Carpe Diem

I didn’t realize when I chose the cover photo for my book Lead Me, Guide Me: The Life and Example of Father Dan Begin that its significance would be lost on many readers—maybe most readers. I should have done more explaining.

The book does provide some context. I explained that Father Dan’s friend, former Cleveland newsman Ted Henry, got married at his farm in Rock Creek, Ohio. It was a second marriage for both Ted and his bride, officiated by a woman friend who acquired a certificate online. At the conclusion of the ceremony, Father Dan removed his jacket and opened his shirt to reveal the “Carpe Diem” tee shirt underneath.

By some lights, I went on, Father Dan shouldn’t even have been there. The Catholic Church frowns on outdoor weddings, and it still frowns, to put it mildly, on divorced Catholics remarrying. But he didn’t perform the wedding, and so, Ted told me, “He really didn’t break the rules. Almost, but not quite.”

That’s where my explanation stopped. I thought the connotations of that picture would be self-evident, but I’ve learned they’re not.

First, not everybody knows that the Latin expression “Carpe diem” means “seize the day.” (More than one person has asked me.) To be precise, “carpe” means something more like “pluck,” as in plucking a grape from a vine. The command is to pluck each day and savor its sweet juices. But “pluck the day” sounds weird in English, so we translate it loosely as “seize the day.”

The phrase comes from the Roman poet Horace’s Odes, published in 23 BCE, that is, before the birth of Christ. His line goes, “carpe diem quam minimum credula postero,” which can be translated as “pluck the day, believing as little as possible in the next one.” Life is short, and you better enjoy it now. Horace was a pagan, and others who’ve celebrated carpe diem are even more pagan, that is, more inclined to, shall we say, self-indulgent behavior.

The sentiment, if not the actual phrase, appears in Andrew Marvell’s poem To His Coy Mistress, for example, in which the poet urges his girlfriend to sacrifice her virginity for pleasure, because time is fleeting. A bunch of Shakespeare’s sonnets encourage the young to procreate. Do it now! You’re aging by the minute! He and other poets often warn the ladies, “You’re not going to be beautiful forever!” Eat, drink, and be merry is the idea.

I’m trying to say that “carpe diem” is not a religious expression. It’s sure not close to anything I learned from the nuns at my parish Sunday school. It’s not inherently scandalous, but it does carry a whiff of secular self-indulgence.

For Father Dan, though, the expression evoked the line from Psalm 118: “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad.”  The past is over, the future is uncertain, he often said. He strived and mostly succeeded at living intentionally in every moment, and, more important, feeling grateful for it.

To me, that photo and that tee shirt represent so much about him. He was a Catholic priest standing at his divorced friend’s outdoor wedding officiated by a lay woman. He ripped off his shirt and grinned. It’s a beautiful day. Seize it. Enjoy it. Smile (if you can) right now.