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:
Ulrik Sverdrup-Thygeson RIP 
Romans 14.7-9: None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself.
John 14.1-6, 27: I give you my peace, not the peace the world bestows.
Face to face with death, the Church sings of peace. She does so Read More
John 14.1-6, 27: I give you my peace, not the peace the world bestows.
Face to face with death, the Church sings of peace. She does so Read More
Premonitions This striking painting graces the public church of the Carmel in Tromsø. It was done by Guro Giske, who entitled it ‘Mary, Premonitions’. The shade of blue evokes the glow of ‘the blue hour’ that is a feature of winter Read More
22 Sunday A Homily preached in the church of Longyearbyen to commemorate the centenary of the first Catholic Mass offered on Svalbard by Bishop Johannes Olav Smit in August 1926, while we prayed, too, for King Harald, who left this life two days Read More
King Harald V RIP The tradition of the Church gives us a prayer to recite when death is near and our own words fail us. The prayer, from the ninth century, begins like this: ‘Go forth, Christian soul, from this world, in the name Read More
Natural Joy Evelyn Waugh wrote of his father Arthur that his ‘most obvious characteristic was theatricality, but I did not become conscious of this until it was pointed out to me at the age of sixteen by the first adult visitor I Read More
Mission
For almost a century, the Missionaries of the Holy Family have had a special care for the Catholic community in the Prelature of Tromsø. The Fathers who came in 1931 were predominantly German; now it is the Polish province that provides us with priests, men of courage and generosity, who continue to do much to build up the Church both materially and spiritually. Last year Mateusz Rodziejczak produced this cinematographical account of a remarkable mission.
The dialogue is in Polish, but the images speak for themselves, and need no subtitles.
The dialogue is in Polish, but the images speak for themselves, and need no subtitles.
Ulrik Sverdrup-Thygeson RIP
Romans 14.7-9: None of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself.
John 14.1-6, 27: I give you my peace, not the peace the world bestows.
Face to face with death, the Church sings of peace. She does so whether the deceased was a greybeard full of years or a tiny infant; whether death took place in a well-made bed surrounded by dear people or in the chaotic isolation of a trench.
Requiem! The word awakens associations of comfort even in those who haven’t darkened the door of a church for years. Mozart, Verdi, Fauré have given the Requiem Mass universally accessible musical expression. We can easily forget how paradoxical it is, in fact, to sing of death in a tonality of tenderness that pulsates with hope.
Humanly speaking death is shocking, also when it is foreseeable. What reverence we feel at someone’s deathbed! The dying person may be quite unconscious but is clearly and emphatically there. Then death comes; and suddenly we are keenly aware of an absence. In Norwegian we say that the dying person ‘takes leave’ of us. It’s not a daft expression. Nor is it daft to speak of those ‘left behind’. They remain at the crossroad, powerless. This experience can call forth strong reactions of grief, rebellion, rage.
And yet we sing of peace?
The Gospel account tells us that this peace has a twofold origin.
The first concerns an act of will. ‘Let not your hearts be fearful’, Jesus tells us. Fear paralyses. When others seek to manipulate us, they try to make us afraid. Fear is not, however, determined. We can to a remarkable degree deny fear access to our mind. We do so by acknowledging things as they are: ‘So now I am here. Now it’s like this.’ We can cope with the real; what terrifies us is the fantastical. As long as we set out from facts, we can make reasoned choices. We feel trapped when we entertain the notion that what is ought not to be. In order to encounter death peacefully we must accept it as part of life. We have neither to conceal it nor to prettify it. We must simply look it in the eye as something that comes to us, as something given us.
The second Gospel condition for peace is faith. ‘Have faith in God, have faith in me!’ Faith is often a complex matter for Norwegians. It’s a curious effect of Reformation rhetoric that ‘faith’ has come to seem the ultimate kind of ‘deed’. We know we must have faith, that salvation presupposes faith. But how can we know we have faith enough, that our faith possesses the requisite purity? From literature, and possibly from life, we know examples of women and men who have toiched despair on account of such questioning. It may be helpful, therefore, to shed some Biblical light on the matter. In the vocabulary of the New Testament the word for ‘faith’, pistis, can also mean ‘fidelity’. To believe in Biblical terms is no agonisingly solitary pursuit. ‘Faith’ stands for resolute certainty that Someone is keeping his hand both over me and underneath me so that I can walk, and stand, secure. ‘Thou dost beset me behind and before’, we read in a Psalm of David: ‘If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there thy hand shall lead me’. Thus speaks Biblical faith. It is founded, first, on a carefully pondered, rational understanding of God, nurtured by Scripture and theology. Next, it rests on careful observation of the lives of others. The lives of the saints are vital to us because they show, with wonderful diversity, how faith takes embodied form in a vastly various circumstances. That way we can find helpful guidance for our own lives of faith. Thirdly, faith of this kind comes from experience. The older we get, the more clearly we see that it’s true: God really is faithful; in consequence I may believe, I am gifted with faith.
Fearlessness and fidelity: it is not hard to recognise Ulrik’s profile in these qualities. Many of you have known him a lot longer than I. You will see whether you agree; but for my part, I can’t really imagine Ulrik agitated. He was deliberate and upright. He called a spade a spade. Occasionally the spade appeared different to other observers. He thought that an honest business. But set out from what he saw.
He had long since taken the measure of death. He spoke of it undramatically, with respect, but also with a tiny, and beneficial, touch of irony, even when he seemed to all intents and purposes to be quite well, remarkably fit for his age. He simply recognised that he was no longer young, and that death would be the next epochal transition. His genial realism generated, without needing grand words or gestures, a kind of warmth about him. That warmth was a blessing for others.
Ulrik’s faith was utterly unsentimental. That is not to say it was unfeeling. Now and then he voiced the intimate importance to him of his Catholic faith. One was always a little surprised, for he was a private man. Here, too, his concern was to speak things as they are. By reflection and experience Ulrik had reached the conclusion that existence is not meaningless; that life has a direction and a goal; that we are carried by an immense power that regards us benevolently; and that this Power has made itself known in Christ Jesus, whom we, as a result, can call ‘Lord’ without any loss of personal dignity.
Ulrik, a bureaucrat by profession, knew all about the formal parameters of society. He had come to see, though, that faith in Christ was the precondition for a definitive fellowship that transcends boundaries of time and space, in the context of which death is a necessary procedure, though unpossessed of defining jurisdiction.
Well, if that’s the way it is, then one must say it, that was the Ulrikian approach. Then others would see for themselves whether or not they wished to enter this fellowship. Just as Ulrikian was a high regard for others’ freedom.
He passed into eternity fearlessly and faithfully, with gratitude. A few days before his death he sent me a message from hospital. ‘Am being royally treated, royally!’ The adverb was twice repeated. Surrounded by his wife Tone and the rest of the family, lovingly nursed, he took peaceful leave even as he had peacefully built his tabernacle on earth, as if the passage through death was nothing but a somewhat differently configured skiing trip. His backpack was ready. He knew the way.
We remember Ulrik in peace. We pray he may peacefully rejoice before the face of the eternal King. Amen.
Ulrik Sverdrup-Thygeson 1944-2026
John 14.1-6, 27: I give you my peace, not the peace the world bestows.
Face to face with death, the Church sings of peace. She does so whether the deceased was a greybeard full of years or a tiny infant; whether death took place in a well-made bed surrounded by dear people or in the chaotic isolation of a trench.
Requiem! The word awakens associations of comfort even in those who haven’t darkened the door of a church for years. Mozart, Verdi, Fauré have given the Requiem Mass universally accessible musical expression. We can easily forget how paradoxical it is, in fact, to sing of death in a tonality of tenderness that pulsates with hope.
Humanly speaking death is shocking, also when it is foreseeable. What reverence we feel at someone’s deathbed! The dying person may be quite unconscious but is clearly and emphatically there. Then death comes; and suddenly we are keenly aware of an absence. In Norwegian we say that the dying person ‘takes leave’ of us. It’s not a daft expression. Nor is it daft to speak of those ‘left behind’. They remain at the crossroad, powerless. This experience can call forth strong reactions of grief, rebellion, rage.
And yet we sing of peace?
The Gospel account tells us that this peace has a twofold origin.
The first concerns an act of will. ‘Let not your hearts be fearful’, Jesus tells us. Fear paralyses. When others seek to manipulate us, they try to make us afraid. Fear is not, however, determined. We can to a remarkable degree deny fear access to our mind. We do so by acknowledging things as they are: ‘So now I am here. Now it’s like this.’ We can cope with the real; what terrifies us is the fantastical. As long as we set out from facts, we can make reasoned choices. We feel trapped when we entertain the notion that what is ought not to be. In order to encounter death peacefully we must accept it as part of life. We have neither to conceal it nor to prettify it. We must simply look it in the eye as something that comes to us, as something given us.
The second Gospel condition for peace is faith. ‘Have faith in God, have faith in me!’ Faith is often a complex matter for Norwegians. It’s a curious effect of Reformation rhetoric that ‘faith’ has come to seem the ultimate kind of ‘deed’. We know we must have faith, that salvation presupposes faith. But how can we know we have faith enough, that our faith possesses the requisite purity? From literature, and possibly from life, we know examples of women and men who have toiched despair on account of such questioning. It may be helpful, therefore, to shed some Biblical light on the matter. In the vocabulary of the New Testament the word for ‘faith’, pistis, can also mean ‘fidelity’. To believe in Biblical terms is no agonisingly solitary pursuit. ‘Faith’ stands for resolute certainty that Someone is keeping his hand both over me and underneath me so that I can walk, and stand, secure. ‘Thou dost beset me behind and before’, we read in a Psalm of David: ‘If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there thy hand shall lead me’. Thus speaks Biblical faith. It is founded, first, on a carefully pondered, rational understanding of God, nurtured by Scripture and theology. Next, it rests on careful observation of the lives of others. The lives of the saints are vital to us because they show, with wonderful diversity, how faith takes embodied form in a vastly various circumstances. That way we can find helpful guidance for our own lives of faith. Thirdly, faith of this kind comes from experience. The older we get, the more clearly we see that it’s true: God really is faithful; in consequence I may believe, I am gifted with faith.
Fearlessness and fidelity: it is not hard to recognise Ulrik’s profile in these qualities. Many of you have known him a lot longer than I. You will see whether you agree; but for my part, I can’t really imagine Ulrik agitated. He was deliberate and upright. He called a spade a spade. Occasionally the spade appeared different to other observers. He thought that an honest business. But set out from what he saw.
He had long since taken the measure of death. He spoke of it undramatically, with respect, but also with a tiny, and beneficial, touch of irony, even when he seemed to all intents and purposes to be quite well, remarkably fit for his age. He simply recognised that he was no longer young, and that death would be the next epochal transition. His genial realism generated, without needing grand words or gestures, a kind of warmth about him. That warmth was a blessing for others.
Ulrik’s faith was utterly unsentimental. That is not to say it was unfeeling. Now and then he voiced the intimate importance to him of his Catholic faith. One was always a little surprised, for he was a private man. Here, too, his concern was to speak things as they are. By reflection and experience Ulrik had reached the conclusion that existence is not meaningless; that life has a direction and a goal; that we are carried by an immense power that regards us benevolently; and that this Power has made itself known in Christ Jesus, whom we, as a result, can call ‘Lord’ without any loss of personal dignity.
Ulrik, a bureaucrat by profession, knew all about the formal parameters of society. He had come to see, though, that faith in Christ was the precondition for a definitive fellowship that transcends boundaries of time and space, in the context of which death is a necessary procedure, though unpossessed of defining jurisdiction.
Well, if that’s the way it is, then one must say it, that was the Ulrikian approach. Then others would see for themselves whether or not they wished to enter this fellowship. Just as Ulrikian was a high regard for others’ freedom.
He passed into eternity fearlessly and faithfully, with gratitude. A few days before his death he sent me a message from hospital. ‘Am being royally treated, royally!’ The adverb was twice repeated. Surrounded by his wife Tone and the rest of the family, lovingly nursed, he took peaceful leave even as he had peacefully built his tabernacle on earth, as if the passage through death was nothing but a somewhat differently configured skiing trip. His backpack was ready. He knew the way.
We remember Ulrik in peace. We pray he may peacefully rejoice before the face of the eternal King. Amen.
Ulrik Sverdrup-Thygeson 1944-2026
Premonitions
This striking painting graces the public church of the Carmel in Tromsø. It was done by Guro Giske, who entitled it ‘Mary, Premonitions’. The shade of blue evokes the glow of ‘the blue hour’ that is a feature of winter in Tromsø, when light is reflected off the snow and sea, reminding us that the austerity of a long Norwegian winter is an image, somehow, of the Marian mystery of patience, exercised in the certainty that life will conquer death and light will pierce darkness.
The image of Mary as Star of the Sea is especially suggestive in the north, where the night sky for much of the year is a feature also of daytime. Perhaps that is why Grieg came up with one of the most beautiful settings of the ancient poem.
The image of Mary as Star of the Sea is especially suggestive in the north, where the night sky for much of the year is a feature also of daytime. Perhaps that is why Grieg came up with one of the most beautiful settings of the ancient poem.
Fossil
Any reader of Scripture, anyone whose life is paced by the liturgy, is used to living within a long chronological continuity. The life of Christ our Lord, the voyages of Paul, the Psalms of David, and even the creation and fall of Adam and Eve are somehow contemporary with us, brought close by that relativisation of time that faith enables, and indeed presupposes. On Svalbard I was given a tangible reminder that even such antiquities are really rather recent. Before leaving, I was given this lovely fossil of an ammonite. It is, give or take a few millennia, some 40 million years old. I cannot begin to understand what such a time span means; but I do see that it puts much that seems to us present emergency into perspective. I shall keep the ammonite on my desk, as a reminder.
Mann
I first encountered Hanns Zischler on the screen as the ambiguous Captain von Lerenau in Europa Europa. He was eerily credible as Klaus Barbie in La Traque and as the amiable forger Hans, an unlikely Mossad agent, in Spielberg’s Munich. Now you can see him as Thomas Mann in Paweł Pawlikowski’s Fatherland, a brilliant account of Mann’s journey to Weimar in 1949, to receive the Goethe Prize. The Nobel laureate thought this foray into the Soviet-occupied East a unifying, grandly European gesture. In fact it embroiled him as a pawn in a political game. Mann’s mixture of egotism and humanity is rendered in a way that seems to me accurate. Chilling is his response to the news of his oldest son’s suicide. With intelligence and tact, Pawlikowski develops the theme of Mann’s ambivalence in such a way that viewers are brought to consider, uncomfortably, the relative purity of their own motivations. In a recent interview, Zischler spoke of his engagement with the role. He says he would count it among the three or four most consequential of his career. That is a big statement, coming from one of our time’s best actors.
22 Sunday A
Homily preached in the church of Longyearbyen to commemorate the centenary of the first Catholic Mass offered on Svalbard by Bishop Johannes Olav Smit in August 1926, while we prayed, too, for King Harald, who left this life two days ago, on 27 August.
Jer 20.7-9: You have overpowered me: you were the stronger.
Rom 12.1-2: Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed.
Mt 16.21-27: The way you think is not God’s way but man’s.
My first conscious impression of Svalbard is a childish remembrance refreshed each year on New Year’s Eve, when King Olav at the end of his speech to the nation sent good wishes ‘to all of you on Svalbard, Jan Mayen, and in the Arctic.’ It sounded like a litany of enchanted names.
As a child, I hardly thought about what the names meant, but they pointed northward towards a world of ice and long winters, the midnight sun and tough people. A southerner coming to Svalbard is tempted, even after just a few hours, to pour forth platitudes about grandiose nature and mystic solitude.
Oh well. The solitude is rather softened these days by the fact that we are conveyed here comfortably by air and discover we have excellent mobile reception on arrival. Everything that distracts us elsewhere follows us here. Still, it’s gratifying to think oneself a little Nansen-like as one takes up position in a brand new arctic outfit to take a selfie against an austere background.
It was quite a different matter to arrive on Svalbard a few generations ago, after a tiring journey at sea. Once arrived, it was hard to get away, especially during winter. Awareness of the 900 kilometres of icy water lying between oneself and the mainland must have been a tad oppressive even to keen explorers.
And what might the life of trappers have been like during the Polar night, in isolated cabins, days’ travel away even from other people on the island? Helge Ingstad, who served as governor for a couple of years from 1933, described how he called on one such, a man thought to be ill, since there had been no sighting of him for a while. The trapper turned out to be physically fit, but soul-struck. ‘He looked at us with an amazed, distant gaze, the first human beings seen for an eternity. Our presence seemed to shatter his world, focused on life in solitude as darkness weighed down and the snowstorm came in as a shower of whiplashes from the Polar ice. At the same time something like fearful joy came over him’.
This image makes me think of accounts of the first monks of Egypt who, in the fourth century, wishing to emulate Elijah and John the Baptist, withdrew from society and went into the desert to be alone. They did not despise other men; no, they were kindly disposed. Quite simply, they wished to be relieved of any illusions they might have about themselves. They knew that we, in order truly to encounter others, and to know the utterly Other, God, must first meet ourselves in truth. To meet oneself means facing one’s vulnerability.
We live in a world that seeks to cancel vulnerability. Since industrialisation, particularly in the near-century that has passed since Ingstad whizzed around on a dog-sled in these parts, we have been assured that nothing in nature is beyond out power of control. We have firmly believed that technical progress will let us master any earthly circumstance; indeed, the tech-gurus of our time think earth too little, they are keen to conquer the moon. At the same time, the fabric of the world as we have known it is unravelling.
As King Haakon told the nation last night, we live, now, with a new degree of uncertainty, surrendered to factors beyond our control, less and less convinced by pompous politicians who promise supremacy in return for adulation and cash.
What we need now isn’t more virtual fantasy; what we need is a healthy sense of the real.
Reality is what the desert conveys, be it tropical or arctic. If we switch off our phones, Svalbard teaches us much that is essential. Even a visitor realises that.
Nature is in a state of change, the ice is melting. That fact is ineluctable here. The question of who is to blame is important, but not the most important one. We must learn to relate to what is now, to what will be. That is something we can only manage together. In the desert, we perish if we stay isolated too long. Along Isfjorden, geological layers exposed to the light of day show how Svalbard’s mountains have come into being over hundreds of thousands of years. If we have eyes that see, we realise how minute we are in time as well as space. If we have ears that hear, that realisation will resonate with eternity.
‘Before the mountains were brought forth, you are God’, we read in a Psalm. I dare say you can’t live on Svalbard for any length of time without, at some level, turning into a theologian.
Today’s readings exhort us to see the world afresh. ‘Do not be conformed to this world’, writes Paul, ‘but be transformed in the renewal of your minds.’ In the Gospel Jesus rebukes Peter sharply: ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle in my path, because the way you think is not God’s way but man’s.’ The form of the world and a human way of thinking tell us that we are on our own, that the law of existence is premised on the survival of the fittest, and that other people, well, will just have to mind themselves. The mind of God, meanwhile, and the path he bids us follow teach us that we are responsible for one another. If we walk along that path for a bit, we realise that this responsibility need not, in fact, crush us; for God keeps us all in his hand, at once almighty and divinely tender.
Ingstad’s description of the trapper he met in the 30s tells us much about the roughness of life on Svalbard; it also spells out the human condition as such.
For aren’t we all, to a large degree, conditioned to envisage a solitary life, resigned to the darkness and storms outside our front door, kept locked; and don’t we, at the same time, hope that someone might still brave the storm winds and knock? When a friendly face showed, Ingstad notes, ‘something like fearful joy’ came over the man. After a while, the joy of the encounter drove the fear out.
Jesus reprimanded Peter because the Apostle did not see what it costs to trace the path of God in this world. Jesus had just pointed towards the cross, the sacrifice awaiting him, saying: This must come about! Peter refused to accept it. Only later, after having wept bitter tears in solitude, did he understand how it all fit together. We must remain rooted in that connectedness.
We do so by pouring out of our lives, by bringing the good news of reconciliation, healing, and possible friendship to anxious, hopeless people round about us, people ensconced in loneliness. We shall do this as least as effectively with actions as with words. It was in order to bring the effective oblation of Christ to Svalbard that Bishop Smit came in 1926 to offer the first official Catholic Mass on this continent. A Christian fellowship now flourishes here.
Thankful for the grace God has poured out on Svalbard this past century, we wish to answer for that grace, staying anchored in the real, resistant to illusions, without letting ourselves being overwhelmed by fear. Let us knock on the doors of snowed-under cabins whether we find them out in the arctic wilderness or in the urban desert on the mainland.
If we do, the fearful joy of others may find blessed, safe release.
In the name of Christ! Amen.
Jer 20.7-9: You have overpowered me: you were the stronger.
Rom 12.1-2: Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed.
Mt 16.21-27: The way you think is not God’s way but man’s.
My first conscious impression of Svalbard is a childish remembrance refreshed each year on New Year’s Eve, when King Olav at the end of his speech to the nation sent good wishes ‘to all of you on Svalbard, Jan Mayen, and in the Arctic.’ It sounded like a litany of enchanted names.
As a child, I hardly thought about what the names meant, but they pointed northward towards a world of ice and long winters, the midnight sun and tough people. A southerner coming to Svalbard is tempted, even after just a few hours, to pour forth platitudes about grandiose nature and mystic solitude.
Oh well. The solitude is rather softened these days by the fact that we are conveyed here comfortably by air and discover we have excellent mobile reception on arrival. Everything that distracts us elsewhere follows us here. Still, it’s gratifying to think oneself a little Nansen-like as one takes up position in a brand new arctic outfit to take a selfie against an austere background.
It was quite a different matter to arrive on Svalbard a few generations ago, after a tiring journey at sea. Once arrived, it was hard to get away, especially during winter. Awareness of the 900 kilometres of icy water lying between oneself and the mainland must have been a tad oppressive even to keen explorers.
And what might the life of trappers have been like during the Polar night, in isolated cabins, days’ travel away even from other people on the island? Helge Ingstad, who served as governor for a couple of years from 1933, described how he called on one such, a man thought to be ill, since there had been no sighting of him for a while. The trapper turned out to be physically fit, but soul-struck. ‘He looked at us with an amazed, distant gaze, the first human beings seen for an eternity. Our presence seemed to shatter his world, focused on life in solitude as darkness weighed down and the snowstorm came in as a shower of whiplashes from the Polar ice. At the same time something like fearful joy came over him’.
This image makes me think of accounts of the first monks of Egypt who, in the fourth century, wishing to emulate Elijah and John the Baptist, withdrew from society and went into the desert to be alone. They did not despise other men; no, they were kindly disposed. Quite simply, they wished to be relieved of any illusions they might have about themselves. They knew that we, in order truly to encounter others, and to know the utterly Other, God, must first meet ourselves in truth. To meet oneself means facing one’s vulnerability.
We live in a world that seeks to cancel vulnerability. Since industrialisation, particularly in the near-century that has passed since Ingstad whizzed around on a dog-sled in these parts, we have been assured that nothing in nature is beyond out power of control. We have firmly believed that technical progress will let us master any earthly circumstance; indeed, the tech-gurus of our time think earth too little, they are keen to conquer the moon. At the same time, the fabric of the world as we have known it is unravelling.
As King Haakon told the nation last night, we live, now, with a new degree of uncertainty, surrendered to factors beyond our control, less and less convinced by pompous politicians who promise supremacy in return for adulation and cash.
What we need now isn’t more virtual fantasy; what we need is a healthy sense of the real.
Reality is what the desert conveys, be it tropical or arctic. If we switch off our phones, Svalbard teaches us much that is essential. Even a visitor realises that.
Nature is in a state of change, the ice is melting. That fact is ineluctable here. The question of who is to blame is important, but not the most important one. We must learn to relate to what is now, to what will be. That is something we can only manage together. In the desert, we perish if we stay isolated too long. Along Isfjorden, geological layers exposed to the light of day show how Svalbard’s mountains have come into being over hundreds of thousands of years. If we have eyes that see, we realise how minute we are in time as well as space. If we have ears that hear, that realisation will resonate with eternity.
‘Before the mountains were brought forth, you are God’, we read in a Psalm. I dare say you can’t live on Svalbard for any length of time without, at some level, turning into a theologian.
Today’s readings exhort us to see the world afresh. ‘Do not be conformed to this world’, writes Paul, ‘but be transformed in the renewal of your minds.’ In the Gospel Jesus rebukes Peter sharply: ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle in my path, because the way you think is not God’s way but man’s.’ The form of the world and a human way of thinking tell us that we are on our own, that the law of existence is premised on the survival of the fittest, and that other people, well, will just have to mind themselves. The mind of God, meanwhile, and the path he bids us follow teach us that we are responsible for one another. If we walk along that path for a bit, we realise that this responsibility need not, in fact, crush us; for God keeps us all in his hand, at once almighty and divinely tender.
Ingstad’s description of the trapper he met in the 30s tells us much about the roughness of life on Svalbard; it also spells out the human condition as such.
For aren’t we all, to a large degree, conditioned to envisage a solitary life, resigned to the darkness and storms outside our front door, kept locked; and don’t we, at the same time, hope that someone might still brave the storm winds and knock? When a friendly face showed, Ingstad notes, ‘something like fearful joy’ came over the man. After a while, the joy of the encounter drove the fear out.
Jesus reprimanded Peter because the Apostle did not see what it costs to trace the path of God in this world. Jesus had just pointed towards the cross, the sacrifice awaiting him, saying: This must come about! Peter refused to accept it. Only later, after having wept bitter tears in solitude, did he understand how it all fit together. We must remain rooted in that connectedness.
We do so by pouring out of our lives, by bringing the good news of reconciliation, healing, and possible friendship to anxious, hopeless people round about us, people ensconced in loneliness. We shall do this as least as effectively with actions as with words. It was in order to bring the effective oblation of Christ to Svalbard that Bishop Smit came in 1926 to offer the first official Catholic Mass on this continent. A Christian fellowship now flourishes here.
Thankful for the grace God has poured out on Svalbard this past century, we wish to answer for that grace, staying anchored in the real, resistant to illusions, without letting ourselves being overwhelmed by fear. Let us knock on the doors of snowed-under cabins whether we find them out in the arctic wilderness or in the urban desert on the mainland.
If we do, the fearful joy of others may find blessed, safe release.
In the name of Christ! Amen.
King Harald V RIP
The tradition of the Church gives us a prayer to recite when death is near and our own words fail us. The prayer, from the ninth century, begins like this: ‘Go forth, Christian soul, from this world, in the name of God the Father almighty, who created you; in the name of Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, who suffered for you; in the name of the Holy Spirit, who was poured forth on you’.
The prayer reminds us that physical death is a passage from life to Life.
Today our beloved king, Harald V, has made this passage. With reverence and gratitude we commend him to God’s loving mercy.
All of us must make this passage one day. That is our life’s only certainty. Still, the passing of a king affects us uniquely. We suddenly feel orphaned, surrounded by a resounding absence.
In an exemplary manner, King Harald embodied the nation. We were aware that he saw us, knew us, valued us. We knew his care, were embraced by the warmth he exuded. He gave us a magnificent example of dedication. He was so entirely our king, given to his people. No ego seemed to stand in the way. That brought him near to us in a wholly beneficent way.
We, the Catholics of Norway, pray devotedly for him. We pray for Her Majesty the Queen and for the royal family. Not least we pray for King Haakon VIII, that God may grant him wisdom and choice blessings.
The old acclamation, ‘The King is dead, long live the King!’, stirs us today. The monarchy represents a stable axis in society. It stands for self-evident continuity. In our uncertain times, that is comforting. King Harald has, with Queen Sonja, brought a unique kind of stability to Norway. Ever dignified, the king has been a natural point of reference in both grief and gladness. He has spoken wisely to us, with a kind, quirky humour we shall miss.
We will now stand loyally by King Haakon, that the heritage may continue, nurtured by the trust that for ages has bound the people and its sovereign together in this country.
The deathbed prayer culminates in an expression of firm, luminous hope: ‘May your place today be in peace, your dwelling with God.’ Trusting in the intercession of St Olav, Perpetual King of Norway, we bless the memory of King Harald V and pray that he may rest in peace.
We thank God for everything he gave us through him.
Requiescat in pace!
+Erik Varden ocso
Bishop av Trondheim and Apostolic Administrator of Tromsø
Portrait from NRK
The prayer reminds us that physical death is a passage from life to Life.
Today our beloved king, Harald V, has made this passage. With reverence and gratitude we commend him to God’s loving mercy.
All of us must make this passage one day. That is our life’s only certainty. Still, the passing of a king affects us uniquely. We suddenly feel orphaned, surrounded by a resounding absence.
In an exemplary manner, King Harald embodied the nation. We were aware that he saw us, knew us, valued us. We knew his care, were embraced by the warmth he exuded. He gave us a magnificent example of dedication. He was so entirely our king, given to his people. No ego seemed to stand in the way. That brought him near to us in a wholly beneficent way.
We, the Catholics of Norway, pray devotedly for him. We pray for Her Majesty the Queen and for the royal family. Not least we pray for King Haakon VIII, that God may grant him wisdom and choice blessings.
The old acclamation, ‘The King is dead, long live the King!’, stirs us today. The monarchy represents a stable axis in society. It stands for self-evident continuity. In our uncertain times, that is comforting. King Harald has, with Queen Sonja, brought a unique kind of stability to Norway. Ever dignified, the king has been a natural point of reference in both grief and gladness. He has spoken wisely to us, with a kind, quirky humour we shall miss.
We will now stand loyally by King Haakon, that the heritage may continue, nurtured by the trust that for ages has bound the people and its sovereign together in this country.
The deathbed prayer culminates in an expression of firm, luminous hope: ‘May your place today be in peace, your dwelling with God.’ Trusting in the intercession of St Olav, Perpetual King of Norway, we bless the memory of King Harald V and pray that he may rest in peace.
We thank God for everything he gave us through him.
Requiescat in pace!
+Erik Varden ocso
Bishop av Trondheim and Apostolic Administrator of Tromsø
Portrait from NRK
Natural Joy
Evelyn Waugh wrote of his father Arthur that his ‘most obvious characteristic was theatricality, but I did not become conscious of this until it was pointed out to me at the age of sixteen by the first adult visitor I introduced into the house. This friend said to me: “Charming, entirely charming, and acting all the time.” When I consulted her, my mother confirmed this judgement. […] I must not be thought to impute insincerity to him. It was simply that his nature required every thought and emotion to have immediate histrionic expression. […] He read aloud with precision of tone, authority and variety that I have heard excelled only by Sir John Gielgud. […] In these recitations of English prose and verse the incomparable variety of English vocabulary, the cadences and rhythms of the language, saturated my young mind, so that I never thought of English Literature as a school subject, as matter for analysis and historical arrangement, but as a source of natural joy. It was a legacy that has not depreciated.’