Warning: The Following Contains Spoilers
We have passed the first week of Lent. By this point, many of us, even the most enthusiastic for penance, even those of us keeping relatively light disciplines, are saying to ourselves some variation of “What the hell was I thinking?” The Church, like a good mother, responds to our struggles with encouragement, giving us on the second Sunday of Lent a preview of what lies at the end of our season of penance, by setting before our eyes the Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor.
“At that time, Jesus took Peter, James and his brother John, and led them up a high mountain by themselves, and was transfigured before them. And His face shone as the sun, and His garments became white as snow. And behold, there appeared to them Moses and Elias talking together with Him. Then Peter addressed Jesus, saying, Lord, it is good for us to be here. If You will, let us set up three tents here, one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elias. As he was still speaking, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and behold, a voice out of the cloud said, This is My beloved Son, in Whom I am well pleased; hear Him. And on hearing it the disciplines fell on their faces and were exceedingly afraid. And Jesus came near and touched them, and said to them, Arise, and do not be afraid. But lifting up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only. And as they were coming down from the mountain, Jesus cautioned them, saying, Tell the vision to no one, till the Son of Man has risen from the dead.” (Matt. 17:1-9).
This episode in the Gospel of Matthew comes right on the heals of St. Peter’s famous confession of Christ’s Divinity (“Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God”), which Our Lord rewards by giving him the authority of the Keys (“You are Peter, and upon this Rock I will build my Church.”) But between Peter’s confession and the Transfiguration, Christ tells His Apostles plainly what will happen to Him in Jerusalem, how He will be betrayed, crucified, and killed, and rise again on the third day. Peter is scandalized by this (earning a rebuke from Our Lord) but we should not be surprised that he was troubled. Despite the abundance of blood sacrifice taking place in their sacred rites, the ancients, Jew and Pagan, saw death and divinity as complete opposites. A god who could die, especially is as shameful a way as crucifixion, was no god at all. From the Jewish perspective, this made even less sense: God is eternal, having neither beginning nor end, and His Being is necessary for everything else to exist. For God to die was a contradiction, a nonsensical notion.
And yet, it was on Mount Tabor, when Our Lord reveled His hidden glory between Moses and Elias, that He showed the resolution of this contradiction, one so sublime that it has poets, mystics, and theologians still reeling from it’s implications. There, on that high peak, at the place nearest to the heavens, Christ reveals Himself as fully God and fully Man, possessing the fullness of both natures in perfect union. But this overwhelming glory is not for Himself alone, but for us too. As St. Paul tells us in this same Mass’s Epistle, “For this is the will of God, your sanctification,” (1 Thessalonians 6, 1-7). To be sanctified is to be holy, and to be holy is to be like God. As St. Clement of Alexandria puts it, “The Word of God became man, that thou mayest learn from man how man may become God.” Heaven and Earth are thus united, yet each remaining distinct, not only in the Person of Jesus Christ but in the Divine Marriage between Christ and His Church. The hopes and dreams of the mass of humanity from all ages is realized, as the deepest desires of their imaginations, preserved in myth and poetry, are confirmed and made manifest: the cosmos is not a diagram, but a wedding dance; the union of opposites is not a muddle but a marriage, and Reality is a Romance.
Which brings us to this week’s anime: Fly Me to the Moon.
Fly Me to the Moon is the story of a very unfortunately named boy. His well-intentioned, but not very self-aware, parents chose a name for him that means “Starry Sky.” The name: Nasa.
After being teased his entire childhood, Nasa Yuzaki throws himself into his studies, determined to make himself remembered for something other than his unfortunate name.
One cold winter’s night, on the eve of being accepted to a prestigious high school, Nasa spots a cute girl on the opposite side of the road. He’s instantly smitten, and runs across the road to talk to her… directly in front of a truck.
Fortunately, the mystery girl, Tsukasa Tsukoyomi, dives in to save him from being killed and/or reincarnated in a videogame world. Miraculously, they both survive, although Nasa is very badly beaten up. Defying Tsukasa’a advice and all common sense, Nasa uses his last remaining strength to chase after her and ask her to date him. As he passes out, he hears her reply: “Yes, but only if we’re married.”
Nasa wakes up in a hospital, and Tsukasa is nowhere to be found. His injuries cause him to miss the enrollment date for his high school, so he drops out, getting his own apartment and taking all manner of jobs, in the hope of somehow finding Tsukasa again. Then, at midnight on his eighteenth birthday, Nasa hears a knock at his door.
Tsukasa has found him, and, now that he’s legal, she wants to get married that instant. Nasa, being a smitten teenager with a pulse, instantly agrees. After a surprisingly quick trip to obtain a marriage license and an emergency shopping trip, Nasa and Tsukasa begin their life together as a married couple.
Naturally, this elopement cause quite a stir among their family and social circle, and the rest of the season follows the hijinks that ensue, from Nasa trying to find a larger apartment so that he and his wife can sleep in the same bed and *gasp* hold hands, to Nasa getting kidnaped by Tsukasa’s jealous adopted sister.
All of this seems like normal anime rom-com stuff, but there is a deeper mystery developing in the background.
When Nasa first sees Tsukasa that fateful night, his first thought is that she’s as beautiful as Princess Kaguya. This a reference to an old Japanese legend, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. In this tale, an old bamboo cutter finds a baby the size of his thumb inside a bamboo shoot. As he and his wife have no children, they adopt this baby as their own, naming her Nayotake no Kaguya-hime, “Shining Princess of the Young Bamboo.” From then on, every time the old man cuts open a bamboo shoot, a golden nugget falls out. Within three months, the old man and his wife are fabulously rich, and Kaguya has miraculously grown up into a beautiful woman. The most powerful and prominent men in all Japan, including the Emperor, seek her hand in marriage, but she rejects all of them, though she and the Emperor continue to write letters to each other. Eventually, she reveals that she comes from the Moon, and that her own people are coming to take her back. The Emperor tries to stop this, but in the end, Kaguya returns to her people. Her adopted parents die of sadness, and the Emperor spends the rest of his life regretful and heartsick.
The comparison of Tsukasa to Kaguya seems quite apt, as the series keeps dropping hints that Tsukasa might not only be of the same kind as Kaguya, but might actually be Kaguya. The accident with the truck that left Nasa in the hospital only drew a bit of blood from Tsukasa, even though the truck hit her head on. She later tells Nasa, “I can’t get hurt or sick,” though he’s too sick himself to make sense of it. Her adopted family is fabulously wealthy, just as Kaguya’s adopted parents were, and in her old room is a vacuum-sealed moon rock, “in case she gets homesick.” She can easily read a manuscript that Nasa’s father, an antiquities professor, can’t decipher, and despite her apparent disinterest in history in favor of pop culture, she knows an awful lot about 10th century Japan.
So this odd but ordinary romance has cosmic implications. We might speculate as to why an immortal moon princess for whom the Emperor wasn’t good enough has decided to marry a smart yet inept young man like Nasa. But the answer that Tsukasa gives is the only one necessary: she loves him. Perhaps this is why Fly Me to the Moon has been so well received. All of us love to see a tragic love story turn into a happy ending. With so many of our ancient stories telling of marriages gone wrong (Japan has the divorce of Izanagi (Life) and Izanami (Death), and the separation of Amaterasu the sun goddess from her husband Tsukuyomi the moon god, among others), it’s a breath a fresh air to see a cosmic marriage go right. It may, possibly, reveal the deepest desire of our hearts: for an end to the great divorce that has made life so hard, for a return to a time when Heaven and Earth were closer together, the golden age where Man and God walked in the garden together.
For Christians, this is not just a dream, but a hope realized in the person of Jesus Christ, in our life as members of His Bride the Church, and fully realized when He returns at the end of time for the greatest wedding of all time, followed by a romance that will last forever.
May the thought of this future glory and bliss lighten your burden this Lent. Pray, fast, and give alms, knowing that you are preparing yourself and all mankind for something far better than you are giving up.
And maybe enjoy a delightful show from Japan, in which Nasa lands the moon.
Once again, I apologize for posting this so late in the week. I will do my best to ensure that future entries in this series get posted on time. If you’d like to support me, and are into epic romances, check out my novel, Cain Son of Adam: A Gothic Tragedy, available in paperback and eBook formats on Amazon, and free to read on Kindle Unlimited.
Stay tuned for next week’s article: Fighting Little Devils: Goblin Slayer and Spiritual Warfare.
Blessed Lent!
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