Herdod, that FoxLuke 13.31-35: Some Pharisees came up to Jesus. ‘Go away’ they said. ‘Leave this place, because Herod means to kill you.’ He replied, ‘You may go and give that fox this message: Learn that today and tomorrow I cast out devils and on the third day attain my end. But for today and tomorrow and the next day I must go on, since it would not be right for a prophet to die outside Jerusalem. Jerusalem, you that kill the prophets and stone those who are sent to you! How often have I longed to gather your children, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you refused!’ I love this passage. While the Gospel texts do permit us to know many things about Jesus, we rarely get the sense of his temperament, of the sort of things that might have made him smile, the jokes he might have made. For, surely, when the Church assures us that the Son of God was made fully man, that means he will also have had a sense of humour. One can catch a twinkle in the Lord’s eye when he refers to Herod as ‘that fox’. He, ‘who knew what was in man’ (John 2.25) had seen through this blustering kinglet, ambitious and lustful, yet not insensitive to matters of ultimate importance. After all, Herod had listened to John ‘gladly’ (Mark 6.20). In Aesop’s Fables, the fox is a sly fellow, at times likeable, too; and time and again proven to be less clever, poor thing, than he holds himself to be, as in the tale that speaks of a fox’s intrigues against a cock and a dog, out of which he comes the loser, to prove the moral: ‘They who lay traps for others are often caught by their own bait’. It is hard not to be struck, however, by the juxtaposition of the image of the fox with that of a brood of chickens in the simile that follows: ‘Jerusalem! How often have I longed to gather your children as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.’ An apparently amiable rogue is a rogue nonetheless, and can be dangerous. The king who flattered the Forerunner with friendly attention had John’s head chopped off in a trice when his own pride was at stake. There’s a lesson in that. Photograph: Wikimedia.
For ManyRomans 8.26-30: The Spirit comes to help us in our weakness. Luke 13.22-30: But he will reply, ‘I do not know where you come from. Away from me.’ In the Gospel narrative of the institution of the Eucharist, we read: ‘This is my blood of the covenant, poured out for many’, in Greek: hyper pollōn. The sense is unambiguous, but has caused a headache for liturgists seeking to render it in vernacular translations of the Eucharistic Prayers. For is the ‘for many’ not somehow exclusive? Does it not limit the reach of the Eucharistic sacrifice effectively foreshadowing Christ’s Passion? May our Blessed Lord have spoken, in distraction, out of turn? In some national contexts this view has prevailed. So the Germans hang on to their ‘für alle’, the Italians to their ‘per tutti’ — one does not quite see how, given that the Latin editio typica has ‘pro multis’, which simply has to be, ‘for many’. ‘God desires all men to be saved’. This is axiomatic to the New Testament (1 Tim 2.4). God does not, though, force his saving on anyone. We are free to embrace or reject it: this awesome privilege is inscribed on our iconic nature. The pouring out of Christ’s Blood on the cross is a wholly gracious dispensation, It cannot be fathomed by any merely juridical category. A grace is a gift. A gift proposed calls out to be received. Should it not be, the dynamic of grace and thanksgiving, ēucharistia, is incomplete. The ‘for many’ recalls that receptivity is no matter of course: such is God’s immense regard for our freedom. Today’s Gospel reminds us sternly of this fact. It is possible to have eaten and drunk with Christ, yet to make oneself unfit for his redemption, effectively to be locked out, if eucharistic grace is not allowed to saturate and transform our being. Redemption, as renewal and recreation, is not improvised. It is made ready in an organic process of growth. This process is not realised despite us. We must say yes to it, cooperate. Let us keep alive, then, our wish to be saved, and for others to be, too; let us keep looking for the narrow door, and direct others towards it. The phrase ‘for many’ does not exclude ‘for all’, only does not take it for granted. ‘The Spirit comes to help us in our weakness’. If only we let ourselves be helped. Amen.
Sts Simon and JudeIn the tenth chapter of the book of Genesis, we are told how, once Noah’s Ark was settled on firm ground, his sons scattered over the face of the earth. So closely were various parts of the inhabited world linked with them and their descendants that geography and ethnography become one in later biblical narrative, exactly as it would a many centuries later, when Israel’s sons inhabited the Land of Promise. Personal names are irrevocably connected with places. In the early Church, lists of Jesus’s Apostles evoked similar associations. We associate Rome with Peter, Egypt with Mark, India with Thomas, Malta with Paul, and so forth. True to Christ’s commandment the Apostles scattered to the north and south, east and west. Like Noah’s children, and Jacob’s, they represented a new humanity. That new humanity had to spread everywhere, lest the light of Christ should be hidden under a bushel. It is fashionable these days to say we not know nothing about the later life of the apostles, that these men, so characteristically present in the Gospels, vanish into thin air after the Ascension. That is what sceptics maintain who have no time for tradition. But perhaps we need not be quite so reductive? The Apostles we celebrate today, Simon and Jude, are in very ancient sources associated with a mission to the East. A venerable document of early Church history, the Doctrine of Addai, tells us how Jude, also known as Thaddeus, or Addai in Syriac, was despatched by St Thomas to Edessa in modern-day Turkey. There his preaching and works of healing brought about the conversion of the city. Let the doubter doubt. The fact remains that Christianity was established in that part of Mesopotamia by the early second century with a firm claim to Apostolic origins. Someone must have brought it there, and Thaddeus’s name is connected with the mission from the first. An impressive feature of the Doctrine of Addai is the Apostle’s serene self-consciousness. He knows he is carrying an infinitely precious message; at the same time he is entirely uninterested in any honour for himself. He does not even bother to make a display of his humility. So obvious is it to him that his person is of no consequence. What matters is the word entrusted to him, the spiritual power he dispenses. At one point, King Abgar of Edessa wants to pay Thaddeus gold and silver for his benefits to the city. Thaddeus calmly retorts, ‘If we have left our own property behind, how can we accept other people’s?’ It is not strange that this humble man should gradually disappear in the mist of history. He was concerned to bestow Christ, not to leave traces of himself. He lived out the principle of all Christian mission: ‘He must increase, I must decrease.’ He was determined to remain poor and transparent, to be a voice crying in the wilderness, not a protagonist accumulating thousands of ‘likes’ on Facebook. In that respect he remains a timeless example to us all. The Mandylion of Edessa. The foremost relic of the evangelisation of Edessa is an image of the face of Christ, not an ‘I was here’ signature of the Apostle. That says something.
Desert Fathers 44You can find this episode in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here. At a certain point Abba Poemen went into the land of Egypt to dwell there. It happened that there was, living next to him, a brother who had a woman. The elder knew about it, but did not put the brother to shame. It came to pass that one night the woman gave birth. Knowing what was going one, the elder summoned a young brother and said: ‘Take a jug of wine and give it to the neighbour, for today he has need of it.’ His brothers did not know what was going on. The brother [next door], though, was greatly profited. He repented. After some days he sent the woman away, giving her absolutely everything she needed. Then he came to the elder and said: ‘Abba, from today I will begin a new life.’ He came and built a cell for himself right next to that of the elder, going to see him often. And the elder shed light upon him. Pointing out the way that leads to God, he gained [his brother]. We have all faced this dilemma in one way or another. Someone close to us, someone we care for, does something reprehensible. We wonder whether we should try to put him right. If we decide to have a go, the still thornier question arises: how? For our own sake the temptation is to bulldoze in and lay down the law. It is, after all, satisfying to be in the right. By making our point strongly, without mincing words, we affirm ourselves; what is more, we sense that justice is done to high principles. But will the other person receive what is given? A correction made with anger, be the passion ever so subliminal, is likely to call anger forth, and resistance. There is a chance the door will be slammed in our face. We may then think: ‘At least now he knows!’ But will there be benefit ensuing? Do I correct my brother to feel good about it, or because I hope for his change of heart? If my intervention causes a hardening instead, I shall be responsible, and answerable, for it. Special care must be taken when trespasses observed concern matters of the heart. We are vulnerable in this area, where all sorts of interconnections overlap. A slight slip of the surgeon’s scalpel risks affecting a vital function. Further, in such matters there is often a second party involved, who may carry no guilt at all, indeed, who may be the situation’s victim. Their integrity must be respected. Poemen’s course of action is exemplary. It provides us with a paradigm applicable in a range of circumstances. In the story Poemen arrives abroad into a settlement where people are living with established habits. His move may be connected with bandit raids we know caused havoc in Scetis in the early fifth century, driving a number of monks to seek a new home elsewhere. Having found a convenient spot for his cell, Poemen observes the monastic neighbourhood. He sees that the next brother is living a double life. Outwardly a solitary, he is conducting an affair. The text says he ‘had a woman’. Poemen, a revered authority, could have raised an outcry: ‘Brothers, in our midst is one who brings shame on our profession!’ He does not do that. When a religious or priest fails in celibacy, there is often great sadness involved: loneliness, a sense of purposelessness, a loss of direction. Poemen is not satisfied to upbraid his neighbour; he is concerned for his salvation. In addition he cares for the woman, great with child. None of the other brothers knew what was going on. The couple were good at concealing their relationship. Poemen, meanwhile, was a true monk with eyes trained to see beyond appearance, into the secrets of the heart. He bided his time, waited for the opportune moment. The day came for the woman to give birth. Poemen asked his assistant to call next door with a gift of wine. For us today, a bottle of wine in a smart gift bag is a gesture of celebration. I do not think this was the intent of Poemen’s gift. He sent it to his brother ‘for today he has need of it’. The wine was intended as sustenance after labour; it may have served hygienic purposes, as when the Good Samaritan poured ‘oil and wine’ on the wounds of the beaten-up man in the ditch, by way of first aid. Be that as it may, the erring brother received it as a sign of tenderness. He, who had thought his fault was secret, realised that Poemen, the great ascetic, has known about it long, yet had not spoken a censorious word or given an angry look. Instead he graced him, in his hour of testing, with a kind, much-needed gift. This was the impetus he needed to renounce duplicity and return to the path of his profession. And the woman? We are not told much about her. She will have had her own tale to tell, her own wounds to be bound up. The monk did give her ‘everything she needed’, trying to provide for her justly. Should he have followed her into town? She may not have wanted it. He could have made her unhappy. There is material here for a Tolstoyan novel. We must content ourselves with what we know, however. The monk, having learnt the hard way what may happen when a man directs himself, entrusted himself to Poemen. Poemen, alive with the Spirit, ‘shed light upon him’, tracing out for him the way that leads to God. That way he ‘gained’ him, a turn of phrase that makes us think of the parable of the Prodigal Son. That is the end fraternal correction must always seek to reach. May we never forget it. Francis Hayman, The Good Samaritan. Wikimedia Commons.
Bent DoubleRomans 8.12-17: The Spirit himself and our spirit bear united witness. Luke 13.10-17: One sabbath day Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues, and a woman was there who for eighteen years had been possessed by a spirit that left her enfeebled; she was bent double and quite unable to stand upright. When Jesus saw her he called her over and said, ‘Woman, you are rid of your infirmity’ and he laid his hands on her. And at once she straightened up, and she glorified God. In Romans Paul speaks of creation yearning to be freed from bondage; then of how we, awakened to the things of God, ‘groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies’. Stirring within us at such times is the spirit that recalls our origin in God, our Father, reminding us that we are called to be coheirs, συγκληρονόμοι, with Christ. Anyone who has sat at a deathbed knows how obvious it is that we’re made for more than just physical existence. At some point the longing of the spirit must burst boundaries set by our natural frame. But how easy it is to forget these deep things in the humdrum, often superficial busyness of life. We may be more like the poor woman bent double than we would like to think. So accustomed may we have become to looking down, scanning the path before us for obstacles, lest we succumb to a fall from which we’d think ourselves unable to rise, that we’ve all but forgotten there’s a heaven up there, with stars shining down on us. It matters, then, to be attentive to Jesus’s passing; not to hide from his gaze; to receive his will for us, which tells us: ‘Be healed! Rise!’ If we do, we shall like that woman be able, be it a little creakingly, to straighten up, look up and out, and glorify God — not to stand around and dawdle, but to follow our Master and Good Physician, to follow him wherever he goes. Amen. ‘Bent Woman’ by Milos Todorovic 2018
Today we celebrate the Feasts of St Simon and St Jude -1st Century Apostles. Saints Simon and Jude went together as missionaries to Persia, and were martyred there. This may explain why so little is known about them and also Read More 2 Comments
