DIFFICULT QUESTIONS. PRAY FOR DISCERNMENT . . .

I have been reading the second volume of Pope Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth, on Holy Week, the Passion and the Resurrection, and find it staggering in its intelligence and understanding. I will be putting up a few quotations here from time to time,  but for now I’m just trying to come to terms with what it has made me understand, or understand better.

For example, the Last Supper. While Mark, Matthew and Luke see it as a Passover meal, John does not. Benedict, I think intelligently, agrees with John, as the Jewish authorities themselves at one point say, “We can’t arrest and kill him on the feast” (of Passover) as they were afraid it would cause riots and might in any case be seen as blasphemous. However, as one scholar B cites puts it, Jesus knows he is going to die, and as he is now himself both priest and sacrificial victim, he institutes a new Passover on the night before the old official one. The Last Supper is the institution of the new Passover. And the early Church understood the intense link between the Last Supper and the Resurrection in instituting the “breaking of bread”, i.e. the first Eucharist, on the morning of the Resurrection, i.e. the “first day of the week”, Sunday.

Jesus as “priest and victim both” of a new Passover leads to another thought. Our local parish priest Jean-Kamel regularly insists on the fact that "at your baptism you were made a priest, a prophet, and a king!” He is referring, of course, to 1 Peter 2:9, as well as  Exodus 19:5–6, First Peter 2:4–8, Book of Revelation 1:4–6, 5:6–10, and the Epistle to the Hebrews. He uses this mainly to encourage the congregation to witness and evangelisation (as I said earlier, he is a convert, and an enthusiastic and somewhat charismatic one). It does, though, raise the old question, more urgent in and since Luther, of the “priesthood of all believers”. This is mainly a Protestant concept, yet the Catholic church accepts it also – as long as it doesn’t interfere with the ordained priesthood.

It leads me to two questions. First: if Jesus is priest and victim in his Passover, i.e. his crucifixion and resurrection, is the “priest” that I am also priest and victim in my own little Passover? After all, I shall die, and as a believer I am promised a resurrection. Is that process my own Passover, and part of my imitatio Christi? If so, to be true my Passover, like his, must be in some way and measure for others. Second, if I am by my baptism a priest, does that allow me – for example, in an extreme situation where no ordained priest is present – to consecrate bread and wine and forgive sins? If so, my faith has just taken on a huge new dimension of seriousness and responsibility.

But if the answer to both those questions is No, then what Jean-Kamel tells us is simply a figure of speech, an edifying image. A priest? Well, no. A prophet? Not really. A king? You’re kidding.

This links up with all sorts of other difficult questions, like the ones developed in Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory; but those will have to wait for another time.

A FRENCH HERMIT ON A GALILEAN LOCUST-EATER

Piero della Francesca, Baptism of Christ

From time to time I have had occasion to cite, to quote, and to express my admiration for, Sœur Emmanuelle Billoteau, a Benedictine hermit from Provence who periodically provides comments on the daily readings in that admirable French booklet Prions en Eglise.  This Sunday, the first after Epiphany, I found her meditation on the reading from the Gospel of John instructive enough to translate it here.

AND I KNEW HIM NOT

John I:29-34

“The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me: for he was before me. And I knew him not: but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water.’ And John bare record, saying, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God.’”

The story of John the Baptist is that of a revelation received from God. John has been able to recognise him whom it was his mission to announce. The text bears the mark of wonder, the fruit of a lived experience. As a privileged witness, John is the spokesman of the Evangelist.

Observation

John’s verses provide a key for reading the whole of the gospel. They contain a teaching of great density concerning this Jesus who comes to John. In citing the faith in the pre-existence of the Word, “before I was, He was”, the Baptist embraces equally the time of Jesus’ earthly life and its beyond, with the evocation of the Paschal mystery, the gift of the Spirit, and the glorification. A sequence we can follow by means of the names given to Jesus: “Lamb of God”; he who “baptises in the Spirit”; “Son of God”. The first of these titles refers us back to the sacrificial ritual of the Temple, with its burnt offering, to the Paschal lamb the blood of which protected the children of Israel at their departure from Egypt, and to the triumphant lamb of the Jewish apocalypses of the inter-testamentary period (from the 5th century BCE to the 1st century CE).

Meditation

In pointing us back to the Paschal mystery, the highest point of the revelation of God’s love, John the Evangelist reminds us that strength is deployed in weakness. Thus the royalty of Christ, the triumphant Lamb, is not conquered according to the usual human modalities, through force and violence. The way God has chosen for the establishing of his Kingdom, which “is not of this world” (Jn 18:36), is that of humility, of the love that proposes and exposes itself. It is in the self-humbling of the Son that the Spirit revealed himself by resting upon Him. And it is the Spirit, the gift of his Passover, who gives us access to the confession of His sonship by the renewal of our intelligence. Which allows us to pass from a partial knowing to an ever more profound knowing of the mystery of the Son, our discovering of which is never-ending. So we should do well to beg the Father to make us open ourselves to the Spirit, so that he may guide us to the whole and entire Truth.

IN THE CARMEL OF BANGUI, A NURSERY OF 4,000 REFUGEES

                                                           

This is a translation of a letter of 18 January 2015 that appeared in the French daily La Croix, from Fr Federico, a Discalced Carmelite whose monastery in the Central African Republic is hosting thousands of people fleeing from the civil war. I found it moving and inspiring enough to publish it here – in part as an antidote to the horrors we are daily fed from around the world.

Very dear friends,

     It’s a little late to give you a Christmas story, but here in the Carmel of Bangui, for more than a year now it’s as if it was Christmas all the time.

     In the morning of December 5, 2013, towards the end of the Mass, the sound of artillery mixed itself with the chant of our prayers. That day, apart from the looting and the houses burnt down, 500 people were killed in various parts of the city. Soon afterwards, thousands of people arrived in our monastery. Before we knew what was happening, it was transformed into a huge nursery.

     That nursery is still there. Although the number of little ones has diminished, there are still about 4,000 people, who remain very attached to us. From time to time we remember with some nostalgia those first months when the children slept in our church, the women gave birth in the refectory, and we ate rice and beans in the dormitory corridor.  John of the Cross, the first child born in the Carmel, now walks on his own two feet and is starting to speak a few words. How beautiful it will be, one day, to tell him his own story.

     We are still amazed that so far we have been able to reconcile the demands, more or less rigorous, of a Carmelite monastery with the equally legitimate needs of thousands of refugees.  Today we are so used to their presence that we wonder how we spent our days before they came, when we were a “normal monastery”. We would almost suggest that every monastery or convent host some refugees, if only for a few months, in order to experience the good that their presence does to the life of the community, to recover the enthusiasm and to start over with a fresh liveliness.

     The main change since then has been the new setup of many tents, no longer attached to the monastery but a little further away, about 100 feet. We regret a little not having them as close as before. The refugees have given their new tents grand names, like “Noah’s Ark”, “Solomon’s Temple”, “The White House” . . . The International Red Cross has done a careful census with high-tech methods. Each head of a family has received a card with photographs and a bar-code. According to the census, there are more than a thousand family groups in our camp.

     For December 5 of last year, we thought that the best way to celebrate the anniversary of the events would be to have a Mass for the dead: the victims of the war, those who died to make peace and those who died of sickness here among us, old people and some children. At the time of the offertory, our guests had prepared a beautiful surprise for us, as if they wanted to offer their contribution and to beg us to continue a little longer this miracle of the loaves. All the heads of the various zones of the camp organised a dance and brought gifts for the community: bread and wine, fish, eggs, bananas, tomatoes, cucumbers and coloured fabrics (which would be transformed into twelve shirts – one for each brother) . . .  How this offering tasted of the Gospel!

     Giving a gift to a poor person is a beautiful thing, to which we are accustomed, which gives the feeling of helping to save humanity, and which inculcates peace of the soul; but receiving a gift from a poor person is quite a different thing, which happens when one least expects it and which gives you goosebumps and brings tears to your eyes.

When Christmas approached, the dream of giving a little present to each child almost gave us sleepless nights. Then came the miracle. In the afternoon of December 24, twenty serious well-dressed gentlemen arrived at the monastery. They were part of a Central African association unknown to us. They got out of their cars with five large crates and told us “We have brought you 1,600 toys for the children between 1 and 5 years old. Please distribute them as soon as you can.” Then those distinguished gentlemen, sent by Heaven knows whom, disappeared as they had come. It seemed surreal. In a little over an hour we distributed the presents and wished a Happy Christmas to all our refugees. I have to say that at that moment I would not have wished to be anywhere else in the world than here with my brothers and with these people.

     Afterwards, we celebrated Midnight Mass at 7 PM, which was already a sign of peace, for in 2013 we had had to move it up to 3 PM because of the war. On Christmas morning we celebrated a dozen baptisms. This is exceptional, for our church is not a parish. For me, a rather improvised and autodidact missionary, they were the first baptisms I administered in Africa. Among the baptised, there was a John of the Cross, a Theresa, an Edith, a Joseph . . . the Carmelite heaven can rejoice! Some Italian soldiers, led by Colonel Renna, were present also. After the celebration, they unloaded from their armoured cars balloons, felt-tips, colouring books and crayons, given by soldiers from Casale Monferrato, from Turin and from Como.

     In the night, there was another surprise. It was 1.30 AM and we were all asleep, when I was called to the door. A woman was about to give birth. I ran to wake Aristide, our novice and competent male nurse. After examining the woman, he told me that there isn’t time to get to hospital, as the birth was about to happen. So our roles were reversed: Aristide became the novice-master and I the novice (a little shaken, to be honest). In a few moments, the chapter-house was transformed into delivery room. We even had a wooden trumpet to listen to the baby’s heartbeat.

     An older woman, mother of eight children, sat down beside the woman in labour. While her rough hands told a worn rosary, she gave useful advice on how to push, how to breathe, and other matters I had not learnt during my theological studies. Her serenity was impressive, as if she knew the exact moment when the baby would be born. The mother gave no cry, she uttered only invocations and prayers, as if she did not want to trouble the silence of the monastery. Then a magnificent little girl came into the world. After the cutting of the umbilical cord, the newborn was given to the older woman who cleaned her, dressed her and received her, as if a chain of generations, of wisdom and womanhood needed to look each other in the eyes and hold each other, to continue the cycle of life. At that moment it was the father’s turn. He gather up the placenta and the umbilical cord to bury them: an ancestral rite to encourage fertility.

     It was nearly dawn. In a few moments the bell would call us to prayer. We went to the library where there is a weighing-scale. I put the little girl on the scales. How romantic our Bethlehem is! There are no angels, no shepherds, no Magi from the East; but there are books by Plato, the Treatises of St Augustine, and the Summa theologica of St Thomas Aquinas. Then I looked at the needle of the scales: 3,500 grams of life, of hope and of peace.