AND THOU CONTINUEST HOLY

 

Periodically, in or after my daily prayers, I think “This is all very well, but one can’t always be asking.” Well, there is the giving of thanks, too, and that is both joyful and healthy; but, something whispers, isn’t it still all about me? Not always – sometimes I give thanks for the healing of a friend or relative; but even that raises nagging questions about whether God micromanages His creation. What one would like is a prayer that isn’t about what happens to us. 

The Church teaches us that there is such a prayer: the prayer of adoration. Here, we do not ask for something; we do not give thanks for something; we simply adore God for what He is, for the fact that He is, for the ways in which He is. The prayer of adoration can fix itself upon an object, a monstrance with a consecrated wafer, or a crucifix, but it doesn’t have to do so: we can contemplate God in our heart and an outpouring of joy and delight can result. 

It is, of course, not the kind of prayer which, as children, we are taught; and so it can be hard at first to get used to it. First of all, it takes time and leisure. I’ve often thought that it would be good to have, as an acquaintance of mine with a château does, a small chapel in one’s house: one could retire there for half an hour at some point during the day or evening and shut out the world to concentrate. But lately I have found that the second part of the night, when sleep is intermittent and lighter, is a good time to point one’s mind to a certain kind of prayer and meditation. 

And in one such moment recently, a prayer of adoration suggested itself. I remembered the “map” of the Universe published by astronomers a few years ago and its immensity, and it made me think of the Creator of all that; and there swam into my mind the moving text from the terrible Psalm 22, the “crucifixion Psalm”: “and thou continuest holy”. In spite of what I may be going through; in spite of the pain in the world, “thou continuest holy”. In spite of our requests, our thanksgivings, “thou continuest holy”.

Putting these two things together, I try to imagine the Creator of that Universe: is He bigger than it? Smaller than it? Non-dimensional entirely and thus unimaginable? Whichever of those, “thou continuest holy”. And then I added the fact that His nature is Love, and imagined that within Himself, in other words, within the Trinity: as a permanent whirlwind of cosmic Love between Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And with that imagining, my prayer of adoration came as naturally as water from a spring. What glory!

“Thou continuest holy.”    

NO PEACE FOR THE FAITHFUL

In Luke 24:35, Yeshua appears to the disciples even as Cleopas and his friend finish recounting their experience at the inn in Emmaus. He is suddenly there, in the way he has now, after the Resurrection, but which he had also had from time to time before, of moving in ways not common to ordinary earthlings. He is there, we may imagine with a friendly smile, and he says “Shalom!”

            The commentators tend to make much of this pax vobiscum, this “peace be with you!”, this “Que la paix soit avec vous!” But it was, as it still is, also simply a way of saying Hello. Nevertheless, it does have the unemphasised but real weight of shalom, that vast and wonderful condition we translate, inadequately,  as “peace”. It is the almost cosmic peace that results from perfect harmony, from God being in His heaven and all being right with the world; of everything and everybody in the right place, doing what God intends them to do. The peace that results from that harmony being played in the key of Love. Every little peace we make makes us “peacemakers”, who are Blessed in the Beatitudes.

            It has been a long time since the need for inner peace was as urgent as it is now. Daily, we hear that the need is not only for more nurses and hospital workers, but for psychologists and psychiatrists. The pandemic is wearing us down and Christians are not immune. So I find it alarming to see devout commentators whom I have long admired now once again insisting that no, shalom does not mean well-being, it does not mean comfort, it means taking up your cross and suffering with the Meshiach like a true disciple, it means turning your life upside down. 

            Most people are not starving swineherds with boils. There are those – always too many – who live from day to day in precarious misery, and Christians should help them in every way they can. But to assume, as preachers and commentators regularly do, that the faithful are mainly comfortable rentiers who direly need their billowy parts booted is an error that especially now causes real pain. The churches, as we know, are emptying, and so far the pandemic does not, surprisingly, seem to have reversed that trend. Could it be, in part, because they are no longer offering comfort? They are not donors, purveyors, spreaders of shalom; instead they are unrepentant purveyors of unrest, challenging believers to get off their behinds and make shalom themselves in the world. 

            This is not in itself wrong: as St Teresa of Ávila said, the only hands God has in the world are ours. But when thousands are suffering inward misery, stress, depression, frustration and grief, it might not come amiss for those who bring the word to the faithful and beyond to remind everyone of those other words: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give you rest . . . for my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” (Mt 11:28-30) 

 

SO WHAT DO YOU GO HOME WITH?

 

 

Trying to sum up the Sermon on the Mount is like trying to put Paris into a bottle. Which doesn’t mean one might not try. The reason for undertaking it is that, however it was originally delivered, it has been passed on as a single if complex discourse, and it does sum up Yeshua’s teaching, the eu-angelion, the Good as well as the Authoritative Message, better than almost anything. And it matters.

 

So let us look back over it all and try to imagine what a good but not necessarily sophisticated listener, there on that truly lovely hill, full of flowers and overlooking Lake Kinneret, might have taken away on his or her way home, and remembered in the next few days. Remember it would have been part, not all, of their memory of the man: the healing he performed was in some ways more spectacular. But if the Meshiach’s task was to redeem Israel, and the ‘nations’, from the appalling condition of the systemic refusal of, or indifference to, the Father’s love – i.e. sin -- , then the two pillars of that task were Healing and Teaching, and the essence of the Teaching is in the Sermon. So what, finally, does it amount to?

 

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. 

 

Perhaps we can break it down into who we should try to BE and what we should try to DO. 

 

Who we should try to be is:

·      simple people, going about our lives, doing our work, kind, caring, with our heart clean and uncluttered. 

·      Feet on the ground, pragmatic, using our mind for discernment, fair and trustworthy. 

·      Not boring: we should be good company, amusing, interesting, but discreet – not showing off. 

What should we do? 

·      Know that we have been redeemed (bought back, ransomed) at a great price and so give thanks daily. 

·      Make shalom whenever and wherever we can, in small things as in large.

·       Avoid like the plague the Pandora’s boxes of ira (rage) and luxuria (lust), and avoid judging our neighbours’ faults before we have judged our own. 

·      Do unto others as we would have them do unto us. 

·      Keep Yeshua before our eyes all the time, integrate His teaching completely into our selves, get our priorities straight: seek FIRST the Kingdom, at all times. 

·      Don’t be fooled by wide and easy gates and spiritual snake-oil salesmen: build our house on His rock. 

·      Pray, inwardly, all the time, in any way we can, from the simplicity of Brother Lawrence to the sublimity of St Teresa of Ávila.  

 

An example of the simple, pragmatic, caring person is the Samaritan businessman. Levi the tax-collector, with whom Yeshua dined, was probably witty and amusing, even after his metanoia.

Notice that there are very few mystics here, and no sentimentalists. Even the glorious St Teresa was, as she herself relates, a simple, solid, hardworking nun, unimaginative by nature if given to fetching images from daily life. And she said that for people living in the world (not in a convent) simple and constant prayer without aspiration to mysticism is much the best way to salvation.

So finally: do your job, pray a lot, and make shalom. And find consolation, and joy, growing unobtrusively but gloriously, on your path.

GOOD GRIEF

 Makarioi hoi penthountes, hoti autoi paraklèthèsontai. ”Fortunate are they that mourn: for they shall be consoled.”

            Very different from the first Beatitude, this one. It refers, not to the nature or character of the fortunate ones, but to a condition arising from a specific situation. 

 

            The situation involving the verb pentheō is usually death; and the root of the consoling verb is the same as that of the Paraclete: the Defender sent to help us when we are the prisoner at the bar: the Holy Spirit. This may help us understand what is meant. All of us are mortal; hence all of us except the loneliest will at some time be mourners. Mourning is not the same as grief: it is a reaction to grief. Psychologists speak of the “work of mourning” – a task that needs to be undertaken and accomplished before life can go on. And in traditional societies it is a very outwardly-evident work, undertaken collectively by family, friends and acquaintances; visible and audible in wearing black (or, in the Far East, white) and keening or wailing, in keeping vigil, in sitting Shiva: a work of the community of which the deceased was a part. This is added to, and partly absorbs, the individual grief of the nearest and dearest, thus already providing a level of consolation: a sorrow shared is a sorrow halved or at least reduced.

 

            Beyond this comes the Paraklètos. Why, here, a Defender? A friend summoned to help us in court? In the modern, psychological sense because guilt is always a part of mourning. We feel we could have, should have, been closer, more supporting, more positive, a better friend, lover, spouse to the deceased. In mourning, a part of us is always the prisoner at the bar. And the Judge is He ‘in whose sight no man living is justified’. As always, for now, He is silent, which only increases our apprehension. Someone once wrote that Hell is the confirmation of all our worst thoughts about ourselves as  definitively true.

 

            But here comes the Defender. As invisible to earthly eyes as the Judge, he wraps himself around us and brings to remembrance all that is good in us, and notably the fact that we have been bought back – at a high price. Bought back: “redeemed”, like a pledge, or a hostage. And bought back by that other Person of the Trinity: the Judge’s own Son. If we were worth buying back, redeeming, by him at the cost of his own life, and if we recognise and accept that, then surely, says the Defender, we are free? Free, and consoled. For moreover, those for whom we mourned are now in the direct presence and care of Him who loves them as He loves us. 

 

            “Blessed are they that mourn; for they shall be comforted” says the Authorised Version. And perhaps here that version of makarioi is truly a good one.

 

MORE LIGHT, OR CANDLEMAS

Today is two feasts in one: the Presentation in the Temple, and Candlemas. The Presentation in the Temple is based on the Jewish law that required every firstborn to be given to God. The child was brought to the Temple as a gift, but could then be bought (or perhaps rented?) back by way of a sacrifice. And so Yosef and Miryam, forty days after the birth of Yehoshua, bring him to the Temple to be given to God. There they meet Shimon, a devout man who spent his old age awaiting the Consolation of Israel, i.e the Moshiach; he recognises this in the child and utters his famous “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace”, and then gives a rather unnerving prophecy as to the kind of “consolation” this Messiah is likely to bring. They are then joined by the 84-year-old Chanah, a widow prophet, who also recognises the child and proclaims him to the assembled people.

The point, of course, is that here for the first time the newborn child is revealed, and revealed not only as who he is but as what he is, in the physical context of the Temple and in the human context of the devout. He is the Anointed One, the Saviour, the Moshiach, the Christos. He is what Israel has been waiting for. So the Presentation as a Church occasion is one of enlightenment: the Umwelt, the world around, is for the first time enlightened as to the coming of the Messiah, and as to the identity of this child.

As such, it is a festival confirming the increasing/returning light, and so it is fitting that here should take place the blessing of the candles to be used in the services for the whole remainder of the church year: “Candlemas”.

In France, moreover, Candlemas, or more often Candlemas Eve, is Pancake Night, when pancakes (larger and thinner than the Anglo-American kind) are baked and flipped in the pan, and if the flipped pancake is properly caught in the frying-pan you will have good luck in the coming year.  

Image: Rembrandt van Rijn, "The Presentation in the Temple" (detail)

LATE AND SOON

In a time when many are shaken; in the winter season when sunshine is rare; at moments when ways ahead are unclear or menacing; one aid -- never easy, but always there -- is the existence of the Carthusians. Above is their symbol: the seven stars are St Bruno and the six companions with whom he founded the Order; the motto explains the image: "Stat crux dum volvitur orbis" -- "the Cross stands, while the world turns". To their writings, always anonymous, we can turn when the world is too much with us. And from one of their books,  The Wound of Love: a Carthusian Miscellany (Leominster: Gracewing, 1994), I share this magnificent passage of consolation.

           The encounter that love desires, between God and me, involves my whole being. Its rendezvous will be the truth, communion between my true self and the true God. But who am I? I enter into the deep caverns of my spirit in order to discover myself and then to be able to give myself. I encounter my demons, the dark forces that dwell in me. I name some of them, but they are legion. I try to determine my interior face, but it dissolves into a thousand changing masks. I want to offer my heart, but my freedom shows itself host to innumerable determinisms, the majority of which elude me. So, am I only the ephemeral confluence of impersonal and obscure forces?

            No, even if all the ‘matter’ of my being were such, my spirit can look at it from outside and say yes or no to it. Seeing what little light I have, I can trust in the light that comes from God and receive from his word the ultimate knowledge of myself. So I know, in faith, that I am made in the image of God, a subject endowed with freedom, called by God to a communion of love, son of the Father in the Son, by the gift of the Spirit. It is the Spirit alone who can tell me my name in the silence of my heart. So let me be silent in prayer in order to hear who I am. My chastity is humble attention before the mystery that dwells in me, that transcends me.

'It is the Spirit alone who can tell me my name in the silence of my heart. So let me be silent in prayer in order to hear who I am.'