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

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.

HATE SPEECH?

Cosimo Rosselli, 'The Sermon on the Mount' 

`If any one doth come unto me, and doth not hate his own father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brothers, and sisters, and yet even his own life, he is not able to be my disciple;  and whoever doth not bear his cross, and come after me, is not able to be my disciple.’ (Luke 14:26-7; today's Gospel.)

There is no way around it: J.B. Phillips, in his modern New Testament translation, put quotation marks around ‘hate’, but the Greek verb is uncompromising. This is one of Jesus’ more rebarbative sayings, one of those we would rather forget; the more as the current Church insists that every believer should be a mathètès, a disciple. So, we say, what about the man and wife who are to be one flesh? We are to love the little ones, the children – just not our children? We are to honour our parents, yet hate them?

The saying goes, of course, with Jesus’ snarky reaction to his mother and brothers’ coming to visit him: ‘Who are my mother and my brothers? . . . These are mother and my brothers’, pointing to the disciples (Mt 12:46-7); and Matthew 19:29, where anyone who leaves everything (home, father, mother, sisters, brothers, wife, and property) to follow him will receive a hundredfold return and eternal life. Extreme, also: still, giving up is less than hating.

How do we deal with such a saying? One way is to say that Jesus, in his humanity, was truly human (in all things, we are told, except sin), and that thus he was capable of impatience and irritation as he was of exhaustion and depression. In that sense, the saying Luke reports comes from a simple, indeed a simplistic, binary ‘love’ and ‘hate’. He does not, in other words, mean the verb literally. (Hence Phillips’ quotation marks.)

Another way of dealing with it is to remember that ‘Matthew’ was part of the early Church, and that his Gospel, like the other Synoptics, doesn’t want only to recount Jesus’s sayings and doings in great accuracy but is engaged, as part of the Church, in building an edifice for those who have not been there, and future generations, to live in. The extreme terms, then, are those of a community that has to deal with members who regularly privilege their private affairs over those of the ecclesia.

Leaving history aside, though, we need to know how we are to deal with these words.  And there, I think, another passage from Matthew comes to our aid. This comes in the discourse on the lilies of the field that toil not, neither do they spin, yet Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Therefore take no thought for the morrow, says Jesus: but ‘seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.’ (Matthew 6:33)

Here, I think, may be the key to our passage of hate. Hyperbole aside, we need to concentrate on the kingdom (basileia, perhaps better translated the ‘kingship’, the reign) of God: both on recognising it in Jesus, who is the Kingdom, and in bringing it about in the world where he is no longer physically present. ‘Seeking first’ is beginning the day with the prayer that we may do His will that day, and that we may not forget that by lunchtime. (The noontime Angelus is a good reminder.) It’s not a matter of hating A, but of going all out to pursue B – in which case, if A gets in the way, you brush A aside impatiently – which, to A, may feel like hate but isn’t. (And in any case, it only happens if A gets in the way.) 

And, he says, if we do so; if all we consciously care about is doing His will, is living His kingship; why, then our parents, our spouse, our children, our property, ‘will be added unto us’, will be there, but as gifts, not earnings, and thus all the more precious. Not only will we find what we seek, i.e. the kingdom of God, but we will find ourselves showered with all those other good things that we thought we had but didn’t really until now, when we receive them all over again, as God’s gifts. And eternal life as well. 

One final thought: on the way to the kingdom of God, on the way of our pursuit, there may well be a cross. And that we cannot, must not brush aside: for He is the kingdom, and it is from the Cross that He reigns. At the very least there is death, for all of us; for some there is great suffering. But among the gifts we receive there is Resurrection -- Zoèn aionion, eternal life.

WHEN THE SAINTS GO MARCHING IN

Hallowe'en is catching on even in France. I suspect that 90% of those who celebrate it have no idea of its context nor of the feast of which it is the even. Mind you, few know much about its background either: the Wikipedia article on it is long and most informative. Still, I thought it would be good to have a little post on All Saints' Day, as a counterweight to all that cobwebs 'n candy.

People who like to read are divided into two kinds: readers of fiction and readers of non-fiction. For the latter – often those engaged in business or other ‘prosaic’ occupations – the favourite kinds of reading are history and biography. History has the pleasure of narrative with the assurance that this story ‘really happened’ and is thus not a flight of fancy or of mendacity; biography, often the lives of great men and women, has the virtue of inspiring admiration and emulation.

For readers of biography, the saints of the Church are a special case. One finds among them few entrepreneurs or scientists, and not many military heroes. However, there are no milquetoasts or marshmallows either. There are Martyrs: those who have suffered and died for the faith, from the victims of lions and gladiators in the Roman arenas to Maximilian Kolbe in Auschwitz. There are Confessors: those who have proclaimed the faith and worked tirelessly for it, and/or have lived signally holy lives, from the earliest hermits in the desert to the twentieth-century St Faustina Kowalska in Poland. There are Doctors: those who have applied their intelligence and learning to the faith and thus light the way for the rest of us, from St Athanasius to St Thérèse of Lisieux. There are the Evangelists, like St Francis Xavier, who brought the faith to far corners of the world. And there are the saints of Charity, like St Vincent de Paul and Mother Teresa, who have worked tirelessly for the poorest and most forgotten of humanity. Reading the lives of all these, and the works some of them have written, is indeed a journey of admiration and if inspiration: we learn courage, intentness, commitment, meditation, prayer, steadfastness and a vastness of faith that most of us sadly lack.

A particular case is that of the Saints Unknown. The Church allows for this: there are those whose faith shines, but shines in a small or remote context where it is not noticed by those who could bring it to the attention of the Church as a whole. Some of us have known people like this, and our lives have been genuinely blessed by the privilege and the joy. I find it pleasing that the category is recognised: there are so many flowers in so many fields, after all.

The Feast of All Saints celebrates and commemorates all those, famous, known, and unknown, who have been received in Heaven and there rejoice in the Presence of God. It is a joyful feast: meditating on all these extraordinary characters, one can almost feel caught up by them into a faint but joyous echo of Heaven here on earth. In one sense, it should be a permanent feast: the doctrine of the Communion of Saints recognises that we, the faithful of the Church Militant here in earth, are in communion with the Saints of the Church Triumphant. Catholics pray to them, as do some Anglicans; other Anglicans venerate them without asking them to intercede for us. But either way, we can derive strength and support from their courage, their commitment and their discernment. 

I can understand but deplore the representations of Heaven and its saints in most of the Last Judgement paintings. Hell is graphically and hideously imagined; Heaven has serried ranks of boring and bored-looking ecclesiastics. Of course, the experience of Heaven must be ineffable, and hard to picture; but surely something better could have been achieved? Heaven, if it is anything, is more beautiful than beauty, more joyful than joy, more glorious than glory, and more loving than love. The angels are its denizens; the saints its welcome immigrants. What joy, if this were our future. Imagine . . .

I can recommend the Oxford Dictionary of Saints, in paperback, as an inexpensive source of pleasurable study on the subject.

CARPENTRY AND DANGEROUS READING

Benedict/Ratzinger cites 'liberal theology' as theorising that Jesus, having hitherto lived a perfectly normal life in Galilee, at his baptism by John underwent a shattering experience that began his ministry. He condemns this as being the attitude of a 'Jesus novel', and claims that Jesus is above our psychologising, that we should read the whole episode theologically.

He is doubtless right in the major sense. But I do not think that it is either irrelevant or reprehensible that we, as humans reacting to the story of a God who took full humanity upon him, should wonder how he came to the point where, ca. 30 years of age, he began his ministry. And if this is a 'Jesus novel', then so be it: a novel conceived, composed, and read in faith.

I have spent a number of years wondering about, and being fascinated by, the 'lost years' of Jesus, between 13 (in the Temple) and 30 (on the bank of the Jordan). The image that suggests itself to me pleases me but is not therefore necessarily wrong. 

It is of a young man much marked by his childhood, much marked by his mother's presence and stories, but otherwise a young carpenter (teenagers worked) of Nazareth; a young Jewish carpenter, i.e. one who not only learnt the trade but learnt to read and spent much of his spare time studying the Scriptures. A little later, say ca. 21 or 22, I suspect he is taking over the shop: he is the eldest son, and Joseph is either retired or already deceased. So he is a young professional craftsman, running a small business -- and reading, reading the scriptures at night, as well as conversing with his mother, who must have been a major presence.

During this time, partly because of the climate of the period, partly because of what Myriam may have told him about his birth, what he reads is especially the passages about the Messiah, and notably those of Deutero-Isaiah, that show a counterintuitive Messiah, a Messiah who is not a conquering king, not a supreme warlord, but a sacrificial lamb, a scapegoat almost, a Messiah who takes upon him, into himself, all the sheer awfulness of crapulous humanity and bears it into the mouth of Hell. And gradually, there must have come upon him as he read these scriptures an awful (in every sense) sense of recognition. My feeling is that the Revelation came upon him gradually, that it stole into his consciousness, that it crept in upon him, until one day, at the age of perhaps 29, he could no longer put it aside or ignore it -- much as he may well have wanted to. The recognition that 'OMG, it's me.' But also the day his regular and devout prayers open, open up a vast space in which at first he is lost, but which then surrounds him like cosmic skin, immeasurably vast and utterly close and intimate at the same time, where he is fully one with the Father he has been praying to and with the Ruach Qadosh who has been doing the praying, through him.

And then, having heard about John the Baptist, he realises that not only must he now go out and live this destiny in the world, but that being baptised by John is the only true and perfect beginning to such a road. He has always been God and man/boy; now he has truly become God and Man. And if Man, then he must, even if he is sinless, join with the sinners who are immersed in the water of the river overhung with trees and skimmed by kingfishers. John, remember, is his cousin; and John too has grown into his destiny. When it is Jesus' turn, he recognises him, both as Cousin Yeshua and as the Meschiach: briefly taken aback, he quickly sees the point. And the heavens open. Were they two the only ones who heard the Voice and saw the dove?

  Of course, this is novelistic, in a way. But it is also the cry of human historical inquiry since Ranke: Wie es eigentlich gewesen: What really happened? We want to know, about human events that occurred in this world, what really happened? We wish we could time-travel; we want to have been there. And it is very hard, if not impossible, for us not to think that the only alternative to 'this really happened' is 'this didn't happen, at least not in this way.' And that if we are told, as in the ancient Catalan beginning of tales, 'Aixa era y no era', 'this was and was not, that we are being told a fiction, something made up.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons so many modern people have turned away from religion: because we have lost the particular scale of reality it demands. A scale where what we are told is true, the form in which it is expressed is true, it is not fiction, yet it did not happen in the way that this morning's subway ride happened. It is this truth that Genmesis expresses; it is this truth that Revelations communicates; it is this truth that the story of Jesus' baptism offers us. 

Perhaps -- to continue the inquiry -- this is one of the reasons, if not the main one, that we are told to become as little children. A child at a certain age does not distinguish between truth and happoening: the stories you tell him make sense, that is all and that is enough. We all experience our children's or our grandchildren's first questioning of Father Christmas as somehow a fall from grace; and this, while inevitable, is also true. The child now begins to believe that there is a difference between truth and fiction, and that truth resides in happening. Only much later, if he is fortunate, does he relearn a sort of unity, when he is taught that fiction can contain important truths; but in that educated-adult universe, its fictionality remains. What Jesus teaches us is that what we need to be close to his, and our, Father is to regain the pre-factual sense of truth.

How to do this? That was Nicodemus's question. How can an adult become a child again? Isn't it against nature? No: it's against culture, not against nature. What we have to do is to allow ourselves to be children again. Nature will let us do this; culture disapproves. Rereading Genesis, we allow ourselves to be thrilled all over again, unquestioningly, by the image of the Spirit of God brooding over the waters. We react with absolute simplicity and enthusiasm to the story of Abraham making lunch for the angels. We see the three Children of Israel in the fiery furnace, and shiver at the fleeting vision of a fourth. And while we do so, the truth is silently building in our minds and hearts an edifice: a synagogue that can allow truth to be transmitted, a temple that can receive Emmanuel.

Benedict/Ratzinger says, and he is right, that the texts tell us nothing about Jesus's years between 13 and 30; he also says, and there I'm not sure he is right for everyone, that that means we should not try to go beyond the texts but read therm as they were intended to be read: as a young Church's attempt to make sense of the life, the death, and the resurrection of the Messiah. Again, I believe that ultimately he is right in this; but proximately I believe that a fragmentary 'Jesus novel', if conceived and received in faith, may have the virtue of helping us be, or become again, the children our daily lives and even our serious religion all too often disallow.