SMALL JEWELS: EASTER 4

DEUS, qui fidelium mentes unius efficis voluntatis, da populo tuo id amare quod præcipis, id desiderare quod promittis, ut inter mundanas varietates ibi nostra fixa sint corda, ubi vera sunt gaudia. Per Christum Do. &c

O almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men : Grant unto thy people, that they may love the thing which thou commandest, and desire that which thou dost promise : that so, among the sundry and manifold changes of this world, our hearts may surely there be fixed, where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

  

In my occasional contemplation of the Collects in the Book of Common Prayer, the oratio for this week seemed particularly pleasing. Once again we begin with the Latin, compact and tense as always: “God, who makes the minds of the faithful of one will…” – and we see right away that Cranmer has been embroidering. “O Almighty God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men . . .” Whoa! The Acknowledgement here departs considerably from the Latin. Adding “Almighty” to the Invocation is not a problem, but from there on Cranmer seems to veer off into interpretation. What does he add or change? Let’s follow the order of the Latin and start with “fidelium mentes”. No longer, in the English, does God unite the hearts of the faithful: it is of sinful men that He orders, not the minds or spirits but the wills and affections. Moreover, this is so difficult that He alone can do it. 

It all looks very pessimistic and Protestant, and to some extent it is; but there is more to it than that. I think that the Archbishop has been looking at the Petition and Aspiration, which specify what we are asking and to what end. These, interestingly, he translates simply and straightforwardly: we want to be able to love what God commands and to desire what He promises. But when we think about that, we realise that that is not only peculiar but feels oddly wrong: to love what we are commanded to do feels like not only being told to do something but being ordered to love it, while to desire what we are promised feels like putting the cart before the horse. And that strange wrongness, Cranmer clearly thinks and wants to tell us, comes from our wills and affections being somehow skewed: if we were in heaven, it would come naturally – there would be a natural concord between our will and God’s, so that what He commands would be what we love and what He promises would be what we desire. And conversely: they would all fit together in the perfect chords of His will’s harmony. That this is clearly not so, that we need to ask for it to be made so, shows that our wills and affections are “unruly” and that we the faithful are therefore “sinful men”. Being unruly, said wills and affections need to be “ordered” – as we pray every morning that our doings may be “ordered” by His governance.  Notes of music, duly ordered or well-tempered, make a harmony, among themselves and with the spirit of the composer. 

Once again, we see what a small intricate jewel such a Collect is. And Cranmer can even add some ornaments: the bald mundanas varietates become “sundry and manifold”, adding a pretty rhythm, and fixa is intensified by “surely”, that splendid adverb the richness of which I mentioned in my last post. A miniature treasure, for which we may be truly thankful.

SMALL JEWELS: HOW AND WHAT THEY MEAN

Reciting Collects, those intricate small jewels of language and piety, I sometimes make myself slow down and think about the words and their meanings. For example, consider the Second Collect for Morning Prayer:

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 Jesus Christ our Lord. 

And the original:

Deus auctor pacis et amator, quem nosse, vivere; cui servire, regnare est : protege ab omni oppugnatione suppleces tuos, ut qui in tua protectione confidimus, nullius hostilitatis arma timeamus. Per Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.

It’s fascinating, first of all, to see what Cranmer has done with the Acknowledgement, the relative clause naming the relevant qualities of the Deity. The Latin, with its incomparable brevity, says: God, author and lover of peace, whom to know is to live and to serve is to reign… In this case, Cranmer with his “author of peace and lover of concord” expands the Latin, in my opinion for the sake of the rhythm (with the implication, interesting in itself, that peace and concord are perfect synonyms). He then expands the second term to “in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life”, thus explaining the bald vivere; and the third term to “whose service is perfect freedom”. This last is where he exercises the greatest liberty: he seems to have found regnarea little too extreme (perhaps with the possible wrath of Henry VIII in mind), and so replaces it with “perfect freedom”, which could, in a pinch, be described as a synonym, as only a ruler is completely free to act. (Incidentally, Milton may have had the Latin Collect and its verbal oxymoron in mind when he wrote that it is “better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven”.)

In the Petition, he translates supplecesas “humble servants” while the Latin more strictly means “those who beseech” or  “those who humbly request”; and to the danger from which they ask to be protected, the simple oppugnatio, attack or assault, he adds the enemies (implicit in the Latin), again I think for the sake of rhythm. 

Then, in the Aspiration, he emphasizes confidimusby adding “surely” (with 16^th-century overtones of “safely”, “securely”, “loyally”, “steadfastly”, and “confidently”); and changes the “weapons of any conflict” to “power of any adversaries”, generalizing the first term and particularizing the second. And even though he has shown himself sensitive to rhythm, in this case he does not attempt to copy or represent the Latin’s elegant combination of a cursus tardus(protectióne confídimus) with a cursus velox(árma timeámus). 

On the whole, Cranmer’s meaning follows the Latin; and what I find fascinating is what we ask to be protected against, and why: defend us in, protect us against, assaults, but not so that we may have a quiet life but so that we may not fear. The point of the whole Collect, in other words, is a prayer against fear. And in the light of the Acknowledgement, the removal of fear will in turn facilitate the knowledge of God that gives us eternal life, and His service that confers perfect freedom. As so often in the case of these orationesthe text, as compact and elegant as a sonnet, when suitably parsed gives us the spiritual wealth of an entire homily.

SOME ARE BORN LENTEN, SOME ACHIEVE LENT....

And yes, some have Lent thrust upon them. I have never been good at fasting and generally at self-denial and other outward and visible signs of penitence. The only time I remember having renounced something successfully for Lent, what I had decided to give up was anger. Prayer and sharing come somewhat more easily. But each year the beginning of Lent is a moment of crisis and difficulty. One is told that it must not be like New Year’s resolutions; that the hope of “making a good Lent” is a form of pride; and so what one is left with is a mess of confusing, and confused, thoughts and prayers and the hope that somehow it will all come out right.

This year, though, the general feeling of vernal well-being and bouncing energy that always used to feel so contradictory to a season of penitence and introspection was providentially removed. In the first place I was recovering from surgery, having had a knee replaced and still learning to walk. I can assure those friends who haven’t had this done that the verse “At the name of Jesus, every knee will bow” takes on a whole new, and conflicted, meaning. Then, as walking was going better, off on a 3-day birthday trip to Barcelona, I tripped over a suitcase on a station platform, measured my length and broke two ribs. This ensured discomfort if not actual pain for another four weeks. And when that was finally settled, on a conference trip to North America, I contracted what I thought was a particularly vile cold but what turned out (as diagnosed in a New York hospital) to be authentic flu. 

My medical experiences are of no interest; what is curious is the coincidence with Lent. It truly did feel as if one was having Lent thrust upon one. And yes, it made me read more, pray more, and meditate more – most particularly as, returning home, I found among the held-over mail, a present from my daughter that blazingly illuminates each remaing Lenten day: Malcolm Guité’s Words in the Wilderness, a daily companion to Lent and Easter by way of poetry, ranging from his own (remarkable) poems to those of C.S. Lewis, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Tennyson, Donne, and of course the indispensable and durably glorious St George Herbert (as I have heard him invoked in an Anglican litany). With Guité and Benedict XVI’s magnificent Jesus of Nazareth vol. 2 Holy Week, my Lent is moving toward a deeply satisfying close, for which I can only give continuing thanks. Mind you, the fast is still slow……  

OF FALLING TOWERS AND WAYS TO DIE

At that very time there were some present who told him about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. 2 He asked them, ‘Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? 3 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish like them. 4 Or those eighteen who were killed when the tower of Siloam fell on them—do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish like them.’

To the question ‘does shit happen to sinners because they have sinned?’ Yeshua answers, No. There is no necessary connection between nasties that happen to us and the moral quality of our antecedent behaviour. That is already a huge thing to say. Because what it implies is that Shit Happens. Sometimes it’s an Act of Nature: a woman I knew was killed climbing in the Rockies when thaw dislodged a stone 1200 feet above which fell and cut her rope. Sometimes it’s somebody’s fault: that tower in Siloam may have had a fault in the foundation because of somebody’s negligence. But it is not the victim’s fault.

Moreover, Shit Happens, and when it does it is not God’s fault. This is much harder to conceive. God does not micromanage this or, we may assume, any other planet. God knows when every sparrow falls; but He does not stop its falling. Why not? Because, first, the whole life of the planet is based on mortality and replacement. We need to die to make room for our grandchildren. The tree bears seed so that a new tree can replace it. So why, then, not make mortality such that each human dies in a kindly and harmonious way? Because even when a loved person dies at the right moment, for those around, weeping, it is still a trauma, the moment is never right. And finally, we forget Satan at our peril. His presence – tempting us to sin and busily collecting our IOUs -- ensures that much that might have been harmonious will not be.  

Then Yeshua goes on to say, ‘but if you do not turn your mind around, you will perish like them.’ My daughter, in her sermon, elaborated that beautifully in saying that we need to turn from our pages and screens and news cycles to ‘bask in God’s love’ – which will necessarily make us pass on that love to others. But what also intrigues me is the ‘perishing like them.’ The point here, I think, is that we all die, whether peacefully in our beds, painfully in a hospital, horribly in a car crash or a fire, or among many in a natural disaster (see Leonard Cohen’s moving song ‘Who by Fire’, based on a Day of Atonement text). So why does He say ‘unless you turn around’? Will that exempt us from mortality? No – we know that. But if we have turned definitively to God – which means turning to the Anointed One – we will die, but not like them. We will die differently. We will die in the warmth of God’s love, and whatever awaits us on the other side will be a form of that. 

Photo: New York, September 11, 2001, by Detective Greg Semendinger, New York City Police Aviation Unit.  

"NOT A SAD TIME"

It’s been too long since I’ve written anything here. But now, at the beginning of another Lent, it may be useful to set down a few thoughts. 

CHEERFULNESS

In his Ash Wednesday sermon, our Franco-Algerian priest reminded us that Lent is not meant to be a time of sadness. Coming just after the Old Testament reading from the Book of Joel where we are told to rend our hearts (not our garments) and to proclaim a public fast and massive repentance in the faint hope that the Lord may spare us His chastisement, this might seem just a little bouncy. 

The Israel of Joel was a community, and religion was its raison d’être and what held it together. Communal, and even more so, national, repentance these days seems scarcely thinkable (except perhaps in the new idolatrous religion of Ecology). If modern communications have done anything, it has been to turn us into individualists, in religion as elsewhere. Our sins, we tend to think, are our own. Hence repentance, if repentance there be, is our own. And, mindful of Jesus’ warning against showing off while fasting or praying, we tend to keep quiet about it. And we are often not quite sure what to do about Lent. Unlike Muslims, who keep Ramadan with admirable consistency, we haver and dither: do we “give up” something, like chocolate, or alcohol, or binge-watching Netflix? And if we do, what relation does that have to our relation to God? 

The Church often tells us not to concentrate on Lent as an accomplishment: “making a good Lent” (which we usually fail at). It would be too much like New Year’s resolutions. In fact, listening to the Church may well help us. As Pope Francis reminds us, Lent is quite simply about three things: fasting, praying, and sharing. 

Real fasting is something very few of us do; traditionally the Church told us to give up meat (“carne vale”: goodbye, meat) and replace it with fish, seafood, or vegetarian meals. This is still one way to fulfil that particular obligation. And with moderation: if you are invited to dinner by unbelievers, you should not refuse to eat their pork roast, as that would be showing off. You can always compensate by skipping lunch next day. 

Prayer, though, is more important than fasting. It is in any case the key to a life of faith. Talk to God; argue with God; weep to God; listen to God; it’s all prayer, and it’s the breath of life. He may not always talk; but He always listens, and He always loves. You. 

And sharing is what used to be called almsgiving. Giving to those who need. Not just money, though some of that is always welcome. No, comfort; kindness; respect; a hug; a smile, even; they are all gifts, alms, sharing. 

To come back to our priest: as he said, Lent is the spring cleaning of the soul. You may sometimes find it onerous (incidentally, who still does spring cleaning in the old way, I wonder?); but you don’t do it grumbling, grouching, and kvetching. Housecleaning the soul should, like the other kind, be thorough – it’s when you finally get at those corners behind the stove and at those spiders’ webs in the corners of the ceiling – but cheerful, looking forward to the celebration of Easter. 

You begin with ashes: yes, we’re all headed for the dustheap. But no: it’s not final. You face up to the shit you have done, said, and been, because we all have, at some time. And you sincerely say, out loud if only to your Abba, your Father, that you’re sorry, that you wish you hadn’t, and that you need help not to do, say, and be that in future. 

And then you get out the mop, the broom, the pail, and get to work. Whistling. 

  

OF WATER AND LIGHT

“For with thee is the well of life: and in thy light shall we see light.” (Psalm 36)

Coming upon this while reading through the day’s psalms, I always feel a thrill run down my spine: the sure sign of true poetry. The well of life reminds me of Spenser’s characterization of Chaucer as “the well of English undefiled”. The well, of course, is not un puits but une source, a wellspring, a spring in the grass from which water flows unceasingly. God, says the Psalmist, is not the well: the spring is with him. It is near him, in his proximity; it is complicit with him, on his side, part of what God creates and wants us to recognize. 

We may imagine – as God always lets us imagine – himself, the Ancient of Days, seated in a meadow of his own creation, perhaps on the Seventh Day, tired but content, contemplating a new and unspoiled planet, and at his foot, in the unimaginably lovely fresh grass, a spring bubbling, its water coursing in rivulets down the hill. The water is life. Which is very insightful of the Psalmist: we now know that the sine qua non for a planet to support life is the presence of water. And the spring of that life is with God.

He created it, after all; but the beauty is that he kept it with him: close to him, never far away. He does not let the bubbling up of life out of his sight. Whatever it becomes later; whatever mud weighs it down, whatever filth pollutes it, whatever cruel droughts dry it up; if we trace it to its source, we shall find God, watching over it.

Life and light, in the good fortune of English, are alliterative twins; and the image of life is followed by an even more puissant one of light. Light allows us to see: to see things, to see the world, to see our neighbours. But what allows us to see light? In one sense, light is invisible; but what the Psalm tells us us that that is only one sense. In another, we see light; but we see it “in thy light”, in the light of God. No easy image of the Ancient of Days here. Can we get our mind round this? “In thy light shall we see light.” Light, the very essence of our consciousness, the primary element that allows us to see everything else, is itself secondary. We see it in, in the context of, as part of, as an emanation of, His light. 

How do we adjust this to our known and felt experience? We think we see light all the time, whether we ‘believe in’ God or not. We live, move and have our being in a world where light is an everyday occurrence. So in what way can it be secondary? Perhaps we should entertain the possibility that only when we see light in His light do we see light pure, light as it was created to be when God said “let there be light.” Any light, then, which we see on our own, without first adjusting our mind’s eye to God, is a polluted light, a light subtly touched by original sin. An uncomfortable thought; but those who have known conversion can tell you that it changes even your way of seeing – i.e. light. Perhaps they, for the first time, are seeing light in His light.

And finally, both life and light together spurred the Psalmist – unknown to us, but he must have existed as a real person, King David or no – to compress them together and so make a flash of pure poetry. Which in itself is always a new way of seeing.

POOR AND FREE?

The following is a passage from the admirable The Wound of Love: a Carthusian Miscellany. The author, anonymous like all Carthusian writers, has been discussing spiritual poverty, in the context of poverty, chastity and obedience. I found these paragraphs very striking, even for those who are not monks or nuns They merit being read with real attention. 

We have no right to claim as our own the good which we do. We do not even have the absolute certainty of believing in God, of loving him or our brothers. Each morning we must receive everything anew in faith. God creates us truly at every moment. The past, we entrust to his mercy; we must empty our memory of its supposed riches so as to change it into a pure movement toward God himself beyond his gifts. This movement is lived uniquely in the reality of the present moment, in our conforming to the will of the Lord for us, here and now, in our communion of love and our close attention to him. Here poverty and simplicity become one. For the future, we entrust ourselves to God. We do not, as it were, have an account in some celestial bank, all we have is our faith in the love of the Lord, our hope and our desire to love. 

            We must not be anxious before the demands of true spiritual poverty. We are never so well off as when we have nothing. We are free and available for anything. Our ego, weak as it is, would like to cover its nakedness with furs made of material things, and intellectual and spiritual goods. The obscure light of faith is a light indeed, and whoever becomes accustomed to it will not abandon it for all the sweetness and consolations of days gone by. May God preserve us from our virtues! Our faith allows us to discard this deceitful covering in order to walk in truth along the path which is no path, which leads us to the Father in Love, that is, in the Spirit of Christ. The man who is poor finds the gates of death open, and he passes freely into the Kingdom of God. For if we despoil ourselves, it is in order to rediscover the innocent nakedness of God’s image in our hearts and thus to clothe ourselves in Christ (Galatians 4:27). Our poverty is the poverty of the children of God, who ‘having nothing, yet possess all’ ( 2 Corinthians 6:10), in hope and in faith. We have received ‘a spirit of adoption as sons, by virtue of which we cry “Abba! Father!”’ (Romans 8:15-17).