Humpty a Catholic?
By Mark Roberti
Stewardship Director, Heartland Parishes of Ellis County

In college theology classes, they call it exegesis, a critical examination of a text.  The idea is to breakdown a passage or series of passages, interrogating the text, so to speak. What are the cultural circumstances?  What are the historical conditions? Should we take it literally?  Is there spiritual sense?  Is it an allegory of some sort? Is there a moral lesson we are to learn from the passage?  Is it a passage about the end-times?  How does it tie into the rest of the Bible? 

Well, I was in the garden the other day turning over soil at my wife’s request when the old nursery rhyme popped into my head.  Just goes to show you what a deep thinker I truly am!

So here I was turning over soil and saying, “Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall.  Humpty Dumpty had a great fall….” Then it struck me, it wasn’t a wall at all, it was a fence.  In the jump from Hebrew to Greek to Latin to English, somehow, maybe an exact translation could not be made.  It had to be a fence.  Humpty was sitting on a fence!

Okay, then why was Humpty sitting on the fence?  It is pretty uncomfortable to sit on a fence.  Most of us have done it, but you try not to do it too long.  It hurts.  And what does the fence connote?  Well, in modern parlance, sitting on the fence means you can’t make up your mind.  So, Humpty was probably sitting on the fence because he couldn’t – or didn’t want to – make a decision.  He probably wanted both worlds and couldn’t find it in his heart to commit to either. 

Humpty was probably a Catholic.  Like the rest of us, he liked the spirituality his religion taught him, but he also liked the material things the world offered.  I’ll bet you he stayed on that fence as long as he could, thinking he could play both sides.  He could hop down on the material side if he wanted.   But, then, he could climb back up and go over to the spiritual side when he needed that.  Maybe he even had it down to an art!

But then the inevitable happened.  He fell off the fence.  The reality is that playing the fence is, in the long run, like gambling.  You lose.  Humpty, being an egg, was not made to be sitting on fences.  He took the gamble and lost.  “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.” 

Putting people back together again is not a job for man.  That’s why the best of the best – “all the kings horses and all the kings men” – couldn’t do it.  Putting people back together when they fall is God’s job.  He is great at it! He did it for Adam and Eve.  He did it for all of fallen mankind; and he does it for each one of us.  In fact, he does it over and over again for each one of us!

But I’ll tell you a little secret that I’ve learned from experience. It’s better to get off that fence!  It is better to gently slide down on the spiritual side.  It is better to let your Church guide you through life. 

You see, each one of us is created for a purpose.  We don’t really “work right” unless we are serving that purpose.  Let me provide an illustration: using a screwdriver like a hammer often results in either a broken screwdriver, a ruined nail, or an injured person.  The same is true of our lives. We need to use them for that which they were designed.

I like the old Baltimore Catechism explanation for why we exist: “To know, love, and serve God in this life and to be with Him forever in the next.”  My experience is that this also puts a whole lot of joy and substance in our lives while we are here.  We are using our lives for the purpose that we have been given them.  It’s too bad that Humpty didn’t know that. 

I don’t know what Humpty’s ultimate fate was.  I do know that God is both just and merciful.  I also know that through His Church, He has provided us some rules and guidelines. I can also tell you that I have been a Humpty in my life.  I could show you the multiple cracks in my shell to prove it, the cracks that resulted not just from one fall, but from many. 

I plan to stay on this side of the fence.  I pray that I am never lured back on to it.  Sometimes, it sure looks awfully nice on the other side.  But I know, from experience, that it doesn’t bring the substance or joy that the world professes.

I want to be a steward.  I want to be a disciple.  It has sometimes proven to be both some hard work and sacrifice.  But I’m in this for the long run.  I’m in this for eternity.