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:
Summer Break
Coram Fratribus will take a holiday for a couple of weeks. Thank you for visiting the site. I hope you get something from it.
With best wishes,
+fr Erik Varden
***
I remember one day in June.
The height of summer and the sun
still rising Read More
Coram Fratribus will take a holiday for a couple of weeks. Thank you for visiting the site. I hope you get something from it.
With best wishes,
+fr Erik Varden
***
I remember one day in June.
The height of summer and the sun
still rising Read More
Desert Fathers 26 
You can find this episode in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here.
Two brothers went off to Read More
Two brothers went off to Read More
Learning to Pray This text was written as a preface to the Spanish edition of Dom André Poisson’s precious treatises on prayer, recently published by Rialp.
‘Lord, teach us to pray!’ This cry stirs in the heart of every believer. In Scripture, it is Read More
‘Lord, teach us to pray!’ This cry stirs in the heart of every believer. In Scripture, it is Read More
La Traviata Works of art affect us in different ways at different stages of our lives. Seeing La Traviata this evening I was moved, of course, by the drama of Violetta, a character showing that it is possible for the leopard to change its spots Read More
Chastity in French My book Chastity was recently launched in a fine French translation published by Artège.
On that occasion I was invited to present it in a number of media, in conversation with Vincent Roux of Le Figaro, with Aymerick Pourbaix in En quête d’Esprit, with Read More
On that occasion I was invited to present it in a number of media, in conversation with Vincent Roux of Le Figaro, with Aymerick Pourbaix in En quête d’Esprit, with Read More
Corpus Christi in Toledo I have had the privilege of celebrating Corpus Christi in Toledo. It is like nothing else, not only on account of the splendid pageantry, of the streets strewn with scented herbs, of the famous monstrance that holds an ostensorium Isabelle Read More
Desert Fathers 25 You can find this episode in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here.
It was said about Amma Read More
It was said about Amma Read More
Marian Mystery Homily given at the June convention of the Fatima Prayer Centre in Büren.
Gen 3.9-20: Wo bist du?
Joh 19.25-27: Siehe, deine Mutter!
Unsere Lesung aus dem Buch Genesis beschreibt die Konsequenz des Sündenfalles. Man könnte meinen, eine solche Geschichte hätte unserer Zeit Read More
Gen 3.9-20: Wo bist du?
Joh 19.25-27: Siehe, deine Mutter!
Unsere Lesung aus dem Buch Genesis beschreibt die Konsequenz des Sündenfalles. Man könnte meinen, eine solche Geschichte hätte unserer Zeit Read More
Summer Break
Coram Fratribus will take a holiday for a couple of weeks. Thank you for visiting the site. I hope you get something from it.
With best wishes,
+fr Erik Varden
***
I remember one day in June.
The height of summer and the sun
still rising on one of those days
that calls all nature into song.
R.S Thomas
Coram Fratribus will take a holiday for a couple of weeks. Thank you for visiting the site. I hope you get something from it.
With best wishes,
+fr Erik Varden
***
I remember one day in June.
The height of summer and the sun
still rising on one of those days
that calls all nature into song.
R.S Thomas
Desert Fathers 26
You can find this episode in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here.
Two brothers went off to the market to sell their wares. Having parted company, one of them fell into lust. When the other brother returned, that one said to him: ‘Brother, let’s go back to our cell!’ But he said: ‘I’m not coming’. The other besought him saying, ‘Why, brother?’ He said: ‘When you left me, I fell into lust.’ His brother, wanting to gain him, said: ‘The same thing happened to me, too, when I left you. But let us go! Let us forcefully repent, and God will forgive us.’ They went and told the elders what had happened. The elders prescribed how they should do penance. And the one did penance for the other, as if he himself has sinned. When God, after a few days, saw what pains he took for love’s sake, he revealed to one of the elders that he who had sinned had been forgiven on account of the great love of him who had not sinned. This is what it is to give one’s life for one’s brother.
The fathers ate their bread in the sweat of their brow. To live, they had largely to be self-sufficient. They made saleable stuff, the production of which was compatible with their contemplative purpose: mats or ropes. Having built up a stock, they sold it. Trips into the city were called for. In this way the interface between desert and ‘world’ remained vibrant. It could lead to salutary encounters. At the same time it posed challenges. Alexandria did not provide the ascetic safeguards of Scetis. A monk out of his cell had to rely on his virtue being interiorised. It was not always.
This situation-bound story provides a parable into which we can easily read ourselves. Most of us conduct our daily lives within predictable parameters. We learn to negotiate these. Familiar boundaries steer our behaviour and choices. We know where temptations are, and occasions of sin, so take prudent precautions. Life seems safe enough. But what happens when we find ourselves in unfamiliar, unbounded places: alone on a trip, say, away from our community or family; sauntering unrecognised through a metropolitan red-light district; or just finding ourselves before an unguarded, unobserved computer? Is our virtue then reliable and firm?
We do not know exactly how the monk we read about ‘fell into lust’. Did he have an illicit encounter? If so, was he the seducer or did he succumb to seduction? Did he pursue porneia through some kind of pornography? Or was the sin of ‘lust’ a sudden conflagration in his mind that led to impure thoughts, and possibly deeds?
By not being specific, the apophthegmata exercise their pedagogy. These stories are not just historical exemplars; they are intended as mirrors of conscience. To work as such their applicability must be at once pointed and broad. The key thing to note is diabolical hopelessness induced in the brother. Looking at himself through the prism of what just happened, he thinks: ‘Good God! There is no way back!’ He is convinced that all his devout endeavours have been futile and insincere — else, how could he so easily have fallen? The thought of going back to the setting of his consecration, where once he pronounced a Yes! he had wished to be final, is unbearable. Not only does he feel, now, unworthy of his cell and the companionship of his faithful brother; the cell and the brother would be for him a reproach he reckons he could not endure. His mind is made up. He thinks: ‘I have rolled in mud: the mud is now where I belong’. Believing himself defined by his sin, he is sure he is beyond redemption’s reach.
This is where his companion comes to the rescue. This other fellow, returning from errands cheerfully and innocently run, sees his brother downcast. He instantly knows: something serious has happened. He owns at least to a degree a charism prized by the fathers: cardiognosis, the ability to read another’s heart in charity. He sees a humiliated man hurt in his convictions who thinks himself beyond repair, bound to remain an object of disdain. He knows: the only ointment that will work in this case is compassion — compassion not just by way of saying, ‘My poor friend, what an awful thing; still, pull yourself together’; no, compassion in the sense of taking on himself what the other carries, much as it was said about Antony: ‘He did suffer with the suffering’.
The enlightened monk knows it could be fatal, now, to look down on his brother. So he places himself at his level. Saying, ‘I did the same!’, he relieves him of thinking himself an outcast. Thus he inflames courage to repent, to start again. He assures his brother of God’s power and will to save. We may object: But did he not thereby tell a lie? Not if we adopt the fathers’ mindset. Antony said: ‘Our life and our death is with our neighbour.’ My brother’s burden is mine to help bear and repair. That is what life in the mystical body is like. In the intimate reality of monastic fellowship, or that of a married couple, this dynamic truly takes on flesh. Combined with the guilty brother’s confession and repentance, the pure monk’s vicarious penance was effective. ‘This is what it is to give one’s life for one’s brother’, a universal command. We read in Scripture that God ‘for our sake made him to be sin who knew no sin, that in him we might become the righteousness of God.’ That work carries on in the Church. It does not cancel justice, but infuses it with charity, letting the sweet aroma of Christ ascend as from a censer from the burnt coals of our life.
Koinonia – fraternal communion. An icon from the monastery of Bose.
Two brothers went off to the market to sell their wares. Having parted company, one of them fell into lust. When the other brother returned, that one said to him: ‘Brother, let’s go back to our cell!’ But he said: ‘I’m not coming’. The other besought him saying, ‘Why, brother?’ He said: ‘When you left me, I fell into lust.’ His brother, wanting to gain him, said: ‘The same thing happened to me, too, when I left you. But let us go! Let us forcefully repent, and God will forgive us.’ They went and told the elders what had happened. The elders prescribed how they should do penance. And the one did penance for the other, as if he himself has sinned. When God, after a few days, saw what pains he took for love’s sake, he revealed to one of the elders that he who had sinned had been forgiven on account of the great love of him who had not sinned. This is what it is to give one’s life for one’s brother.
The fathers ate their bread in the sweat of their brow. To live, they had largely to be self-sufficient. They made saleable stuff, the production of which was compatible with their contemplative purpose: mats or ropes. Having built up a stock, they sold it. Trips into the city were called for. In this way the interface between desert and ‘world’ remained vibrant. It could lead to salutary encounters. At the same time it posed challenges. Alexandria did not provide the ascetic safeguards of Scetis. A monk out of his cell had to rely on his virtue being interiorised. It was not always.
This situation-bound story provides a parable into which we can easily read ourselves. Most of us conduct our daily lives within predictable parameters. We learn to negotiate these. Familiar boundaries steer our behaviour and choices. We know where temptations are, and occasions of sin, so take prudent precautions. Life seems safe enough. But what happens when we find ourselves in unfamiliar, unbounded places: alone on a trip, say, away from our community or family; sauntering unrecognised through a metropolitan red-light district; or just finding ourselves before an unguarded, unobserved computer? Is our virtue then reliable and firm?
We do not know exactly how the monk we read about ‘fell into lust’. Did he have an illicit encounter? If so, was he the seducer or did he succumb to seduction? Did he pursue porneia through some kind of pornography? Or was the sin of ‘lust’ a sudden conflagration in his mind that led to impure thoughts, and possibly deeds?
By not being specific, the apophthegmata exercise their pedagogy. These stories are not just historical exemplars; they are intended as mirrors of conscience. To work as such their applicability must be at once pointed and broad. The key thing to note is diabolical hopelessness induced in the brother. Looking at himself through the prism of what just happened, he thinks: ‘Good God! There is no way back!’ He is convinced that all his devout endeavours have been futile and insincere — else, how could he so easily have fallen? The thought of going back to the setting of his consecration, where once he pronounced a Yes! he had wished to be final, is unbearable. Not only does he feel, now, unworthy of his cell and the companionship of his faithful brother; the cell and the brother would be for him a reproach he reckons he could not endure. His mind is made up. He thinks: ‘I have rolled in mud: the mud is now where I belong’. Believing himself defined by his sin, he is sure he is beyond redemption’s reach.
This is where his companion comes to the rescue. This other fellow, returning from errands cheerfully and innocently run, sees his brother downcast. He instantly knows: something serious has happened. He owns at least to a degree a charism prized by the fathers: cardiognosis, the ability to read another’s heart in charity. He sees a humiliated man hurt in his convictions who thinks himself beyond repair, bound to remain an object of disdain. He knows: the only ointment that will work in this case is compassion — compassion not just by way of saying, ‘My poor friend, what an awful thing; still, pull yourself together’; no, compassion in the sense of taking on himself what the other carries, much as it was said about Antony: ‘He did suffer with the suffering’.
The enlightened monk knows it could be fatal, now, to look down on his brother. So he places himself at his level. Saying, ‘I did the same!’, he relieves him of thinking himself an outcast. Thus he inflames courage to repent, to start again. He assures his brother of God’s power and will to save. We may object: But did he not thereby tell a lie? Not if we adopt the fathers’ mindset. Antony said: ‘Our life and our death is with our neighbour.’ My brother’s burden is mine to help bear and repair. That is what life in the mystical body is like. In the intimate reality of monastic fellowship, or that of a married couple, this dynamic truly takes on flesh. Combined with the guilty brother’s confession and repentance, the pure monk’s vicarious penance was effective. ‘This is what it is to give one’s life for one’s brother’, a universal command. We read in Scripture that God ‘for our sake made him to be sin who knew no sin, that in him we might become the righteousness of God.’ That work carries on in the Church. It does not cancel justice, but infuses it with charity, letting the sweet aroma of Christ ascend as from a censer from the burnt coals of our life.
Koinonia – fraternal communion. An icon from the monastery of Bose.
Learning to Pray
This text was written as a preface to the Spanish edition of Dom André Poisson’s precious treatises on prayer, recently published by Rialp.
‘Lord, teach us to pray!’ This cry stirs in the heart of every believer. In Scripture, it is made at a crucial juncture in the Gospel of Luke, just after Jesus had sent 72 of his disciples out ‘like sheep among wolves’ to proclaim his Gospel, telling them not to bring anything at all with them on the way: no purse, no bag, no spare sandals. The one thing they were to carry in abundance was peace. Such was their possession of peace to be that they could leave it behind in abundance wherever they passed and yet have undiminished reserves. From this peace healing would flow, and pardon.
The vassals of the Prince of Darkness, constitutionally disquiet, would be powerless confronted with this peace, swept off their perches. When the 72 returned and reported on the great works in which they had been instrumental, Jesus, who is peace, remarked: ‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.’ A single bright flash was all that was left of the stolen glory jealously displayed by this cosmic agitator, startled to find his host of troubling spirits disarmed by peaceful poor men.
The 72 were conscious that the peace they carried exceeded them. Its source lay outside themselves. It sprang from the presence in their midst of Jesus, who alarmed them all the more with predictions of his imminent departure. How might they continue to pursue his peace, and remain within its orbit, with him no longer there? The answer came one day after the encounter in Bethany during which Jesus told Martha, bustling, that Mary, her sister, who sat at his feet listening, had ‘chosen the better part’. In the light of these words, the disciples were moved when they ‘saw Jesus praying in a certain place’. He, their master and friend, displayed what ‘the better part’ stood for. He not only taught, but showed, what utter attention to the Father’s will looks like. This was how the disciples, too, wished to ground their existence. After he had finished praying, they said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray!’
Jesus’s response was immediate and precise. He gave his disciples the formula we know as the Our Father. It constitutes the core of Christian prayer. From the beginning of the Church, great teachers of the faith have expounded it, drawing out its various aspects. It is an excellent school of prayer to read the treatises by Fathers such as Tertullian, Cyprian of Carthage, and Augustine of Hippo. Sprung from these is the fine contemporary commentary, steeped in tradition, on the Our Father in the fourth part of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, an inexhaustible resource.
Jesus’s teaching on prayer amounted to more than the provision of a text for recitation, that is clear. It was the sight of Jesus praying that made the disciples wish to learn prayer. The words of prayer, which touch our reason and orient our will, point towards the breaking-open of our heart, the transformation of our being as we dare to aspire, even in this life, to ‘become participants of the divine nature’.
This existential dimension of prayer has attracted generous women and men at all times. It stands for the outwards manifestation of the inward truth, held in faith, that man is made in the image of God and will not find peace, or perfect joy, until his iconic potential is realised in a divine likeness wrought by grace made effective through human freedom. This dimension of prayer is sometimes called ‘contemplative’. People refer to it as ‘the prayer of quiet’, for words are not primary to it, or as ‘the prayer of the heart’, in as much as, by it, the intellect descends into the heart, where Scripture’s anthropology posits the centre of the human person.
Our patrimony offers us a wealth of guidance on how to proceed along this path of prayer. Indeed, the immensity of resources may seem overwhelming. Which ‘school’ of prayer should I choose? Should I follow the intimate counsels of St John of the Cross, the liturgical mysticism of the Cistercians, the exultant effusions of St Francis? Or dive into the boundless sea of the Philokalia? And how can I practise a deepening of prayer responsibly, on guard against both self-delusion and the illusions of the devil, who tries to trip up those who seek to grow in godliness?
Ideally we need an experienced guide, someone who has already passed through the landscape we prepare to enter, who knows its paths and pitfalls. Such guides are hard to find, however. There is no lack of persons with diplomas in ‘spiritual direction’: they are two a penny. But a true spiritual father or mother is a rarity. It was ever thus; but perhaps the sparseness is especially acute in our day.
That is why reliable books are such a blessing. A book can never replace a conversation; but immersion in the testimony of a man or woman of God can become conversation. A word carrying the message of truth become flesh does convey a presence, somehow. Exposure to such presence can turn into genuine friendship.
The past century has produced some very precious books. It is perilous to draw out some, for there will be others I overlook or of which I am ignorant. Nonetheless, I wish to highlight a handful that have been beneficial to me. They may help others. I think of the Spiritual Letters of Abbot John Chapman; of Metropolitan Antony Bloom’s School for Prayer; of The Spiritual Life and Prayer by Mother Cécile Bruyère; of Father, into Your Hands, a book by the Carmelite Wilfrid Stinissen. No single text has helped me more, however, than the one contained in this present volume. I discovered it in a Parisian bookshop a quarter of a century ago in a poorly bound edition that has long since come apart. The volume’s material fragility contrasts with the substance of its content. It gave me food for which I was ravenously hungry. There was a time when I knew this text more or less by heart.
Its two parts are dated: the first to Christmas 1983, the second to Advent 1988. The references are meaningful. Presented here is an account of prayer rooted in the mystery of God made man, revealed in the Gospel and defined with precision at the Council of Nicaea, whose 1700th anniversary we celebrate this year, called to appreciate afresh the consequences for human nature of the incarnation of the Word.
The first published version came out without an authorial signature in 2001. The author was discreetly designated as ‘a Carthusian’, following the custom of an order of monks that does not like to make a display of individuals. We are now free to say who he was. His name was Dom André Poisson. He was a man of my grandparents’ generation. In the archives of La Grande Chartreuse, his biography is summed up as follows, with Carthusian succinctness:
Étienne Poisson was born at Douce, in Maine-et-Loire, on 28 February 1923. After studies at the Polytechnic School, he made his first profession at La Grande Chartreuse on 2 February 1948, solemn profession on 6 October 1953. He was ordained a priest on 13 March 1954. He was made Sub-Procurator in 1957, Procurator in 1961. On 8 May 1967 he was elected Prior and General of the Order, dedicating himself to the aggiornamento of the Order following the indications of the Second Vatican Council. He resigned in 1997. The General Chapter of that year sent him to be Prior at the Charterhouse of the Transfiguration [in the USA] for two year. From there he went to Vedana [in Italy], as Chaplain to Carthusian nuns, in 1999. Having returned to La Grande Chartreuse in May 2001, he died there on 20 April 2005.
Our natural curiosity would like to know more: the story of his vocation, his spiritual graces and trials. We are avid to get a sense of his personality; to know how he evaluated developments in the Church and world during his long ministry, which spanned turbulent decades. But none of this is essential. Everything we need to know about Dom Poisson is contained in the text you hold in your hand. It is a sliver of a book, almost just a brochure. In these pages, though, you will find a concentrated depth of content that a less wise, less humble, less articulate writer would need multiple pages to express. We have here the distillation of intimate experience, presented graciously and lucidly, with a mixture of authority and diffidence. The authority springs from the status of the text as testimony: ‘This’, we are given to understand, ‘is how the living God has made himself known to me, and to his graciousness I bear witness.’ The diffidence springs from the knowledge that the mystery of God by definition transcends any particular account: ‘Such has been my way’, the author seems to say, ‘and I share the account of it for what it is worth, but you must find your own way — and God will help you if you let him, and trust him.’
Dom Poisson wrote these two brief treatises in the form of letters. Each of us can confidently read them as specifically addressed to himself or herself. In terms of content, they are self-explanatory. They need no exegesis from me; I would clutter their elegant essentiality with unnecessary verbiage. I rejoice, simply, to recommend this little book with all my heart. It opened my eyes to ‘the boundless riches of Christ’; it pierced my heart with the light of a trust I had previously only known notionally; and it gave me a sense of what it might really mean to profess with the faith of the Church, defined at Nicaea: ‘I believe in the resurrection of the flesh’. It could do this because its author speaks with authority, of things he knows.
Another twentieth-century Carthusian has written that a contemplative is ‘a man inebriated on pure water drunk from the source’. This book offers you a map pointing straight to the source as well as the bucket and rope you need to draw water for yourself. Draw and drink, deep draughts. You will come to understand, then, what Jesus meant when he said to the Samaritan woman: ‘Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never again be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life’.
Photograph from the website of the Charterhouse of Miraflores.
‘Lord, teach us to pray!’ This cry stirs in the heart of every believer. In Scripture, it is made at a crucial juncture in the Gospel of Luke, just after Jesus had sent 72 of his disciples out ‘like sheep among wolves’ to proclaim his Gospel, telling them not to bring anything at all with them on the way: no purse, no bag, no spare sandals. The one thing they were to carry in abundance was peace. Such was their possession of peace to be that they could leave it behind in abundance wherever they passed and yet have undiminished reserves. From this peace healing would flow, and pardon.
The vassals of the Prince of Darkness, constitutionally disquiet, would be powerless confronted with this peace, swept off their perches. When the 72 returned and reported on the great works in which they had been instrumental, Jesus, who is peace, remarked: ‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.’ A single bright flash was all that was left of the stolen glory jealously displayed by this cosmic agitator, startled to find his host of troubling spirits disarmed by peaceful poor men.
The 72 were conscious that the peace they carried exceeded them. Its source lay outside themselves. It sprang from the presence in their midst of Jesus, who alarmed them all the more with predictions of his imminent departure. How might they continue to pursue his peace, and remain within its orbit, with him no longer there? The answer came one day after the encounter in Bethany during which Jesus told Martha, bustling, that Mary, her sister, who sat at his feet listening, had ‘chosen the better part’. In the light of these words, the disciples were moved when they ‘saw Jesus praying in a certain place’. He, their master and friend, displayed what ‘the better part’ stood for. He not only taught, but showed, what utter attention to the Father’s will looks like. This was how the disciples, too, wished to ground their existence. After he had finished praying, they said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray!’
Jesus’s response was immediate and precise. He gave his disciples the formula we know as the Our Father. It constitutes the core of Christian prayer. From the beginning of the Church, great teachers of the faith have expounded it, drawing out its various aspects. It is an excellent school of prayer to read the treatises by Fathers such as Tertullian, Cyprian of Carthage, and Augustine of Hippo. Sprung from these is the fine contemporary commentary, steeped in tradition, on the Our Father in the fourth part of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, an inexhaustible resource.
Jesus’s teaching on prayer amounted to more than the provision of a text for recitation, that is clear. It was the sight of Jesus praying that made the disciples wish to learn prayer. The words of prayer, which touch our reason and orient our will, point towards the breaking-open of our heart, the transformation of our being as we dare to aspire, even in this life, to ‘become participants of the divine nature’.
This existential dimension of prayer has attracted generous women and men at all times. It stands for the outwards manifestation of the inward truth, held in faith, that man is made in the image of God and will not find peace, or perfect joy, until his iconic potential is realised in a divine likeness wrought by grace made effective through human freedom. This dimension of prayer is sometimes called ‘contemplative’. People refer to it as ‘the prayer of quiet’, for words are not primary to it, or as ‘the prayer of the heart’, in as much as, by it, the intellect descends into the heart, where Scripture’s anthropology posits the centre of the human person.
Our patrimony offers us a wealth of guidance on how to proceed along this path of prayer. Indeed, the immensity of resources may seem overwhelming. Which ‘school’ of prayer should I choose? Should I follow the intimate counsels of St John of the Cross, the liturgical mysticism of the Cistercians, the exultant effusions of St Francis? Or dive into the boundless sea of the Philokalia? And how can I practise a deepening of prayer responsibly, on guard against both self-delusion and the illusions of the devil, who tries to trip up those who seek to grow in godliness?
Ideally we need an experienced guide, someone who has already passed through the landscape we prepare to enter, who knows its paths and pitfalls. Such guides are hard to find, however. There is no lack of persons with diplomas in ‘spiritual direction’: they are two a penny. But a true spiritual father or mother is a rarity. It was ever thus; but perhaps the sparseness is especially acute in our day.
That is why reliable books are such a blessing. A book can never replace a conversation; but immersion in the testimony of a man or woman of God can become conversation. A word carrying the message of truth become flesh does convey a presence, somehow. Exposure to such presence can turn into genuine friendship.
The past century has produced some very precious books. It is perilous to draw out some, for there will be others I overlook or of which I am ignorant. Nonetheless, I wish to highlight a handful that have been beneficial to me. They may help others. I think of the Spiritual Letters of Abbot John Chapman; of Metropolitan Antony Bloom’s School for Prayer; of The Spiritual Life and Prayer by Mother Cécile Bruyère; of Father, into Your Hands, a book by the Carmelite Wilfrid Stinissen. No single text has helped me more, however, than the one contained in this present volume. I discovered it in a Parisian bookshop a quarter of a century ago in a poorly bound edition that has long since come apart. The volume’s material fragility contrasts with the substance of its content. It gave me food for which I was ravenously hungry. There was a time when I knew this text more or less by heart.
Its two parts are dated: the first to Christmas 1983, the second to Advent 1988. The references are meaningful. Presented here is an account of prayer rooted in the mystery of God made man, revealed in the Gospel and defined with precision at the Council of Nicaea, whose 1700th anniversary we celebrate this year, called to appreciate afresh the consequences for human nature of the incarnation of the Word.
The first published version came out without an authorial signature in 2001. The author was discreetly designated as ‘a Carthusian’, following the custom of an order of monks that does not like to make a display of individuals. We are now free to say who he was. His name was Dom André Poisson. He was a man of my grandparents’ generation. In the archives of La Grande Chartreuse, his biography is summed up as follows, with Carthusian succinctness:
Étienne Poisson was born at Douce, in Maine-et-Loire, on 28 February 1923. After studies at the Polytechnic School, he made his first profession at La Grande Chartreuse on 2 February 1948, solemn profession on 6 October 1953. He was ordained a priest on 13 March 1954. He was made Sub-Procurator in 1957, Procurator in 1961. On 8 May 1967 he was elected Prior and General of the Order, dedicating himself to the aggiornamento of the Order following the indications of the Second Vatican Council. He resigned in 1997. The General Chapter of that year sent him to be Prior at the Charterhouse of the Transfiguration [in the USA] for two year. From there he went to Vedana [in Italy], as Chaplain to Carthusian nuns, in 1999. Having returned to La Grande Chartreuse in May 2001, he died there on 20 April 2005.
Our natural curiosity would like to know more: the story of his vocation, his spiritual graces and trials. We are avid to get a sense of his personality; to know how he evaluated developments in the Church and world during his long ministry, which spanned turbulent decades. But none of this is essential. Everything we need to know about Dom Poisson is contained in the text you hold in your hand. It is a sliver of a book, almost just a brochure. In these pages, though, you will find a concentrated depth of content that a less wise, less humble, less articulate writer would need multiple pages to express. We have here the distillation of intimate experience, presented graciously and lucidly, with a mixture of authority and diffidence. The authority springs from the status of the text as testimony: ‘This’, we are given to understand, ‘is how the living God has made himself known to me, and to his graciousness I bear witness.’ The diffidence springs from the knowledge that the mystery of God by definition transcends any particular account: ‘Such has been my way’, the author seems to say, ‘and I share the account of it for what it is worth, but you must find your own way — and God will help you if you let him, and trust him.’
Dom Poisson wrote these two brief treatises in the form of letters. Each of us can confidently read them as specifically addressed to himself or herself. In terms of content, they are self-explanatory. They need no exegesis from me; I would clutter their elegant essentiality with unnecessary verbiage. I rejoice, simply, to recommend this little book with all my heart. It opened my eyes to ‘the boundless riches of Christ’; it pierced my heart with the light of a trust I had previously only known notionally; and it gave me a sense of what it might really mean to profess with the faith of the Church, defined at Nicaea: ‘I believe in the resurrection of the flesh’. It could do this because its author speaks with authority, of things he knows.
Another twentieth-century Carthusian has written that a contemplative is ‘a man inebriated on pure water drunk from the source’. This book offers you a map pointing straight to the source as well as the bucket and rope you need to draw water for yourself. Draw and drink, deep draughts. You will come to understand, then, what Jesus meant when he said to the Samaritan woman: ‘Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never again be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life’.
Photograph from the website of the Charterhouse of Miraflores.
La Traviata
Works of art affect us in different ways at different stages of our lives. Seeing La Traviata this evening I was moved, of course, by the drama of Violetta, a character showing that it is possible for the leopard to change its spots and for a life to begin again on fresh terms; but I was especially struck by the late insight of Germont, Alfredo’s father, who for the sake of social ambition forced apart two people who loved one another and were able to make each other happy. Owning his mistake he exclaims: Oh, malcauto vegliardo! Il mal ch’io feci ora sol vedo! — ‘Oh, rash old man! Only now do I see the harm I have done.’ It’s way too late, though.
Oh, to weigh the consequence of one’s words and actions in due time.
Oh, to weigh the consequence of one’s words and actions in due time.
Chastity in French
My book Chastity was recently launched in a fine French translation published by Artège.
On that occasion I was invited to present it in a number of media, in conversation with Vincent Roux of Le Figaro, with Aymerick Pourbaix in En quête d’Esprit, with Cyriac Zeller of Famille Chrétienne, a magazine that also dedicated an article to the subject in its print edition.
‘We progress with patience from what is partial to what is whole, ordering and making chaste our bodies, souls and minds in the obedience of charity. The eyes of our love are opened thereby. We pass from blindness to sight. The journey is laborious at times, but leads through lovely landscapes. The further we travel, the more keenly we are conscious that we do not walk alone.’
You may be interested in this thoughtful review of the English volume by Harry Redhead.
On that occasion I was invited to present it in a number of media, in conversation with Vincent Roux of Le Figaro, with Aymerick Pourbaix in En quête d’Esprit, with Cyriac Zeller of Famille Chrétienne, a magazine that also dedicated an article to the subject in its print edition.
‘We progress with patience from what is partial to what is whole, ordering and making chaste our bodies, souls and minds in the obedience of charity. The eyes of our love are opened thereby. We pass from blindness to sight. The journey is laborious at times, but leads through lovely landscapes. The further we travel, the more keenly we are conscious that we do not walk alone.’
You may be interested in this thoughtful review of the English volume by Harry Redhead.
Corpus Christi in Toledo
I have had the privilege of celebrating Corpus Christi in Toledo. It is like nothing else, not only on account of the splendid pageantry, of the streets strewn with scented herbs, of the famous monstrance that holds an ostensorium Isabelle of Castille had made with the first gold brought back from America, of the tapestries adorning houses in which locals stand on balconies throwing handfuls of rose petals; all this is beautiful and impressive. What pierces one’s heart, though, is the corporate, tangible focus on the spectacle’s Protagonist – the Lord of the world sacramentally present in the Sacred Host, greeted at each turning of the winding, narrow streets with applause while people kneel in reverence. None of the mighty of this world would be greeted thus. Never before have I seen so clearly that the Corpus Christi procession manifests the mystery we celebrate on the final day of the liturgical year, when we venerate Christ as Universal King. I shall never forget this day. Edgar Beltrán from The Pillar was in Toledo, too. You can read his account here.
Desert Fathers 25
You can find this episode in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here.
It was said about Amma Sarra that for thirteen years she remained strongly embattled by the demon of lust and that she never prayed for the combat to depart from her; she said simply, ‘My God, strengthen me!’ Further it was said about her that the spirit of lust attached itself to her more vehemently still, spreading out before her the world’s vanities. She, though, never wavered in the fear of God or in ascesis. One day she went up to her room to pray. The spirit of lust appeared to her bodily and said: ‘Sarra, you have vanquished me.’ But she said to it: ‘Not I have vanquished you; Christ my Lord has.’
Some of the Desert Fathers were Mothers. The ascetic vocation was mixed from the start. Antony entrusted his sister to a group of virgins: some sort of religious life was already in existence. The women we encounter in the desert are the men’s equals, sometimes their superiors. Faced with the example of Mary of Egypt, the monk Zosima exclaimed: ‘Glory to you, Christ our God, who have shown me by this servant of yours how far I am distant from perfection.’
Sometimes the women set the men right, and very effectively. We read of a monk who, on his way somewhere, ran into a company of nuns. He stepped aside from the road in order not to set eyes on them, fearful of being sensually snared. This earned him a quip from the Mother Superior. She said: ‘You there, had you been a perfect monk, you would not have noticed that we are women!’ Ha! She did not mean that she and her sisters had dissembled, or transcended, their feminine appearance; she referred to the monk’s way of seeing them. A perfect monk will look for in people he meets an image of God, a messenger from Christ, and see them in the light of the kingdom where there is ‘no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female’. If his heart is pure, and he is free from passion, he will not need to run away from anyone: he will greet all gently in Christ’s name, reverence them, ask a blessing, then pass on untroubled.
The stories told about Amma Sarra tell us how a pure heart is forged. They speak of combat, of being embattled, attacked. Peace, we have remarked, does not rise into consciousness as mystic mist. It must be conquered. Even as we these days run, or go to the gym, to get our bodies into shape, our inner life requires exercise. Virtue is not tested where temptation is absent. Temptation has its part to play in Christian maturing. Amma Sarra, an example of fortitude, reminds us of this.
In recent years there has been debate about the last article of the Our Father. In Latin, the Church’s mother tongue, the phrase goes: ne nos inducas in tentationem. For ages we have prayed in our vernaculars: ‘Lead us not into temptation’. Then, recently, folks got scruples. God is our loving Father, is he not? What father knowingly leads his kids into temptation? The thought seemed shocking. Liturgists set about adapting the prayer. So, in Italy and France, for instance, one no longer prays, ‘Lead us not into temptation’, but rather, ‘Let us not enter temptation’ or ‘Let us not get stuck in temptation’. The Greek text, though, says clearly: ‘Lead us not’. What it expresses is healthy diffidence. Temptation can take us to our limits. That is dangerous terrain. We ask, ‘Lead us not’, aware of our unreliability and frailty. At the same time we know that if God nonetheless does lead us, he does it for a reason; because he has a plan that will serve our salvation and the thriving of his holy Church. Temptation is devilish only in so far as we suspect the experience has no sense and is purely destructive. That supposition comes itself, though, from the evil one from whom, at the end of the prayer, we ask to delivered once for all.
Must we really prevail on the eternal God to conduct a little aggiornamento to fall into line with current pastoral guidelines? Surrounded by secular notions that life ought to be straightforward (and that if it isn’t, someone is at fault and should be sued), we, now, take a dim view of temptations. They seem to us unfair, for they disturb our calm. But God’s concern is not to keep us comfortably undisturbed. His concern is that we should know the truth, which alone sets us free. A life in untruth is not happy. The Bible tells us repeatedly that God uses temptation to prepare men and women for a task and to free them from illusions. Temptations can clarify, even purify. In temptation we realise where our vulnerability is. We learn to cry for help and to let ourselves be strengthened and healed. A temptation is not necessarily a curse. It can be a summons to battle, an exodus at last from noxious dependencies or from self-centredness. If we pray, ‘Let us not enter into temptation’, it might be tantamount to saying: ‘Let us not grow up; we prefer to stay children.’ That was not an option for the valiant Amma Sarra. She abode within temptation as within a crucible. What emerged, by grace, was gold. The devil was not pleased. Having failed to trip her up by sensuality, the enemy tried another track, tickling Sarra’s vanity. We can imagine her snorting as she replied: ‘Not I have vanquished you; Christ my Lord has.’ This is how a Christian warrior, a true Christ-bearer speaks.
It was said about Amma Sarra that for thirteen years she remained strongly embattled by the demon of lust and that she never prayed for the combat to depart from her; she said simply, ‘My God, strengthen me!’ Further it was said about her that the spirit of lust attached itself to her more vehemently still, spreading out before her the world’s vanities. She, though, never wavered in the fear of God or in ascesis. One day she went up to her room to pray. The spirit of lust appeared to her bodily and said: ‘Sarra, you have vanquished me.’ But she said to it: ‘Not I have vanquished you; Christ my Lord has.’
Some of the Desert Fathers were Mothers. The ascetic vocation was mixed from the start. Antony entrusted his sister to a group of virgins: some sort of religious life was already in existence. The women we encounter in the desert are the men’s equals, sometimes their superiors. Faced with the example of Mary of Egypt, the monk Zosima exclaimed: ‘Glory to you, Christ our God, who have shown me by this servant of yours how far I am distant from perfection.’
Sometimes the women set the men right, and very effectively. We read of a monk who, on his way somewhere, ran into a company of nuns. He stepped aside from the road in order not to set eyes on them, fearful of being sensually snared. This earned him a quip from the Mother Superior. She said: ‘You there, had you been a perfect monk, you would not have noticed that we are women!’ Ha! She did not mean that she and her sisters had dissembled, or transcended, their feminine appearance; she referred to the monk’s way of seeing them. A perfect monk will look for in people he meets an image of God, a messenger from Christ, and see them in the light of the kingdom where there is ‘no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female’. If his heart is pure, and he is free from passion, he will not need to run away from anyone: he will greet all gently in Christ’s name, reverence them, ask a blessing, then pass on untroubled.
The stories told about Amma Sarra tell us how a pure heart is forged. They speak of combat, of being embattled, attacked. Peace, we have remarked, does not rise into consciousness as mystic mist. It must be conquered. Even as we these days run, or go to the gym, to get our bodies into shape, our inner life requires exercise. Virtue is not tested where temptation is absent. Temptation has its part to play in Christian maturing. Amma Sarra, an example of fortitude, reminds us of this.
In recent years there has been debate about the last article of the Our Father. In Latin, the Church’s mother tongue, the phrase goes: ne nos inducas in tentationem. For ages we have prayed in our vernaculars: ‘Lead us not into temptation’. Then, recently, folks got scruples. God is our loving Father, is he not? What father knowingly leads his kids into temptation? The thought seemed shocking. Liturgists set about adapting the prayer. So, in Italy and France, for instance, one no longer prays, ‘Lead us not into temptation’, but rather, ‘Let us not enter temptation’ or ‘Let us not get stuck in temptation’. The Greek text, though, says clearly: ‘Lead us not’. What it expresses is healthy diffidence. Temptation can take us to our limits. That is dangerous terrain. We ask, ‘Lead us not’, aware of our unreliability and frailty. At the same time we know that if God nonetheless does lead us, he does it for a reason; because he has a plan that will serve our salvation and the thriving of his holy Church. Temptation is devilish only in so far as we suspect the experience has no sense and is purely destructive. That supposition comes itself, though, from the evil one from whom, at the end of the prayer, we ask to delivered once for all.
Must we really prevail on the eternal God to conduct a little aggiornamento to fall into line with current pastoral guidelines? Surrounded by secular notions that life ought to be straightforward (and that if it isn’t, someone is at fault and should be sued), we, now, take a dim view of temptations. They seem to us unfair, for they disturb our calm. But God’s concern is not to keep us comfortably undisturbed. His concern is that we should know the truth, which alone sets us free. A life in untruth is not happy. The Bible tells us repeatedly that God uses temptation to prepare men and women for a task and to free them from illusions. Temptations can clarify, even purify. In temptation we realise where our vulnerability is. We learn to cry for help and to let ourselves be strengthened and healed. A temptation is not necessarily a curse. It can be a summons to battle, an exodus at last from noxious dependencies or from self-centredness. If we pray, ‘Let us not enter into temptation’, it might be tantamount to saying: ‘Let us not grow up; we prefer to stay children.’ That was not an option for the valiant Amma Sarra. She abode within temptation as within a crucible. What emerged, by grace, was gold. The devil was not pleased. Having failed to trip her up by sensuality, the enemy tried another track, tickling Sarra’s vanity. We can imagine her snorting as she replied: ‘Not I have vanquished you; Christ my Lord has.’ This is how a Christian warrior, a true Christ-bearer speaks.
Marian Mystery
Homily given at the June convention of the Fatima Prayer Centre in Büren.
Gen 3.9-20: Wo bist du?
Joh 19.25-27: Siehe, deine Mutter!
Unsere Lesung aus dem Buch Genesis beschreibt die Konsequenz des Sündenfalles. Man könnte meinen, eine solche Geschichte hätte unserer Zeit nichts zu sagen. Wer denkt überhaupt mehr an Sünde? Die katholische Kirche, hört man manchmal sagen, sei zu lange von der Idee der Sünde besessen gewesen; sie habe dadurch den Menschen Lasten von Schuldgefühlen aufgebürdet; und sei so verantwortlich für eine Verdrehung des Glaubens, der ja für Leben, Freude, Offenheit und Heiterkeit stehen müsse. Also weg mit dem Sündengerede! Lassen wir lieber bunte Drachen des Optimismus in die Luft steigen!
Was sollen wir dazu sagen? Ich denke spontan an Worte des nachdenklichen Konsuls in Puccinis Oper Madama Butterfly. Wenn Pinkerton, der naive Schurke, von seiner Zukunftsvision spricht, einer Projektion von Glück der dem eigenen Verlangen rücksichtslos entspricht, sagt der Konsul: “Das ist aber ein zu einfaches Evangelium!”
Leben aber ist selten einfach. Leben ist schwer. Der Glaube hilft uns, ehrlich mit der Schwierigkeit umzugehen, nicht indem er sie wegzaubert; sondern in dem er uns hilft, Ursachen zu erkennen und dadurch Lösungen, Wege in die Freiheit, in den Frieden.
Sünde hat nicht hauptsächlich mit Schuld zu tun. Sünde steht für eine Wunde, die uns Verhältnisse sabotiert, die uns fesselt und vereinsamt. Der biblische Text beschreibt den Vorgang dichterisch, realistisch und luzid. Was tut der Urmensch nachdem er gesündigt hat? Was tut der für ewiges Leben geschaffene nachdem er, bewusst, dem Weg folgt der ihn in den Tod führt?
Er versteckt sich schamrötend, will nicht gesehen werden. Die Scham wird ihm nicht von Gott auferlegt. Nein! Gott ruft ihn zurück in die Beziehung: “Adam, wo bist du?” Die Scham kommt von selbst. Sie drückt eine Überzeugung aus, die uns vielleicht nicht ganz fremd ist. Sie lässt uns denken: “Würde jemand wissen, was ich in meinem Leben gemacht oder gedacht habe, würde mich jemand sehen wie ich bin, dann würde er vor mir meilenweit fliehen!” So verschanze ich mich lieber, wie Adam im Wald oder hinter einer Maske. Es scheint besser, sicherer, mich selbst zu isolieren als die gefürchteten, erwarteten Worte zu hören: “Ich will nichts von dir wissen!”
Die Entfremdung des Menschen vom Schöpfer spiegelt sich in der Entfremdung zwischen Mann und Frau. Ursprünglich fanden die beiden im anderen Wonne. Erst als Adam von Eva gesehen wurde und sich selbst in ihrem Blick erkannte, überwand er sein Gefühl von Unvollständigkeit. Der Mensch ist nicht grundsätzlich autonom und autark, nicht sich selbst genügend. “Es ist nicht gut, dass der Mensch allein ist” (Genesis 2.18). Die Sünde drängt ihn aber in die Einsamkeit. Nackt und verwundbar steht er da, ob er auch alles Mögliche tut um sich selbst und anderen ein Bild der Stärke und des Muts zu projizieren.
Gott ist Mensch geworden um diese existentielle Wunde zu heilen. Das Wort ist im Leib einer Jungfrau Fleisch geworden nicht nur um Schulden zu regeln: reduzieren wir sein werk nicht aufs Kalkül. Der allmächtige Vater hat in Christus durch den Geist die Menschennatur neu erstellt. Der Leib Mariens öffnet wieder das vom lodernden Flammenschwert bewachte Tor des Edens so dass der Herr, wenn alles vollbracht ist, ausrufen kann: “Heute noch wirst du mit mir im Paradies sein!”
Wunderbar ist es, dass er kurz davor seiner Mutter sagt: “Siehe!” Dann dem geliebten Jünger: “Siehe!” Die Szene ist kein bloß sentimentales Bild; sie enthielt eine theologische Aussage. In Maria erkennt die Kirche die neue Eva, die deren schönen Namen verwirklicht: endlich, nach tausendjährigem Warten, wird der in Christus neu geborene Mensch im wahren Sinne ein Lebendiger, nicht nur jemand, der ein Weilchen in dieser Welt überlebt, sondern des ewigen Lebens fähig ist. In Johannes sieht die Kirche ein Bild von sich selbst, “für das Menschengeschlecht die unzerstörbare Keimzelle der Einheit, der Hoffnung und des Heils” (Lumen Gentium 9). Im begnadeten Schatten des Kreuzes, wovon Herrlichkeit strahlt, dürfen sich Mann und Frau, die Menschheit symbolisch wiedervereint, sich wieder frei anschauen, ohne Furcht, ohne Scham, ohne ambivalente Begierde, in Dankbarkeit und mit freudigem Staunen. Denn der Kreuzstamm an dem das wahre Opferlamm geschlachtet wurde ist zugleich der Baum des Lebens. Durch ihn wird dem Menschen wieder ein würdiges Dasein ermöglicht und die Traurigkeit der Sünde verdrängt.
Deswegen ist die Feier die wir nun begehen wesentlich. Wir verehren die Gottesmutter nicht nur aus privater Devotion: wir bekennen dass wir, durch sie, zum neuen Leben berufen sind jenseits der Begrenzungen des Todes, von der Macht der Sünde befreit. Um unsere Rückkehr aus tödlicher Knechtschaft in die Freiheit geht es wesentlich. “Zur Freiheit hat uns Christus befreit” (Gal 5.1). Er lehrt uns was es heißt, gottähnlich zu leben – in Anbetung und zuverlässiger Hingabe, bereit zur Freundschaft, zu grosszügigem Dienen, zum liebevollen Opfer.
Hören wir dann auf damit, uns vor Gott zu verstecken! Kommen wir aus dem Gebüsch hinaus in seine Gegenwart. Er wartet auf uns “gnädig, langmütig, reich an Huld” (Ps 103.8). Maria, die vom Sündengewicht nicht niedergedrückte, zeigt uns wie das menschliche Nein! zu Gott in ein lebensspendendes Ja! verwandelt wird. Mögen wir leben, durch ihr Beispiel, auf Ihre Fürsprache, liebend, frei, glaubwürdig und furchtlos sehend, jetzt und in der Stunde unseres Todes. Amen.
Annunciation from the fifteenth-century Merode Altarpiece, now in the Met Cloisters.
Gen 3.9-20: Wo bist du?
Joh 19.25-27: Siehe, deine Mutter!
Unsere Lesung aus dem Buch Genesis beschreibt die Konsequenz des Sündenfalles. Man könnte meinen, eine solche Geschichte hätte unserer Zeit nichts zu sagen. Wer denkt überhaupt mehr an Sünde? Die katholische Kirche, hört man manchmal sagen, sei zu lange von der Idee der Sünde besessen gewesen; sie habe dadurch den Menschen Lasten von Schuldgefühlen aufgebürdet; und sei so verantwortlich für eine Verdrehung des Glaubens, der ja für Leben, Freude, Offenheit und Heiterkeit stehen müsse. Also weg mit dem Sündengerede! Lassen wir lieber bunte Drachen des Optimismus in die Luft steigen!
Was sollen wir dazu sagen? Ich denke spontan an Worte des nachdenklichen Konsuls in Puccinis Oper Madama Butterfly. Wenn Pinkerton, der naive Schurke, von seiner Zukunftsvision spricht, einer Projektion von Glück der dem eigenen Verlangen rücksichtslos entspricht, sagt der Konsul: “Das ist aber ein zu einfaches Evangelium!”
Leben aber ist selten einfach. Leben ist schwer. Der Glaube hilft uns, ehrlich mit der Schwierigkeit umzugehen, nicht indem er sie wegzaubert; sondern in dem er uns hilft, Ursachen zu erkennen und dadurch Lösungen, Wege in die Freiheit, in den Frieden.
Sünde hat nicht hauptsächlich mit Schuld zu tun. Sünde steht für eine Wunde, die uns Verhältnisse sabotiert, die uns fesselt und vereinsamt. Der biblische Text beschreibt den Vorgang dichterisch, realistisch und luzid. Was tut der Urmensch nachdem er gesündigt hat? Was tut der für ewiges Leben geschaffene nachdem er, bewusst, dem Weg folgt der ihn in den Tod führt?
Er versteckt sich schamrötend, will nicht gesehen werden. Die Scham wird ihm nicht von Gott auferlegt. Nein! Gott ruft ihn zurück in die Beziehung: “Adam, wo bist du?” Die Scham kommt von selbst. Sie drückt eine Überzeugung aus, die uns vielleicht nicht ganz fremd ist. Sie lässt uns denken: “Würde jemand wissen, was ich in meinem Leben gemacht oder gedacht habe, würde mich jemand sehen wie ich bin, dann würde er vor mir meilenweit fliehen!” So verschanze ich mich lieber, wie Adam im Wald oder hinter einer Maske. Es scheint besser, sicherer, mich selbst zu isolieren als die gefürchteten, erwarteten Worte zu hören: “Ich will nichts von dir wissen!”
Die Entfremdung des Menschen vom Schöpfer spiegelt sich in der Entfremdung zwischen Mann und Frau. Ursprünglich fanden die beiden im anderen Wonne. Erst als Adam von Eva gesehen wurde und sich selbst in ihrem Blick erkannte, überwand er sein Gefühl von Unvollständigkeit. Der Mensch ist nicht grundsätzlich autonom und autark, nicht sich selbst genügend. “Es ist nicht gut, dass der Mensch allein ist” (Genesis 2.18). Die Sünde drängt ihn aber in die Einsamkeit. Nackt und verwundbar steht er da, ob er auch alles Mögliche tut um sich selbst und anderen ein Bild der Stärke und des Muts zu projizieren.
Gott ist Mensch geworden um diese existentielle Wunde zu heilen. Das Wort ist im Leib einer Jungfrau Fleisch geworden nicht nur um Schulden zu regeln: reduzieren wir sein werk nicht aufs Kalkül. Der allmächtige Vater hat in Christus durch den Geist die Menschennatur neu erstellt. Der Leib Mariens öffnet wieder das vom lodernden Flammenschwert bewachte Tor des Edens so dass der Herr, wenn alles vollbracht ist, ausrufen kann: “Heute noch wirst du mit mir im Paradies sein!”
Wunderbar ist es, dass er kurz davor seiner Mutter sagt: “Siehe!” Dann dem geliebten Jünger: “Siehe!” Die Szene ist kein bloß sentimentales Bild; sie enthielt eine theologische Aussage. In Maria erkennt die Kirche die neue Eva, die deren schönen Namen verwirklicht: endlich, nach tausendjährigem Warten, wird der in Christus neu geborene Mensch im wahren Sinne ein Lebendiger, nicht nur jemand, der ein Weilchen in dieser Welt überlebt, sondern des ewigen Lebens fähig ist. In Johannes sieht die Kirche ein Bild von sich selbst, “für das Menschengeschlecht die unzerstörbare Keimzelle der Einheit, der Hoffnung und des Heils” (Lumen Gentium 9). Im begnadeten Schatten des Kreuzes, wovon Herrlichkeit strahlt, dürfen sich Mann und Frau, die Menschheit symbolisch wiedervereint, sich wieder frei anschauen, ohne Furcht, ohne Scham, ohne ambivalente Begierde, in Dankbarkeit und mit freudigem Staunen. Denn der Kreuzstamm an dem das wahre Opferlamm geschlachtet wurde ist zugleich der Baum des Lebens. Durch ihn wird dem Menschen wieder ein würdiges Dasein ermöglicht und die Traurigkeit der Sünde verdrängt.
Deswegen ist die Feier die wir nun begehen wesentlich. Wir verehren die Gottesmutter nicht nur aus privater Devotion: wir bekennen dass wir, durch sie, zum neuen Leben berufen sind jenseits der Begrenzungen des Todes, von der Macht der Sünde befreit. Um unsere Rückkehr aus tödlicher Knechtschaft in die Freiheit geht es wesentlich. “Zur Freiheit hat uns Christus befreit” (Gal 5.1). Er lehrt uns was es heißt, gottähnlich zu leben – in Anbetung und zuverlässiger Hingabe, bereit zur Freundschaft, zu grosszügigem Dienen, zum liebevollen Opfer.
Hören wir dann auf damit, uns vor Gott zu verstecken! Kommen wir aus dem Gebüsch hinaus in seine Gegenwart. Er wartet auf uns “gnädig, langmütig, reich an Huld” (Ps 103.8). Maria, die vom Sündengewicht nicht niedergedrückte, zeigt uns wie das menschliche Nein! zu Gott in ein lebensspendendes Ja! verwandelt wird. Mögen wir leben, durch ihr Beispiel, auf Ihre Fürsprache, liebend, frei, glaubwürdig und furchtlos sehend, jetzt und in der Stunde unseres Todes. Amen.
Annunciation from the fifteenth-century Merode Altarpiece, now in the Met Cloisters.