HOPE AND STRENGTH?

“God is our hope and strength : a very present help in trouble.” (Psalm 46)

If one has faith, this is stirring; and instinctively one feels it’s true. But it it? And if so, how? 

First of all, the Psalm says that God is our, not my, hope and strength. As always, the original referent is the people of Israel; as always, for a Christian, the Psalms’ people of Israel is now the Church. 

As members of the Church, then, we can say that God is our hope. Between faith and charity; between our belief in the Resurrection and our active love for our neighbour, there is hope. Hope is symbolised by an anchor: it is what prevents us from drifting on to a lee shore. Hope is what permits us not to give up. Hope is what sustains us when we see the decline of Christendom, when we are depressed by the oceans of complete indifference to religion around our battered fleet. And our hope is – God. Is it our hope that He will, magically, act? that he will come flying into history on the wings of a divine wind and take over? We may daydream of such a dénouement, but we are pretty sure it will not happen. If our hope is God, it is perhaps rather that He will give us the strength and the stamina to carry on regardless; that He will continue to be the well of life, where we can go to draw the living water of renewed faith and energy.

As members of the Church, again, we can say that God is our strength. He is our strength, the strength of the Church: and the Church, in turn, is the strength of its members. There are times when our belief in this is sorely tested: when the Church, through its leaders, singularly fails to cope with the travails of modern life; when the Church, through some its visible groups or individuals, shows itself foolish or sinful or both. And yet – anyone who has tried to maintain an active and lively faith for a long time on his own knows how much the strength needed for that surpasses his little private store of resources. Within the Church, through the liturgy, through the Eucharist, but also through the sharing of thought and feeling in both theology and devotion – within the Church there is strength in abundance, available to all. 

A help in trouble. That is where it comes to the nub. Trouble is always with us, and may emerge from any shadow at any moment: for the community and/or for the individual. In what way is God our help in trouble? First, as hope: it is our hope in God that gives us strength and stamina. That hope is what is expressed in prayer. When we beg and beseech, we do so hoping. Because we know that, if we do not ask for fishhooks but for the force that will allow us to do His will whatever befalls, He will not let us down. 

Second, as strength. In trouble, God is our strength. Our strength. If we face trouble as a body, as members of the Church, as the Church, we will have the strength needed to survive and overcome trouble. This means unity. This means solidarity: not (only) in the now usual sense of helping the poor, but of knowing how to bury our differences and metaphorically link arms, watch each other’s back, and deal with it, whatever it is. And if God is our strength, that means that we receive it through prayer.

Finally, God is a very present help. Present, here; present, now. Not absent, not future. I often find it hard to remember, to realise, that God is with me here and now. As air is. As radio waves are. As light is. So, in trouble, prayer does not have to be elaborately organised and anticipated. It can be hurried, panted, cried, whispered; and if there are more of us, physically, it can be remembered and recited, or improvised, together. 

If I am in trouble, let me remember that I am not alone, but that I am a member of a body, the Church, the new people of Israel. And let me remember that as such, I have at all times the ear of our heavenly Father, Almighty and everlasting God. Through – per, by means of, by way of, through the mediation of -- Jesus Christ our Lord. 

STORMS AND THE HEART - TRINITY 8

Mitch Dobrowner, 'Storm Over Field'

Deus, cuius providentia in sui dispositione non fallitur, te supplices exoramus ut noxia cuncta submoveas et omnia nobis profutura concedas. Per.

O God, whose never-failing providence ordereth all things both in heaven and earth; We humbly beseech thee to put away from us all hurtful things, and to give us those things which are profitable for us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (Collect for the Eighth Sunday after Trinity)

For a devout person, the Acknowledgement of this collect is self-evident: since God is omnipotent, His providence orders all things in heaven and earth, and cannot fail. For one who lives in the world with open eyes, however, it seems at first little short of monstrous. For taken literally it means that everything that occurs is intended so to happen by God: which would then include earthquakes, tsunamis, the St Batholomew’s Massacre, Passchendaele, torture, lynchings, Chernobyl and homo homini lupus.

            How, then should  we take it? For the dogma of Divine omnipotence is not in doubt. With one exception, I have always said. God can do anything, except go against his own nature. And since His nature is Love, and Love cannot include compulsion, He cannot force men to return His love. Hence, they are free; and when they choose the Adversary, who delights in cruelty and revels in blood and suffering, God weeps hot cosmic tears. It is not up to Him, it is up to us to return His love for us, and to persuade others that (to quote another Collect) ‘in knowledge of Him standeth [their] eternal life, and that in His service is perfect freedom’.

            That leaves the earthquakes and the tsunamis, which even insurance companies call Acts of God. We have learnt, over the ages and with the growth of science, that in fact they are acts of nature and the elements. Can God prevent them? Technically, perhaps He could: Exodus tells us that He intervened at the Sea of Reeds. But as I have said elsewhere, it seems unlikely that God micromanages His creation. He may see each sparrow that falls, but He does not stop its falling. It seems more probable that what matters to Him is the human heart. It is the heart that He loves; and if it knows and loves Him in return, then it, and all it touches, is ‘ordered by His never-failing providence’. It can still, as a child to a loving father, ask Him to put away from us all hurtful things and give us what will do us good; but it trusts Him to do so according to His will and insight, which may not be the same as our wishes and desires.

            But among the earthquakes and tsunamis are also the hideous medical afflictions that blight some lives. And here it is all at its hardest: these are the real tests of our re-ligio.  The only decent response to these, for those of us untouched by them, is humility and silence: to do what we can to help when we come into contact with them, but in no way to preach to their victims. We can and must pray for them; and what we can pray is that they may come to, or remain in, the knowledge and love of God, and that if it be His will, their infirmities may be relieved. For history is full of the stories of extreme sufferers whose faith nevertheless so shone about them as to bless and comfort their entourage. We may admire and be inspired by them; but if we are moderately healthy, humility and silence is still our watchword. God’s providence never fails: His grace always prevents and follows and accompanies us, and we have access to it in all times and in all places; but His ways are, it is true, sometimes dark to our understanding. Hence humility; silence; and prayer. Always and everywhere: prayer.

A TIME (NOT) OUR TIME?

This is a year of which many will be glad to see the end. I see the sentiment everywhere expressed, often profanely. And for this late post for the Second Week in Advent I was moved to consider the ways in which we relate to the “time of the world”. There are so many kinds of time we live in, as someone on French radio, discussing Gilles Deleuze on Proust, said recently; and what I call the time of the world is one that seems to occupy more people more of the time than ever.

The “time of the world” is not a measure of time, although years, decades and centuries might be related to it. Rather, it is “time” in the sense of Zeitgeist, a “spirit of the age” as the Germans call it: an expression dating from the nineteenth century, and which the sixteenth might have found bizarre. The sense of a Zeitgeist seems linked to what we now call communication, which in its modern sense is a product of the Industrial Revolution, and which participates (and is in part at the root of) the accelerating J-curve of “rapid social change” which the Victorians were the first generation to have to confront.

It has continued to accelerate and has now (for the time being) culminated in the smartphone. This, together with the social networks it gives us permanent access to, has had the effect of bringing the “time of the world” into individuals’ lives in ways, and to degrees, never before experienced. As such it far outstrips newspapers and television. Much, perhaps too much, has been said about this, and I’ve no wish to repeat it. But it does change the felt quality of this season of the year. Not its essence, which is darkness and hope, sorrow and the promise of light; but the felt quality, different as the Wind Chill Factor makes the felt temperature.

A year such as 2016 has brought to the world a series of misfortunes, some unavoidable (the hurricane in Haiti), some avoidable (the Syrian civil war and the American election result – which will soon be seen as disastrous by all but the few who sit on the pork barrels). And because of the “time of the world” it appears to have been a uniquely ghastly twelvemonth, spreading gloom all around. Nevertheless.

Nevertheless, the world has not become worse: it still carries on in its difficult journey from the Fall to the Second Coming, a journey full of sin and misery but equally full of kindness, generosity, love and hope. That these last are not felt by many as part of the “time of the world” shows the degree to which that concept belongs to the public world and the media that reflect and comment upon it. A French radio programme, “Carnets de Campagne”, each day interviews founders and members of local organisations that work on the bases of co-operation and solidarity: the number of these, and their quality, is astonishing. I shared on Facebook today the story of Torrington in North Devon and its experience with child refugees. In a little-repeated story, France in the last 10 months has seen anti-semitic and anti-Moslem acts diminish by ca. 60% from the year before. And virtually all of us personally know people who, at whatever level, make the world a little better.

At this time of the year, I propose placing “the time of the world” in perspective by more attention to two other dimensions: the “time of our lives” and the “time of eternity”. The Time of our Lives is what happens to us personally. It may be fraught with difficulty and danger, but it is our time, to savour and to deal with and to improve. And if, as also often happens, it is a time of happiness, joy or even prosperity, we should not let the Time of the World embitter that. The Time of our Lives is the time in which we can be kind, generous, positively effective and spread comfort and joy.

And the “time of eternity”? That is God’s paradox: dark and difficult, we tend to think until we remember that those supposed to understand it best are little children. It is the time which eternity underlies; the time which eternity penetrates; the time which eternity suffuses and lights with a glow that is permanent, if only intermittently perceived. It is the time of faith, of hope, and of love, at the smallest level (a child grasping its parent’s hand without looking) and at the greatest level, a dimension far beyond our understanding. That is God’s paradox, totally incorporated in the apparently simple phrase “Our Father which art in Heaven” – which always makes me catch my breath, when I think of Hubble’s view of a corner of the Universe: the Creator and Father of that, all that, is here in this room and hears my prayer? 

Stupendous. And quite enough for two candles.

OF MARTYRS, MOTHERS, MUSLIMS, AND MASS

Muslims attending Mass at St Ouen, North of Paris, after the murder of Fr Hamel

(NB: white is the Muslim colour of mourning)

I was asked the other day why on this blog I hadn’t written anything about the murder of Fr Jacques Hamel, the old French priest stabbed to death at the altar by two ISIS-encouraged 19-year-olds. I thought about it, then answered that I wasn’t sure what sensible things I could say that hadn’t been said already a hundred times by the media, social or otherwise. Outrage, horror, grief. One Facebook meme had his picture with the overlay “MARTYR DE FRANCE”. I wasn’t happy with that: “martyr for Christ” would have been nearer the mark. However, two things happened – one big, one small – that persuaded me to write something here, if only to give them wider and encouraging publicity.

In the first place – and this is big, really big --, on the following Sunday when Masses were said in his memory, thousands of Muslims all over France spontaneously went to the Catholic churches to attend the service, many if not most of them for the first time. It was an extraordinary deed of solidarity and should have been given far more coverage. All those who were interviewed said that they had come to support their Christian neighbours and to show the world how appalled they were at what these young thugs had done. Many added that they were impressed with the closeness of the two faiths, and convinced that we serve the same God.

I find this, as we say nowadays, beyond decent; a genuinely noble gesture that I hope will be amply repaid by Christians. A few more visits to mosques during prayers might be a good beginning.

The small thing that I found extremely encouraging was that at a small local talk-plus-prayer-service I heard the visiting priest – and to me this was a first, I’ve written about it – praying, and urging us to pray, for the murderers and their families. I’m not sure how much this will directly touch the brainwashed, but in the context of my last post more intensive intercessory prayer for our enemies is urgently needed.

I remember, only a few years ago, reading a number of Collects and Psalm texts about “the assaults of our enemies” and thinking that nowadays, mercifully, we should perhaps learn to take them as part of a spiritual war. But no: the enemies are back, they are real, they are armed, they are intelligent, and they hate us. We can start rereading a lot of those texts (taking some care to apply Jesus’ teaching to some of the more vindictive Psalms), and looking at the ways they teach us to react. Note, for instance, that in the case of the Anglican Church’s Second Collect at Matins at no time do we pray to God to take away our enemies and their attacks: “defend us thy humble servants in all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in thy defence, may not fear the power of any adversaries.” And in the Second Collect for Evensong: “that we being defended from the fear of our enemies may pass our time in rest and quietness.” What we ask God to do is take away our fear. Perhaps, if he does that, we can become like St Stephen who, as he was being stoned, prayed that God might forgive his murderers. And pray at once for the soul of Fr Hamel and for the souls of Adel Kermiche and Abdel Malik Petitjean; for  their families and for their neighbours who have done us the honour of attending Mass.


PS: I have been reminded that the Muslim attendance at Mass was in response to a call by the CFCM, the French Council of Muslims; so not technically spontaneous -- but the response was huge, and deeply moving.