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. 

 

GETTING CLOBBERED AND SUMMING UP

Egyptian Christians cleaning up after their chapel was looted and burned in 2013

"Fortunate are you, when they reproach you and persecute you and say all wickedness about you, lying, because of me. Be joyful and rejoice exceedingly, because your reward is great in heaven; for so did they reproach the prophets before you."

Makarioi este hotan oneidōsin humas kai diōxōsin kai eipōsin pan ponèron kath’umōn pseudomenoi heneken emou. Chairete kai agalliasthe, hoti ho mismos humōn polus en tois ouranois: outōs gar ediōxan tous prophètas tous pro humōn.

 

This final Beatitude elaborates the previous one, and confirms the movement away from character traits towards events and behaviour. The fortunate are no longer ‘they’ but ‘you’; and the persecution is made more specific. Meanings of the verb diōkō can range from ‘pursue’ as a deer in the hunt, via ‘prosecute’ in the courts to ‘persecute’, so that the place where the lies and the reproaches are uttered may well be the courts, where followers of the Meshiach might be charged with blasphemy in a Jewish tribunal or with nonconformity in a Roman one.

 

It may, now, be time to put the nine Beatitudes together and consider them as one Torah, or teaching. (Note that it is given to his disciples, not to the multitude.) The first element is the ninefold anaphora of makarioi. It translates the Hebrew ashrei which, because it opens in anaphora (from Psalm  84:5-6) the central daily Jewish prayer, has given to that prayer its name. As so often, Yeshua’s teaching is very close to the Book of Psalms.

 

Secondly, each example of the makarioi’s fortunate condition is a reward, mostly for enduring what seems unfortunate in an earthly human context – with the exception of being pure in heart. In this way they form part of the central Christian paradox: the last shall be first. The Meshiach and his teaching deliberately disrupt and overturn a great deal of received wisdom. So far from being the new King David, arriving with an army to liberate Israel from Rome by chasing out the occupiers, this unlikely Saviour is an itinerant rabbi in Galil-haGoyim, ‘Galilee of the Gentiles’, not really thoroughly Jewish at all, who wanders around with a dozen talmidim, ‘disciples’, pupils, and whose teaching is as disconcerting as it is paradoxical. How can he be the Meshiach? How can he liberate Israel? Well, his idea is that Israel needs liberating from sin more than from Rome; and that such liberation applies as much to the ‘nations’, the Goyim, as to the Chosen People. 

 

The makarioi themselves fall into two categories. There are those who have certain characteristics, and there are those to whom certain things happen. The first are the poor in spirit, the gentle, the caring, the peacemakers, and the pure in heart; the second are those who mourn, those who hunger for justice, and those who are persecuted, especially those persecuted because of Him. The former are cited as examples of a way to be and to live; the latter are cited to show that the miseries of humanity are seen and recompensed by the Father.

 

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. 

 

One does, finally, see St Jerome’s point. For such people, in such a relation to their loving Father, ashrei, makarioi, may perhaps indeed be translated as ‘Blessed’. 

Samuel Palmer, 'Coming from Evening Church' (1830)

SO WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT, THEN (AND NOW)?

a nasty dogma (cf Psalm 59)

A recent discussion with a friend about religion, church, and dogma set me thinking about such things, and trying to work them out. I post the result here in case it may be helpful to some. (NB: A None is not a canonical Hour, but someone who to the pollster’s question about one’s religion answers “None”. A Vaguist is, well, vague.)

 

A. What was the Eu-angelion, the content of Yeshua’s teaching?

 

1.     The Law is fulfilled.

2.     Yeshua bar Yosef from Nazareth is the Meshiach.

3.     Yeshua Meshiach is the (new) Law, and the new Temple.

4.     Our role is to be as children: in the innocence of trust, and the trust of innocence.

5.     Yeshua is present with us, in the Eucharist and in prayer.

6.     Our childlike life is to be governed (as He said to Nicodemus) by the two Great Commandments.

7.     The first we obey in prayer (and sometimes in fasting).

8.     The second is exemplified in the Samaritan: we obey it in giving (as he did).

 

 

B. How does one discuss faith with a 21C None? Very difficult. If the occasion arises, perhaps say “Let me tell you my faith, and then you tell me your reactions to those points.” And tell it more or less in the above form. 

 

The points the None will almost certainly make are 1) Auschwitz and 2) earthquakes or the equivalent.  Possible answers:

1) God is Love, and as such his omnipotence is limited (only) by the nature of Love itself, that cannot suspend freedom.

2) God does not micromanage nature. He has left Nature to us, to our care and our intelligence.

 

C. Now, how does one answer a 21C Vaguist? The Vaguist will say “I believe in a Higher Being [perhaps even God]; I am a very spiritual person; but my contact with the Higher Being happens in surroundings of natural beauty. Do NOT ask me to go to, still less to join, a church – they are full of DOGMAS [which, it is understood, are things that bark, bite and – as the Psalmist says -- grin and run about the city].” Again, very difficult.

 

I might start by saying that I too find surroundings of natural beauty congenial to contact with God: after all, He provided them, so addressing Him when in them seems natural, if only to give thanks. 

 

But then one does have to tackle the topic of the church. I might point out that while Creeds are in the singular, all the ancient Christian prayers, beginning with the one taught us by Yeshua, are couched in the first person plural. The early Christians lived their faith most strongly in a community. “Where two or three are gathered together, I will be in the midst of them.”

 

Yes, but what about those horrid DOGMAS? 

1.     Try to imagine what the first centuries of the Christian community were like. Not only were they persecuted, hunted down and killed, but they were trying to work out just what it all meant. What did the Resurrection mean? What is the God we worship like? Father? What kind of a father? And if Yeshua was the Son of God, what does that mean? And if he said, I will send you the Holy Spirit, who is that? They were totally absorbed in a terrible problem of definition: terrible, because their – eternal – lives depended on it. 

2.     So every time they managed to reach some sort of agreement on one bit of the enormous subject, they would file it with a sigh of relief, saying, OK, this one we can now see as settled, let’s go on to the next one. And so the settled one was filed as “something we are sure enough of to teach it”, the Greek word for which is dogma.

 

Of course the real trouble, for a Vaguist, is not with dogmas as such but with the idea of the Church as a spiritual authority. Which means, supposedly, that it can tell – order – you what to believe. No effing way!

 

This is of course nonsense. Only you know what you believe and whom you trust, unless you tell someone. And the Church – the community of the faithful – cannot tell you what to believe. However, it has (after many centuries and a very great deal of debate) set down the core of its faith, in the Creed – from credo, I believe. The Apostles’ Creed is the simplest: it says

 

I believe in God, the Father almighty, 
    maker of heaven and earth; 
And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord; 
    who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, 
    born of the Virgin Mary, 
    suffered under Pontius Pilate, 
    was crucified, dead, and buried. 
    He descended into hell. 
    The third day he rose again from the dead.
    He ascended into heaven, 
    and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father almighty. 
    From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. 
I believe in the Holy Ghost, 
    the holy catholic Church, 
    the communion of saints, 
    the forgiveness of sins, 
    the resurrection of the body, 
    and the life everlasting. Amen.

 

This, of course, may need some explanation to those who are new to the material, which is why the various churches created catechisms. But simply speaking these are the essentials:

 

1) God exists. God is the Maker of everything and the Father of everyone. He is all-powerful. Jesus of Nazareth is His (only) Son. Together with the Holy Spirit (the old word was Ghost from Germanic Geist, spirit) they form the Trinity: three Persons, one God. (That one is notoriously difficult to get one’s mind around. But never mind.)

2) Jesus was conceived by the Spirit, he was born of (as the child of) Mary, who was virgin at the time. He was a real man, a real human being (not a disguised god): he suffered at a specific time and place in history: in Jerusalem, under the government of Marcus Pontius Pilatus (d. ca. 38AD). He was a real man, and so he died a real death: he was buried, and he went down (according to Jewish belief) to the “hell”, Sheol, the place of the dead. 

But on the third day after his burial, he was resurrected. After a brief return to earth and to his disciples, he went to heaven, where he recovered his place as God’s Son “at the right hand” of the Father. 

At the end of time, he will return, and there will be a final judgement of those then alive and the dead. 

3) The Holy Spirit exists – he is the third Person of the Trinity. He is the one who is always with us to defend us. 

·      The universal (“cath-holica”) ecclesia, church, community of believers, exists for all who believe. It has been entrusted with a communal (not individual) and historic (grown over the ages) knowledge of God, which gives it a certain authority, a certain claim to respect and attention.

·      All those who trust in God are part of one organism, and share their strengths: the living and the dead. (The “communion of saints”.) This means that we can benefit not only from each other’s spiritual experience and wisdom but also from that of those who have gone before and who are now close to God: I, now, can learn from St Theresa of Avila (1515-82), from St John of the Cross (1542-91), and from the late Michael Lonsdale (1931-2020).

·      Sins – offences against love, against God’s love – are grave but can and will be forgiven if that is sincerely asked for. 

·      We shall all die, but that death is not definitive. We too shall be resurrected, and with some sort of “body”, though we do not know where or with what kind of “body”.

·      And finally, if we truly want it, we will live in God’s presence (“Heaven”) where there is no such thing as time (“the life everlasting”).

 

This is not what the Church tells you to believe, but a complex of astounding truths it invites you to discover, to ponder, the pray about (on your mountain top, for instance), and eventually to take on board, with the extraordinary joy of knowing that you are loved: “Ransomed, Healed, Restored, Forgiven”. Every single day.

 

ALL IS REVEALED (?!)

In an ecclesiastical calendar not obsessed with Sundays, today is the Feast of the Epiphany. In France, people have to be reminded that it is not just the feast of the marzipan-filled cake with a bean in it: they come together all through the month of January “pour tirer les rois”, i.e. to draw the kings – to see who gets the bean (invariably a child, who gets a cardboard crown and gets to choose his queen or her king).
    Epiphany, as the local priest reminded us, is Revelation. Not in the sense of the Apocalypse: it is not the opening of a secret book, but the making clearer of something already partly known. It is, for once, a feast of and for scholars: the Three Kings were three Wise Men or Magi: they were scholars, probably from Persia, whose study of the constellations (the distinction between astronomy and astrology came later) had told them that a new king would be born in Judea. One wonders why that news was important enough to make them assemble strange gifts and mount their camels in the dead of winter. Something in their studies must have told them that this would be more than a new monarch in a foreign state: they clearly came prepared for something out of the ordinary. One almost wonders if they had read Isaiah.
    In any case, they were the first goyim, the first Gentiles, to see the new-born Meshiach. And so their feast celebrates the revelation of the Meshiach’s importance for people beyond the Jews, which was to be one of the keys of Yeshua’s preaching, of St Paul’s, and of the whole orientation of the early Church. If the Meshiach had just been a new King of Israel, he might have been important to the region but hardly beyond. Even if he had been an Isaic Meshiach strictly within the Jewish faith, his reputation might have filtered through to a Jewish diaspora throughout the Middle East, but Greeks, Turks and Romans would hardly have thought him relevant.
As it was, though, they ended up listening. And what they heard convinced a surprising number of them that this man, who had healed bodies and souls, who had loved Jews and Samaritans equally, and who had risen from the dead and eaten grilled fish with the living, was a) the Son of God and b) the incarnation of God’s love for the human race in its entirety; that he was the new Alliance, a rainbow that now extended over all the earth; that he was the new Torah, one that embraced not only Jews but any and all who welcomed it/him in faith.
    It also meant that unlike a second King David, who would syllogistically have been mortal and thus temporary, this Meshiach was and is still here: a forgiveness still accessible, a love and a healing still present, right here and now.
    And for those of us who are scholars, this feast is a comforting reminder that even the learned are not excluded from the New Alliance. For the Beatitudes mention the “poor in spirit”, ptochi to pneumati; but those are not necessarily poor in mind or learning: they are those who have humility, who realise that they have nothing to contribute to God and everything to receive from Him. And that, curiously, is something true scholars understand: for over a lifetime of study, the more one learns, the less one feels one truly knows. If we can learn to apply that humility to our humanity, we too my find a narrow gate and slip into the Kingdom of Heaven where we may meet, not only (as Eliot ironised) Sir Philip Sidney but the Three Magi themselves – who would have much to tell us.

JOYS WE FORGET

Rereading an old hymn the other day – humming it, remembering boyhood chapel services – I was suddenly struck by one line that leapt out at me. As Henry Francis Lyte wrote: “Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven,/ To his feet thy tribute bring;/ Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven,/ Who like me his praise should sing?”

And those past participle adjectives have been haunting me ever since.

            “Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven.” How many of us manage to remember that, and/or live as if it were true? What, in any case, does it mean, exactly? 

            Let’s begin with “Ransomed”. It’s a simpler way of saying “redeemed”, and much more understandable. We humans are all sinners. True, when we’re 16 we resent that thought, but as we grow older we realise that it’s perfectly true. If we were not we should live daily in perfect union with God. Obviously, we don’t. Some people are close; but we all sin, in the sense that we do not perfectly return God’s love. In so far as we sin, we give IOUs to Old Nick, who loves lending us opportunities to sin, as he collects paper from all of us in return. But: what happened, one unique time in Israel? Meshiach came, and bought all our debts, making Old Nick an offer he couldn’t refuse (much as he wanted to). What did he buy them with? His life, no less. So he, the Anointed one, the Son of God, risen from the dead, tore up our IOUs – and still does so, for all who entrust themselves to him. Hence we are bought back: Ransomed.We were hostages; we are free.

            “Healed.” A character in a Charles Morgan novel says to another, “The world is very sick, Mr Flower, but you will not cure the patient by kicking him out of bed.” We are sick, many if not all of us: sick unto death. Some of us know it, and awake each morning with a little less vigor, a little less taste for life, a little more gray sadness. Some of us don’t, and live feverish lives “distracted from distraction by distraction”, as Eliot put it. But do we remember that we were baptized? Alternatively, do we realise that we can be baptized? And that that very process heals us, at least begins a cure? A cure that, admittedly, needs to be completed by a daily life of practical thanksgiving, but a cure nonetheless. We are, we really are, Healed.

            “Restored.” Restored to what? Well, if we are both ransomed and healed, we are restored to freedom and health. Anyone who has spent any considerable time deprived of either of these knows what it means to be restored to them. It is the day you walk out of prison and know you can go anywhere in the morning sunshine. It is the day you walk out of hospital, or your sick-room, take a deep breath, listen to the birds, and walk and walk, because you can. Restored indeed.

            And finally perhaps the greatest, or at least the most moving. “Forgiven.” The hardest to remember, because we have been taught that, sinning as we do constantly, we keep needing to ask for forgiveness. “Forgive us our trespasses.” It seems utterly presumptuous to behave as if we had beenforgiven. And yet. We have been told, have we not, that if we sincerely repent and pray wewillbe forgiven. So we need to remind ourselves that even if the process will likely reoccur, we have beenforgiven. And someone who has been forgiven feels as if a huge weight is removed from bowed and lacerated shoulders. Stretches, curls, sighs, smiles, and leaps. Forgiven. What joy. 

            If we could believe all this, really. If we could live, one, or two, or three days a week as if all four of those adjectives were true and applied to us; would there not be a noticeable change in our behavior? Surely there would. Who, we might say, like us His praise should sing? I we were young enough, we might tattoo on the four fingers of one hand, R H R F . As it is, let us tattoo it in our consciousness.                      

NOT KING DAVID?

On many occasions in the Gospels, we are told that Yeshua travelled the length and breadth of the country preaching the eu-angelion, which in Greek means “the good message” but which, as Joseph Ratzinger has reminded us, can also mean something like “the authoritative message”, being used for messages from the king. I wonder how often we stop to consider what the content of that message might have been. 

   For later writers, the authors of the Gospels and the Pauline epistles, the answer seems obvious: the evangelium is Christ Himself. But what, at the time, was the content of His preaching? A hint – a very large hint – is given in what we call the Sermon on the Mount, which may in fact be the conflation of several preachings. It has to do with His relation to the Old Testament commandments, which are not to be abandoned but ‘fulfilled’: internalized, as the Ten Commandments are fulfilled/internalized in the Two. 

   This ‘matter’ of the Sermon is profound and of the greatest possible importance; but is it ‘good news’? I can imagine hearers going home having heard it, in a reflective frame of mind as they apply what they have heard to what they had been taught and then to their own lives; but do they go home rejoicing or, as the modern French Psalm translation puts it ‘quivering with joy’?

   I was led to this meditation by reading all the Old Testament, and particularly the Psalms’, mentions of ‘rejoicing’, ‘shouting and dancing for joy’, and comparing them to the behavior of most believing Christians I know, who tend to live their faith with a profound happiness perhaps but on a daily basis tend to be sober, slightly austere, somewhat worried, and more apt to say ‘Lord, I believe: help thou mine unbelief’ than to quiver with joy.

   Yeshua, of course, wrought miracles of healing almost constantly; yet it often strikes me that he doesn’t seem to consider it central to what his does. He frequently tells those he has healed to keep quiet about it, which in anyone but him would seem disingenuous but which in him seems sincere; on several occasions he forgives the patient his sins and only when challenged about that does he heal him, as an outward and visible sign comprehensible even to the dolts who disputed him.  When Yochanan the Baptist sends to know if he is really the Meshiach, he lists the miracles as evidence – again, not as the core of meaning but as outward and visible signs comprehensible to anyone. 

   So if the healing is the outward and visible sign, what is the inward and spiritual grace? It can only, I think, be the message that the long-awaited Meshiach, the Anointed – both king and priest – has now come; that He is here, in the here and now; that the anxious, hopeful but occasionally almost despairing, waiting is over.

   This must itself have caused a great deal of confusion as well as joy. After all, the general view of the Meshiach was that he would be a new King David, a great political and military leader who would liberate Israel from Roman rule; and here was an itinerant preacher with a small band of disciples, who heals the blind and the lame and comes from Dogpatch, claiming to be Him! Where are his divisions? Where are his battalions? Yet that seems to have been the reaction mainly of the Establishment: the crowds that followed him around the Sea of Galilee appear to have taken this redefinition of Messiahship in their stride. We know that part of his teaching – as in the Nazareth synagogue – was an explanation of his actions in terms of the Book of the prophet Isaiah, which would have at least in part made clear to his hearers that this new and real Meshiach was a king of humility, come to serve rather than be served, and who would not confine liberation to freeing Israel from the Romans but extend it outward to include all nations and deepen it to free people not from political oppressors but from the tyranny of sin.

   Once that sinks in, we can see the healing for what it was: a by-product and an outward and visible sign. What matters is that the Meshiach, who is the new Torah, is here, and that anyone who believes and trusts in him is, as Henry Lyte’s hymn wonderfully puts it, ‘ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven’. That is a matter for quivering with joy – almost unimaginable for reasonable and worldly adults living in a world that oscillates between catastrophe and cynicism. That is what we should meditate upon and ponder. It is eu-angelion: good news from an authoritative source. The ultimate good news from the ultimately authoritative source. Blow your mind.

early image of Christ from the Nunziatella Catacomb, Rome

(?3rd century AD)

NOT THE WILL TO POWER

Orthodox icon: Christ and Moses

In his meditation on the perfect all-purpose prayer, I imagine Yeshua, having hallowed the Name (Baruch HaShem) and expressed hope for the coming of the malkut, the kingship, the Reign, now turning to the Divine Will. This flowed naturally from its predecessor: if a king reigns, his subjects do his will. What is God’s will? The Hebrew ratzon, when linked to the Deity, leads one directly to the Torah: God’s Will for Israel – and, eventually, for humanity – is that they keep his commandments, his statues, his testimonies. By itself the prayer that this be done is large and seems adequate for a Divine instruction; but Yeshua here added “on earth as it is in heaven” (ba’arets ka’asher na’asah vashamayim). In a sense this multiplies it: we pray that His will may be done on earth, not imperfectly in our usual sloppy human way, but the way it is done in Heaven, in His own presence, where the Reign is eternal and accomplished. There, we may imagine, His will is naturally done; and since His nature is Love, the natural doing of His will is a permanent activity of love, involving all the inhabitants of Heaven. Although we cannot equal this, we can strive for it.

Whether, when he composed the prayer, he already knew it or not, Yeshua was (to be) the new Torah: the divine commandments became two, then eventually one: first, to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind and strength, and to love our neighbours as ourselves; then, simply, to love and follow Yeshua Meshiach in everything.

 For earthling humans, though, questions remain. If we are to help bring about that Reign where his Will is done, we nevertheless ask ourselves, on almost a daily basis, what God’s will is. In this or that situation, hypothetical, actual or urgent, what should A do? Similarly, and sometimes even more anguishingly, what, in all that happens, does so by God’s will? If we say to someone “I’ll see you next month, Deo volente”, what does that imply?

It is comforting for us to remember that Yeshua himself faced this problem. When, in Gethsemane, he prays that the bitter cup he faces may be taken from him, he ends, “Yet not as I will, but as Thou wilt”. In that case at least, the Father’s will was clear: the Son’s sacrifice had to be carried through to the end.

We are often, and rightly, taught not to confuse our desire with God’s will. Even in an apparently good cause, Deus vult is more often than not a projection and thus an error. Sometimes an attitude of suspicion, particularly toward ourselves, is salutary. On the other hand, neither should we fall into the trap of assuming the Divine will always to be the opposite of our own. It is independent of us, and of our desire. How to discern it, then?

I think that the best way is to remember the nature of the God who wills. His nature is Love. Whatever is congruent with Love at its highest may safely be considered congruent with His will. Which brings us back to the conflation of commandments in the new Alliance: 10 > 2 > 1. The eu-angelion, the authoritative good message, is precisely that: that doing God’s will is no longer a matter of memorising and following detailed rules, but of being definitively touched by the absolute, sacrificial Love of the Anointed One, and transforming one’s heart, mind and life accordingly. We are still stumbling earthlings, and will never do it as completely or as elegantly as the angels: but that, we may be assured, will be taken into account.

Once we have been touched by that Love, all we really need to do is (as I wrote before) to keep our shutters, our windows, and our doors wide open to the grace that is poured upon us unceasingly: Grace Abounding. It will fill us gradually, until perhaps one day, like Myriam Yeshua’s Mother, we will be gratia plena.