SCANDALOUS AND IDIOTIC

I was struck, again, by the text of today’s reading in the French Prions en Eglise, which really is very powerful, and also touched by one of the commentaries on it, which seemed to me extremely perceptive. (I have retranslated the Pauline passage from the French, because it comes across strongly that way, but not without rechecking it against a few English versions and the Greek.)

“Brothers, Christ did not send me to baptise but to announce the Gospel, and that without having recourse to the language of human wisdom, which would make vain the cross of Christ. For the language of the cross is folly to those who perish, but to those who are saved, to us, it is the power of God. Indeed, the Scripture says, I will make the wisdom of the wise to perish, and the intelligence of the intelligent I will reject. Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the rational man of earth? As for the wisdom of the world, has God not made it folly? Indeed, since -- by a disposition of God’s wisdom -- the world, with all its wisdom, was not able to recognise God, it has pleased God to save those who believe by the folly that is the proclamation of the Gospel. While the Jews demand miracles and the Greeks look for wisdom, we proclaim a Messiah crucified: a scandal for the Jews, a folly for the pagans. But for those whom God calls, whether Jews or Greeks, this Messiah, this Christ, is the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the folly of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”  (1Corinthians 1: 17-25)

Commentary by Roselyne Dupont-Roc, Hellenist and Bible scholar:

The text operates a series of reversals, from folly to a higher wisdom, from weakness to a higher strength. This reversal Paul had himself experienced on the road: an encounter had made the persecutor, sure of his rights and of his power, into the passionate disciple of the Crucified, announcing the Good News in the midst of the dangers and the sufferings of the voyage.

How can one say, faced with the Cross, that object of horror and disgust, that the wisdom of God and his power are at work? Only, surely, by experiencing in our deepest self that His love comes to us and sustains us in our distress and anguish, and by bearing witness toward those who have not known this experience, through an attentive and loving accompaniment of their crucified lives.

Image: the Crucifixion, from the Isenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald (ca. 1470-1528)

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)

PAX VOBISCUM

We have all heard about the "peace of God, which passeth all understanding", and we are used to hearing "peace be with thee/And with thy spirit" in the Eucharist. But what is this peace the Bible talks about? There is an exhaustive lexical and contextual analysis here: http://biblehub.com/greek/1515.htm, which I won't attempt to reproduce. But it's a huge word, with a range of meaning as wide, but also as coherent, as a rainbow.

First, there is, well, peace. Not war. Those of us old enough to have been born before or during World War II have a visceral feeling about, and for, peace in that sense. In his novel The Empty Room (1942), Charles Morgan shows some people in England talking about the distant past and a hoped-for future. One evening, says one of them, some friends will sit together, talking in a garden, and one of them will say, with wonder and contentment, "A June night, and no war." Perhaps there are people in Syria today who feel the same way. It is eirènè, the fundamental meaning of that lovely Greek word, and the reason that the Dutch princess born during WW II was named Irene. Peace as a public condition, a condition of not-war, is never to be taken for granted. It is huge, a privilege, and should be savoured daily by those fortunate enough to live in it.

Then, there is peace as a condition between people. Here, the meaning is closer to harmony: an absence of strife, of quarrel, of awkwardness, of hostility. It is an emotion elevated to a condition, which means that it is felt by the heart rather than, or prior to, being understood by the mind. It is the peace sometimes seen in very old long-married couples whose love has over the decades been distilled to a fine and almost silent essence. It is the peace between true friends engaged together in some activity long known, long practiced and long loved. And notice that both these examples remind us that peace between individuals often has time as a component element.

There is the peace of science, or of scholarship. This is a peace experienced individually. It is the peace found by someone working tranquilly at some project within one's competence and which, again, requires time to mature and complete. It is a peace I have experienced while working in great research libraries: Duke Humphrey's 15th-century library in Oxford's Bodleian, the 17th-century Manuscript Room of Paris's Bibliothèque nationale. It is a peace composed in part of a going out of one's self, of losing oneself in a subject, in the life of another age, in the patient search for a clue. A similar peace is found, we are told, by writers, novelists for the most part, when they are engaged upon a lengthy task in propitious surroundings. The great Dutch poet Adriaan Roland Holst experienced it during the six long winters, in the1930s, when, in his little thatched cottage behind the North Sea dunes, he worked concentratedly on his masterpiece, the long, dense poem known as A Winter By The Sea.

Such peace  touches, and sometimes becomes, a peace of the spirit. This peace is known by some philosophers, by some contemplatives, by those who in one way or another have reached a true wisdom. In some societies such men and women are revered as sages; in others, they live unknown in corners of the world, sometimes with a small group of pupils, sometimes alone, quietly engaged in some trade and encountered by chance. I have known a watchmaker like that; a former paratrooper; a retired journalist who studied mysticism; and a professor of Indian philosophy. In some, this peace of wisdom can be and is expressed in words; in others, it communicates itself intangibly, mysteriously but unmistakeably.

All peace that is not cowardice is good. But it does not really, not truly, not completely pass oour understanding. It is not the peace of God. What, then, is?

Reading the Bible, Old Testament and New, one sees little peace. Humanity seems always at war with itself; Israel with its neighbours; Israel with its God; heroes with other heroes or with bloodthirsty monsters; brothers with brothers, fathers with sons; and the Serpent with everyone. Where, then, is the Peace of that God the Scriptures describe, explain, and adore? We find it, sometimes, in the Psalms. The Psalmist, nominally King David, finds peace in the Law,  which shows him a way through a trackless desert. He finds peace in adoring God, in being, as he says, an olive tree in the house of the Lord. And above all, remember that the term we are seeking occurs in a blessing; may the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Philippians 4:7). One translation has guard for keep, which helps us understand. The peace of God, then, is something that keeps us, that guards us, that protects us from harm. It does so in Christ Jesus: which is a whole story unto itself. We are in Christ when we are a part of him; for since the Resurrection he is present wherever those who love God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, are present -- as a congregation especially, in the Eucharist especially, but in prayer, in meditation, in contemplation also. And since he is Love, in the Spirit he not only neighbours us with his presence, but he surrounds us, he enfolds us; and when this happens, each time it happens (because in this mortal life it is never once and for all, not yet), we have come home. That is the peace of God: our homecoming to the relation he always intended, to the hearth of the Father's house.

WISDOM'S POETRY

"and sweetly doth she order all things"

I came across this passage in French in Prions en Eglise the other day and found it moving. It occurred to me that, having been brought up Protestant, I had never read the Book of Wisdom, deuterocanonical and very fine. The passage below, an exquisite poem in praise of Wisdom (here in the King James version), might be a description of the Holy Spirit.

For wisdom, which is the worker of all things, taught me: for in her is an understanding spirit holy, one only, manifold, subtil, lively, clear, undefiled, plain, not subject to hurt, loving the thing that is good quick, which cannot be letted [resisted], ready to do good,

Kind to man, steadfast, sure, free from care, having all power, overseeing all things, and going through all understanding, pure, and most subtil, spirits.

For wisdom is more moving than any motion: she passeth and goeth through all things by reason of her pureness.

For she is the breath of the power of God, and a pure influence flowing from the glory of the Almighty: therefore can no defiled thing fall into her.

For she is the brightness of the everlasting light, the unspotted mirror of the power of God, and the image of his goodness.

And being but one, she can do all things: and remaining in herself, she maketh all things new: and in all ages entering into holy souls, she maketh them friends of God, and prophets.

For God loveth none but him that dwelleth with wisdom.

For she is more beautiful than the sun, and above all the order of stars: being compared with the light, she is found before it.

For after this [light] cometh night: but vice shall not prevail against wisdom.

Wisdom reacheth from one end to another mightily: and sweetly doth she order all things.




Hat tip to Wisdom Square for the image.

SURPRISED BY GIDE

André Gide, portrait by Matzneff

I was surprised to hear the marvellous voice of the bilingual actor Michael Lonsdale murmuring, on my car's stereo, a touching passage of faith by the austere and sometimes caustic Andre Gide. It comes from a notebook of diary-like jottings, Le Cahier vert (1916), and I offer it here in my own translation:

Lord, it is not because they tell me that you are the Son of God that I listen to your word; but your word is beautiful beyond all human words, and that is how I recognise that you are the Son of God. 

Through what absurd modesty, through what humility, what shame,  have I put off until today to write that which for so many years has yearned in me…

I always waited for more wisdom, reading, knowledge, as if the wisdom of men were not folly before God. 


Lord, I come to you as a child; as the child that  you want me to become, as the child that whoever abandons himself to you becomes. I resign all that was my pride and which near you would be my shame. I listen, and my heart is yours. 

A GOOD ASKING

This mosaic of St Ephrem is the oldest image I could find: an 11C mosaic from the Nea Moni monastery 
on the Greek island of Chios. He looks as if he has just seen the ghost of Mani threatening him. 

I was looking up the 4th-century St Ephrem of Syria, nicknamed "the harp of the Holy Spirit" for his Syriac hymns, and came across "the Prayer of St Ephrem" which is part of the Orthodox liturgy and which I found simple and touching:

O Lord and Master of my life, give me not the spirit of idleness, meddling, lust for power and idle talk.

But grant unto me, Thy servant, a spirit of wisdom, humility, patience and love.

Truly, Lord and King, grant me to see mine own faults and not to judge my brother. For blessed art Thou, world without end. Amen.

The "wisdom" in the second line is sophrosunè in Greek, which is a kind of general intelligent sanity of life: it is traditionally translated as "chastity" but in modern terms something like "wisdom, discernment, integrity, simplicity" and/or a mixture of all of those seems more accurate. 

REIGN AGAIN

Today, the readings and commentary in my little French daily booklet seemed to chime so remarkably with my last post that I can’t resist sharing them here. In the passage from Wisdom, the wonderfully lyrical description given of her struck me as a perfect portrait of the Third Person of the Trinity: the Holy Spirit. And the use of the feminine pronoun (from the Greek original of ‘wisdom’) has something pleasing about it, since there is no reason necessarily to imagine the Spirit as masculine.

Wisdom 7:22 – 8:1

For 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. [in the old translation: “and sweetly doth she order all things”.]

It is the Gospel reading that struck me most, with reference to my previous post: Jesus tells the Pharisees ‘God’s reign is among you’ – it’s there already. This should give us furiously to think. If it’s here already, it may just be growing slowly like dough with a core of yeast . . .

Luke 17:20-25

Asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was to come, he gave them this answer, 'The coming of the kingdom of God does not admit of observation, and there will be no one to say, "Look, it is here! Look, it is there!" For look, the kingdom of God is among you.'

He said to the disciples, 'A time will come when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of man and will not see it. They will say to you, "Look, he [or: it] is there!" or, "Look, he is here!" Make no move; do not set off in pursuit; for as the lightning flashing from one part of heaven lights up the other, so will be the Son of man when his Day comes.

But first he is destined to suffer grievously and be rejected by this generation.’

The commentary is by Sr Emmanuelle Billoteau, a Benedictine hermit from Southeast France whose comments are almost always the most intelligent and nourishing. She is the only hermit to whom I have ever written a fan-letter. (Obviously, there was no reply: I didn’t expect one.)

The Gospel verses belong to the “synoptic apocalypses” that deal with the Last Things, but not by way of calculation or speculation. In them, Christ rather invites us to take account of the unexpected nature of the irruption of God’s Kingdom and, in view of that, to live in vigilance and confidence. Jesus also warns us against the temptation of seeing signs everywhere, without taking time for discernment; a work to be undertaken under the guidance of the Spirit and in genuine inner freedom, yet without abdicating reason and good sense.

So we still wait: but not impatiently for a coup de ciel. We wait in 'vigilance and confidence' -- confident that the reign has already begun and that we are part of it; intelligently vigilant as semioticians of true signs.