GHOST

 

 

He is the oddity in the Trinity: like Winnie the Pooh’s East Pole, people don’t seem to like to talk about him. Well, Anglicans and Catholics, annyway. He is an ancient embarrassment: it was he, after all, who was at the origin of the notorious filioque clause, on account of which rival groups of medieval monks came to blows. Does he, did he, “proceed from” the Father, or from the Father filioque “and the Son”? The author of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles (Luke?), on the other hand, is quite at home with him: Pentecost/Whitsun is his feast. Genesis says that he was there at the beginning: like a vast and formless fowl he “brooded over the waters” of the tohu-wa-bohu, the primeval chaos. “By him, all things were made;” yet at the same time he “bloweth where he listeth” and none can tell whence he comes and whither he goes. 

            St Ephrem of Syria was called his harp. Perhaps his wind-harp, sounding as he passed. And there is always in meditations on him a sense of air moving. He is ruach in Hebrew, pneuma in Greek, spiritus in Latin: in each case words of three meanings, “breath”, “wind or breeze” and “spirit”. (Our, or rather Cranmer’s, “ghost” comes from the Old English gast, linked to German geist, always a spirit.) In John 20:22 the resurrected Yeshua gives him to the disciples: “and then he breathed on them and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost”.

            Theologians tell us that he is the love between the Father and the Son. This ties him closely to both, and reminds us that love is the language, the essence, of the Deity; but in no way does it enable, or even encourage, us to regard him as a person. This is a bother in prayer. Do we pray to him? We can pray to the Father; we can pray to the Son; but can we pray to (someone who is) a relation(ship)?

            Strangely, I think we can. It does, of course, seem presumptuous; but no more so that praying to the Creator of everything the Webb telescope sees as if he were our dad, and no more so than calling upon the Resurrected King of Peace and informing him that I, a breadcrumb on the skirt of the universe, have sinned today. If we can forget scale, and address him firmly but humbly, experience has convinced me that he listens. If we ask him for such things as he is not only able but willing to give, we shall usually receive them: guidance, for instance; direction; love where we lack it; discernment; and courage. 

            And as this happens, and goes on happening, in our nighs and quiet moments, we do gradually get a sense of a person on the other end of the line. A person who rarely speaks in words, but who sometimes forms a perfectly clear idea or response to the eye of our mind. One surprising example: one night, I asked him to help me, a former Protestant, better to understand the cult of the Blessed Virgin Mary. There was silence, both aural and visual; then, suddenly and briefly, a clear vision of a deep well in time, at the bottom of which I saw a clearly prehistoric, clearly female, hand reach out and make fire, and light some kind of primitive candle or oil-lamp. That was all; but it was a clear response, and equally clearly it was up to me to make sense of it. I should be hard put to it to explain it; but my feeling of having understood was, and is, entire. 

            When I need him, I call upon him; and if his answers are never simple, he has never let me down. 

            Accende lumen sensibus:                    unto our senses strike the light
            Infunde amorem cordibus:                 abundant love pour in our hearts
            Infirma nostri corporis                        shore up our bodies’ weakness now
            Virtute firmans perpeti.                      with virtue that will bend nor end. 

 

(from Hrabanus Maurus’s glorious 9^th-century hymn Veni creator Spiritus)

 

IS NOTHING SACRED?

There has been a great deal of noise, most of it generous, in the wake of the killings in France. It seemed useful to ponder a little on the deeper issues, some of which were raised by the Tunisian thinker and essayist Mezri Haddad in a recent article. Apart from immediate political arguments, his chief point was that Western civilisation in its post-Enlightenment form depends on “the de-sacralisation of the sacred”. So is this true, and if so, what does it mean and what does it imply?

The OED’s chief definition of sacred is: “Of things, places, of persons and their offices, etc.: Set apart for or dedicated to some religious purpose, and hence entitled to veneration or religious respect; made holy by association with a god or other object of worship; consecrated, hallowed.” For the related “holy” definitions are longer and multiple, but they all concur in the meaning of “set apart, set aside, dedicated to veneration or worship”, culminating in the moral and spiritual perfection of God (in Christianity, but, I believe, also in Judaism and Islam).

Haddad’s phrase, clearly, is not meant literally in this sense. His invoking the Enlightenment is a clue. What, I think, he means is that in a post-Enlightenment society no specific object or belief can be considered sacred to, and its veneration therefore binding on, everybody, except (a respectful) freedom.

In the last few days, the outpouring of solidarity with Charlie Hebdo and its murdered contributors has made this seem obvious; and yet it is not, nor should it be. It is obvious only to the superficial. Nothing – no thing – is sacred: yet I have the greatest sympathy for the outrage of ordinary Catholic Dutchmen in 1556 when gleeful bands of supposed Reformers profaned and destroyed their beloved statues of the Virgin and Child. I have no sympathy whatever for the Inquisition; yet if one believes that certain statements of faith represent objective truth, those who attempt to turn others to unbelief are worse than murderers – a murderer kills only your body, a heretic murders your immortal soul for eternity. Mezri Haddad says, rightly, that the Prophet himself would have disallowed considering him as sacred, for only God the Almighty is so. And yet millions of ordinary Muslims consider him “entitled to veneration or religious respect” as ordinary Catholics do a representation of the Blessed Virgin Mary; so that while to insult that respect may not be a crime, it is certainly a blunder.

Several issues intersect here, and should not be confused. In the first place there is the issue of respect. Again, it seems obvious that one should respect what another holds sacred; yet what to do when faced with those who in the name of what they claim to hold sacred maim, torture and slaughter others? As the caption beneath a recent drawing of a Kalashnikov read, “Ceci n’est pas une religion” – this is not a religion.

We might think that in such a case it is better to fight with reason and education (and an efficient secret service); but in every age and especially in France there are those for whom the best weapon against the barbarians claiming religion and/or authority is laughter. When faced with others whose culture knows no irony, these take a grave risk; but it is theirs to take.

What has the Enlightenment brought to Christianity? A conviction that our faith cannot be forced on unbelievers; that if (as we hope) it is one day to become universal, that shall happen by acceptance and not by conquest; that no persuasion, metaphysical, social, or political, shall be allowed to dominate the public sphere; that no thing is sacred; that all faith shall be considered private but as such inviolable. Moreover, a sense that when the ill-bred, the ill-intentioned, the ignorant and the busy mockers invade our religion and attempt to provoke us to retaliation, we are not touched in what is essential and we can say “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.”

We should, however, be aware that other religions, other cultures, have not necessarily gone through an Enlightenment, and that in a globalized world we increasingly live cheek by jowl with them. We may think that it would be good if some of what Kenneth Clark called “the smile of Reason” should rub off on them; but meanwhile a certain caution and a certain respect should perhaps rule our actions, our words (more about those later), and even our drawings.

( Test your tolerance. For those who have only seen the Mohammed drawings: this was Charlie Hebdo's cover on the gay marriage controversy. Mgr Vingt-Trois is the Cardinal Archbishop of France. "Mgr Vingt-Trois has 3 daddies". )