Serene Statio
It is moving to observe the seemingly endless row of crosses in the cemetery of St Vincent’s Archabbey, Latrobe. More than 700 monks rest here. Some will have lived linear, crystalline, clearly focused lives; others’ lives will have been more contorted. But here, in death, they repose fraternally in peaceful order, lined up in serene statio, waiting for the heavenly liturgy. Whether their fidelity was spontaneous or hard-won, they kept it to the end. ‘Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord‘.
St Vincent’s was founded, as the first Benedictine monastery in the United States, in 1846 by Abbot Boniface Wimmer. He was a man of courage, vision, and more than a little tenacity. Tellingly, his motto was, ‘Forward, always forward’. This missionary monk impressed Pope Pius IX at an audience in 1865. The pontiff is said to have sent him off with the singular valediction: ‘Long live Abbot Wimmer and his magnificent beard.’
Where Have I Been?
Whitsun makes me think of a scene from the last act of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt in which Solveig, on the Eve of Pentecost, sits in her hut and sings. Her life has been one of waiting for the man she loves, who left her, promising to return. Years have passed, yet her confidence in him has not wavered. She sings: ‘If you have much to carry, give yourself time. I shall wait: I promised you that.’ As for Peer, he roams, having all but forgotten her. He is forced, however, to reflect on what has become of his life when a messenger of God confronts him, saying: ‘There’s nothing left of you, only unfulfilled promise.’ He challenges Peer to summon positive proof of personal integrity; else, he warns, he will be melted down and repurposed. He does not even have the mettle for damnation — there’s simply nothing there. That’s when Peer stumbles on Solveig’s hut. Meeting her again, he asks her, genuinely moved, and appalled by the threat of annihilation: ‘Can you tell me where I have been since last we met, where I have been myself, whole and true?’ She answers: ‘That riddle is easily answered. You have been in my faith, my hope, and my love.’ To bear one another’s burdens is not just about helping others; it is about holding their truth before God in love, even when they are lost to themselves. Such is life in the Spirit.
Living Truly
While his nation bleeds, and his pastoral heart bleeds for the nation, Major Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk of Kyiv reflects on essentials. He asks what love stands for. ‘Today the word “love” is so devalued […] that we sometimes do not understand what it means to love. Therefore, the virtue of love should be distinguished from the feeling of liking some wish of ours, a desire, something that we like, something that is dear to us, something that is the subject of our longing. Love, divine love, is complete self-sacrifice, complete self-giving for the sake of the one I love. This is the divine love with which God loves us all, and the fullest manifestation of the content of this divine love that leads to sacrifice are the words, once again of the Saviour Himself: “ For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (Jn 3:16). Therefore, the revelation, the full revelation of our God in Whom we believe, is the God of sacrificial love we have on the Cross. When our Saviour dies, He gives His spirit into the hands of the Father and says, “It is finished!” […] It seems to us that when we sacrifice ourselves for another, we die. But the truth is that love is a life-giving force, a force that gives life. When we give ourselves, then we truly live, we live eternal life.’
At Peace with All
Nikolai Gogol’s Meditations on the Divine Liturgy begin with an account of how the priest must prepare himself to celebrate. He should ‘begin from the evening before to be abstinent in body and spirit, should be at peace with all, and should avoid harbouring displeasure towards anyone. From the evening on, after reading the prescribed prayers, he should dwell with his mind in the altar, […] so that even his very thoughts may be duly consecrated and filled with sweet fragrance. When the time comes, he goes to the church with the deacon; together they bow down before the Holy Doors and then kiss the icons of the Saviour and the Mother of God, after which they bow to all present, by this bow asking forgiveness of everyone.’
One doesn’t just stumble into prayer. Body, heart, and mind must be made ready. That takes time. And requires of one commissioned to celebrate the sacred mysteries utter dispossession. It is good to be reminded.
In the Same Boat
When you’re in Minnesota, Norway doesn’t seem too far away, somehow. The landscape is sometimes similar, but that is not all. Tens of thousands of Norwegians came to Minnesota between 1851 and 1920, making the Twin Cities the unofficial capital of Norwegian America. Many here speak fondly of a Great Grandpa Åsmund or a Great Aunt Bergljot. A local luminary like Garrison Keillor can make a statement like, ‘To Norwegians, the polka is a form of martial art’, and expect to draw a self-ironical grin from hearers. My favourite example of the Minnesotan-Norwegian connection is this commercial for Lutheran Airlines. It catches fundamental aspects of a mindset that is instantly recognisable.
‘You’re all in the same boat on Lutheran Air’.
Gratuity
At St John’s Abbey, Collegeville, I am privileged to live just opposite a room that houses a facsimile copy of the St John’s Bible. What an extraordinary creation! The brainchild of Welsh calligrapher Donald Jackson, it is a unique phenomenon in modern publishing: a hand-written, illuminated copy of the entire Old and New Testaments. I am struck by something Jackson says about the project: ‘The continuous process of remaining open and accepting of what may reveal itself through hand and heart on a crafted page is the closest I have ever come to God.’ At a time when most of us are so chained to keyboards that our hands start trembling as soon as we have to write more than just our signature with a pen, it is good to be reminded of the role handwriting can play in enabling understanding, even enlightenment. I am struck, too, by the sheer gratuity of this project, alive with delight. Delight is something most of us could do with more of in engaging with things that lend significance to our lives.
By Being Happy
An interview with the Lithuanian poet Indrė Valantinaitė in this week’s Dag og Tid contains a marvellous exchange. Valantinaitė reflects on the fate of her grandmother, who died in traumatic circumstances.
— We all carry sadness as part of our family histories. The hope is that we can make peace with what is tragic. Then we help those others, too.
—Those who suffered the sadness? How?
—By being happy. By living life to the full. By the experience of freedom. By making peace with terrible happenings. You see what I mean. No, she isn’t here; but thanks to her, I am here. If I am happy, I believe she is helped.
‘I am a religious person’, says Valantinaitė, ‘a Catholic’. She adds: ‘A good poem doesn’t lie. I find strength in poetry. And in faith. Poetry and prayer heal.’
Hyperbole
I am on a journey. Before departure, an email from the airline warbled, ‘We look forward enormously to welcoming you onboard’. Enormously? The affirmation contrasted with the flight attendants’ weary gestures. The receipt from the airport hotel told me, ‘We hope you had an amazing stay’. Even a bottle of fruit juice in the departure lounge is rich in aspiration: ‘You are special! Treat yourself kindly!’ I find all this wearying.
Why do we revel in automatically generated assurances that we, like every one else who spends money in the furtherance of a particular enterprise, are uniquely wonderful? Why do we put up with this overwrought rhetoric? It is time to reaffirm the nobility of the ordinary. That, after all, is what life mostly consists of. It would be a shame to miss out on it.
A Future
Over the past few days, given the encirclement of Ukrainian forces in the region of Donetsk, there has been speculation in the media about whether negotiation with the aggressor will — should — ensue. It is useful to re-read Professor Timothy Snyder’s recent talk to the Kyiv Security Forum. It bore the title, Why Ukrainian victory is important for the world. Especially thought-provoking is Snyder’s tenth and final reason. It touches a tendency of retrospective myth-making whose influence is felt in other areas, too; indeed it shows signs of becoming culturally axiomatic. ‘Russian propaganda is all about the past, it’s all about how things are predetermined, it’s all about seeking some kind of moment at some point in history where we were right and everyone else was wrong. But that is not what we need. We need, everyone needs, a future. We need a politics of the future; we need an event that can break us out of our rut and which will point us towards a future.’ To opt, then, for prospect. This will mean assuming responsibility for life, nurturing a will to live, for others to have life.
Lifted Up
a child walks alone through the forest of grief
without being afraid
it is only the forest of grief, says the child,
I shall walk here awhile while I wait
a child walks alone through the forest of grief
it waits not, just walks slowly on
seeing all there is, touching it
I am because I am, says the child
a child walks alone through the forest of grief
only by walking alone can I find my way
I shall lose all I find
and all that I lose shall be mine forever
a child walks alone through the forest of grief
I hear best when all is quiet, says the child,
then I hear that I am not on my own
I walk alone and am lifted up to where I cannot reach
Tora Seljebø
Tragedy
The word ‘tragedy’ is much overused nowadays. This is a paradox, given that we’ve largely forgotten what it means. When we say ‘tragedy’ we tend to have in mind ‘a very sad occurrence’. To the ancients meanwhile it meant something more like ‘a great commotion or disturbance’, notably in the form of a public spectacle. If such disturbance or commotion awakens us inwardly, it can be beneficial without necessarily being pleasant. The force of tragedy was brought home to me afresh last week when, on account of a spot of Covid, I had leisure at last to read Oliver Taplin’s 2018 version of Aeschylus’s Oristeia. Compellingly readable, it is characterised at once by nobility and verve. One is spontaneously drawn to read it aloud. It is hard not to feel a twitch of nostalgia for days in which exposure to texts of such profundity was a prerequisite for public discourse, thereby held up to an exacting standard. We are reminded of the peril inherent in seeing things as they are in Cassandra’s outburst: ‘Again the piercing anguish/of foretelling true comes swirling up/and thrums me with discordant preludes.’
Autumn Sonata
Bergman’s Autumn Sonata made an indelible impression when I first saw it as a teenager. I’ve watched it again. It’s lost none of its power. The film is not reducible to pamphleteering issues: it is not about gender roles or career choices, not even primarily about parenting. It poses an existential, universal question: ‘Am I a human being able to love?’ When it was launched in 1978, the critic Lasse Bergström wrote: ‘Bergman has for a major part of his mature life as an artist moved towards chamber acting in a closed environment, in which a few people meet and speak to or past one another, in which dramatic space opens solely onto the landscape of the soul and of dreams. His new film Autumn Sonata has been produced in proximity to this path; still, something new has happened to the acting within the closed room. We are no longer meant to observe it from a distance. We are constrained to enter it, so to feel the impact of the mirrors that come crashing down upon us. Let me say it straightaway: I experience the affecting power of Autumn Sonata as something enormous and unique. Between two viewings I tried hard to think of any previous film by Bergman or anyone else that in the same naked way has struck me like a fistblow in the soul – but to no avail.’
Lichen in a Tree
A few weeks ago, in Germany, at a second-hand book sale, I acquired a copy of Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons for half a Euro. That is one eight of the cost of a large latte. Published in 1862, the book depicts the conflict between traditionalists and intellectuals, manifest as a conflict between generations. Bazarov, a resolute nihilist, occupies centre stage. He believes in nothing, in love least of all. The strong impressions that remain with the reader, though, are not those left by his rhetoric, but the quiet presence of auxiliary characters like Bazarov’s parents, whom he largely deems unworthy of attention. At one point his mother, Arina Vlasievna ‘pressed her grey head’ to his father’s and said: ‘”Never mind, my Vasia. True, our son has broken away from us; he is like a falcon—he has flown hither, he has flown thither, as he willed: but you and I, like lichen in a hollow tree, are still side by side, we are not parted. And ever I shall be the same to you, as you will be the same to me.” Taking his hands from his face, Vasili Ivanitch embraced his old comrade, his wife, as never—no, not even during the days of his courtship—he had done before. And thus she comforted him.’ Strong winds may agitate the crowns of trees a while, then die away. The lichen remains, be it in the trunk of fallen stems.
Ignorance
The novels of John Le Carré, with their tightly woven, sticky webs of deception, speak to the present. In The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Control, head of the British secret service, says to the agent Leamas: ‘Our work, as I understand it, is based on a single assumption: that the West is never going to be the aggressor. Thus we do disagreeable things, but we are defensive. Our policies are peaceful. But our methods can’t afford to be less ruthless than those of the opposition, can they? […] Yes, I mean, occasionally we have to do wicked things, very wicked things indeed, but you can’t be less wicked than your enemy simply because your government’s policy is benevolent, can you?’
Leamas sums up his professional experience in the observation, ‘There’s only one rule: expediency.’ He also says, ‘I reserve the right to be ignorant. That’s the Western way of life’. How one would wish this to be simply a malicious caricature.
What Do We Value?
In a column in last week’s Economist, Fr Andriy Zelinskyy, chief military chaplain for the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, writes openly about the atrocities and the absurdity of Russia’s war against Ukraine. Already before this phase of invasion began, he remarked: ‘The future depends on all of us. If we face it together, we will succeed. If not, the consequences will be serious, not only in Ukraine.’ Now he goes further, as he must: ‘This war is about more than politics and more than gas and oil. The nature of our humanity is at stake. The dreams the West harboured after the cold war ended led to a shift in global culture. Among the changes was a divorce between power and compassion. Governments forgot that the essential goal of all democratic institutions is to treasure human life. The importance of this point differed between countries, however. And at times commitment to it wavered in the face of political and economic concerns. The war in Ukraine uncovers a difficult question: “What do we really value?”’
Indeed.
Unity
Norway’s Constitution Day invites us to reflect on the criteria for unity among human beings. Sigrid Undset proposes the following in an essay on St Eystein of Nidaros.
‘The Church of Christ has always preached liberty, equality, and fraternity but on another basis — that of knowledge of human nature. Our brotherhood consists in that we are all co-heirs of a treasure which we lost at the very outset of our family history, and which was wonderfully won back for us by a God who of his own free will entered into blood relationship with us. Human brotherhood implies that there is a need for authority to lead the backward, the thoughtless, and childish, and to direct the heartless and unscrupulous; and he is a betrayer of mankind who thinks himself to be so far different from these others that he needs no authority and no one to guide his conscience. Only One can have absolute authority, he who is Actor Vitae — exercising the Creator’s authority over that which he has made.’
Insight
This morning Pope Francis enlisted Charles de Foucauld (1858-1916) among the Church’s saints. Having rejected faith as an adolescent, absorbed by ambition, pleasure-seeking, and indolence, Charles was provoked to recognise religion’s claims by witnessing Muslims at prayer in North Africa. Back in Paris, he wished to gain an understanding of the confession into which he had been baptised. He looked up a priest, Fr Henri Huvelin, with the cerebral question, ‘Father, I have no faith. Please teach me.’ The priest answered, ‘Kneel down and confess to God, you will believe!’ Charles objected, ‘But, I didn’t come for that!’ Huvelin repeated, ‘Confess!’ The young man come in pursuit of enlightenment realised that only forgiveness would bring him light. He knelt down and confessed his entire life, which thereby changed decisively. Rowan Williams once remarked that Huvelin ‘was not what many would call a whole man, but a deeply injured and fearful man, psychologically scarred.’ Yet he knew exactly what this sybaritic rebel needed to hear and had the courage to say it, occasioning a revolution that brought about the unification of another’s complex life in the unity of holiness. I find this fascinating, and beautiful.
Don’t Get Caught!
On 13 May 1917, three children in Fatima, Portugal had a vision of the Mother of God which they described as a communication of ‘light so intense that, as it streamed from her hands, its rays penetrated our hearts and the innermost depths of our souls, making us see ourselves in God, who was that light, more clearly than we see ourselves in the best of mirrors.’ The three gained insight into eternal realities. One might think they’d be estranged, thereafter, from earthly things. Far from it. Not long afterwards, one of the children, Francisco, was upset upon seeing a friend clutch in his hand a bird he had caught. Offering to ransom it, Francisco ran home to fetch his savings, gave them to his friend, and set the bird free. ‘Then, as he watched it fly away, he clapped his hands for joy, and said: “Be careful! Don’t let yourself be caught again!”‘ The encounter with God’s redemptive grace had made him unable to endure the sight of unfreedom in any form. Is it possible to have a radical sense of justice for creatures without faith in an ultimate, eternal Justice? A moot point.
Recalibration
‘Man’s ability to see is in decline. Those who nowadays concern themselves with culture and education will experience this fact again and again. We do not mean here, of course, the physiological sensitivity of the human eye. We mean the spiritual capacity to perceive the visible reality as it truly is.’ Thus wrote Josef Pieper in the 1950s, in a passage cited this morning by Elizabeth R. Powell at a symposium held in Trondheim under the title, Seeing Nature. We’ve become a lot worse since Pieper.
Powell went on to perform an exercise in seeing by means of close analysis of David Jones‘s engraving from 1924, The Nativity. Notice the middle ‘n’ in the word ‘incarnation’. The inversion, we were told, was probably a simple mistake (an engraver must carve his work as a mirror image), yet one rich in significance, for God’s becoming man is the source of ‘multiple inversions’. To relearn to see, we must ‘recalibrate our senses to the wonders of the small’. Then great discoveries, perhaps even revelations, await us.
Ars moriendi
‘Modern societies’, writes Emily Wilson, ‘are peculiar in the degree to which we segregate the dead from the living.’ Monks are in this respect blessedly countercultural. They live and die within an ancient wholeness. A monastic death is a community affair. The community watch with the dying brother, offering prayers and the comfort of friendship. When death occurs, the body is washed, then brought to the church with singing; there it remains, in the middle of choir, illumined by the paschal candle, always with a praying monk at its side, until it is carried out, again with song, to be buried in a grave dug by the brethren’s hands. A Cistercian is buried without a coffin, on a plank. It’s a way of honouring in death the simplicity that marks our life. It’s also a way of making explicit the symbolism of John 12:24: ‘Unless the grain of wheat…’ This tactile, familiar engagement with death is in no way morbid; on the contrary, it is reassuring and freeing, as those who attend a monastic funeral can testify and as many viewers of the film Outside the City have remarked. It is a way of healing the estrangement of what Wilson calls ‘our peculiar modern desire to mourn the dead without having to touch them.’
A Heart Changed
How often are we not told, ‘Do as your heart dictates!’ In a symposium in Hildesheim today on what the Benedictine patrimony can contribute to the Church’s mission, Mother Christiana Reemts, abbess of Mariendonk, picked up this imperative and said, ‘I hold it to be quite false’. She explained what she meant by pointing out what we know from experience and what Jeremiah pointed out almost cruelly: ‘The human heart is deceitful above all things’ (17:9). Our heart is not an infallible compass; it is subject to many temptations, tensions, and trends. Before it can guide us reliably, it must be oriented and, when necessary, healed. The great Christian task which the monks or nun exemplifies, said the abbess, is ‘to let the heart be transformed by God’s Word — then to listen to this transformed heart’. How liberating to hear a voice speak such basic truths, truths that, once one has assimilated them, seem self-evident. There is more food for thought, in German, on the abbess’s blog.
German Renewal
When Gotthard, abbot of Niederaltaich heard of his appointment as bishop of Hildesheim in 1022, he is said to have said, ‘Lieber in Bayern ein Abt als droben ein Bischof’ (‘Rather abbot in Bavaria than bishop up there’). Yet up he went, beginning a ministry that was singularly fruitful. Gotthard was canonised in 1131, the foundation year of Tintern Abbey. Today, on his liturgical feast, the diocese of Hildesheim inaugurated a Godehardjahr, not only a year of commemoration, but of prospective mission. At the opening Mass, Gotthard’s successor, Mgr Heiner Wilmer, summoned the entire diocese to ‘Benedictine renewal’. In a rousing sermon he said: ‘For us in the diocese of Hildesheim, this is about inner change and transformation in Christ.’ Much is being written and said at the moment, not least in Germany, about the problems of the German Church. How marvellous, then, to witness such a life-giving initiative, bearing the hallmarks of unity, hope, and Benedictine humilitas, focused on and oriented towards Christ to whom, St Benedict insists, ‘nothing is to be preferred’.
Odysseus
One of the endlessly fascinating things about the early Church is the way in which the Fathers (and Mothers, too, though they left less evidence in writing) used classical culture as a way of illuminating Christian revelation. Many of them knew Homer by heart. The story of Odysseus’s return from Troy shaped their consciousness. The passage in which he had himself tied to the mast to resist the sirens’ call had special appeal. In it they saw an image of the Christian’s return to the Homeland in a voyage marked by ‘glorious risk’, καλὸς κίνδυνος. The sirens symbolised ‘the world’ as the New Testament writers understood the term: creation as opposed to God, endeavouring to draw us away from him. St Jerome wrote in his commentary on Isaiah (PL 24, 216B): ‘The sirens still repose in shrines of pleasure. By means of a sweet but death-inducing song, they pull souls into the depths.’ I dare say that peril is still to be reckoned with, but are we able, in this day and age, to recognise the sirens’ warbling for what it is?
Shepherding
In the rite of consecration of a bishop, the consecrator gives the newly ordained his staff and says: ‘Receive this staff, a sign of your calling to be a pastor. Watch over the flock which the Holy Spirit has appointed you to govern in the Church of God.’ My own staff, a gift from a faithful friend, was made in the workshop of the Hungarian master silversmith Kristóf Gelley. He has just released a video recording the process of creation. You can find it here — a testimony to craftsmanship of the highest order.
A pastoral staff is crooked as a means of catching hold of the hind legs of sheep in flight from the fold: that, too, is part of the shepherd’s task! The crook on mine, which recurs in my seal, is modelled on the seal of St Bernard of Clairvaux. The cross is Byzantine (you may refer to this exquisite example), a reminder of all I owe the rich tradition of the Eastern Church, which is nourishingly present, too, in the heritage of Nidaros.
Purity of Heart
Great purity can exist in the midst of ugliness. Darkness can help us perceive the brilliance of light, be it small and placed at a distance. It impresses me that the Major Archbishop of Kyiv, Mgr Sviatoslav Shevchuk, should choose to reflect on purity of heart today, even as we may be tempted to avert our gaze from atrocities committed in Ukraine. His words, which I’ve compressed very slightly, are an inspiration:
‘To be pure in heart means to see God present in my heart; to build a pure relationship with him, not a selfish one, not using God as a means to achieve my own goals or satisfy my own lusts and passions. To see God in your heart means to share in his resurrection. The Lord God gives man this gift of resurrection in the sacrament of baptism. The fullness of God’s presence must be manifest in our relationship with God and neighbour. May the Lord God show his face in Ukraine. May he bless Ukraine through pure-hearted people who, even in the circumstances of a brutal war, know how to maintain their purity. People who look into the face of God, then see his image in every person, then try to serve God present in a specific other. Such people are already blessed. Such people rejoice in the purity of their hearts, and they see God.’
