THE EVEN AND THE HALLOWS

Now that Hallowe'en is spreading like an oil-slick across the Atlantic and filling Western Europe with 8-year-old ghouls and wrapped sweets, it may be useful to remind the ignorant, and even the uncaring, about its morrow. In France, All Souls Day, November 2, has long been known as le jour des morts, the Day of the Dead, marked by visits to churchyard and cemetery and by a tidal wave of small-flowered chrysanthemums, bought at the local grocery shop or florist's to be placed on the tombs of the faithful departed. Now, even in the land of laïcité (state-sponsored secularism), Hallowe'en is spreading irresistibly; and so the two slices of the sandwich are in place, but the ham is absent and forgotten. And even in America the Religious, I'm not sure how many people remember that the scary fun of Hallowe'en is intended to scare the Powers of Darkness and not the populace.  For those Powers, the old folk wisdom said, walk the earth on this even, and we light candles in grinning heads to keep them away.
They walk the earth partly because the year's dark days are here, now after harvest, and partly because the morrow is a feast they hate with all their might. For it is the celebration of All the Saints: the entire community of those who have returned God's love with a power and might that is exceptional; an intensity the rest of us can venerate but likely not attain; and in whom we rejoice because they inspire us and, many believe, pray for us because they know our need as even we do not.
We have all met, upon occasion, someone of real and transparent goodness, and from such persons something like a light shines forth that is doubtless at the origin of the halo with which painters endow them. Such a gentle light surrounds a person simply good. What of a saint? I don't think I've ever been in the physical presence of one; but I have seen on photo and on film, and read the writings of, some I canonise in my heart and the Church may soon if it has not already. And from such persons there comes a power, a penetrating influence that is like a vast radiance: quiet often, unassuming even, not always uncontroversial but impossible to ignore.
Now imagine a room, a palace, a firmament full of such singular intensities. Can our minds and hearts even begin to encompass the light and the cosmic joy of it? It would intimidate us; it would frighten us. And if it would frighten us, think of what it must do to those sad souls and spirits who cannot abide the love of God and have chosen endless night rather than have to encounter it. No wonder that at the mere approach of its mere commemoration they gibber and howl and stalk our streets in despair. They want our blood, or at least our happiness: they are mad with jealousy and bent on our destruction. So we light fires and candles, we sing songs, we eat and drink and pray, and we hug our children in their small disguises; because we are creatures of hope, and tomorrow comes the light of all God's darlings, united for our good.

THE GIFT THAT KEEPS ON GIVING

Veni, Creator Spiritus . . . I have always loved the Latin hymns with their stately iambic tetrameters; and this one especially. Since my youth – and an education not given to particular ‘devotions’ – I’ve had a special orientation towards the Holy Ghost (and towards St John the Evangelist, after whom I was named at baptism and who was the poet of the Gospels). The Third Person of the Trinity, so ungraspable, so strange and yet so close: what do we do with him?

The question is of course the wrong way round. What does He do with us? The readings I’ve seen recently give one useful answer, which has doubtless occurred to many. Jesus promises the disciples that he will send them the Spirit to be with them after he has gone up to the Father. So, says Fr Marc Sevin, all the things that Jesus says he still has to tell them but which they ‘cannot bear now’: these are the things the Spirit will tell them – tell us – in and through the community of the Church, from the first Pentecost to the Second Coming. 

So in that sense, the Spirit is the One who continues Jesus’ teaching. What else does he do? Another reading says that the Pentecostal event of the tongues is not about speaking, but about hearing and understanding. Each person heard and understood what was being said, in his own dialect. So the Spirit teaches us to hear and understand both God and our neighbour in our own dialect. First, we can look through and beyond language- and communication-barriers to the heart, and meet one another in the language of love; and secondly, we hear and understand both God and our neighbour in the way we, personally, are capable of doing so. The Spirit, then, removes barriers: the barriers between us and our neighbours are removed by both of us hearing the one who is speaking of God, and the barriers between us and God are removed by our understanding what is being said. 

What else does the Spirit do? Paul says that He prays in us. ‘Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered’ (Romans 8:26) – and the Father understands this, says Paul, because the Spirit does so kata Theon, in conformity, in harmony, with God. This goes very deep. If when we pray the vastness of God Himself prays in us; like something holding us up as we learn to swim; then our prayer takes on a trembling confidence we may never have thought of.

I wrote last time that the Spirit is our Paraclete, our Defender, our Advocate. He is also our ‘shield and defender’ against the Evil One. And he is the Comforter – a word we have somewhat trivialised in applying it to blankets and such. And, we are taught, ‘comfort’ in Early Modern English still has the sense of con-fortare, strengthening. He is the Comforter in that sense: he strengthens us when we definitely do not feel up to things. Here again, we should learn to be aware of that as a Presence, and to rely on it: how many people might avoid the clutching quicksand of depression, the knifing of despair, if they knew Who was ready to hold them up and give them that extra ounce of strength they lack?

He teaches us; helps us hear and understand; prays in, with and for us; strengthens us and holds us up. No wonder Pentecost, Whitsun, is a feast. A feast; a festival; a celebration. We can’t earn the Spirit; we can’t work to receive him; we can’t get him by making sacrifices or fasting or doing good. He is given us, as a gift, a present, free of charge. He gives Himself. As the French say, Que du bonheur! What joy.

OFFERING

In the admirable little book Missa Est by Daniel-Rops (the nom de plume of Henri Petiot 1901-1965) with stunning photographs by Laure Albin-Guillot, which I have had occasion to mention here before, I found a little text that moved me and that I thought I'd share. In the section on the preparation of the bread and the wine -- of the offerings ---, after the explanation of the history of this part of the Mass, he writes the following:

If you have nothing else to offer the Lord, only give him your efforts and your pains:

it took much work by many men, the piece of bread lying there on the paten. 

If your hand is empty and your mouth painfully dry, offer your wounded heart, all that you have suffered:

for the wine to be poured into the chalice, did the grapes not have to be crushed and their seeds opened?

If you have nothing in you but sin and bitterness, the distress of living and all the anguish of being human,

let your hands lift up those pitiful things to heaven, for Mercy has received them already beforehand, at His Supper.

And if you no longer have even the strength to offer and to beg, if there is nothing in you but absence and abandonment,

merely accept in silence that Another take care of you for your sake and accept you, so that the Offering and the Offerer may be one gift. 

For those who read French, I'll give the original, which is far better than I can translate:

Si tu n'as rien d'autre à offrir au Seigneur, présente-lui seulement tes travaux et tes peines,

à beaucoup d'hommes il a coûté beaucoup d'efforts ce morceau de pain qui repose là sur la patène.

Si ta main est vide et ta bouche douloureusement sèche, offre ton coeur blessé, tout ce que tu as souffert,

pour que le vin fût versé dans le calice n'a-t-il pas fallu que la grappe fût broyée et le grain ouvert?

Si tu n'as rien en toi que le péché et l'amertume, la détresse de vivre et toute l'angoisse humaine,

que tes mains tendent au ciel ces pitoyables choses car la Miséricorde les a reçues par avance à sa Cène.

Et si tu n'as même plus la force de présenter et d'implorer, si tout en toi n'est qu'absence et abandon,

en silence accepte qu'un Autre se charge de toi pour toi et t'assume, pour que l'Offrande et l'Offrant soient un seul don.