A VERY QUIET JOY

 

For Christmas, I always put up this exquisite small poem written by a very young English actress, Jill Furse, around 1940. At the outbreak of World War II, Jill married the poet and glass-engraver Laurence Whistler, had a daughter Robin, whom I knew at University, and died soon after giving birth to her son Simon, at the age of 29.

CAROL

 

Beyond this room

Daylight is brief.

Frost with no harm

Burns in white flame

The green holly leaf. 

Cold on the wind’s arm

Is ermine of snow.

 

Child with the sad name,

Your time is come

Quiet as moss.

You journey now

For our belief

Between the rich womb

And the poor cross.

 

Jill Furse (1915-1944)

Advent Sunday

 

The First Sunday in Advent is the beginning of the liturgical year. Advent, for many people, is either barely present in the rush of work, school, travel plans and buying presents, or it is seen as a kind of minor version of Lent, vaguely gloomy and depressing. I take this opportunity once again to quote in extenso the admirable Advent meditation of Dom David Bird OSB, a Benedictine monk.

During the season of Advent, the Church proposes for our attention four truths which are general enough and profound enough to shape our whole spiritual life.

 The first is that, whoever we are, whatever our vocation, whether our life is happy or sad, fulfilled or frustrated, useful or a waste of time, interesting or boring, in harmony with God or sinful, it is destined to change; and what we consider normal now will, one day, become a thing of the past. This is true at every level of life and for everybody, and is even true of the whole creation in which we live. All will eventually end, because God so wills it. God is not in favour of every change, but his Providence is at work in every change.

   The second Advent truth is that Christ is present in every change, even if the change has been brought about against his will, and, at the end of every change, Christ will manifest himself to each and every one of us in a new way, taking into account what has happened, if we allow him. This will go on happening until  his Second Coming in which the whole of creation will be transformed into a new heaven and a new earth, and his presence will be manifested in a new and definitive way.

   This Sunday we celebrate the presence among us of the Risen Christ, as we do every Sunday; but, because it is Advent, at the same time, we are warned not to be satisfied with the level of our Christian life, our own holiness or our degree of commitment, nor closed to Christ's challenges when they involve us in change.  While we are alive, we can be confident that Christ has much more for each of us, and that he wants to make us capable of receiving what he has to offer. He would prefer our firmament should cave in, our whole world collapse rather than allow us to sink into a mire of complacency that would make us impervious to his grace. The Church has given us Advent as an antidote to complacency.  To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often, as Blessed John Henry Newman said, and Christ wishes to accompany us; and, round every corner, after every change, Christ is ready to meet us, to offer us something new.

   The third Advent truth is that when we meet Christ, we never meet him alone. Christ is in heaven and does not leave it when he comes to meet us. Where Christ is, there are Our Lady, the angels and saints. Whether in the Mass where we meet him as a Church, or in our hearts when we meet him in prayer, or when we recognise him as present in every situation, heaven and earth become one. 

   We talk about Christ coming to us; but the early Church talked about our ascending into heaven, even as we remain physically on earth.   This is the theme of the Letter to the Hebrews and of the Apocalypse. It is a further paradox that, the more we are united to Christ who is in heaven, the more heaven is present on earth through us.

   Is it not strange that, in the early Church, when the Liturgy was at its most communal, when there was so much emphasis on the Church as the body of Christ, that Christians should have gone into the desert to become hermits? Was it a flight into non- Christian individualism? It may have been for some; but the classical Christian hermit was anything but an individualist. What united him or her to the Christian community was that both he or she and the community believed they were citizens of heaven before they were citizen of this world, precisely because they were members of Christ's risen body. The monk believed that, because of his own weakness, he could not really become what baptism had made him, a citizen of heaven, without entering a monastery or going into the desert.   Did you know that the word "cell", used for a monk's room, was believed to have the same root as "coelum" because, just as the Christian community was raised in the Eucharist to share in the liturgy of heaven, so the monk in his cell was raised up to heaven in his prayer, and his solitude was filled with Our Lady, the angels and saints who prayed with him, and even with all those on earth who are united to Christ in his risen body.  No space on earth was more populated than a hermit's cell! Moreover, people went to visit hermits and monasteries because they believed that, through the monks life of sacrifice and prayer, sacred spaces are formed where heaven and earth are united.

   The fourth Advent truth is that heaven changed radically when Jesus, having died and risen again, ascended into his Father's presence. The Incarnation had brought about a new relationship between God and his creation. When this relationship was perfected by Christ's obedience unto death and became the central reality in heaven by means of Christ's ascension, heaven became the new reality into which the whole human race and the whole of creation were destined to be transformed.   It became the ultimate destiny of all that is. Jesus said that this generation will not pass until all these things shall happen; and in a certain and real sense this is exactly what took place when Christ ascended into heaven. For this reason, the early Christians never changed the texts in which Christ foretold the end of the world. We are in the last days, not, as the Jehovah Witnesses believe, because some world-destroying calamity is about to happen, but because every time we celebrate Mass, every time we pray, every time we meet Christ in the circumstances of the present moment, we are brought into the Father's presence by Christ in the Spirit, and we share directly in heaven which is God's final solution for the whole of creation; and every time we go to Mass or simply pray, Christ, Our Lady, the angels and saints enter our world through and in us.

  Advent is the time when we remember that this life receives its value only in so far as it incarnates God's will revealed to our faith in Christ's presence.  As the gospel today teaches us, we must be awake, ready to receive him and not pass our time in debauchery and drunkenness.   In every situation we must pray, "Come, Lord Jesus," and he will be there. 

   In this world of change, we find Christ's will in the present moment. We must not try to re-create a past that is agreeable to us, because God's will is not to be found there. Nor must we seek our fulfilment in an imaginary future, because that is our own creation, not God's. We must find God's will where Christ is, in the present; but we must not be so attached to present circumstances that we try to hold on to them when it is God's will that they be changed. 

   We must become Advent Christians for whom everything in this world, past, present and to come, must make way for the Christ who comes. Only our self-will stands in the way.

 

Dom David Bird, OSB (from his blog Monks and Mermaids at http://fatherdavidbirdosb.blogspot.fr/

THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE?

7. All mine enemies whisper together against me : even against me do they imagine this evil.

8. Let the sentence of guiltiness proceed against him : and now that he lieth, let him rise up no more.

9. Yea, even mine own familiar friend, whom I trusted : who did also eat of my bread, hath laid great wait for me. (Ps. 41)

12. For it is not an open enemy, that hath done me this dishonour : for then I could have borne it.

13. Neither was it mine adversary, that did magnify himself against me : for then peradventure I would have hid myself from him.

14. But it was even thou, my companion : my guide, and mine own familiar friend.

15. We took sweet counsel together : and walked in the house of God as friends. (Ps. 55)

Given the peculiar and oniric relation of the Gospels to the Psalms, I am moved to wonder whether we might not find in these passages the beginnings of an explanation for the strange conduct of Yehuda of Kerioth. 

I have always found the explanation in John 12:6, that Yehuda (Judas) was the group’s thievish treasurer, scarcely believable; and the whole story of the actual ‘betrayal’, the kiss in the park, too theatrical to make sense. As Yeshua himself said, he was not exactly hiding himself: he taught and preached in public practically every day, and the Temple guards could have taken him whenever they wanted. He did not need to be identified.

Once again, I am transgressing Benedict XVI’s injunction against writing a ‘Jesus novel’: first, I believe that if His actual, historical existence as a man in Galilee is of such crucial importance, then whatever we can find out or reasonably deduce about that existence is worth while; secondly, a combination of a historian’s and a reporter’s mind makes me bridle at improbabilities and search for what might actually have happened. 

And in the case of Yehuda of Kerioth, there is a possible narrative. That it comes to us from the Psalms would normally invalidate it at least in part: the Psalms are poetry, and from a time much earlier than the Gospels. Yet the relation between the two is so strange and close at times as to be unnerving. Most of us discover it first in Psalm 22, parts of which read like a description of the Crucifixion even unto the foolish details of the soldiers dicing for the robe; and we meet it again in Psalm 69:22: ‘They gave me gall to eat : and when I was thirsty they gave me vinegar to drink.’

Does this mean that Yeshua modelled his life upon the Psalms? That the Evangelists took Psalm passages to fill in details of the Crucifixion? Or that there was a deeply strange but real coincidence between the two? My narrative concerning Yehuda, I suppose, postulates the third of these possibilities. Here it is.

Imagine that from the beginning of the Disciples’ life as a group it was Yehuda who was the ‘disciple that Jesus loved’. That it was he who was the ‘familiar friend’, especially close to the Master; that it was with him that the Meshiach took sweet counsel in the Temple and who had the favoured place beside him at meals. 

And then, gradually, over the two or three years that we know of, Yochanan the ‘Son of Thunder’ began to make inroads upon that relationship. He it was, young and charming, who wormed his way into Yeshua’s confidence; he it was who became the new favourite. One can then easily imagine Yehuda’s feelings. Disquiet growing slowly but surely and morphing into a green-eyed monster. At first, dislike turning to hatred for the young co-disciple; and little by little a turning of that hatred to the Master himself. The verses from Psalm 55 might then equally well have issued from the mouth of Yehuda of Kerioth himself. 

That the end result was a pointless but deliberate and vengeful giving-up of Yeshua to the Temple authorities makes, in this case, perfect sense. Hell hath no fury like a loving friend and disciple scorned. And it makes all the more likely and understandable, also, his instant and total remorse once the inevitable consequences of his action began to unroll, and his swift dramatic suicide.

There are holes in this narrative, sure; but it seems to me a great deal more likely than the grubby suggestion that he had been stealing shekels. Poor Yehuda. It would indeed have been better for him had he never been born. And yet, if this story is true, may there not, at the end of time, be mercy even for him?

 

AND THOU CONTINUEST HOLY

 

Periodically, in or after my daily prayers, I think “This is all very well, but one can’t always be asking.” Well, there is the giving of thanks, too, and that is both joyful and healthy; but, something whispers, isn’t it still all about me? Not always – sometimes I give thanks for the healing of a friend or relative; but even that raises nagging questions about whether God micromanages His creation. What one would like is a prayer that isn’t about what happens to us. 

The Church teaches us that there is such a prayer: the prayer of adoration. Here, we do not ask for something; we do not give thanks for something; we simply adore God for what He is, for the fact that He is, for the ways in which He is. The prayer of adoration can fix itself upon an object, a monstrance with a consecrated wafer, or a crucifix, but it doesn’t have to do so: we can contemplate God in our heart and an outpouring of joy and delight can result. 

It is, of course, not the kind of prayer which, as children, we are taught; and so it can be hard at first to get used to it. First of all, it takes time and leisure. I’ve often thought that it would be good to have, as an acquaintance of mine with a château does, a small chapel in one’s house: one could retire there for half an hour at some point during the day or evening and shut out the world to concentrate. But lately I have found that the second part of the night, when sleep is intermittent and lighter, is a good time to point one’s mind to a certain kind of prayer and meditation. 

And in one such moment recently, a prayer of adoration suggested itself. I remembered the “map” of the Universe published by astronomers a few years ago and its immensity, and it made me think of the Creator of all that; and there swam into my mind the moving text from the terrible Psalm 22, the “crucifixion Psalm”: “and thou continuest holy”. In spite of what I may be going through; in spite of the pain in the world, “thou continuest holy”. In spite of our requests, our thanksgivings, “thou continuest holy”.

Putting these two things together, I try to imagine the Creator of that Universe: is He bigger than it? Smaller than it? Non-dimensional entirely and thus unimaginable? Whichever of those, “thou continuest holy”. And then I added the fact that His nature is Love, and imagined that within Himself, in other words, within the Trinity: as a permanent whirlwind of cosmic Love between Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And with that imagining, my prayer of adoration came as naturally as water from a spring. What glory!

“Thou continuest holy.”    

ITE, MISSA INLICITA EST?

Pope Francis’s recently-published limitations on the use of the Tridentine (Latin) liturgy for the Mass appear to have occasioned exactly the reactions he was doubtless expecting and may have hoped for: joy among the modernists, outrage among the “tradis”. It is useful to remember that he has not cancelled the Latin Mass, or Benedict XVI’s decree permitting its use. He has merely subjected its use in any parish or community to the authority of the local bishop. 

            Apparently, Francis decided on this measure out of alarm at what he saw as being an incipient schismatic cleavage in the Church, especially in America where the increasing political polarization of society is now seen as augmenting the existing divisions within the Catholic community – to the point where liturgy was being weaponized in the struggle about other things such as abortion, the role of women in the Church, gay marriage and so forth. What he either did not realise or weighed but found worth while is that he hemself, with this decree, is doing exactly the same thing, and thus in a sense already conceding a victory to his adversaries. 

            Exceedingly interesting in this regard is the 2018-9 study of Fr Donald Kloster, a Connecticut priest from the Diocese of Bridgeport who specialises in the study of the traditionalist movement, and who found that 99% of the those favouring the Tridentine Mass attended every week, whole of those favouring the modern Mass only 22% did so. Moreover, he found that the Tridentine Mass was particularly favoured by the 18-39-year-olds – which contradicts precisely the arguments of those who think that vernacular, familiar, happy-clappy liturgies will appeal to the young. Of the reasons given by the Millennials and Gen Z lovers of the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) by far the most important (35%) was “reverence”.

            One of the rules of life that were dinned into me at an early age was “It’s rude to say ‘I told you so’”. Yet it is very tempting in this case to utter those words. I have been trying to tell people for decades that the continual modernizing and de-solemnizing of the liturgy, so far from counteracting the emptying of churches, encourages and increases it. Certainly, some people prefer a jolly, informal, cheerful Mass or Eucharist; but at least as many, if not more, people of faith love and long for a sense of reverence, or solemnity, of significant form. And this is every bit as true for Anglicans/Episcopalians as it is for Roman Catholics. 

            What seems to me of crucial importance is that, first, we should abandon the terminology of “modernists” vs. “traditionalists” when referring to liturgy and replace it with something like “informalists” vs. “formalists” or “proponents of togetherness” vs “proponents of reverence/solemnity”. Second, and even more important: all sides should be brought to agree to divorce discussions of liturgy from discussions of other aspects of religion in society. It is perfectly possible to love solemnity and reverence and tradition in a celebration of the Eucharist while accepting that such a celebration may be performed by a female priest or a gay priest, either or both of them married, and believing that abortion, while always sad and often traumatic, is permissible and not a sin. 

            Finally, a word to Anglicans and Episcopalians. While we do not use the ancient Latin liturgy, we have an equivalent. Like the Latin texts, the sixteenth/seventeenth-century words of the Book of Common Prayer (1662) are in a language that, while comprehensible, is distant from everyday modern usage and was specifically designed to convey the reverence of the older Latin. Moreover, even more than Latin, this liturgical language has shaped English usage for over three centuries: “to have and to hold”, “till death us depart”, “we are as the beasts that perish”, “devices and desires”, “peace in our time”, “sudden death”, “the kindly fruits of the earth”, “our bounden duty and service” – centuries of worshippers have repeated and loved these words so that they have acquired the patina and glow of handed-down family treasures. And thus and so, they allow us to combine reverence and solemnity with familiarity in a way that destroys and cancels neither.

            

 

OUTLINE FOR A PERSONAL CATECHISM

 

What is a personal catechism, and why make one? In the Roman Catholic Church, and for all I know in several other churches, one is emphatically not encouraged to define the elements of one’s faith individually. Criticisms of “smorgasbord Christianity” prevail: one is told that it is bad to pick and choose among the truths and dogmas of one’s religion, and that one should accept the lot both intellectually and in one’s manner of living. 

            This is a principle, and perhaps even admirable; but it is not a reality. I gravely doubt whether even the Pope and his closest advisers truly accept and follow everything contained in the Catholic Church’s dogma. For example: Pope Leo XIII formally proclaimed Anglican priestly orders to be null and void. From this, it follows that every Anglican priest is a charlatan, and that every time he or she gives Communion, he helps a soul to damnation. Were the Catholic hierarchy actually to believe this, they would refuse all contact with the Anglican Communion. In reality, relations between Canterbury and Rome are perfectly friendly, and conducted with mutual respect. 

            I posit that in reality all Christians (Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox) who are serious about their religion work out for themselves the elements of their faith, and give considerable thought to the reasons for such belief. In other words, all of us have, inchoate or detailed, a private catechism. Such a catechism is necessarily an elaboration of the basic Creed: virtually all Western churches accept the Apostles’ Creed as the foundation of their faith (though many individuals, if pressed, will confess to being quite unsure of several of its bits).

            In view of all this, I have been working out the elements, the building-blocks, of a personal catechism, which I here share with others who may be pondering such things themselves. 

 

1.     There is nor was a beginning. God is, was, and ever shall be, in His own dimension, which we neither know nor would comprehend. 

2.     God did decide to create our Universe. (There may be others.)

3.     Within this Universe, either we are alone, as a planet with intelligent life, or there are others.

4.     If there are others, God will have acted there in, perhaps, different ways, which we do not (yet) know about.

5.     If we are alone, it is reasonable to assume that God chose Terra as an experimental unit.

6.     Upon this planet, He let life grow and eventually produce something like humans, who had in common a growing potential of thought and action, and a sense of a/the Divine. (And yes, they also had in common a capacity for badness.)

7.     At a certain point, just as He had chosen one planet, upon that planet He chose one people, for the next stage of development: Israel. 

8.     With them, He conducted a long experiment of relationship, in the key of Law and Obedience, rebellion and salvation.

9.     At a certain point, He went to the next stage and gave them His Son as the Meshiach, to initiate them in a new relationship, of fusion with Him in sonship.

10.  By way of the crucifixion of the Meshiach and His resurrection, this fusion of sonship was a) extended in space, from Israel to all humanity, and b) extended indefinitely in time, recreated and thus accessible in every Eucharist.

11.     The key of this fusion is Love. The sine qua non of Love is free will. Hence the continuing existence of evil and of indifference: God cannot compel man to return His love, because He cannot go against His own nature (the only limit to His omnipotence).

12.     Man’s language for the fusion is Prayer, in three kinds: Petition, Thanksgiving, and Adoration.

13.     God does not micromanage His creation, hence the casualty lists of earthquakes, tsunamis etc. This is particularly hard for us to comprehend and accept. The other such thing is the origin of evil (perhaps a combination of nos. 6 and 11, above). 

FROM WHAT OPPRESSION?

"And now, Lord, what is my hope : truly my hope is even in thee.

Deliver me from all mine offences . . ." (Psalm 39)

This Psalm text illustrates with startling precision the difference between two concepts of the Meshiach current at the time of Yeshua's youth. The first was the image of the new King David, a David returning at the head of an army to rout the Romans, deliver Israel, and institute a new reign of peace, justice, and devotion to the Lord. This was probably the dominant image, and it corresponds to similar dreams in other nations: in Portugal, for instance, there was long a legend of a return of the good King Sebastian, and in England, of the great magician Merlin. 

In contrast to this, Yeshua delivered a new image of the Meshiach: an itinerant rabbi in a remote Northern provice, walking from town to town or arriving by fishing-boat, preaching in small-town synagogues and showing a miraculous talent for healing the sick. Admirable, of course, but in what way could this be The Meshiach? One can see why a number of educated people found it unlikely. Only those who were deeply permeated by the Scriptures yet at the same time of an open mind would have understood. They would have seen that he had based his idea of the Saviour on an eclectic reading of Zechariah, Ezekiel and especially Isaiah and the Psalms. From such a reading he would have deduced that, in the first place, the Meshiach would be a man of deep humility and simplicity, who would arrive riding on a donkey; that his basileia, his kingdom, his kingship or reign, would not be that of a worldly king but in and of some other dimension; and that any liberation he would bring would not be political or involve the Roman occupation. 

If we ask ourselves what, then, that "liberation" would be, what oppressor it would unseat and in what way it would do so, the above text from Psalm 39 gives us a clue. "Deliver me," the Psalmist begs, not from Rome and its armies; not from the Assyrian kings, not from the bulls of Bashan; no, "deliver me from all mine offences". The tyrant, in other words, is Sin; and the oppressed are not just the Jews but all humankind. And so this mild provincial itinerant with his modest program of teaching and healing turns out to be a giant, with a giant's ambition: to deliver the whole of humanity from the tyranny of Sin.

He can do this by taking the Law, that immense gift of God to His favourite nation, and "fulfilling" it. Fulfilling, in this case, means internalising it. I have written a series of posts on the Sermon on the Mount that show this. Concomitantly, the Temple is no longer central: upon Yeshua's death on the Cross, the Temple veil rips apart. Yeshua himself is the new Temple; and he is the Temple not just for the Jews but for all humanity. He contains in himself the Law and the Temple, and fulfils both in an immensity of divine Love that has become immediately accessible to ordinary humans.

This accessibility is confirmed as permanent by his Resurrection; which means that this Meshiach’s liberation is no longer limited to one moment in history but continues to operate even now, just as the Adversary does. Each of us can and does feel the tyrant’s grim presence in our life; but each of us can also pray the Psalm verse above and thus, in being heard, reach safety. 

 

NO PEACE FOR THE FAITHFUL

In Luke 24:35, Yeshua appears to the disciples even as Cleopas and his friend finish recounting their experience at the inn in Emmaus. He is suddenly there, in the way he has now, after the Resurrection, but which he had also had from time to time before, of moving in ways not common to ordinary earthlings. He is there, we may imagine with a friendly smile, and he says “Shalom!”

            The commentators tend to make much of this pax vobiscum, this “peace be with you!”, this “Que la paix soit avec vous!” But it was, as it still is, also simply a way of saying Hello. Nevertheless, it does have the unemphasised but real weight of shalom, that vast and wonderful condition we translate, inadequately,  as “peace”. It is the almost cosmic peace that results from perfect harmony, from God being in His heaven and all being right with the world; of everything and everybody in the right place, doing what God intends them to do. The peace that results from that harmony being played in the key of Love. Every little peace we make makes us “peacemakers”, who are Blessed in the Beatitudes.

            It has been a long time since the need for inner peace was as urgent as it is now. Daily, we hear that the need is not only for more nurses and hospital workers, but for psychologists and psychiatrists. The pandemic is wearing us down and Christians are not immune. So I find it alarming to see devout commentators whom I have long admired now once again insisting that no, shalom does not mean well-being, it does not mean comfort, it means taking up your cross and suffering with the Meshiach like a true disciple, it means turning your life upside down. 

            Most people are not starving swineherds with boils. There are those – always too many – who live from day to day in precarious misery, and Christians should help them in every way they can. But to assume, as preachers and commentators regularly do, that the faithful are mainly comfortable rentiers who direly need their billowy parts booted is an error that especially now causes real pain. The churches, as we know, are emptying, and so far the pandemic does not, surprisingly, seem to have reversed that trend. Could it be, in part, because they are no longer offering comfort? They are not donors, purveyors, spreaders of shalom; instead they are unrepentant purveyors of unrest, challenging believers to get off their behinds and make shalom themselves in the world. 

            This is not in itself wrong: as St Teresa of Ávila said, the only hands God has in the world are ours. But when thousands are suffering inward misery, stress, depression, frustration and grief, it might not come amiss for those who bring the word to the faithful and beyond to remind everyone of those other words: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest . . . for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Mt 11:28-30) 

 

JUST THE FACTS, PLEASE, MA'AM

 Andrea Mantegna, "Crucifixion"

Rereading Josef Ratzinger’s (Benedict XVI’s) Jesus of Nazareth, vol. 2 (Holy Week) for Lent, I am struck all over again by his steadfast refusal to ask, or at least to insist upon, a historian’s questions. Those of us who were trained as historians, even literary historians, generally have a detective‘s mindset. We want to find out, as Leopold von Ranke famously put it in the nineteenth century, Wie es eigentlich gewesen, “what actually happened”. And since the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are presented in the form of historiæ, (hi)stories, we want to know what actually happened, there in Galilee, there in Jerusalem. Moreover, we are encouraged in this viewpoint by the evangelists’, and St Paul’s, insistence that the Resurrection was a historical fact, something that “really” happened, just as the Ever Given’s beaching in the Suez Canal happened: “For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile.” I Cor. 15:16-17). 

 

And yet Ratzinger regularly refuses the attitude that looks for a “Jesus novel” and reminds us of all the theological and ecclesiastical dimensions of each incident in each of the Gospels: their interweaving of occurrences in Jesus’ life and career with passages from the Prophets and the Psalms, or the parallels between certain actions of the disciples and some of Isaiah’s prophecies. 

To take a particularly striking example: he points out the way in which the soldiers on duty at the crucifixion divide up Jesus’ garments and toss for the robe or tunic, which was woven as one piece and thus too good to split. This, he rightly says, corresponds exactly to Psalm 22:18: “They parted my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.” Our historian’s question in such a case is: is this true? is this what happened? And if so, is the parallel happenstance, is it a conscious re-enactment of the psalm by the soldiers, one of whom might know the psalm, or is it the invention of the story’s author who thought of it as a detail that would increase the recounted event’s weight of Scriptural importance? 

Ratzinger refuses even to ask the question and accepts that it “fulfils the Scripture”. As far as I can tell, that means, Yes, it happened; No, they were not consciously re-enacting the psalm; God made it happen that way to “fulfil”, i.e. validate, the psalm as Scripture; and No, the soldiers did not know that. I, on the other hand, want to know how and why Yeshua at his crucifixion was wearing sufficient garments for a guard detail to think them worth dividing up, and what those were.

Another, and much more dramatic, case: upon Jesus’ death, the veil of the Temple split in two, from top to bottom. Ratzinger, completely convincingly, expounds the meaning of this: Jesus is himself the new Temple that replaces the old, and with his self-sacrifice the Temple sacrifices have become obsolete. Moreover, the veil that split was doubtless that which obscured the Holy of Holies and screened the Deity from profane eyes (only the High Priest could enter, once a year); and in Jesus, and even more in the Eucharist that continues his death and resurrection, God has made himself visible and available to men, “unveiled” himself. 

All this is not only true, but beautiful and profound. But something in me naggingly wants to know: all right, but did that great curtain spontaneously rip in two?  And if not, what went on in the author’s mind when he wrote Καὶ ἰδοὺ τὸ καταπέτασμα τοῦ ναοῦ ἐσχίσθη εἰς δύο ἀπ᾽ ἄνωθεν ἕως κάτω: “And at that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. “ (Mk 15:38) For the verb, eschisthè, he used the aorist tense, which parallels the French passé simple, indicating that such-and-such a thing happened. 

Now Mark wrote sometime between 30 and 70 AD, which means he was still able to talk to people who had been there. Is he then recounting a story that with retelling had become a legend, sprouting much extraneous detail, or did it actually happen? Ratzinger is surely right to say that the symbolism, not the actual torn fabric, is what matters; but that aorist bothers me. Later authors who created techniques of meditation, such as Ignatius of Loyola and François de Sales, encourage the devout to begin by vividly imagining the scene they will meditate upon, seeing themselves as being among the characters present and, as it were, seeing the events occur. To do so, we should like to know if the scene we are entering upon is a poiesis from a lovely tale or one that happened in the nitty-gritty. 

And yet, there is no answer. We have no way of checking most of the details. Moreover, we know that ancient historians often put into the mouths of historical characters words, reported in direct speech, which they felt the character should have said, or probably said, and may well have taken similar liberties with details of events. So, as the French say, “on reste sur notre faim”, we are left hungry, unfed. Perhaps the meditation masters have the best answer. For in our imagination we are allowed to reflect the details and even add to them; but only if they are succeeded, enriched, by interpretation – analyzing and learning the meaning of the scene – and resolution – figuring out what we, here and now, can, should, and will do about it. 

SO WHAT DO YOU GO HOME WITH?

 

 

Trying to sum up the Sermon on the Mount is like trying to put Paris into a bottle. Which doesn’t mean one might not try. The reason for undertaking it is that, however it was originally delivered, it has been passed on as a single if complex discourse, and it does sum up Yeshua’s teaching, the eu-angelion, the Good as well as the Authoritative Message, better than almost anything. And it matters.

 

So let us look back over it all and try to imagine what a good but not necessarily sophisticated listener, there on that truly lovely hill, full of flowers and overlooking Lake Kinneret, might have taken away on his or her way home, and remembered in the next few days. Remember it would have been part, not all, of their memory of the man: the healing he performed was in some ways more spectacular. But if the Meshiach’s task was to redeem Israel, and the ‘nations’, from the appalling condition of the systemic refusal of, or indifference to, the Father’s love – i.e. sin -- , then the two pillars of that task were Healing and Teaching, and the essence of the Teaching is in the Sermon. So what, finally, does it amount to?

 

A picture emerges. The new Torah shows the new Chosen as being not of a tribe but of a kind: not warlords, not brave fighters, not conquerors, not even prophets: they are simple in the best sense, one-fold, not multiple; their love for, and obedience to, the Father is uncomplicated and unquestioning; they care for and help the unfortunate, not sentimentally but effectively; they heal the wounds of conflict in their surroundings; and they avoid what, and whom, they know to be evil. Very simple, and un-glamorous. Yet as such, they will be – they are -- Ransomed, Healed, Restored, Forgiven; and they will see God, they will rule in Heaven. And when things go pear-shaped, when their loved ones die or when they are pursued, persecuted, prosecuted, and sometimes tortured and executed, they will be given consolation, they will receive a Paraclete, a Spirit to defend them, they will be granted joy and in turn astonish those who see them. And they pray, constantly, like the Meshiach Himself. 

 

Perhaps we can break it down into who we should try to BE and what we should try to DO. 

 

Who we should try to be is:

·      simple people, going about our lives, doing our work, kind, caring, with our heart clean and uncluttered. 

·      Feet on the ground, pragmatic, using our mind for discernment, fair and trustworthy. 

·      Not boring: we should be good company, amusing, interesting, but discreet – not showing off. 

What should we do? 

·      Know that we have been redeemed (bought back, ransomed) at a great price and so give thanks daily. 

·      Make shalom whenever and wherever we can, in small things as in large.

·       Avoid like the plague the Pandora’s boxes of ira (rage) and luxuria (lust), and avoid judging our neighbours’ faults before we have judged our own. 

·      Do unto others as we would have them do unto us. 

·      Keep Yeshua before our eyes all the time, integrate His teaching completely into our selves, get our priorities straight: seek FIRST the Kingdom, at all times. 

·      Don’t be fooled by wide and easy gates and spiritual snake-oil salesmen: build our house on His rock. 

·      Pray, inwardly, all the time, in any way we can, from the simplicity of Brother Lawrence to the sublimity of St Teresa of Ávila.  

 

An example of the simple, pragmatic, caring person is the Samaritan businessman. Levi the tax-collector, with whom Yeshua dined, was probably witty and amusing, even after his metanoia.

Notice that there are very few mystics here, and no sentimentalists. Even the glorious St Teresa was, as she herself relates, a simple, solid, hardworking nun, unimaginative by nature if given to fetching images from daily life. And she said that for people living in the world (not in a convent) simple and constant prayer without aspiration to mysticism is much the best way to salvation.

So finally: do your job, pray a lot, and make shalom. And find consolation, and joy, growing unobtrusively but gloriously, on your path.