FURTHER TO THE KATHAROI

 

Makarioi hoi katharoi tèi kardiai, hoti autoi ton theon opsontai.

Fortunate are the clean in heart, because they shall see God.

I wrote a blog post on this as I did on the other Beatitudes, and thought at the time that the “seeing” was through the Spirit. This may be true, but another thought occurred to me. In John 14 (8), Philip the disciple says to Yeshua, ‘Show us the Father and that’s enough for us,’ and Yeshua replies, ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and you still don’t know me? He who has seen me has seen the Father.’

This stunning reply should make us think, inter alia about the Beatitude. ‘No one has ever seen God’, true: but ‘Who has seen me, has seen the Father.’ Could it be, then, that whoever saw, and sees, Yeshua and believes, is pure in heart? For he, the Meshiach, the Anointed, is, then, the visible form of the Creator. And the cleanness, the purity, of heart that is required to see, really to see, is faith. Because it is the eye of faith that sees through the lean, tough, dark-haired, brown-skinned man, the Father of an infinite majesty, the God of endless, suffering love.

Tricky for Philip. Trickier for us, who do not see him face to face. There are, possibly, three ways through this enigma. 1) First, the icon. Not necessarily an Orthodox icon: it can be a painting or a sculpture, a Gospel scene, a Pietà, or a crucifix. Really to see such an icon, with the eye of faith, is perhaps to come close to seeing Him, and through Him, the Father. 2) Secondly, meditation. In the first part of an Ignatian meditation we are asked to take a Gospel scene and to recreate it as vividly as possible with our own mind, assigning ourselves the place of a minor character. If we do this with complete engagement, we may again, perhaps, come close to seeing Him, and seeing through Him. 3) And finally, we should remember that He also said that ‘‘whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ (Mt 25:40) If, then, we are to look on any man and see Yeshua, are we to look on any man and see the Father? The mind not only boggles but rebels. And yet. What does the eye of faith behold? It sees, in the beaten and wounded traveller, a neighbour. It sees, in the down-and-out begging for food, Yeshua. It sees, in the man Yeshua Bar-Yosef, the Father. What have they all in common? Suffering. 

If, now, we go to the end of this trail of learning, what do we find? A Father who suffers. A Father who is denied and rejected, a Father who continually sees his love thrown back in his face. Could it be that that is exactly what Yeshua meant us, through Philip, to learn? We see the Son on the Cross. We see the Father in the Son. How much discernment does it take to draw the conclusion? 

THE PRAYER OF THE HEART - CONTINUED

In my last post I ended with the Carthusian saying that, in the Prayer of the Heart, the heart itself is eventually transfigured by the Crucifixion and Resurrection: a saying that if it is not simplistic is extremely profound, complex and difficult. So I have been giving it some thought, and prayer, and I think that there is perhaps a way to understand it.

            Let’s begin with that word “transfigured”. it has dictionary meanings, but in the discourse of a contemplative monk it should be taken, surely, in a Biblical, Gospel sense. There is, in the Gospel, that moment when Yeshua goes up on a mountain – traditionally Mount Tabor, on the summit of which my daughter was married – with Peter, James and John. There, all of a sudden, he is “transfigured before them; his face shining as the sun, and his garments became white as the light." Moses and Elijah appear, talking with him (according to Luke, about his fatal journey to Jerusalem); the voice of God is heard, saying “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased: listen to him.” When the terrified disciples eventually look up, Moses and Elijah have gone, and Yeshua is there looking normal and telling them not to be afraid.

            So “transfigured” implies a change not only of appearance but of nature: in the Gospel story, Yeshua’s brief and flaming change from human to divine and back again. In what way can our heart, then, be “transfigured” by the Crucifixion and Resurrection? Coming as it does after an astonishingly profound and beautiful chapter on the Prayer of the Heart and the silence that we must learn, not to create but to accept, I think this transfiguration is in a sense a reminder. The prayer of silence, it tells us, is not a cruise. It is not a peaceful, meditative, lengthy polishing of an ideal or higher self we are growing into (as it might be in Buddhism). As we are learning the prayer of the heart, the prayer of silence, the Crucifixion and Resurrection are there to add a necessary dimension of verticality, and a vivid reminder of suffering.

            I have thought a lot recently about the gradual transformation of Yeshua bar Yosef, teknon (builder) of Nazareth, into Yeshua the Meschiach, the Anointed (i.e. crowned) Saviour. Toward the middle or end of this process I seem to see something like a rage of compassion. As he looks around him with new, or gradually renewing, eyes what he sees is an ocean of suffering: I imagine him feeling like the only physician in Aleppo after weeks of bombing. It is of course a suffering he is destined wholly and entirely to share in what is perhaps the acme of his humanity.

            For us, that sharing is a message we cannot and must not evade. Yet in this context that message is not simple: it is not simply telling us to stop being Mary and become Martha. It is telling us that we must, in the midst of pursuing the prayer of the heart, let that very heart be transfigured, first by the Cross and then by Easter. The Cross will enrich our search by the hugeness of its suffering, by the enormity of its sacrifice, by the price of its blood. It will remind us that we are not embarked on a development of our self to greater heights and/or depths. We are embarked on a relationship that will lead us to places unknown and barely guessed at. And Easter, the Resurrection, will remind us that that relationship and the voyage it entails is one of our salvation, and thus of a scarcely imaginable joy.

            Coda:

           So many of these words have become counters in discourse. “Salvation”: what does it mean, really? Literally: to be safe, to end up safe, home free, saved from danger on every side, from the bullet that flies in the noonday, from the bomb that kills in the night, from the cancer that stalks us everywhere, from the inferno to which we consign ourselves daily in our great and small refusals of love. To be plucked from the jaws of peril and set down in a garden of pure raindrop love. But like Yeshua, we can only be resurrected if we go through death ourselves. That it is not eternal, not definitive, we proclaim in every recitation of the Creed. Learning the prayer of the heart may help us actually to believe this incredible promise.

TENEBRAE

John Howe, The Dark Tower

Dark days; and the terror is faceless.

War, and not war: as a scholar put it on French radio, ‘You cannot make war on terrorists; but they can make war on us.’

It is both sobering and useful, in times like these, to read with some care a couple of Prayer Book collects. The first is the Second Collect at Matins, and reads:

O God, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom: 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; through the might of Jesus Christ our Lord.

The second is the Second Collect for Evensong, which reads:

O God, from whom all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works do proceed: give unto thy servants that peace which the world cannot give; that both our hearts may be set to obey thy commandments, and also that by thee we being defended from the fear of our enemies may pass our time in rest and quietness; through the merits of Jesus Christ our Saviour.

I have long noted, and am now reminded, that in neither Collect do we pray for the destruction of our enemies, nor even that their assaults may not occur. In both Collects what we ask to be defended against is fear: ‘that we . . .may not fear the power of any adversaries’, and that we ‘being defended from the fear of our enemies’ may obtain rest and quietness – or, as another Collect puts it, be enabled ‘to serve Thee with a quiet mind.’ A peace which the world cannot give.

This is, as the media have reminded us, more easily said than done; but then, we are not asked to conquer the fear of our enemies ourselves. We pray that we may be defended, in the assaults of our enemies, by God; and defended, not from those assaults, but from fear.

God’s defence is absolute but peculiar. St Stephen had it, but he was stoned to death. Dietrich Bonhoeffer had it, but he was hanged with piano wire. Whatever God’s defence is, it is clearly not what we think or would normally desire. Is it, then, simply courage we are asking for: the courage to submit to atrocities without fear? If that were so, we should be no different from a pagan warrior, or an Islamist kamikaze praying just before he blows up himself and dozens of innocents. Courage is a great good and a noble virtue, but in itself it is as pagan as it is Christian.

No, there is another prayer to be added to those Collects, and Cranmer did not write it. Had he done so, it might have been something like this:

O Lord our heavenly father, who in the passion of thy Son Jesus Christ commanded and taught us to pardon our enemies and to love them that hate us; grant to them, we beseech thee, a true conversion, and to us the courage to conquer all hatred; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  

It is this Collect, or one very like it, that I should love and hope to hear in many churches tomorrow, and often.

Rubens, the Flagellation of Christ

SPRING CLEANING?

The current Catholic guidelines for Lent emphasise its triple nature: fasting, prayer and sharing. I have never been good at fasting, perhaps because there was a famine in occupied Holland when I was 3. Giving up chocolate and similar tiny deprivations have always seemed jejune, yet one should do (without) something. The best Lenten fast I ever had was a few years ago when, recognising myself to be choleric in nature, I gave up anger: not only did it work but it was of genuine spiritual value. This Lent I’ve gradually given up Scotch whisky, though abandoning prejudices would have been even harder and much more valuable . . . .    

The Catholic texts I’ve read stress the fact that all three exercises, and Lent generally, are intended to clear our inner decks of the clutter that comes between us and God. This I sympathise with. Prayer, the second item, would appear at first to be a much more direct line to God than fasting; yet John Donne already noted in his Devotions how difficult silent prayer on one’s own can be. “I throw myself down in my chamber, and I call in and invite God and his angels thither, and when they are there, I neglect God and his angels, for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door.” The mind’s capacity for distraction is so extensive that one wonders if it is not diabolical.

            As for sharing, enough envelopes from worthwhile charities turn up in my mailbox that an increased level of giving is easy; yet then one wonders if that ease itself is not a snare and delusion. Shouldn’t it be harder, less pleasant, more sacrificial? That depends, I conclude, on the purpose of the exercise. If the purpose is to torment oneself, as in flagellation, then indeed one should do something more painful or at least demanding, like working in a soup-kitchen or hospital visiting. If the purpose is to bring the greatest possible amount of help to many, significant giving to good and well-run charities probably accomplishes that better. If the underlying (Lenten) purpose is to bring one closer to God and His values, each such gift should perhaps be accompanied by a serious and prolonged meditation on the people it is helping.

            Can one wish people a “Happy Lent”? It seems like a contradiction in terms, or even a sarcasm. Yet spring cleaning a house, while tiring, is a joyful experience, as everyone who has tried it knows. If we see  Lent not as a gloomy penitence but as a spiritual spring cleaning before Easter, it takes on a different colour.

            But. 

            But, says an inward voice, what about the Cross? The recent CNN documentary on  Jesus used what looked to me like clips from Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” to remind us of the sheer gory and humiliating horror of crucifixion. They were perhaps overdoing it: the expression on the Roman soldiers’ faces is likelier to have been one of bored distaste than the Gothic leers we saw on the screen. But it was a useful reminder that elegant crucifixes hide a damned unpleasant truth. Being nailed to two chunks of wood and left to die of choking was the execution method for rebellious slaves. In some way or other, we need to share in this, however great the distance.

            The prayer of the Angelus asks “that, as we have known the incarnation of thy son Jesus Christ by the message of an angel, so by his cross and passion we may be brought unto the glory of his resurrection.” Our cheerful spring cleaning metaphor breaks down on Good Friday. So what do we do?

            This, I think, is where prayer shows itself to be superior to all but the most extreme forms of fasting and almsgiving. For through prayer we can move to Galilee, to Jerusalem, even to Golgotha. Prayer, when supported by the twin pillars of reading and meditation, is the temple where we can share in the suffering, the silence, and finally the morning joy of Easter. It is the house of the Lord which we must first clear of its merchants, its money-changers, its ox and ass, its doves, its noise of fly and its rattling of coach; when we have done that, it is the house of the Lord into which, with the Psalmist, we can be full of joy to go.

            On Good Friday I try always to follow the old Dutch Protestant custom of listening to Bach’s St Matthew Passion. Doing this with real concentration is one of the finest ways I know of living that extraordinary day of pain, sacrifice and salvation. At its end, one is emptied of all emotion as the church’s tabernacle is empty of the host, and open as its door. I’ll try and write a little more about this in the days to come.    

OFFERING

In the admirable little book Missa Est by Daniel-Rops (the nom de plume of Henri Petiot 1901-1965) with stunning photographs by Laure Albin-Guillot, which I have had occasion to mention here before, I found a little text that moved me and that I thought I'd share. In the section on the preparation of the bread and the wine -- of the offerings ---, after the explanation of the history of this part of the Mass, he writes the following:

If you have nothing else to offer the Lord, only give him your efforts and your pains:

it took much work by many men, the piece of bread lying there on the paten. 

If your hand is empty and your mouth painfully dry, offer your wounded heart, all that you have suffered:

for the wine to be poured into the chalice, did the grapes not have to be crushed and their seeds opened?

If you have nothing in you but sin and bitterness, the distress of living and all the anguish of being human,

let your hands lift up those pitiful things to heaven, for Mercy has received them already beforehand, at His Supper.

And if you no longer have even the strength to offer and to beg, if there is nothing in you but absence and abandonment,

merely accept in silence that Another take care of you for your sake and accept you, so that the Offering and the Offerer may be one gift. 

For those who read French, I'll give the original, which is far better than I can translate:

Si tu n'as rien d'autre à offrir au Seigneur, présente-lui seulement tes travaux et tes peines,

à beaucoup d'hommes il a coûté beaucoup d'efforts ce morceau de pain qui repose là sur la patène.

Si ta main est vide et ta bouche douloureusement sèche, offre ton coeur blessé, tout ce que tu as souffert,

pour que le vin fût versé dans le calice n'a-t-il pas fallu que la grappe fût broyée et le grain ouvert?

Si tu n'as rien en toi que le péché et l'amertume, la détresse de vivre et toute l'angoisse humaine,

que tes mains tendent au ciel ces pitoyables choses car la Miséricorde les a reçues par avance à sa Cène.

Et si tu n'as même plus la force de présenter et d'implorer, si tout en toi n'est qu'absence et abandon,

en silence accepte qu'un Autre se charge de toi pour toi et t'assume, pour que l'Offrande et l'Offrant soient un seul don.

MON DIEU, JE VOUS L'OFFRE

  

Travelling (I’m in Chicago for a conference where my edition of Sidney’s Correspondence is having a prize presented to it) is conducive to thought but mainly in bits, choppily, and perhaps more suited to Twitter than to a pensive blog.  On the other hand, its vicissitudes include, at my age, aches and pains and contrarieties, and those lead me to consider the old French expression of resignation Mon Dieu, je vous l’offre. It is repeated, mutteringly or with a shrug, even now by those who may years ago had a Catholic education but who have since confined their churchgoing to Christmas and Easter.

However, early one morning I thought of it again and wondered what it really meant, or could be brought to mean. The idea was, or so the young were told, that when something unpleasant happened to you you offered it up to God. Why, I wondered. If I miss an aeroplane connection, or if I am experiencing a nasty arthritic cramp, what would God want with that? And yet even my beloved Carthusians mention such offering in their writings, and they are so far advanced in spirituality that I can barely see their dust. So I kept pondering.

In the first place, I began to see, it may clean the wound, so to speak. If I miss that plane or have that cramp, I am filled with negative vibrations – rage, anguish, pain – that take up all the space in my mental house and make it a damned unpleasant place to be. If I off-load all those vibrations on to Someone else, I shall be rid of them. Oh, goody.

Yet there remains the problem: why would I saddle God (Who, one hopes, has better things to do) with all that grudge and grunge? Here, Lord, You take it, I don’t want it. An unattractive attitude, surely?

Well, in the course of some stubborn pondering, three answers either suggested themselves or, I prefer to think, were suggested to me. The first one has to with that chap Yeshua. I (thank God) so far have mainly aches, pains and contrarieties; He went all the way. If He could offer all that horror up to His Father, then – whether I understand it or not – it has to make sense. What’s more, He did it for me, which is a sobering thought.

Secondly, it leads one to think about what “offering” means. And the more you think about it, the more you realise it’s not just  dumping or unloading. It’s giving. Now that still seems odd; but if you give what is attacking you to God, it does two things to your spirit. It reaffirms your status as a child of God: when a kid meets a problem too big for its understanding, it presents it to its father who, being an adult, can and should handle it. Pain, suffering of all kinds, passes our understanding. C.S. Lewis once said that for a modern Westerner the only rational choices are Stoicism or Christianity (or perhaps Judaism if you are born into it). So if you give your suffering to God, you are recognising Him as your Father and behaving as you should. Also, the giving is an offering: you give to God something that either is precious to you or at least takes up a large space in your life. And you give it as an act of thanks, as an expression of belonging, or as an act of beseeching: here it is clearly the latter.

Thirdly, if what you want in life is to be filled with the Spirit of God, the Spirit that is God, think of those moments of giving, of offering – even the small ones – as creating, and opening, a small window in the wall of your spiritual house: a window that lets in a little more of the Spirit Who is always waiting, loving and surprisingly patient, outside until you are ready to open up. A large suffering, offered, opens a large window: my father, spending every day and night for several years looking after my mother who had Alzheimer’s, I suspect opened a huge window. But even a small suffering – an ache, a pain, a contrariety – can open a small but important little shutter and let in another bit of that huge and wonderful Spirit Who is very much a Person also, one-third of the Triune God.

And – as a friend who posted Philippians 4:4-7 on Facebook reminded me – if you do manage to do this, the ache will frequently go away, and at least a little piece of the Great Peace of God, which passeth all understanding, will take root and grow in your heart.

This is a really small and clumsy beginning of coming at, and getting a glimmering of, what seems like a huge truth. Stay tuned, and we can explore it some more. For those interested: I’m reading Lewis’ The Great Divorce and finding it moving and perceptive – perhaps it has something to do with these scattered intuitions.

The painting above is Holman Hunt's "The Light of the World".