THOUGHT FOR THE DAY

For those who, despite the coming of the Paraclete, feel obscurely bereft after the Lord’s Ascension because He is no longer with us in the flesh:

Perhaps He has left it up to us to be Him in the flesh.

In compassion for the widow whose only son died;

In the forgiveness of the woman about to be stoned;

In the thought that produced those memorable images we call the Parables;

In the constant, unceasing prayer to the Father;

In the patience with the well-intentioned who act like idiots;

In the occasional flash of real anger at those who blaspheme the sacred;

and in the readiness to go the whole way if the world insists and it cannot be avoided;

Perhaps He has left it up to us to be Him, here, in the flesh.

OMG.

ἀγάπη

In the Church of England as it was, today is Quinquagesima Sunday, the last Sunday before Lent, and the Epistle is one everyone knows: 1 Corinthians 13. Everyone knows it; but as I reread it, I was struck all over again by the sheer power of the Authorized Version. I checked my Jerusalem Bible, often the best of the modern translations, but found it flabby and vulgar. So I thought I would put up the 1611 version in all its glory, so that we can all learn from it, reading it aloud: here, for once, the beauty of holiness and the holiness of beauty do not contradict one another.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal. 

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. 

And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.

Charity suffereth long, and is kind; 

charity envieth not; 

charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,  doth not behave itself unseemly, 

seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;  

rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; 

beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away. 

For we know in part, and we prophesy in part. But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: 

now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known. 

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.

Here is Cranmer's Collect that goes with it:

O Lord, who hast taught us that all our doings without charity are nothing worth; Send thy Holy Ghost, and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of charity, the very bond of peace and of all virtues, without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee; Grant this for thine only Son Jesus Christ's sake. Amen. 

And just in case that word "charity" for agapè still bothers us, here is the finest exposition of it I know:

Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,

                   Guiltie of dust and sinne.

But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack

                   From my first entrance in,

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,

                   If I lack’d any thing.

A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here:

                   Love said, You shall be he.

I the unkinde, ungratefull?  Ah my deare,

                   I cannot look on thee.

Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,

                   Who made the eyes but I?

Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame

                   Go where it doth deserve.

And know you not, sayes Love, who bore the blame?

                   My deare, then I will serve.

You must sit down, sayes Love, and taste my meat:

                   So I did sit and eat.* 

Whatever we each do about Lent and its usages, these three passages are as good a preparation for it as I can imagine.



*George Herbert, "Love (III)" from The Temple.

IT'S AMORE

As an elderly lawyer once said, “All this Love is a sad mistake.” I’ve had occasion to write before about being ordered to love, and the other day I cited Fr Jean-Kamel on pondering “with what love we are loved”. In English, and in French, these days it’s all quite simple. “Love. Love. All you need is Love.. Love is all you need.” From a rank enseamèd bed to New Age fluff, it’s a panacea if not a pangaea.

But if I take Fr Jean-Kamel’s enthusiastic cry as a real, not a rhetorical, question, I ask not De quel amour nous sommes aimés but De quel amour sommes-nous aimés? And I go to look at original texts, because the New Testament and the Old are full of love and charity but seem remarkably free of sentimentality.

“Charity” is now out of fashion except as a legal definition for tax purposes. In modern translations, it’s all “love”. But what is? In Koinè Greek (the sort of Greek spoken, often badly, all over the Mediterranean in Jesus’ time, like English today) there are three nouns for “love”: Eros, Agapè, and Philia. The writers of the New Testament tried hard not to let Eros into anything they wrote – well, they would, wouldn’t they? (We in our time know, to our cost, how hard it is to keep the little pest out of anything.) So they were left with Philia, a good Classical word for affection, as between spouses, really good friends, and parents & children (one hopes).  And they adopted a slightly less usual word derived from the verb “Agapao”, to which I’ll come back in a minute.

But most of these blokes were Jews and thought in Hebrew or Aramaic. So when they wrote about Philia and Agapè, what were they translating, if only in their minds?

Hebrew, bless it, has lots of words for love and affection. The most common are Ahab (which I’ve seen described as a love you feel, and feel spontaneously), Hesed (the love/loyalty belonging to a bond, a relationship: the love felt by God for Israel, and presumably the love referred to by Cordelia), and Racham (a compassionate love, one assumes the love felt by the Samaritan for the poor bloody victim of a mugging).

The thing we have to remember is that the authors of the Gospels were making up translations as they went along. So they used Philia for the love Jesus had for Lazarus – which was strong enough not only to have him resurrect Lazarus but to weep over his grave first. Jesus doesn’t weep a lot in the Gospels. So don’t knock Philia: it’s what you have for your three very closest friends, as well as for your 9-year-old and for your ageing parents whose lives you would trust them (the friends) with.

So what about Agapè? Well, the verb (agapao) is used in both the Great Commandments, for “loving” the Lord your God and “loving” your neighbour as yourself. But it also the verb used for Jesus’s relation to John: he was “the disciple that Jesus loved”. In the Church’s nervousness about avoiding Eros, it has often described “charity” (from caritas, the Latin translation of agapè) in rather bloodless and dutiful ways. Even “loving-kindness” doesn’t really cut it for most of us.

So I’ll share my own candidate, which seems to work in almost all cases, though still not easy in some (the First Commandment, for example). I would translate “agapao” as “to cherish”. Etymologically and intelligibly, it refers to something or someone (can work for both) that you “hold dear”, something or someone that you hug to you because you hold it/him/her dear beyond price. (“Dear” after all is the old word for “expensive, pricey”.) But “cherish” also has a massive feeling-content to it. “I cherish you” is something deep, rare, and fine to say to someone.

So de quel amour sommes-nous aimés, with what love are we loved, especially this Holy Thursday, tomorrow at the dreadful foot of the Cross, and on Sunday after the unimaginable? We are loved with a love that cherishes us. We are the ones – not just as a collectivity, like the Nation of Israel, but individually, like the wounded traveller, like the sad woman saved from stoning, like Lazarus trying to get used to daylight – we are ones the Maker of the Universe, our very own Father, cherishes.

To die for.