FULL OF IT?

     In the Sanctus we sing “Heaven and earth are filled with Thy glory.” It suddenly struck me yesterday how curious that is. Heaven, yes. We know it is filled with His glory. But dear old Earth? I recently attended a conference occasioned by the quincentenary of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia: almost all the sessions either were about dystopian subjects or used “utopia” and “utopian” in the sense of daydreams and illusions. At best we are encouraged to regard our blue planet with alarmed compassion, like a seriously-wounded person encountered by a car wreck: possibly dying and direly in need of something we are not competent enough, or not numerous enough, to perform. And this poor wretched miserable planet, the ultimate champion in the Victimhood Stakes, is “filled with His glory”?

     Note that it is not a prayer, a begging, a wish, not even an optative like the first three petitions of the Our Father: it is a statement, bold, absolute, that dares to equate Earth with Heaven. Not the lovely, innocent Earth we think once existed before humanity screwed it up; not the final, redeemed Earth of the Second Coming; no, this same planet in which we live, move, and have our being. Right now.

     First, this should give us furiously to think. Second, it should send us off into our daily comings and goings with fiercely-open eyes, in an exercise to which Pokemon Go is mere flummery. Where is the glory? Where is it hiding? If the Earth is full of it, why can’t I see it? Why aren’t I overwhelmed wherever I go?

     We furiously think because if we are to find it we need to know what it looks like. Clues? Well, it presumably looks like Heaven; and it presumably looks like God. Mmmm. So, an Alpine valley at sunrise? Beethoven’s Ninth? The Northern Lights? Well, overwhelming beauty is certainly an aspect of God’s glory. So, I suspect, are a surprisingly large number of human beings. The truly righteous (note: not “self-righteous”) of all faiths are perhaps the hewers of wood and drawers of water of the glory: but without wood fire cannot burn and without water we die. When I look at a group of small children in a playground, there is kind of pearly spider’s web of glory being made there. When, on a busy street, I see a thoroughly professional beggar woman, with scarf and baby, whining for alms, and someone nevertheless stops and puts something fairly large in her paper cup, it’s as if a quick flash of glory came and went. In the psychiatric hospital where I spent a few hours this year visiting an agèd friend, the sheer kindness of the staff, joking lovingly with those who stared, those who cried inconsolably and those who just looked lost, created a kind of mist of glory that hung, not quite visible, in the ancient cloister.

     The Sermon on the Mount, which Benedict XVI calls the “New Torah”, may help us to find this fullness. Note again, that the Beatitudes are not promises or prayers: they are statements. The pure in heart are blessed. And as such, they are also blessings: each a tiny ray in that immense glory that fills the earth. And usually recognisable when we meet them.

     The Cross, which still and always stat in our orbis, is not a negation of this glory, but the culmination of it. He who was the Living God made man, is now the Living God with man, and in man. Yesterday’s Gospel showed us the two thieves crucified beside him, and his answer to the good thief’s begging: “Amen, I tell thee: today thou shalt be with me in Paradise.” After that, the Communion is a wellspring of glory.

“Heaven and Earth are filled with Thy glory.” Perhaps we just need our eyes opening.