Turns out, I’ve been breathing ancient air all week. And here I thought it was just the oppressive humidity.
It has been sticky (if not veritably yucky) in these climes in recent days – with dew points in the 70s or 80s throughout the week. The air feels thick with moisture, literally capable of curling the page. We’ve managed a few “outside walks,” my Sweetie and I, during our long-awaited retreat week at King’s House. But in each case it hasn’t taken long for beads of sweat to appear on the brow…and hasten our return to the air-conditioned spaces all around the property.
Both sorts of air masses – outside “humid” and indoor “conditioned” – contain an ancient component, we learned during one of our sessions: Argon. At just under 1%, it ranks as the third-most abundant gas in earth’s atmosphere, typically more than twice as profuse as water vapor (most weeks, anyway.) Argon is also notable for being inert, which is to say it doesn’t play well with others … doesn’t mix, doesn’t combine, doesn’t blend easily into new compounds.
So … the argon molecules I breathe in and out today … have been circulating in the atmosphere, pretty much unchanged, for a very long time – since in fact the atmosphere formed. “My” argon today might well be the very same argon Caesar breathed. Or Beethoven. Or Jesus.
If so, then “Bless the Lord for argon,” I say.
Bless the Lord for argon’s inertness, its stability. Bless the Lord for this possible molecular connection to Christ, to the very air he breathed as he walked the shores of the Sea of Galilee … and hiked along the Jordan … and made his dreadful way toward Calvary.
Argon is no substitute for Eucharist, of course. But what a blessing that argon is everywhere. That the very argon Jesus breathed … could later make its way into the air any person breathes. A bit of Christ caught up in them, even if unawares. Even a single molecule of argon, once touched by the Divine, would qualify as a “better portion,” would it not?
Saint Paul, I’m guessing, understood little about the elemental composition of earth’s air. But as we hear in this week’s second reading, he seems to have grasped (and cherished!) something like an “argon connection” that can bind us all as one. It is, as he says:
[a] mystery hidden from ages and from generations past.
But now it has been manifested to his holy ones,
to whom God chose to make known the riches of the glory
of this mystery among the Gentiles;
it is Christ in you, the hope for glory.
“Christ in me.” It’s a fact, with argon standing as witness. And I’m thinking it’s our job is to ensure that the mystery does not remain inert, but instead provides a catalyst to transform the world.
Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.
IHS
With Us Still 