Shun to Appear HarshI recently found, hidden away in a book, some advice from St Seraphim of Sarov that a friend, a Benedictine nun, sent me in the last letter I received from her before she died in 2009. I needed to re-read Read More
Learned LevitesI happen to own a life of St Francis de Sales published in 1928 by Eugène Julien, bishop of Arras. It carries the epigraph, ‘A mes prêtres, ce beau visage de Prêtre’, ‘To my priests I propose this beautiful type Read More
Magic, Moving ChainsThe internet can be serendipitous. Looking for Imogen Cooper’s 1989 recording of Schubert’s Impromptus, I happened upon this remarkable lecture she gave in Oxford in 2014. I listened to it on a train, entranced. Never have I heard a performer Read More
Full of SchubertOn Sunday evening Dame Imogen Cooper gave her last solo recital at Wigmore Hall, playing Schubert’s Impromptus. In a noble speech at the end, after the Duke of Kent had presented her with the Wigmore Medal, she said she felt Read More
Shun to Appear HarshI recently found, hidden away in a book, some advice from St Seraphim of Sarov that a friend, a Benedictine nun, sent me in the last letter I received from her before she died in 2009. I needed to re-read it: ‘We cannot be too gentle, too kind. Shun even to appear to appear harsh in your treatment of each other. […] All condemnation is of the devil. We condemn others because we shun knowing ourselves. When we gaze at our own failings, we see such a morass of filth that nothing in another can equal it. That is why we turn away, and make much of the faults of others. Keep away from the spilling of speech. Instead of condemning others, strive to reach inner peace. Keep silent, refrain from judgement. This will raise you above the deadly arrows of slander, insult, outrage, and will shield your glowing hearts against the evil that creeps around.’
The Pain of ‘Why?’This conversation, which you can read online in Spanish here, was part of the presentation of Healing Wounds in Spanish. How do you believe that contemplating the wounds of Christ can help human beings find comfort and healing in the midst of suffering? To contemplate Christ’s wounds in the midst of our own pain does not necessarily bring instantaneous comfort or healing. Time may be required for these to happen. Time and patience. Let’s never forget that at the heart of the noun ‘patience’ is the Latin root pateor, meaning ‘I suffer’. What contemplation of the sacred wounds can do at once, exercised in faith, is to let me find meaning in suffering. The most terrible part of pain can be the overhanging question ‘Why?!’. A secular logic tells us that we ought not to suffer; and that if we do it is unfair. This can make us angry and bitter. We think things ought to be OK. When they’re not, we feel we’ve been cheated. The Christian narrative is different. It sets out from the conviction that things in this world are not OK. God became man to heal our nature from within. In the early Christian centuries, the image of Christ as Healer was of great importance. The New Testament tells us that Christ healed the world, not by some wonder-remedy, but by suffering through our wounds, investing them with his grace in love, making them glorious. Even death is relieved of its terror. ‘By death he conquered death’, we sing during Lent. Experiences that seem to us, humanly speaking, as dead ends and deadlocks reveal themselves to be passages, open doors, ways forward. When we contemplate Christ’s wounds, we remind ourselves that suffering, even when it happens by accident, need not be futile. It can be deeply purposeful. By owning my own suffering consciously as a member of the Church, Christ’s mystical Body, I can let my weakness be touched by Christ’s power; at the same time, my pain, little or great, can be oriented towards participation in his redemptive work, which continues till the end of time. This opens a vast perspective of grace and hope. To glimpse that perspective may already be to a comfort, a beginning of healing. In your book, you explore the idea that vulnerability can be a gateway to grace. How do you believe we can cultivate this vulnerability in our daily lives? I do not think we need to cultivate vulnerability. It is simply there. What we need to do is stop nurturing the illusion that we are invulnerable. Christianity offers a worldview and a self-understanding that let me accept my wounds with realistic hope — admitting them as they are, but not, so to speak, enclosing me within them. That is a great help in a cultural context in which we like to project constant strength, success, and health at every level, so that experiences of adversity risk knocking us out physically or psychologically. It also helps us negotiate the flipside of that same cultural context, which invites us to wallow in our own pain and to cultivate a strong sense of victimhood, reducing the suffering person’s identity to his or her pain. What role do you believe faith plays in overcoming pain and suffering, and how can it be a source of strength for those who feel overwhelmed by adversity? It plays an essential role, primarily because the woman or man of faith is relieved of thinking that his or her life is an isolated, monadic existence. Life in Christ, mediated through the Church, draws us into a great and palpable communion where, when my strength is limited, I can be carried by the strength of others; where, when my prayer is weak, I can be carried by the prayer of the Church. Such experience transforms a life over time. As one of the Prefaces in the Missal says: it makes the fainthearted courageous. How do you believe the wisdom of the monastic tradition and patristics can be relevant to the challenges and questions of contemporary humanity? The monastic tradition is relevant not least because it is deeply human. The early monks and nuns were unafraid to call a spade a spade. The sayings of the Desert Fathers are wonderfully specific in dealing with trials and temptations that are timeless because they pertain to the deep hunger of the human heart, and of human flesh. The early monastics did not make this hunger into an abstraction. They faced it in the full conviction that God, by becoming man, has enabled the illumination and sanctification of every aspect of human life, including the most embodied. That is a perspective we really need today, in a cultural and intellectual climate that is not only marked by a certain dualism, inclined to see spirit and flesh as two incompatible dimensions of the human condition, but which is faced with the Brave New World of the virtual, the artificial. What an opportunity to restate an intelligent, coherent Christian anthropology based on the theology of incarnation! What message do you believe you are trying to convey to readers through “Healing Wounds,” and how do you believe it can help human beings find a path towards healing and redemption? I wish to introduce readers to the richness and beauty of the Christian patrimony in its approach to the pathos of existence. I wish to show that an engagement with Christ’s wounds does not limit itself to sentimental dolorism, but in fact opens a perspective of hopefulness. Along the way I wish to propose practical and spiritual advice on how to deal with situations of pain. To be a Christian is to live in fellowship. We need to extend a helping hand to each other when we can. And we need to reach out and seize the helping Hand Christ extends to us through the Church, through the rich legacy of her theologians and saints, through the sacred liturgy. Crucifix in the parish church of Ciempozuelos.
Learned LevitesI happen to own a life of St Francis de Sales published in 1928 by Eugène Julien, bishop of Arras. It carries the epigraph, ‘A mes prêtres, ce beau visage de Prêtre’, ‘To my priests I propose this beautiful type of a Priest’. We need beautiful examples of people whose holy lives we desire to emulate. For a bishop to put forward such an example is truly a pastoral initiative. When King Henry IV offered Francis de Sales preferment that would take him from Geneva to a wealthier see, he replied: ‘Sire, I pray Your Majesty to forgive me, but I cannot accept his offer. I am a married man. I have married a poor woman, and I cannot leave her for one who is richer.’ Herein lies a whole theology of episcopal ministry. To his priests, this humane and approachable bishop said: ‘It is not enough for clerics to strive to be holy; they must also become learned in the science of their state. In priests, ignorance is more to be feared even than sin, for by ignorance one does not merely lose oneself, one dishonours, disgraces the priesthood. […] In a priest, learning is the eighth sacrament of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. The greatest misfortunes of the Church have come when the ark of learning has been found in other hands than those of the Levites.’
Magic, Moving ChainsThe internet can be serendipitous. Looking for Imogen Cooper’s 1989 recording of Schubert’s Impromptus, I happened upon this remarkable lecture she gave in Oxford in 2014. I listened to it on a train, entranced. Never have I heard a performer engage with her call so eloquently, so movingly. Cooper speaks of music’s ‘quite extraordinary power to pinpoint and localise both the numinous and the dark-shadow areas of the human soul and to give them voice. Such voicing’, she says, ‘brings wonder, pain, relief, performing a role that is quite uniquely cathartic.’ She points out that great geniuses need catharsis as much as the rest of us. How did Beethoven, Schubert deal with their anguish, illness, and isolation? ‘They worked. They went inside themselves and plucked sounds from their imagination to string together into magic and moving chains.’ These are liberating chains. We can enter them.
Full of SchubertOn Sunday evening Dame Imogen Cooper gave her last solo recital at Wigmore Hall, playing Schubert’s Impromptus. In a noble speech at the end, after the Duke of Kent had presented her with the Wigmore Medal, she said she felt overwhelmed on account of the occasion, but also because her ‘heart was still very full of Schubert’. It is a moving thing to witness a great artist perform works that have been the object of a lifetime’s study, analysis, dreams, and backbreaking labour. I have long known and admired Cooper’s recording of the Impromptus from 1989. The way she orchestrates the piano is extraordinary. Sunday’s performance was different, more inward, perhaps. What we give our hearts to grows with us.
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Tune into @RTÉ One and to @rteradio1 to join Bishop Diocese of Meath at 11am who will celebrate Mass for Catholic Schools Week on Sunday from Christ the King Cathedral, Mullingar #CSW2026
Today is Sunday of the Word of God, a day instituted in 2019 by Pope Francis devoted to the celebration, study and spreading of the Word of God. The Word of God as revealed in the Bible makes up a Read More 15 Likes
Today is the Feast of St Francis de Sales 1567-1622. Bishop of Geneva & founder of the Visitation Sisters. He worked with gentleness & love to rebuild the Catholic faith after the Reformation. Patron saint of writers editors & journalists. Read More 4 Likes
