Ultraviolet — light on the edge

 

Violet is the canonical liturgical color of Lent in Roman Catholic practice (and in many other traditions as well), at least since the 16th century and the Council of Trent. Much before that there were not universal norms for the colors of vestments and ancillary textiles.

Why violet? Red for martyrs seems obvious - the color of blood. White and gold for feasts is arguably apt. Green for the Ordinary days, mostly in the green summer months of the Northern hemisphere, seems reasonable. But how did purple, an expensive, rare color associated with royalty come to connote penance?

I did a bit of research this weekend, but didn’t surface anything particularly compelling. The most popular theory is it’s the color Jesus wore during the Passion (though the four evangelists do not agree on this point, Matthew says scarlet, kokkinēn in the Greek; Mark gives it as porphyran, purple; Luke merely describes it as resplendent; John, like Mark, has purple). The color points to Jesus as king, and so obviously it signifies penance. Which is not so obvious to me. Another theory is that the blossoms of violets (some, but not all of which are indeed violet) hang their heads, a penitential posture. 

I want to float another theory, violet is on the very edge of the light the human eye can perceive. (Weirdly, most of the light in the electromagnetic spectrum we cannot detect with our eyes, we do not have X-ray vision, or infrared detection.) Once you get beyond violet, as the light increases in energy, we can no longer see it. In Lent we stand at the precipice of Easter, at the edge of the resurrection, facing the mysteries just beyond our perceptions. 

Or perhaps it is because violet is the color of the sky just before dawn?

Fiat and lux

Fra Angelico's Annunciation in Florence;
Mary heavy with the weight of her fiat

Fiat. It brought a universe into being. Fiat lux — let there be light. With a breath an unbearable radiance poured into the darkness. Fiat, said Mary to Gabriel. And with a breath that infinite, unbearable Light poured into a young woman in a small town, until she swayed with the weight of it. Fiat, cried Jesus in the garden of Gesthemane. Once again the universe was borne on a breath, carried across the shoulders of God incaranate.

We hear these assents as “let it be done to me.” Yet the Greek word Luke uses in this Gospel -- genoito -- means more than passive assent. It whispers of birth and growth, of what might we become. None of the events set in motion by these fiats are complete, they were each a “yes” to becoming. The light that tore through the darkness all those billions of years ago is still flaring out, igniting suns whose light will not reach us for a hundred billion years. 

Mary said yes to becoming the Christ-bearer. Even now she bears our prayers aloft, swaying under the weight of our needs.  And with a word ripped from the depths, Jesus became the redeemer of our sins past and present and even of the future. Light still careening through our darkness, moving heaven and earth. 

Light has no weight the physicists tell us. Except when it is in motion. Then it has power that can sweep the dust of dead stars together with enough force to bring the very earth we stand on into being. Dare I take on the weight of light? Dare I say “yes”  to moving toward what God hopes for me?  

Fiat.  Fiat lux. Let me be aflame with the Gospel, heavy with the light of Christ.

_____________

A version of this reflection appeared in Give Us This Day on March 25, 2023.

Socks and the Second Law

 

The second law of thermodynamics can be framed as the desire for the universe for disorder. Things, left to their own devices, will get messier. Sorted stacks of papers gradually get scrambled. Ice melts. Socks become unpaired.

There were a weeks’s worth of socks, 8 pairs, in the laundry. What did I get back? Ten socks total - only 2 pairs. Where did the rest go? Great question. Entropy rules.

This present moment

In some sense it always Advent, even now in Lent. We are pilgrims, ever leaning into the future. To quote Walter Burghardt, SJ, “every tomorrow has it’s own tomorrow”. We are always waiting. Yet. Yet we are living now, in this precise moment. It is all we have. The past has slipped through our fingers, the future is for the moment unknowable. It can feel like we are merely marking time, or enduring the storms that rage. Yet. Yet we can live, not wrapped in our own thoughts, but awake to the needs that present themselves now, awake to each other, awake to God…

Walter Burghardt, SJ in an Advent homily.

“I have one swift answer: live in hope! Both words are important, indispensable, irreplaceable: hope and live. You must be men and women of ceaseless hope, because only tomorrow can today's human and Christian promised be realized; and every tomorrow will have its own tomorrow, world without end. Every human act, every Christian act, is an act of hope. But that means you must be men and women of the present, you must live this moment – really live it, not just endure it – because this very moment, for all its imperfection and frustration, because of its imperfection and frustration, is pregnant with all sorts of possibilities, is pregnant with the future, is pregnant with love, is pregnant with Christ.

If you want to lift Advent from liturgy to life, don't waste your days with sheer waiting. Wait indeed, for tomorrow promises to be rich in life and love. But life and love are here today, because God is here today — because your brothers and sisters are here today.”

 

Shout

 

Shout
Shout
Let it all out
These are the things I can do without
Come on
I'm talking to you
Come on

In violent times
You shouldn't have to sell your soul...

Forty years ago Tears for Fears released "Shout". I hadn't thought of the track in years but today as scientists and others gather to rally for science in the face of the cuts proposed by the current administration's unelected minions I find it running through my mind. Can we shout, make ourselves heard above the maelstrom that we are living through?

I am committed in the current moment to being noisy where I can. Like a great wind blowing, the current events are snatching our voices, drowning out the cries of the poor, the marginalized, the hungry, the sick, and the suffering with their drum beat of lies. The beating drums are meant to frighten, to shock into silence, to bewilder.

I wrote the op-ed that follows, which appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer last month. I woke up at 3:45 in the morning with the question running through my head, "Is this what you voted for?" 

Know a Trump voter? Ask them, be specific. Did you vote for an increase in pediatric cancer deaths? Are you willing to forgo treatment with anything developed using funding by the NIH? Really? Have you have had shingles? No? You got the shot? Great, NIH funded. 

Shout.

The op-ed:

“This is what the people voted for.”or so we hear from the White House with each slashed program. But is it? Did people really vote to tear apart the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and lay waste to the nation’s scientific infrastructure? Perhaps you did, wondering what we get for our $48 billion every year.

I know what I have gotten: my life back. The pioneering work that led to the drug that I take for a neurodegenerative disease was done at the NIH, by a foreign scientist here on a visa. Without that drug I struggle to write on the blackboard, walk down the hallway, or even brush my teeth. It's not a cure, but with it I can work full time — and pay the taxes that help support the NIH.

I also know what others have gotten. When a teen-aged friend died of acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) in the 1970s, survival rates were about 25%. Now 90% of children with ALL survive thanks in part to research supported by the NIH. 

A study by Ekaterina Cleary, Matthew Jackson, and Edward Zhou published in JAMA in 2023 showed that nearly every drug approved by the FDA between 2010 and 2019 was touched by NIH funding. Shingrix to prevent the misery of shingles. Dulaglutide to control blood sugar in type 2 diabetics. Stelara for Crohn’s disease. Lifesaving drugs for cancer, including Keytruda and aflibercept. My own research into the mechanism by which the anti-cancer drug taxol works was funded in part by the NIH.

Private investment in pharmaceutical research cannot replace the NIH. The work done by academic scientists is not proprietary and can be shared widely, amplifying the effect of our government investment. Commercial companies have a responsibility to shareholders, they cannot take as much of a risk as NIH funded projects can. Not every research project on lizard saliva will lead to a block buster drug (as it did for Ozempic) but some will. We need both public investment and the private sector to continue to be world leaders in health care.

But you voted to get rid of”wokeness” not real science, you say? The US has a high maternal and infant mortality rate, appallingly so for black women. Cancelling the research related to race keeps us from understanding why these disparities exist and what to do about them. Women and babies will continue to die. 

If ending public investment in biomedical research in the US is what you hoped for when you voted in the 2025 presidential election, then I expect you to look me in the eye and tell me you voted for me to be disabled and unemployed. I hope you can explain to your neighbor why her grandchild was stillborn and her daughter dead. Or tell your father that no cure for your mother’s Alzheimer’s disease is coming anytime soon. Because that’s what you voted for.

If this isn’t what you voted for, then I urge you to call your congressperson and your senator and tell them so. Before it's your life on the line.

___________

Photo is of molecular model of L-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine, L-DOPA, the standard of care for Parkinson's.