PLENI SUNT COELI ET TERRA

“Pleni sunt cœli et terra gloria tua”

”Heaven and earth are full of thy glory”. We know this and have heard it often. Do we ever think about it? I’ve often wondered. Heaven is full of His glory, yes, I can believe that, wherever Heaven actually is. But earth? 34th St in New York? Soho in London? An undistinguished B road in the British or French countryside? Full of His glory?

A few days ago I had a sudden revelation on the subject. I was in hospital, in a clinic in a French provincial city near where I live. For three days I had a room in the cardiology department. And over each 24-hour period, a succession of nurses and care personnel came into my room, took my blood-pressure and temperature, did the cleaning, gave me blood-tests, brought me charmingly inedible salt-free meals, shaved my body hair in embarrassing places, and gave me unfailing smiles, encouragement and gentleness. And as I lay on my rather uncomfortable bed in between snoozes, two great truths came to me. First: medical science is one of God’s languages. If you have ever wondered why we see so few healing miracles these days, you haven’t been looking. From the invention of CoVid vaccines in less than a year to the possibility that a bypass operation might actually work, they are all around us: just not being performed by itinerant rabbis but by hardworking doctors and laboratory specialists. Second: the glory of God is all around us, right down the hall in the nurses’ station. If God is love, His glory surely shines through these young-to-middle-aged, always-tired-but-never-showing-it women of pure care and kindness to patients who range from the stoically quiet to the roaring and screamingly rebellious who bang the walls of their rooms (an old lady next door to me). I left feeling instructed and overwhelmingly grateful. Heaven and earth are full of His glory. Indeed.  

 

A COLD CASE?

 

                   

                                        

This is an attempt to clear up a mystery, a “cold case” from way back. 

 

How can it be that the Gospel accounts of the Crucifixion coincide so remarkably with the references in at least two Psalms (22 and 69)?

 

If we exclude the possibility that the Evangelists were deforming the reality in order to make it conform to the Psalms, and if we also, at least for now, discount the idea of a mystical and prophetic conformity of the Psalms to the later reality, we need to find some probable and realistic explanation. Here is a possibility:

 

The Sanhedrin and its mob bring the captured Yeshua to Pontius, howling for his blood. Pontius is awoken disgracefully early to deal with this. I do not believe that he saw Yeshua alone. A colonial Governor like him would always have staff on hand. And on that staff I postulate one Marcus Manlius ‘Judaicus’, his expert on the local population and its culture. (Even Manlius may have had staff under him.) He might have gone native to the point of having married a Jewish woman. But he is of good family and highly cultured, and indispensable to Pontius (who, historians tell us, is a faily average colonial administrator). 

So, Pontius tells whoever wakes him to call and summon Manlius immediately, to assist at the hearing. 

            We know how the hearing went. Yeshua is his usual taciturn self, replying only with two enigmas: first “the words are yours”, and later “my kingdom (basileia) is not of this world.” However, it is clear to Pontius (and to Manlius, who has not spoken but watched and listened) that this chap has done nothing that should lead Romans to execute him. He curtly says so to the Sanhedrin people, who insist that he is challenging the authority of Cæsar (and imply that they may send a complaint directly to the Emperor if Pontius doesn’t give in). 

            So eventually he goes along. Now for my insertion. I imagine a conversation between Pontius and Manlius, along these lines:

 

P. OK, I guess we’ll have to crucify him, but boy, does it go against the grain. Those bloody Jewish elders! You know, he genuinely made me wonder with his kingdom. I’m wondering if he mightn’t be genuine, and important. And we’re going to string him up?

M. I know what you mean, sir. I felt the same way. 

P. If we do crucify him, isn’t there something we can do to show that we do it reluctantly and that we take him seriously?

M. Well, there might be something. In fact, I can think of two things. First, as we always put up a sign above each cross with the description of the crime, how about in his case putting one up that simply says “Jesus Nazarenus Rex Judæorum”? That will placate those who believe in him and infuriate the elders.

P. Brilliant. And the second?

M. The Jews have a prophet, Yeshayahu, who describes the Meshiach, the great future king and liberator of Israel, not as a conqueror but in terms of a suffering sacrificial lamb, slaughtered for the sins of the people. This Yeshua of ours clearly identifies with that character. Now, they also have a Psalm that closely describes what could be seen as his execution: “they pierced my hands and my feet,” “they cast lots for my clothes” and so forth. These texts are known to all the Jews. How would it be if we conducted the crucifixion precisely as described in their texts?

P. Sounds a bit different.

M. Well, we don’t usually nail them to the cross, but it has been done on occasion. And as for the lads drawing lots for his clothes, we can tell them to do that, and perhaps put something decent on him before we nail him up so it’s worth dicing for.

P. Manlius, I like it. At least we can make them look foolish, even if he has to go.  Carius!

[enter Publius Carius, the Centurion in charge of today’s executions]

C. Sir?

P. This latest prisoner, Bar-Yosef, we’re going to do something different with him. It’s important for the effect. So you get the armourer to make up some 12-inch nails, and instead of tying him to the cross you nail him. Here’s the text for the notice on top; and I need the execution detail to put on a little show once he’s up. [describes the dicing]. And prepare some gall and some sour wine to put up on a stick if he calls for it. I know it sounds odd, but it’s important  for the politics of the thing.

C. Yes, sir. May I say, sir, how sorry I am to have to execute this fellow? He’s a truly good man, who healed my servant a year or so ago, quite miraculously and at a distance.

P. I know, Carius, but the situation is tense enough, and I really cannot let him go. After all, if he is who and what he seems to imply he is, this may not be wholly the end of him. Anyway, get the men together and get this show on the road. I want all three of them up there by noon. 

C. Very good, sir.

 

And Carius gets together the execution platoon with a sergeant. They perform the ritual flogging, though without much enthusiasm, but several of the legionaries have had a few drinks before the distasteful task, and so they decide to have some fun with the prisoner. “Since we have to crucify a king, let’s dress him up as one. Jam some thorn branches on his head; here’s a broomstick for a sceptre, hey, anyone got a nice red cloak?” Private Varus has nicked one from the officers’ cloakroom, so they wrap him in it. Carius passes by and gets very angry. “Sergeant, take those men’s names!” he snaps. But it is in these improvised regalia that he is led to the waiting beams and nails. And it is for the stolen officer’s cloak that the soldiers draw lots . . . . .

 

Of course I have no idea if this is how it happened. But I’m morally sure that Caius Pontius Pilatus had a Manlius on his staff; and something like this makes the parallels at least plausible.  

A VERY QUIET JOY

 

For Christmas, I always put up this exquisite small poem written by a very young English actress, Jill Furse, around 1940. At the outbreak of World War II, Jill married the poet and glass-engraver Laurence Whistler, had a daughter Robin, whom I knew at University, and died soon after giving birth to her son Simon, at the age of 29.

CAROL

 

Beyond this room

Daylight is brief.

Frost with no harm

Burns in white flame

The green holly leaf. 

Cold on the wind’s arm

Is ermine of snow.

 

Child with the sad name,

Your time is come

Quiet as moss.

You journey now

For our belief

Between the rich womb

And the poor cross.

 

Jill Furse (1915-1944)

Advent Sunday

 

The First Sunday in Advent is the beginning of the liturgical year. Advent, for many people, is either barely present in the rush of work, school, travel plans and buying presents, or it is seen as a kind of minor version of Lent, vaguely gloomy and depressing. I take this opportunity once again to quote in extenso the admirable Advent meditation of Dom David Bird OSB, a Benedictine monk.

During the season of Advent, the Church proposes for our attention four truths which are general enough and profound enough to shape our whole spiritual life.

 The first is that, whoever we are, whatever our vocation, whether our life is happy or sad, fulfilled or frustrated, useful or a waste of time, interesting or boring, in harmony with God or sinful, it is destined to change; and what we consider normal now will, one day, become a thing of the past. This is true at every level of life and for everybody, and is even true of the whole creation in which we live. All will eventually end, because God so wills it. God is not in favour of every change, but his Providence is at work in every change.

   The second Advent truth is that Christ is present in every change, even if the change has been brought about against his will, and, at the end of every change, Christ will manifest himself to each and every one of us in a new way, taking into account what has happened, if we allow him. This will go on happening until  his Second Coming in which the whole of creation will be transformed into a new heaven and a new earth, and his presence will be manifested in a new and definitive way.

   This Sunday we celebrate the presence among us of the Risen Christ, as we do every Sunday; but, because it is Advent, at the same time, we are warned not to be satisfied with the level of our Christian life, our own holiness or our degree of commitment, nor closed to Christ's challenges when they involve us in change.  While we are alive, we can be confident that Christ has much more for each of us, and that he wants to make us capable of receiving what he has to offer. He would prefer our firmament should cave in, our whole world collapse rather than allow us to sink into a mire of complacency that would make us impervious to his grace. The Church has given us Advent as an antidote to complacency.  To live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often, as Blessed John Henry Newman said, and Christ wishes to accompany us; and, round every corner, after every change, Christ is ready to meet us, to offer us something new.

   The third Advent truth is that when we meet Christ, we never meet him alone. Christ is in heaven and does not leave it when he comes to meet us. Where Christ is, there are Our Lady, the angels and saints. Whether in the Mass where we meet him as a Church, or in our hearts when we meet him in prayer, or when we recognise him as present in every situation, heaven and earth become one. 

   We talk about Christ coming to us; but the early Church talked about our ascending into heaven, even as we remain physically on earth.   This is the theme of the Letter to the Hebrews and of the Apocalypse. It is a further paradox that, the more we are united to Christ who is in heaven, the more heaven is present on earth through us.

   Is it not strange that, in the early Church, when the Liturgy was at its most communal, when there was so much emphasis on the Church as the body of Christ, that Christians should have gone into the desert to become hermits? Was it a flight into non- Christian individualism? It may have been for some; but the classical Christian hermit was anything but an individualist. What united him or her to the Christian community was that both he or she and the community believed they were citizens of heaven before they were citizen of this world, precisely because they were members of Christ's risen body. The monk believed that, because of his own weakness, he could not really become what baptism had made him, a citizen of heaven, without entering a monastery or going into the desert.   Did you know that the word "cell", used for a monk's room, was believed to have the same root as "coelum" because, just as the Christian community was raised in the Eucharist to share in the liturgy of heaven, so the monk in his cell was raised up to heaven in his prayer, and his solitude was filled with Our Lady, the angels and saints who prayed with him, and even with all those on earth who are united to Christ in his risen body.  No space on earth was more populated than a hermit's cell! Moreover, people went to visit hermits and monasteries because they believed that, through the monks life of sacrifice and prayer, sacred spaces are formed where heaven and earth are united.

   The fourth Advent truth is that heaven changed radically when Jesus, having died and risen again, ascended into his Father's presence. The Incarnation had brought about a new relationship between God and his creation. When this relationship was perfected by Christ's obedience unto death and became the central reality in heaven by means of Christ's ascension, heaven became the new reality into which the whole human race and the whole of creation were destined to be transformed.   It became the ultimate destiny of all that is. Jesus said that this generation will not pass until all these things shall happen; and in a certain and real sense this is exactly what took place when Christ ascended into heaven. For this reason, the early Christians never changed the texts in which Christ foretold the end of the world. We are in the last days, not, as the Jehovah Witnesses believe, because some world-destroying calamity is about to happen, but because every time we celebrate Mass, every time we pray, every time we meet Christ in the circumstances of the present moment, we are brought into the Father's presence by Christ in the Spirit, and we share directly in heaven which is God's final solution for the whole of creation; and every time we go to Mass or simply pray, Christ, Our Lady, the angels and saints enter our world through and in us.

  Advent is the time when we remember that this life receives its value only in so far as it incarnates God's will revealed to our faith in Christ's presence.  As the gospel today teaches us, we must be awake, ready to receive him and not pass our time in debauchery and drunkenness.   In every situation we must pray, "Come, Lord Jesus," and he will be there. 

   In this world of change, we find Christ's will in the present moment. We must not try to re-create a past that is agreeable to us, because God's will is not to be found there. Nor must we seek our fulfilment in an imaginary future, because that is our own creation, not God's. We must find God's will where Christ is, in the present; but we must not be so attached to present circumstances that we try to hold on to them when it is God's will that they be changed. 

   We must become Advent Christians for whom everything in this world, past, present and to come, must make way for the Christ who comes. Only our self-will stands in the way.

 

Dom David Bird, OSB (from his blog Monks and Mermaids at http://fatherdavidbirdosb.blogspot.fr/

THINKING THE UNTHINKABLE?

7. All mine enemies whisper together against me : even against me do they imagine this evil.

8. Let the sentence of guiltiness proceed against him : and now that he lieth, let him rise up no more.

9. Yea, even mine own familiar friend, whom I trusted : who did also eat of my bread, hath laid great wait for me. (Ps. 41)

12. For it is not an open enemy, that hath done me this dishonour : for then I could have borne it.

13. Neither was it mine adversary, that did magnify himself against me : for then peradventure I would have hid myself from him.

14. But it was even thou, my companion : my guide, and mine own familiar friend.

15. We took sweet counsel together : and walked in the house of God as friends. (Ps. 55)

Given the peculiar and oniric relation of the Gospels to the Psalms, I am moved to wonder whether we might not find in these passages the beginnings of an explanation for the strange conduct of Yehuda of Kerioth. 

I have always found the explanation in John 12:6, that Yehuda (Judas) was the group’s thievish treasurer, scarcely believable; and the whole story of the actual ‘betrayal’, the kiss in the park, too theatrical to make sense. As Yeshua himself said, he was not exactly hiding himself: he taught and preached in public practically every day, and the Temple guards could have taken him whenever they wanted. He did not need to be identified.

Once again, I am transgressing Benedict XVI’s injunction against writing a ‘Jesus novel’: first, I believe that if His actual, historical existence as a man in Galilee is of such crucial importance, then whatever we can find out or reasonably deduce about that existence is worth while; secondly, a combination of a historian’s and a reporter’s mind makes me bridle at improbabilities and search for what might actually have happened. 

And in the case of Yehuda of Kerioth, there is a possible narrative. That it comes to us from the Psalms would normally invalidate it at least in part: the Psalms are poetry, and from a time much earlier than the Gospels. Yet the relation between the two is so strange and close at times as to be unnerving. Most of us discover it first in Psalm 22, parts of which read like a description of the Crucifixion even unto the foolish details of the soldiers dicing for the robe; and we meet it again in Psalm 69:22: ‘They gave me gall to eat : and when I was thirsty they gave me vinegar to drink.’

Does this mean that Yeshua modelled his life upon the Psalms? That the Evangelists took Psalm passages to fill in details of the Crucifixion? Or that there was a deeply strange but real coincidence between the two? My narrative concerning Yehuda, I suppose, postulates the third of these possibilities. Here it is.

Imagine that from the beginning of the Disciples’ life as a group it was Yehuda who was the ‘disciple that Jesus loved’. That it was he who was the ‘familiar friend’, especially close to the Master; that it was with him that the Meshiach took sweet counsel in the Temple and who had the favoured place beside him at meals. 

And then, gradually, over the two or three years that we know of, Yochanan the ‘Son of Thunder’ began to make inroads upon that relationship. He it was, young and charming, who wormed his way into Yeshua’s confidence; he it was who became the new favourite. One can then easily imagine Yehuda’s feelings. Disquiet growing slowly but surely and morphing into a green-eyed monster. At first, dislike turning to hatred for the young co-disciple; and little by little a turning of that hatred to the Master himself. The verses from Psalm 55 might then equally well have issued from the mouth of Yehuda of Kerioth himself. 

That the end result was a pointless but deliberate and vengeful giving-up of Yeshua to the Temple authorities makes, in this case, perfect sense. Hell hath no fury like a loving friend and disciple scorned. And it makes all the more likely and understandable, also, his instant and total remorse once the inevitable consequences of his action began to unroll, and his swift dramatic suicide.

There are holes in this narrative, sure; but it seems to me a great deal more likely than the grubby suggestion that he had been stealing shekels. Poor Yehuda. It would indeed have been better for him had he never been born. And yet, if this story is true, may there not, at the end of time, be mercy even for him?

 

AND THOU CONTINUEST HOLY

 

Periodically, in or after my daily prayers, I think “This is all very well, but one can’t always be asking.” Well, there is the giving of thanks, too, and that is both joyful and healthy; but, something whispers, isn’t it still all about me? Not always – sometimes I give thanks for the healing of a friend or relative; but even that raises nagging questions about whether God micromanages His creation. What one would like is a prayer that isn’t about what happens to us. 

The Church teaches us that there is such a prayer: the prayer of adoration. Here, we do not ask for something; we do not give thanks for something; we simply adore God for what He is, for the fact that He is, for the ways in which He is. The prayer of adoration can fix itself upon an object, a monstrance with a consecrated wafer, or a crucifix, but it doesn’t have to do so: we can contemplate God in our heart and an outpouring of joy and delight can result. 

It is, of course, not the kind of prayer which, as children, we are taught; and so it can be hard at first to get used to it. First of all, it takes time and leisure. I’ve often thought that it would be good to have, as an acquaintance of mine with a château does, a small chapel in one’s house: one could retire there for half an hour at some point during the day or evening and shut out the world to concentrate. But lately I have found that the second part of the night, when sleep is intermittent and lighter, is a good time to point one’s mind to a certain kind of prayer and meditation. 

And in one such moment recently, a prayer of adoration suggested itself. I remembered the “map” of the Universe published by astronomers a few years ago and its immensity, and it made me think of the Creator of all that; and there swam into my mind the moving text from the terrible Psalm 22, the “crucifixion Psalm”: “and thou continuest holy”. In spite of what I may be going through; in spite of the pain in the world, “thou continuest holy”. In spite of our requests, our thanksgivings, “thou continuest holy”.

Putting these two things together, I try to imagine the Creator of that Universe: is He bigger than it? Smaller than it? Non-dimensional entirely and thus unimaginable? Whichever of those, “thou continuest holy”. And then I added the fact that His nature is Love, and imagined that within Himself, in other words, within the Trinity: as a permanent whirlwind of cosmic Love between Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And with that imagining, my prayer of adoration came as naturally as water from a spring. What glory!

“Thou continuest holy.”    

ITE, MISSA INLICITA EST?

Pope Francis’s recently-published limitations on the use of the Tridentine (Latin) liturgy for the Mass appear to have occasioned exactly the reactions he was doubtless expecting and may have hoped for: joy among the modernists, outrage among the “tradis”. It is useful to remember that he has not cancelled the Latin Mass, or Benedict XVI’s decree permitting its use. He has merely subjected its use in any parish or community to the authority of the local bishop. 

            Apparently, Francis decided on this measure out of alarm at what he saw as being an incipient schismatic cleavage in the Church, especially in America where the increasing political polarization of society is now seen as augmenting the existing divisions within the Catholic community – to the point where liturgy was being weaponized in the struggle about other things such as abortion, the role of women in the Church, gay marriage and so forth. What he either did not realise or weighed but found worth while is that he hemself, with this decree, is doing exactly the same thing, and thus in a sense already conceding a victory to his adversaries. 

            Exceedingly interesting in this regard is the 2018-9 study of Fr Donald Kloster, a Connecticut priest from the Diocese of Bridgeport who specialises in the study of the traditionalist movement, and who found that 99% of the those favouring the Tridentine Mass attended every week, whole of those favouring the modern Mass only 22% did so. Moreover, he found that the Tridentine Mass was particularly favoured by the 18-39-year-olds – which contradicts precisely the arguments of those who think that vernacular, familiar, happy-clappy liturgies will appeal to the young. Of the reasons given by the Millennials and Gen Z lovers of the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM) by far the most important (35%) was “reverence”.

            One of the rules of life that were dinned into me at an early age was “It’s rude to say ‘I told you so’”. Yet it is very tempting in this case to utter those words. I have been trying to tell people for decades that the continual modernizing and de-solemnizing of the liturgy, so far from counteracting the emptying of churches, encourages and increases it. Certainly, some people prefer a jolly, informal, cheerful Mass or Eucharist; but at least as many, if not more, people of faith love and long for a sense of reverence, or solemnity, of significant form. And this is every bit as true for Anglicans/Episcopalians as it is for Roman Catholics. 

            What seems to me of crucial importance is that, first, we should abandon the terminology of “modernists” vs. “traditionalists” when referring to liturgy and replace it with something like “informalists” vs. “formalists” or “proponents of togetherness” vs “proponents of reverence/solemnity”. Second, and even more important: all sides should be brought to agree to divorce discussions of liturgy from discussions of other aspects of religion in society. It is perfectly possible to love solemnity and reverence and tradition in a celebration of the Eucharist while accepting that such a celebration may be performed by a female priest or a gay priest, either or both of them married, and believing that abortion, while always sad and often traumatic, is permissible and not a sin. 

            Finally, a word to Anglicans and Episcopalians. While we do not use the ancient Latin liturgy, we have an equivalent. Like the Latin texts, the sixteenth/seventeenth-century words of the Book of Common Prayer (1662) are in a language that, while comprehensible, is distant from everyday modern usage and was specifically designed to convey the reverence of the older Latin. Moreover, even more than Latin, this liturgical language has shaped English usage for over three centuries: “to have and to hold”, “till death us depart”, “we are as the beasts that perish”, “devices and desires”, “peace in our time”, “sudden death”, “the kindly fruits of the earth”, “our bounden duty and service” – centuries of worshippers have repeated and loved these words so that they have acquired the patina and glow of handed-down family treasures. And thus and so, they allow us to combine reverence and solemnity with familiarity in a way that destroys and cancels neither.