Ordinary Time Starts with the Extraordinary: Repentance
Sponsored
Catholic365 is sponsored by
Road to Purity
[Continuing our reading of and meditations on The Christmas Carol]:
Having once again evaded confrontation with his mortality, Scrooge tries to turn the question: show me somebody “who feels emotion caused by this man’s death.” Beware of what you ask for; you just might get it.
Remember, Dickens is writing in the 1840s, a time Romanticism was still influential in literature. Romanticism focused on feelings, not reason. So Scrooge wants to see some feelings.
The Ghost conveys him to a room where a woman awaits her husband. She cryptically asks whether he bears good news or bad. He says both.
What a difference a day makes. Last night, he says he begged an unnamed creditor for a week’s debt relief. He was refused. His future looked bleak. Debtors prisons still existed in 1840s England. Indigent family members might end up in the workhouses. But, this morning, he learned his creditor was dead. Indeed, the man “ was not only very ill, but dying” the night before. The husband and wife were lighthearted: the delay would let them discharge their debt and avoid the worst of judgment. What Dickens doesn’t tell us is what the now-dead creditor might now owe, given the prayer to “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”
Scrooge asked for emotion. He got it: gladness at the man’s death. So, Scrooge goes back, asking this time for “tenderness connected with a death.” He doesn’t ask for “tenderness connected with this death.” Is it a slip of the tongue, a lapsus linguae? Or, somewhere deep down, is he aware the Ghost would be unable to fulfill the request?
The request for “tenderness” brings Scrooge back to the Cratchit house where he learns Tiny Tim is dead. Bob is out, at his boy’s gravesite. The family, gathered around their mother, resolves to maintain a stiff upper lip for dad when he comes home. It’s only partially successful. But it also provides the occasion for Bob Cratchit to introduce Scrooge’s nephew, who showed more concern for him than Scrooge ever did.
Finally, however, all good things must end – even invitations to conversion. The Ghost of Christmas Future has shown him six scenes that, arguably, one could only be blind to if he refused to see. But the human capacity for blindness can be huge.
Scrooge senses and declares ““something informs me that our parting moment is at hand. I know it, but I know not how.” He wants to know who the dead man was and “what I shall be in days to come.”
Once more the Ghost leads him, though not where he expects. He sees his seat in the exchange occupied by another. He sees “Scrooge and Marley” renovated and under new ownership. He sees his “house,” but the Ghost takes him in the opposite direction.
In the film version, Scrooge’s line is much simpler. “I’ve asked for tenderness and depth of feeling, and you’ve shown me that. Nothing more I need see. Take me home.”
Except home is the cemetery.
Emotions are a normal and healthy part of man, but they can be blind. Our feelings can attach themselves to truly good things or to truly bad things. Our emotions can make us question “how can something be so wrong when it feels so right?” So, in themselves, emotions are neither good nor bad. They simply are. They require further analysis to determine whether they are leading me to the good or into temptation.
In Scrooge’s case, the emotions he experiences – even those he does not expect, like relief at a man’s death -- are sincere. They correspond to truth. But when Scrooge asks to be “taken home,” the question is: has this been enough for his conversion?
John Grondelski (PhD Fordham) was former associate dean of the School of Theology, Seton Hall University in New Jersey. He is a Catholic theologian with special interests in moral theology and the thought of St. John Paul II. All views are his own.
