PRIESTLY PONDERING'S (2) - Prayer, the heartbeat of life

(These 'Ponderings' are available via YouTube:  https://youtu.be/leecLTTnHu4)

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

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

In the first of these ‘Ponderings’ I quoted those lines by T. S. Eliot in connection with the way this pandemic is forcing many of us into a place of loss.  That’s been made worse, for some clergy, by the absence of ‘real time’ pastoral contact compounded by that instruction from the hierarchy about not entering churches. This seminal crisis is causing some to experience an existential darkness seeping through their vocation; the very things priests were identified as possessing and ordained to express – an ability to care, an empathic nature, praying the Divine Office in church – all that and more, has been denied.  And, despite valiant efforts to nurture their calling, some are feeling let down, lost and fearful. 

In that first ‘Pondering’ I said that this period reminds me of the way Christ entered the darkness on Holy Saturday with the light of the Resurrection. I touched on this in my second book, ‘The Mystery of Faith’ when, in Chapter 6, I wrote about Christ’s descent into this darkness, a darkness he allowed to overwhelm him but which, in the end, didn’t overcome him;

‘There’s something of deep significance in Christ’s journey into the realm of Death, for the effect of his redemption works at both a conscious and unconscious level, affecting the whole cosmic order. Carl Jung said it also represents the ego’s deliberate descent into the unconscious where it emerges reborn.

This great event, celebrated in the – neglected – Liturgy of the Burial of Christ, is portrayed in orthodox icons by the image of his descent into that darkness.  He breaks into the prison-house of death and drags Adam and Eve, our archetypal ancestors, from sleep into the light of his Divinity.  This, arguably, is the great moment of salvation – his victory which redeems all humankind, even back to the beginning.  And our ceaseless task is to open ourselves more and more deeply to Christ’s gracious, compassionate invitation to be set free.’  (p.61f)

As both theology and psychology agree in the importance of this event, it’s clearly of primary importance.  God needs to descend into our depths and illuminate them with resurrection light, something the icon of the Anastasis reveals.  It also reveals just how hard it was for our archetypal parents, Adam and Eve, to receive that light into which Christ had to drag them.  It’s in that darkness we encounter our vulnerability, the place where we realise the need for humility, where we open ourselves to the reality of our human frailty.  It’s a darkness which we proclaim Christ entered; he has broken open that place by the light of the resurrection, and where Christ has gone, we need to follow despite any fear we may have; for our gospel is that the darkness cannot overcome us.  Isn’t that what we should be proclaiming and every parish celebrating? 

This year the Paschal Triumph has an importance that we need to take to heart.  We may not be able to be with people in their sickness, their suffering or their dying, but we can seek to be in that place of dazzling darkness.  Christ invites priests, in particular, to be open to that for, as part of the Holy People of God, we need to lead where all must go.  Isn’t our vocation to show the way, no matter how hard, how very hard, it can be?  Whatever Christ meant when John records him as saying in the gospel for Good Shepherd Sunday: “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly”, it’s clear the life he offers comes as a consequence of passing through suffering and death.  People won’t hear about that on the TV News – they’ll only hear it if we tell them what we’re discovering.

Death and life are, of course, the twin foundations of our faith – and the former isn’t pleasant!  For a priest, at this time, it can be experienced in a variety of ways.  Yet, through it all, there is one thing that matters, and that’s our faithfulness to our calling.  Not to what we do, for we are denied much of that, but to the call of Christ ‘who was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful’ (Heb.3.2).  As I said in Enfolded, Christ didn’t save us by his ability but through his disability (p.109). Our faithfulness is, primarily, to the God who calls us and that must mean faithfulness to be open to that call – to prayer.  About that, one enclosed sister wrote to me:

‘I think as a monastic I am aware how beneficial the rhythm and routine of the life we live is.  ... Unfortunately, it is much easier to form a rhythm when things are normal, so that it is there to fall back on when they aren't’.

So, maybe this is the time to look at your Rule of Life and check what norm you have created in relation to praying, and not simply saying, the Divine Office each day.  Occasions when we enter the wonder of Christ’s prayer to the Father through the Spirit not just twice, but maybe four or more times a day.  But any prayer – especially meditation – can become boring, especially when it doesn't seem there's any consolation in it. But Christian meditation – or contemplation – isn’t passive ‘quietism’ but desiring to be where Christ is; and whether that’s in the joy of heaven or the darkness of hell, we’re called to be there.  Whatever we experience (and it’s not the experience we’re to desire, but God) we’re called to be faithful to the way that leads to divine union.  As sister pointed out:

“Learning to inhabit boredom when it is around is important; not easy, but we get into patterns of distracting ourselves when things are not very exciting.  If we can sit with boredom and restlessness when they are there and realise that they are normal – we don't need to feel a failure or guilty, just sit with the discomfort.  We are being pushed to realise that our value is in being and not doing – doing flows from being – and it is uncomfortable for people.  On the whole we take our identity and value from what we can do, and for lots of people having the usual opportunities for doing taken away is very uncomfortable!  We don't really know how to be alone and unoccupied.  We will face an apparent void we think, nothing there, if we are not 'doing'.”

That clearly speaks of the way our life is united with Christ’s oblation ‘of himself once offered’ – and an oblation isn’t a pleasant thing!  It’s bloody and involves the apparent loss of everything that makes life meaningful but, as I said in Enfolded, ‘We follow one who was a failure in the sight of most of his contemporaries, yet who could never have been a failure in the sight of his Father.  Jesus wasn't formed for success but for faithfulness’ (p.57).  It’s the way of the saints: of Theresa of Lisieux who wrote in ‘Autobiography of a Soul’:

‘He allowed my own soul to be plunged into the thickest gloom. The thought of heaven which had been so sweet from my earliest years became for me a subject of torture.  The trial did not merely last for days or weeks.  As I write, it has gone on for months and still I am waiting for relief.  I wish I could explain what I feel, but it is beyond my power.  One must have passed through the tunnel to understand how black its darkness is.’

She had wanted to be a priest and now God allowed her a share in Christ’s passion whereby she had to live by faith – and love – alone.  It’s the way of St John of the Cross who, thrown into a dungeon by his Carmelite confreres because they didn’t approve his reforms, produced from that place of deprivation some of the greatest poetry ever written.  Who said:

“Never give up prayer, and should you find dryness and difficulty, persevere in it for this very reason. God often desires to see what love your soul has, and love is not tried by ease and satisfaction.” – St. John of the Cross, Special Counsels: Degrees of Perfection #9

Perhaps this pandemic is forcing us to face what lies beneath the surface of our lives, inviting us to consider where we look for our primal meaning.  Without so many of the norms of ministry we might experience a sense of being overwhelmed by darkness.  One of the reasons why it’s important to continue to offer Christ’s oblation is that it’s concerned with overcoming the darkness of death – it unlocks the gates of Hades and, with great tenderness, sets prisoners free.  Unfortunately – and misleadingly – some say of that day that it’s when Christ ‘rested’, a day of “dead silence” (Pastoral Letter, Archbishops of Canterbury and York, 2018) when nothing happened.  But, lying at the heart of the Paschal Mystery, it’s the greatest day of salvation, the day when what is most important occurs. 

Feelings of loss and confusion can drive us away from our calling, yet it’s precisely at this moment we need to be present to prayer.  Present to the Spirit moving within us as we open our heart – with all its messy emotions – to God whose ongoing work of salvation will be occurring at the deepest levels.  Prayer which isn’t just the words we utter but what happens in a heart inclined to God; which goes on gently even when we’re unconscious of it.  We have to set up the rhythm – like the rhythm of breathing – because prayer is the heartbeat of life. 

It may be that this pandemic is forcing us into places we would never enter by our own efforts.  Now, like the contemplative, God invites us to enter the worlds lostness with the flickering light of Christ.  Not our flame but his, carried in our heart.  We may fail at times, fall flat on our faces or even run from this calling, but it’s fundamental to the nature of priesthood.  All we need to do is be there, in the darkness and despair with the light of Christ’s love.  He does the work.  

John-Francis Friendship

April 30^th 2020

HOLY SATURDAY 2020 - Sermon for All Saints, Blackheath

“Let him Easter in us,

be a dayspring to the dimness of us.”

X

INTRODUCTION

So wrote Gerard Manly Hopkins in his epic poem, The Wreck of the Deutschland, a ship that, in 1875, floundered off the coast of Harwich and in which five Franciscan nuns, fleeing persecution in Germany, were drowned.   ‘Let him Easter in us’

It is such an odd use of the word; surely ‘Easter’ is an event, not an experience; a noun not a verb?  Yet, here is Hopkins inviting us to let Christ ‘Easter in us’.   But it’s a great way to look at the truth, the transforming reality of Easter.  For Easter is about an activity that does not apply to something we do but something ‘he’ does in us.  Let Easter get into us.  Let Easter come and live where we live.  Let Easter permeate our souls.  Let him Easter in us; be as a new day to the darkness in us.  

Tonight we normally gather, after the long rigours of Lent and Holy Week, to do just that.  To let Christ ‘Easter’ in us.  Not to wistfully recall a long-ago episode, affirm our faith or even to worship at a powerful and moving Liturgy.  But to be present before the One who can Easter in our lives; we gather because we want to be transformed, given new life, find meaning and purpose.  Isn’t that what each of us longs for?  What we really want?  To know Easter in us.

Poetry, of course, takes us to places that prose cannot.  It is a way of painting with words and, like any painting it looses something when you try to explain its meaning.  Its power lies in the way the words effect the soul.  It’s the difference between the women described in tonight’s gospel reading from Matthew (28.1f) as running from the tomb with great fear and joy, and the description of Mary Magdalene, in the gospel for Easter Day (John 20.11), standing alone and encountering the risen Christ who forbade her to touch him: she needed to take that encounter to heart, not to make sense of it.

St. Paul in his Letter to the Romans hints at something similar: ‘For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his’ (6:5).  Hopkins, on the other hand, reflects that same faith in fewer words: ‘Let Him … be a dayspring to the dimness in us.’

So here we are, like Mary Magdalene, before the mystery at the heart of our Faith, a Faith that is not focussed on the way we should live, or on the quality of life; not on creating a particular social order or helping people deal with pain and sickness, though it involves all of that and more.  Rather, ours is a faith that is centred on the death and resurrection of Christ.  It asks you and I to stand before that one event (for the two are one, though separated in time) and gaze upon it with loving eyes in the belief that that which you desire, that upon which you set your heart, will change you.  ‘Let him Easter in us.’

BAPTISED INTO LIFE IN CHRIST

This year we’re unable to celebrate this mystery with symbols that speak to us about life: fire and light; bread and wine.   We can’t encounter these sacramentals, as Mary Magdalene encountered Christ, material things which don’t speak into our understanding, but into our heart.  Although there is one symbol we can use – water.   If you can, go now and fill a glass bowl with water … 

We use water to wash and cleanse, to drink and enjoy.  But water also ends life, as it ended the lives of those Franciscans – and it can restore to life.  It is the ocean of birth and the river of death.  Hopkins was moved by the drowning of those five sisters, but he understood their death to be the fulfilment of baptism into new life, their rebirth into Christ, so concludes his poem:

Now burn, new born to the world,

                                                Doubled-naturèd name,

                        The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled

                                     Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame,

Mid-numbered He in three of the thunder-throne!

Hopkins saw in this wrecked ship the lot of a world gone astray.  He compares it with the ark of salvation, the barque in which we’re saved.  He saw in the water the womb of Mary and the birth of Christ, and beneath the waters of death saw the ground of our being – what he called the ‘granite of God’.   Tonight, we can affirm our own faith in the granite – the Christ-rock: just dip your fingers into the water and make the sign of the cross over yourself …

None of us are immune to the ravages of existence; all of us are at risk of infection.  Sometimes it can feel as if we, too, are drowning beneath the terror of it all.  There will be moments, maybe days or weeks, when we seem to be existing beneath a dark pall, when it seems as if the storms of life will never pass.  That is when we need to hold fast in Christ. 

Eventually the storm will pass and calm will come; it’s then we need to make sure that that which holds and carries us, the faith which we profess, the hope which we have and the love which holds us in his hands, lies at the heart of our attention.  And there will be moments when we just need to bask in the sun of God: ‘Let Him Easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness in us.’

CONCLUSION

So, let’s live as Easter people!  Live the faith we profess tonight: Christ is risen. For “… if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (Roms. 8:5)

This is the night when first you saved our fathers:
you freed the people of Israel from their slavery
and led them dry-shod through the sea.

This is the night when Christians everywhere,
washed clean of sin and freed from all defilement,
are restored to grace and grow together in holiness.

This is the night when Jesus Christ broke the chains of death

and rose triumphant from the grave.

Christ is risen, and hell is cast down!

Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!

Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!

Christ is risen, and life reigns in freedom!

Christ is risen, and the grave is emptied of the dead!

Let him Easter in us as we gaze upon him, not seeking to hold him but, rather, to be held in him who is our life and who offers us Easter.

Alleluia!!

"Lord, increase our faith!"

The days of the Triduum Sacrum, the three holy days known as Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter Vigil, offer a powerful doorway into the mystery of the Christian faith. What they tell us is that new life comes at a cost, it's not something that comes whenever you choose as you might decide on a makeover or somewhere different to go for your holiday. Nor will new life come by singing more choruses or screwing yourself up. It comes as we decide to die to live.

The Triduum outlines all that our faith is about – service through love, Christ known beneath the outer forms of creation and life through death. I'm dying to live might be the motto of these days. Christianity is the costly antidote to so much superficiality which masquerades as offering a better life. But you need to embrace and participate in those three days rather than avoid them if you’re to understand this faith. Is there any other way to deepen it?

MAY THEY ALL BE ONE

Today we feel the wind beneath our wings
Today  the hidden fountain flows and plays
Today the church draws breath at last and sings
As every flame becomes a Tongue of praise.
This is the feast of fire, air, and water
Poured out and breathed and kindled into earth.
The earth herself awakens to her maker
And is translated out of death to birth.
The right words come today in their right order
And every word spells freedom and release
Today the gospel crosses every border
All tongues are loosened by the Prince of Peace
Today the lost are found in His translation.
Whose mother-tongue is Love, in every nation.

 Malcolm Guite

PENTECOST witnesses the reversal of Babel when peoples divided became united.  The story of Babel concerned how God divided and scattered humankind so we could not become like God.  Yet our dis-union and separation was never God’s final purpose which Christ summed up in those words: ‘May they all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us’ (John 17:21)

With the Referendum in just over five weeks’ time I am struck by this thought.  There seems a constant tussle between two extremes, individualism and collectivism.  Are we primarily called to be individuals who can exist without the other?  Or do we belong together?  In upport of Individualism the 19^th cent. American social reformer and statesman, Frederick Douglass, wrote:  ‘We are distinct persons, and are each equally provided with faculties necessary to our individual existence. In leaving you, I took nothing but what belonged to me, and in no way lessened your means for obtaining an honest living. Your faculties remained yours, and mine became useful to their rightful owner.’  Whilst David Callahan of the think tank Demos recently stated that: “America works best when its citizens put aside individual self-interest to do great things together—when we elevate the common good,” 

This notion of the ‘common good’ having the greater moral claim is what has inspired society down the ages.  It has been the motivation of the Commonwealth and is a central pillar of Catholic social teaching.   John XXIII describes it as ‘the sum total of conditions of social living, whereby persons are enabled more fully and readily to achieve their own perfection.’ Mater et Magistra (1961).  It differs from pursuing the ‘greatest good for the greatest number’ in Christian terms because ‘the pursuit of the common good entrusts, both to the government and the Church, care for the greatest good of all persons, not just the greatest possible number. No individual is excluded from the common good. It is also therefore linked to the ideas of human dignity and authentic and integral human development, making them central aims of all societies.’ (Catholic Social Teaching.org.uk)    The common good also provides a balance against too strong an individualism by emphasising the social aspect of the human person.  Pentecost witnesses to God’s affirmation that we are created to be alone (Gen. 2:18) but, as difficult as it is, to discover ourselves in relation to the other. 

A reflection on the way in which we are ‘Better Together’ a certain Michael Gove said in March 2014: “Think globally.  Think what would happen if Scotland and England broke up. Do we think that Vladimir Putin would think, ‘Oh that's a pity’?  Or would he think, ‘Ah look, the second principal beacon of liberty in the world is a little more unstable. That plinth has been broken. I'm in a stronger position to do what I want’?” And, just 18 months ago, Boris Johnson wrote: “… we are on the verge of an utter catastrophe for this country. In just 10 days’ time … a fundamental part of our identity will have been killed. We will all have lost a way of … explaining ourselves to the world. We are on the verge of trashing our global name and brand in an act of self-mutilation …” And so on, and so forth, until this heartrending conclusion: “I am praying that we will wake from this sleepwalk to tragedy; and that the Scots vote no to divorce, and yes to Britain, the greatest political union ever.” (Daily Telegraph, September 10th, 2014)  Whatever the difficulties and problems, choosing the path of separation whilst recognising that this signals disunion seems, to me (and, not long ago, Messers Gove and Johnson), an act of wilful vandalism. 

As a race we seem to have a propensity to heed the call to self-centrism.  Today’s Feast of Pentecost s is not only the birth of the Church but, through Christ, completes humanity’s wholeness.  It is ‘a fulfilment of the prophecies that God would gather his scattered people together.  It is a decisive recasting in anthropological terms of human foundational order.’  (James Alison)  And whilst this recasting is a Godly act and can never be fully achieved in social terms, nonetheless it would seem that to seek to do otherwise, to seek to fragment society, is not what God intends for Creation but is, rather, to heed the Accuser who delights in preventing that unity which is in the mind of God.  As Pope Benedict affirmed on the Solemnity of Pentecost 2012: “Pentecost is the feast of union, comprehension and human communion. We can all see that in our world, although we are increasingly close to one another with the development of the means of communication and geographical distances seem to be disappearing, understanding and communion between people is both superficial and problematic.”

HOLY SATURDAY - God descends into our depths to draw us into Life

From time to time I notice comments concerning this day, Holy Saturday, which refer to it as a “day of rest” or one of “waiting and watching” – an “empty liturgical day”.  This may be the understanding of the western churches but it is not the Orthodox understanding of this day as is made clear in this Homily by St. Ephrem the Syrian (c.306-373), quoted in the Office of Readings for the Friday in Easter Week:

Death trampled our Lord underfoot, but he in his turn treated death as a highroad for his own feet. He submitted to it, enduring it willingly, because by this means he would be able to destroy death in spite of itself. Death had its own way when our Lord went out from Jerusalem carrying his cross; but when by a loud cry from that cross he summoned the dead from the underworld, death was powerless to prevent it.

Death slew him by means of the body which he had assumed, but that same body proved to be the weapon with which he conquered death. Concealed beneath the cloak of his manhood, his godhead engaged death in combat; but in slaying our Lord, death itself was slain. It was able to kill natural human life, but was itself killed by the life that is above the nature of man.

Death could not devour our Lord unless he possessed a body, neither could hell swallow him up unless he bore our flesh; and so he came in search of a chariot in which to ride to the underworld. This chariot was the body which he received from the Virgin; in it he invaded death’s fortress, broke open its strongroom and scattered all its treasure.

At length he came upon Eve, the mother of all the living. She was that vineyard whose enclosure her own hands had enabled death to violate, so that she could taste its fruit; thus the mother of all the living became the source of death for every living creature. But in her stead Mary grew up, a new vine in place of the old. Christ, the new life, dwelt within her. When death, with its customary impudence, came foraging for her mortal fruit, it encountered its own destruction in the hidden life that fruit contained. All unsuspecting, it swallowed him up, and in so doing released life itself and set free a multitude of men. …

We give glory to you, Lord, who raised up your cross to span the jaws of death like a bridge by which souls might pass from the region of the dead to the land of the living. We give glory to you who put on the body of a single mortal man and made it the source of life for every other mortal man. You are incontestably alive. Your murderers sowed your living body in the earth as farmers sow grain, but it sprang up and yielded an abundant harvest of men raised from the dead. …

This theology/spirituality of the anastasis or ‘harrowing of hell’ emerges from a number of scriptural references, not all of them apocryphal.  For example, in 1 Peter 3: 18b: ‘He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the Spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison’ and 4:6 that ‘… the gospel was proclaimed even to the dead, so that though they had been judged in the flesh as everyone is judged, they might live in the spirit as God does’.  This doctrine seems, in part, a response to the statement in Job: ‘As waters fail from a lake, and a river wastes away and dries up, so mortals lie down and do not rise again; until the heavens are no more, they will not awake or be roused out of their sleep. O that you would hide me in Sheol, that you would conceal me until your wrath is past, that you would appoint me a set time, and remember me!  If mortals die, will they live again? All the days of my service I would wait until my release should come.’ (14: 11-14) 

There is a rich liturgical observance of this work of Christ amongst the dead found in The Festal Menaion, translated into English by Mother Mary and Archimandrite (now Bishop) Kalistos Ware.  It has always seemed sad to me that, liturgically, we leave Christ on the Cross after the Liturgy of Good Friday  and so some years ago I used aspects of Orthodox Vespers of Good Friday and the Liturgy for Great and Holy Saturday to create a short Night Office of the Deposition and Burial of Christ which includes aspects of Tenebrae and concludes with the Blessing of Graves which can be celebrated on the evening of Good Friday.  It also offers a service for those who may not be able to attend the afternoon Liturgy of the Day (Anglicans seem to have ignored the fact that some people are unable to attend services during the day!). 

But there is more, it seems to me, than simply re-enacting the physical events of this movement from Cross to grave.  Something of deep significance in Christ’s journey into the realm of Death and Hades.  For the effect of His redemption works at both a conscious and unconscious level, affecting the whole cosmic order.   As one write has observed:

‘As a phase of individuation, Edinger* points to the descent as having “the greatest importance to depth psychology” in that it represents “the ego’s deliberate descent into the unconscious.” The light of the ego is temporarily extinguished in the upper world and is carried into the lower world where it rescues worthy contents of the unconscious and even conquers Death itself. (*Edinger, op cit, ‘Christian Archetype’, p 110)  The imagery of the descent into hell is analogous to the ego’s fall into the unconscious for a prolonged time and to a depth from which it emerges as one reborn, and as a result now seeks to serve the Self who serves the All.  Jung views this prolonged encounter as the psychological equivalent of the integration of the collective unconscious and as forming “an essential part of the individuation process.”(Jung, ‘Aion’, CW9ii, par 72).  Similarly, St John of the Cross speaks of “the cleansing fire of the dark night.” when, Divine light . . . acts upon the soul which is purged and prepared for perfect union in the same way as fire acts upon a log of wood in order to transform it into itself. (Soul Afire, op cit. 258-259)’  © ‘Higher Ground’ by Ann K. Elliott

Far from Holy and Great Saturday, lying as it does at the heart of the paschal mystery, being a day when ‘nothing happens’ it is, arguably, the great day of salvation.  For whilst western artists have portrayed the glory of resurrection as the appearance of Christ to humankind, orthodox iconography presents us with the image of Christ drawing Adam and Eve, our archetypal ancestors, from their slumbers into the Mandorla of His divinity.  This action symbolizes that his victory redeems all humankind, even back to the beginning.  The dynamic of resurrection is taking place in the past, present, and future.  (http://www.orthodoxroad.com/christs-descent-into-hell-icon-explanation/)  And our ceaseless task is to open ourselves more and more deeply to Christ’s gracious, compassionate invitation into life.

“When in the new tomb you, the Redeemer of all, had been laid for the sake of all, hell became a laughing stock and, seeing you, quaked with fear; the bars were smashed, the gates were shattered, the graves were opened, the dead arose ...When you went down to death, O immortal Life, you slew hell with the lightning flash of your Godhead” (from: The Good Friday Matins of Great Saturday)

i thank You God

Just read this poem in Janet Morley's book, 'The Heart's Time - A Poem a Day for Lent and Easter'.  The words leapt out at me and awakened something fresh and vital (do I detect echoes of Hopkins and the Countess of Craven?) Thank you, Janet - (and, more particularly, e.e.cummings:

i thank You God for this most amazing
day: for the leaping of greenly spirits of the trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(i who have died am alive again today
and this is the sun's birthday; this is the birth
day of life and love and wings: and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all; nothing human merely being
doubt unimaginable You!

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)


e e cummings (1894-1962)

EASTER 4 - Sunday, May 3rd 2009

INTRODUCTION

Now the bright morning-star, Day’s harbinger,
Comes dancing from the East, and leads with her
The flowery May, who from her green lap throws
The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.
Hail, bounteous May, that dost inspire
Mirth, and youth, and warm desire!
Woods and groves are of thy dressing;
Hill and dale doth boast thy blessing.
Thus we salute thee with our early song,
And welcome thee, and wish thee long.

So wrote John Milton, one of our greatest 17th century poets. May is a month that many of us love above all others for it heralds the end of winter and the coming of summer. May is the month when our landscape changes, our gardens come into flower and the trees are newly clothed in green. The American author and philosopher, Henry Thoreau, put it even more succinctly when he declared: “Spring - an experience in immortality.”

Today, as we continue to celebrate the joy of the resurrection and our desire that Christ might Easter in us, “be a dayspring to the dimness within us”, we are presented with three focii for our attention. Firstly, Jesus’ gospel affirmation that he is the Good Shepherd. Secondly, the Baptism of Alfreda. And finally, the Crowning of Mary on this, the first Sunday of Mary’s month of May.


CHRIST, THE GOOD SHEPHERD
“I am the good shepherd.” said Jesus. “The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” Shepherds, of course, are few and far between in Romford these days! I guess few of us will have ever met one. And as to talking about people as a lot of sheep, well, that could be thought of as highly insulting. When I lived at Hilfield Friary, in Dorset, my room overlooked the next-door farm and, at this time of the year, I had to put up with the sound of sheep bleeting away all night long. During the day, all they seemed to do was to aimlessly wander around the pastures chewing on this or that piece of grass.

And the shepherd who looked after them couldn’t have been further removed from the image we often have in the bible – someone who searches out good grazing on the barren hillsides of Palestine. This one used to whiz around the hillsides on a noisy four-wheeled motorbike!

“I am the good shepherd.” said Jesus. The emphases here is not on the sheep but on the shepherd and it’s one of the great “I am” statements that St. John places on the lips of Jesus and which he concludes by saying: “I lay down my life of my own free will and … I have power to take it up again.” St. John’s focus is on Jesus and on that dynamic of letting go and raising up, abasement and glory. The sheep in the parable need to be understood in relationship to the shepherd, and because of his power to bring new life they trust him and follow where he leads. The Good Shepherd will lead them into fresh, life-giving pastures.

But there’s more to the parable than this. The Israelites were a nomadic people whose wealth lay in sheep-rearing. This distinguished them from other nations, such as the Egyptians, and gave rise to the concept of the ideal leader as a Shepherd-King, an ideal focussed on David. The Shepherd-King not only provided pasturage but liberation from foes and protection from danger. Hence Isaiah prophesied that God would call the Persian King, Cyrus, “my Shepherd” because of his role in liberating Israel from Exile.

So for Jesus to say “I am the Good Shepherd” was for him to claim to be the Shepherd Israel sought – a claim which was political as much as a religious.

In the Old Testament Ezekiel had railed against the shepherds of Israel and prophesied that Yahweh Himself would take the role of Shepherd once more: he would rescue them, gather them in and give them good land for grazing:
“I will search for the lost
recover the straggler
strengthen the sick
leave the healthy and strong to play
and give them their proper food.” (Ez. 34: 16)

We’ve moved a long way from those insipid Sunday School pictures of Jesus: here he is projecting himself as the true leader for Israel. And, more than that, just a few verses before, Jesus had said: “Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.” (Jn. 10:7) Shepherds in his day literally slept in the entrance to the sheepfold, both to protect the sheep from scavengers and to prevent them wandering off at night. Nothing could get in or out unless without permission of the shepherd.

Last week I asked how we ‘enter’ the Church – the people of God, or the ‘fold’ if you like – and the answer, of course, is through Baptism. Baptism into Christ enables us to become part of Christ’s fold, his Body.

Today we are welcoming Alfreda into this fold and the one lesson I hope her parents and godparents will take from our readings today is simply this – the she will need to keep her eyes fixed on Jesus – the Good Shepherd. And she will be helped in doing this if you, her parents and godparents, set the example. There is so much in the world that invites our attention, but keeping one eye firmly focussed on Jesus will make sure that the way we view and respond to life is through his eyes and heart. The Church, the fold of Christ, is there to nurture and nourish her. Here we are fed through Word and Sacrament: our Good Shepherd offers us His life and assures us that he will never desert us. We only need to look to Him.


MARY’S MONTH OF MAY
And, in all this, we have the example of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. She who said: “Do whatever he tells you.” (John 2:5)

This month, which is about new-birth and new creation, has long been called ‘Mary’s Month’ because Mary, like the season, was pregnant with new life. So that wonderful phrase of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘Let Him Easter in us’ has a very particular resonance. Let Christ’s life, pregnant in Mary, be realised in us. Let His new life, pregnant in the world, Easter in us! As Hopkins wrote in another poem:
Ask of Her, the mighty Mother.
Her reply puts this other
Question: What is Spring?-
Growth in every thing… (The May Magnificat)

At the end of Mass we shall crown the statue of our Lady and salute her as our Queen and Mother. She who carried the seed of new life reminds us of the way in which each of us is invited to bring new life into the world. Each of us is called to be creative, like Mary, and make our own ‘yes’ to God. To offer ourselves to be bearers of His life and His love in the world.

CONCLUSION
So let today recall us, in all these different ways, to the new beginnings, the ‘green shoots’ of new life, which the Christian Faith seeks to affirm and nurture. Christ calls us to Himself, the Good Shepherd, and invites us into relationship with Him. To turn our gaze to Him as sheep to the shepherd, or a child to its Father.

To look to Mary and find, in her, encouragement and inspiration as we seek to nurture the life of Christ within us and within the world.

Holy Mary, now we crown you
Honoured queen of all our race
Noble Virgin, may our tribute
Win your love and gain us grace.

Queen of heaven, while creation
Speaks the grandeur of God's love,
Mould our hearts to seek his glory;
May we see the Shepherd’s face.

Amen

VIGIL of the RESURRECTION 2009

“Let him Easter in us,
be a dayspring to the dimness of us.” INTRODUCTION

So wrote Gerard Manly Hopkins in his epic poem, The Wreck of the Deutschland, a ship was wrecked off the coast of Harwich in 1875 and in which five Franciscan nuns, fleeing persecution in Germany, were drowned. ‘Let him Easter in us’

It is such an odd use of the word, for surely ‘Easter’ is an event, not an experience; a noun not a verb. Yet, here is Hopkins inviting us to let Christ ‘Easter in us’. Yet, as someone has pointed out, it’s a great way to look at the real truth, the transforming reality of Easter for it’s about an activity, Easter, that does not apply to something we do but something ‘he’ does in us.

Let Easter get into us. Let Easter come and live where we live. Let Easter permeate our souls. Let him Easter in us, and be a dayspring to the dimness of us.

So tonight we gather, after the long rigours of Lent and Holy Week, to do just that. To let Christ ‘Easter’ in us. Not to wistfully recall a long-ago episode, affirm our faith or even to be present at this Liturgy. But to be present before the One who can Easter in our lives. To be transformed, given new life, find meaning and purpose. Isn’t that what each of us long for? What we really want? To know Easter in us?

Poetry, of course, takes us to places that prose cannot. It is a way of painting with words and, like any painting it looses something when you try to explain its meaning. Its power lies in its effects in the soul. It’s the difference between the women we heard of in tonight’s gospel who fled in terror from the tomb because they couldn’t understand what had happened, and Mary Magdalene (whom we shall hear about tomorrow). She returned alone and encountered the risen Christ who forbade her to touch him: she needed to take that encounter to heart, not to make sense of it.

St. Paul in his Letter to the Romans hints at something similar: ‘For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.’ (6:5)

Hopkins reflects that same faith in fewer words: ‘Let Him … be a dayspring to the dimness in us.’

So, here we stand like Mary Magdalene before the mystery at the heart of our Faith, a Faith that is not focussed on the way we should live, or on the quality of life; not on creating a particular social order or helping people deal with pain and sickness. Though it involves all of that and more. Rather, ours is a faith that is centred on the death and resurrection of Jesus.

It asks you and I to stand before that one event (for the two are one, though separated in time) and gaze upon it with loving eyes in the belief that that which you desire, upon which you set your heart, will change you. ‘Let him Easter in us.’

BAPTISED INTO LIFE IN CHRIST
Tonight we celebrate with symbols that can speak to us about life: fire and light; bread and wine. We are to encounter them as Mary Magdalene encountered Christ: not seeking to understand their meaning but letting them speak into the heart. And one symbol, in particular, that carries so much. Water. Water to wash and cleanse, to refresh and enjoy. But water that also kills - and restores to life. It is the ocean of birth and the river of death. Hopkins was moved by the drowning of those five Franciscan nuns. But he understood this death to be the fulfilment of baptism into new life: their rebirth into Christ:
Now burn, new born to the world,
Doubled-naturèd name,
The heaven-flung, heart-fleshed, maiden-furled
Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame,
Mid-numbered He in three of the thunder-throne!

Hopkins saw in this wrecked ship the lot of a world gone astray. He compares it with the ark of salvation, the bark in which we are saved. He saw in this water the womb of Mary and the birth of Christ, and beneath the waters of death he saw the ground of our being – the ‘granite of God’.

Tonight we shall affirm our own faith in Christ as water is poured out over (him and) us. None of us is immune to the ravages of existence. Sometimes we can feel as if we, too, are drowning. There will be moments, maybe days or weeks, when everything is dark and it seems as if the storms of life will never pass. That is when we need to hold fast in Christ.

At other times, at times when there is calm, we need to make sure that that which holds and carries us, the faith which we profess, the hope which we have and the love which holds us in His hands has the focus in our attention. And there will be moments when we just need to bask in the sun of God: ‘Let Him Easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness in us.’

CONCLUSION
So let us live as Easter people! Let us live the faith we profess tonight: Christ is risen. And “… if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” (Rms. 8:5)

For This is the night when first you saved our fathers:
you freed the people of Israel from their slavery
and led them dry-shod through the sea.
This is the night when Christians everywhere,
washed clean of sin and freed from all defilement,
are restored to grace and grow together in holiness.
This is the night
when Jesus Christ broke the chains of death
and rose triumphant from the grave.

Christ is risen, and hell is cast down!
Christ is risen, and the demons are fallen!
Christ is risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is risen, and life reigns in freedom!
Christ is risen, and the grave is emptied of the dead!

So, let him Easter in us who stand in his presence and
gaze upon him, not seeking to hold him but, rather, to be held in him who is our life and who offers us Easter.

Amen. Alleluia!!