Words on the Word
Erik Varden is a monk and bishop, born in Norway in 1974. In 2002, after ten years at the University of Cambridge, he joined Mount Saint Bernard Abbey in Charnwood Forest. Pope Francis named him bishop of Trondheim in 2019.
Please find below a selection of homilies:
Herrens Bebudelse 
Kollektbønnen for Maria Budskapsdag inneholder en formulering som hvert år gjør meg ettertenksom. I norsk oversettelse, er den blitt helt borte, dessverre.
Der begynner bønnen med å fastslå: ‘Hellige Gud, du ville at ditt Ords skulle bli sant menneske’. Det er Read More
Der begynner bønnen med å fastslå: ‘Hellige Gud, du ville at ditt Ords skulle bli sant menneske’. Det er Read More
The Body in Eternity Today marks the third anniversary of the Nordic Bishops’ Conference’s Letter on Human Sexuality. In it, we wrote: ‘What our bodies will be like in eternity we cannot yet imagine. But we believe on biblical authority, grounded in tradition, that Read More
5 Sunday of Lent A Ezekiel 37.12-14: I am going to open your graves.
Romans 8.8-11: You are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit.
John 11.1-45: Through it the Son of God will be glorified.
‘Behold, my people’, the Lord proclaimed through Ezekiel, ‘I will Read More
Romans 8.8-11: You are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit.
John 11.1-45: Through it the Son of God will be glorified.
‘Behold, my people’, the Lord proclaimed through Ezekiel, ‘I will Read More
Heimur í orðum A windstorm like nothing I’ve ever seen kept the whole Nordic Bishops’ Conference stranded in Reykjavik today. Walking diagonally through town at midday, I had at one point to hold on to a fence not to be blown over. I Read More
Facing Fear Speech given to open the spring plenary assembly of the Nordic Bishops’ Conference in Stykkishólmur.
To prepare myself for our meeting here at Stykkishólmur, I have been dipping into a travel book — not one of the recent ones that seem Read More
To prepare myself for our meeting here at Stykkishólmur, I have been dipping into a travel book — not one of the recent ones that seem Read More
Herrens Bebudelse
Kollektbønnen for Maria Budskapsdag inneholder en formulering som hvert år gjør meg ettertenksom. I norsk oversettelse, er den blitt helt borte, dessverre.
Der begynner bønnen med å fastslå: ‘Hellige Gud, du ville at ditt Ords skulle bli sant menneske’. Det er jo vel og bra, og sant. Men latinen er langt mer radikal. Den ber:
Deus qui Verbum tuum in utero Virginis Mariæ veritatem carnis humanæ suscipere voluisti.
Det vil si: ‘Gud, du ville at ditt Ord, i Jomfru Marias liv, skulle få motta menneskekjødets sannhet.’
Bibelvitere og språkfolk mener vi ikke mer skal få lov til å bruke ordet ‘kjød’. De sier det er blitt for altfor sjeldent. Folk skjønner ikke hva ordet betyr, sier de. Jeg sier da: Bruker vi ordet litt mer, blir det mindre sjeldent og slik bedre begripelig. Jeg har ikke tenkt å gi opp den skansen.
Men dét er en sidebemerkning.
Det slående ved Kirkens bønn, er at den nevner kjødet, altså vår fysiske natur med sine kjennetegn, anlegg og mangler, som bærer av sannhet. Sannhet er ikke bare noe som har med grubling å gjøre. Sannhet er mer enn abstrakte formler. Sannhet er noe vi er skapt for å være med hele vårt vesen.
Jesus sier da også, ‘Jeg er sannhet’ (Jn 14.6). Han sier ikke bare, ‘Jeg forteller dere det som er sant’, men ‘Jeg er sannhet’. Slik kaller han også oss til å bli sannhet med alt vi er.
Vi skal elske Herren vår Gud av hele vårt hjerte og av hele vår sjel og av all vår forstand og av all vår kraft (jfr. Mk 12.30). Vi skal også forherlige ham ‘i vårt legeme’ (1 Kor 6.20).
Bebudelsen markerer begynnelsen på Guds inkarnasjon. Marias ja, hennes frie samtykke til Herrens nådige plan, gjør det mulig at Ordet blir kjød.
På samme tid peker bebudelsen fremover mot Påske. Sannhet hører evigheten til; det som er sant forgår ikke. Har kjødet sin sannhet, bærer det óg en kime av evighet i seg. Den kimen lar oss frimodig bekjenne vår tro på kjødets oppstandelse.
Vårt kall er evig liv, ikke kun som vagt åndelige vesener, men på et eller annet vis (som vi ennå ikke kan forstå) som vesener bestående av sjel og sinn og kropp.
Dagens høytid viser Guds aktelse for kjødet, en nødvendig del av vår natur formet i hans bilde. La oss da akte det selv og føre oss verdig og sant i det.
Amen.
Medieval enamel from Limoges in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Der begynner bønnen med å fastslå: ‘Hellige Gud, du ville at ditt Ords skulle bli sant menneske’. Det er jo vel og bra, og sant. Men latinen er langt mer radikal. Den ber:
Deus qui Verbum tuum in utero Virginis Mariæ veritatem carnis humanæ suscipere voluisti.
Det vil si: ‘Gud, du ville at ditt Ord, i Jomfru Marias liv, skulle få motta menneskekjødets sannhet.’
Bibelvitere og språkfolk mener vi ikke mer skal få lov til å bruke ordet ‘kjød’. De sier det er blitt for altfor sjeldent. Folk skjønner ikke hva ordet betyr, sier de. Jeg sier da: Bruker vi ordet litt mer, blir det mindre sjeldent og slik bedre begripelig. Jeg har ikke tenkt å gi opp den skansen.
Men dét er en sidebemerkning.
Det slående ved Kirkens bønn, er at den nevner kjødet, altså vår fysiske natur med sine kjennetegn, anlegg og mangler, som bærer av sannhet. Sannhet er ikke bare noe som har med grubling å gjøre. Sannhet er mer enn abstrakte formler. Sannhet er noe vi er skapt for å være med hele vårt vesen.
Jesus sier da også, ‘Jeg er sannhet’ (Jn 14.6). Han sier ikke bare, ‘Jeg forteller dere det som er sant’, men ‘Jeg er sannhet’. Slik kaller han også oss til å bli sannhet med alt vi er.
Vi skal elske Herren vår Gud av hele vårt hjerte og av hele vår sjel og av all vår forstand og av all vår kraft (jfr. Mk 12.30). Vi skal også forherlige ham ‘i vårt legeme’ (1 Kor 6.20).
Bebudelsen markerer begynnelsen på Guds inkarnasjon. Marias ja, hennes frie samtykke til Herrens nådige plan, gjør det mulig at Ordet blir kjød.
På samme tid peker bebudelsen fremover mot Påske. Sannhet hører evigheten til; det som er sant forgår ikke. Har kjødet sin sannhet, bærer det óg en kime av evighet i seg. Den kimen lar oss frimodig bekjenne vår tro på kjødets oppstandelse.
Vårt kall er evig liv, ikke kun som vagt åndelige vesener, men på et eller annet vis (som vi ennå ikke kan forstå) som vesener bestående av sjel og sinn og kropp.
Dagens høytid viser Guds aktelse for kjødet, en nødvendig del av vår natur formet i hans bilde. La oss da akte det selv og føre oss verdig og sant i det.
Amen.
Medieval enamel from Limoges in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Enjoyment
In Marilynne Robinson’s Jack the eponymous hero, persuaded of his dissoluteness, ever expecting the worst, is told by a preacher: ‘Mr Ames, if the Lord thinks you need punishing, you can trust Him to see to it. He knows where to find you. If He’s showing you a little grace in the meantime, He probably won’t mind if you enjoy it.’ I thought of this while watching a decent documentary about Mahalia Jackson. Thomas Dorsey said: ‘The key to Mahalia was very simple: she enjoyed her religion.’ Having grown up with Jackson’s voice (my mother had LPs), still feeling immensely comforted by it, I wonder if this is not what I’ve always sensed, somehow, without articulating it. Mahalia, a key player in the civil rights movement, had known hardship; she had few illusions about life; yet the visceral vocal power of this woman, who ‘took the beat from the nightclubs back to the church’ is charged with joyful zest. Coming to think of it, most of us could probably risk enjoying our religion a little more.
The Body in Eternity
Today marks the third anniversary of the Nordic Bishops’ Conference’s Letter on Human Sexuality. In it, we wrote: ‘What our bodies will be like in eternity we cannot yet imagine. But we believe on biblical authority, grounded in tradition, that the unity of mind, soul, and body is made to last forever. In eternity we shall be recognisable as who we are now, but the conflicts that still prevent the harmonious unfolding of our true self will have been resolved. ‘By God’s grace I am what I am’. St Paul had to battle with himself to make this statement in faith. So, often enough, must we. We are conscious of all we are not; we focus on gifts we did not receive, on affection or affirmation lacking in our lives. These things sadden us. We want to make up for them. Sometimes this is reasonable. Often it is futile. The journey to self-acceptance passes through engagement with what is real. The reality of our lives embraces our contradictions and wounds. The Bible and the lives of saints show that our wounds can, by grace, become sources of healing for ourselves and for others.’ You can (re)read the complete text here.
5 Sunday of Lent A
Ezekiel 37.12-14: I am going to open your graves.
Romans 8.8-11: You are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit.
John 11.1-45: Through it the Son of God will be glorified.
‘Behold, my people’, the Lord proclaimed through Ezekiel, ‘I will open your gaves’. Reading this text with Christian spectacles, and so close to the solemnity of Easter, we are filled with humble wonder. To think that an inkling of Christ’s resurrection lived in the consciousness of Israel 2,500 years ago! To think how coherent God’s work of salvation is! To think that we discern straight lines in the unfailing realisation of God’s providence!
This is a true perspective. Faith lets us look back with new insight. What we know now, in the light of Christ’s revelation and gracious power, gives meaning to things that took place long ago.
We ascertain this in our own lives. The older we get, the more clearly we can consider our existence and say, in retrospect, ‘Ah! So that is why such and such a thing happened; that is why I got, or didn’t get, what I wanted just then.’ Our personal history is gradually formed into a whole, even if along the way we may experience it as painfully fragmented.
The same goes for the history of mankind. That, too, has an origin and an end. That, too, will one day appear integral.
This may seem unlikely now. The world appears singularly chaotic. But our outlook is restricted, like that of ants in an anthill. We are absorbed by micro-processes. To see things aright, we must see the world as God sees it. Just think: the sun, which God created on the first day, is approximately four and a half billion years old; but for God it is young, even as it looks young, young and bashful, to us in a March sunrise here up north
What, then, do the mere 2,500 years that separate us from old Ezekiel amount to?
Still, we must also make an effort to hear the prophet’s words as they sounded in his time. We have to remember that the thought of opened graves and the rising of the dead is not in itself sweet. For ages, and in different religious contexts, people have wished the dead rest.
Death represents a conclusion. This conclusion calls for respect. To summon forth the dead is risky. We learn this from the Orpheus myth, which tells of how a man goes to fetch his beloved, Eurydice, up from Hades. In the Old Testament, it is counted a great sin to call the dead (Lev 20). This practice can have fatal consequences, as Saul realised when he bade the witch of Endor summon Samuel (1 Sam 28). Many people have been hurt, even traumatised, by engaging in stupid spiritistic board games at parties. To cross the line between life and death is more than we can handle on our own.
If history really has a form, and if each element in it has its place, then it isn’t good news if a person suddenly turns up out of his or her own time, if only in fantasy. Films about time-travellers rarely have an entirely happy end. And it is hardly the thought of earthly bliss that draws some individuals, now, to have themselves frozen down, confident that science will one day make such advances that they, duly thawed, can live unlimitedly; they are rather motivated by an intense fear of death.
Of course: the Biblical hope of resurrection is not about prolonged human existence. Our hope, our sure expectancy, is that we shall rise to new life in God.
Paul distinguishes between the life of the flesh and the life of the Spirit in us. The flesh represents our transient, physical being whose limitations are obvious – our arthritic self. The Spirit represents that in us which cannot die, which lets us entertain our mad longing for eternity. A seed of eternity does live in our nature on account of its being created in the image of God; but that seed must be watered by God’s grace poured out upon us in Christ. For eternal life is life in him, through him, with him.
The raising of Lazarus does not confirm the part of the creed which says: ‘I believe in the resurrection of the dead’. Lazarus steps out of the grave with the same body he had before. He must yet go through physical death. What has been given him is continued existence. Jesus cures him of death understood as a disease, the way the prophet Elijah, centuries before, raised the widow’s son in Sarepta (1 Kings 17).
The events that took place by the tomb in Bethany reveal Jesus as mankind’s Physician. At the same time they have a prophetic dimension. Jesus wants to teach us something essential by the way in which he acts. That is why he did not at once set off when Mary and Martha called him; that is why he assured his disciples: ‘This sickness will not end in death, but in God’s glory’. The raising of Lazarus shows that Jesus, Lord of the sabbath, Lord of evil spirits, Lord of uncleanness and disease, is also Lord of death. When he calls, ‘Lazarus, come out!’, he constrains death from without even as, shortly afterwards, in Jerusalem, he will constrain it from within by entering it.
In the Cistercian tradition, we commemorate Martha, Mary, and Lazarus as hospites Domini, ‘hosts of the Lord’, on a feast day that by God’s providence falls on the same day as that of our St Olav, 29 July. The three siblings were the Lord’s friends. They provided him with rest, care, a good meal. In their company he lets us glimpse the power that, at Easter, will utterly destroy the reign of death and let Christ’s holy resurrection shine forth as the sun in a new universe that will never end.
May we live faithfully as Jesus’s friends and hosts. And may he break down in us all that which belongs to death in order to make us ready to really live.
Amen.
Photograph of the sun from the website of NASA.
Romans 8.8-11: You are not in the flesh, you are in the Spirit.
John 11.1-45: Through it the Son of God will be glorified.
‘Behold, my people’, the Lord proclaimed through Ezekiel, ‘I will open your gaves’. Reading this text with Christian spectacles, and so close to the solemnity of Easter, we are filled with humble wonder. To think that an inkling of Christ’s resurrection lived in the consciousness of Israel 2,500 years ago! To think how coherent God’s work of salvation is! To think that we discern straight lines in the unfailing realisation of God’s providence!
This is a true perspective. Faith lets us look back with new insight. What we know now, in the light of Christ’s revelation and gracious power, gives meaning to things that took place long ago.
We ascertain this in our own lives. The older we get, the more clearly we can consider our existence and say, in retrospect, ‘Ah! So that is why such and such a thing happened; that is why I got, or didn’t get, what I wanted just then.’ Our personal history is gradually formed into a whole, even if along the way we may experience it as painfully fragmented.
The same goes for the history of mankind. That, too, has an origin and an end. That, too, will one day appear integral.
This may seem unlikely now. The world appears singularly chaotic. But our outlook is restricted, like that of ants in an anthill. We are absorbed by micro-processes. To see things aright, we must see the world as God sees it. Just think: the sun, which God created on the first day, is approximately four and a half billion years old; but for God it is young, even as it looks young, young and bashful, to us in a March sunrise here up north
What, then, do the mere 2,500 years that separate us from old Ezekiel amount to?
Still, we must also make an effort to hear the prophet’s words as they sounded in his time. We have to remember that the thought of opened graves and the rising of the dead is not in itself sweet. For ages, and in different religious contexts, people have wished the dead rest.
Death represents a conclusion. This conclusion calls for respect. To summon forth the dead is risky. We learn this from the Orpheus myth, which tells of how a man goes to fetch his beloved, Eurydice, up from Hades. In the Old Testament, it is counted a great sin to call the dead (Lev 20). This practice can have fatal consequences, as Saul realised when he bade the witch of Endor summon Samuel (1 Sam 28). Many people have been hurt, even traumatised, by engaging in stupid spiritistic board games at parties. To cross the line between life and death is more than we can handle on our own.
If history really has a form, and if each element in it has its place, then it isn’t good news if a person suddenly turns up out of his or her own time, if only in fantasy. Films about time-travellers rarely have an entirely happy end. And it is hardly the thought of earthly bliss that draws some individuals, now, to have themselves frozen down, confident that science will one day make such advances that they, duly thawed, can live unlimitedly; they are rather motivated by an intense fear of death.
Of course: the Biblical hope of resurrection is not about prolonged human existence. Our hope, our sure expectancy, is that we shall rise to new life in God.
Paul distinguishes between the life of the flesh and the life of the Spirit in us. The flesh represents our transient, physical being whose limitations are obvious – our arthritic self. The Spirit represents that in us which cannot die, which lets us entertain our mad longing for eternity. A seed of eternity does live in our nature on account of its being created in the image of God; but that seed must be watered by God’s grace poured out upon us in Christ. For eternal life is life in him, through him, with him.
The raising of Lazarus does not confirm the part of the creed which says: ‘I believe in the resurrection of the dead’. Lazarus steps out of the grave with the same body he had before. He must yet go through physical death. What has been given him is continued existence. Jesus cures him of death understood as a disease, the way the prophet Elijah, centuries before, raised the widow’s son in Sarepta (1 Kings 17).
The events that took place by the tomb in Bethany reveal Jesus as mankind’s Physician. At the same time they have a prophetic dimension. Jesus wants to teach us something essential by the way in which he acts. That is why he did not at once set off when Mary and Martha called him; that is why he assured his disciples: ‘This sickness will not end in death, but in God’s glory’. The raising of Lazarus shows that Jesus, Lord of the sabbath, Lord of evil spirits, Lord of uncleanness and disease, is also Lord of death. When he calls, ‘Lazarus, come out!’, he constrains death from without even as, shortly afterwards, in Jerusalem, he will constrain it from within by entering it.
In the Cistercian tradition, we commemorate Martha, Mary, and Lazarus as hospites Domini, ‘hosts of the Lord’, on a feast day that by God’s providence falls on the same day as that of our St Olav, 29 July. The three siblings were the Lord’s friends. They provided him with rest, care, a good meal. In their company he lets us glimpse the power that, at Easter, will utterly destroy the reign of death and let Christ’s holy resurrection shine forth as the sun in a new universe that will never end.
May we live faithfully as Jesus’s friends and hosts. And may he break down in us all that which belongs to death in order to make us ready to really live.
Amen.
Photograph of the sun from the website of NASA.
Heimur í orðum
A windstorm like nothing I’ve ever seen kept the whole Nordic Bishops’ Conference stranded in Reykjavik today. Walking diagonally through town at midday, I had at one point to hold on to a fence not to be blown over. I warmed up at the exhibition World in Words at the Edda Museum. I’d read about it in the New York Times, which called the show ‘mesmerisingly immersive’. I agree. It is exhilarating. After an hour and a half I had not only learned a lot; I felt I’d been somewhere else, in a different world. At a time when digital media often cause concern, it is grand to see them used sensibly and well. State-of-the-art equipment provides privileged access to a distant past. That past comes very close when we hear, for example, how Arinbjorn consoles Egill Skalla-Grímsson on the death of his brother: ‘Even though you have suffered a great loss with your brother’s death, the manly thing to do is bear it well. One man lives after another’s death. What poetry have you been composing? Let me hear some.’
Custody
In the liturgy there is one term that more than any other characterises St Joseph: he is referred to as custos — Custos Redemptoris, Custos Verbi, etc. In today’s collect we thank God for entrusting the beginning of our salvation precisely to Joseph’s custodia. It’s not such an easy term to render. The English word ‘custody’ makes us think of a prison sentence; a ‘custodian’ is not at first sight a liberating presence. In Latin, custos is derived from the same root as scutum, which means ‘a shield’. A shield exists to defend a man from enemy attack. It must be light enough to be easily manoeuvrable; it must be strong enough to withstand sharp arrows. Here’s an image that may help us understand St Joseph better.
From a homily for the feast of St Joseph.
From a homily for the feast of St Joseph.
On Cracks
A conversation with Ewa Skrabacz published in W drodze. You can find it here in PDF. Below is an English version.
What is the sound of loneliness and what is its colour?
Good question. I’d say the colour of loneliness is grey and its sound is indefinable — just a resonance, an echo coming from another place.
I was thinking about shades, semitones – there can be different tones of loneliness, different intensities.
A useful feature of English is its varied vocabulary in this respect. You can speak about solitude, which does not have a negative meaning. Solitude is a choice; it can be uplifting. You can speak about aloneness, more neutral, neither good nor bad. It carries no difficult emotional charge. Then there’s loneliness, which has a distinctly negative connotation and is associated with isolation, abandonment. While one can long for solitude, one cannot truly yearn for loneliness. Much can probably be learnt about the English from their subtle differentiation in the vocabulary of loneliness!
Using the richness of the English language, I would like to clarify that we are going to talk about that difficult variety – loneliness. We do not choose it, we do not wish for it. It is an unwanted guest in our lives. Can it still be useful and constructive?
Good can come from everything. Such an attitude is, of course, related to a specific Christian view of reality. Scripture shows that even from death, sin, or betrayal, good things can come. I think about people who have spent time in forced isolation. When someone is in such isolation, they experience forced loneliness. This was the case of Brian Keenan, who in his book An Evil Cradling tells the story of his kidnapping and forced isolation in the 90s. He talks about the suffering of loneliness. At the same time he found that it carved out new depths within him. In retrospect, he sees that the experience was enriching. This enrichment, however, comes not from loneliness itself, but from the proper way — the wise, skilful way — of coping with it. Loneliness can also be destructive and can even lead to madness. This is why totalitarian regimes always have eager recourse to it and like to use it.
So suffering caused by loneliness does not in itself make us better or ennoble us, but we can derive meaning from it?
Yes, we can derive meaning from such experience.
Can we do it ourselves? I am wondering how it is possible. The title of your book Shattering of Loneliness, may suggest a more forceful approach?
Several friends had long discussions about which word would be best in the Polish translation. The image that accompanied me while creating the English title was of a glass dome, the kind you use to cover cheese. I imagined a man standing under such a dome. At some point, for some reason – whether due to some kind of tension within the glass structure itself, or due to an accurate blow with a stone – cracks appear on the dome. And later, these cracks, these glass wounds, spread, extending across the entire surface. At first, the shape of the dome is maintained, but the necessary internal strength is no longer there. As a result, suddenly the whole thing falls apart. One can breathe at last. This is the image of shattering of loneliness.
Does it mean that a person trapped in loneliness should actively work to escape it? It is said that in a crisis, it is better not to make any decisions, that it is not a good time for action.
I think the most important thing in this context is to acknowledge loneliness. Often we are reluctant to admit – both to ourselves and even more so to others – that we are lonely. This resistance is related to the fact that we perceive loneliness as a failure. It is particularly difficult in times when success in life is perversely measured by the number of virtual friendships. People spend time taking photos of everything – what they eat, the beautiful things they buy or want to buy – and in this way put much effort into creating an image of themselves as constantly enterprising, always connected to others. In this way the pain of loneliness is suppressed and hidden under images of apparent closeness. I think it is important to develop and hone skills — emotional, intellectual, communicational skills — that let us sit in a chair and say, ‘I am lonely’. Then it becomes clear that what we perceived as failure can actually be liberating. For when I acknowledge my loneliness, I can also ask myself, ‘Why am I lonely? What can I do to overcome this loneliness?’ In this way, I assume initiative, I have a chance to regain agency.
So we take the initiative, throw something at the dome and break it? Could honesty with ourselves be such a stone?
Yes, the first and decisive step is to cast the stone of honesty, as we have already talked about. Then we can find stones of agency and take positive action.
To face the truth about one’s own loneliness requires courage and maturity. At the same time, loneliness forces us to be courageous, and this leads us to maturity.
The question is: Am I able to use the word ‘I’ within my glass dome? Can I say, ‘I am here. This is my loneliness. This is my suffering, and I can face it.’ Or do I still claim that others brought me to this state, that others are to blame, that ‘they’ did this to me. Until I say the word ‘I’, I will not be able to move forward. The glass dome will remain intact.
Self-awareness is therefore important. But is awareness of the other equally important? We have evoked a virtual reality in which the drama of loneliness unfolds in successive acts: we reach for ChatGPT, with which we enter into relationships (sic!). True liberation from loneliness involves an encounter, it must relate to a person. No substitute will suffice – we need a human being.
This is very important. This is what my book Chastity: Reconciliation of the Senses is about. I consciously structured the narrative so that the last chapter would be about seeing. It is crucial to look, to see clearly. The opposite of chastity may be loneliness, separation from others. Although loneliness can be painful, it can also be pacifying and provide a sense of security. I may complain about my loneliness, but at least I am left undisturbed in it; no one is a threat to me. But when I meet another person, when I go out to meet the other, I also meet his or her gaze – I see someone and that person sees me! Then there is risk: I am visible, uncovered, I can be exposed. Loneliness protects me from such exposure. In that sense, it can seem comfortable, even desirable.
This is the paradox of our times: we desperately want to be seen and yet we hide behind a version of ourselves we have created.
And we want to see others; we want to peek into their lives through their windows.
We look inquisitively, fragmentarily, not wanting to really see the other person’s face.
Yes, we have created a culture of voyeurism.
At the same time, there is a cruel type of loneliness — we create the illusion of closeness and familiarity, but in reality, we isolate ourselves even further.
I would say it is the saddest kind of loneliness. And yet, we hold the key that allows us to escape it. The stones that can shatter the glass dome are in our hands.
We observe various struggles with loneliness; we share many experiences. What is your personal experience? What sort of loneliness has there been in the life of Erik Varden, a Trappist, then a bishop.
Like many others, I went through a period during my adolescence when I felt very lonely. People sometimes speak with irony or even contempt about Weltschmerz, the pain of existence experienced during adolescence. It always leaves me a little peeved. For this is a real dimension of teenage experience: the feeling that the pain of the world, the pain of existence, is somehow massed within me, within my body. Of course, it is not strictly speaking true. Nevertheless, this adolescent experience is real and demands recognition and respect.
The pain of existence, which is a developmental experience.
Yes, but there is always a risk of getting stuck in such a state. It can become a trap.
Adolescent Erik didn’t get stuck?
Well, I was very lucky because I had friends, I read books, listened to music. I could find echoes of what I was experiencing. Thanks to that, I was no longer alone.
At what stage of this experience did faith appear?
I was about fifteen years old. Until that moment, I assumed that the Christian faith was just a collection of superficial, stupid answers to unreal questions. Then I began to discover that, in fact, this is not the case at all, that the Christian tradition provides deep, insightful, beautiful answers to fundamental questions. It occurred to me that within these answers, the Church gives us the courage to ask new questions which, without the experience of tradition, continuity, and community, might seem too difficult or too painful.
And these questions, these answers led you to the Trappist Order?
Yes, I found great authenticity in monastic life. Every moment of the day, whether you are singing in church or milking cows on the farm, can be a search for truth. This attracted me. In the monastery, I discovered an extraordinary intellectual and spiritual heritage and I loved it. I was glad to be part of creation a community with good, faithful, kind brethren.
A community of faith. Faith itself is a relationship. One might provocatively ask, can a believer be lonely?
I think such a question is justified, and the answer is ‘no’. However, a person of faith can still feel lonely. Loneliness is a subjective feeling. It is worth noting that feelings of loneliness can be a useful warning sign. When this sense appears, the familiar feeling that I am lonely, it tells me that I am withdrawing into myself, entering again into the glass dome, hiding under it as if I were cheese.
This image of cheese under the glass dome will stay with me.
To complete the image, imagine the smell!
A strong and evocative addition! Isolation protects against contact, but not against corruption or decay. Loneliness, therefore, is a warning sign. Properly interpreted, it leads to conversion.
The experience of helplessness can work this way. I can throw stones at a glass dome and cry, ‘Lord, have mercy on me!’
Humility, humiliation that leads to God.
Absolutely. And I expand on the theme when writing about loneliness. Humility is related to humus. Humus is the soil, the ground, the ground level. So, it is about being at ground level. I must face the collapse of my pride, the collapse of my illusion that I can rise on my own. There is a chance I will discover what grace and mercy mean. I have a chance to discover what salvation is.
When we talk about a believer who cannot be alone, I recall a story of a certain man. Being in a difficult situation, he said he felt like a stray dog. And then he heard the words that stayed with him forever and saved him in many situations: ‘No, you are created and redeemed by the Lord.’ Man is always the Lord’s.
This is true. What is important is that he decides to admit this, to see it, to accept it. And let’s remember that God is a dangerous reality.
‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God…’
Yes, this God whom I call upon as Comforter and Helper may turn out to be a God who makes as well demands. Maybe I do not want these demands! That is why I prefer to keep Him at a distance. Just as we spoke about forming relationships with real people, not virtual reality, we speak now about an encounter with the living, true God.
And we can create our own ‘Lord God,’ mould him from our imaginations. Life with such a god can be much easier, although ultimately tragic, because false.
And I will find no great comfort in a god I created for myself. The Israelites discovered this after they spent some time dancing around the golden calf. Sooner or later, the experience of worshipping our idols teaches us the same thing.
This risk is inevitable – escaping loneliness means entertaining an authentic encounter with the true God and reaching out to a true man. Can one prepare for this?
We mentioned earlier the challenge of admitting loneliness. We move forward towards the next stage: preparations for the encounter. I must ask myself: Am I ready for the encounter? Or do I prefer a chatbot I can programme to support me, encourage me and assure me everything is fine? Perhaps at some level it is more comfortable to stay with this thing than to risk a friendship with someone who might come and say, ‘You can’t go on like this!’ My preparation will begin with the question: Do I really want my loneliness to be shattered? This reminds us of the question Jesus asks in the Gospel, ‘Do you want to be healed?’ We could describe this stage as an internal, subjective preparation. There is a further preparation that is realised ‘outwardly’. In this sense it is objective. It is about engaging, about entering the reality of other people. It can be performed in a safe way by, say, reading books, engaging with poetry, or watching films. These are simple exercises in compassion, in developing empathy, or simply in showing interest for another person. But it is necessary to meet real people who stand before us, to see them, talk to them. I do not mean that we must immediately start to talk about deep issues. It can be just a look in the eye, a smile, a simple way of saying, ‘I am here and you are here. That’s good.’
I think of the poem Loneliness by Rainer Maria Rilke. I would like to quote in its entirety:
Die Einsamkeit ist wie ein Regen.
Sie steigt vom Meer den Abenden entgegen;
von Ebenen, die fern sind und entlegen,
geht sie zum Himmel, der sie immer hat.
Und erst vom Himmel fällt sie auf die Stadt.
Regnet hernieder in den Zwitterstunden,
wenn sich nach Morgen wenden alle Gassen
und wenn die Leiber, welche nichts gefunden,
enttäuscht und traurig von einander lassen;
und wenn die Menschen, die einander hassen,
in einem Bett zusammen schlafen müssen:
dann geht die Einsamkeit mit den Flüssen…
***
Being apart and lonely is like rain.
It climbs toward evening from the ocean plains;
from flat places, rolling and remote, it climbs
to heaven, which is its old abode.
And only when leaving heaven drops upon the city.
It rains down on us in those twittering
hours when the streets turn their faces to the dawn,
and when two bodies who have found nothing,
dissapointed and depressed, roll over;
and when two people who despise each other
have to sleep together in one bed –
that is when loneliness receives the rivers…
There is a closeness that feels like an abyss of emptiness – a person is physically close and still very distant. Loneliness ‘drops upon the city’, ‘it rains down on us’, and ‘receives the rivers’. Is this an inevitable human experience?
When I was at school, I had a good history teacher. When we wrote essays, he never allowed us to use the word ‘inevitable’. If you did, the word was crossed out or underlined in red. He instilled in all of us that nothing is inevitable. I think this is true in the context of history, but also regarding human experience. Therefore, I’d hesitate to say that everyone ‘must’ go through the experience of loneliness. At the same time, based on years of empirical observation, I’d say that most people do go through it. However, the experience of loneliness can become a place out of which community is born, closeness is built. Even when two people — as in Rilke’s poem, ‘who despise each other, must sleep together’ — experience loneliness in the space of a shared bed, this doesn’t have to be the ultimate situation. We are created to build relationships; we are programmed for it.
We do not so much have relationships; we are relationships. How can we not be in relationship with others, with God?
We can be isolated from others. But it is impossible to flourish while we are cut off from the others. In my book on chastity, I recall the story of a monk who had a vision of hell: it is a place where people are chained back-to-back. They can never get rid of each other, yet never see one another. The Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland captured this state in his monumental relief Hell, which is a vision of loneliness, not as physical separation, but as a state of being among others without any true connection.
But there is an escape from the hell of loneliness – Jesus Christ. The mystery of the incarnation is God’s radical response to human confusion, to our loneliness.
Logically, the story of what it is to be human begins at a different point: man was made to live in communion, in the fundamental complementary of ‘me’ and ‘you’. This communion is symbolised in the image of man and woman, incomplete without each other. Loneliness comes later. It is a consequence and wound of sin. The Biblical account indicates that the dissatisfaction Adam felt before Eve was created was not strictly speaking loneliness, for it was marked by anticipation. He asks, ‘Where is my companion?’ Only when sin enters the picture is he separated from God, and from others. He hides, isolates himself. Emmanuel, ‘God with us’, speaks to this lost man as ‘God with me‘, within my loneliness.
Wherever the wound of sin appears, God pours out the grace of his closeness. In my thoughts I return to the image of the dome, the broken glass. The blessed crack from which it all begins.
And as someone once said: ‘Blessed are the cracked, for they shall let the light in.’
Translated by Daria and Oskar Styczynscy.
What is the sound of loneliness and what is its colour?
Good question. I’d say the colour of loneliness is grey and its sound is indefinable — just a resonance, an echo coming from another place.
I was thinking about shades, semitones – there can be different tones of loneliness, different intensities.
A useful feature of English is its varied vocabulary in this respect. You can speak about solitude, which does not have a negative meaning. Solitude is a choice; it can be uplifting. You can speak about aloneness, more neutral, neither good nor bad. It carries no difficult emotional charge. Then there’s loneliness, which has a distinctly negative connotation and is associated with isolation, abandonment. While one can long for solitude, one cannot truly yearn for loneliness. Much can probably be learnt about the English from their subtle differentiation in the vocabulary of loneliness!
Using the richness of the English language, I would like to clarify that we are going to talk about that difficult variety – loneliness. We do not choose it, we do not wish for it. It is an unwanted guest in our lives. Can it still be useful and constructive?
Good can come from everything. Such an attitude is, of course, related to a specific Christian view of reality. Scripture shows that even from death, sin, or betrayal, good things can come. I think about people who have spent time in forced isolation. When someone is in such isolation, they experience forced loneliness. This was the case of Brian Keenan, who in his book An Evil Cradling tells the story of his kidnapping and forced isolation in the 90s. He talks about the suffering of loneliness. At the same time he found that it carved out new depths within him. In retrospect, he sees that the experience was enriching. This enrichment, however, comes not from loneliness itself, but from the proper way — the wise, skilful way — of coping with it. Loneliness can also be destructive and can even lead to madness. This is why totalitarian regimes always have eager recourse to it and like to use it.
So suffering caused by loneliness does not in itself make us better or ennoble us, but we can derive meaning from it?
Yes, we can derive meaning from such experience.
Can we do it ourselves? I am wondering how it is possible. The title of your book Shattering of Loneliness, may suggest a more forceful approach?
Several friends had long discussions about which word would be best in the Polish translation. The image that accompanied me while creating the English title was of a glass dome, the kind you use to cover cheese. I imagined a man standing under such a dome. At some point, for some reason – whether due to some kind of tension within the glass structure itself, or due to an accurate blow with a stone – cracks appear on the dome. And later, these cracks, these glass wounds, spread, extending across the entire surface. At first, the shape of the dome is maintained, but the necessary internal strength is no longer there. As a result, suddenly the whole thing falls apart. One can breathe at last. This is the image of shattering of loneliness.
Does it mean that a person trapped in loneliness should actively work to escape it? It is said that in a crisis, it is better not to make any decisions, that it is not a good time for action.
I think the most important thing in this context is to acknowledge loneliness. Often we are reluctant to admit – both to ourselves and even more so to others – that we are lonely. This resistance is related to the fact that we perceive loneliness as a failure. It is particularly difficult in times when success in life is perversely measured by the number of virtual friendships. People spend time taking photos of everything – what they eat, the beautiful things they buy or want to buy – and in this way put much effort into creating an image of themselves as constantly enterprising, always connected to others. In this way the pain of loneliness is suppressed and hidden under images of apparent closeness. I think it is important to develop and hone skills — emotional, intellectual, communicational skills — that let us sit in a chair and say, ‘I am lonely’. Then it becomes clear that what we perceived as failure can actually be liberating. For when I acknowledge my loneliness, I can also ask myself, ‘Why am I lonely? What can I do to overcome this loneliness?’ In this way, I assume initiative, I have a chance to regain agency.
So we take the initiative, throw something at the dome and break it? Could honesty with ourselves be such a stone?
Yes, the first and decisive step is to cast the stone of honesty, as we have already talked about. Then we can find stones of agency and take positive action.
To face the truth about one’s own loneliness requires courage and maturity. At the same time, loneliness forces us to be courageous, and this leads us to maturity.
The question is: Am I able to use the word ‘I’ within my glass dome? Can I say, ‘I am here. This is my loneliness. This is my suffering, and I can face it.’ Or do I still claim that others brought me to this state, that others are to blame, that ‘they’ did this to me. Until I say the word ‘I’, I will not be able to move forward. The glass dome will remain intact.
Self-awareness is therefore important. But is awareness of the other equally important? We have evoked a virtual reality in which the drama of loneliness unfolds in successive acts: we reach for ChatGPT, with which we enter into relationships (sic!). True liberation from loneliness involves an encounter, it must relate to a person. No substitute will suffice – we need a human being.
This is very important. This is what my book Chastity: Reconciliation of the Senses is about. I consciously structured the narrative so that the last chapter would be about seeing. It is crucial to look, to see clearly. The opposite of chastity may be loneliness, separation from others. Although loneliness can be painful, it can also be pacifying and provide a sense of security. I may complain about my loneliness, but at least I am left undisturbed in it; no one is a threat to me. But when I meet another person, when I go out to meet the other, I also meet his or her gaze – I see someone and that person sees me! Then there is risk: I am visible, uncovered, I can be exposed. Loneliness protects me from such exposure. In that sense, it can seem comfortable, even desirable.
This is the paradox of our times: we desperately want to be seen and yet we hide behind a version of ourselves we have created.
And we want to see others; we want to peek into their lives through their windows.
We look inquisitively, fragmentarily, not wanting to really see the other person’s face.
Yes, we have created a culture of voyeurism.
At the same time, there is a cruel type of loneliness — we create the illusion of closeness and familiarity, but in reality, we isolate ourselves even further.
I would say it is the saddest kind of loneliness. And yet, we hold the key that allows us to escape it. The stones that can shatter the glass dome are in our hands.
We observe various struggles with loneliness; we share many experiences. What is your personal experience? What sort of loneliness has there been in the life of Erik Varden, a Trappist, then a bishop.
Like many others, I went through a period during my adolescence when I felt very lonely. People sometimes speak with irony or even contempt about Weltschmerz, the pain of existence experienced during adolescence. It always leaves me a little peeved. For this is a real dimension of teenage experience: the feeling that the pain of the world, the pain of existence, is somehow massed within me, within my body. Of course, it is not strictly speaking true. Nevertheless, this adolescent experience is real and demands recognition and respect.
The pain of existence, which is a developmental experience.
Yes, but there is always a risk of getting stuck in such a state. It can become a trap.
Adolescent Erik didn’t get stuck?
Well, I was very lucky because I had friends, I read books, listened to music. I could find echoes of what I was experiencing. Thanks to that, I was no longer alone.
At what stage of this experience did faith appear?
I was about fifteen years old. Until that moment, I assumed that the Christian faith was just a collection of superficial, stupid answers to unreal questions. Then I began to discover that, in fact, this is not the case at all, that the Christian tradition provides deep, insightful, beautiful answers to fundamental questions. It occurred to me that within these answers, the Church gives us the courage to ask new questions which, without the experience of tradition, continuity, and community, might seem too difficult or too painful.
And these questions, these answers led you to the Trappist Order?
Yes, I found great authenticity in monastic life. Every moment of the day, whether you are singing in church or milking cows on the farm, can be a search for truth. This attracted me. In the monastery, I discovered an extraordinary intellectual and spiritual heritage and I loved it. I was glad to be part of creation a community with good, faithful, kind brethren.
A community of faith. Faith itself is a relationship. One might provocatively ask, can a believer be lonely?
I think such a question is justified, and the answer is ‘no’. However, a person of faith can still feel lonely. Loneliness is a subjective feeling. It is worth noting that feelings of loneliness can be a useful warning sign. When this sense appears, the familiar feeling that I am lonely, it tells me that I am withdrawing into myself, entering again into the glass dome, hiding under it as if I were cheese.
This image of cheese under the glass dome will stay with me.
To complete the image, imagine the smell!
A strong and evocative addition! Isolation protects against contact, but not against corruption or decay. Loneliness, therefore, is a warning sign. Properly interpreted, it leads to conversion.
The experience of helplessness can work this way. I can throw stones at a glass dome and cry, ‘Lord, have mercy on me!’
Humility, humiliation that leads to God.
Absolutely. And I expand on the theme when writing about loneliness. Humility is related to humus. Humus is the soil, the ground, the ground level. So, it is about being at ground level. I must face the collapse of my pride, the collapse of my illusion that I can rise on my own. There is a chance I will discover what grace and mercy mean. I have a chance to discover what salvation is.
When we talk about a believer who cannot be alone, I recall a story of a certain man. Being in a difficult situation, he said he felt like a stray dog. And then he heard the words that stayed with him forever and saved him in many situations: ‘No, you are created and redeemed by the Lord.’ Man is always the Lord’s.
This is true. What is important is that he decides to admit this, to see it, to accept it. And let’s remember that God is a dangerous reality.
‘It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God…’
Yes, this God whom I call upon as Comforter and Helper may turn out to be a God who makes as well demands. Maybe I do not want these demands! That is why I prefer to keep Him at a distance. Just as we spoke about forming relationships with real people, not virtual reality, we speak now about an encounter with the living, true God.
And we can create our own ‘Lord God,’ mould him from our imaginations. Life with such a god can be much easier, although ultimately tragic, because false.
And I will find no great comfort in a god I created for myself. The Israelites discovered this after they spent some time dancing around the golden calf. Sooner or later, the experience of worshipping our idols teaches us the same thing.
This risk is inevitable – escaping loneliness means entertaining an authentic encounter with the true God and reaching out to a true man. Can one prepare for this?
We mentioned earlier the challenge of admitting loneliness. We move forward towards the next stage: preparations for the encounter. I must ask myself: Am I ready for the encounter? Or do I prefer a chatbot I can programme to support me, encourage me and assure me everything is fine? Perhaps at some level it is more comfortable to stay with this thing than to risk a friendship with someone who might come and say, ‘You can’t go on like this!’ My preparation will begin with the question: Do I really want my loneliness to be shattered? This reminds us of the question Jesus asks in the Gospel, ‘Do you want to be healed?’ We could describe this stage as an internal, subjective preparation. There is a further preparation that is realised ‘outwardly’. In this sense it is objective. It is about engaging, about entering the reality of other people. It can be performed in a safe way by, say, reading books, engaging with poetry, or watching films. These are simple exercises in compassion, in developing empathy, or simply in showing interest for another person. But it is necessary to meet real people who stand before us, to see them, talk to them. I do not mean that we must immediately start to talk about deep issues. It can be just a look in the eye, a smile, a simple way of saying, ‘I am here and you are here. That’s good.’
I think of the poem Loneliness by Rainer Maria Rilke. I would like to quote in its entirety:
Die Einsamkeit ist wie ein Regen.
Sie steigt vom Meer den Abenden entgegen;
von Ebenen, die fern sind und entlegen,
geht sie zum Himmel, der sie immer hat.
Und erst vom Himmel fällt sie auf die Stadt.
Regnet hernieder in den Zwitterstunden,
wenn sich nach Morgen wenden alle Gassen
und wenn die Leiber, welche nichts gefunden,
enttäuscht und traurig von einander lassen;
und wenn die Menschen, die einander hassen,
in einem Bett zusammen schlafen müssen:
dann geht die Einsamkeit mit den Flüssen…
***
Being apart and lonely is like rain.
It climbs toward evening from the ocean plains;
from flat places, rolling and remote, it climbs
to heaven, which is its old abode.
And only when leaving heaven drops upon the city.
It rains down on us in those twittering
hours when the streets turn their faces to the dawn,
and when two bodies who have found nothing,
dissapointed and depressed, roll over;
and when two people who despise each other
have to sleep together in one bed –
that is when loneliness receives the rivers…
There is a closeness that feels like an abyss of emptiness – a person is physically close and still very distant. Loneliness ‘drops upon the city’, ‘it rains down on us’, and ‘receives the rivers’. Is this an inevitable human experience?
When I was at school, I had a good history teacher. When we wrote essays, he never allowed us to use the word ‘inevitable’. If you did, the word was crossed out or underlined in red. He instilled in all of us that nothing is inevitable. I think this is true in the context of history, but also regarding human experience. Therefore, I’d hesitate to say that everyone ‘must’ go through the experience of loneliness. At the same time, based on years of empirical observation, I’d say that most people do go through it. However, the experience of loneliness can become a place out of which community is born, closeness is built. Even when two people — as in Rilke’s poem, ‘who despise each other, must sleep together’ — experience loneliness in the space of a shared bed, this doesn’t have to be the ultimate situation. We are created to build relationships; we are programmed for it.
We do not so much have relationships; we are relationships. How can we not be in relationship with others, with God?
We can be isolated from others. But it is impossible to flourish while we are cut off from the others. In my book on chastity, I recall the story of a monk who had a vision of hell: it is a place where people are chained back-to-back. They can never get rid of each other, yet never see one another. The Norwegian sculptor Gustav Vigeland captured this state in his monumental relief Hell, which is a vision of loneliness, not as physical separation, but as a state of being among others without any true connection.
But there is an escape from the hell of loneliness – Jesus Christ. The mystery of the incarnation is God’s radical response to human confusion, to our loneliness.
Logically, the story of what it is to be human begins at a different point: man was made to live in communion, in the fundamental complementary of ‘me’ and ‘you’. This communion is symbolised in the image of man and woman, incomplete without each other. Loneliness comes later. It is a consequence and wound of sin. The Biblical account indicates that the dissatisfaction Adam felt before Eve was created was not strictly speaking loneliness, for it was marked by anticipation. He asks, ‘Where is my companion?’ Only when sin enters the picture is he separated from God, and from others. He hides, isolates himself. Emmanuel, ‘God with us’, speaks to this lost man as ‘God with me‘, within my loneliness.
Wherever the wound of sin appears, God pours out the grace of his closeness. In my thoughts I return to the image of the dome, the broken glass. The blessed crack from which it all begins.
And as someone once said: ‘Blessed are the cracked, for they shall let the light in.’
Translated by Daria and Oskar Styczynscy.
Facing Fear
Speech given to open the spring plenary assembly of the Nordic Bishops’ Conference in Stykkishólmur.
To prepare myself for our meeting here at Stykkishólmur, I have been dipping into a travel book — not one of the recent ones that seem to speak only of adventure trails and spas, as if Iceland were thought up by God Almighty as a leisure park, but a book written 90 years ago, in 1936, when the poets W.H. Auden and Louis MacNeice spent three months here.
The trip was an adventure to them, too; but an adventure into a natural and human reality they regarded with reverence. Iceland came across as wild in 1936, a place where life was hard but people were hospitable.
No one had thought of a Chai latte back then. One cooked to survive, not to generate gastronomic ‘experience’. The food impressed Auden, who notes, for example, how to get on with the dried fish he found served everywhere. It should, he says, ‘be shredded with the fingers and eaten with butter. It varies in toughness. The tougher kind tastes like toe-nails, and the softer kind like the skin off the soles of one’s feet.’
Auden and MacNeice were both born in 1907. They were 29 years old, joyful and strong, full of sparkle and wit, enthralled by the grandiose nature of this country and by its society, so different from the England and Ireland they came from. Still thirty years later, Auden was pleased to register that ‘modernity does not seem to have changed the character of [Icelanders]. They are still the only really classless society I have ever encountered, and they have not — not yet — become vulgar.’
Yet there was fear in the air. ‘Though writing in a “holiday” spirit’, though having the holiday of their lives, the poets were conscious, writes Auden retrospectively, ‘of a threatening horizon to their picnic — worldwide unemployment, Hitler growing every day more powerful and a world-war more inevitable. Indeed the prologue to that war, the Spanish Civil War, broke out while we were there.’
I thought of those words while reading the paper on the plane yesterday.
Pundits disagree on whether the Third World War has already begun. Since 2022 we have, in the Nordic countries, followed with pain and anxiety the grinding continuity of Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. Russia is our neighbour, too. Our countries are rearming. We are watching our boundaries to the East and to the West.
Greenland was, not long ago, at the centre of the world’s attention as the president of the United States insisted, in less and less diplomatic terms, on his private notion that the territory should really be his.
Gaza is in ruins as a result of the war provoked by the gruesome Hamas attacks on Israel in 2023.
No one knows what the long-term effect of regime change in Venezuela will be, notably what effect it will have on Cuba.
The Israeli-US war on Iran was advertised as the swift cutting of a gordian knot that would produce stability. The US Department of War, which used to be called Department of Defence, announced the operation under the name ‘Epic Fury’, presenting it as ‘laser focused’. That phrase summons up the reassuring image of sophisticated surgery by which a steady surgeon’s hand, assisted by wonderful gadgetry, removes a cancerous growth without damaging healthy tissue, enabling the patient to return home that same day. Furies, though, are now unleashed in the Strait of Hormuz, in the Persian Gulf, in Lebanon, and elsewhere.
Who sows the wind reaps the whirlwind (Hosea 8.7). Fury calls fury forth.
Anyone who thought they were out on a picnic stands corrected. A threatening horizon surrounds us on all sides. Conflicts like those mentioned — and God knows they are not the only ones — coincide with environmental change, the unpredictable rise of AI, and weird virtual addictions. We are left feeling under threat not only on the human and political, but also on the natural and digital level.
This state of affairs is found by many to be overwhelming. Mental health needs are growing exponentially, notably among the young. Many say they simply do not know, now, where existence is pointed. That confusion can seem too much to bear.
Meanwhile, voices of more or less self-proclaimed prophetic authority loudly profess that they know exactly where the world is going, and that there is no getting away from it. A couple of weeks ago, Alexander Dugin, whose influence on the president of Russia has often been remarked on, publicly envisaged the onset of an end-time battle, the war of all wars that will, he thinks, probably bring an end to history. Dugin’s discourse is a mixture of political analysis and apocalyptic symbolism drawn from Scripture. Dugin speaks of a ‘sacred mission’ to ‘stop the civilisation of Baal’. The victory he looks towards has little to do with the prospect of an evangelical reign of justice and peace in love, however; in fact, it is itself marked by the Baalist characteristics of a god who devours his children.
What a setting in which to be a bishop these days!
The task entrusted to us is grave. At the same time it is beautiful. The world is caught up in a maelstrom of violence, fear, duplicity, and sheer madness. Yet over this chaos the Spirit hovers, not menacingly, but benignly. The Spirit, of course, is the Spirit of justice and truth. The Spirit will have no truck with injustice and untruth. Where worldly tendencies marked by sin pull what is whole apart, the Spirit unites. The Spirit unites by setting right boundaries, not by compromise.
Our political and cultural climate is marked by fierce polarisation and by an increasingly aggressive, belligerent tone, even among those who call themselves believers.
But the Church must follow a different path; she must show that such a path is humanly possible, for it is her task to let God’s peace become flesh. We cannot be content just to stand around and tell people to be nice to one another. We must show what a renewed humanity looks like. Only such renewal can save us from the constant acceleration of confrontations.
I know it can seem bombastic to begin our conference, a modest gathering, on such a note. I am no political analyst. I am no theoretician of culture. I simply want to share with you a deep conviction: this is a decisive and fearful time for Europe and for the world. Into this time we must speak Christ’s peace, a peace not like that which the world gives piecemeal.
Christ’s peace is no transaction, no pragmatic ‘deal’. It is the fruit of an all-encompassing sacrifice brought in love, accomplished once for all on Calvary, and renewed every day on our altars. What we must do above all, now, is to let that sacrifice work, to teach the faithful by word and example what it means to live in the spirit of that sacrifice, in the confidence that God, through his holy Church, is still working out the salvation of mankind. God saves us from evil. He also saves us from ourselves.
This is a time in which to draw a line between what matters and what does not; this is no time for vanity, trifles, or silly little squabbles.
Today the Church celebrates St Patrick, a Romano-British soldier abducted by Irish pirates in the early fifth century. Time in slavery made him reflect on the sense of existence. Released, returned to Britain, he became a Christian. He did not, though, turn his back on the land in which he had been unfree. No, that land occupied his thoughts. It attracted his love. He went back to Ireland and worked, first as a priest, then as a bishop, in unspectacular ways, the way any priestly or episcopal life is made up chiefly of ordinary things.
This one man’s givenness, though, left its mark on a nation. So deep is that mark that even secular, repaganised Ireland sees itself reflected in the glory of St Patrick and that, wherever the Irish have worked or settled, from New York to Lagos, Patrick is held in highest honour. Not all of us are called to be a St Patrick; but his example speaks to us all. Like him we can carry light into darkness. We can refuse to be crippled by the threats of those who would frighten us. We can put our whole trust in Christ’s power to save. If the shepherd is fearless, the chances are, the flock will be, too. St Patrick sang, in the prayer known as his Breastplate:
I bind to myself to-day,
The Power of God to guide me,
The Might of God to uphold me,
The Wisdom of God to teach me,
The Eye of God to watch over me,
The Ear of God to hear me,
The Word of God to give me speech,
The Hand of God to protect me,
The Way of God to prevent me,
The Shield of God to shelter me,
The Host of God to defend me,
Against the snares of demons,
Against the temptations of vices,
Against the [lusts] of nature,
Against every man who meditates injury to me,
Whether far or near,
With few or with many.
It is possible to live in this way. If a sufficient number of people do, they can actually transform society. The Church, a little flock, can reveal itself, then, the seed of a new humanity. A threatening horizon can turn into a sunrise full of sweet hope.
That’s what we’re about, surely.
Everything else must be seen in this light.
+fr Erik Varden OCSO
President of the Nordic Bishops’ Conference
View from Stykkishólmur.
To prepare myself for our meeting here at Stykkishólmur, I have been dipping into a travel book — not one of the recent ones that seem to speak only of adventure trails and spas, as if Iceland were thought up by God Almighty as a leisure park, but a book written 90 years ago, in 1936, when the poets W.H. Auden and Louis MacNeice spent three months here.
The trip was an adventure to them, too; but an adventure into a natural and human reality they regarded with reverence. Iceland came across as wild in 1936, a place where life was hard but people were hospitable.
No one had thought of a Chai latte back then. One cooked to survive, not to generate gastronomic ‘experience’. The food impressed Auden, who notes, for example, how to get on with the dried fish he found served everywhere. It should, he says, ‘be shredded with the fingers and eaten with butter. It varies in toughness. The tougher kind tastes like toe-nails, and the softer kind like the skin off the soles of one’s feet.’
Auden and MacNeice were both born in 1907. They were 29 years old, joyful and strong, full of sparkle and wit, enthralled by the grandiose nature of this country and by its society, so different from the England and Ireland they came from. Still thirty years later, Auden was pleased to register that ‘modernity does not seem to have changed the character of [Icelanders]. They are still the only really classless society I have ever encountered, and they have not — not yet — become vulgar.’
Yet there was fear in the air. ‘Though writing in a “holiday” spirit’, though having the holiday of their lives, the poets were conscious, writes Auden retrospectively, ‘of a threatening horizon to their picnic — worldwide unemployment, Hitler growing every day more powerful and a world-war more inevitable. Indeed the prologue to that war, the Spanish Civil War, broke out while we were there.’
I thought of those words while reading the paper on the plane yesterday.
Pundits disagree on whether the Third World War has already begun. Since 2022 we have, in the Nordic countries, followed with pain and anxiety the grinding continuity of Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. Russia is our neighbour, too. Our countries are rearming. We are watching our boundaries to the East and to the West.
Greenland was, not long ago, at the centre of the world’s attention as the president of the United States insisted, in less and less diplomatic terms, on his private notion that the territory should really be his.
Gaza is in ruins as a result of the war provoked by the gruesome Hamas attacks on Israel in 2023.
No one knows what the long-term effect of regime change in Venezuela will be, notably what effect it will have on Cuba.
The Israeli-US war on Iran was advertised as the swift cutting of a gordian knot that would produce stability. The US Department of War, which used to be called Department of Defence, announced the operation under the name ‘Epic Fury’, presenting it as ‘laser focused’. That phrase summons up the reassuring image of sophisticated surgery by which a steady surgeon’s hand, assisted by wonderful gadgetry, removes a cancerous growth without damaging healthy tissue, enabling the patient to return home that same day. Furies, though, are now unleashed in the Strait of Hormuz, in the Persian Gulf, in Lebanon, and elsewhere.
Who sows the wind reaps the whirlwind (Hosea 8.7). Fury calls fury forth.
Anyone who thought they were out on a picnic stands corrected. A threatening horizon surrounds us on all sides. Conflicts like those mentioned — and God knows they are not the only ones — coincide with environmental change, the unpredictable rise of AI, and weird virtual addictions. We are left feeling under threat not only on the human and political, but also on the natural and digital level.
This state of affairs is found by many to be overwhelming. Mental health needs are growing exponentially, notably among the young. Many say they simply do not know, now, where existence is pointed. That confusion can seem too much to bear.
Meanwhile, voices of more or less self-proclaimed prophetic authority loudly profess that they know exactly where the world is going, and that there is no getting away from it. A couple of weeks ago, Alexander Dugin, whose influence on the president of Russia has often been remarked on, publicly envisaged the onset of an end-time battle, the war of all wars that will, he thinks, probably bring an end to history. Dugin’s discourse is a mixture of political analysis and apocalyptic symbolism drawn from Scripture. Dugin speaks of a ‘sacred mission’ to ‘stop the civilisation of Baal’. The victory he looks towards has little to do with the prospect of an evangelical reign of justice and peace in love, however; in fact, it is itself marked by the Baalist characteristics of a god who devours his children.
What a setting in which to be a bishop these days!
The task entrusted to us is grave. At the same time it is beautiful. The world is caught up in a maelstrom of violence, fear, duplicity, and sheer madness. Yet over this chaos the Spirit hovers, not menacingly, but benignly. The Spirit, of course, is the Spirit of justice and truth. The Spirit will have no truck with injustice and untruth. Where worldly tendencies marked by sin pull what is whole apart, the Spirit unites. The Spirit unites by setting right boundaries, not by compromise.
Our political and cultural climate is marked by fierce polarisation and by an increasingly aggressive, belligerent tone, even among those who call themselves believers.
But the Church must follow a different path; she must show that such a path is humanly possible, for it is her task to let God’s peace become flesh. We cannot be content just to stand around and tell people to be nice to one another. We must show what a renewed humanity looks like. Only such renewal can save us from the constant acceleration of confrontations.
I know it can seem bombastic to begin our conference, a modest gathering, on such a note. I am no political analyst. I am no theoretician of culture. I simply want to share with you a deep conviction: this is a decisive and fearful time for Europe and for the world. Into this time we must speak Christ’s peace, a peace not like that which the world gives piecemeal.
Christ’s peace is no transaction, no pragmatic ‘deal’. It is the fruit of an all-encompassing sacrifice brought in love, accomplished once for all on Calvary, and renewed every day on our altars. What we must do above all, now, is to let that sacrifice work, to teach the faithful by word and example what it means to live in the spirit of that sacrifice, in the confidence that God, through his holy Church, is still working out the salvation of mankind. God saves us from evil. He also saves us from ourselves.
This is a time in which to draw a line between what matters and what does not; this is no time for vanity, trifles, or silly little squabbles.
Today the Church celebrates St Patrick, a Romano-British soldier abducted by Irish pirates in the early fifth century. Time in slavery made him reflect on the sense of existence. Released, returned to Britain, he became a Christian. He did not, though, turn his back on the land in which he had been unfree. No, that land occupied his thoughts. It attracted his love. He went back to Ireland and worked, first as a priest, then as a bishop, in unspectacular ways, the way any priestly or episcopal life is made up chiefly of ordinary things.
This one man’s givenness, though, left its mark on a nation. So deep is that mark that even secular, repaganised Ireland sees itself reflected in the glory of St Patrick and that, wherever the Irish have worked or settled, from New York to Lagos, Patrick is held in highest honour. Not all of us are called to be a St Patrick; but his example speaks to us all. Like him we can carry light into darkness. We can refuse to be crippled by the threats of those who would frighten us. We can put our whole trust in Christ’s power to save. If the shepherd is fearless, the chances are, the flock will be, too. St Patrick sang, in the prayer known as his Breastplate:
I bind to myself to-day,
The Power of God to guide me,
The Might of God to uphold me,
The Wisdom of God to teach me,
The Eye of God to watch over me,
The Ear of God to hear me,
The Word of God to give me speech,
The Hand of God to protect me,
The Way of God to prevent me,
The Shield of God to shelter me,
The Host of God to defend me,
Against the snares of demons,
Against the temptations of vices,
Against the [lusts] of nature,
Against every man who meditates injury to me,
Whether far or near,
With few or with many.
It is possible to live in this way. If a sufficient number of people do, they can actually transform society. The Church, a little flock, can reveal itself, then, the seed of a new humanity. A threatening horizon can turn into a sunrise full of sweet hope.
That’s what we’re about, surely.
Everything else must be seen in this light.
+fr Erik Varden OCSO
President of the Nordic Bishops’ Conference
View from Stykkishólmur.