EASTER WITHOUT MARKERS

For a variety of reasons, this Easter season has been very different. No church services, much busyness, absolutely nothing conducive to quiet, ritual, or contemplation. What to do in such a case?

What it has done is make me think more deeply about the Passion and the Resurrection, quite apart from ritual and in ways more individual than ecclesial. On Good Friday I awoke at 5 and spent two hours meditating on the day. I’ll share some of the thoughts.

      1.     The Anglican Communion service reads, in the Prayer of Consecration, “On the night that he was betrayed . . .” The new Catholic version says “On the night that he entered freely into his Passion . . .” At first I used to trip over this last version, but I have come to agree with it and like it (except rhythmically). It emphasises Yeshua’s willed accord with the Father’s will; his clear understanding that this death, grisly as it was, was the whole point of the Meshiach’s life and activity. Contrary to much Messianic thinking that wanted a new David to deliver Israel from its enemies, Yeshua’s interpretation was that of Isaiah. The Meshiach’s role went infinitely further than that of a political liberator: it aimed to liberate humanity from its Enemy – Satan, sin, and death. And this was possible only through the Meshiach himself becoming the Paschal sacrifice. So, human indeed, he quakes, he grieves, but he nevertheless goes forth. The Anglo-Saxon Dream of the Rood is doubtless factually wrong but also spiritually right in seeing Christ as a “young hero” voluntarily ascending the Cross.

      

      2.     I am always fascinated by the fact that his last words were two quotations from the Psalms. That shows, to cite Bonhoeffer, the degree to which the Psalter was Yeshua’s prayer-book. Having tried to say Morning and/or Evening Prayer regularly during Lent, I found reading through the Psalter one of the most moving parts of the experience. It is so wonderfully Jewish in its constant dialogue with the Creator: thankful, suffering, indignant (“Up, Lord!”), cursing, adoring and praising, it shows us how to relate to a sometimes distant and almost always (ostensibly) silent God.

      3.     The Crucifixion was necessary, because without it there could be no Resurrection. Perhaps what it teaches us is that our death too is necessary, and that we too follow him in a resurrection: not in the flesh – as his had to be, temporarily, to make people understand – but in the “body” of our post-mortem life, whatever that may look and feel like. No caterpillar, I suspect, has the faintest idea beforehand of what it feel like to be a butterfly.

      4.     Yochanan, St John the Evangelist, after whom I was named, thrills me, not only because of his mystical understanding and his poetic writing but because he was the only disciple not to have fled the Cross. He and the women stayed till the end. Perhaps that is one reason for the depth of his comprehension? It came to equal Miriam’s, which is why it was he who was detailed to look after her.

      5.     “Give us that peace which the world cannot give.” This impresses itself upon me more and more. The world can give suffering; the world can give comfort, and fun. But it cannot give true peace. When I look at those who live without faith, I mostly see a deep underlying sadness; those who live in faith are not exempt from pain and suffering, but they see meaning and coherence, and know that they are loved. 

      6.     The paradox of the Cross is inexhaustible. Its horror is bottomless, its joy is endless.

      7.     What, exactly, is the Good News that Yeshua preached? That you are not bound nor bounded by your self. That the Kingdom, the Reign, of God is here now. That it is the reign of Love, and that what you have to do, all you have to do, is relax and let it take you over. That you need to open the windows, doors and shutters of your soul and let the Ruach, Pneuma, Spiritus in. That if you live from day to day, hour to hour, by what it tells you, the Father, Son, and Spirit will come and live in you. That you are loved as you are, not as you might be if you were a better person. (That is really and truly hard to take on board!) That you can live day by day in subservience, in filial or servantlike devotion to something, Someone, greater than you are without losing your independence or your pride. On the contrary, it will increase your stature by making it irrelevant.  

THE TEARS OF BEAUTY, AND VICE VERSA

SOME THOUGHTS ON BACH’S ST MATTHEW PASSION

I listen to this every year on Good Friday, as do many Dutchmen; when I was 15 my parents took me to hear what at the time was the country’s finest performance, by the Bach Association, with the great Dutch baritone Laurens Bogtman as Christ – a role the associations of which so overwhelmed him that he spent months spiritually preparing himself for the performance. Since then, I have preferred the 1964 Stuttgart version now on the Decca Ovation label, directed by Karl Münchinger, with Elly Ameling (soprano), Marga Höffgen (alto), Fritz Wunderlich (tenor) and Tom Krause (bass), who are all magnificent, but the miracle of this version is Peter Pears as the Evangelist.

This year, following it as always with the German text and a (rather horrid) English translation, I was struck differently by the Christian Friedrich Henrici’s (“Picander”’s) German poetry. When I was young, the pietistic texts of the arias tended to revolt me, but now I understand them better and appreciate them more. Because there are in fact four levels of text, and thus of poetry, in the work: 1) the Evangelist, who recites the narrative; 2) the characters, who act out the drama; 3) the Chorus, who give an emotional but controlled reaction, moving but (because?) restrained; and 4) the “I” of the arias, who gives a distinctly unrestrained emotional reaction. The texts of this group are the ones most controversial and, I notice with amusement, rather bowdlerised in the English translation – not that they are obscene, but they have a quality very similar to the poetry of Crashaw: quite unashamed of what to the sophisticate appears bathos, joining the great cosmic emotions of the Passion to intimate and quotidian imagery. An example: in the alto aria “Können Tränen meiner Wangen”, reacting with total grief to the flagellation and binding of Jesus, the text says, “If my cheeks’ tears cannot accomplish anything, O take my heart as well! But let it also, at the floods, when the wounds gently bleed, be the sacrificial bowl.” Or, in the monumental and moving final chorale, “Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder”, it says “May your grave and tombstone be for the frightened conscience a comfortable pillow and a resting place for the soul: there the eyes fall most pleasantly asleep.” In my old age I find these effusions endearing rather than annoying, as I do Crashaw’s “The Weeper”, for instance.

Some of the choruses, on the other hand, are magnificently moving in their disciplined, economical German. The one that struck me this year was no. 55, “Befiehl du deine Wege”, which I will try and give here bilingually:

Befiehl du deine Wege               Entrust your ways
Und was dein Herze kränkt       And what pains your heart
Der allertreusten Pflege               To the very faithfullest care
Des der den Himmel lenkt;       Of him who directs the Heaven;
Der Wolken, Luft und Winden       He who to clouds, air and winds
Gibt Wege, Lauf und Bahn,       Gives roads, course and direction,
Der wird auch Wege finden       He will surely find ways also
Da dein Fuss gehen kann.       Where your foot can go.

One miraculous little economy German can give that English can’t: “Faithfullest care/Des der den Himmel lenkt” Long live inflected languages. To the care “des” – of him; “der” – who, “den” – the, accusative singular masculine, with “Himmel” heaven, and the verb goes at the end. It clicks together like a beautiful machine.

So – this Good Friday, a little plaudit for the much-maligned Picander (of whom I have not been able to find a likeness), ennobled by the immortal and not nearly always austere Johann Sebastian.

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.

CHRISTMAS AND BEYOND

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)

Jill Furse (granddaughter of the poet Sir Henry Newbolt) was a young actress of great promise who married glass-engraver and poet Laurence Whistler. Their brief but idyllic marriage was cut short by her death after the birth of their second child, and was exquisitely described by Whistler in his book The Initials in the Heart. I was privileged to know both Whistler and his daughter, and have always loved this little poem Jill wrote in their secluded cottage in Devon. 

I used to wonder at the ending, but have come to understand what was doubtless elementary to all but me: that the Incarnation implies the Crucifixion. If the almighty and everlasting God of the entire universe (and possibly of a few others also) decides, in His son, to take upon him, not a human form but human substance, human life itself; if Deus homo factus est; then that human life implies a human death. The rich womb opens the way to the poor cross. 

And the poor cross, of course, is not the end. Et resurrexit tertia die: Christmas points to Good Friday, but Good Friday points to Easter morning. Laurence, who wrote some very moving poems after her death, died in December 2000. It is a good thought that they are now reunited.

ODDLY LENT

Tenebrae: part of a Good Lent

In a longish lifetime I’ve found that I’m never original; so there must be others who have had a peculiar Lent with a shambolic ending. You know who you are. It’s mainly for you that I’m writing this, and of course for myself.

When one gets serious about one’s faith, or mainly so, one of the things one dreams about is a Good Lent. With a little real fasting, with lots of profound prayer, with charity and sharing: a shapely movement of the soul’s days from Ash Wednesday to Easter.  And then reality comes along.

Even when I was young and Lent was not much practiced – except for the St Matthew Passion on Good Friday, a Dutch tradition – I was always exercised about the fact that Christianity had chosen the most glorious time of year, full of bird-song, fields of flowers, trees in bloom, fresh green everywhere, the sap rising, for its gloomiest meditations. As a child and later a teenager I did not feel particularly sinful, so penitence was hardly a topical concept; I was sorry for what those people had done to Jesus, but when I was introduced to the great 17C Dutch poet Revius’s sonnet “’Twas not the Jews who crucified Thee, Jesu . . . ‘twas I, my Lord, ‘twas I did this to Thee”, my reaction was Well, no, it wasn’t.

When you get older you realise, first, that maybe it wasn’t but in the circumstances it might well have been: how do I know that had I been a believing Jew or a routine-bound Roman corporal in Jerusalem on that day I would have had the intelligence and  the courage to stand up against the crowd?

That, however, is not the point of the poem or the meditation it reflects. And as you go deeper into the faith we inherit you come to a new awareness: doing it to anyone is doing it to Him. OK, you and I have not crucified anyone lately, we’re not into torture and murder; but there are many ways of doing the dirty on others, and every one of them comes out of a bag of nails. Giving comfort to a grieving stranger or relative is comforting Him; withholding love from anyone is withholding it from Him.

As you look at your aging self in the mirror of hindsight, you see a decidedly unlovely Dorian Gray. So you acquire the dream of a Good Lent that will maybe, with some serious effort, make you ready for Easter. And then, as I said, reality sets in.

Reality provides us with all sorts of distractions, excuses, and daily messes that really muck up our Good Lent. And when Easter rolls around we know that we have not fasted enough, the theological or devotional texts we were going to read remained untouched beyond Chapter 3, our prayer has been subject to John Donne’s distractions even more than usual, we didn’t go and visit that old person in the next street or village we’d promised ourselves we’d see, we didn’t even go to church on Good Friday, our CD player was on the blink so the St Matthew Passion was out, we ended up feeding passing friends from far away, and here we are, supposedly meditating by the tomb in perfect silence like a Victorian painting of the mourning Marys, but in reality shopping for Easter food, hiding eggs, doing e-mail, and a hundred other unworthy things. What a mess.

And then there comes, at the moment when one does pray, a still small voice that says, “That Good Lent you so wanted to have, supposedly for Me – did it occur to you that that was entirely your idea, conceived by and for you? I do not necessarily want your Good Lent any more than I want smoking bulls’ meat on the altar: if you can look at your life and see the bits that really don’t go with my Father’s love, and if that view makes you miserable enough desperately to want Me, Us, to change it (because you now know that you can’t), then, little lad, you will have had a Lent that’s good enough for Me.” And you realise that you have been given a major lesson in humility. And you get ready for Easter’s celebration, with a rather tremulous joy in your heart.