On Hedgehogs and Synods, by Regis Martin

There once lived a Greek poet by the name of Archilochus, among whose surviving fragments is the following, which I regularly inflict each semester upon great numbers of unsuspecting students:

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.

Knowing next to nothing about either animal, they wonder if I’m making a zoological point, which of course I’m not. It’s a metaphor, I tell them, designed to make a precise and deeply theological point. How so? Because the one big thing he knows may provide the student of Catholic theology an almost perfect point of entry into the mysteries of faith.

Allow me to explain. While I’ve seen a few foxes out and about, only once in my life have I seen a hedgehog, and from the safety of my car I very nearly ran him over. Nevertheless, my sympathies are entirely on the side of the hedgehog, whose single-minded perspective enables him to see into the very heart of faith, there to espy the one mystery without which everything remains mystery.

And what is that mystery? Begin with Balthasar, whose formulation is most wonderfully exact, to wit, “the ineffable poverty of the divine incarnate crucified love.” Or there is Hopkins, who will cover it just as well: “infinity dwindled to infancy.” Or, finally, there is John Betjeman, former Poet Laureate of England, who, in a charming little lyric called “Christmas,” puts it this way: …

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