GETTING BACK TO NORMAL

A regular feature of pastoral life in a parish is a good amount of small talk after Mass. It fell by the wayside during the pandemic, but has been slowly returning in recent months. It seems that small talk often gets a bad reputation for its cursory, passing quality. I’ve railed against it myself before, opposing it to more substantial modes of conversation. But that was immature and unfair of me. Small talk is not deficient, it’s just small. The smallness of this talk accomplishes a purpose that is different from bigger talks. It is superficial, but it happens with great frequency. Alone, it cannot nourish community, but its regularity works gently to establish a common sense among diverse people and reliability over time. It is one of the pillars of communal normalcy.

The idea of “normal” is currently controversial. It’s said by some that to say there is such a thing as a ‘norm’ is to invoke immediately a hateful dismissal of someone or something important. This is understandable. Sometimes, what have been called ‘norms’ have not been norms, but preferences of those with influence. Sometimes, ‘norms’ have been mistaken--the product of a deficient perspective that fails to see a wider pattern. Often, what prove to be inadequate norms are the result of an overly hasty attempt to discern them. We can get ‘norms’ wrong. But it does not follow that ‘norms’ do not exist. Rather, it may be that they are just difficult to find.

This is why I’d suggest that all of us depend more on a sense of the normal to navigate life. We know somewhere inside that we need this. We need enough confidence to go forward in life, but we are foolish if we become brash through confidence that becomes invincible to reason or experience. A sense of the normal is adequate if held in tension by a humility to be continually refined. When it is removed entirely, though, our world quickly becomes chaotic and we tend to anxiously search about for new normals. Some norms need to be removed when revealed to be faulty; some norms require recommitment when they prove strong through testing and scrutiny. We know we need norms and we know we get them wrong sometimes. We can neither accept them uncritically nor reject them outrightly. Instead, we have to learn to bear the burden of our own ignorance and the burden of being led forward with a degree of uncertainty.

This past year has been a case study in diverse approaches to normalcy. It’s become normal to hear the phrase “the new normal,” which has again and again proved to be anything but that. What has actually been normal has been our desperation for normal. For example, when the lock-downs hit last March, I heard “this isn’t normal” until two weeks turned into two months and suddenly it was “our new normal” until a month later when the lockdowns lifted and we “were getting back to normal” until two months later during the surge when either of these normals were politically and culturally vilified as pathologically abnormal. What a ride. 

It’s helpful to know that this is nothing new. Twice during the pandemic we’ve had Lent and Eastertide. And it’s there that we can be enlightened about this tendency to need and yet mistrust the sense of normal.  The best place to look at this is in the span of time during and after the Death and Resurrection of Jesus. Of the four Evangelists, St. John gives us the most intimate account of what the Apostles were up to in the days after He rose from the dead. 

After these things Jesus showed Himself again to the disciples at the Sea of Tiberias, and in this way He showed Himself: Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of His disciples were together. Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.”They said to him, “We are going with you also.” They went out and immediately got into the boat, and that night they caught nothing.

The language of this scene echoes the initial calling of the fishermen in the Gospels of Ss. Matthew and Luke, who both recount how they caught nothing just before Christ called them to follow Him as “fishers of men.” The events of the Crucifixion sent the Apostles into a deep fear and hiding. Jesus’ first appearance to them was in the middle of the upper room where they had last gathered with Jesus before the Passion. They return to the last moment of normal. Jesus shows Himself to them there, but He doesn’t stay there with them. He goes out and they are able to follow Him. But then they find a new normal--they return to their prior occupations. So Jesus shows Himself to them there, and calls them to come back to the shore and back into His ministry. And then Jesus goes forth, and they follow Him.

The Gospels make clear that Jesus is the norm of the Christian life--His character does not change, does not end. Communion with Jesus in prayer, scripture, and sacrament normalizes every Christian. He gives us the most essential ‘normal’ of our life. To encounter Him is to return to the real normal. Every other normal either draws its normalcy from this, or else will prove tenuous or even abnormal. Only that which conforms to Christ’s normalcy will endure. He will continue to call us from fleeting senses of normal into His everlasting normal. As we assent and follow, what begins as abnormal will become normal--indeed, the normal. Christ is the normal from which humanity departed, the normal who calls in love for us to return, the normal who gathers all to Himself at the end. 

I am glad we’re able to have small talk after Mass again. It’s a good norm. It is how our people are turned toward each other after being turned again toward God and turned again toward their calling. It is one of the many humble routines of the Church, of a community emerging from Holy Communion. It is normal. It is the new normal. It is getting us back to normal.