The Baptism of the Lord
Until very recently there was no feast of the Baptism of the Lord; Epiphany was the end of Christmastide and commemorated three very disparate events: the visit of the Magi, the Baptism of the Lord and the Marriage at Cana. So far we haven’t been given a separate feast for the Marriage at Cana, but I live in hope.
It is a good thing that our attention is now properly focussed on the Baptism; only liturgical geeks like me knew that it was one of the vents celebrated on 6 January; most people never thought about it at all, although it is one of the most important events in Jesus’ life, and is the source of arguably the most important event in our lives, our own baptism. This event was not only important to Jesus as an experience, as confirmation – if he needed it, and I suspect that it was at least welcome, if not necessary – that he was who he believed himself to be, but it was an event which actually made a difference to his status, and certainly marked the official opening of his mission as Messiah. It would be wrong, in fact it would be heretical, to suggest that it had an ontological erect on his person: he did not begin to be the Servant of God at his baptism, and he certainly did not become Son of God at his baptism. But I think there is a sense in which he did begin to be the Messiah, King, Priest and Sacrifice at his baptism. A parallel might be like this: the infant son of a king, when his father dies, does become king in fact – ontologically, one might say. But the exercise of his kingship does not take effect from the moment of his father’s death. A regent will rule on his behalf until such time as he is declared capable of ruling and – this is the point – anointed, or crowned, or whatever the ritual is. There was never a time when he was not king; but his reign was, all the same inaugurated at his coronation. It’s an imperfect parallel, but you see what I mean. That is why St Peter could say that “God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ”. Jesus is the Son of God incarnate. There was no time when he was not Lord and Christ. But it was from his baptism that this actually took effect. “Christ”, like “Messiah”, means the anointed one, and this was his official anointing, the official anointing as King, Priest and Sacrifice of him who had always been so. It is clear from the sequel that it made a difference: Luke says “Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the desert”. He had always been full of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. But he was now full of the Holy Spirit to a purpose: for his mission, for his messiahship. Something new had begun.
So it was central to Jesus as a person. It was also central to us. Just as I said at Christmas that when Jesus entered into his inheritance, it was not he but the inheritance that came of age, just so when he was baptised, it was not he but baptism that was regenerated, and ourselves with it. Although the baptism Jesus received was John’s, he was himself instituting a new baptism, the sacrament of Christian baptism. God has always been our Father. But at this moment that fatherhood came into effect in its completeness. No, Jesus didn’t “become God’s Son” at his baptism. But I think we did; and our own baptism, the baptism of each one of us individually, is simply an individual application of what took place at the Jordan. It was the inauguration of Jesus’ mission; it was also the beginning of what he referred to as “his baptism”, for whose accomplishment or completion he longed.
It is interesting that the feast of the Baptism holds the same place in relation to Christmas as the feast of the Trinity does to Paschaltide. The feasts conclude the seasons, and herald the return of Ordinary Time the following day. They also do not seem to have much to do with the seasons to which they act as finale. Our own baptism day may be closely associated with our birth day, but Jesus’ wasn’t; it took place, Luke tells us, thirty years later; and I think that’s a bit of a red herring. The point is, I think, in both cases, to remind us that God is the Trinity. In Paschaltide we have been attending largely to the risen Christ, with a nod to the Holy Spirit at Pentecost; although Christ is glorified, we do still run the risk of forgetting, so to speak. “the rest of God”, especially since we’d previously spent six-odd weeks fighting our way through Lent in company of a very human Jesus. The risk is still greater during Advent and Christmastide, when we are looking at a human family with a baby – and babies bring out the human and sentimental in all of us. There are miracles, yes; there are the magi; and there are frequent reminders that this baby is more than he seems. But it isn’t enough. Whatever our intellects do, our devotion remains by the crib. It needs something to shake it back to the whole picture, not for the sake of cold realism – there is nothing cold about the Trinity, as St Augustine could tell you – but in order that we should not forget why we are celebrating at all. The Baptism of Jesus is the only clear manifestation of the Trinity. If the Transfiguration or possibly the Sermon on the Mount is the new Testament Sinai, then the Old Testament foreshadowing of the baptism is not Ezekiel and the waters flowing from the Temple or any such thing, but Abraham’s hospitality to the three mysterious beings at the vale of Mambre.
Whether it was a manifestation that all or some could see and hear, or whether it was for Jesus alone, is not clear in Luke’s version. But both Matthew and Mark say he saw the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit descending. It isn’t very important. I once heard a sermon on this depicting the event as a wet young man standing in the river surrounded by a flock of doves, one of which settled on his shoulder. All right; maybe it did look like no more than that to bystanders, but it was more than that, and Jesus made sure his disciples – and we – knew it. I say “Jesus made sure”. Because if no one else saw what really happened, then this event joins those texts of the Gospel which one considers either most suspect or – as I do – most privileged, because they can come only from Jesus himself. It joins those precious moments of the Temptations and the Agony in the Garden. That is most suitable, because it shares another vital characteristic with them.
If the Baptism of the Lord is a clear manifestation of the Trinity, it is also a clear statement of the two natures in Christ, as are those two other occasions witnessed and transmitted by him alone. “Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil…For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted…For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin.” However, if he had not been God, he would not have been able to redeem us – the devil knew that, which is why he was so keen to find out whether or not he was the Son of God. In Gethsemane the same applies. His weakness – his agony indeed – highlights his true humanity; his total obedience shows his unique sonship; and again, the magnitude of his suffering. paradoxically also show his Godhead. However, the Baptism is perhaps the clearest manifestation: he is the Son, the Second Person of the manifested Trinity; but he is also human, as he shows by submitting to the baptism of John. He does not suggest thereby that he has sins to repent of: as John says, he is the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. He takes away the sins, yes, but takes upon himself, too; that is what Gethsemane is. No man, therefore could have suffered as he did. And that was what the Temptations were: in him the devil was tempting the whole human race. All this began at the Baptism.
He regenerated the baptismal waters and the human race: may God fulfil the grace of our own baptism and conform us perfectly to the image of his beloved Son.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Quis enim mihi est in caelo? Et a te quid volui super terram?
What can I give Him
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man
I would do my part;
But what I can I give Him:
Give my heart.
Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man
I would do my part;
But what I can I give Him:
Give my heart.
Saturday, January 3, 2009
Jesu, quem velatum nunc aspicio, oro fiat illud quod tam sitio: ut, te revelata cernens facie, visu sim beatus tuae gloriae
Epiphany 2009
Not much attention is paid to Epiphany in the UK, especially now that it simply falls on the second Sunday after Christmas rather than having its own special day on the sixth of January. It is simply Twelfth Night, the day when you are supposed to take down the Christmas decorations, on pain of appalling bad luck in the year to come. In Spain, it is the day when presents are given, the equivalent of Christmas Day in the UK; in Italy it is celebrated as Befana (though what witches have to do with Epiphany I do not know) and in France they eat, with much ritual, the Gateau des Rois – very much nicer than Christmas Pudding – and the person who gets the bean in their portion becomes King or Queen for the day. But I’m not sure that they are more concerned than we are about the significance of the feast, which is a pity. Epiphany is perhaps the richest of all the feasts of the Church’s year. I don’t say it’s the most important; it clearly isn’t that; but first, it is the only feast that celebrates more than one event: the coming of the Magi, the Baptism of Christ, and the Marriage at Cana; and, second, it is suggestive as no other feast is, overflowing with so many and so varied themes. It has been called the Feast of Light, and seen as a celebration of the stars and of the angels which belong to them. It is the justification of lavishness and riches in the service of God; it is the distant prophecy of the entry of the Gentiles into the Church; it tells of Christ’s triple nature as God, mortal, and universal priest-mediator; it contains both the Blessed Trinity and the Holy Family, it is a celebration of life and joy in the Marriage at Cana – and it is an indisputable expression both of Mary’s care for us and of her power with her divine son.
But you couldn’t exhaust Epiphany with a list, however long. And the wonderful thing about the feasts of the Church, a characteristic they share with the Bible, is that they say different things to you each year. I am no mystic, despite my monastic past. I am never rapt in ecstasy, and I do not have an intense or palpable sense of the presence of God – not most of the time, at any rate. My prayer is mostly just like yours is mostly: as disturbed and dissipated, as seemingly useless, as boring and unsatisfying for the one praying. But one thing I have been given – as can be guessed from the fact that the last verse of the hymn “Adoro te” most fully sums up my spirituality – is a longing, at times an almost unbearable longing, for God. Not even for the “heavenly homeland”; not a nostalgia for a golden age; for God. I suspect that the dismal failure of so many of my hour-long prayer-times is due to the fact that one can’t just sit and long for an hour at a time without becoming both distracted and self-conscious. For what, precisely, do I long? That I can’t tell you. I know that when in the psalms I come across verses such as “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water”, I am saying something profoundly true, not in the abstract, not with an undertone of “wouldn’t it be nice”, but very specifically true for me.
But I can’t tell you what are the characteristics of this Person for whom I long. I have never met him closely enough to know that; I can only tell you what he is not. I lose interest pretty quickly when people list the lovable or adorable characteristics of God. I suppose they are right, though at times I feel like crying (in an echo of my History supervisor at Cambridge) “Evidence! Evidence!”. Those characteristics are just not interesting. They are not gripping. They do not hold my attention. They feel abstract and irrelevant. I know that Jesus is the Good Shepherd. I know that God is Love. I know that Jesus is the Wisdom of God and the Power of God. And I know that he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And these are things which he has said about himself and which are, therefore, true: no lack of evidence there: Truth himself speaks truly, or there’s nothing true. I have been known to wrestle with these during prayer time, trying to squeeze some spiritual or even emotional response from myself. It cannot be done, except insofar as I succeed in not thinking about the concepts but connect with the One about whom all these words are used. Because spiritual response does not take place in the brain but bypasses it; and the only way words will ever elicit it is if they are allowed to go straight to the soul, where a response undoubtedly takes place, but not one that can be explained, rationalised, or, sometimes, even perceived sufficiently for it to be comprehensible, recognisable, or make any sense at all. The other things, the non-biblical things that people say because they like or approve of a certain characteristic or feel the need of it in their own lives (under this heading come not only personal devotions, some most odd, but also all the groups who have hi-jacked Jesus and him into one of them), all these I can only ignore. They do not speak to me, the more so because, as doctrines and teachings of human beings, they risk misrepresenting the One for whom I long.
I can feel you getting restive. This insight into the spiritual life of the blogger is gripping, I hear you say, but what has it got to do with Epiphany? As Paul would say, much in every way. Let me return to what I said earlier: the feasts say something different every year, and something different to every person. This year, and to me, Epiphany is the feast of longing, the feast of those who consider no effort too much in their search for their heart’s desire. To me there can be no more potent symbol of longing than those Magi, whoever they were, from heaven-knows-where, following a star on the slimmest of evidence to heaven-knows-where, in search of a shadowy king of a mysterious tiny nation whose significance on the world stage was almost nil. Why? They could not have told you why, they could not have told you what they hoped he would do for them, what would happen if they did find him. All they knew was that they were drawn so forcible that they could not resist; and the pull was not on their bodies but on their hearts and souls. They did not know what it was for which they longed. But they longed, unbearably; nothing could compete.
Today or maybe not today
Tonight or not tonight,
All voices that command or pray
Calling me,
Shall kindle in my soul such fire
And in my eyes such light
That I shall see that heart’s desire
I long to see.
Not much attention is paid to Epiphany in the UK, especially now that it simply falls on the second Sunday after Christmas rather than having its own special day on the sixth of January. It is simply Twelfth Night, the day when you are supposed to take down the Christmas decorations, on pain of appalling bad luck in the year to come. In Spain, it is the day when presents are given, the equivalent of Christmas Day in the UK; in Italy it is celebrated as Befana (though what witches have to do with Epiphany I do not know) and in France they eat, with much ritual, the Gateau des Rois – very much nicer than Christmas Pudding – and the person who gets the bean in their portion becomes King or Queen for the day. But I’m not sure that they are more concerned than we are about the significance of the feast, which is a pity. Epiphany is perhaps the richest of all the feasts of the Church’s year. I don’t say it’s the most important; it clearly isn’t that; but first, it is the only feast that celebrates more than one event: the coming of the Magi, the Baptism of Christ, and the Marriage at Cana; and, second, it is suggestive as no other feast is, overflowing with so many and so varied themes. It has been called the Feast of Light, and seen as a celebration of the stars and of the angels which belong to them. It is the justification of lavishness and riches in the service of God; it is the distant prophecy of the entry of the Gentiles into the Church; it tells of Christ’s triple nature as God, mortal, and universal priest-mediator; it contains both the Blessed Trinity and the Holy Family, it is a celebration of life and joy in the Marriage at Cana – and it is an indisputable expression both of Mary’s care for us and of her power with her divine son.
But you couldn’t exhaust Epiphany with a list, however long. And the wonderful thing about the feasts of the Church, a characteristic they share with the Bible, is that they say different things to you each year. I am no mystic, despite my monastic past. I am never rapt in ecstasy, and I do not have an intense or palpable sense of the presence of God – not most of the time, at any rate. My prayer is mostly just like yours is mostly: as disturbed and dissipated, as seemingly useless, as boring and unsatisfying for the one praying. But one thing I have been given – as can be guessed from the fact that the last verse of the hymn “Adoro te” most fully sums up my spirituality – is a longing, at times an almost unbearable longing, for God. Not even for the “heavenly homeland”; not a nostalgia for a golden age; for God. I suspect that the dismal failure of so many of my hour-long prayer-times is due to the fact that one can’t just sit and long for an hour at a time without becoming both distracted and self-conscious. For what, precisely, do I long? That I can’t tell you. I know that when in the psalms I come across verses such as “O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry and weary land where there is no water”, I am saying something profoundly true, not in the abstract, not with an undertone of “wouldn’t it be nice”, but very specifically true for me.
But I can’t tell you what are the characteristics of this Person for whom I long. I have never met him closely enough to know that; I can only tell you what he is not. I lose interest pretty quickly when people list the lovable or adorable characteristics of God. I suppose they are right, though at times I feel like crying (in an echo of my History supervisor at Cambridge) “Evidence! Evidence!”. Those characteristics are just not interesting. They are not gripping. They do not hold my attention. They feel abstract and irrelevant. I know that Jesus is the Good Shepherd. I know that God is Love. I know that Jesus is the Wisdom of God and the Power of God. And I know that he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And these are things which he has said about himself and which are, therefore, true: no lack of evidence there: Truth himself speaks truly, or there’s nothing true. I have been known to wrestle with these during prayer time, trying to squeeze some spiritual or even emotional response from myself. It cannot be done, except insofar as I succeed in not thinking about the concepts but connect with the One about whom all these words are used. Because spiritual response does not take place in the brain but bypasses it; and the only way words will ever elicit it is if they are allowed to go straight to the soul, where a response undoubtedly takes place, but not one that can be explained, rationalised, or, sometimes, even perceived sufficiently for it to be comprehensible, recognisable, or make any sense at all. The other things, the non-biblical things that people say because they like or approve of a certain characteristic or feel the need of it in their own lives (under this heading come not only personal devotions, some most odd, but also all the groups who have hi-jacked Jesus and him into one of them), all these I can only ignore. They do not speak to me, the more so because, as doctrines and teachings of human beings, they risk misrepresenting the One for whom I long.
I can feel you getting restive. This insight into the spiritual life of the blogger is gripping, I hear you say, but what has it got to do with Epiphany? As Paul would say, much in every way. Let me return to what I said earlier: the feasts say something different every year, and something different to every person. This year, and to me, Epiphany is the feast of longing, the feast of those who consider no effort too much in their search for their heart’s desire. To me there can be no more potent symbol of longing than those Magi, whoever they were, from heaven-knows-where, following a star on the slimmest of evidence to heaven-knows-where, in search of a shadowy king of a mysterious tiny nation whose significance on the world stage was almost nil. Why? They could not have told you why, they could not have told you what they hoped he would do for them, what would happen if they did find him. All they knew was that they were drawn so forcible that they could not resist; and the pull was not on their bodies but on their hearts and souls. They did not know what it was for which they longed. But they longed, unbearably; nothing could compete.
Today or maybe not today
Tonight or not tonight,
All voices that command or pray
Calling me,
Shall kindle in my soul such fire
And in my eyes such light
That I shall see that heart’s desire
I long to see.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Sermon for the Feast of Mary, Mother of God
Germinavit radix Jesse: orta est stella ex Jacob; Virgo peperit Salvatorem: te laudamus. Deus noster.
The root of Jesse has flowered; a star has risen out of Jacob: the Virgin has given birth to the Saviour: we praise thee, our God.
Whose fest is this? Is it Our Lord’s; are we celebrating his circumcision” Is it Our Lady’s; are we celebrating her motherhood It’s both; but this year, perhaps because the earthly Israel is involved in such terrible bloodshed, it seems to me that we are celebrating something which is at the root of both, and which. as the world calculates time, goes back far beyond either. We are celebrating the true Israel. The chosen people, God’s election. As Paul insists, the New Covenant has not abolished or deleted that election. Mary is the daughter of Zion, and Jesus is – well, Jesus is both the summation of Israel which was chosen, and the God who chose Israel. As he did not come to destroy the Law but to fulfil it, so he did not destroy Israel but fulfil it. his own received him not; but that does not change the ontological effect he had on his own, and also on those sheep who were not of that fold.
From the time of Moses and long before the time of Moses, Israel is a blessed nation, and in its name were all the nations of the world to be blessed.. It might seem hard to understand why God – who is God of the whole earth, should choose one particular nation out of all nations to be his own; why he should, in the early days, choose one man out of all to be the vehicle of his blessing. We can hardly imagine it: Abraham was the only believer in the entire world: he had no support or affirmation from any other human being. That is why he is the father of faith = he’s almost faith personified. The reason, I think, is not that God prefers or chooses any person or nation to the exclusion of any others. He is infinite and therefore capable of preferring, absolutely, each one of us, and does. However, we can’t grasp that; indeed, if God hadn’t begun by choosing Abraham and not Lot, Israel and not Esau, we simply couldn’t have grasped the concept of being “chosen”. And it is only once we have grasped that concept that we can begin to grasp the fact that all creation, and each member of creation, is his chosen – in just that “preferential” sense.
“What advantage then has the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision? Much in every way. First indeed because the words of God were committed to them. For what if some of them have not believed? Shall their unbelief make the faith o God without effect? God forbid. But God is true.” there has grown up – though I think it is less strong now – a form of “replacement theology” in which Christianity is seen as the replacement of Judaism, the Church the replacement of the synagogue. There is a small amount of truth in this, in that present-day Judaism is incomplete; it needs the Christian revelation to complete it. Christianity is not the replacement but the fulfilment of Judaism. Jesus himself said so; and Paul who might be accused of being at the origin of the replacement theology, insisted that there is one God who justifies circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision by faith. “Do we then”, he asks. “destroy the Law through faith? God forbid; but we establish the Law”. A possible analogy, it seems to me, is the relation between an engagement and a marriage. When the couple have married, they could say with equal truth “The engagement is at an end, it is over it is not longer relevant”; and “The engagement has been fulfilled, has come to full flowering, in the marriage.” So too with Judaism and Christianity. The flower that came forth from the root of Jesse is the full flowering of Judaism. Christianity is simply the full faith implicitly contained in Judaism, and is named after its full flowering. Jesus was not a Jew by chance. “For the end – in both senses – of the Law is Christ, unto justice to everyone that believes”.
the motherhood of Mary contains all we need to know about the new dispensation: the Virgin overshadowed by the Holy Spirit gave birth to Jesus Christ, God incarnate, true God and true Man, who was born to save his people from their sins. Yet that same Jesus was circumcised according to the old dispensation, thus sealing his identity as a Jew. The Apostle of the Gentiles used very strong language in order to insist on this, to stress the continuity between the two Testaments. It would certainly never have occurred to him that he had ceased to be a Jew because he accepted Jesus as the Christ. “I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit—I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised!” I have no doubt that although Mary suffered greatly at the sufferings of her son, that sword which Simeon predicted would pierce her heart was made up largely of that same great sadness and continual sorrow of which Paul speaks. She too was an Israelite, and could see that blindness in part had happened in Israel. The will of her heart, indeed, and her prayer to God, was for the unto salvation. For she could bear then witness that they had a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they, not knowing the justice of God, and seeking to establish their own, had not submitted themselves to the justice of God.
Blindness in part. justification by faith and not by law. And yet, it was an Israelite, a daughter of Abraham, whom God chose as his mother. “It is not as though God's word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham's children. On the contrary, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." In other words, it is not the natural children who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring.” No, God had not cast away his people. Mary also was an Israelite of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Judah.
We are told that God is able to bring good out of evil, and there is no doubt that Mary believed this, and so did Jesus – except during those agonising hours in Gethsemane. No, the Israelites have not ceased to be children of God. “As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God's gifts and his call are irrevocable.” What has happened is that those who were not Israelites according to the flesh have received the sonship which previously appeared reserved only to Israelites. it is as if the failure of part of Israel had opened a breach in that dividing wall which Jesus cam to destroy, and allowed the Gentiles to enter Somehow, by their offence, salvation is come to the Gentiles; that blindness in part is temporary: it is to last only until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, and so all Israel will be saved.
There’s a homily for the feast of St Stephen by Fulgentius of Ruspe which seems to me to express beautifully the end result of all this. “This is the true life, in which Paul is not brought to confusion by the murder of Stephen, but Stephen rejoices at the company of Paul, and charity gives joy to both. Charity in Stephen overcame the ferocity of the Jews; in Paul, charity covered a multitude of sins. Charity has given to both the possession of the Kingdom of Heaven.” Paul, the Jew, and Stephen, the Gentile, will be joyfully united in the Kingdom of Heaven. “For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? If the part of the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; if the root is holy, so are the branches. If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you…And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?”
“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of the children of God.” Children of God, and with the Only-Begotten Son, children of Mary, mother of God, and mother of the Church.
Venerunt nobis vere omnia bona pariter cum illa!
The root of Jesse has flowered; a star has risen out of Jacob: the Virgin has given birth to the Saviour: we praise thee, our God.
Whose fest is this? Is it Our Lord’s; are we celebrating his circumcision” Is it Our Lady’s; are we celebrating her motherhood It’s both; but this year, perhaps because the earthly Israel is involved in such terrible bloodshed, it seems to me that we are celebrating something which is at the root of both, and which. as the world calculates time, goes back far beyond either. We are celebrating the true Israel. The chosen people, God’s election. As Paul insists, the New Covenant has not abolished or deleted that election. Mary is the daughter of Zion, and Jesus is – well, Jesus is both the summation of Israel which was chosen, and the God who chose Israel. As he did not come to destroy the Law but to fulfil it, so he did not destroy Israel but fulfil it. his own received him not; but that does not change the ontological effect he had on his own, and also on those sheep who were not of that fold.
From the time of Moses and long before the time of Moses, Israel is a blessed nation, and in its name were all the nations of the world to be blessed.. It might seem hard to understand why God – who is God of the whole earth, should choose one particular nation out of all nations to be his own; why he should, in the early days, choose one man out of all to be the vehicle of his blessing. We can hardly imagine it: Abraham was the only believer in the entire world: he had no support or affirmation from any other human being. That is why he is the father of faith = he’s almost faith personified. The reason, I think, is not that God prefers or chooses any person or nation to the exclusion of any others. He is infinite and therefore capable of preferring, absolutely, each one of us, and does. However, we can’t grasp that; indeed, if God hadn’t begun by choosing Abraham and not Lot, Israel and not Esau, we simply couldn’t have grasped the concept of being “chosen”. And it is only once we have grasped that concept that we can begin to grasp the fact that all creation, and each member of creation, is his chosen – in just that “preferential” sense.
“What advantage then has the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision? Much in every way. First indeed because the words of God were committed to them. For what if some of them have not believed? Shall their unbelief make the faith o God without effect? God forbid. But God is true.” there has grown up – though I think it is less strong now – a form of “replacement theology” in which Christianity is seen as the replacement of Judaism, the Church the replacement of the synagogue. There is a small amount of truth in this, in that present-day Judaism is incomplete; it needs the Christian revelation to complete it. Christianity is not the replacement but the fulfilment of Judaism. Jesus himself said so; and Paul who might be accused of being at the origin of the replacement theology, insisted that there is one God who justifies circumcision by faith, and uncircumcision by faith. “Do we then”, he asks. “destroy the Law through faith? God forbid; but we establish the Law”. A possible analogy, it seems to me, is the relation between an engagement and a marriage. When the couple have married, they could say with equal truth “The engagement is at an end, it is over it is not longer relevant”; and “The engagement has been fulfilled, has come to full flowering, in the marriage.” So too with Judaism and Christianity. The flower that came forth from the root of Jesse is the full flowering of Judaism. Christianity is simply the full faith implicitly contained in Judaism, and is named after its full flowering. Jesus was not a Jew by chance. “For the end – in both senses – of the Law is Christ, unto justice to everyone that believes”.
the motherhood of Mary contains all we need to know about the new dispensation: the Virgin overshadowed by the Holy Spirit gave birth to Jesus Christ, God incarnate, true God and true Man, who was born to save his people from their sins. Yet that same Jesus was circumcised according to the old dispensation, thus sealing his identity as a Jew. The Apostle of the Gentiles used very strong language in order to insist on this, to stress the continuity between the two Testaments. It would certainly never have occurred to him that he had ceased to be a Jew because he accepted Jesus as the Christ. “I speak the truth in Christ—I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit—I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption as sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised!” I have no doubt that although Mary suffered greatly at the sufferings of her son, that sword which Simeon predicted would pierce her heart was made up largely of that same great sadness and continual sorrow of which Paul speaks. She too was an Israelite, and could see that blindness in part had happened in Israel. The will of her heart, indeed, and her prayer to God, was for the unto salvation. For she could bear then witness that they had a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. For they, not knowing the justice of God, and seeking to establish their own, had not submitted themselves to the justice of God.
Blindness in part. justification by faith and not by law. And yet, it was an Israelite, a daughter of Abraham, whom God chose as his mother. “It is not as though God's word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham's children. On the contrary, "It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned." In other words, it is not the natural children who are God's children, but it is the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham's offspring.” No, God had not cast away his people. Mary also was an Israelite of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Judah.
We are told that God is able to bring good out of evil, and there is no doubt that Mary believed this, and so did Jesus – except during those agonising hours in Gethsemane. No, the Israelites have not ceased to be children of God. “As far as the gospel is concerned, they are enemies on your account; but as far as election is concerned, they are loved on account of the patriarchs, for God's gifts and his call are irrevocable.” What has happened is that those who were not Israelites according to the flesh have received the sonship which previously appeared reserved only to Israelites. it is as if the failure of part of Israel had opened a breach in that dividing wall which Jesus cam to destroy, and allowed the Gentiles to enter Somehow, by their offence, salvation is come to the Gentiles; that blindness in part is temporary: it is to last only until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, and so all Israel will be saved.
There’s a homily for the feast of St Stephen by Fulgentius of Ruspe which seems to me to express beautifully the end result of all this. “This is the true life, in which Paul is not brought to confusion by the murder of Stephen, but Stephen rejoices at the company of Paul, and charity gives joy to both. Charity in Stephen overcame the ferocity of the Jews; in Paul, charity covered a multitude of sins. Charity has given to both the possession of the Kingdom of Heaven.” Paul, the Jew, and Stephen, the Gentile, will be joyfully united in the Kingdom of Heaven. “For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? If the part of the dough offered as firstfruits is holy, then the whole batch is holy; if the root is holy, so are the branches. If some of the branches have been broken off, and you, though a wild olive shoot, have been grafted in among the others and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root, do not boast over those branches. If you do, consider this: You do not support the root, but the root supports you…And if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is able to graft them in again. After all, if you were cut out of an olive tree that is wild by nature, and contrary to nature were grafted into a cultivated olive tree, how much more readily will these, the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?”
“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of the children of God.” Children of God, and with the Only-Begotten Son, children of Mary, mother of God, and mother of the Church.
Venerunt nobis vere omnia bona pariter cum illa!
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Iam non sumus hospites et advenae; sed sumus cives sanctorum et domestici Dei
Feast of the Holy Family 2008
Today some parts of the Church are celebrating the feast of the Holy Family. For those of you who are not familiar with this feast, it refers to the family of Joseph, Mary and Jesus. While agreeing that this is indeed a holy family, and one worthy of a feast in its own right, I am going to suggest that we too are the holy family. I would think that that would be quite easy to accept, if we can be the created image of the uncreated God.
I have so often heard sermons which speak about the way in which our own family groups should model themselves on that perfect one – and so they should, while accepting that we know, in fact, very little about it – but on those occasions I have felt that the preacher is barely scratching the surface of what this feast is about. I do have an axe to grind: I have no family and have felt left out and almost cheated; as if the preacher were suggesting that because I am a single person with no family, this feast has nothing to say to me, as if this is not my feast, as if I have no part in it. The essential part of the collect for the feast is the petition to God to “help us to live as a holy family”; a petition which is rightly on the lips of every child of God.
The Holy Family is, of course, a family unit, what they now call a nuclear family. I was never quite sure why that name was used, but it goes some way towards explaining the most important thing about the Holy family. The nuclear family (father, mother and offspring) is quite simply the nucleus, or one of the nuclei, of the family with which this feast is concerned, the family with which God is concerned: the family of humankind. Anyone can proclaim the value of family life. Both the present Government and its predecessor have done so and I cannot seriously describe either of them as Christian governments. The “nuclear family” is good for society; it is one of its most effective building bricks and undoubtedly, if it is happy, does prevent some of the unrest and general moral decline about which we hear so much. But there is nothing specifically Christian about the nuclear family. It has existed since records began, and doubtless long before that. It exists and has existed in various forms, of which the form we have now in the West is only one, and not necessarily the best. And even when lived Christianly it is a human thing baptized, not a divine thing. The divine thing is our universal brotherhood (and I do not use this phrase in a sentimental but a literal sense) stemming from the universal fatherhood of God.
The nuclear family does not have a large place in the teaching of Jesus; that is not, I am sure, because he did not value it, but simply because he saw its value as the very relative thing that it is. It sounds rather extreme to tell us to call no man on earth our father, but when he explains that it is because we have one father who is in heaven and that we are therefore all brothers, it becomes clear that this is like his instruction to hate our parents, our family, and our own life. It is a wild attempt to get into our thick heads what matters and what doesn’t; it is an a fortiori argument, of which he was in general rather fond. We all know how natural it is to love father and mother – and certainly ourselves. Well, compared with the love we are to have for God, that love is more like hatred than love, so much lesser is it. Just so, compared with the family relationship between the children of God, mere blood relationship is hardly a relationship at all. It is an attempt to make us lift our eyes from what is on earth to what is in heaven.
There is a parallel with the Martha/Mary story here. Martha’s vocation – the active one – was not a bad one. It was given by God. The difference is that Mary’s – the contemplative one – does not end with life, but will never be taken away from her. in heaven, Mary will remain a contemplative; but Martha will, in her own way, and while still remaining distinctively Martha, become a contemplative too. the time for action will be over. Blood relationship, the family structure, does not even remain unchanged throughout life; and it ends with death. That does not – emphatically not – mean that in heaven we will cease to love those whom we loved on earth. We will love them still more; because the real relationship, the relationship between members of God’s family, only becomes closer and clearer in the next world; death cannot change it. My other and father were indeed my mother and father; the relationship was a close one. But far more important, more fundamental and more true – an more lasting – is the fact that as children of God they were, and are, my sister and brother.
Family relationships are exclusive, as are friendships and all relationships based on profit or esteem. That is not a bad thing in itself; but by definition it means that they are not relationships that can be universal, common to all human beings; we cannot base on such relationships our status and bond before God. Everyone was born of parents, certainly; but there are many who never knew those parents, and very many who never had family relationships properly so called. Not everyone has friends; not everyone has relationships in which they help or are helped, admire or are admired There is only one universal relationship, only one relationship in which we all find ourselves equally members of God’s holy family; if any one human being is excluded, the we are all excluded, at least in theory. Kierkegaard pointed out that if we deny to any person the status of child of God – and that includes failing to treat them as such – then we are denying ourselves that status: either God is the Father of every member of the human race or else anyone’s status as child of God, including mine, may be called into question. The basis of our behaviour towards other human beings cannot be that of a blood relationship, friendship or any such limited thing.
To be a father or other is a great thing. It is like being an apostle; to them the Father says, as Jesus said to his apostles, “Whoever hears you hears me”. We honour our parents because they hold the place of God the Father in the nuclear family. But since the incarnation it is a great thing to be a son or daughter too; we stand in the place where the Word Incarnate stood. We are all sons and daughters, in the sphere of nature as in the sphere of grace; since the Incarnation there is no-one who does not stand in the place of God. We are not only heirs of God, we are fellow-heirs without Brother Jesus Christ.
And that. to me, is the value and lesson of the Holy Family: it was the place of the Incarnation, the place where our likeness to Jesus was born. It cannot really be called the origin of the nuclear family, though it may very well be taken as a model;; but it is truly the origin of the family of God. Before the Incarnation, Israel was God’s People, and all humankind was his creation; ad the universe was its mysterious setting. But since God became the son of the Virgin and (most truly, if not physically) of Joseph, there has been a dramatic revolution: creation has become a family, and the universe has become its home.
Today some parts of the Church are celebrating the feast of the Holy Family. For those of you who are not familiar with this feast, it refers to the family of Joseph, Mary and Jesus. While agreeing that this is indeed a holy family, and one worthy of a feast in its own right, I am going to suggest that we too are the holy family. I would think that that would be quite easy to accept, if we can be the created image of the uncreated God.
I have so often heard sermons which speak about the way in which our own family groups should model themselves on that perfect one – and so they should, while accepting that we know, in fact, very little about it – but on those occasions I have felt that the preacher is barely scratching the surface of what this feast is about. I do have an axe to grind: I have no family and have felt left out and almost cheated; as if the preacher were suggesting that because I am a single person with no family, this feast has nothing to say to me, as if this is not my feast, as if I have no part in it. The essential part of the collect for the feast is the petition to God to “help us to live as a holy family”; a petition which is rightly on the lips of every child of God.
The Holy Family is, of course, a family unit, what they now call a nuclear family. I was never quite sure why that name was used, but it goes some way towards explaining the most important thing about the Holy family. The nuclear family (father, mother and offspring) is quite simply the nucleus, or one of the nuclei, of the family with which this feast is concerned, the family with which God is concerned: the family of humankind. Anyone can proclaim the value of family life. Both the present Government and its predecessor have done so and I cannot seriously describe either of them as Christian governments. The “nuclear family” is good for society; it is one of its most effective building bricks and undoubtedly, if it is happy, does prevent some of the unrest and general moral decline about which we hear so much. But there is nothing specifically Christian about the nuclear family. It has existed since records began, and doubtless long before that. It exists and has existed in various forms, of which the form we have now in the West is only one, and not necessarily the best. And even when lived Christianly it is a human thing baptized, not a divine thing. The divine thing is our universal brotherhood (and I do not use this phrase in a sentimental but a literal sense) stemming from the universal fatherhood of God.
The nuclear family does not have a large place in the teaching of Jesus; that is not, I am sure, because he did not value it, but simply because he saw its value as the very relative thing that it is. It sounds rather extreme to tell us to call no man on earth our father, but when he explains that it is because we have one father who is in heaven and that we are therefore all brothers, it becomes clear that this is like his instruction to hate our parents, our family, and our own life. It is a wild attempt to get into our thick heads what matters and what doesn’t; it is an a fortiori argument, of which he was in general rather fond. We all know how natural it is to love father and mother – and certainly ourselves. Well, compared with the love we are to have for God, that love is more like hatred than love, so much lesser is it. Just so, compared with the family relationship between the children of God, mere blood relationship is hardly a relationship at all. It is an attempt to make us lift our eyes from what is on earth to what is in heaven.
There is a parallel with the Martha/Mary story here. Martha’s vocation – the active one – was not a bad one. It was given by God. The difference is that Mary’s – the contemplative one – does not end with life, but will never be taken away from her. in heaven, Mary will remain a contemplative; but Martha will, in her own way, and while still remaining distinctively Martha, become a contemplative too. the time for action will be over. Blood relationship, the family structure, does not even remain unchanged throughout life; and it ends with death. That does not – emphatically not – mean that in heaven we will cease to love those whom we loved on earth. We will love them still more; because the real relationship, the relationship between members of God’s family, only becomes closer and clearer in the next world; death cannot change it. My other and father were indeed my mother and father; the relationship was a close one. But far more important, more fundamental and more true – an more lasting – is the fact that as children of God they were, and are, my sister and brother.
Family relationships are exclusive, as are friendships and all relationships based on profit or esteem. That is not a bad thing in itself; but by definition it means that they are not relationships that can be universal, common to all human beings; we cannot base on such relationships our status and bond before God. Everyone was born of parents, certainly; but there are many who never knew those parents, and very many who never had family relationships properly so called. Not everyone has friends; not everyone has relationships in which they help or are helped, admire or are admired There is only one universal relationship, only one relationship in which we all find ourselves equally members of God’s holy family; if any one human being is excluded, the we are all excluded, at least in theory. Kierkegaard pointed out that if we deny to any person the status of child of God – and that includes failing to treat them as such – then we are denying ourselves that status: either God is the Father of every member of the human race or else anyone’s status as child of God, including mine, may be called into question. The basis of our behaviour towards other human beings cannot be that of a blood relationship, friendship or any such limited thing.
To be a father or other is a great thing. It is like being an apostle; to them the Father says, as Jesus said to his apostles, “Whoever hears you hears me”. We honour our parents because they hold the place of God the Father in the nuclear family. But since the incarnation it is a great thing to be a son or daughter too; we stand in the place where the Word Incarnate stood. We are all sons and daughters, in the sphere of nature as in the sphere of grace; since the Incarnation there is no-one who does not stand in the place of God. We are not only heirs of God, we are fellow-heirs without Brother Jesus Christ.
And that. to me, is the value and lesson of the Holy Family: it was the place of the Incarnation, the place where our likeness to Jesus was born. It cannot really be called the origin of the nuclear family, though it may very well be taken as a model;; but it is truly the origin of the family of God. Before the Incarnation, Israel was God’s People, and all humankind was his creation; ad the universe was its mysterious setting. But since God became the son of the Virgin and (most truly, if not physically) of Joseph, there has been a dramatic revolution: creation has become a family, and the universe has become its home.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Sermon for Christmas
Christmas 2008
“In these days God has spoken to us by his Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the world”.
We are the inheritance of Christ; as he suffered to enter into his glory, so he became incarnate to enter into his inheritance. It’s a poor inheritance, for him who is the brightness of God’s glory and the reflection of his substance, and upholds all things by the word of his power. It is small consolation if all the angels of God adore him; the fact remains that he has inherited clay, and clay made unusable by sin; he came unto his own, and his own received him not. As the clay, we rejoice; but for him we can only feel sorrow.
The Christmas story, the whole story of Christ’s life on earth, is the story of what happened when the Son of God entered into his inheritance. It is perhaps revealing that he only told one parable about an heir, and that was the parable which most nearly approximates to an autobiography. The importance of that parable was realised: all the Synoptics related it. The details vary, but the versions come together at the sharp point: “The lord of the vineyard said: What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; it may be, when they see him the will reverence him Whom when the husbandmen saw, they thought within themselves, saying: This is the heir, let us kill him, that the inheritance may be ours. So casting him out of the vineyard, they killed him.” The servants who had been sent before him were not asking what was theirs by right of the husbandmen; they were, shall we say, prophets, speaking on behalf of another. But he came unto his own, came to his own inheritance, to that which was his own as much as it was his Father’s; that which was planted by him; far from failing to know him (St John is too kind here) the husbandmen destroyed him precisely because they did know him. This is the heir.
These don’t seem very seasonal thoughts. But it is to this kind of thought that I always find myself turning during Mass on Christmas night; sometimes when I enter the church and see the crucifix, but very often, with a shock, at the eucharist. On the night he was betrayed he took bread…this is my Body which will be given up for you. This is my Blood of the new and everlasting covenant; it will be shed for you. Betrayal? Giving up of his Body, shedding of his Blood? But we’re talking about a baby! We are talking about a baby, yes, because Christ was true Man; but really, we are talking about the Incarnation, the clothing of God in our garment, the entering of the Son of God into his inheritance at the time appointed by the Father for him to become the heir of all creation.
Most rights involve responsibilities and duties. Christ knew what he was saying when he told us that more is demanded of him to whom more is given. Like us, the Son of God receives his being from the Father, but in his case it is the very Godhead he receives, and the task that that entails. To God, no task is a burden, but from the moment of the Incarnation it was a man who had to complete that task and near that burden. Receiving the universe as inheritance means the task of redeeming the universe, transforming it so that it is a worthy kingdom to be delivered up to God the Father, when he shall have brought to nought all principality, and power, and virtue; for he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.
Christ faced this immense talk not only with courage but with alacrity. Isaiah was speaking from our point of view when he said “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings” and the Song of Songs is speaking of the same thing but from another point of view, the point of view of Christ’s eagerness: “Behold, he comes leaping upon the mountains, skipping over the hills”. It is always a joyful thong to enter into an inheritance, especially if it does not involve the death of one’s father, and so it was for Christ; not as if he loved himself and wanted to receive a benefit – but because he loved the inheritance and wanted to bestow a benefit.
Indeed, all this talk about Christ's inheritance sounds rather strange. If it isn’t the sort of inheritance which requires the death of a father, then it must be the sort which requires a coming of age. But are we to think that somehow Christ came of age at the Incarnation, as if he gained something thereby? “As long as the heir is a child, he differs in nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all, but is under tutors and governors until the time appointed by the father.” Are we to say that of Christ” No; but in this case the usual circumstances are strangely reversed: it is, rather, the inheritance which comes of age. “For we also, when we were children were serving under the elements of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, made of a woman…that we might receive the adoption of children…therefore now we are not servants but children; and if children, heirs also through God”.
This was Christ’s task, and he knew very well what it was to mean for him, from the self-emptying with which it began until the death with which it ended. And in an odd way, it was his own death that completed his entering into his inheritance; because it completed the task of conforming us to him; the task of leading not just the Head, but also the body, into the inheritance. Strange sort of inheritance, indeed, for which the death, not of the testator but of the heir, is required!
The conclusion I find myself coming to is that what Christ inherited was the capacity to make us inherit: that his entering into his inheritance was ours; that as he inherited clay, so we inherited glory. O admirabile commercium! O wonderful exchange! As so often, my confession that I don’t understand is not so much a reflection on my incapacity and littleness as on God’s power and infinity. Somehow, by the Incarnation, I have inherited God.
Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
“In these days God has spoken to us by his Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the world”.
We are the inheritance of Christ; as he suffered to enter into his glory, so he became incarnate to enter into his inheritance. It’s a poor inheritance, for him who is the brightness of God’s glory and the reflection of his substance, and upholds all things by the word of his power. It is small consolation if all the angels of God adore him; the fact remains that he has inherited clay, and clay made unusable by sin; he came unto his own, and his own received him not. As the clay, we rejoice; but for him we can only feel sorrow.
The Christmas story, the whole story of Christ’s life on earth, is the story of what happened when the Son of God entered into his inheritance. It is perhaps revealing that he only told one parable about an heir, and that was the parable which most nearly approximates to an autobiography. The importance of that parable was realised: all the Synoptics related it. The details vary, but the versions come together at the sharp point: “The lord of the vineyard said: What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; it may be, when they see him the will reverence him Whom when the husbandmen saw, they thought within themselves, saying: This is the heir, let us kill him, that the inheritance may be ours. So casting him out of the vineyard, they killed him.” The servants who had been sent before him were not asking what was theirs by right of the husbandmen; they were, shall we say, prophets, speaking on behalf of another. But he came unto his own, came to his own inheritance, to that which was his own as much as it was his Father’s; that which was planted by him; far from failing to know him (St John is too kind here) the husbandmen destroyed him precisely because they did know him. This is the heir.
These don’t seem very seasonal thoughts. But it is to this kind of thought that I always find myself turning during Mass on Christmas night; sometimes when I enter the church and see the crucifix, but very often, with a shock, at the eucharist. On the night he was betrayed he took bread…this is my Body which will be given up for you. This is my Blood of the new and everlasting covenant; it will be shed for you. Betrayal? Giving up of his Body, shedding of his Blood? But we’re talking about a baby! We are talking about a baby, yes, because Christ was true Man; but really, we are talking about the Incarnation, the clothing of God in our garment, the entering of the Son of God into his inheritance at the time appointed by the Father for him to become the heir of all creation.
Most rights involve responsibilities and duties. Christ knew what he was saying when he told us that more is demanded of him to whom more is given. Like us, the Son of God receives his being from the Father, but in his case it is the very Godhead he receives, and the task that that entails. To God, no task is a burden, but from the moment of the Incarnation it was a man who had to complete that task and near that burden. Receiving the universe as inheritance means the task of redeeming the universe, transforming it so that it is a worthy kingdom to be delivered up to God the Father, when he shall have brought to nought all principality, and power, and virtue; for he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.
Christ faced this immense talk not only with courage but with alacrity. Isaiah was speaking from our point of view when he said “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings” and the Song of Songs is speaking of the same thing but from another point of view, the point of view of Christ’s eagerness: “Behold, he comes leaping upon the mountains, skipping over the hills”. It is always a joyful thong to enter into an inheritance, especially if it does not involve the death of one’s father, and so it was for Christ; not as if he loved himself and wanted to receive a benefit – but because he loved the inheritance and wanted to bestow a benefit.
Indeed, all this talk about Christ's inheritance sounds rather strange. If it isn’t the sort of inheritance which requires the death of a father, then it must be the sort which requires a coming of age. But are we to think that somehow Christ came of age at the Incarnation, as if he gained something thereby? “As long as the heir is a child, he differs in nothing from a servant, though he be lord of all, but is under tutors and governors until the time appointed by the father.” Are we to say that of Christ” No; but in this case the usual circumstances are strangely reversed: it is, rather, the inheritance which comes of age. “For we also, when we were children were serving under the elements of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, made of a woman…that we might receive the adoption of children…therefore now we are not servants but children; and if children, heirs also through God”.
This was Christ’s task, and he knew very well what it was to mean for him, from the self-emptying with which it began until the death with which it ended. And in an odd way, it was his own death that completed his entering into his inheritance; because it completed the task of conforming us to him; the task of leading not just the Head, but also the body, into the inheritance. Strange sort of inheritance, indeed, for which the death, not of the testator but of the heir, is required!
The conclusion I find myself coming to is that what Christ inherited was the capacity to make us inherit: that his entering into his inheritance was ours; that as he inherited clay, so we inherited glory. O admirabile commercium! O wonderful exchange! As so often, my confession that I don’t understand is not so much a reflection on my incapacity and littleness as on God’s power and infinity. Somehow, by the Incarnation, I have inherited God.
Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Cum esset desponsata
“Cum esset desponsata”
It is traditional in monasteries to give a sermon on 20 December, when the Gospel is “The angel of the Lord was sent…” The sermon is called “Sermo super Missus Est”, and you will find examples as far back as St Bernard of Clairvaux. Legend has it that there was once a lay sister who only discovered in her eighties, after fifty-odd years in the monastery, that it was not a sermon “about Mrs S”…when it comes to transparency, monasteries still have a lot to learn.
However, I don’t think it’s fair to expect two sermons in two days, and since today’s Gospel reading is the annunciation not to Mary but to Joseph, I thought I would grab the opportunity to redress the balance a bit for those who feel that my sermons are sometimes a bit sexist. I do often wonder why St Joseph is consistently presented as inferior to, standing in the shadow of, his more prominent wife, not so much as a historical figure, but as a saint.
It is perfectly true that no word of his is recorded and that the total of his appearances is marginally less than hers, but what we do see is certainly not a second-class saint. Indeed, during the time when he was alive (it is clear that he was not alive by the time of the Crucifixion, and unlikely that he was so by the time Jesus’ “mother and brethren” came looking for him) there is only one incident in Mary’s life in which she appears alone, or else which is not paralleled in the life of Joseph, and that is the Visitation. I also wonder why it is that Mary is always portrayed as a silent woman – as an index of her humility – while in fact, though we have evidence of humility, we have none at all of silence. Surely the model of the silent and humble saint is rather Joseph, despite the fact that he was clearly a man of action (as was Mary a woman of action). His silence and his lack of interest in himself come through most clearly in today’s narrative, whose original can only have come from him. When Mary related the story of her Annunciation – Missus Est – she related faithfully all the details, what she said no less than what the Angel said. I suppose the narrative of the Visitation comes from her too, and she has given us not only Elizabeth’s words but her own Magnificat. When Joseph told the story of his Annunciation – Cum Esset Desponsata – and, perhaps, the story of the dream that led to the Flight Into Egypt, he did not think it of any importance what he said or did not say. He had to tell us that he had been considering “putting Mary away quietly” or the rest of the story would not have made sense, but that is the only information he ever gives about himself.
It may well be that he obeyed without a word, and I do not think he did have those doubts about Mary’s virtue that seem to be plaguing him in the icons of the Nativity, although even more faith was required of him than of her. Partly because her holiness must have been so blindingly obvious to a man hardly less holy than she; but also because he would never, being a righteous man, have married her unless the dream had been completely convincing; nor, I think, would he ever have admitted that he had contemplated “putting her away” had be retained any doubts. Mary’s consent was required for the conception of Christ, but Joseph’s was required if his preservation through childhood – and Mary’s preservation too, come to that – was not to demand a flood of complicated miracles and divine dispensations. Mary gave her consent in words, Joseph in actions. One might even say that his obedience was even more unhesitating than hers.
I am not saying – how could I – that Joseph was “a greater saint” than Mary. But I sometimes think it was a close-run thing. And while feminists complain that they suffer and are discriminated against because they are women, I would reply that in the great-saint stakes, Joseph was disadvantaged because he was a man. He did not have the Immaculate Conception because, as the mere foster-father of Christ, unrelated to him by blood, he didn’t need it. There was no reason why he should be completely untouched by original sin. He could not, as a man, conceive Christ in his body. He undoubtedly did conceive him in his heart, which is more important. St Augustine commented that Mary could not have conceived Christ in her body had she not already conceived him in her heart. But that possibility is open to anyone, not just to Joseph; and it can pass completely unnoticed except by God.
From his reticence about himself and the fact that he let Mary take the lead when it was not a matter of life and death, I suspect Joseph was relieved that he was only the foster-father and so need not be subjected to the limelight. Where was he when the Magi visited? Out mending someone’s door-frame? Discreetly in his workshop till they left? Joseph had the gift of being there when he was needed and disappearing when he was not.
I know that all God’s actions are supremely free. But in a way his choice of Joseph – of any man – to assist at this point in the plan of salvation was particularly gratuitous. A woman was strictly necessary and he chose and prepared a perfect one who, all the same, also cooperated perfectly with her gracing. But a man was not strictly necessary. I sometimes like to imagine that God would have been quite happy to preserve his incarnate Son without the help of a human foster-father, but, seeing the magnificent holiness of Joseph (before the world was made), was so captivated that he could not resist giving him to that Son as a birthday present. Joseph was the most perfectly beautiful creature that ever lived and attained to holiness with no special helps. He really was worthy to be the husband of the Queen of Heaven and, as I’ve said before, the understudy of the First Person of the Blessed Trinity. And all this addition to the essential (that a virgin should conceive and bear a son) perhaps provoked simply by one great saint. I m not suggesting that God was persuaded to change his mind, any more than our prayers do that. But the saints, and their prayers and ours, all have an essential place in the unfolding of God’s plan.
Perhaps you were surprised at my claim that more faith was required of Joseph than of Mary. I would go further. Faith has been satirically described as “the capacity to believe that which you know to be untrue”. But, you know, that is very much what seemed to be required of Joseph. I do not think there has ever been a person asked to base his whole life upon something for which he had no evidence and which everyone, including himself, knew to be impossible. Mary was told specifically that nothing is impossible for God’ Joseph just had to know it without being told. Blessed are those who have not been told and yet believe! Mary, in fact, despite the enormity of what she was asked to believe, had solid evidence such as has rarely been vouchsafed to anyone. Every other human being had to believe that she was a mother and a virgin; she alone knew it. But Joseph – well, it is he and not St Rita of Cascia who should be the patron saint of the impossible. Politics may be the art of the possible; St Joseph teaches us, without a word, that sanctity is sometimes the art of the impossible. And he should know; he was married to a living impossibility: a virgin mother.
Which does not mean that sanctity is impossible. I am sure that when Jesus made his celebrated comparison he did not have in his mind’s eye a miserable and hopeless-looking camel, regarding with depression the tiny eye of a minuscule needle. What he saw was that camel squeezing happily through the needle’s eye. losing the odd package, perhaps, but emerging unscathed. It really is true. For God all things are possible.
Joseph fidelissime, ora pro nobis!
It is traditional in monasteries to give a sermon on 20 December, when the Gospel is “The angel of the Lord was sent…” The sermon is called “Sermo super Missus Est”, and you will find examples as far back as St Bernard of Clairvaux. Legend has it that there was once a lay sister who only discovered in her eighties, after fifty-odd years in the monastery, that it was not a sermon “about Mrs S”…when it comes to transparency, monasteries still have a lot to learn.
However, I don’t think it’s fair to expect two sermons in two days, and since today’s Gospel reading is the annunciation not to Mary but to Joseph, I thought I would grab the opportunity to redress the balance a bit for those who feel that my sermons are sometimes a bit sexist. I do often wonder why St Joseph is consistently presented as inferior to, standing in the shadow of, his more prominent wife, not so much as a historical figure, but as a saint.
It is perfectly true that no word of his is recorded and that the total of his appearances is marginally less than hers, but what we do see is certainly not a second-class saint. Indeed, during the time when he was alive (it is clear that he was not alive by the time of the Crucifixion, and unlikely that he was so by the time Jesus’ “mother and brethren” came looking for him) there is only one incident in Mary’s life in which she appears alone, or else which is not paralleled in the life of Joseph, and that is the Visitation. I also wonder why it is that Mary is always portrayed as a silent woman – as an index of her humility – while in fact, though we have evidence of humility, we have none at all of silence. Surely the model of the silent and humble saint is rather Joseph, despite the fact that he was clearly a man of action (as was Mary a woman of action). His silence and his lack of interest in himself come through most clearly in today’s narrative, whose original can only have come from him. When Mary related the story of her Annunciation – Missus Est – she related faithfully all the details, what she said no less than what the Angel said. I suppose the narrative of the Visitation comes from her too, and she has given us not only Elizabeth’s words but her own Magnificat. When Joseph told the story of his Annunciation – Cum Esset Desponsata – and, perhaps, the story of the dream that led to the Flight Into Egypt, he did not think it of any importance what he said or did not say. He had to tell us that he had been considering “putting Mary away quietly” or the rest of the story would not have made sense, but that is the only information he ever gives about himself.
It may well be that he obeyed without a word, and I do not think he did have those doubts about Mary’s virtue that seem to be plaguing him in the icons of the Nativity, although even more faith was required of him than of her. Partly because her holiness must have been so blindingly obvious to a man hardly less holy than she; but also because he would never, being a righteous man, have married her unless the dream had been completely convincing; nor, I think, would he ever have admitted that he had contemplated “putting her away” had be retained any doubts. Mary’s consent was required for the conception of Christ, but Joseph’s was required if his preservation through childhood – and Mary’s preservation too, come to that – was not to demand a flood of complicated miracles and divine dispensations. Mary gave her consent in words, Joseph in actions. One might even say that his obedience was even more unhesitating than hers.
I am not saying – how could I – that Joseph was “a greater saint” than Mary. But I sometimes think it was a close-run thing. And while feminists complain that they suffer and are discriminated against because they are women, I would reply that in the great-saint stakes, Joseph was disadvantaged because he was a man. He did not have the Immaculate Conception because, as the mere foster-father of Christ, unrelated to him by blood, he didn’t need it. There was no reason why he should be completely untouched by original sin. He could not, as a man, conceive Christ in his body. He undoubtedly did conceive him in his heart, which is more important. St Augustine commented that Mary could not have conceived Christ in her body had she not already conceived him in her heart. But that possibility is open to anyone, not just to Joseph; and it can pass completely unnoticed except by God.
From his reticence about himself and the fact that he let Mary take the lead when it was not a matter of life and death, I suspect Joseph was relieved that he was only the foster-father and so need not be subjected to the limelight. Where was he when the Magi visited? Out mending someone’s door-frame? Discreetly in his workshop till they left? Joseph had the gift of being there when he was needed and disappearing when he was not.
I know that all God’s actions are supremely free. But in a way his choice of Joseph – of any man – to assist at this point in the plan of salvation was particularly gratuitous. A woman was strictly necessary and he chose and prepared a perfect one who, all the same, also cooperated perfectly with her gracing. But a man was not strictly necessary. I sometimes like to imagine that God would have been quite happy to preserve his incarnate Son without the help of a human foster-father, but, seeing the magnificent holiness of Joseph (before the world was made), was so captivated that he could not resist giving him to that Son as a birthday present. Joseph was the most perfectly beautiful creature that ever lived and attained to holiness with no special helps. He really was worthy to be the husband of the Queen of Heaven and, as I’ve said before, the understudy of the First Person of the Blessed Trinity. And all this addition to the essential (that a virgin should conceive and bear a son) perhaps provoked simply by one great saint. I m not suggesting that God was persuaded to change his mind, any more than our prayers do that. But the saints, and their prayers and ours, all have an essential place in the unfolding of God’s plan.
Perhaps you were surprised at my claim that more faith was required of Joseph than of Mary. I would go further. Faith has been satirically described as “the capacity to believe that which you know to be untrue”. But, you know, that is very much what seemed to be required of Joseph. I do not think there has ever been a person asked to base his whole life upon something for which he had no evidence and which everyone, including himself, knew to be impossible. Mary was told specifically that nothing is impossible for God’ Joseph just had to know it without being told. Blessed are those who have not been told and yet believe! Mary, in fact, despite the enormity of what she was asked to believe, had solid evidence such as has rarely been vouchsafed to anyone. Every other human being had to believe that she was a mother and a virgin; she alone knew it. But Joseph – well, it is he and not St Rita of Cascia who should be the patron saint of the impossible. Politics may be the art of the possible; St Joseph teaches us, without a word, that sanctity is sometimes the art of the impossible. And he should know; he was married to a living impossibility: a virgin mother.
Which does not mean that sanctity is impossible. I am sure that when Jesus made his celebrated comparison he did not have in his mind’s eye a miserable and hopeless-looking camel, regarding with depression the tiny eye of a minuscule needle. What he saw was that camel squeezing happily through the needle’s eye. losing the odd package, perhaps, but emerging unscathed. It really is true. For God all things are possible.
Joseph fidelissime, ora pro nobis!
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