Following Jesus
An existential question in the middle of urban traffic.
Sorrow and Joy
The liturgy honours St Mary Magdalene, first witness to the resurrection, with the title Apostle to the Apostles. What equipped her for this? The perseverance and courage that enabled her, at a point when all her hopes were shattered, she who had so often been let down, just to remain, wait, and weep. She did not run away from grief. She did not seek distraction from it. Nor did she lock herself within it, indulgently. She touched its core, simply and deeply, and was thus prepared to recognise the presence she sought not in front of her (where she had expected it) but behind her, where she could have sworn it must be someone else’s.
It is hard to sustain sorrow. But sometimes there is no other way to encounter joy.
Communion
In a beautiful, elegiac tract, Yoshida Kenkō (c.1283-c.1352) reflects on the transience of earthly things, counselling detachment. He take delight, though, in encounters. ‘What happiness to sit in intimate conversation with someone of like mind, warmed by candid discussion of the amusing and fleeting ways of this world … but such a friend is hard to find, and instead you sit there doing your best to fit in with whatever the other is saying, feeling deeply alone.’
Even in such cases there is a remedy within everyone’s reach: ‘It is a most wonderful comfort to sit alone beneath a lamp, book spread before you, and commune with someone from the past whom you have never met’ — yet nonetheless do meet somehow through the medium of the book.
Children
With characteristic lucidity, Eivor Oftestad analyses a recent documentary on surrogate parenthood. We assume we know what the parental-filial social contract consists in. She helpfully highlights the extent to which it is conditioned by changing circumstances:
‘Our understanding of what a child is cannot be taken for granted. It reflects, at any time, conditions and notions prevalent in cultural paradigms. An agrarian society understood the begetting of children as generation. The industrial society was inclined to regard it as production. Today, in a consumerist society that hardly permits experiences of deferred need, it is increasingly seen in terms of acquisition – and everything, as we know, can be acquired if we pay for it.’
Do we think in terms of being given children or of getting them? The question really matters.
Two Ways
In today’s Vigils reading, St Ignatius of Antioch (ad Magn. 1-5) develops a motif typical of early Christian writings. It is the image, rooted in Deuteronomy 30:19, of the two ways between which each human being must choose. ‘All things have an end, and two things, life and death, are side by side set before us, and each man will go to his own place. Just as there are two coinages, one of God and the other of the world, each with its own image, so unbelievers bear the image of this world, and those who have faith with love bear the image of God the Father through Jesus Christ. Unless we are ready through his power to die in the likeness of his passion, his life is not in us.’
Living as we are in a world of endlessly blurred boundaries, this perspective challenges us. It is a salutary challenge. We need the testimony of brave women and men who choose life. It isn’t an easy option; it will, as Ignatius says, bear the mark of Christ’s passion. But it will be a function of truth, and the truth sets us free.
Stupidity
I have long pondered a statement made by Bonhoeffer in Resistance and Resignation. At first I thought it was rhetorical hyperbole; now I no longer think so. ‘Stupidity is a more dangerous foe to the good than wickedness. One can protest against evil. Evil can be exposed. It can even, in extremities, be fought against with violent means. Evil always carries the seed of its own decomposition and at any rate calls forth unease in human beings. Against stupidity we are defenceless. Here we can do nothing whether by protest or by force. Reasoning has no effect. Objective facts that go against the grain of one’s prejudice are dismissed – in such cases the stupid person reveals critical faculties. If the facts simply can’t be overlooked, they will be sidelined as singular cases void of consequence. In acting thus, the stupid – in contrast to the evil – person is wholly pleased with him or herself; indeed he or she becomes dangerous, easily provoked to attack. Greater care, then, is called for in confronting stupidity than in confronting wickedness.’
Of course, the stupidity Bonhoeffer speaks of is not incompatible with considerable intelligence. What’s lacking is prudence.
Usefulness
I know nothing of the surgeon Thomas Prickett beyond what is recorded on this plaque in a thirteenth-century church on the Isle of Wight. But what is stated there is enough.
I’d say one can be counted blessed who is remembered as having lived ‘a life of extensive usefulness’ to others. Indeed we could do with a revival, Europewide, of aspirations to public service. Mr Prickett not only lived well. He also died well, ‘with piety and resignation’. And this he learnt to do in no more than thirty years of existence.
He must have been a good man. May he rest in peace.
Vacation
Coram Fratribus will take a holiday for a couple of weeks.
Thank you for your interest in the site!
I wish you a pleasant summer.
+fr Erik
Czapski
Having visited the Józef Czapski Pavilion in Cracow last September, I was keen to learn more about this extraordinary writer and painter. Czapski’s little book on Proust, Lost Time, is a marvel: the text came into being as lectures given to fellow inmates in a Soviet prison camp. Eric Karpeles’ life of Czapski, Almost Nothing, is also highly readable. A fine portrait not only of a man, but of an age.
A contribution to The Tablet’s recommendations for Summer Reading.
Spirituality
Last week, Abbess Christiana Reemts offered this compact reflection:
‘Earlier, people would say, “I don’t believe in God” or, “I am an atheist”. Now we’re more likely to hear, “Spirituality matters a great deal to me.” What is intended is often the same.’
Transmission
It is a standing joke in Italy that many of the country’s structures don’t work. What does work is the effective transmission of culture. One stumbles across ancient remnants everywhere, of course. But that isn’t all. Italians remain conscious of being heirs to a great civilisation. This heritage is taught in school, discussed in the media, fostered in excellent museums. It isn’t just about looking back to a glorious past. It’s about positioning oneself in the present. When I walked past this newsagent’s window one day last week, a copy of Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War was on display. I enjoyed seeing it. When I went back the next day to photograph it, it was gone: someone had bought it. But a book about Athens and Sparta was there instead, in among the romantic novels and autobiographies of athletes. With Europe in a state of anxious transformation, really under threat, more of us could benefit from revisiting the foundations of our civilisation, reminding ourselves of the history and core meaning of notions like ‘freedom’, ‘democracy’, ‘tyranny’, etc. We need to galvanise our sense of what is worth defending, and why.
Grace to Receive
The ordination of deacons concludes with the traditio evangelii. The bishop hands the newly ordained a book of the Gospel, then addresses to him this exhortation:
Receive the Gospel of Christ, whose herald you have become. Take care that you believe what you read, that you teach what you believe, and that you fashion your life according to what you teach.
A causal chain is indicated here. It absolutely presupposes the first element: Reading the Gospel as it is given us, not as we might like to rewrite it.
Mouth of Truth
The Bocca della verità outside Santa Maria in Cosmedin is one of Rome’s best known landmarks. It features significantly in that immortal film, Roman Holiday, but its history reaches back far beyond celluloid into the mists of history. The story goes that any liar who places a hand in its mouth will have it bitten off. In daylight, the round face looks pleasant enough. The legend attaching to it seems a bit of a joke. Illumined at night by a strange yellow light, the effect is different. The monument looks lunar, sinister, cruel. It makes me reflect that truth on its own, detached from virtue, can have an aspect that is vindictive and destructive. To be life-giving, truth must be suffused with humanitas, which to the ancients was a way of expressing ‘compassion’. The truth, said St Paul, must be enacted in love (Eph 4:15). Detached from love, it risk being marked by the the old titan’s features: an indiscreet, cold, incurious stare and a voracious mouth.
Anger
Friday’s terrible shooting in Oslo is yet another indication — as if we needed more — of the breakdown of conversation in our society. Culturally, the West is pulled in different directions. With certain tendencies we may be in deep disagreement. Yet to seek to annihilate difference, to point a gun (be it rhetorical) at those who embody difference, is perverse. It is time to recover the use of logos, reasoned speech. It is time to be on our guard against discourse sprung from anger. Macarius the Great said: ‘If while correcting another you are carried away by anger, you are feeding your own passion. Yet you mustn’t destroy yourself to save another.’ Today’s Gospel is relevant. Faced with the insult of a Samaritan village that refused to let Jesus in, James and John proposed to ‘call down fire from heaven to burn them up’. The Lord ‘turned and rebuked them’. An ancient Gospel manuscript adds the content of his rebuke: ‘You do not know what manner of spirit you are of; for the Son of Man came not to destroy men’s lives but to save them’ (Luke 9:51-5)
Pardon
No contribution to the World Meeting of Families has received more attention in the secular press (here, for instance) than that of Daniel and Leila Abdallah, a Maronite Australian couple. Their talk called forth a strong response in the aula, too. We all, thousands of us, rose to our feet in tribute to their testimony. The two spoke of pardon. They know more about its cost than most, having lost four children in a terrible accident caused by a drunk, drugged driver on 1 February 2020. The Abdallahs’ Christian response to their loss has had a massive impact in Australia, resulting in the institution of a National Day of Forgiveness. The work of grace in the couple’s life is palpable. Yet they insisted that pardon first of all requires a will to forgive. ‘Forgiveness’, said Leila, ‘is a choice you make’. Daniel added: ‘I had to forgive so that my family would not be imprisoned in the trauma of that night.’ It is precious to be reminded with such simplicity, such authority that no interior prison sentence needs to be final.
Light Struggle
Gigi De Palo and Anna Chiara Gambini spoke today of discovering, four years ago, that their newborn son, Giorgio Maria, had Down’s. There and then, in hospital, they looked at each other, said Gigi, ‘with complicity’, exchanging a glance in which the whole history of their love was contained. And embraced with joy the child given them. They spoke unsentimentally about the struggle it involves to raise a child gifted in this way, but it is, Anna Chiara insisted, a light struggle – ‘Una fatica leggera’. In objective terms it has weight, yet the heaviness is lifted by the love circulating between parents and child, and drawn forth in others. We were told about Giorgio Maria’s singular ability to enable others to respond to him with love. The presentation amounted to an empirical validation of Christ’s saying, ‘my yoke is easy and my burden is light’. The yokes and burdens we carry can seem overwhelmingly our own, yet they can become his, so eased and lightened, if we call his loving presence into them.
Reconciliation
This evening the World Meeting of Families began in Rome. What impressed me most was the testimony of Paul and Germaine Balenza, a couple from Congo, married since 1995. Twenty-six years into marriage, Germaine discovered that her husband, a public figure, had been unfaithful. ‘I felt’, she said, ‘that power had gone to his head, that he was no longer interested in me.’ She left him, and set about publicly shaming him on social media. It was a miserable time for both. With the help of a Catholic couple, Paul began to do serious work on himself. Germaine was drawn into the process. ‘We were able’, she says, ‘to tell each other hard truths, to empty our hearts of hatred and anger.’ Gradually, they resolved, in Christ’s name, to be reconciled. They assembled their families and asked forgiveness of their children; then, in church, they renewed their marriage vows. We sometimes place the ideal of a Christian family on such a pedestal that it seems to be unreachable – or even to vanish into the realm of fiction. Here, meanwhile, is a story that fits into a Biblical paradigm, where families as a norm are dysfunctional and for that reason display the work of grace palpably and credibly. Paul and Germaine remind us with authority that the world can begin anew even when all seems lost.
Never Confuse
I recently happened on a letter Mother Thekla (Sharf), nun of Whitby, wrote to an imaginary convert to Orthodoxy. It probes the self-seeking that can lie hidden in religious aspirations — and indicates remedies. ‘I have not been told why you are about to convert, but I assure you there is no point whatsoever if it is for negative reasons. Are you expecting a kind of earthly paradise with plenty of incense and the right kind of music? Do you expect to go straight to heaven if you cross yourself slowly, pompously and in the correct form from the right side? OR….. Have you faced Christ crucified?’ This, Mother Thekla insisted, is the crunch. It’s about resolving to believe, whatever happens, that Christ’s redemptive work makes sense. And to act on it. ‘That does not mean passive endurance, but it means constant vigilance, listening for what is demanded; and above all, love. Poor, old, sick, to our last breath, we can love. Not sentimental nonsense so often confused with love, but the love of sacrifice – inner crucifixion of greed, envy, pride. And never confuse love with sentimentality. And never confuse worship with affectation.’
The Rose
How can I see the world that surrounds me? Anyone who has considered the question knows the answer isn’t obvious. More than analyses, sometimes, we need testimonies, such as Maud Sumner’s in this brief poem:
Till the midnight hours
I sat up with a rose
To watch the rose.
Other flowers
Drowse and close
But the midnight rose
Then chiefly shows
Its wine-red powers —
Perfume so deep from the heart of the flower,
Beauty so sweet, that zero hour
Stands still,
A frill
Torn from the robe of eternity,
Holding all silence — holding me.
The World’s Hope
The Fathers found a great Old Testament prophecy of the Eucharistic mystery in the bestowal of manna in the wilderness. They were drawn to God’s promise given through Moses in Exodus 16:12, ‘In the morning you will eat your fill of bread.’ Origen read the verse in the light of the image of Christ the Morning Star, expounded wonderfully in his sermons on Exodus. The 1947 edition of that text in the Sources Chrétiennes was done by P Henri de Lubac. He appended to Origen’s commentary a marvellous footnote of timeless relevance:
‘To Origen Christ restores to an ageing world perpetual youth. Thus is conveyed the considered sentiment of gladness that bore up the first Christian communities, conscious, at once, of being heirs to a most ancient tradition and yet of embodying a new world. It still depends on the Christian of today whether Christianity will appear to all as the world’s youth and its hope.’
Catholic Politics
Anne Applebaum’s 2020 volume Twilight of Democracy appears with two different subtitles. The first, apparently peculiar to the US is, ‘The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism’; the second, British, reads, ‘The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends’. The autobiographical account of shattered friendships, judiciously interspersed into an otherwise analytical text, invests the argument with human credibility. Applebaum writes: ‘Authoritarianism appeals, simply, to people who cannot tolerate complexity; there is nothing intrinsically ‘left-wing’ or ‘right-wing’ about this instinct at all. […] It is a frame of mind, not a set of ideas.’ This is a helpful and, to my mind, persuasive point of view. It makes me think how urgent it is to revive a truly Catholic politics. As I have argued in a different context, ‘Part of what makes the Church catholic is its capacity to sustain tension, to wait for apparent antitheses to be resolved — by grace, in charity, not by compromise — in synthesis.’ This trait, presupposing clear orientation, is likewise a frame of mind. It is much needed in public life today, even requiring revival within the Church. This is not a time to be wasted on useless, simplifying squabbles. There is urgent, necessarily complex work to be done for the common good.
Not in Numbers
We worry, and hear others worry, about the falling number of people going to church, requesting the sacraments, pursuing a vocation, and so forth. It is right that we should be concerned. At the same time, we require more than a merely human perspective. What is at stake, after all, is a supernatural matter. Do we believe that God is God, or not? Do we acknowledge, and own a need for, strength beyond our own? The story of Gideon’s battle against Midian (Judges 7) is instructive. Called to be an instrument of Israel’s freeing, Gideon turned up before the Lord with 32,000 men. The Lord said, ‘The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel vaunt themselves against me, saying, My own hand has delivered me.’ By various procedures, the Israelite army was reduced to just 300. It seemed an absurdly inadequate number; yet the Midianites were routed. Israel was awakened to a truth it had forgotten: God is a living God, a God who saves. This week’s collect contains the confession, ‘we are weak and can do nothing without you’. That is surely part of what, in present circumstances, we are called to take on board, recognising ourselves as we are, God as he is. When this happens, new life is released.
Blame
To say, ‘I did it, it’s my fault’, requires a great deal of maturity. It presupposes readiness to take responsibility, and that is hard at a time when so many influences push us in the opposite direction, nurturing a litigious mentality that always looks to charge what goes wrong to someone else’s account. Brené Brown expounds the dynamics of blaming in this smart little video, lasting no more than three minutes. It is a help to self-examination. Brown remarks that blame is simply a discharging of discomfort and pain. It has an inverse relationship with accountability. Accountability is by definition a vulnerable process. Blaming meanwhile is lodged in anger. It shuts us off from others instead of opening us to them. And so it is one of the chief reasons why ‘we miss our opportunities for empathy’.
European Ukraine?
Does Ukraine naturally belong as part of Europe — or not? The Russian aggressor tries to persuade the world that the answer is no. This rhetoric is met with counter-rhetoric, as it must be. Scholars at Harvard’s Ukrainian Research Institute, meanwhile, propose a response based on careful historical research, amassing evidence with which it is impossible to quarrel. They state their purpose modestly as being the creation of ‘a picture of the medieval European world that fits the evidence from the primary sources’. They carry it out by mapping the dynastic connections made between the ruling family of Kyivan Rus’ and the rest of medieval European royalty in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. The map needs no commentary. You can access it here. This project makes a particular impression on me as a Norwegian, gratefully remembering that our national patron, St Olav, arrived in 1030 at the battle of Stiklestad, traditionally marking the Christianisation of our country, straight from Kyiv, where he had enjoyed the protection and hospitality of his friend, Grand Prince Yaroslav the Wise and his Swedish queen Ingegjerd.
As If By Enchantment
Do not blame your brother for an unloving action. Try to cancel it by performing a loving action in its place. Do not preach moral principles: sow only deeds of love. From there, all the rest will follow as if by enchantment.
Seek no more when love is accomplished, for there is no more to seek. Go to another place where love is still imprisoned and deliver it to the holder of the key.
From The Word Accomplished by A.B. Christopher [Alexander d’Arbeloff]
