THE HEART OF THE MATTER

 

¹⁶ `And when you fast, be ye not as the hypocrites, of sour countenances, for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear to men fasting; verily I say to you, that they have their reward.

¹⁷ `But you, fasting, anoint your head, and wash your face,

¹⁸ that you may not appear to men fasting, but to your Father who [is] in secret, and your Father, who is seeing in secret, shall reward you.

¹⁹ `Treasure not up to yourselves treasures on the earth, where moth and rust disfigure, and where thieves break through and steal,

²⁰ but treasure up to yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth disfigure, and where thieves do not break through nor steal,

²¹ for where your treasure is, there will be also your heart.

 

This part of the new Torah is not hard to understand. Just as in prayer one should not show off one’s piety before the world, so in the ancient self-discipline of fasting one should not do so either. The disfiguring of the face may have been an application of mud or a smearing with dust: an outward and visible sign of repentance was the covering of head and face with dust and ashes. 

            It might be useful here to think briefly about fasting, especially as the year moves closer to Lent. Fasting exists as a discipline in many religions: the most visible in today’s Western countries is the Muslims’ Ramadan, which prohibits the taking of any form of food or drink between sunrise and sunset for thirty days, and which is observed far more widely than the forty-day Christian Lent, which mostly leaves the form and intensity of the fast to the individual believer. It is not, of course, practiced for the sake of health or bodily elegance, but to discipline the body in order to subject it more completely to the mind and the soul. It is easier for those whom grief and contrariety put off their feed than for those who eat when depressed and feast when content. The more rigorous and orthodox Christians often make fun of those who “give up chocolate for Lent”; yet they are wrong, because every discipline is an art, and every art needs practice and begins with simple steps. 

            What Yeshua is telling us here is that, whether we are giving up chocolate or living on bread and water like Carthusians, we should keep it to ourselves: it is between us and the Father, and since we are doing it to be closer to Him, keeping it between us and Him is “the way it should be”, i.e. part of shalom. Moreover, this injunction clearly is part of the completed Torah’s emphasis on inwardness: avoid the outward and visible sign and concentrate on the inward and spiritual grace. 

 

            The second part of this text is about treasure. Man is not just a creature that transforms the world – all “work” transforms the world – but a creature that attaches importance to security. True, there are La Fontaine’s grasshoppers, who give never a care for the morrow and thus tend to fall back on their neighbours; but most people try to put away a little nest-egg, an “apple for thirst” as the Dutch say, whether it is in case one loses one’s job, or to put one’s children through college, or against illness or old age. And this impulse can go far, and result in large fortunes passed on, and increased, from generation to generation.

            Yeshua warns against this. In a world where “treasure” was still what our childhood imagined, physically precious objects, whether fine silks, delicately-wrought metals, and gold coin, he reminds us that the silks can be disfigured by moth, the metals by the tinworm, and that the world is full of thieves cleverer than we are. Such treasures are vulnerable. In our modern world, treasure tends to be held either on the stock market or in real estate; yet a financial crash may wipe out the one, and fire and earthquake the other, while cybercriminals may easily make off with anyone’s bank or savings account. All earthly treasure is vulnerable. 

            So what does he suggest? Laying up treasure in heaven. We know this text so well that we often do not really think about it any more; and we feel superior to our medieval forefathers who took it very literally, for instance in the form of indulgences. Yet He speaks to us also; so we owe it to Him to think about it with what intelligence we can summon. How do we “lay up treasure in Heaven”? It displeases us to think of our spiritual life as a sort of divine bank-account; but let us try to think past the image. In contrast to devoting our surplus of time and effort (beyond our basic work in the world) to acquiring more money or objects, we should devote our surplus of time and effort to our life of faith: to our relation to the Father who loves and cherishes us, as much as we let Him. 

            And Yeshua finishes by at once giving us the reason for this injunction: where your treasure is, is where your heart is. And your heart is what matters. If I have a magnificent collection of classic cars, like Jay Leno’s or Ralph Lauren’s, I have to admit it would take up not only much of my time but much of what Keats called “the heart’s affections”; and each of us has only so much of those. If, on the other hand, I spend as much of my time and effort as I can, not on improving my virtue but on the loving bond I have with God and with my brothers and sisters, I may discover to my surprise that in strange and unexpected ways I have become richer, and freer from fear, than I ever thought possible.  

            Once again, I am taught the principle of this completed Torah: the heart is what matters. 

"LOVE FULFILS THE LAW" (ROMANS 13:10)

This is the tightest condensation of Yeshua’s teaching yet. Remember, he said “I come not to abolish the Law but to fulfil it”? Well, now we know what that means. In Romans, it is linked to the love of neighbour – which, of course, is what we always gravitate to. But we ought to remember more often that that is the second Great Commandment: the First is that we must love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength. 

 

            I have written about this before, wondering how we can be commanded to love, when the essence of love is precisely that it cannot be commanded, that it must be free. That, after all, is the reason that however appalling Man gets, he must still be allowed free will, because the God he offends is Love, and Love can do no other than accord freedom. How, then, can we be commanded to love God (or, indeed, our neighbour)?

 

            It occurred to me that perhaps the word “commandment” is, for our understanding, inaccurate. I remember my late father saying that to him the Ten Commandments were not so much laws in the juridical sense as natural laws, such as the Second Law of Thermodynamics, so memorably resumed by Flanders and Swann: “Heat can’t pass from a cooler to a hotter:/You can try if you like but you’d far better notta”. Or another image might be the points made in the User Manual of a complex machine. Is it a “commandment” to say “Do not attempt a gear change without depressing the clutch pedal”? What it means is “If you do X, something will go seriously wrong” (in this case in the harmony of your condition as a created and loved being).

 

            So if we are commanded to love God as described above, what does that mean? First of all, that “love” here probably does not mean a great wave of serotonin, a tsunami of emotion. Still, it does involve all our heart. It helps, perhaps, to remember that we are encouraged to be childlike. A small child does not reason its love for its parent: it jumps into a waiting lap and snuggles. Even a brief counting of blessings will produce a similar effect in us. Hearts do not reason. 

 

            What about all your soul? At first sight, that seems more abstract; and yet, my soul is, almost by definition, nearer to God than my heart is. Here, I think, we go to the core of the Meshiach’s teaching and action. “For God so loved the world/us/me, that he gave his only-begotten son” etc. “Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven.” If we can really take this on board, how can we not love the Father who has given us such a gift?

 

            Now for all your mind. For many people, the mind is the seat of unbelief: how can you go on believing if you use your adult, aware, reasoning mind? Look at the Universe (on the one hand); look at Auschwitz (on the other): believe? you must be joking. And yet we are told to love God with all our mind. I think that this is where the User Manual comes in. If you love God with everything but your mind, either your faith is weak and vulnerable or you have abdicated your adult human judgement. The world, the universe, life, will be wholly without meaning. Yet, as Joseph Ratzinger has so often pointed out, if you love God with all your mind, everything falls into place, and even reason becomes both more rational and more reasonable. 

 

            Finally, all your strength. What strength? we sometimes ask. We feel puny, and weak, and tired, and worn out. Daily living is bad enough, and takes almost all of our strength: do we have any left for loving God? Well, again the User Manual chips in. If you put all your strength into loving God (in all the ways mentioned above), to your absolute surprise you find that you have more strength; that loving God produces an excess, an overplus of strength that allows you to fulfil all the other things that await you as well, and quite possibly better. 

 

           And as a consequence, fulfilling this first commandment itself helps you, gives you the discernment and the strength, needed for the second one. Which is why it’s the First. Q.E.D. 

Image: restored Torah scroll guaranteed kosher by a modern scribe, for sale on Amazon at $28,000

OF HOMESICKNESS AND GOING HOME

Crucifix in the St Crucifix Chapel, Cordes-sur-Ciel, France (sculptor unknown)

This morning – Trinity 3 for us Anglicans, 11^th of Ordinary Time for modern RCs – the second reading was from 2 Corinthians 5:  
“For we know that when this earthly tent we live in is taken down (that is, when we die and leave this earthly body), we will have a house in heaven, an eternal body made for us by God himself and not by human hands. We grow weary in our present bodies, and we long to put on our heavenly bodies like new clothing. For we will put on heavenly bodies; we will not be spirits without bodies.While we live in these earthly bodies, we groan and sigh, but it’s not that we want to die and get rid of these bodies that clothe us. Rather, we want to put on our new bodies so that these dying bodies will be swallowed up by life. God himself has prepared us for this, and as a guarantee he has given us his Holy Spirit.

So we are always confident, even though we know that as long as we live in these bodies we are not at home with the Lord. For we live by believing and not by seeing. Yes, we are fully confident, and we would rather be away from these earthly bodies, for then we will be at home with the Lord. Yet whether we are here in this body or away from this body, our goal is to please him. For we must all stand before Christ to be judged. We will each receive whatever we deserve for the good or evil we have done in this earthly body.”

When I saw this I wondered what our little Algerian priest would say about it; and I couldn’t help wondering also about its relation to Luther and sola fide. However, what he said was surprising and, I thought, rather marvellous. “Don’t think, he said, “that ‘standing before Christ to be judged’ is like the courtroom of the Assizes.” And he pointed to the huge and fascinating 17C crucifix after which the chapel we were in was named (see above). “When you stand before him,” he said, “you stand before Love Himself. And it is not he who will judge you. It is your own heart that will judge you, in the face and in the presence of that love.”

I found this a powerful and extraordinary thought. It was, of course, neither his nor new: in the Orthodox faith it is common, and it was uttered in a slightly different way by both St John Chrysostom and St Basil the Great. In one sense, it is a comforting thought: as Sergei Komarov puts it, “no one is going to be dragged anywhere like a caught thief.” And Gregory Narekatsi, the Armenian poet, wrote “Isn’t God’s judgement still a meeting with God?/ Where will the Judgement be? I’m going there!” Yet the thought of our standing – you, I, us chickens just as we are – before the Son of God himself, with his eyes of absolute love upon us, is both pure joy and real terror. Even the most faithful and loving among us know that they are going to need a great deal of mercy at that moment.

The greatest thoughts I have read about the Last Judgement are those of C.S. Lewis, scattered about his writings. “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened.” Moreover, he says somewhere else, Hell is not fire and brimstone: it is cold and dark. Why? Because Heaven is the continual presence of God in light and warmth. But some there are to whom that would be unbearable. For them God has, in his mercy, left a place where they can live Eternity far away from him. It is cold, dark and dreary, but that is all they have made themselves capable of.

This is entirely compatible with the idea of our own heart’s judging us in Christ’s presence. And it should give us furiously to think.

A TIME OF GIFTS

Mosaic in the church of Sant'Apollinare, Ravenna

Another text from my favourite hermit, Sr Emmanuelle Billoteau, this time a meditation on the Beatitudes --
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

THE CHARTER OF THE KINGDOM

The Beatitudes point us to a favoured road to the kingdom of God. The road of those who let themselves be inhabited and profoundly worked upon by the Holy Spirit, for that is where the wellspring of all joy is found. A paradoxical joy of which no one can rob us (cf. Jn 16:22).

Preparation

“O God, thou art my God: early will I seek Thee. My soul thirsteth for Thee.” (Ps. 63:1-2)

Observation

The evangelist gives the proclamation of the Beatitudes a solemn introduction, by a redundancy that attracts the reader’s attention: “And he opened his mouth, and taught them, saying . . .”. Everyone familiar with the Bible will quickly see the link with the gift of the Torah on Mount Sinai. And that only emphasises the differences all the more, for we are now at another stage of the history of salvation. God no longer speaks from on high and in fire, but face to face; no longer to one man, Moses, charged with transmitting His message, but to the multitude. And what does Jesus say? That the road to the Kingdom goes via places one does not automatically expect it to cross: inner poverty, gentleness, tears . . . In short, it goes via the Cross, i.e. via a death of self-sufficiency, of the dream of omnipotence, and via a consent to human vulnerability. The first beatitude, that of the poverty of spirit, is, clearly, the key that opens all the others, because it allows us to receive the gift of God.

Meditation

Perhaps we may reread the Gospel in its entirety to see how Jesus lived these beatitudes: in receiving everything from the Father, in forgiving his persecutors, etc. That way we will find that the Beatitudes offer us a way of conforming ourselves to Christ, he who “became Man that man might become God” (St Irenæus). For we do need to become like him in order to be resurrected with him (cf Ph. 3). So it is up to each of us to incarnate these words in our own life, including the necessary looking toward Jesus, listening to the Spirit, being personally imaginative. The unquestioning openness of Zacchæus, the tears of Mary of Magdala, may also inspire our practice. By whatever opening, let us allow the Beatitudes to enter our life, to evangelise our concept of happiness and to stimulate our pilgrimage toward God.

Prayer

“Praise the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, praise His holy Name!” (Ps. 103:1) 

WORD FOR TODAY

"The flame of charity is the cry of the heart."

Today I found this wonderful line in my beloved Carthusian miscellany The Wound of Love. The author attributes it to St Augustine's commentary on Psalm 37, but I haven't found it there. Any pointers welcome; though tracing it is really superfluous. Just letting it resonate in our minds throughout the day is enough.

THOU BLOODY WELL SHALT

Ἀγαπήσεις κύριον τὸν θεόν σου ἐν ὅλῃ ^]τῇ καρδίᾳ σου καὶ ἐν ὅλῃ ^]τῇ ψυχῇ σου καὶ ἐν ὅλῃ τῇ διανοίᾳ σου

I was pondering love, and thinking of writing about it, when I remembered I had in fact already done so. So I dug into the blog's archives, and found a post that said at least the first part of what I was going to write, and said it in such a way I couldn't do better now. So for those who weren't around the first time, or who have forgotten it, here it is again. And there will be a sequel soon.

We all know the commandment “Love thy neighbour as thyself” and most of us have heard it explained by the parable of the Samaritan. But we tend to shy away from the fact that it’s the second commandment, because the first is, well, more bothering. I checked a few of the Greek words used in the passage from Matthew 22, and they are interesting. “Commandment” is entolè: an order or an instruction. So there is no getting away from it: we are ordered, or at least instructed, to love God. How, we ask (or we damn well should), can one be ordered to love anyone? Moreover, we are instructed to do so not in any half-hearted way, but with our kardia, our heart; our  psuchè, our breath, life, or soul; and our dianoia, our intelligence. What on earth (well, maybe not entirely on earth) are we to make of that?

Perhaps in the first place we’d do well to look at “love”. The Greek word used is agapao, which is used in the senses of “to have affection for, to care for” (for example, one’s children or one’s parents), “to honour” and very occasionally “to love” (a lover or a spouse). I remember reading a commentary on St Paul that interpreted the New Testament “love” as not so much an emotion as a being-there-for someone. The Samaritan, in that sense, “loved” the beaten traveller. So if we are told to “love” God it means we are to be there for Him, to care for Him as for a child or a parent, to be such that He can depend on us as they would. You can “love” a parent, or a sibling, you don’t much like on a daily basis: in a pinch you’d be there for them.

But why? Why would we do all that for someone whom we can’t even see, who half the time doesn’t answer our prayers, and who expects us to be “good” all the time? Because, when you get down to it and listen to the people who know Him better, in the first place He loved, and loves, us. (More about this in a minute.) Secondly, we can see Him: we can see Him in His Son, the celebration of Whose birth we are even now preparing. He sent His Son, part of Himself, not just to repair the broken toy we had made of the world, but to show us what He is like, in a form our tiny brains can handle. He couldn’t really have done more.

OK, that was then, a couple of thousand years back; but as the Carthusians I love to read (they are the guys who really spend time on this) tell me, He is still doing it, every hour of every day. Doesn’t much feel like it, we grouch. And the Carthusian says, “Don’t get Him wrong. Don’t confuse receiving His love with feeling His love. Sometimes you feel it, and that’s marvellous. But even when you don’t, you are still receiving it. And if you can get your kardia, your psuchè, and your dianoia round that, how can you not love Him back? He is giving you the example. However grouchy you are, however miserable you are, however much of a shit you are, He is there, loving you and hoping to God you will return His love.”

           

         So how about that entolè, that instruction? Perhaps it’s an instruction in a different sense. My father used to say that he thought moral laws were not so much like penal laws as like natural laws, showing the consequences of certain types of behaviour: if you stick your fingers into the candle-flame, you will get burnt and feel serious pain; if you jump off a cliff, you will fall until the rocks stop you and crack your spine, and you will die. Something like this perhaps applies also to the instruction to love God. It may be an instruction of the kind put in owner’s manuals: if you want your car to work properly, as the manufacturer intended, change the oil every 3,000 miles. If you want your life to work properly, as the Maker intended, accept Him as your parent and treat Him accordingly. Things will then tend to fall into place, often surprisingly. And who knows? You may even end up “loving” Him in the way we small humans normally understand it, as a vast feeling that lights our day.