BE VERY CAREFUL

 

Fortunate are the merciful, for they shall experience mercy in return.

Makarioi hoi eleèmones, hoti autoi eleèthèsontai.

 

The Greek text translates with eleos the Hebrew chesèd (ch as in ‘loch’), one of the three words that could become English ‘mercy’. In one sense it can mean ‘kindness’, but not, like praios, as a character trait but rather as a form of action. Chesed is taking care of someone else’s need: Jonathan protects David from Saul in an act of chesed. It is always seen as reciprocal: someone who receives chesed from another is expected to return it. 

 

So this Beatitude does not really introduce something new or unexpected, but rather reminds the audience of the way conventional relationships ought to be. It is really a form of ‘do as you would be done by’. And yet it goes beyond that also. God shows chesed to his people, both collectively, as the people of Israel whom he feeds in the wilderness, and individually in persons such as Abraham, Jacob, David and Job. For human beings it is of course impossible to return this to the Father himself; but He expects them in return to show it to others. So there may well also in this Beatitude be a sense that those who are merciful to others may receive the mercy of the Father, just as in the Lord’s Prayer those who forgive others’ debts to them may receive the forgiveness of their own debts to the Father.

 

In Psalm 85/86:11, ‘Mercy and truth are met together’, it is chesed that is joined to emet; and the ‘truth’ that is also characteristic of the Father is not so much ‘truth’ in the sense of conformity to a factual norm as ‘truth’ in the sense of faithfulness, of being ‘true’ to a loved one, one’s lord, or one’s country. So if that is joined to chesed, it means that Fidelity is joined to Care. 

 

It is both interesting and useful to pursue these words a little, because the English word ‘mercy’ has a connotation of opposition to ‘justice’ which in this case is not present. Our ‘mercy’ is usually closer to ‘compassion’, which translates the Hebrew racham/rachamim. The latter is word that does not imply as much reciprocity as does chesed: its root is linked to the Hebrew word for ‘womb’, hence the otherwise curious English term ‘the bowels of compassion’. So in the case of the fifth Beatitude, one might almost translate the text as ‘Fortunate are those who care, for they shall experience care in return’. And one should always remember that this does not refer merely, or even especially, to human interactions only, but to the very real Care and aid we children receive from our Father in heaven, and which we must pass on.  

THE PRAYER OF THE HEART - CONTINUED

In my last post I ended with the Carthusian saying that, in the Prayer of the Heart, the heart itself is eventually transfigured by the Crucifixion and Resurrection: a saying that if it is not simplistic is extremely profound, complex and difficult. So I have been giving it some thought, and prayer, and I think that there is perhaps a way to understand it.

            Let’s begin with that word “transfigured”. it has dictionary meanings, but in the discourse of a contemplative monk it should be taken, surely, in a Biblical, Gospel sense. There is, in the Gospel, that moment when Yeshua goes up on a mountain – traditionally Mount Tabor, on the summit of which my daughter was married – with Peter, James and John. There, all of a sudden, he is “transfigured before them; his face shining as the sun, and his garments became white as the light." Moses and Elijah appear, talking with him (according to Luke, about his fatal journey to Jerusalem); the voice of God is heard, saying “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: listen to him.” When the terrified disciples eventually look up, Moses and Elijah have gone, and Yeshua is there looking normal and telling them not to be afraid.

            So “transfigured” implies a change not only of appearance but of nature: in the Gospel story, Yeshua’s brief and flaming change from human to divine and back again. In what way can our heart, then, be “transfigured” by the Crucifixion and Resurrection? Coming as it does after an astonishingly profound and beautiful chapter on the Prayer of the Heart and the silence that we must learn, not to create but to accept, I think this transfiguration is in a sense a reminder. The prayer of silence, it tells us, is not a cruise. It is not a peaceful, meditative, lengthy polishing of an ideal or higher self we are growing into (as it might be in Buddhism). As we are learning the prayer of the heart, the prayer of silence, the Crucifixion and Resurrection are there to add a necessary dimension of verticality, and a vivid reminder of suffering.

            I have thought a lot recently about the gradual transformation of Yeshua bar Yosef, teknon (builder) of Nazareth, into Yeshua the Meschiach, the Anointed (i.e. crowned) Saviour. Toward the middle or end of this process I seem to see something like a rage of compassion. As he looks around him with new, or gradually renewing, eyes what he sees is an ocean of suffering: I imagine him feeling like the only physician in Aleppo after weeks of bombing. It is of course a suffering he is destined wholly and entirely to share in what is perhaps the acme of his humanity.

            For us, that sharing is a message we cannot and must not evade. Yet in this context that message is not simple: it is not simply telling us to stop being Mary and become Martha. It is telling us that we must, in the midst of pursuing the prayer of the heart, let that very heart be transfigured, first by the Cross and then by Easter. The Cross will enrich our search by the hugeness of its suffering, by the enormity of its sacrifice, by the price of its blood. It will remind us that we are not embarked on a development of our self to greater heights and/or depths. We are embarked on a relationship that will lead us to places unknown and barely guessed at. And Easter, the Resurrection, will remind us that that relationship and the voyage it entails is one of our salvation, and thus of a scarcely imaginable joy.

            Coda:

           So many of these words have become counters in discourse. “Salvation”: what does it mean, really? Literally: to be safe, to end up safe, home free, saved from danger on every side, from the bullet that flies in the noonday, from the bomb that kills in the night, from the cancer that stalks us everywhere, from the inferno to which we consign ourselves daily in our great and small refusals of love. To be plucked from the jaws of peril and set down in a garden of pure raindrop love. But like Yeshua, we can only be resurrected if we go through death ourselves. That it is not eternal, not definitive, we proclaim in every recitation of the Creed. Learning the prayer of the heart may help us actually to believe this incredible promise.

THE PERFUME OF COMPASSION

The pure pleasure of reading Sr Emmanuelle Billoteau's meditation on Bernard of Clairvaux' interpreting the Song of Songs made me translate it for you. 

In his Sermons on the Song of Songs, St Bernard (1090-1153) describes three perfumes of the “Bride”, which remind us of the “fragrance of Christ” (II Cor. 2:15) which we are all called to spread where we live.

In the Song of Songs, i.e. the song par excellence, according to Origen, perfumes are often mentioned: that of the (male) Beloved, identified by Jewish and Christian tradition as God or as Christ (SS 1:3); that of the (female) Beloved, understood as the type of Israel, of the Church, or of the individual soul (SS 1:12).

            St Bernard (12^th century) identifies three kinds of perfume relating to the “Bride”. “The first is that of contrition, which covers a multitude of sins . . . the second is that of fervour which contains a multitude of blessings”. As for the third, it is the “perfume of compassion”. While the first two touch our relation to God, the third perfume includes the other. In this, Bernard is faithful to the dynamic of the Song: the latter does speak of an eminently personal and intense relation to God, but never conceives that relation as intimist or exclusive, without the presence of a third party and of an openness to the universal – for instance, to those who do not share the same faith.

           

Contrition, fervour and compassion

The first of the perfumes, then, relates to sins, to our lack of love. “The soul,” says our author,  “gathers them, piles them and grinds them in the mortar of its conscience . . .then it burns them, as it were, in the fire of repentance . . . in the vessel of its flaming heart.” In other words, even our failures can be integrated into the offering of ourselves that we make to God.

            The second perfume is made up of nobler essences. “They are the blessings which God grants to the human race.” These will be “crushed” and “ground . . . in the mortar of the heart by the pestle of frequent meditation, and cooked all together on the fire of a holy longing.”  While God does not despise a broken and a contrite heart (Ps 51:19), he is honoured by the sacrifice of our praise (Ps 50:23).

            Nevertheless, for St Bernard the perfume most precious in God’s eyes is that of compassion. “It is made up of the indigence of the poor, the anguish of the oppressed, the distress of the afflicted, the faults of sinners, and in sum of all the pains of the unhappy, whoever they are, even our enemies.” He points out that while the essences of which it is composed may be “contemptible”, the resulting perfume “overgoes all scents”. It is a perfume that everyone may exude in one way or another: directly through concrete actions on a larger or a smaller scale; indirectly through prayer.

A spiritual life

           So let us not hesitate to practice patience towards those close to us, to comfort those who cross our path, to practice mercy, to show generosity . . . In all of this, what we are dealing with is a spiritual life, i.e. a life moved by the Holy Spirit who is “the love of God poured out in our hearts” (Rom. 5:5). Bernard shows us Biblical characters who have exuded this last perfume: Paul saying “Who is weak, and I am not weak?” (II Cor. 11:29); Job who says that he has been “eyes to the blind and feet to the lame” (Job 29:15-17); Joseph who forgave his brothers (Gen. 43:30); David sparing Saul who had tried to kill him (I Sam. 24) and weeping at his death (II Sam. 1:17-27) . . .

            Bernard, then, suggests to us a way of life based on the Scriptures, read not according to the letter but according to the spirit. Thus he initiates us into a fragrant reading which grows with time, with acquired familiarity, and with the deepening of conversion’s way.

OH SAY, CAN YOU SEE?

It is an old, a classic, and indeed even on occasion a Biblical saying that God is invisible. But maybe He fixed all that.

First of all, He sent His only-begotten Son among us in the form – indeed in the fleshly reality – of an ordinary bloke, Josh the carpenter from Slough. Who gradually became known to more an more people as Josh the Preacher, as Josh the Healer, as Josh the Holy Man, and finally as the Son of God. So in him, God had made Himself visible, touchable, talkable-to. (As a fine Canadian Jewish poet once said to me over dinner, “Come on, Roger, Jesus is my brother. But God??? My brother farts. Does God fart?” And I said, “Yup.”)

But then, He went a stage further. This same Jesus said, on several occasions, “Whatever you do to, or for, any of these people, you do to, or for, me.” The Samaritan did it for the traveller: he did it for Jesus. And Jesus is (the Son of) God. The second Person of the Trinity. So here is the new syllogism: Premise 1 – Whatever you do for a person in need, you do for Jesus. Premise 2 – Jesus is God. Conclusion – every human being, at least in the mode of need, is Jesus, i.e. (the Son of) God.

The mode of need is the key. On the lowest level, it means that those in the greatest need, those suffering most, have priority. The stockbroker down the street doesn’t need my fifty Euros: the old woman who can’t pay her electricity bill and shivers, does.

But there are other levels, and simultaneously. The stockbroker may be well off financially, but he may have just learned that he, or his beloved wife, has cancer. As he drives distractedly to work, in a dense fog of misery, he too is in the mode of need; he too, for you or me, is Jesus, i.e. (the Son of) God.

There are harder levels still. The stockbroker may be a shit. He may behave vilely to others, he may be odious politically, he may be a homophobic anti-Semite who insults Africans (or a gay African Jew who defends ISIS), he may beat his wife and cheat his clients. What made him that way? Is he beyond hope? Perhaps he is; perhaps he has built for his own soul the Hell it will spend eternity in. God (as we say) knows. But do we? Do we know for certain that there is not a corner of his miserable being that is in raging need-mode? If there is, that tiny corner of him is Jesus, i.e. (the Son of) God.

These are extrapolations, of course. But Jesus started it: he it was who originally made the equivalence. And in doing so, he invited us to make it also.

And he didn’t tell us at what level, if any, to stop. Look at his own behaviour. The look of infinite sadness he gave Judas as Judas got up from the dinner table and made for the door. The look of profound, if ironic, sympathy he gave Pontius Pilate, standing before him in a ridiculous bloodstained cape with a circle of thorns on his head. And the prayer he made for the bored, tired and depressed soldiers hammering nails through his hands and feet. (“Another day, another cross. Get me out of this horrible country. Get me out of the army.”) He doesn’t seem to have acknowledged limits.

An Internet meme I’ve shared says, “Every stranger you meet is going through a terrible battle you know nothing about.” That seems to sum it up. Paradoxically, the mode of need is what makes God visible. Every day. On the bus. In the shop. Waiting to be clothed, fed, helped, respected, loved. What a curious faith we Christians have.

HORROR -- MERCY

I was going to juxtapose an image of Daech (ISIS/ISIL) beheading, but could not bring myself to. Imagine it, in relation to Grünewald's Crucifixion, and to this post.

Father, they slaughter and behead --

We wail barbarity and sin --

Outraged and chilled, we count the dead --

What do you see, who look within?

You whom no man had ever seen --

You sent your Son, that we might know --

He touched our souls and they were green --

What do you see, who look below?

We took him and we whipped him well --

We nailed him up -- such was his bond --

Dying for us, with us to dwell --

What do you see, who look beyond?

And yet he rose and walks the earth --

To weary pilgrims still a guide --

Giving his treasure to our dearth --

What do you see, who look beside?

In every body washed ashore --

In every soul that lives in hell --

We meet your Son for ever more --

What do you see, who know us well?

Their cruelty may ravage on --

The depth of Heaven knows your tears --

But we must pass your mercy on --

For Him who sees, and loves, and hears.

RK

Image: Matthias Grünewald, outside of the Isenheim Altarpiece (ca. 1515)