“Six Seeeeeven” is the obnoxious cultural trend that makes announcing a basketball game, teaching algebra, or just trying to have a conversation with an adolescent practically impossible. Though this phenomenon might commonly be attributed to the random impulses of a brain rot generation, it is hard to deny that these two numbers have a unique way of summing up our salvation: Jesus, specifically on the sixth day of the week, mounted the cross in order to draw us to the limits of human existence and into contact with eternity, symbolized by the Sabbath, the seventh and final day of the week. This moment itself was an expression of an earlier event, the creation of the world, when the seventh day of the week was established as the spiritual bookend to the drama and complexity of the preceding six days. Such complementarity of earthly and transcendent is, indeed, the truth of things, and it is therefore no wonder that in the ancient religious mind the number six, on its own, was considered evil (Hence the use of 666 to signify the devil!). As this Lenten season draws to a close, let’s ask for the courage to trace the seemingly nonsensical projections of our daily lives back to the primordial paschal pattern that is implicit in all things. We shall happily “six-seven” with the teenyboppers and be at peace. Ave Crux, Spes Unica.
March 28, 2026
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