute, handsome, engaging, marvelous, wonderful, fantastic, or any of the many other words we could use to describe. Everything is either awesome or amazing or, in some cases, both.

The problem with this for me lies in the notion that these two words die the death of a thousand clarifications. Just what do they mean anymore? If everything is awesome or amazing, then nothing is awesome or amazing.

Now I am not just ranting as a former English teacher in this regard. Rather I am concerned because it is becoming more and more difficult to speak as the sacred writer does today in the reading from the Letter to the Hebrews. Today the writer speaks the mystery of God and how it is, indeed, awesome. The writer first cites the awe and fear that possessed Moses when he approached God on Mt. Sinai. Then he moves on to the mystery of our new covenant with God through Jesus, the eternal high priest. If Moses was filled with awe in approaching God on Sinai, which was an incomplete revelation of God at best, how much more so should we be trembling with awe as we approach God through the mystery of the Incarnation and the sacraments that Jesus left us? If that were not awe inspiring enough, consider this. God lives within each and every one of us. All we need do to gain access to God is to quiet ourselves in prayerful attention to that presence. Makes one shiver just to think of it!