WHAT SORT OF HOUSE

I have, in recent years, found enormous inspiration in reading the writings of Carthusian monks. They are often as learned as Benedictines, but since their life is built entirely around prayer they are as one might say its professionals. Reading them is both humbling and informative: rather as if one owned a decent sports car and did the occasional track day and then comes across a manual written by and for Formula 1 drivers. 

            In one such book – and they are always signed “A Carthusian” – I found a fascinating meditation on Jesus’ whipping the merchants out of the Temple. Rather than pondering whether or not this is a comment on capitalism, the Carthusian author proposed seeing the temple as being our heart. Thus, the words of Jesus, “this is a house of prayer and you have made it a den of thieves”, take on a new and richer meaning. As I spend my time at my computer, ordering books or clothes, annotating texts, organising meetings; as I go out to dinner parties or restaurants, as I look at advertisements for classic cars – is my house not rather full of merchants? Good merchants, not necessarily thieves; but then the men selling sacrificial doves, lambs and candles in the spacious Temple courtyard were probably perfectly respectable shopkeepers. 

The point is not what they do but where they are doing it. They are pursuing their perfectly proper mercantile calling not in a shop in the city but in “a house of prayer”. And so, transferring the image as did the Carthusian, I arrive at the fact that my heart should be “a house of prayer, where the Son can meet the Father in love.” I found, and find, this thought overwhelming. And it has become my daily, and almost my only, prayer:

LORD, MAKE MY HEART A HOUSE OF PRAYER

            

Because that prayer potentially includes everything else. It is in fact an application of the saying “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you.” If my heart is made a house of prayer, everything else is secondary but/and will fall into place. 

I share this thought because it occurred to me that others may find it inspiring also. There is such wealth to be found in Carthusian thinking: those Olympic athletes of prayer have much to teach us -- starting with their ancient motto (useful when looking at the news cycle): STAT CRUX DUM VOLVITUR ORBIS. (The Cross stands, while the world turns.)

HELP!

On this Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, and very suitably following the feasts of Michaelmas and of the Guardian Angels, we ask to be protected.

Latin original

CUSTODI, Domine, quæsumus, Ecclesiam tuam propitiatione perpetua; et quia sine te labitur humana mortalitas, tuis semper auxiliis et abstrahatur a noxiis, et ad salutaria dirigatur ; per Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum Amen. 

1549

KEPE we beseche thee, O Lorde, thy Churche with thy perpetuall mercye: and because the frailtie of man without thee, cannot but fall: Kepe us ever by thy helpe, and leade us to al thynges profitable to our salvacion; through Jesus Christe our Lorde. Amen.

1662

Keep, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy Church with thy perpetual mercy : and because the fraily of man without thee cannot but fall, keep us ever by thy help from all things hurtful, and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

One of the rare occasions when the 1662 revisers were more faithful to the Latin original, in restoring its a noxiis. One wonders why Cranmer left it out. He may have thought it self-evident and considered that its omission would lead the sentence more swiftly and elegantly to its conclusion. The Latin is, as usual, a jewel of compact form and shapely rhythm, employing no less than four cursus tardus and ending in a cursus velox (which, in spite of its name, I always suspect was seen by the writers as slower and more dignified).

The Latin original of Cranmer’s “perpetual mercy” is propitiatio, “an appeasing, atonement, propitiation” – which is very odd. One might translate it as “Keep,, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy Church in perpetual atonement”; and one wonders if the perpetual atonement may not belong rather to the church than to its keeping: so that God may be being asked to take care of a Church that lives in perpetual atonement. I suspect, though, that it is rather an unusual medieval use of the word, which makes it rather a peace-offering on God’s behalf, and which thus comes a little closer to Cranmer’s “mercy”.

It is a prayer for protection: custodi, Domine. Take care of us, Lord: protect us. And the rest of the prayer makes specific both the protection and the threat. We ask to be protected from “all things hurtful”, and if Cranmer had used 18^th- or 19^th-century punctuation instead of Tudor, he would have put a second comma after “profitable”. Because what dismays us here is not the threat of things hurtful in general, but the threat of things hurtful to our salvation. 

What are those? What can hurt our salvation? Not the horrors of the world: as St Paul put it in his letter to the Christians in Rome, “I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” No: the only things hurtful to our salvation can come from ourselves. And the Collect understands this: it makes this request because the frailty of man without thee cannot but fall. Not the nastiness of man; not his inherent evil; no, his frailty. He is weak. He wants to do everything right; but on his own, on a daily, hourly basis he falls, he screws it up and scuppers his own salvation. So we ask Him to protect us from doingall things hurtful, and to lead us to doingall things profitable, to our salvation.

Again, a close reading of, and meditation on, a brief prayer shows how rich it is in meaning and how it helps us increase our understanding of ourselves in our relation to our loving but doubtless frequently exasperated Father.

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW

What's new is the year. What's old is the language. To wish everyone the very best for this year, there is no better wish than faith. Here is one way to strengthen it, quietly, quietly, every morning. Just before rising, say this prayer.

O Lord our heavenly Father,
almighty and everlasting God,
who hast safely brought us to the beginning of this day,
defend us in the same with thy mighty power,
and grant that this day we fall into no sin,
neither run into any kind of danger;
but that all our doings may be ordered by thy governance,
to do always that is righteous in thy sight.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

The Book of Common Prayer's Third Collect, for Grace, in the service of Morning Prayer, it is a translation of a Latin original from the 5th century Gelasian sacramentary, and as the French say, in five-and-a-half centuries it has not taken on a wrinkle. No need to "update" or "modernise". A perfect companion to a new day, and to a new year. 

HUMDRUMLIES

I was rereading the wonderful Carthusian miscellany The Wound of Love where, in the introductory chapters, an author (they are always anonymous) explains the difficulties facing a young monk entering the Order. Seduced by the Absolute, expecting marvels of saintliness, he will be surprised and dismayed by the banality of the daily life there, “a kind of dull grey” with occasional conflicts among the brothers and endless compromises within the “family”. Only gradually will he discover that it is in precisely such banality that God develops the qualities which make the mature Carthusian such a remarkable figure in the world of devotion and prayer.

It touched a chord. Since, at the age of 70, I decided that religion was the adventure befitting this new stage of life, I was beginning to miss the illuminations of the early years, the sense of discovery, and had started to feel a dull grey weight of daily humdrumlies interfering with the adventure. So reading our Carthusian friend made me realise that perhaps precisely that weight of humdrumlies is the stuff of God’s action and His way of addressing one. Of course, once you realise that, you remember that George Herbert had been telling you the same thing ever since you discovered him at the age of 20 or so: you have been a little slow on the uptake.

You also remember Brother Lawrence, that amiable 17^th-century German servant of a monastery who turned out to be the saintliest man there, and whose very simple piety based itself on “the practice of the presence of God” and a continuing conversation with Him. A conversation that went on while he was cooking, baking, sweeping floors and tending the kitchen garden.

It is yet another stage in the education to humility. A Church service is wonderful: “I was glad when they said unto me: we will go into the house of the Lord” (Ps. 122:1). An exquisite service with flawless choirs, as in Oxford, is even more glorious. A simple Mass in a country church is still a Mass, where God is present in a very specific and precious way. But reading the stories of Elijah and Elisha at home, sweeping the kitchen floor “as for Thy laws”, making beds, changing the oil on the family car, cooking vegetable soup or dirty rice while having constantly one’s ear open for the murmur of the Spirit and conversing with Him as freely as with one’s intimate friend or family – that may lead us to unexpected uplands of surprising sunlight.

The Elixir

Teach me, my God and King,

         In all things Thee to see,

And what I do in anything

         To do it as for Thee.

         Not rudely, as a beast,

         To run into an action;

But still to make Thee prepossest,

         And give it his perfection.

         A man that looks on glass,

         On it may stay his eye;

Or if he pleaseth, through it pass,

         And then the heav'n espy.

         All may of Thee partake:

         Nothing can be so mean,

Which with his tincture—"for Thy sake"—

         Will not grow bright and clean.

         A servant with this clause

         Makes drudgery divine:

Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws,

         Makes that and th' action fine.

         This is the famous stone

         That turneth all to gold;

For that which God doth touch and own

         Cannot for less be told.

George Herbert

COMFORT YE MY PEOPLE?

Fernandel as Don Camillo

Is Christianity no longer a religion for ordinary people?

 This sounds peculiar, I know; but it has been haunting me for a long time. There is, I admit, a splendid congruence between St Paul on the one hand and, say, Pope Francis on the other: both keep hammering away at the extraordinary nature of discipleship, the total availability expected of all followers of Christ, the complete scission beteen them and the “world”, the prodigies of charity we are called upon to perform, the complete solidarity we are expected to show at all times of day, week, or year with the world’s poor and miserable, the entire purity our motives and behaviour must exhibit, and the fact that, as disciples, everyone calling himself a Christian is expected to follow the Master to the Cross, to be nailed there like St Peter or stoned like St Stephen.

 This is the voice of the 21^st-century Church, faced with minority status, massive desertion, indifference on the part of both bond traders and jobless single mothers, and the loss of everything that gave its members simple joys and pleasures.

 Now go back to Giovannino Guareschi’s Don Camillo. Or to the Dutch novelist Aart van der Leeuw’s I and my Minstrel. They show a world – admittedly not in a mode of gritty naturalism – where a village can have a Catholic priest and a Communist mayor, where the former can discuss with the figure on the Cross, where a Sunday can begin with a Mass and end with a dance, where ordinary life (in other words) can be blessed by the priest’s holy water and where ordinary folk can be encouraged, shriven when penitent, and feel that their daily round, with all its difficulties, is regarded by a Father’s benevolent and smiling eye.

 Could it be – I sometimes wonder – that we have put the cart before the horse? That the changes in our Church are not, in fact, a reaction to its desertion by thousands but that said desertion is, on the contrary, at least in part a reaction to the changes?

 There were hundreds, if not thousands, that were touched, healed, fed by Jesus, all over Galilee and points South. There were twelve – count them, twelve – disciples, eleven of whom skedaddled on Good Friday; there were at most 72 apostles, sent to convert the planet. What about the others? What happened to the Roman officer, to the Samaritan woman, to the healed epileptic, to the diners at Emmaus, afterwards?

 To want to re-institute a Church that will bless daily life, expect confession but offer absolution, accompany ordinary people in their problems while projecting a timeless and benevolent authority, is nowadays to put oneself beyond the Pale. I find it deeply sad that not only the Anglican Eucharist but the Catholic Mass no longer offers absolution following the General Confession, giving the worshipper instead only the thin gruel of a conditional.

 The world does not consist only of wealthy financiers on the one hand and immigrant drug dealers in the housing projects on the other. The world mostly consists of simple people doing their best in difficulties ranging from indigence to Alzheimer’s. What they need from the Church is, among other things, a sense of stability, of visibility, of serenity, of being there for them – not (as Pope Francis said at the beginning of his Papacy but has largely negated since) as an activist NGO but as the father and mother they lack, as the kindly encouraging parent or grandparent missing in their world. Not the urgent and absolute love of a saint ready to be stoned for them: the comforting practical love of a family member ready to take them in for a meal, a song, a dance, and a good sleep. They need priests visible in cassocks, nuns visible in habits, timeless liturgies, and a blessing at the end of the day.  

P.S. The original of Guareschi's Don Camillo, Don Camillo Valota, was not only a parish priest but a fighter with the Partisans during World War II and a prisoner in two concentration camps.

QUICK WORD

Words that sprang into my head upon waking, and that I share because they seem truly fruitful:

O Lord Holy Spirit, be close to me today,
that wherever I am may be Thy temple,
and whatever I do may be Thy liturgy.