Common Life
‘Christ formed a community with the Twelve. A priest can’t live on his own! He runs the great risk of isolating himself and of being caught up in just his own ideas if he does not live in dialogue with laypeople or with other priests. Look at Saint Augustine: he lived with his clergy. It is indispensable to find means by which priests can live in community, even if it requires great humility on their part.’
Remarks by Cardinal Robert Sarah in a recent interview. They correspond to historical fact. Again and again, in the history of the Church, a renewal of the priestly state has come about through the rediscovery and radical practice of a common life.
To Become a Man
The death of Gérard Philipe on 25 November 1959 provoked national grief in France. In a recent book, Jérôme Garcin revisits the actor’s singular life and death. He contends that Philipe personified the need for catharsis after World War II, embodying the French nation’s best aspirations. But he stood for something more universal, too. Maria Casarès said of him: ‘He was a man seeking avidly, ferociously to become a man’. He knew time was short. In an interview with the journal Arts, he was asked: ‘What thought preoccupies you?’ He answered: ‘The urgency of the things I have to do.’ Then, ‘What amazes you about life?’, to which he responded, ‘Its brevity’. Happily we have both the films in which he acted and many sound recordings that he made — this one, for example: a marvellous reading of Georges Duhamel’s Mozart Told to Children.
The Other
When Navid Kermani speaks, I listen. Few commentators have his breadth of perspective and depth of culture, not to mention his elegant style. In a recent article in Die Zeit, ostensibly about German troops’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, he argues for the rebooting of politics beyond demagogy and simple answers. There, must, he says, be a space between non-involvement and warfare. It should be the realm of politics, engaged to seek solutions in seemingly hopeless situations, to conquer indifference, to foster exchange and shared effort for good through clearheaded thinking, persistence, and patience. ‘Politics stands for an interest extending beyond one’s own sphere, embracing what is other, if only for the simple, selfish reason that we cannot keep our prosperity and peace as long as suffering and violence reign elsewhere in the world. The other then becomes our own in the form of refugees, attacks, and terrifying prospects, the effort to sustain which destroy our soul and the civility of our commonwealth.’
Freedom
‘Ought we not to leave the free-born mind of man still ever free?’ The question is posed by Didymus, a Roman soldier, in Handel’s oratorio Theodora, with a libretto by Thomas Morell. Handel considered it one of his major works. It has been unjustly forgotten. This week’s Paris production, with a stellar cast, was a welcome resurrection. The drama is set in Antioch, during the reign of Diocletian. All citizens, on pain of death, are ordered to take part in pagan rites. For the Christian Theodora, the matter is clear: there is no room for compromise, though she is nonetheless a loyal subject. Valens, the emperor’s governor, scoffs: ‘They are not Cæsar’s friends, who own not Cæsar’s gods.’ These were the terms of play during centuries of persecution. What happens when Caesar, be he embodied in a social democracy, no longer has gods? What space is left, socially and politically, for those who do? In Theodora, the confession, ‘I am a Christian’, is an ultimatum. It makes one think.
Secret Depths
Anger simmers through Philippe Sands’s book, occasionally sending the lid of the narrative flying, but never for long. The story returns to containment within a carefully conducted forensic enquiry in what has become an engrossing book.
It offers, as Rebecca Abrams wrote in the FT, ‘a timely reminder that crimes against humanity don’t occur only at the level of states and governments. They take place also in the more secret and less fathomable depths of people’s hearts and minds.’
It shows furthermore the lengths to which people may go to redeem the memory of those they love (and thus their sense of self), the stakes of collusion with injustice, the perversions that occur when high, even transcendent, ideals are submitted to politicking. Sands provides us with something of a universal parable, full of relevance for the present time.
Humour
‘Humour has something liberating about it. […] Humour is not resigned; it is rebellious. It signifies not only the triumph of the ego but also of the pleasure principle, which is able here to assert itself against the unkindness of the real circumstances.’
Sigmund Freud, Der Humor, 1927
I am not sure what Freud would have thought of this advertisement, but he would surely have approved of the principle it represents: good-natured, liberating humour in the middle of a busy cityscape, at a time when many people are anxious about many things.
St Cecilia
On pilgrimage in Rome in 1887, Thérèse Martin (whom we think of as St Thérèse of Lisieux), paid a visit to the abbey of St Cecilia in Trastevere. She had assumed that Cecilia was patron of music because she had sung prettily. She discovered that, no, the reason was another: the proclamation had been made ‘in remembrance of the virginal song of praise she sang to her Divine Spouse hidden in her heart of hearts’. At once Thérèse felt for her ‘the tenderness of a friend’ (A 61 verso).
The story of Cecilia, one of the Church’s early martyrs, has inspired countless works of art. Dear to me is this song, which I first heard recorded by La Trova de Las Faez. The composer, Manuel Corona, was a bohemian. The text is not very devout. But it shows how the legacy of a saint can saturate the consciousness of a culture in such a way that it becomes the obvious prism through which to imagine, consider, and interpret deep experience.
On the Eve
Turgenev’s novel is set on the eve of the Crimean War, but the title refers no less to the experience of the young heroine Yelena, whom we follow from adolescent indecision to steely resolve. There is nothing contrived in this portrait. When, halfway through the story, Yelena asks, ‘What’s the point of youth? What am I living for? Why do I have a soul? What is all this for?’, her suffering is palpable. It accounts for her attraction to the Bulgarian patriot Insarov: ‘When he talks about his homeland, he grows and grows, his looks become finer and his voice like steel, and it seems then that there is no one in the world before whom he would lower his gaze. And he not only talks – he has done things and will do things.’ Yelena, too, ends up doing things. A powerful account of growth and resolution.
Rare Joy
‘Violetta’s playing was improving, was becoming more free. She discarded everything extraneous, everything non-essential, and found herself. This is a rare and supreme joy for an artist. She had suddenly crossed that boundary, which is impossible to define, but beyond which lies beauty. The audience came to life, amazed. […] Borne along and buoyed up by a wave of general sympathy, with tears of artist’s joy – and of real suffering – in her eyes, the singer gave herself up to the wave of support; her face was transformed and, confronted by the awesome spectre of suddenly approaching death, the words broke forth from her in a burst of prayer which rose to the heavens: Morir sì giovine! The whole theatre shook with frantic clapping and rapturous cries.’
Ivan Turgenev, On the Eve, tr. Michale Pursglove, ch. 33.
Limpid Freshness
When Patrick Leigh Fermor visited the abbey of Saint Wandrille in the mid-50s, he was, after an initial spell of restlessness, overcome by a need for sleep ‘so profound that I might have been under the influence of some hypnotic drug’. Then, after some days, a transformation began. Weariness gave way to limpid freshness. How come? ‘The explanation’, he wrote, ‘is simple enough: the desire for talk, movement and nervous expression that I had transported from Paris found, in this silent place, no response or foil, evoked no single echo; after miserably gesticulating for a while in a vacuum, it languished and finally died for lack of any stimulus or nourishment. Then the tremendous accumulation of tiredness, which must be the common property of all our contemporaries, broke loose and swamped everything.’
Since the year of grace 649 the monastic life has been lived in this place, providing rest for the weary, silence for the talked-out, hope for the hopeless.
Assemble the Treasure
How do you see the creative tension between old and new in an age like ours that has made novolatry a guiding principle?
You are right in calling this tension ‘creative’. To live within it presupposes a sense of gratitude for what is handed on to me, and a sense of being responsible for it. Gratitude and responsibility: two qualities that are being eroded, I’d say, in the world we inhabit, the world we have helped construct. So we must cultivate them, practise them, being like the Gospel steward who knew how to bring forth from his treasury ‘things both old and new’. That image presupposes the patient work of assembling the treasure first.
My conversation with Daniel Capó Laisfeldt, first published in Spanish, is now available in English here.
Brave New World
In a recent study, the Angus Reid Institute questioned a cross-section of Canadian leaders about collective priorities for furthering the common good. Its findings are interesting. Of the under 30s, only 23% thought it worthwhile building on the achievements of previous generations. 30% would fix the mistakes of previous generations. 47% opted for ‘starting new and restructuring society differently’. The trends are reflected in the responses of the next age group up. I’d say they are broadly representative of attitudes throughout the Western world, weighed down by fatigue, disillusionment, and anxiety. But how to restructure society, making all things new, without a shared notion of finality? Christians ought to have, here, a substantial contribution to make. But we’d need to sharpen our own sense of purpose first, lifting up, as the Letter to the Hebrews urges, our drooping hands and strengthening our weak knees.
Imprisonment
At the entrance to the women’s prison in Hildesheim there’s a glass showcase with an open book displaying texts written by inmates: an intelligent and moving initiative. The book presently shows an entry dated 28.10.2021:
No support from many people for whom I had made such an effort./I have known hours of pain for my fingers were burnt./Too often in my life have they pierced me with their sword./Too much time have I wasted on those who were not worth it.
A statement of pain and resignation indicating a tough lesson learnt and a wish to know something better. I hope Angie’s burnt fingers will find the balm they need. I hope her pierced heart will find healing — and that one who is worthy will be waiting for her.
Belshazzar
‘You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting’. The saying is proverbial in many European languages. Do we remember its source? It was put before us this morning in the Office of Readings. Belshazzar was the son of Nebuchadnezzar, chastised for his ambition and complacency. But who remembers lessons dealt our fathers and mothers? In a gesture of deliberate blasphemy, Belshazzar profaned the sacred vessels from the Temple, thinking this a convenient way of showing his status beyond any law of whatever origin. That is when he noticed the writing on the wall, a most terse oracle stating simply that some boundaries are final. To overstep them is to plunge into destruction. Heine retold the story in verse set to music by Schumann. Ian Bostridge’s interpretation has an intensity that makes the listener shudder, for it makes us see that this isn’t just the retelling of an old fairytale, but the stated criterion for many decisions with which we ourselves are faced.
A Doorway
I was delighted by this doorway I happened to pass in the centre of Hildesheim, not just because it shows up the banal featurelessness of much modern architecture, which bans any decoration interfering with the streamlined design of an industrially made birds’ nesting box, but because it bears witness to the outlook on life of the houseowner that commissioned it back in 1705. I dare say it does something to you to place all your goings-out and comings-in under the motto ‘In you, Lord, I have always put my hope’.
Insouciance
In Mozart’s Don Giovanni, the aria Là ci darem la mano is charged with ambiguity, being the callous seducer’s attempt to lure the innocent Zerlina into his embrace while Masetto, her fiancé, is otherwise engaged. Don Giovanni fails, so the music has come to represent thwarted ambition. As such Gabriel Axel used it with good-hearted irony in Babette’s Feast to voice the rotund Achille Papin’s futile hope for the pastor’s daughter’s hand. Three weeks ago, in Warsaw, the winner of this year’s Chopin Competition, Bruce Xiaoyu Liu performed Chopin’s Variations on the theme in a ‘vividly detailed and amazingly insouciant’ rendering, writes Gramophone‘s Jed Distler. It is brilliant, with exactly the right measure of humour.
A Tiny Spark
‘If a tiny spark of God’s love already burns within you, do not expose it to the wind, for it may get blown out. Keep the stove tightly shut so that it will not lose its heat and grow cold.’
This was advice St Charles Borromeo gave to priests. He was one of the most enterprising forces behind the great movement of renewal that followed the Council of Trent. He did not advocate passivity or a kind of quietism; but he stressed that no outward work will bear fruit in the Church unless it alive with a fire that is of God. The last part of the collect for the feast is a prayer for the present moment: ‘Shape and renew your Church until it bears the image of Christ, and shows his true likeness to the world.’
Amal
Yesterday, the giant puppet Amal arrived in Manchester after trekking through Europe from the Syria-Turkey border. This epic journey was undertaken to draw attention to the plight of refugee children. They are present on our continent in baffling numbers, but who sees them? Amal stands 3.5 metres tall: it’s been impossible to overlook her. Amir Nizar Zuabi has spoken of his team’s wish to create an ‘artistic moment that creates compassion’. Such moments are needed. Politics void of empathy is nothing but a pragmatic game. Article 1 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms: ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.’ It says a lot about us that we need, these days, a doll to call this principle to mind.
All Souls
We live in times that find it harder and harder to forgive. It is not that people are becoming crueller; but they’ve largely lost the conceptual categories, the identity-shaping stories, that make forgiveness possible. It isn’t natural to pardon. Our nature craves vengeance and tends to crave it immoderately. To be a Christian is to place forgiveness at the centre of one’s life: to ask for it humbly; to give it generously, letting go of grudges. When we come up against the boundaries of our sensibility, we look towards the cross and remember: we are not our own. All Souls’ Day affirms the reality of a pardon that extends, in Christ, beyond death. It summons us to become, by prayer and sacrifice, agents of divine mercy. Our prayer for the dead manifests the Christian revolution. It’s charter is founded on faith in the soul’s immortality, in our answerability for our choices, in the efficacy of intercession, in the reality of a Love stronger than death. Long live that peaceful revolution.
Fear Not
When we hear the name Bach we spontaneously think of Johann Sebastian, one of our civilisation’s most luminous geniuses, a man who has reasonably been called the fifth evangelist. He was not, though, a solitary comet blazing across an otherwise dark sky. He came from a long line of musicians. His star shines within a constellation. The music of other Bachs increasingly draws the attention of scholars, performers, and listeners. This recording of the motet Fürchte Dich nicht by Johann Christoph Bach (1642-1703) is exquisite. Its word patterns and subtle polyphonies indicate a link connecting the music of the better known Bach, the composer’s cousin, with that of Schütz. What is more, the way in which Christ’s promise to the Good Thief (‘Today you will be with me in paradise’) is woven into a prophecy from Isaiah (‘Fear not: for I have redeemed you’) reveals a refined theological sensibility.
Simple Words
We’ve such a need for simple words like
‘bread’, ‘love’, ‘kindness’
to keep the blind from losing their way
in the dark.
We’ve such a need for silence – silence! –
in order, through the air and in our thoughts,
to hear the voice,
the murmured, modest voice,
of pigeons, ants, human beings, human hearts
and their cry of pain amid all that is
not love, not kindness, not bread.
Full of Interest
Archimandrite Sophrony Sakharov taught his community at Tolleshunt Knights: ‘If one always considers oneself to be the last, meeting someone else becomes each time the opportunity for spiritual profit and progress. If I am the first, life is infernally tiresome. If I am the last, life is full of interest because I am always learning something useful.’
Gila Sacks recently said something similar about her father: ‘He learned and learned, and continued to learn every single day, until his last. He learned from books, from texts, from laws. He learned from history and from world events. But, mainly, he learned from people. He would seek out people to learn from, from every possible path of life. And he would seek out what he could learn from everyone he met.‘
To learn to live like that!
Promises
Every Catholic priest carries the legacy of clerical abuse as a profound grief. To be a priest now is to live within an open wound. It is difficult, in such a climate, to speak about the nobility and beauty of the priestly vocation, of the joy at its heart. One statement that still conveys something essential, I think, is this video produced by the Spanish Bishops’ Conference in 2015.
‘I don’t promise that people will ask for your help; but I promise they’ll need you.’ ‘I promise you will provide the world with nourishment.’ ‘You will accompany those who suffer.’ ‘You will give strength to those who desire to be strong.’ ‘I don’t promise you’ll meet important people but people who’ve no idea what they’re worth.’
This is a time to set ourselves a high ideal and to mobilise all our strength, all our love, to follow it.
The Aroma Gone
About halfway through Nikita Mikhalov and Rustam Ibragimbekov’s film Burnt by the Sun (Утомлённые солнцем), an incidental character says:
Things aren’t so bad nowadays, but it’s the aroma, the taste of life, that has vanished. For good.
The statement is belied by the setting, which bursts with life, affection, and sensual warmth. The trouble is: in one participant, life has perished within, frozen by the cold hand of totalitarian power. The outward show of vitality is but a choreographed death-rattle of the soul. Gradually, the influence spreads. To refer to capture in an icy spider’s web as ‘sunburn’ is supreme irony.
Bound for Albania
‘I remember setting out in late August 1996, from a basement flat with one of the classiest addresses in London. The evenings that August were filled with distant music. Live opera wafted over from open-air performances in the nearby park, where fat, late-matingseason peacocks almost broke the tree branches with now desperate enthusiasm, their randy shrieks mingling with snatches of amateur Carmen. A heady blend of music and nature to accompany my frenzied packing, for I was swapping London W11 for Tirana.’
Thus begins Joanna Robertson’s retrospective reportage of how she ‘stumbled into Albania’, a country about which I may not be the only one to know far too little. The result is a thrilling account of a country rich in colour, beauty, dignity, and tragedy at a crucial moment of its recent history.
