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:
Man and Machine Still pondering the richness of Magnifica humanitas, I am haunted by an observation Hannah Arendt made in 1957, in The Human Condition. She reflects on man’s increasing obsession with the thought of creating himself instead of receiving existence as something given. Given Read More
The Sacred Heart ‘Any baptised Christian is called to know the Heart of Jesus from within. I love the old Latin prayer, ‘Iesu, mitis et humilis Corde, fac cor nostrum secundum Cor tuum’: ‘Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make our hearts like Read More
A Curious Story A kind correspondent has alerted me to a remark of Sigrid Undset’s found in the archives of John Mooney, the biographer of St Magnus. Mooney must have asked Undset about something he had heard on the grapevine about a possible Read More
Bonifatiustag 
An address given in Paderborn to mark the (transferred) celebration of St Boniface’s Day. Paderborn is the seat of the Bonifatiuswerk, a foundation that in many ways assists the Catholic Church in the Nordic diaspora. The day gave us, too, Read More
Corpus Christi Deuteronomy 8.2-16: Do not forget the Lord your God!
1 Corinthians 10.16-17: There is one loaf, we form a single body.
John 6.51-58: Whoever eats this bread will live for ever.
The Lord’s Eucharist was instituted in great confidentiality. Jesus took the Read More
1 Corinthians 10.16-17: There is one loaf, we form a single body.
John 6.51-58: Whoever eats this bread will live for ever.
The Lord’s Eucharist was instituted in great confidentiality. Jesus took the Read More
Another Cardinal Everyone knows Otto Preminger’s movie The Cardinal from 1963, but why had I not until recently heard of Peter Glenville’s The Prisoner from 1955? That film, too, is about a cardinal, a Prince of the Church in an unidentified country Read More
Holiday
I’ll take a summer break for a couple of weeks or so.
For seasonal entertainment, try a terrific performance of Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – or this film version of Shakespeare’s play with Judi Dench, Helen Mirren and others, a curious monument to the year 1968. Wonderful for any season is Abbado’s recording of the Brandenburg Concertos with the Orchestra Mozart from 2007, at the end of which there’s a shower of flowers.
Thank you for your interest in the site.
+fr Erik Varden
For seasonal entertainment, try a terrific performance of Balanchine’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – or this film version of Shakespeare’s play with Judi Dench, Helen Mirren and others, a curious monument to the year 1968. Wonderful for any season is Abbado’s recording of the Brandenburg Concertos with the Orchestra Mozart from 2007, at the end of which there’s a shower of flowers.
Thank you for your interest in the site.
+fr Erik Varden
Man and Machine
Still pondering the richness of Magnifica humanitas, I am haunted by an observation Hannah Arendt made in 1957, in The Human Condition. She reflects on man’s increasing obsession with the thought of creating himself instead of receiving existence as something given. Given the fast progress of human ingenuity she envisages a time in which man will not be able to understand the things he can do. ‘In this case, it would be as though our brain, which constitutes the physical, material condition of our thoughts, were unable to follow what we do, so that from now on we would indeed need artificial machines to do our thinking and speaking. If it should turn out to be true that knowledge (in the modern sense of know-how) and thought have parted company for good, then we would indeed become helpless slaves, not so much of our machines as of our know-how, thoughtless creatures at the mercy of every gadget which is technically possible, no matter how murderous it is.’ How crucial, then, to practise thinking and to help others both to practise it and to take delight in it. That’s surely today’s great educational task.
The Sacred Heart
‘Any baptised Christian is called to know the Heart of Jesus from within. I love the old Latin prayer, ‘Iesu, mitis et humilis Corde, fac cor nostrum secundum Cor tuum’: ‘Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make our hearts like your heart.’ […] In John’s Gospel, the mutual indwelling of the believer and Christ is expounded in eucharistic terms: ‘He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.’ Holy communion is an exchange of hearts, possibly in more palpable terms than we commonly realise. It is intriguing that in the case of alleged eucharistic miracles the changed specimens, submitted to scientific analysis, almost invariably show traces of cardiac tissue. Such miracles are not truths of the faith: no-one is obliged to acknowledge them. But anyone can find here a telling symbol.’ From Healing Wounds.
A Curious Story
A kind correspondent has alerted me to a remark of Sigrid Undset’s found in the archives of John Mooney, the biographer of St Magnus. Mooney must have asked Undset about something he had heard on the grapevine about a possible film version of Kristin Lavransdatter. She responded in a letter dated 25 August 1937, with indignation that can still be felt after almost ninety years: ‘I really wonder how this story about refusing an offer from America for the film rights of Kristin Lavransdatter all of a sudden has gotten out – it really happened some years ago, and I never mentioned it as far as I know – I believe it was Miss Garbo wanted to impersonate Kristin. Now I never liked Miss Garbo very much, so the offer did not tempt me at all.’ The idea that the heroine of Camille should turn up as Mistress of Husaby is tinged with absurdity. I doubt it’s a great loss that the plan was never realised.
Mahler 2
Since I wrote, in The Shattering of Loneliness, about the experience of first hearing Mahler’s second symphony, I have had many conversations about this extraordinary music. I have received letters from people who have likewise been inwardly awakened by it. The recording I heard, with Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic, remains dear to me. I wasn’t prepared, though, for the discovery I made the other day when I found that incomparable critic and enthusiast, Dave Hurwitz, proclaim it ‘the best recording ever‘. Bernstein is, says Hurwitz ‘the most literal and faithful exponent of Mahler’s music. There is nothing that he does that you cannot find reason for, good reason, in the score. And beyond that he gets to the essence of the music behind the printed page.’ It’s hard to disagree. Hurwitz says he was twelve when he first heard the symphony, finding himself sitting up in bed, amazed, during the final movement, then needing to listen to the whole work again from the beginning. This music can define a life. Here it is.
Bonifatiustag
An address given in Paderborn to mark the (transferred) celebration of St Boniface’s Day. Paderborn is the seat of the Bonifatiuswerk, a foundation that in many ways assists the Catholic Church in the Nordic diaspora. The day gave us, too, an opportunity to rejoice in the fortieth anniversary of ordination of the General Secretary of the Bonifatiuswerk.
At the time of the Flood it rained for 40 days. It took 40 days to embalm Jacob’s body in Egypt. When Moses entered the cloud of glory on Sinai, he stayed within it for 40 days. The men whom Moses sent to inspect the land of Canaan returned after 40 days, carrying a wonderful cluster of grapes on a pole.
For 40 years Israel wandered in the wilderness. In Scripture, a period of 40 years marks a change of generations. It is said of several kings – Saul, David, and Solomon – that they reigned for 40 years.
A 40-year chunk of any life is epochal.
At 40, in the year of our Lord 716, Saint Boniface left England and came to the German lands in order, here, to show forth and proclaim the Gospel.
We are gathered to honour St Boniface. He instantiates a number of Christian virtues we need especially today: courage, humility, and patience. Boniface emigrated from his country to show the wider world what blessedness is found in Christ. He wanted, to use a lovely Pauline phrase, to spread abroad the sweet perfume of Christ Jesus, to create a new atmosphere, so that people might breathe better and live together more peacefully and graciously. That is a high form of spiritual ecology.
Any the same time we celebrate the fortieth anniversary of ordination of Monsignore Georg Austen.
Dear Georg, I thank you for your faithfulness. To see that it is possible to construct a life (and to do so joyfully) on the basis of an unconditional ‘Yes!’ given once for all is vital encouragement for all of us in these ephemeral times.
You are, like Boniface of yore, a pilgrimaging preacher and builder of churches. In the name of the Nordic Bishops’ Conference I wish to express our gratitude for all the good the Bonifatiuswerk has done, and keeps doing, in our countries through you and your colleagues. Churches and monasteries have been built, wonderful media projects and initiatives for youth have come about. Above all, the work of the Bonifatiuswerk nurtures friendship between individual and nations, concrete signs that the Good News truly transcends all boundaries.
Your jubilee does mark an epoch. You can look back and rejoice in everything the Lord, through his call to you, has realised. At the same time you can look forward with confidence. God who calls you is, and stays, faithful; he will do this. That’s what Paul once wrote. He is as right as ever.
Many congratulations on this day! May God give you his blessing and grace for the road ahead.
***
Zur Zeit der Sintflut regnete es 40 Tage. 40 Tage brauchte man, um Jakob in Ägypten einzubalsamieren. Als Mose auf Sinai in die Gotteswolke eintrat, blieb er 40 Tage lang darin gehüllt. Die Männer, die Mose aussandte “um zu sehen, was für ein Land [Kanaan] ist”, kehrten nach 40 Tagen zurück mit einem wunderbaren Rebstock an der Stange.
Während 40 Jahre wanderte Israel in der Wüste. Ein Zeitraum von 40 Jahren steht in der Bibel für den Übergang zwischen Generationen. Von mehreren Königen — Saul, David und Salomon — wird berichtet, sie regierten 40 Jahre.
Ein 40-jähriger Lebensabschnitt ist epochal.
Mit 40, im Jahre 716, verliess Bonifatius England und kam in die deutschen Lande, um hier das Evangelium vorzuleben und zu verkünden.
Wir sind versammelt um Bonifatius zu ehren. In ihm sehen wir ein Beispiel christlicher Tugenden die wir heute sehr benötigen: des Mutes, der Demut, der Geduld. Bonifatius hat sein Land verlassen um der weiteren Welt die Glückseligkeit des Lebens in Christus zu vermitteln. Er wollte, um es mit Paulus zu sagen, den Wohlgeruch Christi verbreiten, eine neue Atmosphäre schaffen, damit die Leute besser atmen und gnädiger, friedlicher zusammenleben. Das ist eine hohe Form der geistigen Ökologie.
Zur selben Zeit feiern wir das vierzigste Priesterweihejubiläum von Monsignor Georg Austen.
Lieber Georg: ich danke Dir für Deine Treue. Zu bestätigen, dass es möglich ist, ein Leben zu gestalten (und zwar glücklich!) auf Grund eines unbedingten, einmal für alle gegebenen “Ja” ist eine vitale Ermunterung in diesen so ephemeren Zeiten.
Du bist, wie Bonifatius damals, ein pilgernder Verkünder und Kirchenbauer. Im Name der Nordischen Bischofskonferenz möchte ich ein herzliches Vergelt’s Gott ausdrücken für all das Gute, das das Bonifatiuswerk durch Dich und Deine Mitarbeiter in unseren Ländern ermöglicht hat und weiterhin ermöglicht. Kirchen sind entstanden und Klöster, tolle Media- und Jugendprojekte. Vor allem bestehen durch den Einsatz des Werkes nährende Freundschaften zwischen Nationen und Personen, konkrete Zeichen, dass die Frohbotschaft tatsächlich alle Grenzen durchquert.
Dein Jubiläum ist epochal. Zurücksehend darfst Du Dich freuen all dessen, was der Herr durch seinen Ruf an Dich verwirklicht hat. Zur selben Zeit kannst Du zuversichtlich in die Zukunft blicken. Gott, der Dich beruft, ist und bleibt treu; er wird es tun. So schrieb einmal Paulus, und er hat immer noch recht, der Alte.
Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum heutigen Tag — und Gottes Segen und Gnade für den weiteren Weg.
Saint Boniface chopping down the oak of Gaesmere, after a painting by Heinrich Maria von Hess. This is how Willibald recounts the incident in his Life of Boniface:
Now many of the Hessians who at that time had acknowledged the Catholic faith were confirmed by the grace of the Holy Spirit and received the laying-on of hands. But others, not yet strong in the spirit, refused to accept the pure teachings of the Church in their entirety. Moreover, some continued secretly, others openly, to offer sacrifices to trees and springs, to inspect the entrails of victims; some practiced divination, legerdemain, and incantations; some turned their attention to auguries, auspices, and other sacrificial rites; while others, of a more reasonable character, forsook all the profane practices of the Gentiles and committed none of these crimes. With the counsel and advice of the latter persons, Boniface in their presence attempted to cut down, at a place called Gaesmere, a certain oak of extraordinary size called in the old tongue of the pagans the Oak of Jupiter. Taking his courage in his hands (for a great crowd of pagans stood by watching and bitterly cursing in their hearts the enemy of the gods), he cut the first notch. But when he had made a superficial cut, suddenly, the oak’s vast bulk, shaken by a mighty blast of wind from above crashed to the ground shivering its topmost branches into fragments in its fall. As if by the express will of God (for the brethren present had done nothing to cause it) the oak burst asunder into four parts, each part having a trunk of equal length. At the sight of this extraordinary spectacle the heathens who had been cursing ceased to revile and began, on the contrary, to believe and bless the Lord. Thereupon the holy bishop took counsel with the brethren, built an oratory from the timber of the oak and dedicated it to Saint Peter the Apostle.
At the time of the Flood it rained for 40 days. It took 40 days to embalm Jacob’s body in Egypt. When Moses entered the cloud of glory on Sinai, he stayed within it for 40 days. The men whom Moses sent to inspect the land of Canaan returned after 40 days, carrying a wonderful cluster of grapes on a pole.
For 40 years Israel wandered in the wilderness. In Scripture, a period of 40 years marks a change of generations. It is said of several kings – Saul, David, and Solomon – that they reigned for 40 years.
A 40-year chunk of any life is epochal.
At 40, in the year of our Lord 716, Saint Boniface left England and came to the German lands in order, here, to show forth and proclaim the Gospel.
We are gathered to honour St Boniface. He instantiates a number of Christian virtues we need especially today: courage, humility, and patience. Boniface emigrated from his country to show the wider world what blessedness is found in Christ. He wanted, to use a lovely Pauline phrase, to spread abroad the sweet perfume of Christ Jesus, to create a new atmosphere, so that people might breathe better and live together more peacefully and graciously. That is a high form of spiritual ecology.
Any the same time we celebrate the fortieth anniversary of ordination of Monsignore Georg Austen.
Dear Georg, I thank you for your faithfulness. To see that it is possible to construct a life (and to do so joyfully) on the basis of an unconditional ‘Yes!’ given once for all is vital encouragement for all of us in these ephemeral times.
You are, like Boniface of yore, a pilgrimaging preacher and builder of churches. In the name of the Nordic Bishops’ Conference I wish to express our gratitude for all the good the Bonifatiuswerk has done, and keeps doing, in our countries through you and your colleagues. Churches and monasteries have been built, wonderful media projects and initiatives for youth have come about. Above all, the work of the Bonifatiuswerk nurtures friendship between individual and nations, concrete signs that the Good News truly transcends all boundaries.
Your jubilee does mark an epoch. You can look back and rejoice in everything the Lord, through his call to you, has realised. At the same time you can look forward with confidence. God who calls you is, and stays, faithful; he will do this. That’s what Paul once wrote. He is as right as ever.
Many congratulations on this day! May God give you his blessing and grace for the road ahead.
***
Zur Zeit der Sintflut regnete es 40 Tage. 40 Tage brauchte man, um Jakob in Ägypten einzubalsamieren. Als Mose auf Sinai in die Gotteswolke eintrat, blieb er 40 Tage lang darin gehüllt. Die Männer, die Mose aussandte “um zu sehen, was für ein Land [Kanaan] ist”, kehrten nach 40 Tagen zurück mit einem wunderbaren Rebstock an der Stange.
Während 40 Jahre wanderte Israel in der Wüste. Ein Zeitraum von 40 Jahren steht in der Bibel für den Übergang zwischen Generationen. Von mehreren Königen — Saul, David und Salomon — wird berichtet, sie regierten 40 Jahre.
Ein 40-jähriger Lebensabschnitt ist epochal.
Mit 40, im Jahre 716, verliess Bonifatius England und kam in die deutschen Lande, um hier das Evangelium vorzuleben und zu verkünden.
Wir sind versammelt um Bonifatius zu ehren. In ihm sehen wir ein Beispiel christlicher Tugenden die wir heute sehr benötigen: des Mutes, der Demut, der Geduld. Bonifatius hat sein Land verlassen um der weiteren Welt die Glückseligkeit des Lebens in Christus zu vermitteln. Er wollte, um es mit Paulus zu sagen, den Wohlgeruch Christi verbreiten, eine neue Atmosphäre schaffen, damit die Leute besser atmen und gnädiger, friedlicher zusammenleben. Das ist eine hohe Form der geistigen Ökologie.
Zur selben Zeit feiern wir das vierzigste Priesterweihejubiläum von Monsignor Georg Austen.
Lieber Georg: ich danke Dir für Deine Treue. Zu bestätigen, dass es möglich ist, ein Leben zu gestalten (und zwar glücklich!) auf Grund eines unbedingten, einmal für alle gegebenen “Ja” ist eine vitale Ermunterung in diesen so ephemeren Zeiten.
Du bist, wie Bonifatius damals, ein pilgernder Verkünder und Kirchenbauer. Im Name der Nordischen Bischofskonferenz möchte ich ein herzliches Vergelt’s Gott ausdrücken für all das Gute, das das Bonifatiuswerk durch Dich und Deine Mitarbeiter in unseren Ländern ermöglicht hat und weiterhin ermöglicht. Kirchen sind entstanden und Klöster, tolle Media- und Jugendprojekte. Vor allem bestehen durch den Einsatz des Werkes nährende Freundschaften zwischen Nationen und Personen, konkrete Zeichen, dass die Frohbotschaft tatsächlich alle Grenzen durchquert.
Dein Jubiläum ist epochal. Zurücksehend darfst Du Dich freuen all dessen, was der Herr durch seinen Ruf an Dich verwirklicht hat. Zur selben Zeit kannst Du zuversichtlich in die Zukunft blicken. Gott, der Dich beruft, ist und bleibt treu; er wird es tun. So schrieb einmal Paulus, und er hat immer noch recht, der Alte.
Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum heutigen Tag — und Gottes Segen und Gnade für den weiteren Weg.
Saint Boniface chopping down the oak of Gaesmere, after a painting by Heinrich Maria von Hess. This is how Willibald recounts the incident in his Life of Boniface:
Now many of the Hessians who at that time had acknowledged the Catholic faith were confirmed by the grace of the Holy Spirit and received the laying-on of hands. But others, not yet strong in the spirit, refused to accept the pure teachings of the Church in their entirety. Moreover, some continued secretly, others openly, to offer sacrifices to trees and springs, to inspect the entrails of victims; some practiced divination, legerdemain, and incantations; some turned their attention to auguries, auspices, and other sacrificial rites; while others, of a more reasonable character, forsook all the profane practices of the Gentiles and committed none of these crimes. With the counsel and advice of the latter persons, Boniface in their presence attempted to cut down, at a place called Gaesmere, a certain oak of extraordinary size called in the old tongue of the pagans the Oak of Jupiter. Taking his courage in his hands (for a great crowd of pagans stood by watching and bitterly cursing in their hearts the enemy of the gods), he cut the first notch. But when he had made a superficial cut, suddenly, the oak’s vast bulk, shaken by a mighty blast of wind from above crashed to the ground shivering its topmost branches into fragments in its fall. As if by the express will of God (for the brethren present had done nothing to cause it) the oak burst asunder into four parts, each part having a trunk of equal length. At the sight of this extraordinary spectacle the heathens who had been cursing ceased to revile and began, on the contrary, to believe and bless the Lord. Thereupon the holy bishop took counsel with the brethren, built an oratory from the timber of the oak and dedicated it to Saint Peter the Apostle.
Corpus Christi
Deuteronomy 8.2-16: Do not forget the Lord your God!
1 Corinthians 10.16-17: There is one loaf, we form a single body.
John 6.51-58: Whoever eats this bread will live for ever.
The Lord’s Eucharist was instituted in great confidentiality. Jesus took the disciples away from the noisy streets of Jerusalem into an ordered upper room. There he blessed and broke the bread. There he took the chalice, gave thanks, and gave it to his disciples, saying: ‘This is my blood of the covenant. It will be poured out for many.’ The Twelve ate and drank.
The Eucharist was a hidden covenant at first. It was, to put it in Greek, a mystery.
In Apostolic times, and for quite a while thereafter, the Eucharist was celebrated secretly. While it was illegal to be a Christian, while Caesar claimed the whole man and thought himself a god, it was too dangerous to celebrate the mystery openly. That would expose Christians. The sacrament would be at risk of desecration.
Only in the fourth century, when the Emperor Constantine, to the astonishment of many, declared himself a Christian did churches became an integrated, monumental element in the cityscapes of Antiquity.
A Catholic church exists for the sake of the Eucharist. By all means, other sacraments are celebrated there, too: children are baptised, youth are confirmed, couples are married, clerics are ordained, sins are forgiven. Still, it is the Eucharist that binds all the elements together.
How we long for it when we cannot receive it corporally! Our very longing is then a high, noble form of worship that touches God’s paternal Heart.
Awareness that the Lord is present in the consecrated Bread and Wine grew in the Church through a thousand years. In the middle of the thirteenth century, at the time of St Thorfinn, when the young Olav Audunssønn pottered about dreaming of Hestviken, that awareness was given liturgical form. A feast was instituted to honour the Body and Blood of Christ. Thomas Aquinas wrote wondrous texts for it. We recite them still: ‘Godhead here in hiding, whom I do adore,/Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more,/See, Lord, at Thy service low lies here a heart/Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.’ Today’s feast calls us first of all to silent wonder, to marvel at God’s nearness.
The Church, however, knew herself obliged to proclaim this message to the world. In the High Middle Ages people still had a sense – a sense we’ve lost – that the universe is one. It seemed natural, then, on Corpus Christi, to bring the Blessed Sacrament out of church, into the streets. We may, now, expose the mystery. The Word became flesh to save and sanctify the world. His is Emmanuel, ‘God with us’. He would embrace all things, all people. Let the world see it and rejoice!
In the sixteenth century, when so-called ‘reformers’ denied the realism of the Eucharist, Corpus Christi gave Catholics an occasion to convey to an ever more rationalistic and cynical age that, no, the Lord has not abandoned his people. He is humbly faithful to his pledge. We recognise and revere him in the Sacrament, for us a source of beatitude.
A Corpus Christi procession can shock the uninitiated. It can also awaken unconsciously seeking souls.
Sigrid Undset relates how an encounter with the Real Presence shook a Norwegian painter who, 25 or so years before Undset was born, had studied art in Düsseldorf. The painter, a well brought-up young man, secure in his Lutheranism, had walked into town to observe the Corpus Christi procession of 1854. ‘The lights, the canopy and the priests carrying this thing wearing gold-embroidered silken vestment – all this was picturesque, and he had come to Düsseldorf to make pictures. But when the people on the pavement dropped to their knees and the men bared their heads, he could only smile as he stood there straight, tall as he was, with his painter’s hat upon his wavy painter’s hair. – The next moment they sprang up, the men round about, and sent his hat flying down the street.’
Then he suddenly intuited: the Holy One is here!
The painter was Karl Schilling. The experience he entertained on that Düsseldorf street marked the beginning of his conversion. Shortly thereafter he became a Catholic; with time he became a holy priest. The Church honours him as venerable, an exemplary Christian.
‘Five minutes before I became a Catholic’, Schiller later wrote, ‘I had no idea what it was all bout.’ What was needed was the sight of adult women and men kneeling reverently before the Presence of the Lord. Faced with such a reality, he could not keep wearing his hat. It had to to be shed, like Moses’s sandals at the Burning Bush.
We often ask ourselves how we might communicated our faith, so dear to us, to an age that seems indifferent. This incident of Schilling’s gives us a clue: by honouring God’s holiness – and by living according to it, evidently. Schilling lodged with a Catholic family. They kindly but clearly explained to him what Corpus Christi is about. He stressed that he owed that family much. ‘The perfect living-out of faith I witnessed among them brought me more than all the apologetic literature in the world.’
It is no use knocking off others’ hats off for their impiety’s sake if I myself do not lead a life that instantiates the Gospel.
When Father Karl Schilling lay dying in 1907, some young people came to bid him farewell. He told them: ‘You must become saints, great saints!’ Then he said, by way of a final testament: ‘Oh my Jesus, make me ever love you more and more!’
The Holy One is among us to nurture us unto holiness, that we may walk as he walked, in our own inner cell and in public life, out in the streets.
Amen.
1 Corinthians 10.16-17: There is one loaf, we form a single body.
John 6.51-58: Whoever eats this bread will live for ever.
The Lord’s Eucharist was instituted in great confidentiality. Jesus took the disciples away from the noisy streets of Jerusalem into an ordered upper room. There he blessed and broke the bread. There he took the chalice, gave thanks, and gave it to his disciples, saying: ‘This is my blood of the covenant. It will be poured out for many.’ The Twelve ate and drank.
The Eucharist was a hidden covenant at first. It was, to put it in Greek, a mystery.
In Apostolic times, and for quite a while thereafter, the Eucharist was celebrated secretly. While it was illegal to be a Christian, while Caesar claimed the whole man and thought himself a god, it was too dangerous to celebrate the mystery openly. That would expose Christians. The sacrament would be at risk of desecration.
Only in the fourth century, when the Emperor Constantine, to the astonishment of many, declared himself a Christian did churches became an integrated, monumental element in the cityscapes of Antiquity.
A Catholic church exists for the sake of the Eucharist. By all means, other sacraments are celebrated there, too: children are baptised, youth are confirmed, couples are married, clerics are ordained, sins are forgiven. Still, it is the Eucharist that binds all the elements together.
How we long for it when we cannot receive it corporally! Our very longing is then a high, noble form of worship that touches God’s paternal Heart.
Awareness that the Lord is present in the consecrated Bread and Wine grew in the Church through a thousand years. In the middle of the thirteenth century, at the time of St Thorfinn, when the young Olav Audunssønn pottered about dreaming of Hestviken, that awareness was given liturgical form. A feast was instituted to honour the Body and Blood of Christ. Thomas Aquinas wrote wondrous texts for it. We recite them still: ‘Godhead here in hiding, whom I do adore,/Masked by these bare shadows, shape and nothing more,/See, Lord, at Thy service low lies here a heart/Lost, all lost in wonder at the God thou art.’ Today’s feast calls us first of all to silent wonder, to marvel at God’s nearness.
The Church, however, knew herself obliged to proclaim this message to the world. In the High Middle Ages people still had a sense – a sense we’ve lost – that the universe is one. It seemed natural, then, on Corpus Christi, to bring the Blessed Sacrament out of church, into the streets. We may, now, expose the mystery. The Word became flesh to save and sanctify the world. His is Emmanuel, ‘God with us’. He would embrace all things, all people. Let the world see it and rejoice!
In the sixteenth century, when so-called ‘reformers’ denied the realism of the Eucharist, Corpus Christi gave Catholics an occasion to convey to an ever more rationalistic and cynical age that, no, the Lord has not abandoned his people. He is humbly faithful to his pledge. We recognise and revere him in the Sacrament, for us a source of beatitude.
A Corpus Christi procession can shock the uninitiated. It can also awaken unconsciously seeking souls.
Sigrid Undset relates how an encounter with the Real Presence shook a Norwegian painter who, 25 or so years before Undset was born, had studied art in Düsseldorf. The painter, a well brought-up young man, secure in his Lutheranism, had walked into town to observe the Corpus Christi procession of 1854. ‘The lights, the canopy and the priests carrying this thing wearing gold-embroidered silken vestment – all this was picturesque, and he had come to Düsseldorf to make pictures. But when the people on the pavement dropped to their knees and the men bared their heads, he could only smile as he stood there straight, tall as he was, with his painter’s hat upon his wavy painter’s hair. – The next moment they sprang up, the men round about, and sent his hat flying down the street.’
Then he suddenly intuited: the Holy One is here!
The painter was Karl Schilling. The experience he entertained on that Düsseldorf street marked the beginning of his conversion. Shortly thereafter he became a Catholic; with time he became a holy priest. The Church honours him as venerable, an exemplary Christian.
‘Five minutes before I became a Catholic’, Schiller later wrote, ‘I had no idea what it was all bout.’ What was needed was the sight of adult women and men kneeling reverently before the Presence of the Lord. Faced with such a reality, he could not keep wearing his hat. It had to to be shed, like Moses’s sandals at the Burning Bush.
We often ask ourselves how we might communicated our faith, so dear to us, to an age that seems indifferent. This incident of Schilling’s gives us a clue: by honouring God’s holiness – and by living according to it, evidently. Schilling lodged with a Catholic family. They kindly but clearly explained to him what Corpus Christi is about. He stressed that he owed that family much. ‘The perfect living-out of faith I witnessed among them brought me more than all the apologetic literature in the world.’
It is no use knocking off others’ hats off for their impiety’s sake if I myself do not lead a life that instantiates the Gospel.
When Father Karl Schilling lay dying in 1907, some young people came to bid him farewell. He told them: ‘You must become saints, great saints!’ Then he said, by way of a final testament: ‘Oh my Jesus, make me ever love you more and more!’
The Holy One is among us to nurture us unto holiness, that we may walk as he walked, in our own inner cell and in public life, out in the streets.
Amen.
Another Cardinal
Everyone knows Otto Preminger’s movie The Cardinal from 1963, but why had I not until recently heard of Peter Glenville’s The Prisoner from 1955? That film, too, is about a cardinal, a Prince of the Church in an unidentified country run by a totalitarian regime in the wake of the Second World War. It is in essence the record of a drawn-out process of interrogation designed to break down an upright character. An interrogator – on the face of it a humane man, a doctor from a cultured background – picks the cardinal apart in systematic fashion, subjecting him to solitary confinement interspersed with sessions of manipulation, prodding the priest’s weak point: his humility. Alec Guinness is remarkable as the cardinal. Bosley Crowther, who could be fierce as a critic, noted 71 years ago that he plays ‘a role of tremendous emotional and intellectual complexity. And he does so with such clarity and feeling that it strikes the very marrow in your bones.’ Guinness was received into the Catholic Church in 1956. Playing this role had something to do with it.