TRACTS FOR OUR TIMES - Exploring Christian Faith

Simply written modern Tracts for our Times (some having informed the writing of The Mystery of Faith) which seek to do what it says on the label.  Links to YouTube versions, where available, are provided)

TITLES IN THE SERIES

1.       I Believe in God  (You Tube: https://youtu.be/F-DG9Z_MnDQ)

2.       I Believe in Jesus  (You Tube: https://youtu.be/1QRmD-IdO78)

3.       I Believe in the Holy Spirit (You Tube: https://youtu.be/T8OVQobYyqc)

4.       Deepening Prayer (YouTube: https://youtu.be/RS06Sro6bK8)

5.       The Ministry of Healing  (You Tube https://youtu.be/C3pPPsA7r2Q)

6.       The Sacrament of Confession  (You Tube: https://youtu.be/Je3BvuUr6qs)

7.       Praying for the Departed (You Tube: https://youtu.be/qM-gyh5ruR8)

8.       The Longest Journey – Preparing for Death

9.       Dealing with the death of one we love

10.     Is this a Catholic Church?

11.     Holy Baptism

12.     The Eucharist

13.     First Holy Communion

14.     Reservation of the Blessed Sacrament

15.     Let there be light

16.     A Selection of Prayers and Devotions

17.     The Use of the Body in Prayer

18.     The Use of Incense

19.     Mary and the Saints (You Tube: https://youtu.be/FR1v5oEjVbo)

20.     The Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary

21.     Lent, Holy Week and Easter

22.     Traditional Customs and Devotions

_______________________________________

For a fuller exploration:

The Mystery of Faith, Exploring Christian Belief

(This book is intended for individual and group use. It is divided into 8 sections with discussion questions at the end of each.  For those wishing to use it over 6 sessions, a suggested means to do this is available from jff2209@yahoo.com  Please also email for a copy of any of the leaflets shown above)

SACRED HEART TALK 2020: Priests of the Sacred Heart (3)

Hello and welcome to the third and last of these talks concerning the Sacred Heart in which I want to consider how we’re called to be Priests of the Sacred Heart.

One of the important purposes of the priesthood, of course, is to share with others something of the love of God – to help them consider that Love and to grow in their free gift of themselves to that Love, and to do that we need to be growing in that love.  In his gospel St. John records, of course, that triple question Jesus asked Peter: “Do you love me – love me more than these?”  (Jn. 21:15).  He wasn’t speaking of sentimental love, but agape love, love which is costly. He wanted to get Peter to consider in depth – in the depths of his heart – that love which the image of the Sacred Heart reveals.  It’s this love which needs to animate the vocation of every priest and we need to hear Jesus saying to us: “Do you love me – more than these?”  It’s the question that needs to refresh our vocation and to which we need to constantly return.

It’s the question reflected in the image of the Sacred Heart and is one of the reasons why it can be of great benefit to everyone, not least to priest.  We all know the importance of images – how they can speak more powerfully than words – and, as we know, the image of the heart speaks across religions, cultures and ages.  Whether on a heart on a Valentine’s card or one made with our hands, it has a warm sentimental feel; which is the difference between those romantic hearts and the Sacred Heart.  For the Sacred Heart portrays the cost of Jesus’ love shown in the way this Heart is illustrated with symbols of the Passion, so let’s consider them for they reveal the depths of Christ’ love, a love which is of far greater importance than the fuzzy glow that can come with a Valentine.

THE BLOOD-FILLED HEART

Firstly, it is a heart pumping with blood, the one organ which enables the whole body to live.  Unseen, but not unheard, it works away 24/7 for the whole of our time on earth – we could manage without many of our body parts, but not without our heart and it’s that unseen beat of the heart which needs to animate our vocation.

THE PIERCED HEART

Then there’s that matter of the blood with is shown, dripping from a wound. That makes it clear how the Heart of Jesus, like that of His Mother, was pierced; hers by a sword, his by a lance – the holy lance of the soldier, St. Longinus – as he hung on the Cross.  The lance pierced through His side into His Heart, into what this drawing by St. Margaret Mary made clear was a reservoir of caritas, love, from which flowed blood and water, the water of Baptism and the blood of the Eucharist, Sacraments of the Love of God.  In the past the Holy Blood was revered for the way it was that ‘ocean of love’ which could cleanse and renew our own –

Wash thou my wounds in that dear Blood
Which forth from thee doth flow,
New grace, new hope inspire, a new
And better heart bestow.

As Jesus said about the German mystic, St. Gertrude: ‘The proximity of her heart to the wound in my side means that I have so joined her heart to mine that she is able to receive, directly and at all times, the flow of my divinity.’  So we’re also to be priests of the wounded Christ, realising that the wounds of those with whom we minister are reflected in the Wounded Heart of Jesus.

THE CROWNED HEART

To underline the connection between the Sacred Heart and the Passion of Christ, the Heart is encircled by the Crown of Thorns.  Firstly, that reminds us how it wasn’t just His body which reveals the cost of love, His mind also paid the price.  But just as the Holy Lance which pierced the side of Jesus symbolises those ‘darts of longing love’ which gain us entry into Christ’s heart, so we can meditate on the way this Crown of love pierces him.

THE CROSS-CROWNED HEART

‘Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness’ (Phi. 2:1f).  It also reminds us that, whilst we may not find ourselves having to physically suffer for our faith, there will be many times when we’re pierced and humbled and all we can do is hold on to our consecration as priests of the Sacred Heart.  No wonder, then, that the Heart is surmounted by the Cross.  Or, perhaps we might consider how the Cross rests on the Sacred Heart reminding us that when we gaze on it, we must always contemplate it as the sign of God’s love.  Priestly ministry will always be under this sign of our Master and reminding us that we should never be surprised that we’re called to suffer with Him.  St. Teresa of Avila said: ‘the important thing is not to think much but to love much and do that which stirs us to love.’  How often do we place our mind in our heart?  Where is the centre of our being – in the head or the heart?

THE FLAMING HEART

Again, that consideration is informed by the way the Cross is enflamed – the fire of God’s love by which so many have said we must be consumed.  ‘May the power of your love’, prayed St. Francis of Assisi, ‘fiery and sweet as honey, so absorb our hearts as to withdraw them from all that is under heaven.  Grant that we may be ready to die for love of your love, as you died for love of our love.’  That prayer should take us back to that triple question posed to St. Peter, a prayer which might be one every priest should pray daily.   The Sacred Heart is a warm, glowing heart, radiating compassionate love; a hurt, open heart which is the gate of heaven and needs to inform our priesthood.

THE NON-DUALISTIC HEART

But there’s an aspect of some Sacred Heart imagery many find off-putting – the way they show Jesus in an androgynous way – he seems partly male and partly female, certainly not a man’s man!   There’s a femininity about many images which can be challenging, but which fits with the classic symbolism of the heart as feminine and the mind as masculine; the softness and approachability of Jesus in such images is revealed by artists who, perhaps unconsciously, knew the Sacred Heart was meant to open us to the feminine in the divine and is meant to answer the false dualism pictures can inevitably portray.   For we know that in Christ there is neither male nor female, we are all one in Him (Gal. 3:28), something we need to realise in ourselves.   Our priesthood needs to incarnate both the feminine and masculine in God.

THE COSMIC HEART

Finally, I want to acknowledge that the Sacred Heart is not only a universal symbol, it’s also a symbol of the universe. ‘We know’, wrote St. Paul, ‘that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now’ (Roms. 8:22) and can rightly believe that, at the heart of the universe is the Heart of Christ, the Creator.  Within the Cosmic Christ is a cosmic intimacy; the Creator we proclaim isn’t some majestic deus ex machina, but a power of Love, a love whose nature is constantly creative.  The universe is like a woman struggling in giving birth to an infant conceived in love. 

One of the reasons why devotion to the Sacred Heart is so important is that it declares that we were made in that image and if you want to understand what this human-being is all about, look at the Sacred Heart.  As Teilhard de Chardin wrote in The Heart of the Matter, this devotion gave him a sense of the ‘solidity of Christ … the immersion of the divine in the corporeal … a glowing core of fire … able to insinuate itself everywhere … to make love of the cosmic milieu.’  Such a realisation lies behind eucharistic living, living with a constant realisation of the loving, compassionate presence of God in all things.  As priests, we are not only those who preside at the sacraments, we need to enable others to live sacramentally as we deepen our own awareness of God’s loving presence in all things.

CONCLUSION

So as we come to the end of this meditation, let’s keep a few minutes of silence at the end of which I’ll read a reflection by the late Mother Osyth of Malling Abbey.

(Silence)

Wind, fire and flame

   the outward sign 

   but in the heart

   breath of the spirit

        love and light

   heavenly dew

of sanctifying grace

   God’s very presence hallowing the place

   restoring to his image

        the souls face

PRIESTLY PONDERING'S (1) - Being beneath the role

This is also available via YouTube:  https://youtu.be/Mk6GeJHV64g

In 2018 I wrote Enfolded in Christ: the inner life of a priest, and it’s been suggested I might offer some further thoughts arising from that, or from my second: The Mystery of Faith: Exploring Christian belief.  So, as we’re in a world-wide crisis at present, I thought I’d go back to something I wrote in chapter nine of ‘Enfolded’ because I think it speaks into something a number of priests might be experiencing.  It’s headed: Beneath the Role and is part of a section on ‘Being in Christ’:

‘While (the) desire for union with Christ is at the heart of our (priestly) calling, I’ve noticed, in directing clergy, that many find it easier to talk about roles and responsibilities. Although ministry may form the expression of our vocation, it’s not its essence, for that can only be found as ‘Cor ad cor loquitur’ – heart speaks to heart.  Vocation concerns the heart of being which our actions express. The demands of ministry can overbalance the call to intimacy and relationship just as doing can easily replace being in our desire for meaning. And while this isn’t unique to priesthood, unless our vocation is rooted in the desire for union with Christ, sooner or later it will wither – and may die.’

Now I’m not suggesting that your spiritual life has died or even withered, but I’ve noticed the way the present coronavirus crisis is causing some clergy to feel a bit lost – or depressed.  Many of the norms which accompany ministry have gone: ‘no church and no congregation’ is causing them to wonder what they’re meant to be doing.  We look at what the media focuses on – doctors and nurses caring for the sick and dying, food banks providing help for those in poverty and people hard at work raising funds for charities and we can easily begin to feel inadequate, or even guilty.  Many people have begun living in ‘virtual reality’ offering online parties and games, and some clergy are turning to the internet to broadcast services.  And whilst much of what’s appearing is helpful, I wonder – I just wonder – if we might be missing something…  If every crisis provides an opportunity, what might this one offer?  What might God be saying to us through it?

One of the reasons, as I mentioned, for writing Enfolded was because I sensed that many clergy live out of their role, something which can easily begin to take over from our vocation.   Many have become very proficient in what they do; they work hard, and their ministry is greatly valued.  But now much of that role seems to have been side-lined.  A century or so ago it was clergy and religious who nursed the sick – Florence Nightingale turned to the emerging Anglican Religious Orders to work in the Crimea, and priests cared for victims of cholera in the slums of 19^th cent. cities, gaining for them the name, ‘Father’.  Now it can feel as if we’re not needed. Yet, many are doing valiant, if hidden, work supporting congregations, helping organise Food Banks and so on.  But the fact that the Archbishops have ‘banned’ clergy from entering their churches to live-stream liturgies feels as if it’s undermined something of great importance and has hit many hard.

I’m one of those who no longer have a parish, or any ‘official’ ministry, and recall the way I, like others, suddenly felt an utter sense of lostness when that came to an end.  My identity as a parish priest had gone, and I suddenly had no idea what meaning life had for me. T. S. Eliot words, in his Four Quartets, captures something of the feeling I had:

‘ … as, when an underground train, in the tube, 
stops too long between stations

And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence

And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deeper

Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about … ‘ (East Coker, III)

That, of course, can be a feeling anyone can have when their job comes to an end – as has happened to thousands of people as a result of the ‘lockdown’ we’re going through.  So, my first reflection is that priests may be sharing the same feelings as many of their parishioners: this loss means we can identify with millions of others.  Like Christ, some of us have suddenly descended into the experience of many – have entered a wilderness that seems endless.  Into a darkness that can be depressive.

Now one of the things I notice about the account of Christ in the Desert is that the first Temptation which came his way was to turn stones into bread; and I then hear his response: “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matt. 4.4).  What might that be saying to the noble attempts of many to offer ‘virtual’ liturgies replicating, as best we can, what happens in church?  If every crisis offers opportunities, what might this crisis offer those who have a responsibility to nurture the spiritual lives of people?  Those who stand at the threshold of heaven?  Of course, many find satisfaction through the familiar and some, consequently, will encounter ‘church’ via the internet for the first time.  But are we missing something? 

In what we call the ‘spiritual life’ there’s a clear correlation between the wilderness and the monastic cell.  You probably know that saying of the 4^th cent. Desert Father, Abba Moses: “Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.”  In a world where many feel lost, might the most important thing we have to share be that simple piece of teaching?  If you’re finding life difficult at present, don’t go looking for distractions – virtual games and sports, chat rooms and so on.  Simply stay in that place of emptiness and listen to what it might teach you – you may never have another opportunity to learn what this solitude, this enforced ‘retreat’ might offer.  And that, of course, means clergy need to do just that.  As Eliot said:

                            ‘I said to my soul, be still, 
                            and let the darkness come upon you

                            Which shall be the darkness of God.’ (East Coker, III)

That darkness, of course, can feel very dark – a darkness which can feel hellish.  And I’m reminded that Christ entered that darkness on Holy Saturday with the light of the Resurrection – and I want to consider that on another occasion because it is of such importance, yet often ignored.  For now, let’s consider the difference between that feeling of loneliness and the awareness of being alone.  Feeling lonely is about isolation, whereas being alone concerns realising in in-depth at-one-ness with all things.  Just listen to these words of Mother Mary Clare of the Sisters of the Love of God at Fairacres from their pamphlet, Aloneness Not Loneliness:

‘Like the solitary sailor, we deliberately choose our aloneness as part of a personal quest.  We are people engaged on a search.  It is always a search for God, but it is also a quest that brings us to a place of exposure to a deep, heart-searching, listening awareness of the fundamental, crying need of the world.  This is precisely the monk’s or nun’s chief service to humanity.  In aloneness we learn to share in a basic way in the emptiness and lostness that people today often know but also often tried to block out and ignore. … It is essential that we realise the intensely positive use and value of being alone and trying to stop being frightened at the very negative reaction or feeling lonely.’  (Fairacres Pubs. FP002)

I wonder if one of the most important things clergy can do at this time – at any time – is not only to be open to and aware of that basic emptiness and lost-ness, but to encourage people not to run from that primary human condition, the calling to and of God deep within their deepest self – the soul.  Rather than offering people religious ‘distractions’ isn’t one of our primary tasks to enable people to realise they’re called to enter the depths of their being?  Instead of just streaming services, might we also address this primary experience which so many are having but can’t make sense of or seek to avoid – aloneness?  Only the church can do that – the media have no understanding of the deeper reaches of our common humanity.  Doesn’t this crisis offer an opportunity – hopefully, one that won’t be repeated for a long time, but one we need to grasp – the opportunity to encounter ourselves in a creative way.  And to encounter God.   

So, use this time to create a fresh rhythm of prayer.  Make sure you’re having a day offline from time to time – now’s a wonderful opportunity to take an at-home Quiet Day where you can focus on prayer and meditation, a solitary walk and a little light reading. And, if you haven’t already, make sure the Blessed Sacrament is kept in a worthy place at home, a place you can ‘visit’ each day where you can be still before the Lord.  Let’s discover what this time has to offer so we can share with others from our experience.

Do you remember the way, also in 2018, that a group of boys became trapped in a cave system in Thailand for over a fortnight?  Their leader, a former Buddhist monk, led them in various meditation practices which helped them cope with their enforced isolation and kept them sane.  It’s clear many people at present are experiencing great anxiety, and whilst Christian meditation is primarily concerned with opening the eye of the heart to God, it has also been shown to be of great help in addressing anxiety and stress which can lead to depression.  I realise meditation might be difficult if you sense you’re extraverted – you may be finding the loss of human interaction really painful.  But, maybe, this is an opportunity to give attention to your inner life – and to teach others the importance of these practices.  

In a society which judges the church by what it can be seen to do, its actions, might God be offering us an opportunity to reach out to others from the hidden wisdom of our tradition – of the contemplative way?  Might this be a time when we remind the world it has a forgotten soul which needs nurturing?  Isn’t that the meaning behind our role?  Rather than this being a time when the church hardly seems needed, maybe it’s a time when we’re needed even more – we just need to realise what we have and find ways of sharing it with others. 

I said to my soul be still, and wait without hope

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing;

wait without love

For love would be love of the wrong thing;

there is yet faith

But the faith and the love and the hope 
       are all in the waiting.

Wait without thought, 
       for you are not ready for thought:

So the darkness shall be the light, 
       and the stillness the dancing.  (East Coker III)

John-Francis Friendship

April 17^th, 2020

THE MYSTERY OF FAITH by Fr. John-Francis Friendship

This is the video made by Canterbury Press to introduce my new book, 'THE MYSTERY OF FAITH - Exploring Christian Belief'

ATONEMENT – THE ANGER OF GOD?

‘They who suppose the wrath and anger of God upon fallen man to be a state of mind in God himself … hold the doctrine of the necessity of Christ’s atoning life and death in a mistaken sense.  That many good souls may hold this doctrine in this simplicity of belief I make no manner of doubt.  But when books are written to impose and require this belief of others as the only saving faith in the life and death of Christ, it is then an error that ceases to be innocent.’

The Rev. William Law (1686-1791), An Appeal to All That Doubt, Ch.3, para.4

THE SCENT OF HIDDEN SPRINGS – Some Thoughts About Roots and Flourishing

INTRODUCTION

 “What’s it all about, Alfie?”

So sang Dionne Warwick in a famous song, which became a major hit for Cilla Black way back in 1966.  It was written for the film of the same name – Alfie – and she went on to ruminate about life: what was all about? A moment’s pleasure? Making more than you give? And then asked if it’s it foolish to be kind, wise to be cruel? Does life only belong to the strong? The turning point came when she admitted that she believed there was a heaven above, that there’s much more to life and that even non-believers can believe in love. In one poignant line she sang:

‘Without true love we just exist, Alfie. Until you find the love you've missed you're nothing, Alfie.’

            The song may have been written over fifty years ago but the question remains: what’s it all about? It’s the kind of question that we’re suddenly faced with at times of crisis. Teenagers, when they hit upon that existential phase, often stumble upon it. Lovers wonder at it. As we gaze on nature we find it can ask us – what meaning does life have …? Is it really all summed up as ‘eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow you die’?

‘Love is our true destiny.
We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone - we find it with another.’

Fr. Thomas Merton (1915-1968), monk and writer. From: 'Love and Living', Houghton Mifflin, 2002

            

This book isn’t meant to be a deeply philosophical tome or intellectual or theological critique of modern Britain but a reflection – a meditation, an exploration – into some of the fundamental questions about life and death each of us can find ourselves facing. Many of the fundamental questions about the nature of our being touch on the religious dimension of life and yet many have no time for religion and many of the questions which we have always asked – ‘Who am I?’, ‘Is there any purpose to life?’, ‘Why does there have to be pain and suffering?’, ‘What does it mean to be human?’ ‘Who is God?’ – all these and more were and are matters with which Christianity has struggled.  But the wisdom gained by that struggle is no longer accessible to a generation cut off from its ancient roots as it loses interest in religion, a generation which has little sense of having a soul in need of nurturing and nourishing, a soul which bears the image of divine beauty. That is what we are – women and men who bear such beauty within us that needs to be revealed. So that is what this book concerns.

Religious abuse

Perhaps your memory of being taken to church as a child and the words or actions of those who call themselves ‘Christians’ has left you cold or scarred you for life. I remember, when I was a child and had been taken to church, thinking that I never wanted to go there again.  Or you or someone close to you has been deeply hurt – physically, emotionally or spiritually – by the church. This is tragic and anyone who has been abused in this way will rightly feel anger, bitterness even hatred. And when, so often, what is reported is the way Christians have exercised power for their own ends, denied people their sexual or gender rights or refused to accept minority’s people rightly become disillusioned. Whilst many faiths can be narrow-minded, bigoted or homophobic it is Christianity that is seen to be offering simplistic answers to life’s deep and complicated questions. And the kind of worship offered in many churches doesn’t really appeal to the soul, doesn’t nourish it. Rather some churches seem to offer ‘candy-floss’ worship – appealing to the senses but having no substance – and even prayer has too often been taught as a means to achieve what you want; it’s about asking for things, celebrating success and God’s apparent ‘power’ rather than offering a means to encounter the deep mysteries of God or provide us with anything more than a five-minute after-glow.

            Christianity, like any religion, isn’t exempt from corruption, misuse or a fundamentalist interpretation. Something which offers a way of life that can unite us with that which is most noble and creative in our humanity can be, and has been, abused and used as a means of control over others. Of course, we are all ‘fallen’, broken people but it would not be wrong to say that Christ weeps at the inhumanity some in the church exercise and which can prevent people from encountering His compassion. Thankfully God is not limited to the churches and the knowledge that a person is held in the mystical love of a higher power can still be realised. Those who practice the 12-step programme of Alcoholics Anonymous, for example, will know the importance it places on a deity – ‘God’, ‘Him’, or ‘a Power greater than ourselves’ — or to religious practices such as prayer. And the ultimate goal of sobriety, as the final step states, is to achieve a “spiritual awakening”, a goal that is set before all of us but discovered by few.

“Do not be afraid. Do not be satisfied with mediocrity.
Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.”

Pope John-Paul II (Inaugural Homily)

Spiritual, not religious

Because there are some who will say “I’m spiritual, not religious” this book will try to re-connect us with some of those spiritual roots of that faith which nurtured and nourished our society for two thousand years yet now seems irrelevant (what an over-used word!). We’re detached from faith – or semi-detached at best. But the house we inhabit has forgotten cellars containing vast hordes of wisdom for us to explore. We’ve hidden springs for refreshment, caves containing treasures, yet the doorway to these can have become ignored and covered in cobwebs – “we don’t want to go there, what’s the point?” But if we lose touch with our roots – with our soul – we’re in danger of becoming destabilised, a shallow generation satisfied by superficialities. And always, when we descend sufficiently, is a still, small voice which says:

LORD, you search me and you know me.
You know my resting and my rising;

you discern my thoughts from afar.

Behind and before, you besiege me,

your hand ever laid upon me.

O where can I go from your spirit,

or where can I flee from your face?

If I climb the heavens, you are there.

If I lie in the grave, you are there.

If I take the wings of the dawn

or dwell at the sea’s furthest end,

even there your hand would lead me;

your right hand would hold me fast.

If I say, “Let the darkness hide me

and the light around me be night,”

even darkness is not dark to you,

the night shall be as bright as day,

and darkness the same as the light.

For it was you who formed my inmost being,

knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I thank you who wonderfully made me;

how wonderful are your works,

which my soul knows well!

(Ps.139 – extracts)

In depth living

Much of my life these days involves sitting and listening to people who are trying to make sense of God in their lives and explore all the movements that happen within them as they try to give attention to God – it’s called ‘spiritual direction’ and if you want to know more then there’s some notes at the back. Many of the issues that people want to explore and which seem to be around in society, both sacred but mainly secular, concern matters that the great Traditions of Christianity, for want of a better term, have always addressed: ‘Am I simply re-acting to life?’  ‘Life’s so full I don’t have a chance to slow down.’ ‘Why is X having to suffer?’  ‘What will happen when I die?’  ‘I’m doing so much but life seems empty.’ Just because someone may have jettisoned religion, faith, God etc. these questions don't go away. Getting rid of God just means we’ve blocked off a source of wisdom and insight; ignoring Christianity might mean we don’t have to bother with deeper questions but it also means that we’ve lost the ability to access that ‘wisdom of the ages’ which has helped people to live and not just survive.  As someone wrote to me:

            ‘As you know I am one of your acquaintances who does not have a faith, is not a believer. Neither am I an intellectual in anyway shape or form. However, I do question where our humanity has gone, I love the wisdom of the ages from those spiritual leaders, be it religious or pagan. I think the past has so much to             teach us; so much in this modern age is being forgotten. Everything is so shallow and meaningless.’

So this book sets out to look at matters such as what it means to be human and why we’re here; why the God questions don’t go away; what gives meaning and purpose to life; why we resonate with ‘spiritual’ things; why people suffer; how we can become more beautiful and, perhaps most poignant of all, aging and death. And throughout I’ll try to look at what that ‘wisdom of the ages’ might have to offer us for religion, down the ages, has looked at all these matters, and more, and tried to make sense of them. At its best religion doesn’t attempt to provide answers but to shine a light on the path that leads into the heart of our being, into the heart of that which we call God, where we can discover the truth of who we are and how we connect – and realise ourselves, with our unique wonder, as part of a vast whole which finds itself embraced in a mystery.  The mystery of God.

Has religious faith any appeal?

The transcendental appeal of religion remains and still tugs at the hearts of many, in-spite of a chorus of cynical disapproval. It’s certainly not cool to be a Christian, or even to talk about Jesus, God, the Saints, prayer (spirituality is OK), worship and so on.

            But Christianity has rarely been popular; as G. K. Chesterton wrote: ‘The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.’¹ (¹‘What’s Wrong with the World’, Part I, Chapter 5). Yet the heroic lives of saintly men and women continue to have an appeal; they are like beacons shining in the dark. Of course, sportsman and women and ‘celebrities’ can have an instant and greater glow about them, but have you noticed that their appeal is often passing? And many of our ‘gods’ also turn out to have feet of clay. But true holiness, that which takes us out of ourselves so that we are living in the light of the Other, lasts and we can continue to savour it long after a holy one has disappeared from this earth.

‘Man is called to a fullness of life which far exceeds the dimensions of his earthly existence, because it consists in sharing the very life of God. The loftiness of this supernatural vocation reveals the greatness and the inestimable value of human life even in its temporal phase.’ 

Pope John-Paul II (Evangelium Vitae)

Religion re-invented    

What I find so fascinating is the way that so much of our religious past hasn’t actually disappeared but has been taken over – Advent calendars now offer us chocolates rather than insights into waiting for the birth of the Man who can lead us to life in all its fullness; All Saints now offers fashionable clothes rather than being men and women clothed in holiness; Halloween isn’t a way of lovingly remembering the dead but a chance to go a bit mad. Incense is now a costly perfume to enhance our bodies rather than a mystical aroma which announces the presence of holiness, of God; and the ability to make your Confession is now rewarded with an invitation to appear on some ‘reality’ TV programme rather than the ability to find real absolution. And we’ve drained the great mysteries of the Faith – the birth of Christ and his death and resurrection – into times of excess governed by the gods of commerce, holding out nothing more than a plastic Santa or chocolate bunny. Can these satisfy our real needs, our deepest needs? Or are they part of a culture which has to make us feel we need ever more and more to make us happy and find … contentment … but is basically about making a profit for shareholders and never satisfying our needs for fear we won’t spend our money? Yet all the while, dimly maybe, behind it all and almost masked by the deafening clamour of commerce and entertainment can you hear that quiet voice asking: ‘What do you seek? What do I seek?’

           

What do we seek – what’s it all about?

Have you ever thought of that?  Isn’t it such an important question and doesn’t it often get ignored – what do I seek in life? It’s another way of wondering ‘what’s it all about’? Does my life have any meaning or purpose or am I just a creature of evolution waiting to disappear off the face of the earth, to be forgotten in a generation or so (if that)? Those aren’t the sort of questions that often get aired on TV or discussed in the pages of the tabloids (or, come to that, the broadsheets) but aren’t they important questions to ponder? But where do I go to explore them? And do I want to?

‘The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honourable, to be compassionate,

to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.’ (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

           

            It has been the task of religion to help us do that, to open us to those questions and explore the meaning and purpose of life. For some, that purpose is to be happy; no one, normally, wants to be un-happy. For others it might be to live in a close and loving family or find a satisfying career (which is OK until that comes to an end. Then what?) But, and here is the question again, is that all I seek? There's a famous affirmation by someone called St Augustine, who was born in what is now Algeria, north Africa in the 4th century AD which somehow seems to get at the nub of all this: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

            Now if the real task of religion is to help each of us grow into this fullness of life something’s got in the way and managed to palm us off with thinking all we need is a better car, bigger house or a win on the Lottery. That a make-over will, somehow, answer our needs. Surely, unless we’re re-making the heart of who we are anything else is like playing with the deckchairs on the Titanic.

"Love is a one-way street.  It always moves away from self in the direction of the other. 

Love is the ultimate gift of our-selves to others.  When we stop giving we stop loving,

when we stop loving we stop growing,
and unless we grow we will never attain personal fulfilment;

we will never open out to receive the life of God.  It is through love we encounter God.”
 (Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, Where there is Love, there is God, p. 26)

 Do I realise that I am made for love and to be love for others? As one of Jesus’ closest friends said: ‘let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love.’ (I John 4.7) So, might love be the way whereby sacred and secular find common ground? Might it be that it is as we learn more about love that we are drawn out of ourselves to encounter the mystery of the other – and of the Other (the greatest Other)? Well, there’s nothing new in that reflection: "We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become” declared St Clare of Assisi way back in the 13th century, “If we love things, we become a thing. If we love nothing, we become nothing. Imitation is not a literal mimicking of Christ, rather it means becoming the image of the beloved, an image disclosed through transformation. This means we are to become vessels of God´s compassionate love for others." And St Thomas à Kempis, who lived just over a hundred years later, wrote in his famous book ‘The Imitation of Christ’: ‘Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing stronger or higher or wider; nothing is more pleasant, nothing fuller, and nothing better in heaven or on earth, for love is born of God and cannot rest except in God, Who is above all created things.’  So we come to the point, I hope, where believer and unbeliever can discover a language which communicates a divine narrative and agree with what that remarkable woman Julian of Norwich (1342-1416), the first of her gender to write in the English language, said in her book, ‘Revelations of Divine Love’: ‘Understand (this) well: love was his meaning. Who showed it to you? Love. What did he show you? Love. Why did he show it? For love. Hold yourself in this truth and you shall understand and know more in the same vein.’ (Ch.86)

So let’s begin by turning to the vexed question – just what do we understand by that three-letter word: God?

‘God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.’ (I John 4. 16)

THE PHYSICALITY OF PRAYER: Bp. Rowan Williams

The Christianity I was originally formed in was not very ritual-minded: it was both intellectually alert and emotionally intense – the best of a style of Welsh Nonconformity now almost extinct – but tended to look down on physical expression of belief (other than singing, which I suspect was regarded as not really physical). Only when the family joined the Anglican Church when I was in my early teens, after we’d moved to another town, did I discover a sense of worship as a physical art, involving gesture, movement and colour. I still have a vivid memory of my first experience of a solemn Mass with procession at Easter, when I was, I suppose, about 12 – the awareness of a deliberate strategy of involving the senses at many levels.

The mild High Church atmosphere of those years was, for me, an environment that made strong imaginative and emotional sense, and indeed is still the kind of setting where I feel most instinctively at home, rather than in more simply word-oriented styles, or in the heated atmosphere of “charismatic” worship, repetitive song and unstructured prayer – although I’ve learned to be nourished by that, too, in many circumstances. But the ritual that is most significant for me apart from the routines of public worship and the daily recitation of the fixed words of morning and evening prayer owes more to non-Anglican sources.

Readers of Salinger’s Franny and Zooey will recall the somewhat unexpected appearance there of an account of the traditional Greek and Russian discipline of meditative repetition of the “Jesus Prayer” (“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner”). Practically every Eastern Orthodox writer on prayer will describe this, and many in the tradition also describe some of the physical disciplines that may be used to support it – being aware of your breathing, sitting in a certain way, focusing attention on your chest: “bringing the mind into the heart”, as the books characterise it.

The interest in uniting words with posture and breath is, of course, typical of non-Christian practices also; and over the years increasing exposure to and engagement with the Buddhist world in particular has made me aware of practices not unlike the “Jesus Prayer” and introduced me to disciplines that further enforce the stillness and physical focus that the prayer entails. Walking meditation, pacing very slowly and co-ordinating each step with an out-breath, is something I have found increasingly important as a preparation for a longer time of silence.

So: the regular ritual to begin the day when I’m in the house is a matter of an early rise and a brief walking meditation or sometimes a few slow prostrations, before squatting for 30 or 40 minutes (a low stool to support the thighs and reduce the weight on the lower legs) with the “Jesus Prayer”: repeating (usually silently) the words as I breathe out, leaving a moment between repetitions to notice the beating of the heart, which will slow down steadily over the period.

The prayer isn’t any kind of magical invo­cation or auto-suggestion – simply a vehicle to detach you slowly from distracted, wandering images and thoughts. These will happen, but you simply go on repeating the words and gently bringing attention back to them. If it is proceeding as it should, there is something like an indistinct picture or sensation of the inside of the body as a sort of hollow, a cave, in which breath comes and goes, with an underlying pulse. If you want to speak theologically about it, it’s a time when you are aware of your body as simply a place where life happens and where, therefore, God “happens”: a life lived in you.

So the day begins with a physically concrete and specific reminder that your own individual existence is breathed through by a life that isn’t your possession; and at moments of tension or anxiety during the day, deliberately breathing in and out a few times with the words of the prayer in mind connects you with this life that isn’t yours, immersing the anxiety and dispersing the tension – even if it doesn’t simply take away pain or doubt, solve problems or create some kind of spiritual bliss. The point is just to be connected again.

The mature practitioner (not me) will discover a steady clarity in the vision of self and world, and, in “advanced” states, an awareness of unbroken inner light, with the strong sense of an action going on within that is quite independent of your individual will – the prayer “praying itself”, not just human words but a connection between God transcendent and God present and within. Ritual anchors, ritual aligns, harmonises, relates. And what happens in the “Jesus Prayer” is just the way an individual can make real what is constantly going on in the larger-scale worship of the sacraments. The pity is that a lot of western Christianity these days finds all this increasingly alien. But I don’t think any one of us can begin to discover again what religion might mean unless we are prepared to expose ourselves to new ways of being in our bodies. But that’s a long story. 

(New Statesman: 8th July 2014)