no sign except

The sower has thrown seed on beautiful, clear land, the friendliest for life in history. The sun shines all day on the seeds and the sky gives them rain to sip, yet nothing sprouts.

Many people are relying on this harvest, though they might not know it. They are hot and hungry. They scrounge the World’s floor like animals for what food they can find, and they cry when, after all their efforts, lack still wrings their stomachs and their skin burns with sun-poison.

If an undeveloped seed offered himself up to eat, offered an eyeblink of energy for a single sufferer, that would be a better, if still disappointing, fate. But as it is, the blessed Catholics sit under the dank dirt and soak up the World, eating and drinking and making money and going to Mass. Then they rot away, leaving behind other, slightly slimier seeds who will continue the same Circle of Life, minus the Mass part.

I don’t share your love of dingy soil, my brothers and sisters in smallness! Daylight seems so lovely! Some of you must want to creep up with me onto the stage!

Now is the prime time, for the Lord prepares a new presentation of an ancient sign. The Earth and its people sit roasting ’low an encroaching Sun; they watch for near-certain destruction. God calls you, Great Plants here in obscurity, to shoot out for a single day, to give a short run of pleasing shade. Then, your work done, He prepares a worm to attack you, to feed on you and leave you to whither under the wide sky. He has no pity in store for you; all pity is for

that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle.

For you who have no desire for the shadeplant’s short life, I understand you completely. Your lives in moodlit, cool naves are better than ever. A/C makes your loam less grossly moist as you pray. You have a solid income, a little family, and a nice home (Hard to Beat That Interest Rate!). Or you have none of these things and you’ve cultivated a healthy contentedness for the Simple Christian Existence of video games and scrolling and low-grade depression.

But you weirded hearing whispers underground, who must, even for just a moment, fill your lungs with hot Spirit, who ache to be burnt up and tossed aside: this is the prime time! We climb now toward Heaven to sit in eclipse of God and to die. Rifles, literal rifles, rifles and reckless love: these are the leaves with which we’ll each succor for a day the fainting World, then collapse quick to, forgotten by all but the Father, become food for ants and the seeds that will follow.

The hot Earth’s theater is set now for full revolution: you thirst to be its thankless and abused fruitbearers. The Lord labors for you; the Lord makes you grow; the Lord will bring you into full being for a night and let you perish the next. Maybe a prophet will care about your passing away, but probably not. Yet when you are gone, a Kingdom City will stay, against whom God withholds His anger, to whom He gives a Holy River to cool and water.

All Catholics: if your species is not the shadeplant, you must still sprout and bear fruit for the City. You must help the shadeplant do the work of God. You will not be allowed to escape forever. You will receive a less glorious scorching if you stay in the ground.

How happy it will be, though, for the generation’s blessed, to stalk high as the Sign of Jonah! How joyful for the dead plant, a picture of the Slain Lamb!