Forty-seven years ago

Today is my forty-seventh birthday. It's strange how I experience my life. Over the past few years, since turning forty-five, I realize that I am no longer young, but neither am I old. Nonetheless, it still took me awhile to concede to being middle-aged, but that is what I am, I suppose.

Quite providentially I was born on the Feast of St. Martin of Tours (something I note on my blog each and every year). For those unfamiliar with this great saint, whose cultus has been in steep decline for several centuries, he was a holy bishop who lived in the fourth century (316-397). Despite becoming a catechumen at age ten, he did not become a Christian until later, until, while serving as a Roman soldier, he had a profound conversion by means of an encounter with a beggar; living proof of what Don Giussani asserted when speaking to the Pontiff late in life, "the true protagonist of history is the beggar: Christ who begs for man's heart, and man's heart that begs for Christ." When I think of this marvelous saint, I think of being that beggar covered with his cloak.

Below is a lovely picture of St. Martin's tomb, in the Basilica of St. Martin, which is in Tours, wonderfully provided for me today by a friend. I plan someday to make a pilgrimmage there.

The convergence of St. Martin's Feast, the Armistice that ended World War I, Veteran's Day, and Remembrance day, along with it also being the birthday of Fyodor Dostoevsky, but also of Magda Goebbels, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Alger Hiss. All of this makes it a wonderful day for an ordinary person like me to have my birthday. I've always found it easy to feel connected to and, in a very small and even insignificant way, part of history. Time, indeed, is a river.