Midnight Mass

Father Paul:
[to the congregation] For most of us, eternity, it's an abstract. It's a metaphor, a colorful exaggeration. When we're waiting for something we want, it takes forever. We sit in traffic for an eternity. Abstracts, metaphors, colorful exaggerations. To us, maybe, but not to God. Not to Him. And it shouldn't be for us either. God's gifts are tangible as the ground beneath our feet. And His covenant, it's not abstract. No. It's a contract, scrawled in flesh, inked in the blood of the martyrs. And yet, try as we might, we cannot visualize, we cannot mentally picture the rewards promised. Well, if you're here seeking answers to the unknowable, it's incumbent upon me to tell you that I have none. And if you want to know why or how God's will shapes the world, brothers and sisters, so do I. I don't have all the answers. Nobody does. What I do have though, and what God gives us plentifully, are mysteries. God gives us miracles very rarely, here and there, but mysteries? The more that we know, the less we bend. The more brittle we become, the easier to break. Like some would say this island broke. Was broken. But I am here to tell you, the resurrection, body and soul, the redemption, body and soul, the miracles waiting for us here on Crockett Island. Not metaphors, not abstracts, not colorful exaggerations, no.