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:
Christmas Day 
Isaiah 52:2-7: How beautiful are the feet of one who brings good news.
Hebrews 1:1-6: He is the radiant light of God’s glory.
John 1:1-18: He was with God in the beginning.
Each year on Christmas Day the Prologue of John washes over Read More
Hebrews 1:1-6: He is the radiant light of God’s glory.
John 1:1-18: He was with God in the beginning.
Each year on Christmas Day the Prologue of John washes over Read More
Christmas Midnight Mass Isaiah 9:2-7: These you break as on the day of Midian.
Titus 2:11-14: God’s grace has been revealed.
Luke 2:1-14: Glory to God and peace on earth!
In a way, the message of Christmas is straightforward.
Anyone who has ambled through our city’s seasonal Read More
Titus 2:11-14: God’s grace has been revealed.
Luke 2:1-14: Glory to God and peace on earth!
In a way, the message of Christmas is straightforward.
Anyone who has ambled through our city’s seasonal Read More
Conversation with Luke Coppen You can find the online version of this conversation about Christmas here.
Would it be right to say that the first Christmas — the birth of the Saviour — came at a time of immense turmoil in the life of St. Read More
Would it be right to say that the first Christmas — the birth of the Saviour — came at a time of immense turmoil in the life of St. Read More
Behind Scenes This week saw the publication of the fifty-second and last episode of Desert Fathers. This project has marked my year profoundly – and it has been sheer joy. The initiative was Jamie Baxter’s. He invited me some years ago to Read More
Desert Fathers 52 You can find this episode in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here.
Benedict, the man of the Lord, while the brethren were still taking their rest, was zealously keeping vigil. Read More
Benedict, the man of the Lord, while the brethren were still taking their rest, was zealously keeping vigil. Read More
O Clavis David When John the Seer, in the Apocalypse, looks up, he is astonished: ‘Lo, in heaven, an open door!’ The beatitude of which David sang is within reach. The question is, will we, will I, accept the invitation to enter? The Read More
O Radix Iesse The Lord, in Isaiah, shows a supreme disdain for display. Assyria might think itself a towering cedar, yet ‘the Lord of hosts will lop the boughs with terrifying power; the great in height will be hewn down, and the lofty Read More
Christmas Day
Isaiah 52:2-7: How beautiful are the feet of one who brings good news.
Hebrews 1:1-6: He is the radiant light of God’s glory.
John 1:1-18: He was with God in the beginning.
Each year on Christmas Day the Prologue of John washes over us like a thunderous waterfall. The first two Christmas Masses, at midnight and dawn, are narrative in character. We follow the circumstances of Christ’s birth among the shepherds in the field, then in the stable, surrounded by damp hay and the smell of animals. We stand as witnesses.
Much Christmas devotion is focused at a horizontal level, face to face with the mystery. This is good. By the incarnation God entered our horizontality, measurable in time and space. That is where he meets us. The Church’s early preaching insisted on this fact. It seemed incredible, and scandalous, that God should come to us on our terms. So this was rehearsed again and again.
These days we live with the opposite tendency. We take the homely, companionable Jesus for granted. It is natural for us to relate simply to him. We call him our brother, our friend. We are right to do so: these titles are Biblically grounded. But do we sufficiently remember that he is also our eternal Lord, God from God, Light from Light?
‘In the beginning was the Word’, writes John.
What’s a word? Formally speaking a word is a combination of letters or sounds capable of rendering sense. Not all words make sense on their own. They presuppose combinations with other words. But each word does mean something. Words enable us to order our experience and to share it.
To deprive a man of the use of words is to do violence to him. One of the first things totalitarian regimes will do is to restrict speech and outlaw vocabulary.
I have a tattered old book that used to belong to my grandfather, who was a prisoner in the Nazi camp of Grini during the War. The book is a collection of speeches given there by Francis Bull, a man of letters, during the Second World War. There were words that, in that context, it would have been impossible to use: ‘freedom’, ‘resistance’, ‘king’, and so forth. By using them nonetheless, or by finding clever ways of suggesting them by means of other words, Bull kept the other prisoners’ courage up. He kept alive a flame that otherwise might have been blown out by the icy wind of violence.
When John proclaims that the Word become flesh, the Word we revere in the manger, was ‘in the beginning’, it is to show that the Child born of Mary embodies the origin of all things. The Word became flesh not just to run a redemptive errand but also, and not least, to show us what our existence means, where we come from, the goal we are called to reach.
We read that ‘all things came to be through him’. It is literally true that he, by becoming man, ‘came into his own’.
When in daily life we purchase a gadget or other — a mixmaster — we are told to read the user’s manual. We need to know how the equipment is intended to work in order to use it well. Else we risk ruining it. If we come back to the shop with a wreck and it turns out we have used the thing wrongly, trying to mix cement with a Kenwood, the attendant will scoff and the shop’s warranty will do us no good. The accident was our fault.
The Word became flesh to display human nature in a perfect prototype, exactly as it was intended to be. The Producer demonstrates it. He challenges us to look for ourselves in him, and for him in us. He asks us to follow his example. We are called to resemble Christ, not primarily to get a pat on the back and a nice prize in the form of eternal life; we are called to resemble him because he, and only he, can show us who we really are. If we follow other paths, our nature will not work optimally. We may even risk doing it lasting damage.
To be a Christian is to surrender oneself into Jesus’s hands to be formed by them, to be repaired when needed — and to be ennobled. If only we would share God’s ambition on our behalf!
The Church knows it and spells it out. Think of the audacious prayer with which this Mass began, an expression of our dearest Christmas wish:
O God, who wonderfully created the dignity of human nature and still more wonderfully restored it, grant, we pray, that we may share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity..
The human being is wonderfully made. The working of our body is a mystery great enough — but what are we to say about our mind, our soul, of everything we are equipped to know, enjoy, and suffer by?!
‘I will praise thee’, says a Psalm of David, ‘for I am fearfully and wonderfully made’. It’s a good phrase. Fear and wonder often coincide as we grow in self-knowledge.
So yes, the way we are made is amazing. But it will be surpassed, we are told, by our remaking in Christ. What we are of ourselves is as nothing compared to what we have the potential, in him, to become. If we dare to pray for a share in his divinity, it is because he desires to share it with us. The Word that was in the beginning is not external to us. The Word is the agent of our inward renewal. One and the same Word works in our soul by grace and holds the universe together; the Word that became flesh and was laid in a manger is that same Word that created the stars and still guides them. The ordered immensity of the cosmos is an image of the height a Christian is called to reach.
We can aim for such heights if we have the courage to follow John. Not for nothing is his emblem the eagle. John soars in the vast expanse of heaven, apparently immobile but in reality sustained by vast spiritual force.
John illumines the Gospel with glory. And he assures each of us: the Lord’s purpose for you is for your to become glorious, a new, infinitely beautiful creation in Christ, a bearer of eternal light into time’s night.
This does not mean that our faith becomes abstract and theoretical. No one sums the Christian condition up more concentratedly than John. ‘He who loves me’, says Jesus through John, ‘must keep my commandments coherently’. The commandments are immense: ‘Abide in me’ — let nothing, no one, separate you from the grace of Jesus; ‘Love one another’, unto death if need be; ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’, that your life may became the Spirit’s holy temple.
God was born like us and dwells among us to make us like him.
Grateful for his confidence in us, let us live in a manner worthy of him.
Amen.
Initial from an Antiphonary produced in Bologna in the early 14th century, now in the Fitzwilliam Museum
Hebrews 1:1-6: He is the radiant light of God’s glory.
John 1:1-18: He was with God in the beginning.
Each year on Christmas Day the Prologue of John washes over us like a thunderous waterfall. The first two Christmas Masses, at midnight and dawn, are narrative in character. We follow the circumstances of Christ’s birth among the shepherds in the field, then in the stable, surrounded by damp hay and the smell of animals. We stand as witnesses.
Much Christmas devotion is focused at a horizontal level, face to face with the mystery. This is good. By the incarnation God entered our horizontality, measurable in time and space. That is where he meets us. The Church’s early preaching insisted on this fact. It seemed incredible, and scandalous, that God should come to us on our terms. So this was rehearsed again and again.
These days we live with the opposite tendency. We take the homely, companionable Jesus for granted. It is natural for us to relate simply to him. We call him our brother, our friend. We are right to do so: these titles are Biblically grounded. But do we sufficiently remember that he is also our eternal Lord, God from God, Light from Light?
‘In the beginning was the Word’, writes John.
What’s a word? Formally speaking a word is a combination of letters or sounds capable of rendering sense. Not all words make sense on their own. They presuppose combinations with other words. But each word does mean something. Words enable us to order our experience and to share it.
To deprive a man of the use of words is to do violence to him. One of the first things totalitarian regimes will do is to restrict speech and outlaw vocabulary.
I have a tattered old book that used to belong to my grandfather, who was a prisoner in the Nazi camp of Grini during the War. The book is a collection of speeches given there by Francis Bull, a man of letters, during the Second World War. There were words that, in that context, it would have been impossible to use: ‘freedom’, ‘resistance’, ‘king’, and so forth. By using them nonetheless, or by finding clever ways of suggesting them by means of other words, Bull kept the other prisoners’ courage up. He kept alive a flame that otherwise might have been blown out by the icy wind of violence.
When John proclaims that the Word become flesh, the Word we revere in the manger, was ‘in the beginning’, it is to show that the Child born of Mary embodies the origin of all things. The Word became flesh not just to run a redemptive errand but also, and not least, to show us what our existence means, where we come from, the goal we are called to reach.
We read that ‘all things came to be through him’. It is literally true that he, by becoming man, ‘came into his own’.
When in daily life we purchase a gadget or other — a mixmaster — we are told to read the user’s manual. We need to know how the equipment is intended to work in order to use it well. Else we risk ruining it. If we come back to the shop with a wreck and it turns out we have used the thing wrongly, trying to mix cement with a Kenwood, the attendant will scoff and the shop’s warranty will do us no good. The accident was our fault.
The Word became flesh to display human nature in a perfect prototype, exactly as it was intended to be. The Producer demonstrates it. He challenges us to look for ourselves in him, and for him in us. He asks us to follow his example. We are called to resemble Christ, not primarily to get a pat on the back and a nice prize in the form of eternal life; we are called to resemble him because he, and only he, can show us who we really are. If we follow other paths, our nature will not work optimally. We may even risk doing it lasting damage.
To be a Christian is to surrender oneself into Jesus’s hands to be formed by them, to be repaired when needed — and to be ennobled. If only we would share God’s ambition on our behalf!
The Church knows it and spells it out. Think of the audacious prayer with which this Mass began, an expression of our dearest Christmas wish:
O God, who wonderfully created the dignity of human nature and still more wonderfully restored it, grant, we pray, that we may share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity..
The human being is wonderfully made. The working of our body is a mystery great enough — but what are we to say about our mind, our soul, of everything we are equipped to know, enjoy, and suffer by?!
‘I will praise thee’, says a Psalm of David, ‘for I am fearfully and wonderfully made’. It’s a good phrase. Fear and wonder often coincide as we grow in self-knowledge.
So yes, the way we are made is amazing. But it will be surpassed, we are told, by our remaking in Christ. What we are of ourselves is as nothing compared to what we have the potential, in him, to become. If we dare to pray for a share in his divinity, it is because he desires to share it with us. The Word that was in the beginning is not external to us. The Word is the agent of our inward renewal. One and the same Word works in our soul by grace and holds the universe together; the Word that became flesh and was laid in a manger is that same Word that created the stars and still guides them. The ordered immensity of the cosmos is an image of the height a Christian is called to reach.
We can aim for such heights if we have the courage to follow John. Not for nothing is his emblem the eagle. John soars in the vast expanse of heaven, apparently immobile but in reality sustained by vast spiritual force.
John illumines the Gospel with glory. And he assures each of us: the Lord’s purpose for you is for your to become glorious, a new, infinitely beautiful creation in Christ, a bearer of eternal light into time’s night.
This does not mean that our faith becomes abstract and theoretical. No one sums the Christian condition up more concentratedly than John. ‘He who loves me’, says Jesus through John, ‘must keep my commandments coherently’. The commandments are immense: ‘Abide in me’ — let nothing, no one, separate you from the grace of Jesus; ‘Love one another’, unto death if need be; ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’, that your life may became the Spirit’s holy temple.
God was born like us and dwells among us to make us like him.
Grateful for his confidence in us, let us live in a manner worthy of him.
Amen.
Initial from an Antiphonary produced in Bologna in the early 14th century, now in the Fitzwilliam Museum
Christmas Midnight Mass
Isaiah 9:2-7: These you break as on the day of Midian.
Titus 2:11-14: God’s grace has been revealed.
Luke 2:1-14: Glory to God and peace on earth!
In a way, the message of Christmas is straightforward.
Anyone who has ambled through our city’s seasonal market this week has heard it blaring from loudspeakers: ‘A Child is born!’ The iconography of Christmas surrounds us in cribs and on cards inoffensively. All are susceptible to the charm of a conception and birth against the odds. The amiable aspect of Christmas is beneficial, whether we are believers or not. It is right to rejoice in it. We may have a pleasant time at Christmas. We mustn’t, though, reduce the angelic exultation to a soundtrack we quietly hum while out shopping. We need to see the ‘great joy’ in a true perspective. The Child born to us, the shepherds were told, is our Redeemer.
What does that mean? What’s he supposed to redeem us from?
To ‘redeem’ in Biblical language is primarily a matter of freeing captives by way of ransom or rescue. The first reading the Church gives us this night provides a striking image of redemption. ‘The yoke that was weighing on the people’, Isaiah tells the Lord, ‘you break as on the day of Midian’.
Let us remind ourselves of what went on that day, on ‘the day of Midian’.
When Israel, after centuries of exile in Egypt, was back in the Promised Land, the people did ‘what was evil in the sight of the Lord’. The wonders God had done to bring them home had happened just a few generations ago. But that’s how we human beings are: we easily forget acquired experience when we are comfortable, warm, and safe. So the Midianites gained access to Israel. They came, we read in Judges, in huge numbers, ‘like swarms of locusts’. The people of Israel, increasingly vague about their religion and identity, did not much mind. After a while, though, the Midianites became cruel. They oppressed other peoples, destroyed crops. In the end there was nothing to live on, ‘no sheep or ox or ass’.
That’s when Israel thought of invoking the Lord.
God! Many people hadn’t thought about him for years.
The Lord answered (I summarise): I led you out of Egypt; I freed you from slavery; I drove away your enemies; I gave you all you needed and more; I said, ‘I am the Lord your God, and you are not to have other gods’. ‘But you would not listen’.
If God surrendered his people to the Midianites it was to help them see what is really of importance. Having lost their sense of temporal security, Israel suddenly remembered lasting values.
Thus we encounter a recurrent motif in Scripture. God wishes mankind well. He tenderly embraces it. The same Isaiah who speaks about ‘the day of Midian’ is given this word from God: ‘As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you’.
However, ‘comfort’ in the Lord’s mind is not chiefly about letting us have a lovely time. His purpose for us is earnest; even as life, even when it’s sweet, is earnest. When God speaks of ‘comfort’ he speaks of leading us from captivity to freedom, from darkness to light, from mendacity to truth.
If, then, we prefer the dark, the limited, and the untruthful, that is what we are given to taste, not so much as punishment, but as a way of learning from experience that our choices have consequences. Time spent under Midian’s scourge let Israel see that it had no claim on God’s blessing; that his blessing constitutes a call to which people called must live up.
The Lord set about redeeming Israel so that the people might live on what they learnt. The ‘day of Midian’ would be decisive for the country’s future — a Stiklestad of Antiquity!
Israel turned up with a numerous army: 32,000 men. The Lord told them: ‘There are too many of you.’ He sent 22,000 straight home, then kept reducing the army. In the end 300 men were left, a ridiculous number over against the might of Midian. Still the battle was won in one day and one night. ‘For it is I’, said the Lord, ‘who give the camp of the enemy into your hands.’
‘The day of Midian’ is thus an image of God’s power to do the impossible, to win victories with resources that, humanly speaking, are wholly inadequate.
Dear brothers and sisters, we are approaching the end of an anxious year. The darkness surrounding us is dense. So it is good to be thinking of ‘the day of Midian’.
We may feel threatened by forces that overwhelm us. What will the world turn into? There is instability in Europe. We notice that close at hand. In our neighbouring country, Sweden, the government last year distributed a leaflet to all households. It was titled: Should Crisis or War Occur. In Sweden! Last year! What will be the consequences of mounting military tension, extreme tendencies in political discourse, ever more aggressive polarisation, financial collapse? It is natural to feel afraid. We must be lucid, not sweep grave matters under a rug.
We could hardly call ourselves Christians, though, if we did not, at the same time, affirm that the mystery we celebrate this Holy Night brings a remedy also for the sickness and fear of our day.
It is an eternal paradox that God, to redeem the world from sin and death, to free us from the power of evil, should have come, not with legions of angels or some new form of tech, but instead gave himself up to the human condition in a state of great vulnerability, as an infant.
It sounds so pretty when Paul says that God’s power is perfected in our weakness. This is no platitude, however; it is a carrying, concrete, verifiable motif in the Lord’s plan of redemption. That motif is expressed again and again in the Bible and in Church history. It finds expression in our experience, yours and mine.
‘The day of Midian’ is no exception. It stands for the norm in divine agency.
In order that God’s redemption may be manifest right now as on that day, we human beings must know our real needs. Is that not what life is really about: learning what we really need, and what is superfluous? This is the key that unlocks the enigma of existence — and the enigma of our times, for that matter.
So while we rejoice this night in light, warmth, and fellowship let us resolutely open our lives to the Lord’s work here and now. Let us kneel before the manger and welcome our Mighty God in the frail form he chose to assume to make himself known. Christ Jesus is the same today, yesterday, and for ever. He is, and will ever be, our Liberator, Healer, and Redeemer. But he does not force himself on us. We must freely call on him, and let him in.
If we do, the angelic Gloria will sound every bit as clear here in Trondheim anno 2025 as back then in Bethlehem. May God grant our ears to hear it.
Amen.
Titus 2:11-14: God’s grace has been revealed.
Luke 2:1-14: Glory to God and peace on earth!
In a way, the message of Christmas is straightforward.
Anyone who has ambled through our city’s seasonal market this week has heard it blaring from loudspeakers: ‘A Child is born!’ The iconography of Christmas surrounds us in cribs and on cards inoffensively. All are susceptible to the charm of a conception and birth against the odds. The amiable aspect of Christmas is beneficial, whether we are believers or not. It is right to rejoice in it. We may have a pleasant time at Christmas. We mustn’t, though, reduce the angelic exultation to a soundtrack we quietly hum while out shopping. We need to see the ‘great joy’ in a true perspective. The Child born to us, the shepherds were told, is our Redeemer.
What does that mean? What’s he supposed to redeem us from?
To ‘redeem’ in Biblical language is primarily a matter of freeing captives by way of ransom or rescue. The first reading the Church gives us this night provides a striking image of redemption. ‘The yoke that was weighing on the people’, Isaiah tells the Lord, ‘you break as on the day of Midian’.
Let us remind ourselves of what went on that day, on ‘the day of Midian’.
When Israel, after centuries of exile in Egypt, was back in the Promised Land, the people did ‘what was evil in the sight of the Lord’. The wonders God had done to bring them home had happened just a few generations ago. But that’s how we human beings are: we easily forget acquired experience when we are comfortable, warm, and safe. So the Midianites gained access to Israel. They came, we read in Judges, in huge numbers, ‘like swarms of locusts’. The people of Israel, increasingly vague about their religion and identity, did not much mind. After a while, though, the Midianites became cruel. They oppressed other peoples, destroyed crops. In the end there was nothing to live on, ‘no sheep or ox or ass’.
That’s when Israel thought of invoking the Lord.
God! Many people hadn’t thought about him for years.
The Lord answered (I summarise): I led you out of Egypt; I freed you from slavery; I drove away your enemies; I gave you all you needed and more; I said, ‘I am the Lord your God, and you are not to have other gods’. ‘But you would not listen’.
If God surrendered his people to the Midianites it was to help them see what is really of importance. Having lost their sense of temporal security, Israel suddenly remembered lasting values.
Thus we encounter a recurrent motif in Scripture. God wishes mankind well. He tenderly embraces it. The same Isaiah who speaks about ‘the day of Midian’ is given this word from God: ‘As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you’.
However, ‘comfort’ in the Lord’s mind is not chiefly about letting us have a lovely time. His purpose for us is earnest; even as life, even when it’s sweet, is earnest. When God speaks of ‘comfort’ he speaks of leading us from captivity to freedom, from darkness to light, from mendacity to truth.
If, then, we prefer the dark, the limited, and the untruthful, that is what we are given to taste, not so much as punishment, but as a way of learning from experience that our choices have consequences. Time spent under Midian’s scourge let Israel see that it had no claim on God’s blessing; that his blessing constitutes a call to which people called must live up.
The Lord set about redeeming Israel so that the people might live on what they learnt. The ‘day of Midian’ would be decisive for the country’s future — a Stiklestad of Antiquity!
Israel turned up with a numerous army: 32,000 men. The Lord told them: ‘There are too many of you.’ He sent 22,000 straight home, then kept reducing the army. In the end 300 men were left, a ridiculous number over against the might of Midian. Still the battle was won in one day and one night. ‘For it is I’, said the Lord, ‘who give the camp of the enemy into your hands.’
‘The day of Midian’ is thus an image of God’s power to do the impossible, to win victories with resources that, humanly speaking, are wholly inadequate.
Dear brothers and sisters, we are approaching the end of an anxious year. The darkness surrounding us is dense. So it is good to be thinking of ‘the day of Midian’.
We may feel threatened by forces that overwhelm us. What will the world turn into? There is instability in Europe. We notice that close at hand. In our neighbouring country, Sweden, the government last year distributed a leaflet to all households. It was titled: Should Crisis or War Occur. In Sweden! Last year! What will be the consequences of mounting military tension, extreme tendencies in political discourse, ever more aggressive polarisation, financial collapse? It is natural to feel afraid. We must be lucid, not sweep grave matters under a rug.
We could hardly call ourselves Christians, though, if we did not, at the same time, affirm that the mystery we celebrate this Holy Night brings a remedy also for the sickness and fear of our day.
It is an eternal paradox that God, to redeem the world from sin and death, to free us from the power of evil, should have come, not with legions of angels or some new form of tech, but instead gave himself up to the human condition in a state of great vulnerability, as an infant.
It sounds so pretty when Paul says that God’s power is perfected in our weakness. This is no platitude, however; it is a carrying, concrete, verifiable motif in the Lord’s plan of redemption. That motif is expressed again and again in the Bible and in Church history. It finds expression in our experience, yours and mine.
‘The day of Midian’ is no exception. It stands for the norm in divine agency.
In order that God’s redemption may be manifest right now as on that day, we human beings must know our real needs. Is that not what life is really about: learning what we really need, and what is superfluous? This is the key that unlocks the enigma of existence — and the enigma of our times, for that matter.
So while we rejoice this night in light, warmth, and fellowship let us resolutely open our lives to the Lord’s work here and now. Let us kneel before the manger and welcome our Mighty God in the frail form he chose to assume to make himself known. Christ Jesus is the same today, yesterday, and for ever. He is, and will ever be, our Liberator, Healer, and Redeemer. But he does not force himself on us. We must freely call on him, and let him in.
If we do, the angelic Gloria will sound every bit as clear here in Trondheim anno 2025 as back then in Bethlehem. May God grant our ears to hear it.
Amen.
Conversation with Luke Coppen
You can find the online version of this conversation about Christmas here.
Would it be right to say that the first Christmas — the birth of the Saviour — came at a time of immense turmoil in the life of St. Joseph?
That is what Scripture tells us. We read in the Gospel of Matthew that Joseph, when Mary was found to be with child, resolved to divorce her. He would do so ‘quietly’, for kindness’s sake; but break off relations all the same. The pregnancy made him think that the woman who was to be his wife had either betrayed him or been compromised in such a way that she could not speak of it; either circumstance made the prospect of a shared future seem impossible.
That is when the angel intervenes and tells Joseph what is going on: the life conceived in Mary is of the Holy Spirit; the Son she will bear is an answer to prophecy; he will save his people from their sins; for that reason Joseph must not fear. The exhortation to be fearless, which runs right through the New Testament, is present from the outset — in the annunciation to Mary, then in the angelic reassurance of Joseph.
Faced with the intervention of God in history, human beings, even these signally virtuous specimens, respond with turmoil and anxiety. It is unsettling to have one’s life turned upside-down by grace; it takes time to adopt a divine perspective on human affairs.
In iconography, certain representations of Christ’s Nativity integrate a detail easy to overlook. It is a scene known as the temptation of St Joseph. Sitting a little apart from the cave with the Mother and Child, and looking uncannily like Rodin’s Penseur, Joseph is approached by a devil (remember, the Greek word diabolos means ‘puller-apart’) disguised as a harmless shepherd.
We can imagine the sort of things this fellow would have whispered in Joseph’s ear: ‘You don’t seriously believe that nonsense of a dream? Do you think God intervenes like this? Get away while you can!’ These are very human trials, crises of confidence and faith many of us have known from experience. It is good to know that St Joseph has been there too; and that he did not let devilish suggestions sway his mind, staying instead steadfast in loyalty. He himself had to battle to persevere in faith; therefore he is well equipped to sustain us in our battles.
Is there something we can learn from St. Joseph’s attitude amid the trials of traveling to Bethlehem for the census and searching for a place for Mary and the Christ Child to shelter?
Discretion, peace, an absence of fuss. These qualities are especially evidenced in the journey to Egypt, necessitated by Herod’s ravings. Joseph, whom tradition portrays as a man of mature years, leaves his home, his livelihood, and everything familiar in order to protect the protagonists of God’s recklessly precarious plan.
The need to up sticks gave the Holy Family no chance to close in on itself in private cosiness. The leave-taking of Mary and Joseph almost as soon as they welcome Jesus into their lives establishes a paradigm for faithful existence. It also says something vital about parenthood. There’s a tendency abroad these days that considers progeny an acquisition, a way to crown a parent’s ambition for him or herself — for of course it is possible, now, to get (a significant verb!) a child without the inconvenience of trailing a spouse or partner.
The example of Joseph speaks to us of parenthood as a kenotic state, a state of coherent self-outpouring in love for the sake of a purpose other than one’s own. St Joseph is the patron saint of unselfishness.
Is it not striking, in the light of this, that he also stands before us as a singularly joyful saint?
How did the Incarnation change St. Joseph’s life?
You know the way we feel when we are near a really good person? Just being in the same room as such a one affects us. We become conscious of the interior distance there is between us and them — the light they carry set off our darkness in ways that are uncomfortable. At the same time their goodness is a source of encouragement. I might think, ‘If someone so good and pure-hearted, who can surely see through my pretences, puts up with me and does not chase me away, perhaps there is hope for me?’
Now, if exposure to degrees of human perfection can affect us that deeply, what must it have been like to live day in, day out alongside God-made-man?
Here we touch upon a mystery about which it is almost impossible to speak. We can only be contemplatively silent before it. We can, though, deduce the effect of God’s incarnation on St Joseph’s life from the fact that he discreetly lets himself be eclipsed from the story. Having done his providential duty, having brought up the Son of God and protected him while he needed it, St Joseph is content to withdraw from the scene without as much as a furtive bow to the audience.
Something of the dynamic Paul speaks of, ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me’, can be seen in Joseph’s graciousness. As long as I need to draw attention to myself, thirsty for recognition and acclaim, stuck in selfie-mode, I have not truly yielded to the fascination of God’s epiphany in Christ. Once I realise what it is actually about, I shall long to be invisible, not to cast my own shadow over the mystery of Light.
There seems to have been a revival of interest in St. Joseph in recent years. Think of the popularity of the Consecration to St. Joseph and the Sleeping St. Joseph statue, or the Year of St. Joseph proclaimed by Pope Francis. What does this suggest about the nature of our time?
I think it says something about a search for deeper appraisal of the realism of the incarnation. The more virtual our human relationships become, with ‘friendships’ reduced to thumbs-up on social media; the more we struggle to give an account of what it means to be human, a woman or man; the more society relativises the value of a human life — the more we need a sane corrective.
That is what the Gospel provides. The various devotions to St Joseph allow us to reflect on the concrete human conditions in which the Word was made flesh, letting us hear the sounds and smell the smells of the Infant Jesus’s voyages and exile, then of his home life. St Joseph makes all this humanly credible. He brings the sublime very near.
At the beginning of Advent I visited the Dominican Museum in Kraków. There I found this detail from an eighteenth-century Polish altarpiece with scenes from the life of St Joseph. It is not, perhaps, the world’s greatest painting, but it is touching and insightful. I love the zest with which the Boy Jesus imitates Joseph’s gestures, seeing in him a model of manhood and skill. The Word, in whose image human nature is made, himself needed an image of human maturing. At such times Joseph must, in his heart of hearts, have sung a Magnificat of his own.
By reflecting on St Joseph we are kept from letting our faith become too abstract. That is a good thing.
Finally, if you would permit me a question on a different topic, could you recommend a film that you believe truly sheds light on the meaning of Christmas?
I’d recommend three!
First of all, why not watch this electric performance of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio by the Netherlands Bach Society, which extraordinarily keeps making stellar recordings available to people of good will for free out of sheer philanthropy.
Next I would suggest a documentary. At Christmas we hear the angels’ proclamation of peace. The world in which we live is marked by unpeace. There are terrible wars going on, and rumours of further wars. We are fearful and perplexed. How to construct society and conduct dialogue in the midst of tension, with many people bearing heavy loads of hurt? That was the question Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said, firm friends, battled with for years in exasperation at on-going conflicts in the Middle East. It caused them to cofound a great institution, The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. A film made in 2006 tells the story of this orchestra, showing its impact on individuals. I have seen it many times; it shows a parable of peaceful encounter that can keep hope’s flame alive even in the face of intractable situations.
Finally I would point to Mikhail Aldashin’s Christmas. This cartoon made in 1996 is in the best sense naïf, capable of seeing reality as it is, yet gloriously illumined. Works such as this remind us what wonder means. It is vital to keep that faculty alive. Without it our view of the world is contorted, warped. For all its simplicity, this film is full of subtle allusions to Biblical typologies, expository narratives, and great works of art. It makes us want to join the angelic band, even if our instrumental skill does not extend beyond the triangle. What does it matter!
Would it be right to say that the first Christmas — the birth of the Saviour — came at a time of immense turmoil in the life of St. Joseph?
That is what Scripture tells us. We read in the Gospel of Matthew that Joseph, when Mary was found to be with child, resolved to divorce her. He would do so ‘quietly’, for kindness’s sake; but break off relations all the same. The pregnancy made him think that the woman who was to be his wife had either betrayed him or been compromised in such a way that she could not speak of it; either circumstance made the prospect of a shared future seem impossible.
That is when the angel intervenes and tells Joseph what is going on: the life conceived in Mary is of the Holy Spirit; the Son she will bear is an answer to prophecy; he will save his people from their sins; for that reason Joseph must not fear. The exhortation to be fearless, which runs right through the New Testament, is present from the outset — in the annunciation to Mary, then in the angelic reassurance of Joseph.
Faced with the intervention of God in history, human beings, even these signally virtuous specimens, respond with turmoil and anxiety. It is unsettling to have one’s life turned upside-down by grace; it takes time to adopt a divine perspective on human affairs.
In iconography, certain representations of Christ’s Nativity integrate a detail easy to overlook. It is a scene known as the temptation of St Joseph. Sitting a little apart from the cave with the Mother and Child, and looking uncannily like Rodin’s Penseur, Joseph is approached by a devil (remember, the Greek word diabolos means ‘puller-apart’) disguised as a harmless shepherd.
We can imagine the sort of things this fellow would have whispered in Joseph’s ear: ‘You don’t seriously believe that nonsense of a dream? Do you think God intervenes like this? Get away while you can!’ These are very human trials, crises of confidence and faith many of us have known from experience. It is good to know that St Joseph has been there too; and that he did not let devilish suggestions sway his mind, staying instead steadfast in loyalty. He himself had to battle to persevere in faith; therefore he is well equipped to sustain us in our battles.
Is there something we can learn from St. Joseph’s attitude amid the trials of traveling to Bethlehem for the census and searching for a place for Mary and the Christ Child to shelter?
Discretion, peace, an absence of fuss. These qualities are especially evidenced in the journey to Egypt, necessitated by Herod’s ravings. Joseph, whom tradition portrays as a man of mature years, leaves his home, his livelihood, and everything familiar in order to protect the protagonists of God’s recklessly precarious plan.
The need to up sticks gave the Holy Family no chance to close in on itself in private cosiness. The leave-taking of Mary and Joseph almost as soon as they welcome Jesus into their lives establishes a paradigm for faithful existence. It also says something vital about parenthood. There’s a tendency abroad these days that considers progeny an acquisition, a way to crown a parent’s ambition for him or herself — for of course it is possible, now, to get (a significant verb!) a child without the inconvenience of trailing a spouse or partner.
The example of Joseph speaks to us of parenthood as a kenotic state, a state of coherent self-outpouring in love for the sake of a purpose other than one’s own. St Joseph is the patron saint of unselfishness.
Is it not striking, in the light of this, that he also stands before us as a singularly joyful saint?
How did the Incarnation change St. Joseph’s life?
You know the way we feel when we are near a really good person? Just being in the same room as such a one affects us. We become conscious of the interior distance there is between us and them — the light they carry set off our darkness in ways that are uncomfortable. At the same time their goodness is a source of encouragement. I might think, ‘If someone so good and pure-hearted, who can surely see through my pretences, puts up with me and does not chase me away, perhaps there is hope for me?’
Now, if exposure to degrees of human perfection can affect us that deeply, what must it have been like to live day in, day out alongside God-made-man?
Here we touch upon a mystery about which it is almost impossible to speak. We can only be contemplatively silent before it. We can, though, deduce the effect of God’s incarnation on St Joseph’s life from the fact that he discreetly lets himself be eclipsed from the story. Having done his providential duty, having brought up the Son of God and protected him while he needed it, St Joseph is content to withdraw from the scene without as much as a furtive bow to the audience.
Something of the dynamic Paul speaks of, ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me’, can be seen in Joseph’s graciousness. As long as I need to draw attention to myself, thirsty for recognition and acclaim, stuck in selfie-mode, I have not truly yielded to the fascination of God’s epiphany in Christ. Once I realise what it is actually about, I shall long to be invisible, not to cast my own shadow over the mystery of Light.
There seems to have been a revival of interest in St. Joseph in recent years. Think of the popularity of the Consecration to St. Joseph and the Sleeping St. Joseph statue, or the Year of St. Joseph proclaimed by Pope Francis. What does this suggest about the nature of our time?
I think it says something about a search for deeper appraisal of the realism of the incarnation. The more virtual our human relationships become, with ‘friendships’ reduced to thumbs-up on social media; the more we struggle to give an account of what it means to be human, a woman or man; the more society relativises the value of a human life — the more we need a sane corrective.
That is what the Gospel provides. The various devotions to St Joseph allow us to reflect on the concrete human conditions in which the Word was made flesh, letting us hear the sounds and smell the smells of the Infant Jesus’s voyages and exile, then of his home life. St Joseph makes all this humanly credible. He brings the sublime very near.
At the beginning of Advent I visited the Dominican Museum in Kraków. There I found this detail from an eighteenth-century Polish altarpiece with scenes from the life of St Joseph. It is not, perhaps, the world’s greatest painting, but it is touching and insightful. I love the zest with which the Boy Jesus imitates Joseph’s gestures, seeing in him a model of manhood and skill. The Word, in whose image human nature is made, himself needed an image of human maturing. At such times Joseph must, in his heart of hearts, have sung a Magnificat of his own.
By reflecting on St Joseph we are kept from letting our faith become too abstract. That is a good thing.
Finally, if you would permit me a question on a different topic, could you recommend a film that you believe truly sheds light on the meaning of Christmas?
I’d recommend three!
First of all, why not watch this electric performance of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio by the Netherlands Bach Society, which extraordinarily keeps making stellar recordings available to people of good will for free out of sheer philanthropy.
Next I would suggest a documentary. At Christmas we hear the angels’ proclamation of peace. The world in which we live is marked by unpeace. There are terrible wars going on, and rumours of further wars. We are fearful and perplexed. How to construct society and conduct dialogue in the midst of tension, with many people bearing heavy loads of hurt? That was the question Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said, firm friends, battled with for years in exasperation at on-going conflicts in the Middle East. It caused them to cofound a great institution, The West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. A film made in 2006 tells the story of this orchestra, showing its impact on individuals. I have seen it many times; it shows a parable of peaceful encounter that can keep hope’s flame alive even in the face of intractable situations.
Finally I would point to Mikhail Aldashin’s Christmas. This cartoon made in 1996 is in the best sense naïf, capable of seeing reality as it is, yet gloriously illumined. Works such as this remind us what wonder means. It is vital to keep that faculty alive. Without it our view of the world is contorted, warped. For all its simplicity, this film is full of subtle allusions to Biblical typologies, expository narratives, and great works of art. It makes us want to join the angelic band, even if our instrumental skill does not extend beyond the triangle. What does it matter!
Behind Scenes
This week saw the publication of the fifty-second and last episode of Desert Fathers. This project has marked my year profoundly – and it has been sheer joy. The initiative was Jamie Baxter’s. He invited me some years ago to accompany the programme Exodus90, whose founder he is, in 2025. I suggested I might base my contributions on sayings of the Desert Fathers. The more we discussed the material, the more Jamie was convinced that this should be an autonomous series; and so it happened. It has been a privilege to work with Jamie, Doyle, and the others at Exodus90 as well as with Anthony, Pål, and the others at EWTN. Work on the series has shown how surprisingly easy it can be to pull off a major project when there is cheerful good will, a sense of mission, and readiness for hard work on all sides, carried by trust in God’s providence. I look back on this year with much gratitude and recommend this little video, released today, that gives an overview of the series.
Desert Fathers 52
You can find this episode in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here.
Benedict, the man of the Lord, while the brethren were still taking their rest, was zealously keeping vigil. He had anticipated the time of the night prayer. As he stood at the window and prayed to the almighty Lord, suddenly, looking out in the dead of night, he saw that light poured from above had put to flight all the night’s darkness, and it shone with such splendour that that light, which had shed its radiance amidst the darkness, surpassed the day. But a very marvellous thing followed as he looked upon this, for (as he himself told it later), the whole world too was brought before his eyes, as if gathered under one ray of the sun.
For three years Benedict lived in solitude. His life’s task, though, was the founding of communities, even of an order. He acquired his first experience when some monks near Subiaco chose him, freshly emerged from his cave, as superior. They regretted it, finding Benedict too strict. He returned to his cave to ‘live alone with himself’. But when keen disciples gathered round him, he took them to Montecassino, moving from the bowels of the earth onto a hilltop, like the lamp taken from underneath the bed to be placed on the lamp-stand. He poured himself out for his brethren.
Gregory tells us of his spiritual paternity. Benedict’s own rule enshrined it. Writing it, he left to posterity a code that permitted replication of a well-tried, sane form of life. The result was a civilising movement. It humanised Europe and made deserts bloom.
Benedict was graced with gifts of prophecy. Not only was he, like other holy ascetics, able to read people’s hearts; he could see the present in the light of the future. His seeing is a recurrent motif in his biography; even as, in his Rule, he often urges us to learn to see, and to be seen. Two particular visions marked his life and consciousness especially.
The first of these he confided to a friend, a layman called Theoprobus, who turned up one day, as was his habit, to see Benedict in his cell. Theoprobus was surprised to see the normally serene, even-tempered abbot in tears. He asked what had happened. Benedict explained. He had just had a glimpse of the future which terrified him: ‘All this monastery which I have built, and everything that I have prepared for the brethren, has by the judgement of almighty God been handed over to barbarians. And I have only barely been able to obtain the concession that those who will then be living in this place will survive.’ Tradition has recognised the fulfilment of this prophecy in the destruction of Montecassino by Lombard forces in 589, only 42 years after Benedict’s death. He spent much of his life building up something he knew would soon be pulled down. Did that discourage him? Not the slightest bit. His mindset was not that of a prognosticating marketing consultant or an insurance broker. His aim was to offer his existence as a sacrifice of praise to the Lord, sparing nothing. In such priestly worship calculation has no place: the offering risked must be entire, a holocaust. It is good to be recalled to this imperative.
Benedict’s second crucial vision makes sense of his response to the first. But it came decades later. The chronology matters. He had to live long in darkness of faith with prospects of destruction. Only when faith had been through this crucible was it confirmed by vision. Benedict was old then. Night had fallen. The monks had gone to bed. He kept vigil, climbing up into a tower, the highest point of the monastic complex. When one has been to Montecassino one understands this wish to move up. The monastery sits atop a hill in the Lazio plain. At 516 metres, it is not very high, but climatic conditions produce a remarkable effect. When you step out of the abbey church in the morning after vigils, mist covers the landscape below. You have the exhilarating sense of being suspended in the air. The piazza in front of the church is fittingly called Loggia del Paradiso. At night, likewise, heaven seems close, as if the abbey were the end of Jacob’s Ladder. Benedict had climbed to the highest rung. Looking out, ‘suddenly, in the dead of night, he saw that light poured out from above had put night’s darkness to flight. It shone with such splendour that that light […] surpassed the day. A marvellous thing ensued as he looked on this, for the whole world was brought before his eyes, as if gathered under one ray of the sun’.
Oh to see the world in such a way, its complexity, vastness, and apparent contradictions embraced by the purifying light of God’s redemptive love!
Benedict’s faithful, loving life had prepared him for this sight; he was ready to enter the reality it foreshowed. Shortly afterwards he gave up the ghost, his arms raised high in prayer, supported by his brethren, the way we see the scene depicted in sacred art. What makes St Benedict the Father of the West is not primarily the work Benedictines have wrought in learning, hospitality, liturgy, agriculture, and the arts. This work is wondrous, worthy of high esteem. But the source of St Benedict’s enduring fecundity lies elsewhere. It springs from his resolve to put nothing at all before Christ’s love. Like Antony, he could say that Christ was the air he breathed. He shows forth human nature renewed in Christ. That is what matters. Nothing else.
Benedict, the man of the Lord, while the brethren were still taking their rest, was zealously keeping vigil. He had anticipated the time of the night prayer. As he stood at the window and prayed to the almighty Lord, suddenly, looking out in the dead of night, he saw that light poured from above had put to flight all the night’s darkness, and it shone with such splendour that that light, which had shed its radiance amidst the darkness, surpassed the day. But a very marvellous thing followed as he looked upon this, for (as he himself told it later), the whole world too was brought before his eyes, as if gathered under one ray of the sun.
For three years Benedict lived in solitude. His life’s task, though, was the founding of communities, even of an order. He acquired his first experience when some monks near Subiaco chose him, freshly emerged from his cave, as superior. They regretted it, finding Benedict too strict. He returned to his cave to ‘live alone with himself’. But when keen disciples gathered round him, he took them to Montecassino, moving from the bowels of the earth onto a hilltop, like the lamp taken from underneath the bed to be placed on the lamp-stand. He poured himself out for his brethren.
Gregory tells us of his spiritual paternity. Benedict’s own rule enshrined it. Writing it, he left to posterity a code that permitted replication of a well-tried, sane form of life. The result was a civilising movement. It humanised Europe and made deserts bloom.
Benedict was graced with gifts of prophecy. Not only was he, like other holy ascetics, able to read people’s hearts; he could see the present in the light of the future. His seeing is a recurrent motif in his biography; even as, in his Rule, he often urges us to learn to see, and to be seen. Two particular visions marked his life and consciousness especially.
The first of these he confided to a friend, a layman called Theoprobus, who turned up one day, as was his habit, to see Benedict in his cell. Theoprobus was surprised to see the normally serene, even-tempered abbot in tears. He asked what had happened. Benedict explained. He had just had a glimpse of the future which terrified him: ‘All this monastery which I have built, and everything that I have prepared for the brethren, has by the judgement of almighty God been handed over to barbarians. And I have only barely been able to obtain the concession that those who will then be living in this place will survive.’ Tradition has recognised the fulfilment of this prophecy in the destruction of Montecassino by Lombard forces in 589, only 42 years after Benedict’s death. He spent much of his life building up something he knew would soon be pulled down. Did that discourage him? Not the slightest bit. His mindset was not that of a prognosticating marketing consultant or an insurance broker. His aim was to offer his existence as a sacrifice of praise to the Lord, sparing nothing. In such priestly worship calculation has no place: the offering risked must be entire, a holocaust. It is good to be recalled to this imperative.
Benedict’s second crucial vision makes sense of his response to the first. But it came decades later. The chronology matters. He had to live long in darkness of faith with prospects of destruction. Only when faith had been through this crucible was it confirmed by vision. Benedict was old then. Night had fallen. The monks had gone to bed. He kept vigil, climbing up into a tower, the highest point of the monastic complex. When one has been to Montecassino one understands this wish to move up. The monastery sits atop a hill in the Lazio plain. At 516 metres, it is not very high, but climatic conditions produce a remarkable effect. When you step out of the abbey church in the morning after vigils, mist covers the landscape below. You have the exhilarating sense of being suspended in the air. The piazza in front of the church is fittingly called Loggia del Paradiso. At night, likewise, heaven seems close, as if the abbey were the end of Jacob’s Ladder. Benedict had climbed to the highest rung. Looking out, ‘suddenly, in the dead of night, he saw that light poured out from above had put night’s darkness to flight. It shone with such splendour that that light […] surpassed the day. A marvellous thing ensued as he looked on this, for the whole world was brought before his eyes, as if gathered under one ray of the sun’.
Oh to see the world in such a way, its complexity, vastness, and apparent contradictions embraced by the purifying light of God’s redemptive love!
Benedict’s faithful, loving life had prepared him for this sight; he was ready to enter the reality it foreshowed. Shortly afterwards he gave up the ghost, his arms raised high in prayer, supported by his brethren, the way we see the scene depicted in sacred art. What makes St Benedict the Father of the West is not primarily the work Benedictines have wrought in learning, hospitality, liturgy, agriculture, and the arts. This work is wondrous, worthy of high esteem. But the source of St Benedict’s enduring fecundity lies elsewhere. It springs from his resolve to put nothing at all before Christ’s love. Like Antony, he could say that Christ was the air he breathed. He shows forth human nature renewed in Christ. That is what matters. Nothing else.
O Clavis David
When John the Seer, in the Apocalypse, looks up, he is astonished: ‘Lo, in heaven, an open door!’ The beatitude of which David sang is within reach. The question is, will we, will I, accept the invitation to enter? The door that stands between me and God is for me to unlock: ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any one hears my voice and opens the door, I will come to him and eat with him, and he with me.’ We do well therefore to ask: What doors in me require unlocking? Where do I refuse grace access? Where can I perceive God’s knock, but ignore it? What prevents the Word from taking flesh in me? Let’s not think the key we need is hyper-sophisticated. The lock is in fact conventional. The latch is our self-will. You can listen to my third Kraków meditation here. And you can listen to the antiphon O Clavis David sung by Dominicans here.
O Radix Iesse
The Lord, in Isaiah, shows a supreme disdain for display. Assyria might think itself a towering cedar, yet ‘the Lord of hosts will lop the boughs with terrifying power; the great in height will be hewn down, and the lofty will be brought low. He will cut down the thicket of the forest with an axe, and Lebanon with its majestic trees will fall’. This is how the image of Jesse’s root is introduced. While the monumental visibility of worldly presumption is reduced to nought, a crucial work of regeneration is going on underground. The future devolvement of salvation history is prepared subterraneously. The root—that is, the manifestation in space and time of God’s promise—has not lost its generative potential. The collective entities of city and forest have been burnt down; what sprouts is a single shoot, a flower of the field, to initiate a new dispensation. You can listen to my second Kraków Advent meditation here. And you can hear the antiphon O Radix Iesse sung by Dominicans here.
O Adonai
Earlier this Advent I was privileged to give a Lenten retreat in the Kraków church of the Most Blessed Trinity, home to the city’s Dominican community. You can hear an abbreviated version of my meditation on the antiphon O Adonai here. The first occurrence of the divine name אדוני is in Genesis 15.2. It comes in response to Abram’s expostulation after God had appeared to him and said, ‘Fear not, Abram, I am your shield, your reward shall be exceedingly great!’ Abram was exasperated by the disproportion between this wondrous promise and his reality. No progeny had been given him. Should Eliezer of Damascus then be his heir?! A confession of God’s lordship is not necessarily tantamount to visionary clarity. Abram’s confession led him into the deepest core of the night where, hoping against hope, his faith was ‘counted to him for righteousness’ (15:5). The stars of the night were his pledge. You can hear the antiphon sung by Dominicans here.