PATER, FILIUS ET SOPHIA?

Today's reading in Prions en Eglise was the following entirely beautiful passage from the Wisdom of Solomon. I'm sure I'm not the only person to have irresistibly thought, while reading it, of the Holy Spirit.

Within her is a spirit intelligent, holy, unique, manifold, subtle, mobile, incisive, unsullied, lucid, invulnerable, benevolent, shrewd, irresistible, beneficent, friendly to human beings, steadfast, dependable, unperturbed, almighty, all-surveying, penetrating all intelligent, pure and most subtle spirits. For Wisdom is quicker to move than any motion; she is so pure, she pervades and permeates all things. She is a breath of the power of God, pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty; so nothing impure can find its way into her. For she is a reflection of the eternal light, untarnished mirror of God's active power, and image of his goodness. Although she is alone, she can do everything; herself unchanging, she renews the world, and, generation after generation, passing into holy souls, she makes them into God's friends and prophets; for God loves only those who dwell with Wisdom. She is indeed more splendid than the sun, she outshines all the constellations; compared with light, she takes first place, for light must yield to night, but against Wisdom evil cannot prevail. Strongly she reaches from one end of the world to the other and she governs the whole world for its good. 

(Wisdom 7:22-8:1)

A FRENCH HERMIT ON A GALILEAN LOCUST-EATER

Piero della Francesca, Baptism of Christ

From time to time I have had occasion to cite, to quote, and to express my admiration for, Sœur Emmanuelle Billoteau, a Benedictine hermit from Provence who periodically provides comments on the daily readings in that admirable French booklet Prions en Eglise.  This Sunday, the first after Epiphany, I found her meditation on the reading from the Gospel of John instructive enough to translate it here.

AND I KNEW HIM NOT

John I:29-34

“The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me: for he was before me. And I knew him not: but that he should be made manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water.’ And John bare record, saying, ‘I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him. And I knew him not: but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God.’”

The story of John the Baptist is that of a revelation received from God. John has been able to recognise him whom it was his mission to announce. The text bears the mark of wonder, the fruit of a lived experience. As a privileged witness, John is the spokesman of the Evangelist.

Observation

John’s verses provide a key for reading the whole of the gospel. They contain a teaching of great density concerning this Jesus who comes to John. In citing the faith in the pre-existence of the Word, “before I was, He was”, the Baptist embraces equally the time of Jesus’ earthly life and its beyond, with the evocation of the Paschal mystery, the gift of the Spirit, and the glorification. A sequence we can follow by means of the names given to Jesus: “Lamb of God”; he who “baptises in the Spirit”; “Son of God”. The first of these titles refers us back to the sacrificial ritual of the Temple, with its burnt offering, to the Paschal lamb the blood of which protected the children of Israel at their departure from Egypt, and to the triumphant lamb of the Jewish apocalypses of the inter-testamentary period (from the 5th century BCE to the 1st century CE).

Meditation

In pointing us back to the Paschal mystery, the highest point of the revelation of God’s love, John the Evangelist reminds us that strength is deployed in weakness. Thus the royalty of Christ, the triumphant Lamb, is not conquered according to the usual human modalities, through force and violence. The way God has chosen for the establishing of his Kingdom, which “is not of this world” (Jn 18:36), is that of humility, of the love that proposes and exposes itself. It is in the self-humbling of the Son that the Spirit revealed himself by resting upon Him. And it is the Spirit, the gift of his Passover, who gives us access to the confession of His sonship by the renewal of our intelligence. Which allows us to pass from a partial knowing to an ever more profound knowing of the mystery of the Son, our discovering of which is never-ending. So we should do well to beg the Father to make us open ourselves to the Spirit, so that he may guide us to the whole and entire Truth.

HE SANG THE SPIRIT, 17 CENTURIES AGO

Today is the feast of St Basil the Great and of his friend St Gregory of Nazianze. Basil, a capable 4th-century archbishop, is also a Doctor of the Church, and has been called "the Minstrel of the Holy Spirit". So I thought I would put up here a snippet from his De Spiritu Sancto, to give us an idea of his voice. Here he is defending the glory of the Holy Spirit against those who underestimate Him.

49.  And His operations, what are they?  For majesty ineffable, and for numbers innumerable.  How shall we form a conception of what extends beyond the ages?  What were His operations before that creation whereof we can conceive?  How great the grace which He conferred on creation?  What the power exercised by Him over the ages to come?  He existed; He pre-existed; He co-existed with the Father and the Son before the ages.  It follows that, even if you can conceive of anything beyond the ages, you will find the Spirit yet further above and beyond.  And if you think of the creation, the powers of the heavens were established by the Spirit, the establishment being understood to refer to disability to fall away from good.  For it is from the Spirit that the powers derive their close relationship to God, their inability to change to evil, and their continuance in blessedness.  Is it Christ’s advent?  The Spirit is forerunner.  Is there the incarnate presence?  The Spirit is inseparable.  Working of miracles, and gifts of healing are through the Holy Spirit.  Demons were driven out by the Spirit of God.  The devil was brought to naught by the presence of the Spirit.  Remission of sins was by the gift of the Spirit, for “ye were washed, ye were sanctified,…in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the holy Spirit of our God.” There is close relationship with God through the Spirit, for “God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba, Father.” The resurrection from the dead is effected by the operation of the Spirit, for “Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created; and Thou renewest the face of the earth.” If here creation may be taken to mean the bringing of the departed to life again, how mighty is not the operation of the Spirit, Who is to us the dispenser of the life that follows on the resurrection, and attunes our souls to the spiritual life beyond?  Or if here by creation is meant the change to a better condition of those who in this life have fallen into sin, (for it is so understood according to the usage of Scripture, as in the words of Paul “if any man be in Christ he is a new creature”), the renewal which takes place in this life, and the transmutation from our earthly and sensuous life to the heavenly conversation which takes place in us through the Spirit, then our souls are exalted to the highest pitch of admiration.  With these thoughts before us are we to be afraid of going beyond due bounds in the extravagance of the honour we pay?  Shall we not rather fear lest, even though we seem to give Him the highest names which the thoughts of man can conceive or man’s tongue utter, we let our thoughts about Him fall too low?

HAPPY NEW YEAR?

The First Sunday in Advent is the beginning of the liturgical year. Advent, for many people, is either barely present in the rush of work, school, travel plans and buying presents, or it is seen as a kind of minor version of Lent, vaguely gloomy and depressing. I take this opportunity once again to quote in extenso the admirable Advent meditation of Dom David Bird OSB, a Benedictine monk.

During the season of Advent, the Church proposes for our attention four truths which are general enough and profound enough to shape our whole spiritual life.

 The first is that, whoever we are, whatever our vocation, whether our life is happy or sad, fulfilled or frustrated, useful or a waste of time, interesting or boring, in harmony with God or sinful, it is destined to change; and what we consider normal now will, one day, become a thing of the past. This is true at every level of life and for everybody, and is even true of the whole creation in which we live. All will eventually end, because God so wills it. God is not in favour of every change, but his Providence is at work in every change.

   The second Advent truth is that Christ is present in every change, even if the change has been brought about against his will, and, at the end of every change, Christ will manifest himself to each and every one of us in a new way, taking into account what has happened, if we allow him. This will go on happening until  his Second Coming in which the whole of creation will be transformed into a new heaven and a new earth, and his presence will be manifested in a new and definitive way.

   This Sunday we celebrate the presence among us of the Risen Christ, as we do every Sunday; but, because it is Advent, at the same time, we are warned not to be satisfied with the level of our Christian life, our own holiness or our degree of commitment, nor closed to Christ's challenges when they involve us in change.  While we are alive, we can be confident that Christ has much more for each of us, and that he wants to make us capable of receiving what he has to offer. He would prefer our firmament should cave in, our whole world collapse rather than allow us to sink into a mire of complacency that would make us impervious to his grace. The Church has given us Advent as an antidote to complacency.  To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often, as Blessed John Henry Newman said, and Christ wishes to accompany us; and, round every corner, after every change, Christ is ready to meet us, to offer us something new.

   The third Advent truth is that when we meet Christ, we never meet him alone. Christ is in heaven and does not leave it when he comes to meet us. Where Christ is, there are Our Lady, the angels and saints. Whether in the Mass where we meet him as a Church, or in our hearts when we meet him in prayer, or when we recognise him as present in every situation, heaven and earth become one.

   We talk about Christ coming to us; but the early Church talked about our ascending into heaven, even as we remain physically on earth.   This is the theme of the Letter to the Hebrews and of the Apocalypse. It is a further paradox that, the more we are united to Christ who is in heaven, the more heaven is present on earth through us.

   Is it not strange that, in the early Church, when the Liturgy was at its most communal, when there was so much emphasis on the Church as the body of Christ, that Christians should have gone into the desert to become hermits? Was it a flight into non- Christian individualism? It may have been for some; but the classical Christian hermit was anything but an individualist. What united him or her to the Christian community was that both he or she and the community believed they were citizens of heaven before they were citizen of this world, precisely because they were members of Christ's risen body. The monk believed that, because of his own weakness, he could not really become what baptism had made him, a citizen of heaven, without entering a monastery or going into the desert.   Did you know that the word "cell", used for a monk's room, was believed to have the same root as "coelum" because, just as the Christian community was raised in the Eucharist to share in the liturgy of heaven, so the monk in his cell was raised up to heaven in his prayer, and his solitude was filled with Our Lady, the angels and saints who prayed with him, and even with all those on earth who are united to Christ in his risen body.  No space on earth was more populated than a hermit's cell! Moreover, people went to visit hermits and monasteries because they believed that, through the monks life of sacrifice and prayer, sacred spaces are formed where heaven and earth are united.

   The fourth Advent truth is that heaven changed radically when Jesus, having died and risen again, ascended into his Father's presence. The Incarnation had brought about a new relationship between God and his creation. When this relationship was perfected by Christ's obedience unto death and became the central reality in heaven by means of Christ's ascension, heaven became the new reality into which the whole human race and the whole of creation were destined to be transformed.   It became the ultimate destiny of all that is. Jesus said that this generation will not pass until all these things shall happen; and in a certain and real sense this is exactly what took place when Christ ascended into heaven. For this reason, the early Christians never changed the texts in which Christ foretold the end of the world. We are in the last days, not, as the Jehovah Witnesses believe, because some world-destroying calamity is about to happen, but because every time we celebrate Mass, every time we pray, every time we meet Christ in the circumstances of the present moment, we are brought into the Father's presence by Christ in the Spirit, and we share directly in heaven which is God's final solution for the whole of creation; and every time we go to Mass or simply pray, Christ, Our Lady, the angels and saints enter our world through and in us.

   Advent is the time when we remember that this life receives its value only in so far as it incarnates God's will revealed to our faith in Christ's presence.  As the gospel today teaches us, we must be awake, ready to receive him and not pass our time in debauchery and drunkenness.   In every situation we must pray, "Come, Lord Jesus," and he will be there.

   In this world of change, we find Christ's will in the present moment. We must not try to re-create a past that is agreeable to us, because God's will is not to be found there. Nor must we seek our fulfilment in an imaginary future, because that is our own creation, not God's. We must find God's will where Christ is, in the present; but we must not be so attached to present circumstances that we try to hold on to them when it is God's will that they be changed.

   We must become Advent Christians for whom everything in this world, past, present and to come, must make way for the Christ who comes. Only our self-will stands in the way.
 

Dom David Bird, OSB (from his blog Monks and Mermaids at http://fatherdavidbirdosb.blogspot.fr/

ADVENT 4: A GIFT

On the Fourth Sunday in Advent I was at Mass in the rather beautiful village church of Milhars, a cut above most others in the region, perhaps because of the proximity of the large ancient château perched above it. And in the silence following the Communion it occurred to me that each Eucharist repeats the entire story of the Gospel.

At the moment of Consecration, the Incarnation repeats itself. Our Lord and heavenly father, the almighty and everlasting God, again sends his Son to take matter upon himself, et homo factus est in the Body and Blood on the altar.

At the moment of Communion, his preaching life, his healing life, and his crucifixion are compressed into a brief but extraordinarily intense moment: at one and the same time we understand his action, we are healed by his touch, and we crush him in the Host.

And in our subsequent renewal, in our fresh energy of loving, his Resurrection is repeated: our inward life shines with an Easter glory.

This thought is, I am sure, present in the work of mystics and Church Fathers; but in this case it was given to me in a few minutes of quiet, awaiting the Solemn Benediction in a French village church. What a Christmas gift!

THE FIFTH PETITION

A couple of posts ago, I said that I’d write something about forgiveness. One of my reasons for doing so is that I’ve been rereading Joseph Ratzinger’s (Benedict XVI’s) Jesus of Nazareth, one of the most gloriously intelligent books on Christianity I have seen for a long time. And in his section on the Lord’s Prayer, his chapter on the Fifth Petition (“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us”) is a model of perceptive and noble insight. I will try to repeat here what he says, partly in quotation, partly in précis, because it is very much worth pondering.

            First, there is trespass – we all know that. ‘How to overcome guilt is a central question for every human life’. What does one do about offence? The first human reaction is to retaliate. As the old Marines’ saying has it, ‘Yea, I shall walk through the valley of death and fear no evil, because I am the meanest son of a bitch in the valley.’ In real life, of course, retaliation has no logical end and becomes vendetta. But ‘with this petition, the Lord is telling us that guilt can be overcome only by forgiveness, not by retaliation.’

           And it is God, not we, who has taken the initiative. ‘We should keep in mind that God himself – knowing that we human beings stood against him, unreconciled – stepped out of his divinity in order to come toward us, to reconcile us.’ He washed his disciples’ feet; he told the story of the unforgiving servant (Matthew 18:25-35).

            So what do we do? Here I have to quote at slightly greater length, because the argument is dense and pertinent. First, if we want to get into this properly, we have to ask ourselves, ‘What is forgiveness, really? What happens when forgiveness takes place?

Guilt is a reality, an objective force; it has caused destruction that must be repaired. For this reason, forgiveness must be more that a matter of ignoring, or merely trying to forget. Guilt must me worked through, healed, and thus overcome.’

            (Notice that he treats ‘guilt’ not as a feeling, but as a fact. Not ‘I feel guilty’ but ‘I am guilty.’ That is already a biggish step, in a lot of situations.)

            ‘Forgiveness exacts a price – first of all from the person who forgives. He must overcome within himself the evil done to him; he must, as it were, burn it interiorly and in so doing renew himself.’ (My emphasis.) This I find extraordinary in its profound perception. The sentence is worth copying out and meditating on.

            ‘As a result, he also involves the other, the trespasser, in this process of transformation, of inner purification, and both parties, suffering all the way through and overcoming evil, are made new.’

            Sounds wonderful, we say. But does it work in real life? Damned hard. Offence is offence; evil is evil. (It may not help that ‘bad’ and ‘wicked’ have become compliments . . .) We are not good at confronting evil, because when we do we discover how powerful it is. It is bigger than us: as Reinhold Schneider says, ‘it lives in a thousand forms; it occupies the pinnacles of power . . .it bubbles up from the abyss.’ And then he says (to God): ‘Love has just one form – your Son.’

            This is where one the one hand the solution lies, but where on the other hand it gets difficult. ‘The idea that God allowed the forgiveness of guilt, the healing of man from within, to cost him the death of his Son has come to seem quite alien to us today.’ For two reasons: one is that, even while we take the horrors of history as proof that God can’t exist, we trivialize evil: we don’t see the horrors as emanations of something. (‘Shit happens.’) The other reason is that we tend to see the human being as being solely an individual, ‘ensconced in himself alone’. We find it hard to think of all human beings as deeply interwoven, and as all in turn being encompassed by ‘the One – the Incarnate Son.’

            Perhaps, says JR, an idea of John Henry Newman’s (the Victorian Anglican who became a Catholic and a Cardinal) my suffice. ‘Newman once said that while God could create the whole world [read: universe] out of nothing with just one word, he could overcome men’s guilt and suffering only by bringing himself into play, by becoming in his Son a sufferer who carried this burden and overcame it through his self-surrender.’

As such, we have a model we can follow: however hard it is, we aren’t pathless. ‘The overcoming of guilt has a price. We must put our heart – or better, our whole existence – on the line. And even this act is insufficient: it can become effective only through communion with the One who bore the burdens of us all . . . who allowed forgiveness to cost him descent into the hardship of human existence and death on the Cross.’ We need first to give thanks for that, ‘and then, with him, to work through and suffer through evil by means of love.’ We are not terribly good at this, and we keep falling down; but we are held within the power his His love, which means that our puny attempts ‘can still become a power of healing.’

In all honesty, I’ve never read such a profound and powerful analysis of what it means to forgive – not just the little things, the friend who forgot my birthday or the teacher who gave me an unfair mark, but the big things: they know what they are. To forgive and to be forgiven: it means, inevitably, a relationship, a coming together in a challenge. Without prayer, it’s all but impossible; with prayer, it’s hard, but we are not alone. The Force is with us.   

        

Thanks to Rick McNary at rickmcnary.me for the image.