Across the Threshhold

Across the threshhold I had been afraid to cross, things suddenly seemed so very simple. There was but a single vision, God, who was all in all; there was but one will that directed all things, God's will. I had only to see it, to discern it in every circumstance in which I found myself, and let myself be ruled by it. God is in all things, sustains all things, directs all things. To discern this in every situation and circumstance, to see His will in all things, was to accept each circumstance and situation and let oneself be borne along in perfect confidence and trust. Nothing could separate me from Him, because He was in all things. No danger could threaten me, no fear could shake me, except the fear of losing sight of Him. The future, hidden as it was, was hidden in His will and therefore acceptable to me no matter what it might bring. The past, with all its failures, was not forgotten; it remained to remind me of the weakness of human nature and the folly of putting any faith in self. But it no longer depressed me. I looked no longer to self to guide me, relied on it no longer in any way, so it could not again fail me. By renouncing, finally and completely, all control of my life and future destiny, I was relieved as a consequence of all responsibility. I was freed thereby from anxiety and worry, from every tension, and could float serenely upon the tide of God's sustaining providence in perfect peace of soul.

Walter Ciszek, SJ

Batter My Heart

Batter my heart, three-person'd God ; for you
As yet but knock ; breathe, shine, and seek to mend ;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
I, like an usurp'd town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but O, to no end.
Reason, your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captived, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth'd unto your enemy ;
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.


John Donne, Holy Sonnets, No XIV

Justina, Pray for Us

It was if it had been meant to happen. There were so many accidents of fate leading up to it.

My son, Winslow, had come to spend the weekend with me in Jerusalem, his first visit to the Holy Land.

We had aleady spent a couple of hours on our own walking tour of the Old City, which at one point included climbing the 200-odd steps up the narrow winding tower of the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer.



I was beginning to tire, but it did no good trying to steer Winslow toward an early lunch. Now he wanted to see the Jewish quarter. Reluctantly I gave in, and off we started down more narrow and often winding streets. We quickly found it too sanitised and boring (read: no shops), so I started navigating us out, taking streets I had never seen before and trusting to my sense of direction.

Just as I was rounding a corner, Winslow behind me, I heard him say: "Hey, why don't we check this out?" It was St Mark's Syrian Orthodox Church, said to be built over the house of the Evangelist Mark, and in whose Upper Room the Last Supper was held.

I couldn't really resist a suggestion by my own son, who had already been forced to endure visits to a number of churches, to visit just one more.

Neither of us had any idea what awaited us inside, but it kept us spellbound for more than half an hour.



It was actually she, Sister Justina, who seemed to be a sort of custodian and who asked if we wanted her to give us a tour of the small church. More out of politeness than any real interest, I replied yes. When we finally gave Justina a kiss good-bye all that time later, I was in a state of blessed spiritual agitation.

Rather than reinvent the wheel, I defer to Canadian Anglican priest Kevin Dixon, who wrote the following account of his meeting with Justina last June and which I found on his blog, holybuzz.

"Justina is a nun of the Syrian Orthodox Church. This stream of Christianity represents a tradition that has been passed down in Jerusalem from the very first followers of Jesus. Some of the beliefs of this church are different from our own; for instance, Syrian Orthodox Christians believe that God first gave the Church the Holy Spirit not at Pentecost (Book of Acts, ch. 2), but rather when Jesus on the cross gave up his spirit and “breathed” his last. In the Syrian Orthodox view, with this last breath came the Holy Spirit.

"Sister Justina met us at St. Mark’s Syrian Orthodox Church. She is a little woman, maybe 4′ 6″ (137 cm), and quite wide in proportion to her height. She was dressed all in black so only her face showed. When she began to speak in a high-pitched, sing-song voice, I wasn’t sure if we were being welcomed by a hobbit or a character from Shakespeare.

"She told us about her own mystical experiences in the seven years she has been resident at St. Mark’s. For instance, she described her own 'Pentecost' when she greeted a visitor who spoke Hebrew and no English. Sister Justina doesn’t speak Hebrew, but she said that over the course of a one hour conversation they understood every word that was said. She also showed us an icon painted on leather in the first century by St. Luke the Evangelist himself. The power of her belief was compelling. It underlined for me that one person’s faith, shared, can touch the heart of another deeply.



"At the conclusion of her remarks, she sang the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic -- the language of Jesus, and the liturgical language of the Syrian Church -- in a beautiful, keening, Arabic style. It brought tears to my eyes, not least because in recent years the Lord’s Prayer has taken on new depth and meaning for me."

Kevin Dixon's description of Sister Justina is spot on, and closely traces much of what Winslow and I experienced. I would add that she wore a black wool stocking cap that seemed to be too small: She would keep pulling it down to her eyebrows as if she were cold, and it would immediately pop a couple of inches back up her forehead.

I would also add that she spoke in a powerful and compelling voice, often punctuated by references to how she had shed her tears in long hours of solitary prayer in the church.

What Dixon didn't mention was that Justina had spent nearly 20 years teaching math to high school seniors in Nineveh before leaving Iraq, and that she was extremely anguished by the fate of the tens of thousands of fellow Iraqi Christians who had been driven from their country, with others martyred.

She also spoke of having personally been involved in the healing of a young woman from cancer and of how the image of St Luke's Virgin and Child had appeared in the Florida home of a family whose seriously ill newborn was being prayed for, and how the Virgin had brought healing to the infant.

I did't ever look at the time, as the time passed. For most of the time, Winslow and I were privileged to be alone with Justina, though an Irish gentleman eventually joined us. But I do know that occasionally I would anxiously glance in Winslow's direction to see if he were growing restless, and he showed no sign of it.

I wish I had thought to ask Justina if I could take her picture, but the image of her sweet but impassioned exposition of her faith in the Blessed Trinity and of her special love of the Holy Spirit will always remain in my heart.

Pray for us, Justina.

What is Good for Us?

From Fr Stephen at Glory to God For All Things:

We live in a culture that has a fairly clear idea of what is good for a human being. We have notions of the “American Dream” and other ideals. Self-help books abound, each with its own understanding of what it means to be healthy, successful, well-balanced, etc. Frequently these cultural norms run counter to the writings of the Church fathers - sometimes scandalously so. Consider the following excerpt from the Desert Fathers:

Euprepius blessed us with this benediction: May fear, humility, lack of food and Godly sorrow be with you.

I am certain that were I to end a meeting in my parish with such a blessing many people would be either confused, maybe even outraged. There are things in our culture that treat fear as always a bad thing; almost nothing in our culture promotes humility (consider things like “American Idol”), lack of food is a curse and Godly sorrow is just the opposite of the spiritual life marketed through most of our culture.

But the writings of the desert fathers have a different point of view. Their goal is the salvation of the human person. There is a recognition that hardship, whether in the form of fear, humiliation, famine or sorrow are frequent tools in the hand of God to bring about the sanctification of our lives and to re-create us a holy beings.

Christ immediately sets out to fast for 40 days following His Baptism. He does not begin His ministry without such hunger. He did not make Himself a stranger to sorrow, but purposefully delayed His travel to help his dying friend Lazarus. There He encounters weeping and anger, questioning and heartache. And there He raised the dead.

I cannot think of a single saint in the Church, from St. Paul and the Apostles forward who were stranger to any of the benedictions offered by Abba Euprepius. But modernized Christianity has made itself a stranger to these things. Theologians of various stripes go so far as to abandon the faith in the face of suffering and sorrow and discover they have no root in themselves. (A recent interview on NPR offers a very thin reason by the scholar Bart Ehrman, of the University of North Carolina, of why he no longer believes in God. Of course, he never knew or was a part of Orthodox Christianity and has simply reached a trajectory set by the modern academy).

The quote from Abba Euprepius is a demonstration of the Tradition - one that not only knew and understood the meaning of suffering and did not fear to offer such a blessing. But such knowledge can only be known in the heart. It is not a syllogism that satisfies the mind. Thus, we are forced to remember that the great and only battleground of the Christian faith is the human heart. Someone’s unbelief only tells me something of their heart at a particular moment. Unbelief does not tell us of the ultimate end of a person, for only the God who know the human heart can know such a thing. But only the human heart can truly know God. For in the heart all things dwell: heaven, hell, God, the demons. Everything is there.

It is little wonder that we seek to live somewhere else. But every other world is but a false or poor construct of the human heart. We must make that difficult journey and enter through the narrow gate if we are to find the wideness of God’s mercy and the infinity that is the fullness of the human person.

A Consuming Fire

Many schools of Religion and Ethics are to be found among us, and they all profess to magnify, in one shape or other, what they consider the principle of love; but what they lack is, a firm maintenance of that characteristic of the Divine Nature, which, in accommodation to our infirmity, is named by St. John and his brethren, the wrath of God. Let this be well observed.

There are men who are advocates of Expedience; these, as far as they are religious at all, resolve conscience into an instinct of mere benevolence, and refer all the dealings of Providence with His creatures to the same one Attribute. Hence, they consider all punishment to be remedial, a means to an end, deny that the woe threatened against sinners is of eternal duration, and explain away the doctrine of the Atonement.

There are others, who place religion in the mere exercise of the excited feelings; and these too, look upon their God and Saviour, as far (that is) as they themselves are concerned, solely as a God of love. They believe themselves to be converted from sin to righteousness by the mere manifestation of that love to their souls, drawing them on to Him; and they imagine that that same love, untired by any possible transgressions on their part, will surely carry forward every individual so chosen to final triumph. Moreover, as accounting that Christ has already done everything for their salvation, they do not feel that a moral change is necessary on their part, or rather, they consider that the Vision of revealed love works it in them spontaneously; in either case dispensing with all laborious efforts, all "fear and trembling," all self-denial in "working out their salvation," nay, looking upon such qualifications with suspicion, as leading to a supposed self-confidence and spiritual pride.

Once more, there are others of a mystical turn of mind, with untutored imaginations and subtle intellects, who follow the theories of the old Gentile philosophy. These, too, are accustomed to make love the one principle of life and providence in heaven and earth, as if it were a pervading Spirit of the world, finding a sympathy in every heart, absorbing all things into itself, and kindling a rapturous enjoyment in all who contemplate it. They sit at home speculating, and separate moral perfection from action. These men either hold, or are in the way to hold, that the human soul is pure by nature; sin an external principle corrupting it; evil, destined to final annihilation; Truth attained by means of the imagination; conscience, a taste; holiness, a passive contemplation of God; and obedience, a mere pleasurable work.

It is difficult to discriminate accurately between these three schools of opinion, without using words of unseemly familiarity; yet I have said enough for those who wish to pursue the subject. Let it be observed then, that these three systems, however different from each other in their principles and spirit, yet all agree in this one respect, viz., in overlooking that the Christian's God is represented in Scripture, not only as a God of love, but also as "a consuming fire." Rejecting the testimony of Scripture, no wonder they also reject that of conscience, which assuredly forebodes ill to the sinner, but which, as the narrow religionist maintains, is not the voice of God at all,—or is a mere benevolence, according to the disciple of Utility,—or, in the judgment of the more mystical sort, a kind of passion for the beautiful and sublime. Regarding thus "the goodness" only, and not "the severity of God," no wonder that they ungird their loins and become effeminate; no wonder that their ideal notion of a perfect Church, is a Church which lets every one go on his way, and disclaims any right to pronounce an opinion, much less inflict a censure on religious error.

- Cardinal Newman, in his sermon on "Tolerance of Religious Error"

Theology and Humour

Something I found over at ReformedCatholicism that I think we could all do well to read.

“Theology is the study of God and his ways. For all we know, dung beetles may study us and our ways and call it humanology. If so, we would probably be more touched and amused than irritated. One hopes that God feels likewise.”

- Frederich Buechner

“Because of piety’s penchant for taking itself too seriously, theology—more than literary, humanistic, and scientific studies—does well to nurture a modest, unguarded sense of comedy. Some comic sensibility is required to keep in due proportion the pompous pretentions of the study of divinity. When the chips pile too high, I invite the kind of laughter that wells up not from cynicism about theology but from lightness about it. This comes from glimpsing the incongruity of humans thinking about God…The most enjoyable of all subjects has to be God, because God is the source of all joy. God has the first and last laugh. The least articulate of all disciplines deserves something in between.”

- Thomas Oden

“Never attempt the task of theology without a smirk on your face and never trust a theologian who lacks one.”

- Michael J. Pahls

The Dragon Within

Thank you, Albion for posting those words. As one noted for fierce discussion, I've been wanting to say similar things for a while, but he said them much better than I ever could. I would simply add the following poem to that. It came to me as a reminder in the midst of various debates, both theological and political.

The Dragon Within

There lurks a great beast in a darksome place,
a fearsome presence in a well hid space,
whose smoldering evil brings black awe,
whose appetite draws all to its maw.

Draw near to the beast and look in its eye,
and, if you are seeing, in fear you’ll cry,
for what you will see is its rage and its hate,
and a hot emptiness beyond a cruel gate.

Its hot, ugly anger burns beauty to dust,
for utter destruction is always its lust,
and what it beholds, the better it be,
the quicker it wishes its ending to see.

The beast will destroy with its flaming breath,
and all that confront it are touched by death,
and hearts that were soft will be turned to stone,
and every spirit will perish alone.

This dragon, you see, lurks deep in your soul,
and has pure destruction as its only goal,
and, using the hatred that dwells in your heart,
will rend every goodness and tear it apart.

So look on yourself and dig deep within,
and a powerful cleansing you need to begin,
and slay that old dragon of hatred and rage,
and walk with boldness and God’s peace wage.

-------------------------ed pacht

(BTW, it was conceived as a song and wants music)

A Pause for Reflection

The masthead of this blog speaks of welcoming robust discussion, and of that there has been no short supply in recent weeks.

However, I have noted occasionally a comment comes perilously close to losing sight of the politeness that should accompany that robustness.

For the benefit of all, I commend to you a reflection by Glory to God for All Things host Fr Stephen Freeman as an aside to the discussion about the Pope's recent statement on the nature of the Church.

In part, he says: "I see that love gets strained very quickly in learned conversations - even between people whom I know and love. Our learning crushes our patience and lays heavily on our hearts. We need not renounce it, but carry it about us like a miner carrying nitroglycerin. Useful stuff - but it will blow you up."

Read it all here.

A Pause for Thought

Judas was in the company of Christ's disciples, and the thief was in the company of murders. Yet it is a wondrous thing, how in a single instant, they exchanged places."

St. John of the Ladder

Good Counsel

Look well to this day. For it is life, the very best of life. In its brief course lie all the realities and truths of existence: the joy of growth, the splendour of action, the glory of power. For yesterday is but a memory and tomorrow is but a vision. But today, if well lived, makes every yesterday a memory of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well therefore to this day.

Anonymous

The Secret of Patience

A piece inspired by the Epistle for the Fourth Sunday of Advent.

The Secret of Patience

The Lord is coming,
coming,
certainly,
surely,
coming in glory,
coming in power,
coming soon,
or not so soon
as we would have.

The Lord is coming,
coming,
surely coming,
and we wait,
and we wait,
and time goes on
and on and on,
and we wait.

His people wait,
with patience,
or not,
we wait
we wait,
and waiting, what?

Rejoice in His presence,
dance and shout and clap:
He has come,
Rejoice!
He has died,
Rejoice!
He has risen,
Rejoice!
He is here,
Rejoice!
and coming soon,
Rejoice!
for He is Lord,
Rejoice!
and break those dams
that block the flow
of the Spirit of God,
Rejoice!

Pray.
Give thanks.
Talk to Him.

Hear His voice.
Rejoice!
and while you wait,
Rejoice!
be filled,
and pour His love,
His peace,
His joy,
His Spirit -
into the waiting world.
Rejoice!

------------------------ed pacht

Choral Treasure Radio

Choral Treasure, a new site, is devoted to playing great music growing from the Catholic tradition.


Listen to it here.

Biretta tip to Occidentalis.

Solemn Joy

November 15, 2006. I’m serving our regular midweek Mass. Old Father Davis is celebrating and there are a total of four in the chapel. I start out a little distracted, but we come to the words of the General Confession, and, while accusing myself in the following solemn words, I am suddenly convulsed with a holy laughter.

“Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, Judge of all men; We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, Which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed, By thought, word, and deed, Against thy Divine Majesty, Provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us. We do earnestly repent, And are heartily sorry, for these our misdoings; The remembrance of them is grievous unto us, The burden of them is intolerable …”

Solemn Joy

I know my sin,
I hate my sin,
and yet I sin,
and I say the words,
and mean the words,
and feel the words,
of confession,
and sorrow,
and self-accusing,
and declare that I have earned
wrath,
anger,
condemnation,
and everlasting pain,
and my lips begin to smile,
and my chest begins to heave
with silent rocking laughter,
with the blossoming of joy,
as, unworthy, there I kneel,
unworthy, waiting to be fed
with food I have not earned,
have not deserved,
and yet desire,
and I laugh,
because I know
Your Love
that does not give me what I earn,
but that which once forever
He has earned,
and in the Sacrifice we here present,
has bought, has owned,
and done away,
my sin,
my grievous sin,
condemning sin,
yet gone,
and on the Cross
and in the Loaf
and in the Cup,
I am free,
I am loved,
I am washed,
and in the rivers
of the everlasting Joy,
I laugh.

In Life, In Death, In Ecstasy

Tonight the trick or treaters have been running about in my city. Tomorrow is Halloween, then All Saints' and All Souls'. This complex of days leads one to think on life and death, which brought me back to a poem of a month ago.
---------
Monday, September 18, 2006, shortly after midnight. A couple of days ago Jonathan (of O Cuniculi... linked here) posted a brief article on how tradition has often compared sex and death. Something resonated in me. I knew a poem was struggling to emerge. I wrote a bit of an outline of what it might look like, and a working title. I sat in front of my screen, thinking, but not typing. Something wanted to come, but wouldn’t. I gave up and went to bed. Lying there, reading something altogether unrelated (actually, a Stephen King book), I was just about ready to shut off the light and go to sleep, when I just had to get up and write. I powered up, looked at my outline, and deleted it. All I had left was a title (which also became a line in the poem). Words just began to come, entirely unlike what I’d been trying to produce, and here it is, and I’m satisfied with it as it is, and I’m not at all sure I want to take credit for writing it . . .

In Life, In Death, In Ecstasy

The stopping of a heart,
the ceasing of a thought,
the cent’ring of existence on a change,
a death,
transition,
a darkening of the world around,
a bursting in of light that was unknown,
a birth into another world,
an ecstasy beyond what has been known,
the greater death has come,
and to the Christian greater life.

The pausing of two hearts,
the stilling of two sets of thoughts,
the concentration of the world upon an act,
like death,
like change,
a dimming of reality that lies upon them,
a bursting in of light that blinds them,
a birth that may begin within their life,
an ecstasy exploding with the light of life
the lesser death that lifts them out of life,
with life has burst into the world.

In life, in death, in ecstasy,
in birth, in death, in passions of the flesh,
in beauties known by eye and ear and soul,
in raising sound in voice and singing instrument,
in making music by the dance of words,
in sitting silent in the house of God,
in listening, hearing, seeing that which is not known,
to those whose hearts reach heavenward and thirst,
to those immersed within that living Blood,
to those the blessed lesser death has come,
and release, though brief, from this world’s bonds is known,
and foreshadowed here the Christian soul may taste
that blessed greater death that leads to greater life,
and know and feel and touch the shape,
the shape of eternity.
---
ed pacht

Transfiguration

August 6, 2006, Feast of the Transfiguration. Dr. Jonathan Munn (warwickensis), preaching in Dartford, England, delivered a sermon, which he then posted online (at O Cuniculi...). This is one of my favorite feasts, and one of my favorite preaching themes, but Jonathan managed to bring out thoughts a bit different from any I’d previously had. I read the text several times, extracted some key portions of it, and used them to structure this piece . . .

Transfiguration

A veil hangs thick between this world
and the world that lies beyond,
a world of brightness everlasting
that the eyes of men are never able to behold,
and of timeless time beyond our understanding,
around a throne that makes infinity look small;
and we before that veil walk on unknowing,
unseeing, unsuspecting in the presence of that Light,
until . . .

until in arms of teenage virgin Mother,
until the waters of the Jordan flow,
until transfiguration on the mount of light
until the dance of darkness on the Cross
until the breaking of the bonds of death
until the taking of the Bread and Cup
that stand transformed upon the Table of the Lord.

until the veil is breached and broken
and a Man is shown as Son of God and shines
and infinity has stormed across the mighty veil,
and breaks into this world of time,
and then . . .

The cloud falls,
the sight of glory is obscured,
obscured and hid from eyes that cannot see
of men that cannot long endure
the fullness of that majesty
without that they be burnt away,
consumed by joy beyond all strength
unless . . .

The cloud falls,
the vision is removed.
misunderstood, half unbelieved,
obscured but not forgotten,
held in memory to the proper day,
held in memory till eternity

We may have seen, but truly do not know
the meaning of the things we see,
and sometimes grope with blindness in the dark,
seeking somehow something we can understand,
but Christians are not fed by explanations,
and what we understand with finite minds
cannot nourish,
cannot feed our hungry souls,
and so we seek for more than explanation,
and so we seek for God,
and finding God is finding love,
and finding love is finding God,
and finding God is gain.

Knowing God comes not from understanding,
but from the wordlessness of meeting, touching, feeling,
holding, being held and hearing words that can’t be said,
and thinking thoughts the mind will never comprehend

And if we truly wish to meet Him,
truly wish to come into that Presence,
and long that we come close to God,
we may . . .

But it is in that cloud we come to know Him,
in that cloud where even thoughts are hid,
and where the only thing that we are knowing
is that we are knowing nothing,
but await the presence of the Lord of Love.

And when He comes upon this altar we may come,
coming, seeking explanations,
thinking that we understand,
and add a layer to that mighty veil,
that bars the way that leads beyond,
for, if we think we understand the mystery,
the heart of mystery never will we find
until . . .

We walk with boldness and yet humbly toward the cloud,
and entering into what seems darkness,
see the Light,
and, unknowing,
know.
-------------
--- ed pacht