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:
Creating Order One of my favourite books by Thomas Merton is his Seeking Paradise: The Spirit of the Shakers. The Shaker village of Pleasant Hill is unfar from Gethsemani. Engaging with the history of the place and its deep motivation, he was struck Read More
33. Sunday B 
You can find an English version of this text by scrolling down. Photos from the abbey are from the site of Nový Dvůr.
Dn 12.1-3: En ce temps-là se lèvera Michel, le chef des anges.
He 10:11-18: pour les péchés un Read More
Dn 12.1-3: En ce temps-là se lèvera Michel, le chef des anges.
He 10:11-18: pour les péchés un Read More
Wounded Lion The story of St Jerome and the lion reached its canonical form in The Golden Legend. It must have circulated long before, but its textual origin is shrouded in mystery. In the medieval telling, a lion turned up at Jerome’s Read More
Conversation with Carl E. Olson This conversation was first published on the substack What We Need Now, then in The Catholic World Report.
In The Shattering of Loneliness: On Christian Remembrance, you write: “The mystery of God was made manifest to me in veiled ways, densely Read More
In The Shattering of Loneliness: On Christian Remembrance, you write: “The mystery of God was made manifest to me in veiled ways, densely Read More
Show yourselves to the priests Homily given at the reception into the Church of Heidi Frich Andersen.
Luke 17.11-19: Go and show yourselves to the priests.
It is curious, really, that Christ, God from God and Light from Light, on meeting a band of lepers between Samaria Read More
Luke 17.11-19: Go and show yourselves to the priests.
It is curious, really, that Christ, God from God and Light from Light, on meeting a band of lepers between Samaria Read More
Perspective One day it’s enough,
you feel, to view the world
through the common lens
of history, content
with no vision wider
than that of the obvious.
Next day, caught by
a tumult of longing, you search
among the straw and
chaff of things for the golden
corn of meaning.
From Fr Read More
you feel, to view the world
through the common lens
of history, content
with no vision wider
than that of the obvious.
Next day, caught by
a tumult of longing, you search
among the straw and
chaff of things for the golden
corn of meaning.
From Fr Read More
32. Sunday B 1 Kings 17:10-16: The jar of meal was not spent.
Hebrews 9:24-28: Christ, offered once to bear the sins of many.
Mark 12:38-44: She put in everything she had, her whole living.
Our second reading expresses the heart of our Christian faith Read More
Hebrews 9:24-28: Christ, offered once to bear the sins of many.
Mark 12:38-44: She put in everything she had, her whole living.
Our second reading expresses the heart of our Christian faith Read More
Creating Order
One of my favourite books by Thomas Merton is his Seeking Paradise: The Spirit of the Shakers. The Shaker village of Pleasant Hill is unfar from Gethsemani. Engaging with the history of the place and its deep motivation, he was struck by parallels with monastic life. He summed up his findings in this little book, illustrated with his own photographs. We are treated to a precious collection of Shaker apophthegmata, like this one: ‘We are not called to labour to excel, or to be like the world; but to excel them in order, union, peace, and in good works – works that are truly virtuous and useful to man in this life. All things ought to be made according to their order and use.’ What a revolution might ensue in a time in which ‘manufacture’ has become an all but meaningless term, if this principle were heeded here and there. The Shakers also liked to say: ‘If you love a plant, take heed to what it likes.’ That counsel is transferrable to many aspects of living and relating.
33. Sunday B
You can find an English version of this text by scrolling down. Photos from the abbey are from the site of Nový Dvůr.
Dn 12.1-3: En ce temps-là se lèvera Michel, le chef des anges.
He 10:11-18: pour les péchés un unique sacrifice.
Mc 13:24-32: Le ciel et la terre passeront.
Le livre de Daniel a structuré la sensibilité des premiers chrétiens. Le Nouveau Testament et plein d’échos de ce texte grandiose. Les thèmes de l’exil, de la captivité, de l’attitude vacillante du monde par rapport à la religion: cela correspondait à l’expérience des apôtres. Plus essentiellement, l’Église primitive retrouvait ici les figures d’un espoir réalisé en Christ — une prophétie de la présence de Dieu parmi les hommes, de la sanctification, de la résurrection des morts.
Le livre de Daniel n’est pas pourtant une lecture rassurante. Il nous parle de la fin des temps et du combat cosmique. Il nous rappelle que notre existence en ce monde est éphémère, que toute entreprise humaine est relative par rapport à sa finalité, qui dépasse nos projections.
L’Église est née d’un élan eschatologique résistant à toute sensiblerie. Il est bon d’en avoir conscience en face de la tendance actuelle qui veut faire de la spiritualité, voire de la théologie, une catégorie émotive. Le raisonnement et la transcendance cèdent la place au ressenti. La conséquence est évidente: nous nous enfermons dans un subjectivisme idolâtrique. Pas besoin pour cela d’idoles façonnés d’argent ou d’or: il nous suffit de nous regarder nous-mêmes dans une glace, ou dans notre téléphone portable.
L’Église nous donne aujourd’hui l’image de Michel, chef des anges, se levant pour protéger le peuple de Dieu. Nous savons combien cette scène a formé la conscience des catholiques à travers une prière aimée qui débute avec ces cadences sonores:
Saint Michel Archange, défendez-nous dans le combat et soyez notre protecteur contre la méchanceté et les embûches du démon.
Léon XIII faisait de cette prière un élément constitutif de l’action de grâce après la messe dans le contexte de la perte des états pontificaux, vue comme une intrusion séculière sur le terrain ecclésiastique. Pie XI demanda que cette même prière soit dite pour la conversion de la Russie, en proie à l’idéologie communiste et athéiste. Dans les années 60 la prière disparaissait du culte, mais pas de la piété populaire. Jean Paul II la conseillait pour obtenir de l’aide dans la bataille ‘contre l’esprit de ce monde’. Notre pape François la prie, dit-il, chaque matin pour que Michel protège l’Église ‘des attaques du démon’. Notons l’identité fluide de l’ennemi contre lequel l’allié angélique est mobilisé. Il faut du discernment pour savoir quel est à une époque donnée le combat du Seigneur; pour distinguer cette grande cause universelle de nos petites peurs individuelles.
Afin de bien combattre, il faut bien discerner. Le discernement est à la mode. On en parle beaucoup, trop peut-être, vu que discerner devient souvent un synonyme du verbe réfléchir: ‘Je discerne si je prends encore une tasse de caffè.’ Utilisée ainsi, la notion est inutile, dépourvue de sens. Comment pratiquer un vrai discernement?
Michel, lui, sait où se situer dans les combats terrestres car il les voit d’en haut. Il considère les choses, autant qu’une créature (même parfaite) peut le faire, d’un point de vue divin. Le discernement exige que je renonce à mes idées préconçues pour reconsidérer la réalité entière à la lumière de Dieu. Le nom Michel signifie, ‘Qui est comme Dieu?’ Cela implique une relativisation de sa propre stature. Dieu, bien sûr, reste insaisissable et sublime; mais il a voulu, par grâce, laisser des traces intelligibles de son être, de son plan, de sa volonté. C’est significatif que Daniel évoque dans ce passage ceux qui sont ‘inscrits dans le Livre’. Il a en tête non pas autant une liste de réservations que les termes d’une élection ouverte, en principe, à tous. La béatitude, c’est savoir ce qui plaît à Dieu pour ensuite suivre sa volonté d’un coeur sans partage.
‘Ceux qui ont l’intelligence resplendiront’, avons-nous lu. La Vulgate met plutôt, Qui docti fuerint, fulgebunt, liant la splendeur à l’érudition, à la connaissance de l’Écriture. Cette précision nous renvoie à ce que dit Jésus: ‘Le ciel et la terre passeront, mes paroles ne passeront pas.’ Si nous voulons vivre fidèlement au milieu des angoisses présentes, il faut d’abord connaître, comprendre et incarner les paroles du Seigneur, les prenant comme la mesure de notre vie, nous méfiant de ceux qui veulent les réduire à notre mesure de fourmilles souvent aveugles. Le Christ ne change pas. Il est le même aujourd’hui, hier et à jamais. Le renouvellement de l’Église, et par elle du monde, s’effectue non pas en adaptant ses paroles aux circonstances mais plutôt en conjuguant les circonstances par elles. Les moines ont toujours su cela, et c’est cette confiance en l’évangile qui donne au charisme monastique sa fraîcheur joyeuse à toute époque de vraie floraison, tandis que la décadence, ennuyeuse et murmurante, se manifeste en fonction d’une résignation au non-sens qui capitule au monde.
La perspective eschatologique de ces dernières semaines de l’année liturgique s’ouvre non pas pour nous faire peur, mais pour nous orienter. L’Église nous redit que l’histoire a un sens et va vers un but. Ancrés en la parole du Seigneur, tendus vers ses promesses, nous n’avons rien à craindre. Nous pouvons être porteurs de paix et d’espérance à un monde désespéré et craintif. Au son de la trompette finale nous nous réjouirons, car elle n’annoncera que la définitive victoire sur la mort de la vie qui déjà maintenant se prépare. Puissions-nous y collaborer avec toutes nos forces en toute épreuve. Amen.
***
Daniel 12.1-3: At that time Michael, the great prince, will arise.
Hebrews 10:11-18: one single sacrifice for sins.
Mark 13:24-32: Heaven and earth will pass away.
The book of Daniel structured early Christian sensibility. The New Testament is full of echoes of this grandiose text. Exile, captivity, and the world’s ambivalent response to revealed religion: these themes corresponded to the Apostles’ experience. More essentially, the early Church found here premonitions of a hope that had been realised in Christ, a prophecy of God’s presence among men, of sanctification, of the resurrection of the dead.
The book of Daniel is hardly reassuring reading, however. It speaks of the end of time and of cosmic battle. It reminds us that our life in this world is ephemeral, that all human enterprise is relative to its finality, which exceeds our projection.
The Church was born of an eschatological expectation that resisted sentimentality. It is good to be conscious of this right now, at a time which perceives spirituality, and even theology itself, as an emotive category. Reasoning and transcendence yield to feeling. The consequence is evident: we shut ourselves into idolatrous subjectivism. There’s no need for idols of silver or gold — we only need to look at ourselves in the mirror, or into our mobile phones.
The Church gives us today the image of Saint Michael, prince of angels, as he rises up to protect God’s people. We know how deeply this Biblical scene has formed Catholic consciousness by means of a beloved prayer that begins with these sonorous cadences:
Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil; may God rebuke him.
Leo XIII made this prayer a mandatory part of the Church’s thanksgiving after Mass in the context of the loss of the papal states, perceived as secular intrusion onto the Church’s turf. Pius XI asked that the same prayer be said for the conversion of Russia, in thrall to atheist ideology. In the 60s it vanished from the public cult, but not from popular piety. John Paul II prescribed it as a means to implore assistance ‘against the spirit of this world.’ Our Holy Father Pope Francis recites it daily, he says, asking Michael to protect the Church ‘against diabolical attacks.’ Note the fluid identity of the enemy against whom the angelic ally is mobilised. It takes discernment to establish which are the Lord’s battles in a given period; to distinguish this universal cause from our our individual pet anxieties.
To fight well, we must discern well. Of course discernment is all the rage. People speak a lot about it, too much, perhaps, given that discernment often is a synonym for mere deliberation: ‘I’m discerning whether to have another chai latte.’ Used in this way, the notion is useless and senseless. How then to discern in truth?
St Michael knows how to situate himself in earthly battles, given that he sees them from on high. He considers things, as far as a creature (even a perfect one) can, from the point of view of God. Discernment requires that I give up my preconceived ideas to reconsider things in God’s light. The name Michael means, ‘Who is like God?’ It implies relativisation of my stature. God, of course, remains unfathomable and sublime; but he has been pleased to leave, by grace, intelligible traces of his being, his plan, his will. It is noteworthy that Daniel evokes those ‘whose names are written in the book.’ What he refers to is not so much a list of pre-bookings as the terms of an election open, in principle, to all. What is beatitude, if not knowing what pleases God in order, thereupon, to follow his will with an undivided heart?
‘The learned will shine as brightly as the vault of heaven’, we have read. The prophet links brilliance to erudition, the knowledge of Scripture. His observation is related to what Jesus says: ‘Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.’ If we wish to live faithfully in the midst of present anguish, we must first of all know, understand, and embody the words of the Lord, taking them as the measure of our life, being wary of those who would reduce them to our measure of ants, myopic ants, often enough. Christ does not change. He is the same yesterday, today, and for ever. The renewal of the Church, and through her of the world, comes about not by adapting his words to circumstances, but by letting our circumstances be convicted by them. Monks have always known this. It is this confidence in the Good News that invests the monastic charism with joyful freshness in each epoch of true flourishing, whereas decadence, boring and murmurous, occurs as a function of resignation to non-sense, as capitulation to the world.
The eschatological perspective of these last weeks of the liturgical year is not intended to frighten us, but to give us direction. The Church restates that history unfolds towards a goal. Anchored in the Lord’s words, tending towards his promises, we have nothing to fear. We can be bearers of peace and hope to a hopeless, fretful world. At the sound of the last trumpet we shall rejoice, for it will announce the definitive victory over death of a life already burgeoning. May we collaborate with this victory in all our trials, with all our strength. Amen.
Le Mont-Saint-Michel par un temps calme, image d’harmonie restaurée et gage des promesses futures.
Dn 12.1-3: En ce temps-là se lèvera Michel, le chef des anges.
He 10:11-18: pour les péchés un unique sacrifice.
Mc 13:24-32: Le ciel et la terre passeront.
Le livre de Daniel a structuré la sensibilité des premiers chrétiens. Le Nouveau Testament et plein d’échos de ce texte grandiose. Les thèmes de l’exil, de la captivité, de l’attitude vacillante du monde par rapport à la religion: cela correspondait à l’expérience des apôtres. Plus essentiellement, l’Église primitive retrouvait ici les figures d’un espoir réalisé en Christ — une prophétie de la présence de Dieu parmi les hommes, de la sanctification, de la résurrection des morts.
Le livre de Daniel n’est pas pourtant une lecture rassurante. Il nous parle de la fin des temps et du combat cosmique. Il nous rappelle que notre existence en ce monde est éphémère, que toute entreprise humaine est relative par rapport à sa finalité, qui dépasse nos projections.
L’Église est née d’un élan eschatologique résistant à toute sensiblerie. Il est bon d’en avoir conscience en face de la tendance actuelle qui veut faire de la spiritualité, voire de la théologie, une catégorie émotive. Le raisonnement et la transcendance cèdent la place au ressenti. La conséquence est évidente: nous nous enfermons dans un subjectivisme idolâtrique. Pas besoin pour cela d’idoles façonnés d’argent ou d’or: il nous suffit de nous regarder nous-mêmes dans une glace, ou dans notre téléphone portable.
L’Église nous donne aujourd’hui l’image de Michel, chef des anges, se levant pour protéger le peuple de Dieu. Nous savons combien cette scène a formé la conscience des catholiques à travers une prière aimée qui débute avec ces cadences sonores:
Saint Michel Archange, défendez-nous dans le combat et soyez notre protecteur contre la méchanceté et les embûches du démon.
Léon XIII faisait de cette prière un élément constitutif de l’action de grâce après la messe dans le contexte de la perte des états pontificaux, vue comme une intrusion séculière sur le terrain ecclésiastique. Pie XI demanda que cette même prière soit dite pour la conversion de la Russie, en proie à l’idéologie communiste et athéiste. Dans les années 60 la prière disparaissait du culte, mais pas de la piété populaire. Jean Paul II la conseillait pour obtenir de l’aide dans la bataille ‘contre l’esprit de ce monde’. Notre pape François la prie, dit-il, chaque matin pour que Michel protège l’Église ‘des attaques du démon’. Notons l’identité fluide de l’ennemi contre lequel l’allié angélique est mobilisé. Il faut du discernment pour savoir quel est à une époque donnée le combat du Seigneur; pour distinguer cette grande cause universelle de nos petites peurs individuelles.
Afin de bien combattre, il faut bien discerner. Le discernement est à la mode. On en parle beaucoup, trop peut-être, vu que discerner devient souvent un synonyme du verbe réfléchir: ‘Je discerne si je prends encore une tasse de caffè.’ Utilisée ainsi, la notion est inutile, dépourvue de sens. Comment pratiquer un vrai discernement?
Michel, lui, sait où se situer dans les combats terrestres car il les voit d’en haut. Il considère les choses, autant qu’une créature (même parfaite) peut le faire, d’un point de vue divin. Le discernement exige que je renonce à mes idées préconçues pour reconsidérer la réalité entière à la lumière de Dieu. Le nom Michel signifie, ‘Qui est comme Dieu?’ Cela implique une relativisation de sa propre stature. Dieu, bien sûr, reste insaisissable et sublime; mais il a voulu, par grâce, laisser des traces intelligibles de son être, de son plan, de sa volonté. C’est significatif que Daniel évoque dans ce passage ceux qui sont ‘inscrits dans le Livre’. Il a en tête non pas autant une liste de réservations que les termes d’une élection ouverte, en principe, à tous. La béatitude, c’est savoir ce qui plaît à Dieu pour ensuite suivre sa volonté d’un coeur sans partage.
‘Ceux qui ont l’intelligence resplendiront’, avons-nous lu. La Vulgate met plutôt, Qui docti fuerint, fulgebunt, liant la splendeur à l’érudition, à la connaissance de l’Écriture. Cette précision nous renvoie à ce que dit Jésus: ‘Le ciel et la terre passeront, mes paroles ne passeront pas.’ Si nous voulons vivre fidèlement au milieu des angoisses présentes, il faut d’abord connaître, comprendre et incarner les paroles du Seigneur, les prenant comme la mesure de notre vie, nous méfiant de ceux qui veulent les réduire à notre mesure de fourmilles souvent aveugles. Le Christ ne change pas. Il est le même aujourd’hui, hier et à jamais. Le renouvellement de l’Église, et par elle du monde, s’effectue non pas en adaptant ses paroles aux circonstances mais plutôt en conjuguant les circonstances par elles. Les moines ont toujours su cela, et c’est cette confiance en l’évangile qui donne au charisme monastique sa fraîcheur joyeuse à toute époque de vraie floraison, tandis que la décadence, ennuyeuse et murmurante, se manifeste en fonction d’une résignation au non-sens qui capitule au monde.
La perspective eschatologique de ces dernières semaines de l’année liturgique s’ouvre non pas pour nous faire peur, mais pour nous orienter. L’Église nous redit que l’histoire a un sens et va vers un but. Ancrés en la parole du Seigneur, tendus vers ses promesses, nous n’avons rien à craindre. Nous pouvons être porteurs de paix et d’espérance à un monde désespéré et craintif. Au son de la trompette finale nous nous réjouirons, car elle n’annoncera que la définitive victoire sur la mort de la vie qui déjà maintenant se prépare. Puissions-nous y collaborer avec toutes nos forces en toute épreuve. Amen.
***
Daniel 12.1-3: At that time Michael, the great prince, will arise.
Hebrews 10:11-18: one single sacrifice for sins.
Mark 13:24-32: Heaven and earth will pass away.
The book of Daniel structured early Christian sensibility. The New Testament is full of echoes of this grandiose text. Exile, captivity, and the world’s ambivalent response to revealed religion: these themes corresponded to the Apostles’ experience. More essentially, the early Church found here premonitions of a hope that had been realised in Christ, a prophecy of God’s presence among men, of sanctification, of the resurrection of the dead.
The book of Daniel is hardly reassuring reading, however. It speaks of the end of time and of cosmic battle. It reminds us that our life in this world is ephemeral, that all human enterprise is relative to its finality, which exceeds our projection.
The Church was born of an eschatological expectation that resisted sentimentality. It is good to be conscious of this right now, at a time which perceives spirituality, and even theology itself, as an emotive category. Reasoning and transcendence yield to feeling. The consequence is evident: we shut ourselves into idolatrous subjectivism. There’s no need for idols of silver or gold — we only need to look at ourselves in the mirror, or into our mobile phones.
The Church gives us today the image of Saint Michael, prince of angels, as he rises up to protect God’s people. We know how deeply this Biblical scene has formed Catholic consciousness by means of a beloved prayer that begins with these sonorous cadences:
Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil; may God rebuke him.
Leo XIII made this prayer a mandatory part of the Church’s thanksgiving after Mass in the context of the loss of the papal states, perceived as secular intrusion onto the Church’s turf. Pius XI asked that the same prayer be said for the conversion of Russia, in thrall to atheist ideology. In the 60s it vanished from the public cult, but not from popular piety. John Paul II prescribed it as a means to implore assistance ‘against the spirit of this world.’ Our Holy Father Pope Francis recites it daily, he says, asking Michael to protect the Church ‘against diabolical attacks.’ Note the fluid identity of the enemy against whom the angelic ally is mobilised. It takes discernment to establish which are the Lord’s battles in a given period; to distinguish this universal cause from our our individual pet anxieties.
To fight well, we must discern well. Of course discernment is all the rage. People speak a lot about it, too much, perhaps, given that discernment often is a synonym for mere deliberation: ‘I’m discerning whether to have another chai latte.’ Used in this way, the notion is useless and senseless. How then to discern in truth?
St Michael knows how to situate himself in earthly battles, given that he sees them from on high. He considers things, as far as a creature (even a perfect one) can, from the point of view of God. Discernment requires that I give up my preconceived ideas to reconsider things in God’s light. The name Michael means, ‘Who is like God?’ It implies relativisation of my stature. God, of course, remains unfathomable and sublime; but he has been pleased to leave, by grace, intelligible traces of his being, his plan, his will. It is noteworthy that Daniel evokes those ‘whose names are written in the book.’ What he refers to is not so much a list of pre-bookings as the terms of an election open, in principle, to all. What is beatitude, if not knowing what pleases God in order, thereupon, to follow his will with an undivided heart?
‘The learned will shine as brightly as the vault of heaven’, we have read. The prophet links brilliance to erudition, the knowledge of Scripture. His observation is related to what Jesus says: ‘Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.’ If we wish to live faithfully in the midst of present anguish, we must first of all know, understand, and embody the words of the Lord, taking them as the measure of our life, being wary of those who would reduce them to our measure of ants, myopic ants, often enough. Christ does not change. He is the same yesterday, today, and for ever. The renewal of the Church, and through her of the world, comes about not by adapting his words to circumstances, but by letting our circumstances be convicted by them. Monks have always known this. It is this confidence in the Good News that invests the monastic charism with joyful freshness in each epoch of true flourishing, whereas decadence, boring and murmurous, occurs as a function of resignation to non-sense, as capitulation to the world.
The eschatological perspective of these last weeks of the liturgical year is not intended to frighten us, but to give us direction. The Church restates that history unfolds towards a goal. Anchored in the Lord’s words, tending towards his promises, we have nothing to fear. We can be bearers of peace and hope to a hopeless, fretful world. At the sound of the last trumpet we shall rejoice, for it will announce the definitive victory over death of a life already burgeoning. May we collaborate with this victory in all our trials, with all our strength. Amen.
Le Mont-Saint-Michel par un temps calme, image d’harmonie restaurée et gage des promesses futures.
Wounded Lion
The story of St Jerome and the lion reached its canonical form in The Golden Legend. It must have circulated long before, but its textual origin is shrouded in mystery. In the medieval telling, a lion turned up at Jerome’s monastery in Bethlehem one might. The brethren were aghast, but Jerome saw that the beast needed help. Its paw was wounded, pierced by a thorn. The saint extracted it, and the lion was delighted. It ‘ran joyously throughout all the monastery and kneeled down to every brother and fawned them with his tail, like as he had demanded pardon of the trespass that he had done’. The motif has been amply reproduced in art. I recently saw this charming depiction on the Lübeck altarpiece in St Nicolaus’s church in Tallinn. St Jerome looks as crusty as by all accounts he was, yet what precision and gentleness in his surgery. The thorn has become a nail fit to run through a portcullis. The fierce lion stands before us like a cub. The lesson is clear: sometimes we are fearful of things that are in themselves innocent; at the same time, small stings can have disproportionate impact.
Conversation with Carl E. Olson
This conversation was first published on the substack What We Need Now, then in The Catholic World Report.
In The Shattering of Loneliness: On Christian Remembrance, you write: “The mystery of God was made manifest to me in veiled ways, densely embodied. I have lived my way from one stage of awareness to the next.” With that in mind, can you share a bit about your conversion and your journey to and into the Catholic Church? What were some essential moments, insights, decisions?
A conversion is necessarily unfinished business. I am still praying that mine may begin in earnest. The opening to faith happened through an experience of transcendence mediated through music. My journey into the Catholic Church proceeded gradually through my late teens. Some important guideposts were books; others were credible believers. The discovery of the Church’s liturgy was essentially important. I was struck by the sheer objectivity of the mystery celebrated; and relieved to find that there was a pedagogy of prayer laid out for me to follow. I bought my first breviary at eighteen. It filled me with delight, as it still does. The decision to ask to be received into the Church came entirely naturally. It never felt like a rupture; it was a matter of coming into my own, in every sense of that phrase, while I was conscious, at the same time, of encountering an utter otherness beckoning hospitably to me. I look back on this process with gratitude.
In Entering the Twofold Mystery, your book on conversion, you describe conversion as turning towards God, “to do his will and to strive to live in his presence. As such, it is a process with ethical implications.” In your experience and from your reflections on the world today, what are the most significant obstacles to conversion? And what are some of the more difficult ethical and moral implications faced by 21st-century converts in the West?
A conversion is fundamentally a ‘turning round’. It begins with self-questioning, and with the intimate sense that somewhere, somehow I am being called to more, to live differently. The chief obstacle to such turning is the self-affirmation that stops my inward ear to any voice except ones affirming me in what I am. It is significant that our cultural and political, to some extent even our ecclesiastical discourse easily becomes an echo chamber of such voices. Think of the various ways in which we expect ourselves to be ‘celebrated’, these days a ubiquitous word, which by no means occurs only in secular contexts. By staying caught up in myself, shut off from others, cultivating a subjective worldview, I switch off the receiver and only transmit, be it in inward monologues or dreary social media posts. Digital gadgetry has equipped us extraordinarily for what the French call a dialogue de sourds, a dialogue of deaf people endlessly speaking past one another. The result? The construction of dividing walls and the burning of bridges. That is why I like to insist on the pontifical, that is, bridge-building mission of Catholics. The Biblical narrative, and later the history of the Church, is the account of the coming into being of a people out of scattered individuals oriented by conscience and grace towards a shared goal, infinitely attractive. Pursuit of that goal presupposes self-transcendence; at the same time it enables entry into communion. I’d say the principal ethical and moral challenge for converts, recent or seasoned, lies here. It is one thing notionally to acknowledge a high ideal; it is another to order my concrete relationships and choices in such a way that they correspond to that ideal and help me approach it.
Trondheim, Norway, where you are, is one of the larger urban areas in Norway. But the Catholic population is very small, less than 2%. How would describe the situation of the Catholic Church there? And what are the challenges—both overarching and day-to-day—in being a Catholic bishop and abbot in Norway?
Numerically, as you say, the Church is small. However, it is vibrant, young, and wonderfully variegated. The prelature of Trondheim has Catholics from 130 nations. It is remarkable to find such a manifestation of the Church’s catholicity in the extreme diaspora. Also, the configuration of Catholicism within the ecclesiastical landscape is changing. For a long time the Norwegian Catholic Church was a marginal phenomenon. It understood itself more or less as a refrigerator designed for the preservation of exotic fruit. That is no longer the case. With the marginalisation of faith in society, and with the weakening of other faith communities, we are awakened to our task to be Christian witnesses, to spread the Gospel abroad, to ensure that Christ is present in our land. The radical secularisation of the past few decades has caused widespread forgetfulness — it takes no more than a generation and a half for a residual religious identity to fade. When I grew up in the 80s, most people thought they knew what Christianity was. That is so no longer; and there is no embarrassment associated with ignorance. This is a cultural loss. At the same it is an advantage for evangelisation. For it is possibly, now, to present the Gospel in its newness and for it to be perceived as new, fresh. We have a great task on our hands, an exacting and joyful task. It has several aspects that must be developed simultaneously. We need to find ways of communicating authentic Catholic teaching; we must teach people to pray, letting them discover the riches of the liturgy; we must show that Catholics have constructive, attractive contributions to make in politics and culture; and we must make our faith concrete in charitable work, for even though Norway is an affluent country, there is no shortage of people in need.
Here in the Church in the U.S., there is much focus on disagreements over liturgy, life issues, immigration, and education, among other issues. Is that similar to or different from Scandinavian countries and Europe, in your estimation? What do you see when you look at the Church in the U.S.?
I do not know the Church in the U.S. well enough to comment on it with any degree of authority. What I am most conscious of, seeing it from afar, is not so much its disagreements as its evident vitality, even a sense of rebirth evidenced in solid new vocations, in a vibrant intellectual life, in various forms of apostolic enterprise. Of course, to live intensely within the Church is to be confronted with a range of sensibilities and convictions. These can be challenging, and tiresome; but we can mostly cope with them as long as we are rooted together in essentials. That is why I think it is crucial to keep affirming these essentials. We shall do this effectively by following the Second Vatican Council’s great watchword, ‘Return to the sources!’ — by reading the Scriptures perseveringly, with understanding and humility; by studying the Church’s catechism, an amazing treasure chest; by attending to the witness of the saints; and by testing our every intuition by Christ’s stated intention, uttered on the night before he suffered: ‘That they all may be one.’
Synodality has been a big topic in the Church in recent years, with a month-long meeting on the topic coming up in Rome in October. What is your understanding of synodality? What do you make of this ongoing focus on synodality, and what do you think may come of it?
I dare say we may all be a bit tired of hearing the word ‘synodality’. Any single term bandied about for a continuous period of time risks sounding hollow. A synodos is literally ‘a way pursued together’. It stands for fellowship in movement towards a shared goal. There is no particular virtue in just being on the way; it has to lead somewhere. We need to know where we are going. For us Christians the humble, everyday word ‘Way’ has rich resonances. The first disciples of Jesus spoke of the Church simply as ‘the Way’. This was how others spoke about them, too. Towards the end of Acts, when St Paul presents a potted CV to a crowd gathered in Jerusalem, he confesses that, before he encountered the risen Christ, he ‘persecuted this Way up to the point of death by binding both men and women and putting them in prison’. Christians were perceived as a compact group that followed an itinerary different to that of most other people. This was considered a dangerous provocation. Now that the formal synod has apparently come to a conclusion, we can look back over its achievements and ask: Am I strengthened in my resolve to follow Christ’s way whole-heartedly? If so, will I implement it by engaging more fully in my parish or community? Is our way recognisably distinct from the world’s way? Do we follow it on Christ’s terms, that is, by walking as he walked, taking up our own cross?
I’ve enjoyed all of your books, but I think your most recent, on chastity, is especially insightful and challenging. Is it correct to say that the current crisis regarding sexuality is both anthropological and eschatological? What is a Christocentric approach to sexuality so vital on both the personal level and in the social/cultural realm?
Yes, I think that is correct. The crisis regarding sexuality is symptomatic of a deeper crisis, regarding what it means to be a human being; and this springs from a more fundamental perplexity regarding the finality of human existence, and of reality as such. And so I think that a Catholic response to current discourse about sexuality must do more than just volunteer moral verdicts — or indulge in outrage; we shall have a good word to say if we underpin out argument based on the solidity and wealth of our heritage, asking ‘Who are we? Where do we come from and where are we going?’ It is my experience that these questions resonate deeply with our times and that we, by posing them, can engage our contemporaries, be they atheists, in genuine conversation, displaying the intelligibility and the attractiveness of the Christian position. A Christocentric approach to sexuality is conscious of Christ as the Alpha and Omega of the human condition. It will remember that we are made in God’s image in order to become like God; that our immediate, embodied, sensual, and affective desires are sparks of a more essential flame drawing us towards communion with uncreated Light, to ‘the full Godhead’s burning’, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning put it in an ardent poem. No other categories are sufficient to account for the intensity of longing that inhabits men and women aspiring to be fully alive. Our secular establishment has no access to these categories. Therefore we have, as Christians, a responsibility to represent them responsibly and well.
In conclusion, two interrelated questions. For those who are not Catholic or Christian, why be Catholic and Christian? And for those who are Catholic, what signs of hope do you see in the Church today? How best to grow more deeply in faith, hope, and love?
Why be a Catholic? Because what the faith teaches is true, and because the truth sets us free. To rediscover the true sense of freedom is a capital task now, when the notion ‘freedom’ is often instrumentalised rhetorically, amputated from its foundation in truth. As for signs of hope in the Church, I see an immense array, alive in charity and goodness. I am heartened by the sincerity of many young seekers, impelled by our world’s evident frailties to seek coordinates that last. We grow in the cardinal virtues by staking our existence on them, by living them out, not only in occasional public gestures, but in the humble quotidian reality of our lives. We recognise, then, the truth of the Lord’s great parables of the mustard seed, of the leaven in the dough.
Any final thoughts?
I have recently engaged a great deal with the legacy of Blessed Jurgis Matulaitis, a great Lithuanian confessor who died in 1927. He wrote in his diary: ‘Lord, let me be a dishrag in your Church, fit to wipe up messes and then to be thrown away into some dark corner. I want to be used and worn out like this so that your house may be a little cleaner and brighter.’ These days, when a worldly tendency would recast the Christian vocation triumphalistically in terms of culture wars, we need this perspective. It challenges us to devote ourselves faithfully to Christ’s ongoing salvific work, to let ourselves be used where we are needed, with no concern to be seen and praised, pursuing the good because it is good, loving it because it is loveable, sharing it because we want others to be genuinely happy. This is how a real renewal of the Church comes about. This is how, little by little, the face of the earth is renewed.
In The Shattering of Loneliness: On Christian Remembrance, you write: “The mystery of God was made manifest to me in veiled ways, densely embodied. I have lived my way from one stage of awareness to the next.” With that in mind, can you share a bit about your conversion and your journey to and into the Catholic Church? What were some essential moments, insights, decisions?
A conversion is necessarily unfinished business. I am still praying that mine may begin in earnest. The opening to faith happened through an experience of transcendence mediated through music. My journey into the Catholic Church proceeded gradually through my late teens. Some important guideposts were books; others were credible believers. The discovery of the Church’s liturgy was essentially important. I was struck by the sheer objectivity of the mystery celebrated; and relieved to find that there was a pedagogy of prayer laid out for me to follow. I bought my first breviary at eighteen. It filled me with delight, as it still does. The decision to ask to be received into the Church came entirely naturally. It never felt like a rupture; it was a matter of coming into my own, in every sense of that phrase, while I was conscious, at the same time, of encountering an utter otherness beckoning hospitably to me. I look back on this process with gratitude.
In Entering the Twofold Mystery, your book on conversion, you describe conversion as turning towards God, “to do his will and to strive to live in his presence. As such, it is a process with ethical implications.” In your experience and from your reflections on the world today, what are the most significant obstacles to conversion? And what are some of the more difficult ethical and moral implications faced by 21st-century converts in the West?
A conversion is fundamentally a ‘turning round’. It begins with self-questioning, and with the intimate sense that somewhere, somehow I am being called to more, to live differently. The chief obstacle to such turning is the self-affirmation that stops my inward ear to any voice except ones affirming me in what I am. It is significant that our cultural and political, to some extent even our ecclesiastical discourse easily becomes an echo chamber of such voices. Think of the various ways in which we expect ourselves to be ‘celebrated’, these days a ubiquitous word, which by no means occurs only in secular contexts. By staying caught up in myself, shut off from others, cultivating a subjective worldview, I switch off the receiver and only transmit, be it in inward monologues or dreary social media posts. Digital gadgetry has equipped us extraordinarily for what the French call a dialogue de sourds, a dialogue of deaf people endlessly speaking past one another. The result? The construction of dividing walls and the burning of bridges. That is why I like to insist on the pontifical, that is, bridge-building mission of Catholics. The Biblical narrative, and later the history of the Church, is the account of the coming into being of a people out of scattered individuals oriented by conscience and grace towards a shared goal, infinitely attractive. Pursuit of that goal presupposes self-transcendence; at the same time it enables entry into communion. I’d say the principal ethical and moral challenge for converts, recent or seasoned, lies here. It is one thing notionally to acknowledge a high ideal; it is another to order my concrete relationships and choices in such a way that they correspond to that ideal and help me approach it.
Trondheim, Norway, where you are, is one of the larger urban areas in Norway. But the Catholic population is very small, less than 2%. How would describe the situation of the Catholic Church there? And what are the challenges—both overarching and day-to-day—in being a Catholic bishop and abbot in Norway?
Numerically, as you say, the Church is small. However, it is vibrant, young, and wonderfully variegated. The prelature of Trondheim has Catholics from 130 nations. It is remarkable to find such a manifestation of the Church’s catholicity in the extreme diaspora. Also, the configuration of Catholicism within the ecclesiastical landscape is changing. For a long time the Norwegian Catholic Church was a marginal phenomenon. It understood itself more or less as a refrigerator designed for the preservation of exotic fruit. That is no longer the case. With the marginalisation of faith in society, and with the weakening of other faith communities, we are awakened to our task to be Christian witnesses, to spread the Gospel abroad, to ensure that Christ is present in our land. The radical secularisation of the past few decades has caused widespread forgetfulness — it takes no more than a generation and a half for a residual religious identity to fade. When I grew up in the 80s, most people thought they knew what Christianity was. That is so no longer; and there is no embarrassment associated with ignorance. This is a cultural loss. At the same it is an advantage for evangelisation. For it is possibly, now, to present the Gospel in its newness and for it to be perceived as new, fresh. We have a great task on our hands, an exacting and joyful task. It has several aspects that must be developed simultaneously. We need to find ways of communicating authentic Catholic teaching; we must teach people to pray, letting them discover the riches of the liturgy; we must show that Catholics have constructive, attractive contributions to make in politics and culture; and we must make our faith concrete in charitable work, for even though Norway is an affluent country, there is no shortage of people in need.
Here in the Church in the U.S., there is much focus on disagreements over liturgy, life issues, immigration, and education, among other issues. Is that similar to or different from Scandinavian countries and Europe, in your estimation? What do you see when you look at the Church in the U.S.?
I do not know the Church in the U.S. well enough to comment on it with any degree of authority. What I am most conscious of, seeing it from afar, is not so much its disagreements as its evident vitality, even a sense of rebirth evidenced in solid new vocations, in a vibrant intellectual life, in various forms of apostolic enterprise. Of course, to live intensely within the Church is to be confronted with a range of sensibilities and convictions. These can be challenging, and tiresome; but we can mostly cope with them as long as we are rooted together in essentials. That is why I think it is crucial to keep affirming these essentials. We shall do this effectively by following the Second Vatican Council’s great watchword, ‘Return to the sources!’ — by reading the Scriptures perseveringly, with understanding and humility; by studying the Church’s catechism, an amazing treasure chest; by attending to the witness of the saints; and by testing our every intuition by Christ’s stated intention, uttered on the night before he suffered: ‘That they all may be one.’
Synodality has been a big topic in the Church in recent years, with a month-long meeting on the topic coming up in Rome in October. What is your understanding of synodality? What do you make of this ongoing focus on synodality, and what do you think may come of it?
I dare say we may all be a bit tired of hearing the word ‘synodality’. Any single term bandied about for a continuous period of time risks sounding hollow. A synodos is literally ‘a way pursued together’. It stands for fellowship in movement towards a shared goal. There is no particular virtue in just being on the way; it has to lead somewhere. We need to know where we are going. For us Christians the humble, everyday word ‘Way’ has rich resonances. The first disciples of Jesus spoke of the Church simply as ‘the Way’. This was how others spoke about them, too. Towards the end of Acts, when St Paul presents a potted CV to a crowd gathered in Jerusalem, he confesses that, before he encountered the risen Christ, he ‘persecuted this Way up to the point of death by binding both men and women and putting them in prison’. Christians were perceived as a compact group that followed an itinerary different to that of most other people. This was considered a dangerous provocation. Now that the formal synod has apparently come to a conclusion, we can look back over its achievements and ask: Am I strengthened in my resolve to follow Christ’s way whole-heartedly? If so, will I implement it by engaging more fully in my parish or community? Is our way recognisably distinct from the world’s way? Do we follow it on Christ’s terms, that is, by walking as he walked, taking up our own cross?
I’ve enjoyed all of your books, but I think your most recent, on chastity, is especially insightful and challenging. Is it correct to say that the current crisis regarding sexuality is both anthropological and eschatological? What is a Christocentric approach to sexuality so vital on both the personal level and in the social/cultural realm?
Yes, I think that is correct. The crisis regarding sexuality is symptomatic of a deeper crisis, regarding what it means to be a human being; and this springs from a more fundamental perplexity regarding the finality of human existence, and of reality as such. And so I think that a Catholic response to current discourse about sexuality must do more than just volunteer moral verdicts — or indulge in outrage; we shall have a good word to say if we underpin out argument based on the solidity and wealth of our heritage, asking ‘Who are we? Where do we come from and where are we going?’ It is my experience that these questions resonate deeply with our times and that we, by posing them, can engage our contemporaries, be they atheists, in genuine conversation, displaying the intelligibility and the attractiveness of the Christian position. A Christocentric approach to sexuality is conscious of Christ as the Alpha and Omega of the human condition. It will remember that we are made in God’s image in order to become like God; that our immediate, embodied, sensual, and affective desires are sparks of a more essential flame drawing us towards communion with uncreated Light, to ‘the full Godhead’s burning’, as Elizabeth Barrett Browning put it in an ardent poem. No other categories are sufficient to account for the intensity of longing that inhabits men and women aspiring to be fully alive. Our secular establishment has no access to these categories. Therefore we have, as Christians, a responsibility to represent them responsibly and well.
In conclusion, two interrelated questions. For those who are not Catholic or Christian, why be Catholic and Christian? And for those who are Catholic, what signs of hope do you see in the Church today? How best to grow more deeply in faith, hope, and love?
Why be a Catholic? Because what the faith teaches is true, and because the truth sets us free. To rediscover the true sense of freedom is a capital task now, when the notion ‘freedom’ is often instrumentalised rhetorically, amputated from its foundation in truth. As for signs of hope in the Church, I see an immense array, alive in charity and goodness. I am heartened by the sincerity of many young seekers, impelled by our world’s evident frailties to seek coordinates that last. We grow in the cardinal virtues by staking our existence on them, by living them out, not only in occasional public gestures, but in the humble quotidian reality of our lives. We recognise, then, the truth of the Lord’s great parables of the mustard seed, of the leaven in the dough.
Any final thoughts?
I have recently engaged a great deal with the legacy of Blessed Jurgis Matulaitis, a great Lithuanian confessor who died in 1927. He wrote in his diary: ‘Lord, let me be a dishrag in your Church, fit to wipe up messes and then to be thrown away into some dark corner. I want to be used and worn out like this so that your house may be a little cleaner and brighter.’ These days, when a worldly tendency would recast the Christian vocation triumphalistically in terms of culture wars, we need this perspective. It challenges us to devote ourselves faithfully to Christ’s ongoing salvific work, to let ourselves be used where we are needed, with no concern to be seen and praised, pursuing the good because it is good, loving it because it is loveable, sharing it because we want others to be genuinely happy. This is how a real renewal of the Church comes about. This is how, little by little, the face of the earth is renewed.
Show yourselves to the priests
Homily given at the reception into the Church of Heidi Frich Andersen.
Luke 17.11-19: Go and show yourselves to the priests.
It is curious, really, that Christ, God from God and Light from Light, on meeting a band of lepers between Samaria and Galilee, did not just heal them then and there, but instead said, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests’.
There must be a message in this exhortation. Elsewhere he heals sick people forthwith; there’s no lack of ability. He wishes, then, to tell us something about the power inherent in divinely-given liturgy and law. The border country up in the north, the Gospel tells us, was a syncretistic region. Israel’s God was worshiped there, sure; but much had been added to, much subtracted from the religion of the Fathers.
There was faith, otherwise the lepers would not have cried out for God’s mercy; but that faith was rootless, somehow, and lacking orientation. That is why Jesus pointed the seekers towards Jerusalem, towards the ordained priesthood, saying: ‘Discover the grace and promises God has given his people and find therein comfort and healing.’
The counsel was effective. All of them were made well.
Today, dear Heidi, you are being received into full communion with the Catholic Church. You have come a long way. You have walked faithfully. You have found blessing, and been a source of blessing to others, on the journey. But now you have come home. You, too, have been attracted towards the clarity and objectivity handed on in the Church’s sacramental dispensation.
You know church life well enough to have few illusions about people, least of all about the clergy. But thank God we are more than our own limitations. The length and breadth, height and depth of God are present in the assembly he calls. Our community is imperfect; that can be painfully obvious at times. Yet nonetheless it glows with a transcendent yet palpable benediction of which it is not the origin. For one who has eyes to see, ears to hear, the Lord is present in his ecclesia; and where the Church is truly present there is a radiance of glory that illumines, gladdens, and heals.
Of the ten lepers that were cleansed, one only returned to give thanks. This fact gives food for thought. If I may give you one word of advice today, Heidi, it would be this: Do not forget to thank God for the mercy he has shown you, for his providential guidance through deep and dark places, for his life-giving, challenging word, for the nourishment he gives, and for the communion which the Church constitutes.
‘You have made my life’, says Solveig to the love of her life in Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, ‘into a lovely song’. Thereby this strange Marian figure in Norway’s national literature indicates the core of our Christian call, of the Church’s mystery. We are called to become holy, to become, in Christ, praise. It rejoices God’s heart to see us grow into beatitude and resonant freedom.
Rise, then, Heidi, and sing, you who today have been so richly blessed. And welcome home! In Christ’s name, Amen.
Jorge Cocco, Christ and the Ten Lepers.
Luke 17.11-19: Go and show yourselves to the priests.
It is curious, really, that Christ, God from God and Light from Light, on meeting a band of lepers between Samaria and Galilee, did not just heal them then and there, but instead said, ‘Go and show yourselves to the priests’.
There must be a message in this exhortation. Elsewhere he heals sick people forthwith; there’s no lack of ability. He wishes, then, to tell us something about the power inherent in divinely-given liturgy and law. The border country up in the north, the Gospel tells us, was a syncretistic region. Israel’s God was worshiped there, sure; but much had been added to, much subtracted from the religion of the Fathers.
There was faith, otherwise the lepers would not have cried out for God’s mercy; but that faith was rootless, somehow, and lacking orientation. That is why Jesus pointed the seekers towards Jerusalem, towards the ordained priesthood, saying: ‘Discover the grace and promises God has given his people and find therein comfort and healing.’
The counsel was effective. All of them were made well.
Today, dear Heidi, you are being received into full communion with the Catholic Church. You have come a long way. You have walked faithfully. You have found blessing, and been a source of blessing to others, on the journey. But now you have come home. You, too, have been attracted towards the clarity and objectivity handed on in the Church’s sacramental dispensation.
You know church life well enough to have few illusions about people, least of all about the clergy. But thank God we are more than our own limitations. The length and breadth, height and depth of God are present in the assembly he calls. Our community is imperfect; that can be painfully obvious at times. Yet nonetheless it glows with a transcendent yet palpable benediction of which it is not the origin. For one who has eyes to see, ears to hear, the Lord is present in his ecclesia; and where the Church is truly present there is a radiance of glory that illumines, gladdens, and heals.
Of the ten lepers that were cleansed, one only returned to give thanks. This fact gives food for thought. If I may give you one word of advice today, Heidi, it would be this: Do not forget to thank God for the mercy he has shown you, for his providential guidance through deep and dark places, for his life-giving, challenging word, for the nourishment he gives, and for the communion which the Church constitutes.
‘You have made my life’, says Solveig to the love of her life in Ibsen’s Peer Gynt, ‘into a lovely song’. Thereby this strange Marian figure in Norway’s national literature indicates the core of our Christian call, of the Church’s mystery. We are called to become holy, to become, in Christ, praise. It rejoices God’s heart to see us grow into beatitude and resonant freedom.
Rise, then, Heidi, and sing, you who today have been so richly blessed. And welcome home! In Christ’s name, Amen.
Jorge Cocco, Christ and the Ten Lepers.
Discovery
In an interesting interview already ten years old, Tamara Rojo speaks of her first experience of ballet, at the age of five. She’d been brought into the school gymnasium out of the cold while waiting for her mother to pick her up. A dance lesson was going on: ‘There was this quietness and harmony, it felt perfect, like a world I’d never seen. I didn’t want to leave. When my mother finally came, I said: ‘But we need to stay and watch this to the end, whatever it is!’ Because I didn’t know what ballet was. I didn’t understand that ballet was a performance.’
The precocious, mysterious insight small children can have regarding their call, the way they must follow. It calls for reverence.
The precocious, mysterious insight small children can have regarding their call, the way they must follow. It calls for reverence.
Perspective
One day it’s enough,
you feel, to view the world
through the common lens
of history, content
with no vision wider
than that of the obvious.
Next day, caught by
a tumult of longing, you search
among the straw and
chaff of things for the golden
corn of meaning.
From Fr Paul Murray’s Light at the Torn Horizon.
https://coramfratribus.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Perspective-Murray.m4a
you feel, to view the world
through the common lens
of history, content
with no vision wider
than that of the obvious.
Next day, caught by
a tumult of longing, you search
among the straw and
chaff of things for the golden
corn of meaning.
From Fr Paul Murray’s Light at the Torn Horizon.
https://coramfratribus.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/Perspective-Murray.m4a
32. Sunday B
1 Kings 17:10-16: The jar of meal was not spent.
Hebrews 9:24-28: Christ, offered once to bear the sins of many.
Mark 12:38-44: She put in everything she had, her whole living.
Our second reading expresses the heart of our Christian faith with density. It calls for attentive reading. The redemptive action of Christ is presented in three aspects. First, we are told he offered up himself ‘to put away sin’. With this formula, the RSV translates the Greek verb ἀτίθημι quite literally, but we may get a clearer view of what it means by considering the Vulgate’s imaged, even poetic rendering, ‘ad destitutionem peccati’. On this reading, Christ’s Passion robbed sin of its resources, rendering it ‘destitute’, with no securities to hold on to. All spiritual and existential capital pertains henceforth to Christ’s cross, in so far as we let its grace take effect in our lives; in so far, that is, as we ‘bear’ the cross and seek to be conformed to it. The second aspect of Christ’s work follows on from the first: having accomplished his mission on earth, he is at work, now, before the face of his heavenly Father, where he ‘appears on our behalf’. He is our advocate and intercessor, the one who pleads our cause. Having shared the human condition — though without sin — he knows the fragility of women and men; he knows the trials to which we are exposed, the vulnerabilities we have to negotiate. These he presents to the Father with a plea for mercy. When, at the beginning of each Mass, we turn to the Lord and plead, Kyrie eleison, we ascend towards this dialogue of compassion between Father and Son, our prayers carried up by the Spirit. This cry for pity will resound until the end of the world, when Christ, as the third aspect of redemption, returns with glory to judge the living and the dead, to ‘save those who are eagerly waiting for him’. Our great task as Christians is to position ourselves within this dynamic of expiation, intercession, and impending judgement. How do we live in such a way? That is the question we must ask, to which the other two readings of our Mass in some ways provide an answer.
Both speak of widows who gave their all. The widow of Zarephath was affected, with the rest of Israel, by a drought brought on by the Lord in retribution for the people’s idolatrous excesses under King Ahab. The widow, being just and god-fearing, suffered as an innocent, paying the price for the evil done by others. Pain endured for the wickedness others have committed is rarely ennobling. Little is more likely to induce righteous indignation bearing fruits of bitterness. The widow resists this destructive tendency. Even though the famine of the land was sent by God, she believes in God’s goodness and for his sake consents to share her last morsel of food with a stranger, in obedience to Mosaic law. This act of faith on her part (a faith we can surely call heroic) enables a miracle of grace to take place. Having given everything she had to live on, she finds that more is provided, her meal-jar and her oil-cruse filling up by divine intervention. Offering up her livelihood that someone else might live, she finds that life is bestowed, as free gift, in abundance.
The widow in the Gospel is likewise unsparing. To give glory to God and to provide for the poor of the land, she ‘put in everything she had’ as an offering to the Lord. A case could be made for a still more radical rendering. According to the Greek text, she gave ἐκ τῆς ὑστερήσεως αὐτῆς, which means literally, ‘out of her want’, ‘out of what she didn’t have’. A good financial adviser would call her reckless, irresponsible — in fact, he would probably ask that she be placed under tutelage, as being unable to administer her resources. Christ portrays the situation differently: this, he tells us, is the way to live, to give without counting the cost, to surrender ourselves as an oblation, to risk poverty, death even, to abide by the Law’s injunction of charity, to be supremely free, not only with regard to our possessions, but with regard to our life, ready to lay it down in the sure hope that, in Christ, we will take it up again. The sublimely theological vision of Hebrews becomes, by means of these examples, a lesson to live by, by which to construct our lives, individually and in common.
In the collect this week, we pray to be kept ‘from all adversity, so that, unhindered in mind and body alike, we may pursue in freedom of heart the things that are [God’s]’. Real adversity, our readings tell us, is not illness, poverty, and death, though these are bitter. Real adversity is resistance to Jesus’s call to give all, to seek our riches in things of this earth that, on the Cross, he despoiled, instead of following the oblative logic of the Passion, to be conformed to Christ and so made one with him. If we dare to adopt this perspective on life — and courage is called for! —, we find that every moment provide opportunities to make a choice for or against salvation, for or against Christ’s cause. To live in this way is demanding, but it’s the way to be set free, to be rooted in truth, in reality the way it really is — and where freedom and truth intersect, joy is never far away. May God grant us the widows’ great-souled, generous grace so that we, like them, may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. Amen.
Marc Chagall, Elijah and the Widow of Sarepta. From his ‘Desseins pour la Bible’.
Hebrews 9:24-28: Christ, offered once to bear the sins of many.
Mark 12:38-44: She put in everything she had, her whole living.
Our second reading expresses the heart of our Christian faith with density. It calls for attentive reading. The redemptive action of Christ is presented in three aspects. First, we are told he offered up himself ‘to put away sin’. With this formula, the RSV translates the Greek verb ἀτίθημι quite literally, but we may get a clearer view of what it means by considering the Vulgate’s imaged, even poetic rendering, ‘ad destitutionem peccati’. On this reading, Christ’s Passion robbed sin of its resources, rendering it ‘destitute’, with no securities to hold on to. All spiritual and existential capital pertains henceforth to Christ’s cross, in so far as we let its grace take effect in our lives; in so far, that is, as we ‘bear’ the cross and seek to be conformed to it. The second aspect of Christ’s work follows on from the first: having accomplished his mission on earth, he is at work, now, before the face of his heavenly Father, where he ‘appears on our behalf’. He is our advocate and intercessor, the one who pleads our cause. Having shared the human condition — though without sin — he knows the fragility of women and men; he knows the trials to which we are exposed, the vulnerabilities we have to negotiate. These he presents to the Father with a plea for mercy. When, at the beginning of each Mass, we turn to the Lord and plead, Kyrie eleison, we ascend towards this dialogue of compassion between Father and Son, our prayers carried up by the Spirit. This cry for pity will resound until the end of the world, when Christ, as the third aspect of redemption, returns with glory to judge the living and the dead, to ‘save those who are eagerly waiting for him’. Our great task as Christians is to position ourselves within this dynamic of expiation, intercession, and impending judgement. How do we live in such a way? That is the question we must ask, to which the other two readings of our Mass in some ways provide an answer.
Both speak of widows who gave their all. The widow of Zarephath was affected, with the rest of Israel, by a drought brought on by the Lord in retribution for the people’s idolatrous excesses under King Ahab. The widow, being just and god-fearing, suffered as an innocent, paying the price for the evil done by others. Pain endured for the wickedness others have committed is rarely ennobling. Little is more likely to induce righteous indignation bearing fruits of bitterness. The widow resists this destructive tendency. Even though the famine of the land was sent by God, she believes in God’s goodness and for his sake consents to share her last morsel of food with a stranger, in obedience to Mosaic law. This act of faith on her part (a faith we can surely call heroic) enables a miracle of grace to take place. Having given everything she had to live on, she finds that more is provided, her meal-jar and her oil-cruse filling up by divine intervention. Offering up her livelihood that someone else might live, she finds that life is bestowed, as free gift, in abundance.
The widow in the Gospel is likewise unsparing. To give glory to God and to provide for the poor of the land, she ‘put in everything she had’ as an offering to the Lord. A case could be made for a still more radical rendering. According to the Greek text, she gave ἐκ τῆς ὑστερήσεως αὐτῆς, which means literally, ‘out of her want’, ‘out of what she didn’t have’. A good financial adviser would call her reckless, irresponsible — in fact, he would probably ask that she be placed under tutelage, as being unable to administer her resources. Christ portrays the situation differently: this, he tells us, is the way to live, to give without counting the cost, to surrender ourselves as an oblation, to risk poverty, death even, to abide by the Law’s injunction of charity, to be supremely free, not only with regard to our possessions, but with regard to our life, ready to lay it down in the sure hope that, in Christ, we will take it up again. The sublimely theological vision of Hebrews becomes, by means of these examples, a lesson to live by, by which to construct our lives, individually and in common.
In the collect this week, we pray to be kept ‘from all adversity, so that, unhindered in mind and body alike, we may pursue in freedom of heart the things that are [God’s]’. Real adversity, our readings tell us, is not illness, poverty, and death, though these are bitter. Real adversity is resistance to Jesus’s call to give all, to seek our riches in things of this earth that, on the Cross, he despoiled, instead of following the oblative logic of the Passion, to be conformed to Christ and so made one with him. If we dare to adopt this perspective on life — and courage is called for! —, we find that every moment provide opportunities to make a choice for or against salvation, for or against Christ’s cause. To live in this way is demanding, but it’s the way to be set free, to be rooted in truth, in reality the way it really is — and where freedom and truth intersect, joy is never far away. May God grant us the widows’ great-souled, generous grace so that we, like them, may be made worthy of the promises of Christ. Amen.
Marc Chagall, Elijah and the Widow of Sarepta. From his ‘Desseins pour la Bible’.