In keeping with the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day just passed, and of the Holy Days to come, it might be good for our spiritual health to engage in some shenanigans — in other words, to practice the virtue of humility.
Or so says Ed Hays, Catholic spiritual writer, in his book, A Pilgrims Almanac: Reflections for Each Day of the Year
As Hays explains it, when anything inexplicable happened in the household, the Irish would exclaim, Shee nanna gasne, which was both a polite greeting to the wee folk and a gentle invitation for them to leave. The pranks of the Shee were reverenced as reminders that no human being is ever in total control of her or his life, but no one wanted the invisible mischief-makers to become permanent house guests.
Perhaps Hays himself sums up the spiritual lesson of shenanigans better than anyone else could:
“We are all a bit reluctant to accept the gift of humility. Yet humility is the rich soil out of which grows the rose of holiness. Certainly it was the bedrock of the holiness of Jesus who took upon himself our shameful shenanigans that cause so much pain in the world …. today’s technology can easily give us a sense of false pride. It creates the impression that we are secure in our ability to manage our environments and our daily lives. But, with or without the help of the wee folk, we need to learn the wisdom of insecurity, and the value of embracing with humble trust our lack of total control. Our age has a lust for security which expresses itself in countless types of insurance and protection policies. While to a certain extent all of these are good and necessary, they can easily…blind us to the need to place our dependence not upon modern safety nets, but rather upon the love of an ever-caring and compassionate God.”
