"THE SKY IS MARBLE TO MY THOUGHTS"

Those words were written by William Hazlitt in one of English Romanticism’s oddest books, Liber Amoris, the shame-less autobiographical account of his all-consuming passion for a young, uncultured and slightly bewildered shopgirl. But they also reflect the experience of many Christians, in long periods when their prayers seem to be going nowhere, when there is no sense of an answer, an encouragement, a hearing even. One goes on praying because one has been told that that’s important and in any case it has become a habit; but there’s no sense of a conversation any more. Once, there was: we felt that we were being given great spiritual gifts almost every day; we felt privileged, loved, cherished by the Father we were learning to love. And then, gradually more often than suddenly, a curtain of increasing density seems to be drawn between us and Him, and our prayers feel as if they were being absorbed and powdered into dust.

Those who know, the spiritual masters and novice masters, tell us that this is a recognised stage in one’s spiritual education, to which perseverance is the only answer. That’s a slight comfort to know, but it doesn’t help explain the phenomenon; and we feel that somehow an explanation would help us weather it. Should we, greatly daring, try to find one?

Suppose it is we who are the cause ourselves. It might be that, simply, our prayer has become a habit, that repetition has made it routine, that we can recite our prayers without being fully there, and that consequently they arrive in Heaven as a confused mumble hard for even God to hear and decode. On a higher plane, the perceived silence might be the result, the backlash, of a period of intense concentration, a backlash which is telling us to calm down, to give it a rest, to recharge our batteries. And a third reason might be that we have become a little deaf: that we are waiting for a mighty roaring wind, at the least a small earthquake, and that for some reason – ears battered by daily life, eyes glazed over by the Internet, senses numbed by private griefs – we cannot perceive the faint rustle trying to reach us.

Suppose, on the other hand, that it is God who is the cause. If so, the one thing we should not do is take the silence as a rejection: as if God had other things on His mind, as if he didn’t think we were worthy, as if he thought us too ugly or too insignificant to reply to. God rejects nobody who seeks Him: not the sinner, not the idiot, not the creep, not even the saint. So if it is not a rejection, what else might it be? We can take it as axiomatic that whatever His reason, it is meant for our good. Hard, to try to second-guess the Divinity; to plumb the Mind that made us. What might He mean? One possibility is that He wants us to try different kinds of prayer: less formulaic, more spontaneous, or conversely, less ejaculatory and more soberly formal. Or it might be that He wants us to spend more time in action, helping the poor buggers who show us Christ on the bus: action, not words. Or, finally, it might simply be that He is training us for the long haul. The true spiritual life, if we are to believe the masters, is never a sprint and always a marathon.

Every great prayer figure – Theresa of Avila, St John of the Cross, Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas à Kempis, Hildegard of Bingen – somewhere mentions the silence, which can be as deep and desperate as “the Dark Night of the Soul”. And all of them tell us that we must not give up, that beyond the night, beyond the silence, there is a brightness beyond describing. As a Carthusian put it, we are made to enter into the flow of love that passes from the Father to the Son and into the glory of love that returns from the Son to the Father. By the gentle force of the ruach, the pneuma, the Spiritus Sanctus, we are invited, perhaps destined, into the very life of the Trinity. The marble is not to be broken: if we are steadfast, it will melt.  

THE SILENCE OF ADVENT

Yule demands incessant busyness; Christmas demands waiting in silence. How to combine the two? Perhaps we can learn from the Carthusians. A novice-master tells a young monk the complexities of “silence”: to shut oneself up in cell for incessant prayer is not silence as the order’s Statues understand it. Opposed to “noise”, “silence” demands that we identify the source of the noise first, and when we do so we find that much of the clamour comes from one’s own heart. Outward silence does not still this, on the contrary: it invites it. True silence consists first of all of listening: you begin by listening to the others around you – not just what they say, but what they are not saying. You listen to what you can gather of their deep needs, feelings and concerns. Meanwhile, you go about your business – business-business or Yule business – but listening quietly to all you meet.

Once you learn to listen to others (for a Carthusian, “your brothers”, for the rest of us, our families, loved ones, and anyone else who comes our way), you have a much better chance of being able to listen to God. Why? Because your own self, your own ego, your own desires, wishes, prejudices, feelings, thoughts, temper, and what you will, have learnt to shut up. And this, says the old novice-master, is true Silence. Silence happens when your own self has learnt to be quiet. In true Silence, only God speaks. Sometimes in His own voice, in the ears of your heart; sometimes in the voice of your brothers, your sisters, and your neighbour.

And when that happens, you can go about your Yuletide busyness – buying presents, ordering the turkey, decorating the house, adorning the Christmas tree, sending cards, planning convivial meals and stocking up on whisky – in a perfect silence of waiting, of expectation, and of hope. The silence of Advent.  

ADVICE FROM A BUSY ADMINISTRATOR

"Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we must learn an inner solitude wherever or with whomsoever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there....Some people prefer solitude. They say their peace of mind depends on this. Others say they would be better off in church. If you do well, you do well wherever you are. If you fail, you fail wherever you are. Your surroundings don't matter. God is with you everywhere - in the market place as well as in seclusion or in the church. If you look for nothing but God, nothing or no one can disturb you. God is not distracted by a multitude of things. Nor can we be." 

Meister Eckhart, alias Eckhart von Hochheim (ca. 1260-1328), Dominican theologian, mystic and monastic supervisor from Thuringia.




Hat tip: "Mid-Week from St Matthias", St Matthias's RC Church, Somerset, NJ.

THE NECESSITY OF HOPE

Charles Péguy

The French daily Le Figaro published this moving meditation on Hope yesterday. I have translated it, and am pleased to publish it here.

EASTER: “HOPE IS NOT THE FORGETTING OF DEATH”
Fr Luc de Bellescize, vicar of St-Germain-des-Prés, Paris.

     In the film Ordet by Dreyer, a young married man sees his wife die. He stops the drawing-room clock. Time stops its flight. The old father speaks the words from the Book of Job, the act of faith in the dark night: “The Lord hath given, the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the Name of the Lord.” Silence falls, the household falls still in its grief, in its pain, in its love. The shamefastness of silence is the needful frame for the memory of the dead. “Thou tellest my flittings, put my tears into thy bottle,” says the Psalm (56). “One must obtain a proper silence,” said Maria Callas, speaking of her singing. Death requires a proper silence for proper words, for if we have nothing to say in the face of death we have nothing to say in the face of human life.
     In Dreyer’s film, the pastor speaks, the man of God who is called in the morning of one’s life, in the evening of one’s days, in the unforeseen of the good and the evil that weave the inconstant heart of man. “O heart woven of joy on a ground of pain,” wrote Péguy. The old father dares a word that dwells in the silence without breaking its mystery. “Her soul is with God.” But the husband replies, “It was her body I loved.” How true those words are….. For what we love in others is not only their insubstantial soul, it is their fleshly presence, their scent that lives on in their memory, the sound of their voice that echoes in silence, the shining of their eyes after their eyes have closed. Death is goodbye to the face. Such a painful mystery……
     We waste too much time fleeing it. It would be better to learn to live it in order to be fully human. “The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning,” says the Book of Ecclesiastes (VII:4) We have lost too much of wisdom….. What is typical of our time is the loss of the “memory of death,” said the Orthodox theologian Olivier Clément, and with it the forgetting of man’s call to life eternal. Today’s atheism, though, is no longer the fight of the philosophers of suspicion against the hope of Christians, but the idolatry of well-being claimed as a right and pleasure raised up as the supreme idol of happiness. It is TV football, healthy-living.com, a decent retirement plan and the organic guarantee of one’s steak. “One has one’s little joy by day and one’s little joy by night,” wrote Nietzsche, “but one takes care of one’s health.”
     Modern man “feels” a lot, like an apartment Labrador on thick carpet. What counts is “feeling good”. The dictatorship of well-being has replaced the City of Joy. We refuse to “sow in tears” (Ps 126) But what will happen when the drunken boat of my days brings me to the house of mourning? Will I remain on the threshold of my life, stop in the porch of the mystery(1)? Death is the Great Forgotten of men, yet it will always come and jog their memory.
     We are not primarily consumers,  but beings who thirst for genuine life. We taste earthly food, not in the feverish greed of the moment before the coming of unforeseeable Death, but in the eternal flavour hidden within it, which calls us to a life ever higher. “Deep calleth unto deep.”(Ps 42). Through life, love, death we are born into the hope of Heaven. He who has never felt his love to be eternal has never truly loved.

We do not want a life that forgets death,  nor a joy that knows nothing of pain, nor a facile happiness that closes its eyes to the suffering of children, to the death of innocents. It would not be worthy of man. “I would believe in their God if they appeared a little more saved,” said Nietzsche. But Christian joy is not the same as worldly excitement. It is not that unbearable lightness of being that reduces life to the nothingness of youthism pushed to the limit. What we want is a full joy that is everywhere in the richness of man’s life, the great cloak of his night, which accepts all his history and tears for man the veil of the Eternal. Such is the joy of Christ. He has not closed his eyes to Evil, he has let Evil close his eyes in order to fill everything with the joy of Easter. No other religion claims the “death” of God: only the Christian faith. God has entered inito the great silence, the Word made flesh has made his Presence resound in the bowels of the earth. “We proclaim a Messiah crucified, a scandal to the Jews and a nonsense to the pagans,” says the apostle, “ but for us the wisdom of God and the power of God.” (1 Cor. I:23).

Let me ask you this question. What is your hope? Is it to forget death, the Promethean myth of the transhuman? For us who bear the fine name of Christians, it is a well hidden in the desert and which radiates in silence; the empty tomb from which arose, alive, the Resurrected, seen, heard, touched by the apostles; Péguy’s little girl who travels through the shadows, who “shines in the darkness and whom the darkness has not overcome.” (Jn I:5)

(1)   This and “Peguy’s little girl”, below, are references to a moving poetic text published by Charles Péguy in 1916, “The Porch of the Mystery of the Second Virtue”, where Faith and Charity are pictured as grown women, and Hope as a little girl walking between them. 

CHRISTOS ANESTI!

Piero della Francesca

THE SILENCE

                      

 


When I first attended a seriously Anglo-Catholic church, St Mary Magdalen in Toronto, I shall never forget the effect of the veiled images and especially the empty tabernacle on Holy Saturday. An astonishing sense of desolation. Nobody home. Abandonment. We know it's not so, really, but oh, the feeling of grief. The world, sure, lives as if there were no God; but then, thousands of Romans and even Jews went about their business normally on a certain Friday. But this is what it would be like if there really was no God. Tabernacles empty. Nobody home. Only us, on a spinning ball.

Maranatha . . . . . .

DARK, HARD, SILENT ----

                                                                                                             advent four



                                                                                                             Dark darker, cold
                                                                                                             colder, movement
                                                                                                             freezes. In night, lighted
                                                                                                             doors close and go
                                                                                                             dark. Streets gleam
                                                                                                             houseless, hard.
                                                                                                             Where is entry?



                                                                                                             Four candles.



                                                                                                             On bare hills, on
                                                                                                             camel roads, something
                                                                                                             has cracked open. Clouds
                                                                                                             reveal stars. Stillness
                                                                                                             is everywhere. A huge
                                                                                                             holds its breath.

SEX, TERSE, AND NONES

The New York Times's Nicholas Kristof published a column on Sept. 4 titled "What Religion Would Jesus Belong To?" After noting that great religions often migrate far from the idea(l)s of their founders, and pointing out the staggering religious illiteracy among Americans who call themselves Christians, the column unsurprisingly moved to defending action above doctrine.

And in the age of Pope Francis -- who nevertheless, at the beginning of his pontificate, stressed that the Church's mission is not to become a religiously-tinted NGO -- this seems to be the way even the Catholic Church is tending. The Anglican church, of course, has been churning steadily in this direction for decades. Meanwhile, not only is church attendance falling but, as Kristof notes, the percentage of "nones", those who when asked their religion answer "none", is growing by leaps and bounds. In the very religious USA, it is now at 25% and among millennials at one-third; in Once-Catholic France it is not far from 50%.

Some clergy insist that this is not a problem. What is falling away, they say, is merely the churchgoing, and the adherence, out of habit; what is left is the core of true believers, real disciples, who are the essence of the church (and who, some though not many still claim, will some day change and convince the world by their faith and action). Others do see it as a crisis but persist in believing that the solution lies in "reaching out" ever more to the young and the unbelievers by "updating" the church, its doctrines and practices, and putting it "in tune" with contemporary life. Their explanation for the emptying of pews and the growth of the "nones" is that the church is old-fashioned, bourgeois, stick-in-the-mud, reactionary and unable to cope with the issues that really concern thinking people in our time.

As an Anglo-Catholic living in ever-more-aggressively-secularist France among Vatican-II-raised Roman Catholics, I have ample time, occasion and reason to ponder these issues. And over the years (because I am now numbered definitively among the Elderly if not the Elders) I have come to a few conclusions which contradict both the positions described above.

To the "thank goodness we are now left just with the core of true disciples" clergy I say the following: if bad habits can eventually ruin us, as we all know, why may good habits not eventually save us? I am convinced that those who went habitually to church every Sunday morning, slept through mediocre sermons delivered without microphones, were rarely offered, and rarely took, Communion, but knew the texts of Matins, Evensong and a number of Psalms by heart, were extremely fortunate. Because when a crisis struck their mind, body or estate, they were surrounded and held up, if not by a small group of active well-wishers, certainly by a deeply-integrated body of words and doctrine become habit, by a parish that still observed feasts and fasts, and suprisingly often by a good and compassionate vicar or Rector. What, now, in like situations sustains the 3/4 of  their children become Nones? The 1/4 who have become True Disciples have prayer, fasting, and helping Syrian refugees to sustain them, as well as the knowledge that their church approves; but the others are foolish virgins at best, no oil in their lamps, no wedding-garment on a Monday. Who, moreover, are made to feel that the church doesn't really want them, not as they are anyway. In any case, the new/alternative/common-worship services they might go to are all geared to touch them to the heart and call them to action in everyday language, not recognising the fact that they might prefer to be left in peace in their pews with the comfort of age-old glorious English and their own quietly but urgently recited prayers.

Which leads me to the second class of clerical opinion: that the church must be in tune with the times, holding (as the current Archbishop of Canterbury put it) "the Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other". Each church service must be attuned to the casual None passer-by, to draw her in with instantly-comprehensible language and gestures, with clearly-expressed involvement in current public issues, with catchy music, and with well-organised child-care. In the first place, this ignores the fact that a congregation, a parish, is a group of baptised and confirmed adults (with their families, if any) that meets as a body to meet its Maker and Saviour, and that its "family" meetings are not necessarily Mission services. No family organises its every family birthday, Christmas or Sunday dinner in view of the first casual passer-by. Secondly, this view ignores, and so by implication contemns, those whose ecclesiastical needs are expressed in a mood of collective reverence and awe that best incarnates itself in great ancient music and texts, in visual beauty and in much stillness. At best such people, in the Anglican Church, are given the sop of a spare and minimal 8 a.m. BCP service; in the RC church they are mostly given nothing at all.

Beer comes to mind. Many years ago Carlsberg, with Tuborg a fine Danish lager much prized by connoisseurs, proudly announced to Canadian beer-lovers that it would henceforth be brewed under licence in Canada and thus be much more, and more cheaply, available. We then found that Canadian-brewed Carlsberg had a quite different taste and had become simply another Canadian beer, like Molson's. When I mentioned this to a brewery executive, he smiled and said: "The original Carlsberg had maybe 25,000 customers in Canada. The new Carlsberg has a million and a half. Why should they care about the original 25,000?" Why should the modern Church care about what they think is the minority to whom faith is expressed in awe and reverence and ancient beauty?

Except that there is no million of new customers, and the Nones flourish. So my conclusion is this: is the thought not at least envisageable to those in charge of Church doctrine, education and worship that the Church has been driving away as many people as, if not more people than, it attracts? I personally know a number of Roman Catholics who have been alienated from their Church, and consequently from their faith, by an unfortunate remark by a trusted priest. I also know a number of both Roman and Anglican Catholics who no longer feel at home in modern liturgies and resent being pushed into early-morning corners. And I know several of both kinds who need their faith, and who need their church, without necessarily wanting to be lectured to, at every turn, on the absolute cost of, yet the imperative need for, True Discipleship.

Christ had twelve disciples. But He touched and healed many -- dozens, hundreds, thousands. What happened to them? They saw and treated, I'm sure, their troublesome neighbour a different way. They prayed with more thanksgiving when they woke up and went to bed. It was perhaps for them that St Bernard wrote, "Whoever loves God even a little, and loves his neighbour even a little, is united to God." It seems a shame to let them drift off into Nonehood.

Finally, the answer to doctrinal illiteracy is not, surely, to ignore it as long as there is enough admirable social action. Christ spent much of His time teaching. He taught in synagogues, He taught on beaches, He taught on the slopes of green hills. He taught over lunch with tax-collectors and over dinner with Pharisees. Should the Church now renounce its teaching function because doctrine is difficult and sometimes breeds discomfort? No, an epistle is not a female apostle. No, Joan of Arc was not Adam's wife. Yes, the Eucharist is a stupendous mystery but not therefore impossible to comprehend. Not all teaching is or should be about sex. If there have been different theologies of the Holy Spirit, that does not mean it's better not to bother with Him at all. And as for Good Works, let us remember the title, as well as the content, of Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical: Caritas in Veritate -- Charity, in Truth.

. . . WENT HIS WAY

Nazareth Village: the synagogue

Yesterday’s New Testament reading is one of the fascinating ones, especially if one has been to Nazareth, where the Nazareth Village project has reconstructed the synagogue of Jesus’ time, where you can sit on one of the tiered benches and imagine him standing at the front, reading from a scroll. He reads the passage from Isaiah; then, as the congregation waits for the commentary, he says, simply, “Today what’s written here is being accomplished” – in other words, it’s happening now.

The locals’ reaction is depressing but so understandable. This isn’t some exotic preacher come into town from Away: this is Eddie Josephson, the garage owner’s eldest! We’ve known him since he was knee-high to a grasshopper; who does he think he is? The Meshiach or something? If you’re so great, do some healing here, convince us!

He looks at them with a kind of infinite sadness. This is Jesus in his full humanity, completely disillusioned. If we needed proof that God doesn’t – can’t – use his omnipotence to convert everyone, here it is. Uh, huh. Prophets don’t cut it back home. Happened to Elijah; happened to Elisha. No better here, no better today. Sorry, guys.

So they get seriously mad. Go to hell, Eddie! He’s a charlatan; worse, he’s a blasphemer! (For us, it’s easier to imagine this happening in a strict Muslim environment, where blasphemy still merits the sword.) So they rush him, and haul him off to the local escarpment, a kind of provincial Tarpeian Rock that’s useful for executions.

All the commentaries I’ve seen in the last few days more or less stop here, and explain the locals’ reaction. How odd. Is nobody astonished by the story’s ending? Here is a wild crowd, in the grip of mob reaction, enraged, clutching the bad guy and about to throw him off a cliff. And what happens? “But he, passing through the midst of them, went his way.” (Luke 4:30)

This leaves me speechless, and breathless. It’s at least as astonishing as his walking on the water of Tiberias.  How to envisage it? The clutching hands drop; in the heart of the roaring mob there is a sudden focus of intense silence; and suddenly, there on the cliff-edge, they have nobody, and in the distance there is the man himself, striding for the horizon.

It is precisely what the disciples hoped he would do on Good Friday, but then he did not. The contrast should give us furiously to think. But meanwhile, let us at least marvel at this hometown miracle. He, passing through the midst of them, went his way. Just like that.