Christ’s Baptism
‘By his descent into the River, Christ marries a world of promise to one of reality, transposing the future tense of prophecy into the present. He is conscious of his passage through the waters as ‘fulfilment’ (Mt 3:15), and so is the Baptist, himself a bridge (on one bank the greatest, on the other, the least), who testifies to the horizontal, historical axis of the event. Christ utters no word, makes no gesture, and the action he performs is not in itself extraordinary. He follows a throng of anonymous others. But while they drown individual loads of guilt in the Jordan by intention, he carries the totality of sin in his body and for real (cf. John 1:29). The categorical ‘in him’ that underpins the Christology of the Pauline corpus with locative force becomes effective here, on the threshold of God’s Israel, as Christ enters fully, freely into his mission. The crossing happens secretly, but silence is broken when the Father’s voice erupts in jubilant approbation. It establishes a vertical axis of praise— praise that, in this instance, resounds from heaven to earth. It reminds us that Christ’s offering is directed, not towards a faceless Transcendence but to a Father who receives it thankfully and seals the exchange by sending the Spirit in the form that once flew forth from Noah’s hand, hovering upon the waters, unable to find rest for its feet in a drowned and stricken world, yet now coming to ‘abide’ (Jn 1:33) on the first fruit of a new creation.’ From an essay on liturgy.
About the Soul
No one has done more than Tiina Nunnally to enable the rediscovery of Sigrid Undset in the English-speaking world, revealing her as an acutely modern writer, not a producer of mock-medieval mush. Nunnally’s awaited translation of the great cycle about Olav Audunssøn is now complete. In the Christmas issue of the TLS, Hal Jensen writes: ‘Undset takes us right into the minds of Olav and Ingunn, giving voice to their thoughts, matching the big themes of sin, forgiveness, repentance and duty with the subtlety of her understanding of the psychology by which humans attempt to wriggle out of their uncomfortable moral predicaments. Sin is not a crude slogan here, it is a thing of slithering and wavering, delusion and self-deception, well-meant promises to self and self-defensive rationalizations. Undset records these internal trials with the same clear and non-judgemental eye that she brings to natural history. Although there is a strong religious element to the setting, she never climbs to the pulpit. Nor does she reach for any waffly rhetoric of transcendence. There is, however, a cumulative and mesmeric immensity to her focus. This is how to write about the soul.’
Theotokos
Each new calendar year begins with the twin feasts of the Theotokos on 1 January and of Sts Basil and Gregory on the 2nd. They carry especial significance this year. Everyone now has pet theories about the various crises of the Church. As far as I can see, there is only really one big crisis: the gradual eclipse of a true understanding of who Jesus Christ is. Catholics recognise that Jesus intervened with singular force of presence in history, but more and more fail to see him – such is my perception – as Lord of history, as the divine Logos or Reason by which (and by which only) things and destinies reveal their meaning. Once this sense is lost, all sorts of compromises begin to seem not only appealing but necessary with regard to one’s conduct and with regard to one’s understanding and proclamation of the faith. Basil and Gregory brought forward the Athanasian legacy which upheld the doctrine of Christ’s divinity, ignored and laughed at in a world, and Church, that ‘groaned to find itself Arian‘. Is a similar groan, uttered with ennui, not perceptible in our time? The determination of Basil and Gregory prepared and made possible the definition, at Ephesus in 431, of Mary as truly ‘Mother of God‘. It remains a touchstone of Catholic faith. We are called, indeed obliged, to test all our thoughts, actions, sentiments, and procedures by it.
New Year
Hungarian Shattering
‘‘The peace of heaven’, wrote Abbot de Rancé in one of his letters to the Duchess of Guise, ‘is only for those who will have preserved it on earth.’ To preserve peace, I must find it, not as an abstract ideal, but as historical reality. I must seek reconciliation with my past. I must never forget my redemption. I must learn to be grateful, then strive to live a life that is worthy of the freedom won for me. In this way, even memories of time spent in the cruellest captivity can become a source of peace, erupting in praise.’
From The Shattering of Loneliness, which this week was published in Hungarian, by L’Harmattan.
Happy Christmas!
Coram Fratribus will take a little break during the Octave.
Thank you for your interest in the site, and for your encouragement.
To accompany you through these luminous days, here is Leontyne Price singing Vom Himmel hoch with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Karajan. If you want something to read, how about Selma Lagerlöf’s The Christmas Rose? If you go here, you can either read it yourself or have it read to you.
Today’s collect: ‘O God, who wonderfully created the dignity of human nature and still more wonderfully restored it, grant, we pray, that we may share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.’ Here is the decisive paradigm we need for life and thought.
Happy Christmas!
+fr Erik Varden
In medio Ecclesiae
At a time of polarisation in society, and in the Church, it is good to take up position squarely in medio Ecclesiae armed with supernatural faith. One finds this position embodied in Mère Cécile Bruyère, first abbess of Sainte Cécile de Solesmes. On 18 May 1885 she told Mère Aldegonde Cordonnier: ‘Ruins are our only building material.’ Five years later she developed this image in a letter to Dom Albert L’Huillier: ‘If you knew how clearly I can see that God founds nothing, builds nothing except with ruins, impossibilities, paralyses. It is like a mysterious game played by eternal Wisdom on the earth’s orb. I exhort you to pour all your worries, anxieties, and prognostics into the lap of God. After all, we risk nothing, we who have not to eternalise ourselves here below. Success and victory are won for us, and cannot be taken away. Let us believe that all will likewise be well for the Church we love.’ She was fond of saying: ‘We must live our Creed; that’s what gives strength for everything.’
Blessing
The question of what is and isn’t a blessing, what can and cannot be blessed, has always exercised theologians.
A helpful, careful reading of today’s declaration from the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Fiducia supplicans, can be found in Luke Coppen’s analysis for The Pillar. Among the insights of the piece is one gleaned from a footnote, often a fruitful source of reflection, that at least implicitly frames the pronouncement. It is a text drawn from a homily by Benedict XVI for the Solemnity of the Mother of God in 2012: ‘Like Mary, the Church is the mediator of God’s blessing for the world: she receives it in receiving Jesus and she transmits it in bearing Jesus. He is the mercy and the peace that the world, of itself, cannot give, and which it needs always, at least as much as bread.’ Let us, then, invoke that mercy upon the Church and on the world, living in a way that makes us fit to receive the supersubstantial bread that alone can transform our lives. O Adonai! Veni ad redimendum nos in brachio extento.
Art of Life
It is a high form of charity to recognise in others qualities they’d no idea they had, to see a potential they might not have expected, thereby giving them courage to keep trying, to grow and blossom.
Someone able to see in this way is Ana Zarzalejos Vicens, whose profound and witty essay ‘Beer and Chastity: The Art of Living‘ appeared yesterday, filling me with gratitude.
She sums up something I said in Madrid in the following phrase: ‘If you’re going to play the great game of humanity, don’t let anyone downplay its significance for you!’
I stand by that message, glad to hear it resonate.
Opening Doors
‘The word of salvation does not go looking for untouched, clean and safe places. Instead, it enters the complex and obscure places in our lives. Now, as then, God wants to visit the very places we think he will never go. Yet how often we are the ones who close the door, preferring to keep our confusion, our dark side and our duplicity hidden. We keep it locked up within, approaching the Lord with some rote prayers, wary lest his truth stir our hearts. And this is concealed hypocrisy.’
From Custodians of Wonder: Daily Pope Francis, a florilegium just published by Silentium.
You can read the book’s preface here.
Dead Leaves
For the sixth year running, Finland is top of the UN’s Happiness Report. Talking to happiness-hungry foreigners, Finns will tend to nuance the nomination. How do they address the question among themselves? Go and see Aki Kaurismäki’s film Fallen Leaves. I did this week. I loved it. I wasn’t the only one. At the end, the audience clapped. The setting is contemporary. At regular intervals, people switch on the radio. The talk is unfailingly of Russian atrocities in Ukraine. Finland shares a boundary with Russia that is 1340 km long. One is reminded of the precariousness of things. Interiors and costumes might as well be from the 70s. Technical advances, we are left to surmise, do not change deep sensibilities. Authority is largely presented as callous. There is no idealisation of structures. Finns aren’t happy just because their country works well. Kaurismäki points to the source of wellbeing in the tenderness with which he portrays individuals, their vulnerabilities, foibles, and mad hopes. There are moments of great beauty. Also, the film is brimming with liberating self-irony. The point is not trivial. I find it to be a rule that the happiest people I know are are the ones best able to laugh at themselves.
Books of the Year
It’s the season of book supplements.
Chastity made it onto George Weigel’s list compiled for First Things. He writes: ‘In Chastity, Bishop Varden explains just why that much-misunderstood virtue is a matter of living what John Paul II called ‘the integrity of love.”
In The Tablet, Dom Luke Bell writes: ‘With an extraordinary sensitivity to the meaning of words in languages ancient and modern, Erik Varden’s Chastity: Reconciliation of the Senses is a brave and timely book which restores the full resonance of the virtue of chastity. Grounding his reflection in the ancient Syriac text The Cave of Treasures, he finds it to be about seeing with unclouded gaze, “attentively and reverently”. With culture and humour, he leads us to the sublimity of the beatific vision.’
Liturgy
Today marks the 60th anniversary of Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Second Vatican Council’s constitution on the sacred liturgy, a document worth re-reading from time to time.
For me, the most essential part of Sacrosanctum Concilium is this: ‘Christ Jesus, high priest of the new and eternal covenant, taking human nature, introduced into this earthly exile that hymn which is sung throughout all ages in the halls of heaven. He joins the entire community of mankind to Himself, associating it with His own singing of this canticle of divine praise’ (n. 83). It is a wonderful, endlessly fascinating statement. By means of it the Second Vatican Council reminded us that liturgical worship is essentially mystic incorporation — through Christ, with him, and in him — into the ineffable communion of the Blessed Trinity. This theological dimension must ever remain a criterion for liturgical practice, even more for liturgical change. It reminds us that the liturgy is not a human project; it is a work of divine transformation, a novitiate for eternity.
St Andrew
‘Modern psychology has taught us much about sibling rivalry, believed to be among the primary relations that form a life, with the potential to really mess it up. Research gleaned from the analyst’s couch is corroborated by Scripture. Think of Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Leah and Rachel. What twistedness, what pain, we see in these pairs of brothers and sisters! It is interesting, then, that in recruiting for the apostolic college, seeking heads for the Twelve Tribes of the New Israel, Christ should have wished a high percentage – one-third – to be blood brothers. If Christ assumed these complications into his closest band of followers, it was perhaps to show that natural limitations, relational conditioning, can be overcome if we truly become disciples. James and John, Peter and Andrew, grow in faith and stature through the Gospel account, to the extent that, after Christ’s rising, they are ready to be sent, each with his itinerary, to the ends of the earth, to proclaim life’s victory. They’ve grown up. They’ve left themselves behind. Thus they’re freed for mission.’ From Entering the Twofold Mystery.
Shielding Yourself
‘What photography does is to make you bold beyond your normal powers, it’s a way of shielding yourself.’ Ian Jeffrey makes this statement about Dorothy Bohm in Richard Shaw’s documentary Seeing Daylight. The film is a moving account of the great photographer’s life, a remarkable testimony to a way of seeing that is at once acute, illusionless and compassionate. Jeffrey again: ‘For a short period during the 40s and 50s tenderness dominated photography’. Dorothy, he remarks, ‘lived in that particular world’. She somehow managed to keep it alive. Her photography is marked by philanthropy. She grew up amid trauma. She was conscious of the advances achieved during her lifetime. Yet, as a Financial Times tribute observed: ‘Bohm’s greatest wish, in a world where billions of images are carelessly created every single day, is more poetic than political: slow down and take the time to really see the world around you, she says. Look through your eyes, rather than your phone.’
Choreography
We are culturally conditioned to think of discipline or rules as standing in contrast to spontaneity and freedom. The perception is mistaken as a matter of principle. I’ve recently reread a great essay by Lord Sacks that touches on this subject. Speaking of the resilience of Israel’s faith, he reflects that ‘love remains strong after 33 centuries. That is a long time for love to last, and we believe it will do so forever.’ Then he asks: ‘Could it have done so without the rituals, the 613 commands, that fill our days with reminders of God’s presence? I think not. Whenever Jews abandoned the life of the commands, within a few generations they lost their identity. Without the rituals, eventually love dies. With them, the glowing embers remain, and still have the power to burst into flame. Not every day in a long and happy marriage feels like a wedding, but even love grown old will still be strong, if the choreography of fond devotion, the ritual courtesies and kindnesses, are sustained.’ It is helpful for Catholics to apply this insight to themselves, to the rich tradition handed on to us.
Light from Light
Today the sun was seen for the last time this year in Tromsø. It will not be visible again until after 14 January. To look forward to Christmas in such a climate is singularly meaningful. The great themes of the liturgy – ‘and in that day there will be a great light’ – speak with urgency; and we are challenged to face with courage the darkness in our own hearts, our constitutional need for illumination. For no amount of Vitamin D can make up for the absence over time of the Light from Light. In the words of a lovely seasonal hymn composed up here in the north, we sing: ‘This is for us the hardest turn/we struggle to drag ourselves forwards/towards light and Advent/Bethlehem seems a long way away.’ It can, though, be brought electrifyingly close. What is it to ‘love the light’, to choose to come to it (cf. John 3)? Long winter nights make the stakes come alive.
The Crucified’s Victory
Christians of the Middle Ages saw in Nicodemus one who had pierced the mystery of the Passion. A tradition arose that attributed works of art, moving representations of the Crucified, to Nicodemus. He was considered the creator of both the Holy Face of Lucca and the Batlló Crucifix. It is significant that our forbears found him apt to be a sculptor, master of a tactile art, forming what he had seen with his eyes, touched with his hands. Without needing to debate the veracity of such ascription, we can recognise in it perennial symbolic validity. Nicodemus is an example for us who strive synodally to be true disciples and seekers after holiness. Why? He stays away from facile polemics and theatrical gestures. Still he follows the Lord wherever he goes. When he is needed he offers his service and volunteers his friendship to the community. He shows us what it means to be faithful in the darkness of Good Friday. Contemplating the crucified, entombed Christ, he had wisdom to recognise in desolation something sublime, a glorious, divine revelation. Thus he became an authoritative witness to the Crucified’s victory. Truly, this is an attitude the Church needs now.
From Synodality and Holiness, now available also in French, Italian, and Polish
Pauline Matarasso RIP
In my view, the best book on the Cistercian patrimony, alongside Bouyer’s Cistercian Heritage, is Pauline Matarasso’s The Cistercian World. Pauline, a woman of formidable culture, had an understanding of the monastic life that was at once intellectual and connatural. Introducing the third abbot of Cîteaux, she observed: ‘All that Stephen Harding touched bears witness to his pursuit of authenticity, of the spirit that only the authentic letter can set free.’ It is a brilliant insight. She was well placed to produce it. Spirited pursuit of the authentic letter defined her distinguished career as a translator (of medieval epics, of Bobin and Noël), historian (e.g. of her revered father-in-law Isaac Matarasso), and essayist. Even as she lay dying she kept translating, committed to finding and making sense accurately and beautifully. She was one of the noblest, most gracious people I have ever known. She once wrote: ‘Whereas a tiger is born, we are made, and in most of us the making process is still incomplete when death takes us, however late.’ I’d say what had been made when death came to her last Wednesday had reached a kind of perfection. May she now know in fullness the loving truth she sought with fidelity and, unknowingly, radiated.
Leavings
This is the dying time, when earth
relinquishes its surplus.
These words once mine
blown on a cool wind
from the lost land of the mind
settled last night like quiet birds
on memory’s shore.
I greet them with surprise –
together we will journey blind,
probing the ever shifting sands,
unsure of what’s in store . . . only
that there is more.
Before a shivering silvered night
lures to a feast the spoiler frost,
be quick to pick, cost what it may,
the late fruit on your tree,
– there’ll be no more –
and leave it on the roadside stall
where the merchandise is free
to all who pay their dues in kind
for other walkers on the way
where less is more
Pauline Matarasso (1929-2023)
Consecration
Thirty years have passed since I first saw Nicolas Dipre’s Presentation of the Virgin in the Temple in the Louvre. For having been painted half a millennium ago, it is strikingly contemporary. The Virgin waves fondly, a little bashfully to her parents as she makes her way up the winding temple stairs. Anna and Joachim wave back. They’re visibly filled with pride and foreboding, trying not to show sadness at the parting. All of us can recognise this scene: the first significant departure from home, the sense of suddenly following our own path with all that it entails: responsibility, excitement, anxiety. The story of Mary’s presentation is apocryphal. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true. It shows us that a decisive Yes to God’s call, like the one the Virgin gave at the Annunciation, is prepared by innumerable hidden, unspectacular yeses. By small steps we consecrate our will, our being to a higher purpose. The temple stairs are a parable of our life. ‘One step enough for me‘. Yes. What matters is to take the one which is today’s.
Interest
This angel is a detail from a painting from about 1360 on display in the Thyssen Collection in Madrid: The Virgin of Humility with Angels. The viewer is impressed by the elegance of the ensemble. I find myself especially intrigued, though, by the representation of the angels, a subject dear to fourteenth-century artists. According to Biblical evidence, these ethereal beings are charged with a ministry of perfect worship before the face of God, yet here is a specimen contemplating a human reality, the Infant Jesus in the Virgin’s arms, with a most engaging interest. The expression on the angelic face is marked by keen curiosity. A key aspect of Christian faith is thus articulated. The incarnation of the Word does not simply restore human nature to original integrity. It realises a potential for divinisation that leaves even the seraphim astonished. The anonymous Venetian painter’s angel spurs us on to self-examination: Am I conscious of, and do I cooperate with, what God might realise, through pure grace, in my redeemed human frame?
Belshazzar
The office of readings today gives us the account of Belshazzar’s feast (Daniel 5,1-6,1), a supreme example of human presumption. Deliberately and pointedly, Belshazzar publicly profaned objects dedicated to a sacred purpose, his intention being to show himself superior to any purportedly divine institution. While his act of blasphemy was being carried out, ‘the fingers of a human hand appeared, and began to write on the plaster of the palace wall’. The message spoke of measurement, weighing, and division. It did not voice an angry judgement, simply an affirmation that Belshazzar, a ruler of men, was unworthy of the task, not up to it. That same night he was eliminated by his staff.
There is a timeless parable in this biblical story. For each of us there is stuff for self-examination. Would I, on being weighed, be found wanting, or would I correspond to the legitimate estimate? Let’s not forget that in Biblical Hebrew, ‘weight’ is correlative to ‘glory’.
Ordinary?
‘Teresa of Ávila’s Autobiography, completed in her fiftieth year, chronicles the irruption of the divine into an ordinary life. Seeing Teresa at a distance, we may object to the adjective ‘ordinary’. She seems anything but! Teresa, however, argued this point with passion. She was conscious of singular favour shown her; but she insisted that nothing in her nature marked her out from the common run of men and women. She presents her life in its extraordinariness as a typical life, an exemplar each of us might emulate, had we but faith and courage to surrender to God’s work in us. The trajectory she traces reaches from the outset right to the loftiest end of spiritual life. She counsels souls who wobble ‘like hens, with feet tied together’ but also those who soar like eagles. Nor does she forget the perplexing darkness of the long intermediate stage when the soul, like a timid dove, is dazzled by rare glimpses of God’s Sun while, ‘when looking at itself, its eyes are blinded by clay. The little dove is blind’. Everything she writes, she tells us, is born of experience. For long years she herself ‘had neither any joy in God nor pleasure in the world’. She lived in an in-between state, a no-woman’s land. What changed it?’
From a talk given in 2015.
Responsibility
It was stirring to read today’s Gospel (Luke 17.1-6) in the Carmel of the Incarnation in Ávila, St Teresa’s monastery of profession. The Lord calls us to responsibility. We are to make sure our options do not cause scandal to others. Hearing this text today, we may think chiefly of massive, public scandals, but the admonition applies no less to everyday life. Does this particular choice I make edify or break down communion? The criterion is useful in any circumstance. Jesus asks us, too, to take responsibility for others. Not to take over their lives. Each must answer for his or her freedom. But we can help each other to see clearly. ‘If your brother sins, reprove him’. We shall do this effectively if we speak the truth in love, gently holding up a mirror that reflects reality to one lost in illusion. To forgive as Jesus bids us, with endlessly renewed hope of amendment, we must pray daily, ‘Increase our faith’, a prayer embodied in the life of Saint Teresa. The courage she had to review her vocation in the light of faith, to deepen what were already good choices by better choices, then to stick to them, was a source of profound renewal for the Church in a time of decadence. Her example encourages and challenges us to do likewise.
