21 December 20XX+1
My Dear Lucilius:
Although it seems all too quick to me, we have reached the fourth Sunday of Advent.
Our advent wreath sat in the morning light, its two purple candles and pink candle partial burned with one remaining full purple candle present.
“The Angel candle” said Pompeia Paulina as she lit each one, starting with the earliest candle we had used and working her way around the wreath. It symbolizes love”.
Love, Lucilius.
I have to be honest with you that love, especially under the current circumstances, seems like a very strange word. Yes, of course in one way it matters more – one holds the ones that one loves closer in such circumstances (or in my own, finds them in the midst of such circumstances in order to hold them) – but it seems out of place.
If I think back to when post-apocalyptic was a fiction construct circa the 1950’s to 20XX (when it suddenly was no longer fiction), it was something that almost never appeared. Sure, inevitably (it being fiction and all) there was undoubtedly some sort of underlying love story or unrequited love interest (the hero dying just as they reached The Promised Land), but more often than not there was a great deal of fighting and surviving and traveling across ruined country.
Love – especially love for something or someone that was not specifically within your reach – was a pretty foreign fictional concept.
And yet, I look at a candle reminding me of Love, of a message of love brought by an angel, first to Mary, and then to shepherds in a field (joined by thousands of other angels). And am reminded that such an unconditional love does not change, no matter what our outwards circumstances.
God so loved the world, says the Apostle John, that He sent His only Son, that whoever shall believe in Him should not perish but have eternal life. He loved the world through the Western Collapse of Empire, He love the world through the Religious Wars, He loved the world through calamitous 20th Century that led us to here.
We all remain sinners in need of a Saviour, Lucilius, not matter what our outward circumstances.
Your Obedient Servant, Seneca
That four letter word forms the bedrock of Christianity TB, a promise.....one that seems distant during strife and collapse. All the more important to keep that candle lit.
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