LESS IS MORE, BUT MORE IS EVEN MORE

Several of you may have seen the delightful little prayer that circulates on the Internet as being by Thomas More, and that begins "Lord, give me a good digestion, and something to digest". Alas, it is not, and cannot be, by More; its language, its humour and its sentiments are thoroughly twentieth century. Mind you, as Fr Germain Marc'hadour has pointed out, More would probably have enjoyed seeing a prayer of his own so parodied.
The one prayer we know is by More was written in his own hand in a book in the Tower of London, some time before his execution. It is both wry and moving, and I reproduce it here from the website of the Amici Thomae Mori, where there are also discussions of the apocryphal digestion prayer. First, rather than the usual Holbein portrait,  I thought I'd reproduce the Holbein sketch for a More family portrait, the painted version of which is lost. It does show More with his delightful entourage, where wit and humour were close friends with prayer and devotion. In the prayer itself I have modernised the spelling, something I don't often do, but in this case it will make it easier to follow and digest. 

1          Give me thy grace, good Lord

To set the world at naught

2          To set my mind fast upon thee

And not to hang upon the blast

of men’s mouths

3          To be content to be solitary

Not to long for worldly company

4          Little by little utterly to cast off the world

And rid my mind of all the business thereof

5          Not to long to hear of any worldly things

But that the hearing of worldly fantasies may

be to me displeasant

6          Gladly to be thinking of god

Piteously to call for his help

7          To lean unto the comfort of god

Busily to labour to love him

8          To know mine own vility [vileness] & wretchedness

To humble & meeken myself under the

mighty hand of God

9          To bewail my sins past

For the purging of them patiently to

suffer adversity

10        Gladly to bear my purgatory here

To be joyful of tribulations

11        To walk the narrow way that leadeth to life

To bear the cross with Christ

12        To have the last thing in remembrance

To have ever afore mine eye my death that is

ever at hand

13        To make death no stranger to me

To foresee & consider the everlasting fire

of hell

14        To pray for pardon before the Judge come

To have continually in mind the passion that

Christ suffered for me

15        For his benefits incessantly to give him thanks

To buy the time again that I before have lost

16        To abstain from vain confabulations

To eschew light foolish mirth & gladness

17        Recreations not necessary to cut off

Of worldly substance, friends, liberty, life and

all, to set the loss at right nought for the winning of Christ

18        To think my most enemies my best friends

for the brethren of Joseph could never have done

him so much good with their love & favour as

they did him with their malice & hatred

19        These minds are more to be desired of

every man than all the treasure of

all the princes & kings Christian & heathen,

were it gathered & laid together

all upon one heap

IS NOTHING SACRED?

There has been a great deal of noise, most of it generous, in the wake of the killings in France. It seemed useful to ponder a little on the deeper issues, some of which were raised by the Tunisian thinker and essayist Mezri Haddad in a recent article. Apart from immediate political arguments, his chief point was that Western civilisation in its post-Enlightenment form depends on “the de-sacralisation of the sacred”. So is this true, and if so, what does it mean and what does it imply?

The OED’s chief definition of sacred is: “Of things, places, of persons and their offices, etc.: Set apart for or dedicated to some religious purpose, and hence entitled to veneration or religious respect; made holy by association with a god or other object of worship; consecrated, hallowed.” For the related “holy” definitions are longer and multiple, but they all concur in the meaning of “set apart, set aside, dedicated to veneration or worship”, culminating in the moral and spiritual perfection of God (in Christianity, but, I believe, also in Judaism and Islam).

Haddad’s phrase, clearly, is not meant literally in this sense. His invoking the Enlightenment is a clue. What, I think, he means is that in a post-Enlightenment society no specific object or belief can be considered sacred to, and its veneration therefore binding on, everybody, except (a respectful) freedom.

In the last few days, the outpouring of solidarity with Charlie Hebdo and its murdered contributors has made this seem obvious; and yet it is not, nor should it be. It is obvious only to the superficial. Nothing – no thing – is sacred: yet I have the greatest sympathy for the outrage of ordinary Catholic Dutchmen in 1556 when gleeful bands of supposed Reformers profaned and destroyed their beloved statues of the Virgin and Child. I have no sympathy whatever for the Inquisition; yet if one believes that certain statements of faith represent objective truth, those who attempt to turn others to unbelief are worse than murderers – a murderer kills only your body, a heretic murders your immortal soul for eternity. Mezri Haddad says, rightly, that the Prophet himself would have disallowed considering him as sacred, for only God the Almighty is so. And yet millions of ordinary Muslims consider him “entitled to veneration or religious respect” as ordinary Catholics do a representation of the Blessed Virgin Mary; so that while to insult that respect may not be a crime, it is certainly a blunder.

Several issues intersect here, and should not be confused. In the first place there is the issue of respect. Again, it seems obvious that one should respect what another holds sacred; yet what to do when faced with those who in the name of what they claim to hold sacred maim, torture and slaughter others? As the caption beneath a recent drawing of a Kalashnikov read, “Ceci n’est pas une religion” – this is not a religion.

We might think that in such a case it is better to fight with reason and education (and an efficient secret service); but in every age and especially in France there are those for whom the best weapon against the barbarians claiming religion and/or authority is laughter. When faced with others whose culture knows no irony, these take a grave risk; but it is theirs to take.

What has the Enlightenment brought to Christianity? A conviction that our faith cannot be forced on unbelievers; that if (as we hope) it is one day to become universal, that shall happen by acceptance and not by conquest; that no persuasion, metaphysical, social, or political, shall be allowed to dominate the public sphere; that no thing is sacred; that all faith shall be considered private but as such inviolable. Moreover, a sense that when the ill-bred, the ill-intentioned, the ignorant and the busy mockers invade our religion and attempt to provoke us to retaliation, we are not touched in what is essential and we can say “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.”

We should, however, be aware that other religions, other cultures, have not necessarily gone through an Enlightenment, and that in a globalized world we increasingly live cheek by jowl with them. We may think that it would be good if some of what Kenneth Clark called “the smile of Reason” should rub off on them; but meanwhile a certain caution and a certain respect should perhaps rule our actions, our words (more about those later), and even our drawings.

( Test your tolerance. For those who have only seen the Mohammed drawings: this was Charlie Hebdo's cover on the gay marriage controversy. Mgr Vingt-Trois is the Cardinal Archbishop of France. "Mgr Vingt-Trois has 3 daddies". )

OH, WHEN THE SAINTS GO MARCHIN' IN

In between ‘Trick or Treat’ i.e. the Great Candy Gulp, and ‘le jour des morts’ in France where millions of potted chrysanthemums get put on graves, there is ‘la Toussaint’, mainly known here as the date that gives its name to a school vacation. It’s hard to get one’s mind around, rather like the recent maps of the known Universe. All those ‘saints’, known and unknown – and what is a saint, really, anyway?

To some, saints are great people in the faith, who have gone before us, who are in Heaven around God, and to whom we can pray to put in a good word for us, because, after all, God Himself is a bit august for little me to be addressing. To others, all those who genuinely believe and who genuinely try to make their lives conform to the model we have been given are Saints.

In both cases, the Sancti, the consecrated, the set-apart, are a community of which we are a part. So who are the We who celebrate the They, and conversely? We are the ones who are still slogging it out down here (or in here, if you prefer Heaven out there to up there). We are the ones who have to deal with daily brown stuff that hits the fan, and to whom prayer comes in fits and starts when it comes at all.

They, on the other hand, have been there, done that.  Some have been murdered for their faith (alas, we still know about that happening); some have been great preachers who have inspired hundreds if not thousands with their impassioned speech; some have been immense minds who have spent their lives studying God’s thought and meaning in the Scriptures and elsewhere, and communicating their findings to the whole of the Church.

All of them have something to tell us, something to show us, something we can and profitably might well emulate. All of them took their faith seriously. All of them – even the martyrs, I suspect – took their faith with peace and joy and humour. What can they do for us? For some of us, they are the ones who can understand our prayers and pass them on to the Most High. For others, they are models to be studied, venerated, given thanks for, and emulated. In all cases, their stories are worth reading. One of the most delicious books for the coffee-table, the study, the bedside table or the place where kings go on foot, is a dictionary of saints. Not a life but is weirdly fascinating.

They are all around us. We live in a world that breathes creatures beyond our silly senses. Angels, and Saints. And maybe one day we will march in their number: from New Orleans to the Gates of Heaven.