GLINTING RIPPLE, SLOW TIDE

Half-awake at 5 a.m. after a transatlantic flight is a good time and condition to reflect, meditate and pray. I had been reading Brother Lawrence's The Practice of the Presence of God, which always enchants me by its simplicity and by the flavour it gives of the man -- Nicolas Hermann, a 17th-century Lorrain of little education, who became first a footman -- but, being large and clumsy, he broke things --, then a soldier, was lamed and then joined a religious order as a lay brother, working in the monastery kitchen for 40 years. A grander and more educated clergyman interviewed him on a number of occasions and wrote down Brother Lawrence's replies, as well as some things he'd heard about him.

The Practice, as the little volume of the interviews is called, radiates a perfectly simple faith. He knows that, left to himself, he is a wretched piece of humanity, and he keeps wondering why God has done him so many favours. and goes on doing so. But he refuses to worry about it, because that's up to God. So he goes about his daily business, constantly placing himself in God's presence, because that is all that really matters for our souls: even in a clattering busy monastery kitchen with everyone shouting for stuff at the same time, he does his work with admirable serenity. And if he fails at something, he says, he is never surprised, because if he didn't get constant help from God he'd be like that, perfectly useless, all the time.

So, pondering that at 5 a.m., I was taken back (and yes, slightly taken aback, too) to my experiences on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, with a sort of tide of immense peace creeping up the beach of my consciousness. And it occurred to me that in fact all one needs to do is to be completely open and receptive; because God is everywhere and always around us and asks nothing better than to be in us as well. Hardly a new thought; but for whom it happens to, a new experience.

Later, over EMT (Early Morning Tea), I read the passage about the "Journey to the Purity of Heart" in the admirable  Carthusian publication The Wound of Love, in the light of those considerations. The Carthusian points out that it will be a long and difficult journey, but that eventually Grace will complete the task for us. Well, I thought: did Brother Lawrence not find a shortcut? But the Carthusian did agree that we receive rather than achieve; only, he said (and this was the most useful point he made), it cannot be had cheaply -- I thought of T.S.Eliot: "a condition of complete simplicity/ costing not less than everything".

Brother Lawrence, a soul of great and childlike simplicity to start with, paid the price in length of years. Some of the Carthusian Fathers paid and pay it, one assumes, in spiritual exercises. And for those of us in the world it may be paid in all kinds of experience, disappointment, suffering -- or, if the Lord keeps showering one with undeserved and unexpected favours, perhaps in years and (intermittent) constancy also. The low, gentle ripple creeping up my beach, after all, had taken more than five years to get there since, on my 70th birthday, I decided that rock-climbing, hiking the Pyrenees and crossing Europe on a motorcycle were not going to happen, I needed a new adventure proper to my age, and chose faith as the most suitable. Mmmmmm -- was it I who did the choosing?

STRANGE RISING

Fra Angelico, 'The Resurrection'

A strange and unusual Triduum paschale – Good Friday without Bach’s St Matthew Passion for once, but also without computer, tablet or screen of any kind, doing physical things in house and garden, meditating and praying while doing them, rather like Brother Lawrence. A halt at 3 pm for a special prayer as the Temple veil tears and the new Temple is inaugurated, bloodstained, hanging on the Cross.

Holy Saturday, a glorious Spring day, again full of busy-ness but full of prayer also – the strange emptyness of that day filled with blossoms and sunshine, yet always the knowledge of the open, empty Tabernacle that always fills me with wordless anguish.

That evening an invitation to supper, accepted because the veillée paschale at the Cathedral last year had left us cold in every sense, and an Easter morning service seemed preferable. The adorable, generous and appreciative hosts overdid the hospitality with groaning platters of seafood and Gewürtztraminer, and kept us talking – about the Church, amongst other things – till midnight. During the deep, still night a sudden wind sprang up, blew open the windows and died down, as if the Resurrection were taking place at that very moment. Then it rained, the gutters gurgling happily with the new life. And in the morning there was no energy of any kind, and once again the tradition had to be abandoned for care to Brother Ass. And yet this Easter has been one of the most profound I can remember.

The reason I post this very personal note is because there may be a lesson in it. For those of us who love traditions, rituals, ceremony and solemnity, it may upon occasion be very salutary to see what remains when one removes them. (Normally, my struggle goes the other way, as our world is removing them or eviscerating them at an alarming rate in any case.) In my case, what remained, I found, was prayer and a quietly penetrating sense of love.

In the course of this two thoughts occurred to me which I will share here. One: in all the prayers I have heard and joined in for the victims of the recent terrorist attacks, I have not once in any Church or Christian context heard a single prayer for the attackers. And yet we are expected, are we not, to pray for our enemies? Two: in every Mass, after the Institution, the priest prays for the Church; invariably he prays for Pope Francis, then goes on to the bishop and clergy; but not once have I heard Pope Benedict included in this prayer. He is still alive, he is still Pope. If I work at it, I can perhaps imagine a reasoning behind it; but I find it shameful.

And finally, I have said it before but will say it again: the finest accompaniment to Holy Week for an educated lay person that I know is that same Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth, volume 2: Holy Week, from the Entry into Jerusalem to the Resurrection. He is a great man, ending his life gently in a saintly manner; and I pray for him, and give thanks for him, daily.

PURE JOY

Psalm 96. Cantate Domino

O SING unto the Lord a new song : sing unto the Lord, all the whole earth.
2. Sing unto the Lord, and praise his Name : be telling of his salvation from day to day.
3. Declare his honour unto the heathen : and his wonders unto all people.
4. For the Lord is great, and cannot worthily be praised : he is more to be feared than all gods.
5. As for all the gods of the heathen, they are but idols : but it is the Lord that made the heavens.
6. Glory and worship are before him : power and honour are in his sanctuary.
7. Ascribe unto the Lord, O ye kindreds of the people : ascribe unto the Lord worship and power.
8. Ascribe unto the Lord the honour due unto his Name : bring presents, and come into his courts.
9. O worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness : let the whole earth stand in awe of him.
10. Tell it out among the heathen that the Lord is King : and that it is he who hath made the round world so fast that it cannot be moved; and how that he shall judge the people righteously.
11. Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad : let the sea make a noise, and all that therein is.
12. Let the field be joyful, and all that is in it : then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice before the Lord.
13. For he cometh, for he cometh to judge the earth : and with righteousness to judge the world, and the people with his truth.


This morning's Psalm. The trees rejoice before the Lord.

THE NIGHT VISITOR

Henry Ossawa Tanner, "Jesus talking with Nicodemus"

I have always been fascinated by Nicodemus. This Pharisee with the Greek name, who came and visited Jesus by night and discussed the faith with him, who was clearly if discreetly convinced and converted, who spoke up at the planned lynching of the adulterous woman, who may have watched the Crucifixion and who afterwards provided an astonishing quantity of costly spices for the funeral -- "a royal burial" as Pope Benedict XVI calls it --, is someone I should have liked to know.

What, I often wonder, was said that night? We know a little: a couple of gently ironic remarks, one by him and a reply by Jesus, about being born again, lead to a long and magnificent discourse by Jesus, which is often cited separately, without our remembering to whom it was said.  But I suspect it was a longer conversation, there on the roof of a house in Jerusalem. I think they talked for most of the night.  

Nicodemus was either a Judaized Greek (there were quite a few) or a Hellenized Jew, of the Pharisee persuasion, which was that of precise ritual and scrupulous devotion. Jesus calls him a "master of Israel", in other words a prominent man, learned and presumably wealthy. So what would Jesus have said to him, before the exchange noted by John? 

I imagine Jesus explaining the essence of his role, and of his relation to the Jewish scriptures. In the first place, Nicodemus, you know the prophet Isaiah, and you know that in the second part of his remarkable book he draws a gripping picture of someone we think of as the Suffering Servant, often seen as a poetic image of the people of Israel. Secondly, you know that we are living in one of those periods when people talk about the coming of a Meschiach, a royal personage who will save and deliver Israel, God's chosen nation, from all oppression: a descendant of David, who will be the new and possibly the eternal King. 

Now we come to the difficult part, Nicodemus. First, the Meschiach and the Suffering Servant are the same person. Second, he is already here and you are talking to him. He is not a king as you imagine one: he is in appearance, and in reality, a perfectly normal human being, one of millions, with a normal human name and place of origin. Yeshua bar-Yousuf from Nazareth [a real town, as real as Buffalo: my daughter got married there]. 

This means that the salvation of Israel now needs to be reinterpreted. The Meschiach is not going to sweep in on a mighty chariot and drive all Israel's enemies into the sea. Did anyone tell you, Nicodemus, about the image I used the other day to explain how all this is going to come about? I said it was like mustard-seed, one of those tiny, tiny seeds that invariably jump out of any pan in which you try to use them for cooking. You plant it, and you have the impression that you've planted nothing much. Yet it grows, and it grows. That's the way the regnum Dei is happening. Notice my tense: I didn't say it will happen, it is happening. It's here. Now. But it's happening quietly, quietly, in a corner of the Eastern Mediterranean. It will probably take long time -- but then, what is time to my Father?

And another thing, Nicodemus. Since this Meschiach is not politically involved with the nation of Israel, you may need to stretch the envelope of that concept very far. Because if "salvation" comes through a man, and one (incidentally) who is likely not long for this world -- dark clouds are gathering over the city down below --, then "Israel" also will be a new term, not limited to a nation or a people. The Israel the Meschiach saves is open, not only to born and circumcised Jews, but to anyone who recognizes Him and draws the consequences. The consequences include being born anew. 

And that is where John and his Gospel begin -- one assumes that Nicodemus had related the rest to him at or shortly after the burial, and that he omitted the first part because both John and most of his readers already knew that. 

I have known Michelangelo's Pieta since I was a teenager; but I never knew the standing figure (some say the sculptor's self-portrait) was Nicodemus. The thought is deeply pleasing. And that intelligent, discreet and generous man may, somewhere, be smiling.