FROM WHAT OPPRESSION?

"And now, Lord, what is my hope : truly my hope is even in thee.

Deliver me from all mine offences . . ." (Psalm 39)

This Psalm text illustrates with startling precision the difference between two concepts of the Meshiach current at the time of Yeshua's youth. The first was the image of the new King David, a David returning at the head of an army to rout the Romans, deliver Israel, and institute a new reign of peace, justice, and devotion to the Lord. This was probably the dominant image, and it corresponds to similar dreams in other nations: in Portugal, for instance, there was long a legend of a return of the good King Sebastian, and in England, of the great magician Merlin. 

In contrast to this, Yeshua delivered a new image of the Meshiach: an itinerant rabbi in a remote Northern provice, walking from town to town or arriving by fishing-boat, preaching in small-town synagogues and showing a miraculous talent for healing the sick. Admirable, of course, but in what way could this be The Meshiach? One can see why a number of educated people found it unlikely. Only those who were deeply permeated by the Scriptures yet at the same time of an open mind would have understood. They would have seen that he had based his idea of the Saviour on an eclectic reading of Zechariah, Ezekiel and especially Isaiah and the Psalms. From such a reading he would have deduced that, in the first place, the Meshiach would be a man of deep humility and simplicity, who would arrive riding on a donkey; that his basileia, his kingdom, his kingship or reign, would not be that of a worldly king but in and of some other dimension; and that any liberation he would bring would not be political or involve the Roman occupation. 

If we ask ourselves what, then, that "liberation" would be, what oppressor it would unseat and in what way it would do so, the above text from Psalm 39 gives us a clue. "Deliver me," the Psalmist begs, not from Rome and its armies; not from the Assyrian kings, not from the bulls of Bashan; no, "deliver me from all mine offences". The tyrant, in other words, is Sin; and the oppressed are not just the Jews but all humankind. And so this mild provincial itinerant with his modest program of teaching and healing turns out to be a giant, with a giant's ambition: to deliver the whole of humanity from the tyranny of Sin.

He can do this by taking the Law, that immense gift of God to His favourite nation, and "fulfilling" it. Fulfilling, in this case, means internalising it. I have written a series of posts on the Sermon on the Mount that show this. Concomitantly, the Temple is no longer central: upon Yeshua's death on the Cross, the Temple veil rips apart. Yeshua himself is the new Temple; and he is the Temple not just for the Jews but for all humanity. He contains in himself the Law and the Temple, and fulfils both in an immensity of divine Love that has become immediately accessible to ordinary humans.

This accessibility is confirmed as permanent by his Resurrection; which means that this Meshiach’s liberation is no longer limited to one moment in history but continues to operate even now, just as the Adversary does. Each of us can and does feel the tyrant’s grim presence in our life; but each of us can also pray the Psalm verse above and thus, in being heard, reach safety. 

 

JUST THE FACTS, PLEASE, MA'AM

 Andrea Mantegna, "Crucifixion"

Rereading Josef Ratzinger’s (Benedict XVI’s) Jesus of Nazareth, vol. 2 (Holy Week) for Lent, I am struck all over again by his steadfast refusal to ask, or at least to insist upon, a historian’s questions. Those of us who were trained as historians, even literary historians, generally have a detective‘s mindset. We want to find out, as Leopold von Ranke famously put it in the nineteenth century, Wie es eigentlich gewesen, “what actually happened”. And since the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles are presented in the form of historiæ, (hi)stories, we want to know what actually happened, there in Galilee, there in Jerusalem. Moreover, we are encouraged in this viewpoint by the evangelists’, and St Paul’s, insistence that the Resurrection was a historical fact, something that “really” happened, just as the Ever Given’s beaching in the Suez Canal happened: “For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile.” I Cor. 15:16-17). 

 

And yet Ratzinger regularly refuses the attitude that looks for a “Jesus novel” and reminds us of all the theological and ecclesiastical dimensions of each incident in each of the Gospels: their interweaving of occurrences in Jesus’ life and career with passages from the Prophets and the Psalms, or the parallels between certain actions of the disciples and some of Isaiah’s prophecies. 

To take a particularly striking example: he points out the way in which the soldiers on duty at the crucifixion divide up Jesus’ garments and toss for the robe or tunic, which was woven as one piece and thus too good to split. This, he rightly says, corresponds exactly to Psalm 22:18: “They parted my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.” Our historian’s question in such a case is: is this true? is this what happened? And if so, is the parallel happenstance, is it a conscious re-enactment of the psalm by the soldiers, one of whom might know the psalm, or is it the invention of the story’s author who thought of it as a detail that would increase the recounted event’s weight of Scriptural importance? 

Ratzinger refuses even to ask the question and accepts that it “fulfils the Scripture”. As far as I can tell, that means, Yes, it happened; No, they were not consciously re-enacting the psalm; God made it happen that way to “fulfil”, i.e. validate, the psalm as Scripture; and No, the soldiers did not know that. I, on the other hand, want to know how and why Yeshua at his crucifixion was wearing sufficient garments for a guard detail to think them worth dividing up, and what those were.

Another, and much more dramatic, case: upon Jesus’ death, the veil of the Temple split in two, from top to bottom. Ratzinger, completely convincingly, expounds the meaning of this: Jesus is himself the new Temple that replaces the old, and with his self-sacrifice the Temple sacrifices have become obsolete. Moreover, the veil that split was doubtless that which obscured the Holy of Holies and screened the Deity from profane eyes (only the High Priest could enter, once a year); and in Jesus, and even more in the Eucharist that continues his death and resurrection, God has made himself visible and available to men, “unveiled” himself. 

All this is not only true, but beautiful and profound. But something in me naggingly wants to know: all right, but did that great curtain spontaneously rip in two?  And if not, what went on in the author’s mind when he wrote Καὶ ἰδοὺ τὸ καταπέτασμα τοῦ ναοῦ ἐσχίσθη εἰς δύο ἀπ᾽ ἄνωθεν ἕως κάτω: “And at that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. “ (Mk 15:38) For the verb, eschisthè, he used the aorist tense, which parallels the French passé simple, indicating that such-and-such a thing happened. 

Now Mark wrote sometime between 30 and 70 AD, which means he was still able to talk to people who had been there. Is he then recounting a story that with retelling had become a legend, sprouting much extraneous detail, or did it actually happen? Ratzinger is surely right to say that the symbolism, not the actual torn fabric, is what matters; but that aorist bothers me. Later authors who created techniques of meditation, such as Ignatius of Loyola and François de Sales, encourage the devout to begin by vividly imagining the scene they will meditate upon, seeing themselves as being among the characters present and, as it were, seeing the events occur. To do so, we should like to know if the scene we are entering upon is a poiesis from a lovely tale or one that happened in the nitty-gritty. 

And yet, there is no answer. We have no way of checking most of the details. Moreover, we know that ancient historians often put into the mouths of historical characters words, reported in direct speech, which they felt the character should have said, or probably said, and may well have taken similar liberties with details of events. So, as the French say, “on reste sur notre faim”, we are left hungry, unfed. Perhaps the meditation masters have the best answer. For in our imagination we are allowed to reflect the details and even add to them; but only if they are succeeded, enriched, by interpretation – analyzing and learning the meaning of the scene – and resolution – figuring out what we, here and now, can, should, and will do about it. 

WHAT SORT OF HOUSE

I have, in recent years, found enormous inspiration in reading the writings of Carthusian monks. They are often as learned as Benedictines, but since their life is built entirely around prayer they are as one might say its professionals. Reading them is both humbling and informative: rather as if one owned a decent sports car and did the occasional track day and then comes across a manual written by and for Formula 1 drivers. 

            In one such book – and they are always signed “A Carthusian” – I found a fascinating meditation on Jesus’ whipping the merchants out of the Temple. Rather than pondering whether or not this is a comment on capitalism, the Carthusian author proposed seeing the temple as being our heart. Thus, the words of Jesus, “this is a house of prayer and you have made it a den of thieves”, take on a new and richer meaning. As I spend my time at my computer, ordering books or clothes, annotating texts, organising meetings; as I go out to dinner parties or restaurants, as I look at advertisements for classic cars – is my house not rather full of merchants? Good merchants, not necessarily thieves; but then the men selling sacrificial doves, lambs and candles in the spacious Temple courtyard were probably perfectly respectable shopkeepers. 

The point is not what they do but where they are doing it. They are pursuing their perfectly proper mercantile calling not in a shop in the city but in “a house of prayer”. And so, transferring the image as did the Carthusian, I arrive at the fact that my heart should be “a house of prayer, where the Son can meet the Father in love.” I found, and find, this thought overwhelming. And it has become my daily, and almost my only, prayer:

LORD, MAKE MY HEART A HOUSE OF PRAYER

            

Because that prayer potentially includes everything else. It is in fact an application of the saying “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you.” If my heart is made a house of prayer, everything else is secondary but/and will fall into place. 

I share this thought because it occurred to me that others may find it inspiring also. There is such wealth to be found in Carthusian thinking: those Olympic athletes of prayer have much to teach us -- starting with their ancient motto (useful when looking at the news cycle): STAT CRUX DUM VOLVITUR ORBIS. (The Cross stands, while the world turns.)

HELP!

On this Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, and very suitably following the feasts of Michaelmas and of the Guardian Angels, we ask to be protected.

Latin original

CUSTODI, Domine, quæsumus, Ecclesiam tuam propitiatione perpetua; et quia sine te labitur humana mortalitas, tuis semper auxiliis et abstrahatur a noxiis, et ad salutaria dirigatur ; per Jesum Christum Dominum nostrum Amen. 

1549

KEPE we beseche thee, O Lorde, thy Churche with thy perpetuall mercye: and because the frailtie of man without thee, cannot but fall: Kepe us ever by thy helpe, and leade us to al thynges profitable to our salvacion; through Jesus Christe our Lorde. Amen.

1662

Keep, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy Church with thy perpetual mercy : and because the fraily of man without thee cannot but fall, keep us ever by thy help from all things hurtful, and lead us to all things profitable to our salvation. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

One of the rare occasions when the 1662 revisers were more faithful to the Latin original, in restoring its a noxiis. One wonders why Cranmer left it out. He may have thought it self-evident and considered that its omission would lead the sentence more swiftly and elegantly to its conclusion. The Latin is, as usual, a jewel of compact form and shapely rhythm, employing no less than four cursus tardus and ending in a cursus velox (which, in spite of its name, I always suspect was seen by the writers as slower and more dignified).

The Latin original of Cranmer’s “perpetual mercy” is propitiatio, “an appeasing, atonement, propitiation” – which is very odd. One might translate it as “Keep,, we beseech thee, O Lord, thy Church in perpetual atonement”; and one wonders if the perpetual atonement may not belong rather to the church than to its keeping: so that God may be being asked to take care of a Church that lives in perpetual atonement. I suspect, though, that it is rather an unusual medieval use of the word, which makes it rather a peace-offering on God’s behalf, and which thus comes a little closer to Cranmer’s “mercy”.

It is a prayer for protection: custodi, Domine. Take care of us, Lord: protect us. And the rest of the prayer makes specific both the protection and the threat. We ask to be protected from “all things hurtful”, and if Cranmer had used 18^th- or 19^th-century punctuation instead of Tudor, he would have put a second comma after “profitable”. Because what dismays us here is not the threat of things hurtful in general, but the threat of things hurtful to our salvation. 

What are those? What can hurt our salvation? Not the horrors of the world: as St Paul put it in his letter to the Christians in Rome, “I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” No: the only things hurtful to our salvation can come from ourselves. And the Collect understands this: it makes this request because the frailty of man without thee cannot but fall. Not the nastiness of man; not his inherent evil; no, his frailty. He is weak. He wants to do everything right; but on his own, on a daily, hourly basis he falls, he screws it up and scuppers his own salvation. So we ask Him to protect us from doingall things hurtful, and to lead us to doingall things profitable, to our salvation.

Again, a close reading of, and meditation on, a brief prayer shows how rich it is in meaning and how it helps us increase our understanding of ourselves in our relation to our loving but doubtless frequently exasperated Father.

STRANGE RISING

Fra Angelico, 'The Resurrection'

A strange and unusual Triduum paschale – Good Friday without Bach’s St Matthew Passion for once, but also without computer, tablet or screen of any kind, doing physical things in house and garden, meditating and praying while doing them, rather like Brother Lawrence. A halt at 3 pm for a special prayer as the Temple veil tears and the new Temple is inaugurated, bloodstained, hanging on the Cross.

Holy Saturday, a glorious Spring day, again full of busy-ness but full of prayer also – the strange emptyness of that day filled with blossoms and sunshine, yet always the knowledge of the open, empty Tabernacle that always fills me with wordless anguish.

That evening an invitation to supper, accepted because the veillée paschale at the Cathedral last year had left us cold in every sense, and an Easter morning service seemed preferable. The adorable, generous and appreciative hosts overdid the hospitality with groaning platters of seafood and Gewürtztraminer, and kept us talking – about the Church, amongst other things – till midnight. During the deep, still night a sudden wind sprang up, blew open the windows and died down, as if the Resurrection were taking place at that very moment. Then it rained, the gutters gurgling happily with the new life. And in the morning there was no energy of any kind, and once again the tradition had to be abandoned for care to Brother Ass. And yet this Easter has been one of the most profound I can remember.

The reason I post this very personal note is because there may be a lesson in it. For those of us who love traditions, rituals, ceremony and solemnity, it may upon occasion be very salutary to see what remains when one removes them. (Normally, my struggle goes the other way, as our world is removing them or eviscerating them at an alarming rate in any case.) In my case, what remained, I found, was prayer and a quietly penetrating sense of love.

In the course of this two thoughts occurred to me which I will share here. One: in all the prayers I have heard and joined in for the victims of the recent terrorist attacks, I have not once in any Church or Christian context heard a single prayer for the attackers. And yet we are expected, are we not, to pray for our enemies? Two: in every Mass, after the Institution, the priest prays for the Church; invariably he prays for Pope Francis, then goes on to the bishop and clergy; but not once have I heard Pope Benedict included in this prayer. He is still alive, he is still Pope. If I work at it, I can perhaps imagine a reasoning behind it; but I find it shameful.

And finally, I have said it before but will say it again: the finest accompaniment to Holy Week for an educated lay person that I know is that same Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth, volume 2: Holy Week, from the Entry into Jerusalem to the Resurrection. He is a great man, ending his life gently in a saintly manner; and I pray for him, and give thanks for him, daily.

QUICK WORD

Words that sprang into my head upon waking, and that I share because they seem truly fruitful:

O Lord Holy Spirit, be close to me today,
that wherever I am may be Thy temple,
and whatever I do may be Thy liturgy.