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:
Desert Fathers 14 
Below is the text of the fourteenth episode in the series Desert Fathers in a Year. You can find it in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. Read More
Conversation with Sofia Carozza I was recently privileged to be interviewed on the podcast Pilgrim Soul on the subject of my Lent Book, Healing Wounds. You can listen to the episode here (on Spotify), here (on Apple Podcasts), or wherever you like to listen to Read More
Renewal of Vows On the final day of retreat, the Benedictine nuns of Saint Michel de Kergonan renew their vows. You will find an English translation of the homily by scrolling down a little.
Os 6.1-6: Votre fidélité – une brume du matin.
Lc 18.9-14: Read More
Os 6.1-6: Votre fidélité – une brume du matin.
Lc 18.9-14: Read More
Spirit of the Beehive Victor Erice’s film The Spirit of the Beehive is older than I. Learned disquisitions have been written about it, essays situating it in a cultural, political context marked by the Spanish Civil War. Rarely have I been so haunted by a Read More
Desert Fathers 13 Below is the text of the thirteenth episode in the series Desert Fathers in a Year. You can find it in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. Read More
Annunciation You can find an English translation by scrolling down.
Parmi les joyaux que nous donne la liturgie d’aujourd’hui est l’hymne assigné aux vigiles, Iam cæca vis mortalium.
Le texte est écrit par Prudence, un contemporain de Saint Augustin. Né en Espagne, de Read More
Parmi les joyaux que nous donne la liturgie d’aujourd’hui est l’hymne assigné aux vigiles, Iam cæca vis mortalium.
Le texte est écrit par Prudence, un contemporain de Saint Augustin. Né en Espagne, de Read More
Desert Fathers 14
Below is the text of the fourteenth episode in the series Desert Fathers in a Year. You can find it 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.
Abba Isaiah said: ‘Woe is me, for your name is all around me, yet I serve your enemies! Woe, indeed woe is me for I do that which God abhors; and for that reason he does not heal me.’
After the section on hesychia comes one about compunction. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines compunction as ‘anxiety arising from awareness of guilt’ or ‘distress of mind over an anticipated action or result’. It admits as a secondary sense, ‘a twinge of misgiving’, that is, ‘a scruple’.
Here we see a further example of a trend already noted: the tendency, over time, to reduce terms developed to render nuanced states of soul to banal, purely emotional categories. In addition to the advice they offer, the apophthegmata enrich our conceptual vocabulary. Thus they make us better able to deal with complex experience, less inclined to yield to hopelessness. For despair tends to issue from ambivalence, situations in which we feel overwhelmed by confused pain, unable to enact a response. What we can articulate, we can learn to deal with.
That is why we find the Fathers determined to name the thoughts that trouble them or the demons that hold them hostage, even as Christ, confronting the madman of the Gerasene, that poor fellow who lived among tombs and practised self-harm, cut through distracting chitchat and addressed the malign occupant with sternness, asking, ‘What is your name?’, in order, then, to order the evil one out.
So what did the Fathers have in mind when they spoke of compunction? Their Greek word for it, katanuxis, has the same literal sense as the Latin compunctio, which English cavalierly adopted. Both nouns are drawn from verbs of action that mean ‘to gouge’ or ‘to prick’. Think of a bull gouging a matador, causing bloodshed; or of a child pricking a balloon, causing it to emit a brief ‘ptssh’ before it spirals sadly to the ground. The basic reality is one of puncture. In fact, if you pronounce ‘compunction’ carefully, your ear will tell you that the words are related.
At risk of puncture are puffed-up people seduced by vanity to have exorbitant ideas about themselves, conducting their lives on the basis of illusions or of claims to power born of fame, status, or wealth. Compunction results when the air goes out of the balloon; when we have to confront our real rather than our projected self. What remains of me when self-aggrandisement is no longer fuelled? That is the question this section addresses.
Scripture gives us examples of instants of compunction: the woman at the well when Jesus told her all she had ever done; Peter at cock-crow, conscious of his thrice-repeated betrayal; Paul falling from his high horse. Most of us can painfully recall such moments from our own history. We significantly speak of our conscience being pricked, precisely, when we realise we have acted unworthily or spoken untruth. Such rude awakenings are precious. They are, however, merely the beginning of a drawn-out process which we may or may not wish to face.
It is one thing to realise a specific manifestation of ill-will or resistance to grace; it is another to own up to patterns in my life that are unsound or broken in order to embark on the arduous work of conversion. The Fathers’ commitment to compunction was about such probing. It led them to acknowledge the estrangement from God that results from transgression, and to grieve over it. By giving into sin, veering off the straight path into the wilderness, we not only grieve God; we sabotage our own happiness.
I have cited two woes ascribed to Abba Isaiah, a monk with the courage to confront his poverty. His words spoken centuries ago touch us in the present. ‘Woe is me, for your name is all around me, yet I serve your enemies!’ How can it be that I read the Bible, frequent the sacraments, recite my prayers, yet keep giving in to temptations that put to death the life of grace in me? How can I say ‘Amen!’ to the Body of Christ one moment, then the next make a cynical remark or lose myself in waterless places on the internet? ‘Woe, indeed woe is me for I do that which God abhors; and for that reason he does not heal me.’ God wants, intends to heal me; but he does not impose his saving power against my will.
This is a great mystery: God’s reverence for our sovereign freedom. When I call out in distress, ‘Lord, heal me!’, do I adopt the measures that will serve my return to health or do I stay, despite myself, attached to my sickness? Jesus’s question to the paralytic prostrate at the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem, ‘Do you want to be healed?’, regards each of us. It may be the needle we require for compunction. There is hardly a more urgent cause for pride’s pricking than my choice to stay mired in sickness when health is within reach. Compunction is the human response to God’s light shining in our darkness.
It is a mistake to think that such exposure to the light is instantly delightful. That depends on what the light reveals. The sorrow of compunction is a healthy pain, though. It springs from my certainty that what I am now does not determine what I may become. Compunction is grievous, but there is a flicker of joy in it, and energy for change, for new life.
Proud as a peacock! There is a lesson in this display.
Photo from Wikipedia.
Abba Isaiah said: ‘Woe is me, for your name is all around me, yet I serve your enemies! Woe, indeed woe is me for I do that which God abhors; and for that reason he does not heal me.’
After the section on hesychia comes one about compunction. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines compunction as ‘anxiety arising from awareness of guilt’ or ‘distress of mind over an anticipated action or result’. It admits as a secondary sense, ‘a twinge of misgiving’, that is, ‘a scruple’.
Here we see a further example of a trend already noted: the tendency, over time, to reduce terms developed to render nuanced states of soul to banal, purely emotional categories. In addition to the advice they offer, the apophthegmata enrich our conceptual vocabulary. Thus they make us better able to deal with complex experience, less inclined to yield to hopelessness. For despair tends to issue from ambivalence, situations in which we feel overwhelmed by confused pain, unable to enact a response. What we can articulate, we can learn to deal with.
That is why we find the Fathers determined to name the thoughts that trouble them or the demons that hold them hostage, even as Christ, confronting the madman of the Gerasene, that poor fellow who lived among tombs and practised self-harm, cut through distracting chitchat and addressed the malign occupant with sternness, asking, ‘What is your name?’, in order, then, to order the evil one out.
So what did the Fathers have in mind when they spoke of compunction? Their Greek word for it, katanuxis, has the same literal sense as the Latin compunctio, which English cavalierly adopted. Both nouns are drawn from verbs of action that mean ‘to gouge’ or ‘to prick’. Think of a bull gouging a matador, causing bloodshed; or of a child pricking a balloon, causing it to emit a brief ‘ptssh’ before it spirals sadly to the ground. The basic reality is one of puncture. In fact, if you pronounce ‘compunction’ carefully, your ear will tell you that the words are related.
At risk of puncture are puffed-up people seduced by vanity to have exorbitant ideas about themselves, conducting their lives on the basis of illusions or of claims to power born of fame, status, or wealth. Compunction results when the air goes out of the balloon; when we have to confront our real rather than our projected self. What remains of me when self-aggrandisement is no longer fuelled? That is the question this section addresses.
Scripture gives us examples of instants of compunction: the woman at the well when Jesus told her all she had ever done; Peter at cock-crow, conscious of his thrice-repeated betrayal; Paul falling from his high horse. Most of us can painfully recall such moments from our own history. We significantly speak of our conscience being pricked, precisely, when we realise we have acted unworthily or spoken untruth. Such rude awakenings are precious. They are, however, merely the beginning of a drawn-out process which we may or may not wish to face.
It is one thing to realise a specific manifestation of ill-will or resistance to grace; it is another to own up to patterns in my life that are unsound or broken in order to embark on the arduous work of conversion. The Fathers’ commitment to compunction was about such probing. It led them to acknowledge the estrangement from God that results from transgression, and to grieve over it. By giving into sin, veering off the straight path into the wilderness, we not only grieve God; we sabotage our own happiness.
I have cited two woes ascribed to Abba Isaiah, a monk with the courage to confront his poverty. His words spoken centuries ago touch us in the present. ‘Woe is me, for your name is all around me, yet I serve your enemies!’ How can it be that I read the Bible, frequent the sacraments, recite my prayers, yet keep giving in to temptations that put to death the life of grace in me? How can I say ‘Amen!’ to the Body of Christ one moment, then the next make a cynical remark or lose myself in waterless places on the internet? ‘Woe, indeed woe is me for I do that which God abhors; and for that reason he does not heal me.’ God wants, intends to heal me; but he does not impose his saving power against my will.
This is a great mystery: God’s reverence for our sovereign freedom. When I call out in distress, ‘Lord, heal me!’, do I adopt the measures that will serve my return to health or do I stay, despite myself, attached to my sickness? Jesus’s question to the paralytic prostrate at the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem, ‘Do you want to be healed?’, regards each of us. It may be the needle we require for compunction. There is hardly a more urgent cause for pride’s pricking than my choice to stay mired in sickness when health is within reach. Compunction is the human response to God’s light shining in our darkness.
It is a mistake to think that such exposure to the light is instantly delightful. That depends on what the light reveals. The sorrow of compunction is a healthy pain, though. It springs from my certainty that what I am now does not determine what I may become. Compunction is grievous, but there is a flicker of joy in it, and energy for change, for new life.
Proud as a peacock! There is a lesson in this display.
Photo from Wikipedia.
Conversation with Sofia Carozza
I was recently privileged to be interviewed on the podcast Pilgrim Soul on the subject of my Lent Book, Healing Wounds. You can listen to the episode here (on Spotify), here (on Apple Podcasts), or wherever you like to listen to such things.
You know, any experience of trauma — and the word trauma literally means a wound — will have its traumatic effect. There will be pain to negotiate, and fear perhaps, and humiliation, and all those things. And that is work that needs to be done. But any traumatic experience has the potential, precisely, to come back to a theme we talked about earlier on, that of deepening my compassion. Let’s not forget that compassion means a suffering with. It is insofar as I have the experience of what it is to be in pain in whatever way, of what it is to sustain this particular wound, that hopefully the penny will drop: ‘Ah, I’m not the only person in the universe who is actually wounded.’ And the person next to me may visibly or invisibly be wounded in a way. And I think, ‘Well, if this thing that I’m carrying is hurting me like this, I wonder what sort of hurt he or she experiences.’ And that can contribute to what St. Benedict wonderfully describes towards the end of the Prologue as ‘the widening of the heart.’ My little peanut heart starts growing as it becomes more and more able to assume into itself the reality of other lives. It starts growing, step by little step, towards the dimensions of God’s heart, which is a heart without any limitations at all.
You know, any experience of trauma — and the word trauma literally means a wound — will have its traumatic effect. There will be pain to negotiate, and fear perhaps, and humiliation, and all those things. And that is work that needs to be done. But any traumatic experience has the potential, precisely, to come back to a theme we talked about earlier on, that of deepening my compassion. Let’s not forget that compassion means a suffering with. It is insofar as I have the experience of what it is to be in pain in whatever way, of what it is to sustain this particular wound, that hopefully the penny will drop: ‘Ah, I’m not the only person in the universe who is actually wounded.’ And the person next to me may visibly or invisibly be wounded in a way. And I think, ‘Well, if this thing that I’m carrying is hurting me like this, I wonder what sort of hurt he or she experiences.’ And that can contribute to what St. Benedict wonderfully describes towards the end of the Prologue as ‘the widening of the heart.’ My little peanut heart starts growing as it becomes more and more able to assume into itself the reality of other lives. It starts growing, step by little step, towards the dimensions of God’s heart, which is a heart without any limitations at all.
Renewal of Vows
On the final day of retreat, the Benedictine nuns of Saint Michel de Kergonan renew their vows. You will find an English translation of the homily by scrolling down a little.
Os 6.1-6: Votre fidélité – une brume du matin.
Lc 18.9-14: Qui s’élève sera abaissé; qui s’abaisse sera élevé.
La vie bénédictine nous apprend à vivre surnaturellement. Elle nous aide aussi à vivre selon notre notre vraie nature. Le but de l’ascèse n’est pas de combattre la nature, mais de l’ordonner en vue de fécondité.
Un tel project exige de la persévérance, qui est parfois un combat.
‘Votre fidélité’, dit le Seigneur à Israël, ‘est une brume du matin, une rosée d’aurore qui s’en va.’ Eh oui, si nous restons livrés à nos préférences faciles et passagères, ce n’est que trop vrai.
Il faut donc s’enraciner, s’enraciner comme des arbres, de grands hêtres bretons, pour que notre fidélité soignée corresponde à celle de Dieu, vaste comme la mer.
C’est cela le fondement de toute vie spirituelle: l’agir de sa fidélité sur la nôtre.
Le renouvellement des voeux d’une communauté est un acte solennel. Quelle grandeur dans un Oui à vie redit d’un coeur simple, sans partage!
Notre engagement se fait une fois pour toutes, le jour de notre profession; il tient, que nous le renouvelions ou non. Le renouvellement n’est pas d’ordre juridique.
Il s’agit plutôt de souffler sur la flamme de notre premier amour pour qu’il brûle plus vivement, illuminant la compagnie des pèlerins avec lesquels nous poursuivons la route depuis nos nécessités présentes jusqu’à l’havre sûr de la maison du Père.
Vous réaffirmez, chères soeurs, votre oblation la veille du dimanche Lætare. Puisse votre fidélité radicale être une source toujours plus profonde de bonheur pour vous-mêmes, tout comme elle console l’Église et réjouit le Coeur de Dieu. Amen.
Hosea 6.1-6: Your fidelity – a morning cloud.
Luke 18.9-14: He who humbles himself will be exalted.
The Benedictine life teaches us to live supernaturally. It helps us, too, to live according to our true nature. The purpose of asceticism is not to combat nature, but to order it in view of flourishing and fruitfulness.
Such a project calls for perseverance, which at times spells combat.
‘Your fidelity’, says the Lord, ‘is like a morning cloud, like the dew that quickly disappears.’ If we surrender to the pursuit of facile, passing preferences, this is how it is.
We must root ourselves, therefore, like trees, like majestic Breton beeches, in order that our nurtured faithfulness will correspond to God’s, as vast as the sea.
This indeed is the foundation of all spiritual life: the interaction of God’s fidelity with ours.
A community’s renewal of vows is a solemn act. What grandeur in a Yes unto death spoken from an undivided, simple heart!
Our commitment is made once for all, on the day of our profession. It remains valid whether we renew it or not. Our renewal is not of a juridical nature.
It is a matter, rather, of breathing on the flame of our first love so that it burns with greater liveliness, illumining the company of pilgrims in whose midst we follow the road that passes from present necessities to the sure harbour of the Father’s house.
Dear sisters, you reaffirm your oblation on the eve of Laetare Sunday. May your radical fidelity be a source of ever deeper gladness for yourselves, even as it consoles the Church and rejoices the heart of God. Amen.
Os 6.1-6: Votre fidélité – une brume du matin.
Lc 18.9-14: Qui s’élève sera abaissé; qui s’abaisse sera élevé.
La vie bénédictine nous apprend à vivre surnaturellement. Elle nous aide aussi à vivre selon notre notre vraie nature. Le but de l’ascèse n’est pas de combattre la nature, mais de l’ordonner en vue de fécondité.
Un tel project exige de la persévérance, qui est parfois un combat.
‘Votre fidélité’, dit le Seigneur à Israël, ‘est une brume du matin, une rosée d’aurore qui s’en va.’ Eh oui, si nous restons livrés à nos préférences faciles et passagères, ce n’est que trop vrai.
Il faut donc s’enraciner, s’enraciner comme des arbres, de grands hêtres bretons, pour que notre fidélité soignée corresponde à celle de Dieu, vaste comme la mer.
C’est cela le fondement de toute vie spirituelle: l’agir de sa fidélité sur la nôtre.
Le renouvellement des voeux d’une communauté est un acte solennel. Quelle grandeur dans un Oui à vie redit d’un coeur simple, sans partage!
Notre engagement se fait une fois pour toutes, le jour de notre profession; il tient, que nous le renouvelions ou non. Le renouvellement n’est pas d’ordre juridique.
Il s’agit plutôt de souffler sur la flamme de notre premier amour pour qu’il brûle plus vivement, illuminant la compagnie des pèlerins avec lesquels nous poursuivons la route depuis nos nécessités présentes jusqu’à l’havre sûr de la maison du Père.
Vous réaffirmez, chères soeurs, votre oblation la veille du dimanche Lætare. Puisse votre fidélité radicale être une source toujours plus profonde de bonheur pour vous-mêmes, tout comme elle console l’Église et réjouit le Coeur de Dieu. Amen.
Hosea 6.1-6: Your fidelity – a morning cloud.
Luke 18.9-14: He who humbles himself will be exalted.
The Benedictine life teaches us to live supernaturally. It helps us, too, to live according to our true nature. The purpose of asceticism is not to combat nature, but to order it in view of flourishing and fruitfulness.
Such a project calls for perseverance, which at times spells combat.
‘Your fidelity’, says the Lord, ‘is like a morning cloud, like the dew that quickly disappears.’ If we surrender to the pursuit of facile, passing preferences, this is how it is.
We must root ourselves, therefore, like trees, like majestic Breton beeches, in order that our nurtured faithfulness will correspond to God’s, as vast as the sea.
This indeed is the foundation of all spiritual life: the interaction of God’s fidelity with ours.
A community’s renewal of vows is a solemn act. What grandeur in a Yes unto death spoken from an undivided, simple heart!
Our commitment is made once for all, on the day of our profession. It remains valid whether we renew it or not. Our renewal is not of a juridical nature.
It is a matter, rather, of breathing on the flame of our first love so that it burns with greater liveliness, illumining the company of pilgrims in whose midst we follow the road that passes from present necessities to the sure harbour of the Father’s house.
Dear sisters, you reaffirm your oblation on the eve of Laetare Sunday. May your radical fidelity be a source of ever deeper gladness for yourselves, even as it consoles the Church and rejoices the heart of God. Amen.
Order
In an article in The New Statesman this week Bruno Maçães reflects on the tendency in global politics to break structures down for destruction’s sake or, at most, to engender a tabula rasa for an imagined brave new world. What has happened to the principle of order in public discourse? ‘The idea of order’, he writes, ‘is a valuable one because it expands the mind. It forces us to step outside our own perspective, to look for balance and impartiality in a broader horizon where others have their place too.’ The trouble is that now ‘there seems to be no order worth preserving’. The assumption is widespread. It accounts for much anxiety, much anger. Even the most casual grasp of history shows that such an assumption cannot sustain society. It fragments, disorders. Catholic theology has the valuable concept of tranquillitas ordinis enunciating an aspiration to concord, the communion of intelligent hearts. It’s time to blow the dust off it, not just to propound it but to demonstrate it in micro-societies. Deafened as we are by inflated rhetoric, stunned by virtual fantasy, the real renewal of the polis will, based on sound concepts, be experiential.
Spirit of the Beehive
Victor Erice’s film The Spirit of the Beehive is older than I. Learned disquisitions have been written about it, essays situating it in a cultural, political context marked by the Spanish Civil War. Rarely have I been so haunted by a movie. Rarely have I seen one so carefully constructed with an attention at once analytical and poetic. Destinies and relationships play out within a collective, implicit wound. It cannot be spoken. The couple under whose roof the drama is enacted never exchange a word, simply call each other’s names as if blindly seeking each other in thick fog. The performance of the two young sisters is remarkable. There is a disturbing scene with a cat suggesting that a legacy of violence, though silenced, breeds violence even in the innocent. The bees moving up and down in a closed environment with not a fragment of pollen to be found know not the futility to which they are condemned. This is a film to make one wise, or at least a little wiser.
Desert Fathers 13
Below is the text of the thirteenth episode in the series Desert Fathers in a Year. You can find it 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.
Another day when a council was being held in Scetis, the Fathers treated Moses with contempt in order to test him, saying, ‘Why does this black man come among us?’ When he heard this he kept silence. When the council was dismissed, they said to him, ‘Abba, did that not grieve you at all?’ He said to them, ‘I was grieved, but I kept silence.’
Abba Moses’s black skin is often referred to in the stories told about him. Of course, racial prejudice has a long history. It conditioned relationships in the fourth century as it does in ours. We must be wary, though, of reading ancient narratives with modern spectacles. This little story probes beyond questions of ethnicity. It speaks of negotiating hurt, of living with vulnerability. Therefore it has relevance for all of us.
The setting is a council in Scetis, something like a republic of monastic desert dwellers in Northern Egypt. The assembled Fathers resolve to treat Abba Moses with contempt ‘in order to test him.’ In the Gospels we find people ‘testing’ Jesus to trip him up.
In Biblical terms, a test is not always a trap, however.
Think of what Moses tells Israel in Deuteronomy, as the people are about to take possession of the Promised Land: ‘You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments, or not.’ God’s testing has pedagogical intent. Its purpose is not primarily to manifest man’s heart to God, who knows what is in man; it is to reveal man to himself.
We are all more or less prone to self-delusion. We may have grand ideas of our idealism, spirituality, and selflessness. The chances are, though, that at some metaphorical level we are plagued by an ingrown toenail: something about our history, character, or looks that makes us feel insecure, so anxious, so disposed to self-protecting anger.
We discover what is in our heart when, notwithstanding the manicured elegance we like to project, someone steps on that toenail, whether by accident or design. Such discovery is pretty unpleasant, but useful. For it is ill to ride some high horse of principle if, in fact, my chief concern is to hide some intimate complex; my outward position, then, will be shaped to some extent by inward fear, and fear, being an insidious impulse, will be likely to sway my judgement. My integrity is, as a result, compromised. I may find myself subtly, unwittingly undermining the common good.
Abba Moses was a highly respected, much loved monk in Scetis. His ethnic background was evident to all. It does not seem to have been a problem to anyone. The Fathers seem to have wished to establish whether it was an issue to Moses himself. Gathered in council, they doubtless had important business to discuss. Will Moses’s judgement be objective? Or conditioned by a chip on his shoulder? This they set out to discover, testing the abba’s humility, probing his peace.
Moses responds with silence — and silence in the face of insult is indeed a response. It speaks of non-violence and firm integrity. Note the exchange that took place when the council was over. The Fathers ask, ‘Abba, did that not grieve you at all?’ It is a touching detail, revealing a trait that marks the best of the desert dwellers: their great gentleness.
The counsellors’ intent had been to test, not to injure. Before they part from their brother, they want to make sure he does not harbour a grievance. Moses’s reply is revealing, too. He does not pretend to be made of steel. He admits: ‘In fact, what you said did sting’. But he did not feel the need to strike back, to meet insult with insult. He stands before them as one who has stepped outside the spiral of violence that often conditions relationships. Having owned his vulnerability, he does not need to keep it secret. That leaves him free in the face of provocation. What might seem to others a possible weakness is to him an accepted part of his being. It is not to be denied; but neither is it to be made into a label defining his identity.
That Moses’s sense of self was rooted at a much deeper level is apparent from another story told about him. Again the setting is that of a council:
A brother at Scetis committed a fault. A council was called to which Abba Moses was invited, but he refused to go to it. Then the priest sent someone to say to him, ‘Come, for everyone is waiting for you.’ So he got up and went. He took a leaking jug, filled it with water and carried it with him. The others came out to meet him and said to him, ‘What is this, Father?’ The old man said to them, ‘My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another.’ When they heard that they said no more to the brother but forgave him.
Abba Moses, free with regard to others’ prejudice and his own secret wounds, interacted with the world, not on the basis of calculable schemes of retribution, but from keen awareness of the utter disproportion between God’s gracious holiness and human misery. Thus he became a vehicle of mercy, a vessel of peace.
We are called to step outside our own shadow, into the bright light of mercy. It may burn at first, but then it liberates, delivering us from imprisonment in the dank dungeon of self.
Sunrise in Tromsø.
Another day when a council was being held in Scetis, the Fathers treated Moses with contempt in order to test him, saying, ‘Why does this black man come among us?’ When he heard this he kept silence. When the council was dismissed, they said to him, ‘Abba, did that not grieve you at all?’ He said to them, ‘I was grieved, but I kept silence.’
Abba Moses’s black skin is often referred to in the stories told about him. Of course, racial prejudice has a long history. It conditioned relationships in the fourth century as it does in ours. We must be wary, though, of reading ancient narratives with modern spectacles. This little story probes beyond questions of ethnicity. It speaks of negotiating hurt, of living with vulnerability. Therefore it has relevance for all of us.
The setting is a council in Scetis, something like a republic of monastic desert dwellers in Northern Egypt. The assembled Fathers resolve to treat Abba Moses with contempt ‘in order to test him.’ In the Gospels we find people ‘testing’ Jesus to trip him up.
In Biblical terms, a test is not always a trap, however.
Think of what Moses tells Israel in Deuteronomy, as the people are about to take possession of the Promised Land: ‘You shall remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments, or not.’ God’s testing has pedagogical intent. Its purpose is not primarily to manifest man’s heart to God, who knows what is in man; it is to reveal man to himself.
We are all more or less prone to self-delusion. We may have grand ideas of our idealism, spirituality, and selflessness. The chances are, though, that at some metaphorical level we are plagued by an ingrown toenail: something about our history, character, or looks that makes us feel insecure, so anxious, so disposed to self-protecting anger.
We discover what is in our heart when, notwithstanding the manicured elegance we like to project, someone steps on that toenail, whether by accident or design. Such discovery is pretty unpleasant, but useful. For it is ill to ride some high horse of principle if, in fact, my chief concern is to hide some intimate complex; my outward position, then, will be shaped to some extent by inward fear, and fear, being an insidious impulse, will be likely to sway my judgement. My integrity is, as a result, compromised. I may find myself subtly, unwittingly undermining the common good.
Abba Moses was a highly respected, much loved monk in Scetis. His ethnic background was evident to all. It does not seem to have been a problem to anyone. The Fathers seem to have wished to establish whether it was an issue to Moses himself. Gathered in council, they doubtless had important business to discuss. Will Moses’s judgement be objective? Or conditioned by a chip on his shoulder? This they set out to discover, testing the abba’s humility, probing his peace.
Moses responds with silence — and silence in the face of insult is indeed a response. It speaks of non-violence and firm integrity. Note the exchange that took place when the council was over. The Fathers ask, ‘Abba, did that not grieve you at all?’ It is a touching detail, revealing a trait that marks the best of the desert dwellers: their great gentleness.
The counsellors’ intent had been to test, not to injure. Before they part from their brother, they want to make sure he does not harbour a grievance. Moses’s reply is revealing, too. He does not pretend to be made of steel. He admits: ‘In fact, what you said did sting’. But he did not feel the need to strike back, to meet insult with insult. He stands before them as one who has stepped outside the spiral of violence that often conditions relationships. Having owned his vulnerability, he does not need to keep it secret. That leaves him free in the face of provocation. What might seem to others a possible weakness is to him an accepted part of his being. It is not to be denied; but neither is it to be made into a label defining his identity.
That Moses’s sense of self was rooted at a much deeper level is apparent from another story told about him. Again the setting is that of a council:
A brother at Scetis committed a fault. A council was called to which Abba Moses was invited, but he refused to go to it. Then the priest sent someone to say to him, ‘Come, for everyone is waiting for you.’ So he got up and went. He took a leaking jug, filled it with water and carried it with him. The others came out to meet him and said to him, ‘What is this, Father?’ The old man said to them, ‘My sins run out behind me, and I do not see them, and today I am coming to judge the errors of another.’ When they heard that they said no more to the brother but forgave him.
Abba Moses, free with regard to others’ prejudice and his own secret wounds, interacted with the world, not on the basis of calculable schemes of retribution, but from keen awareness of the utter disproportion between God’s gracious holiness and human misery. Thus he became a vehicle of mercy, a vessel of peace.
We are called to step outside our own shadow, into the bright light of mercy. It may burn at first, but then it liberates, delivering us from imprisonment in the dank dungeon of self.
Sunrise in Tromsø.
Annunciation
You can find an English translation by scrolling down.
Parmi les joyaux que nous donne la liturgie d’aujourd’hui est l’hymne assigné aux vigiles, Iam cæca vis mortalium.
Le texte est écrit par Prudence, un contemporain de Saint Augustin. Né en Espagne, de famille chrétienne, Prudence résidait, lui aussi, à Milan durant l’épiscopat d’Ambroise. Bon fonctionnaire, il fut appelé à la cour de l’empereur à Constantinople où il a pu croiser Arsène, tuteur des princes impériaux. Comme Arsène il trouva l’ambiance de la cour nocive. Il s’en retira pour mener une vie ascétique consacrée à la prière — et à la poésie. Le monde chrétien, pensait-il, avait besoin d’un nouveau langage pour exprimer la spécificité de sa vision de l’univers, de l’histoire, de l’homme. Prudence s’est consacré à cette tâche jusqu’à sa mort en 408, à soixante ans.
Chrétiennement élevé, Prudence a connu un monde païen. Il a vu la campagne de Julien pour faire revivre les vieilles crédences romaines; il savait ce que peut devenir une société où le christianisme s’éclipse. En invoquant ‘la raison aveuglée des mortels’, cæca vis mortalium, il savait de quoi il parlait.
Je trouve impressionnante sa deuxième strophe:
Hæc dum sequuntur perfidi
prædonis in ius venerant
et mancipatam fumido
vitam barathro immerserant.
Il s’agit d’hommes perfides qui trahissent une lumière révélée et libératrice pour diviniser plutôt l’oeuvre de leurs mains; qui se livrent bêtement au pillard, le monotone Père des Mensonges qui s’arroge les prérogatives de Dieu. Ainsi, ils s’adonnent à une vie de servitude menée dans un abîme enfumé sans perspective.
Cet arrière-fond, supposant la fumée qui s’élève des sacrifices païens (auxquels notre monde hypermoderne se livre aussi, à sa manière, avec abandon), révèle la vraie splendeur, l’admirable contraste du mystère célébré aujourd’hui. Non seulement Dieu se souvient de sa création pour la sauver. Il entre dans notre condition pour la renouveler de dedans, inaugurant une nouvelle création.
La collecte exprime de manière concise la dynamique qui en résulte: quand le Verbe s’incarne dans le sein de Marie il assume ‘la vérité de la chair humaine’ — notre chair comme elle est avec ses élans, ses désirs, ses pesanteurs — afin que nous, confessant avec tout notre être notre Dieu et Rédempteur, soyons participants de sa nature divine. L’évangile, c’est cela: la possibilité d’une humanité illuminée, non par un faux, ennuyeux gnosticisme, mais par un feu divin qui renouvelle jusqu’à la moelle notre chair et notre esprit, consumant tout attachement ténébreux, tout mensonge, tout compromis avec le mal, nous rendant aptes à connaître Dieu.
La transmission crédible de cette bonne nouvelle est une tâche urgente. Amen.
* * *
One of the gems the liturgy offers us for this feast is the hymn assigned for Vigils, Iam cæca vis mortalium. The text is written by Prudentius, a contemporary of Augustine’s. Born in Spain to a Christian family, Prudentius, too, lived in Milan while Ambrose was archbishop there. Being an excellent civil servant, he was called to the emperor’s court in Constantinople. There he may have come across Arsenius, tutor to the imperial princes.
Like Arsenius, Prudentius found the atmosphere at court noxious. He retired from it to live a life of asceticism — and poetry. He thought the Christian world needed a new language with which to express the specificity of its vision of the universe, of history, of man. Prudentius dedicated himself to this task until his death in 408, at sixty.
Though raised a Christian, Prudentius was familiar with what a pagan world looked like. He witnessed the campaign of Julian the Apostate to breathe new life into ancient Roman religion; he saw what happens to society when Christianity is eclipsed. When he invoked ‘the blinded reason of mortals’, cæca vis mortalium, he knew what he was talking about. I find his hymn’s second stanza impressive:
Hæc dum sequuntur perfidi
prædonis in ius venerant
et mancipatam fumido
vitam barathro immerserant.
It speaks about perfidious people who betray a revealed, liberating light in order, rather, to divinise the work of their hands; who hand themselves over gullibly to the Ravager, the monotonous Father of Lies, who usurps divine prerogatives. In that way they give themselves up to a life of servitude spent in a smoky, prospectless abyss.
This backdrop, presupposing the smoke of pagan sacrifices (which our hypermodern world likewise pursue in its way with abandon), reveals the splendour and admirable contrast of the mystery we celebrate today. Not only has God remembered his creation to save it. He has assumed our condition to renew it from within, inaugurating a new creation.
Today’s collect concisely sums up the dynamic: when the Word became incarnate in Blessed Mary, he assumed ‘the truth of human flesh’ — our flesh as it is with its yearning, desire, and heaviness — so that we, confessing our God and Redeemer with our whole being — might become partakers of his divine nature.
This is what the Gospel is about: the possibility of man illumined, not by some tedious faux gnosticism but by divine Fire renewing our flesh and spirit to the core, burning up all dark attachments, all lies, all compromises with evil in order to make us fit to know God.
The credible transmission of this good news is an urgent task. Amen.
The prisoners’ chorus in Fidelio (from a 2013 production in the Theater an der Wien) – an image of mankind enclosed in abyssal imprisonment, longing for the day, for light.
O welche Lust, in freier Luft
Den Atem leicht zu heben!
Nur hier, nur hier ist Leben!
Der Kerker eine Gruft.
Parmi les joyaux que nous donne la liturgie d’aujourd’hui est l’hymne assigné aux vigiles, Iam cæca vis mortalium.
Le texte est écrit par Prudence, un contemporain de Saint Augustin. Né en Espagne, de famille chrétienne, Prudence résidait, lui aussi, à Milan durant l’épiscopat d’Ambroise. Bon fonctionnaire, il fut appelé à la cour de l’empereur à Constantinople où il a pu croiser Arsène, tuteur des princes impériaux. Comme Arsène il trouva l’ambiance de la cour nocive. Il s’en retira pour mener une vie ascétique consacrée à la prière — et à la poésie. Le monde chrétien, pensait-il, avait besoin d’un nouveau langage pour exprimer la spécificité de sa vision de l’univers, de l’histoire, de l’homme. Prudence s’est consacré à cette tâche jusqu’à sa mort en 408, à soixante ans.
Chrétiennement élevé, Prudence a connu un monde païen. Il a vu la campagne de Julien pour faire revivre les vieilles crédences romaines; il savait ce que peut devenir une société où le christianisme s’éclipse. En invoquant ‘la raison aveuglée des mortels’, cæca vis mortalium, il savait de quoi il parlait.
Je trouve impressionnante sa deuxième strophe:
Hæc dum sequuntur perfidi
prædonis in ius venerant
et mancipatam fumido
vitam barathro immerserant.
Il s’agit d’hommes perfides qui trahissent une lumière révélée et libératrice pour diviniser plutôt l’oeuvre de leurs mains; qui se livrent bêtement au pillard, le monotone Père des Mensonges qui s’arroge les prérogatives de Dieu. Ainsi, ils s’adonnent à une vie de servitude menée dans un abîme enfumé sans perspective.
Cet arrière-fond, supposant la fumée qui s’élève des sacrifices païens (auxquels notre monde hypermoderne se livre aussi, à sa manière, avec abandon), révèle la vraie splendeur, l’admirable contraste du mystère célébré aujourd’hui. Non seulement Dieu se souvient de sa création pour la sauver. Il entre dans notre condition pour la renouveler de dedans, inaugurant une nouvelle création.
La collecte exprime de manière concise la dynamique qui en résulte: quand le Verbe s’incarne dans le sein de Marie il assume ‘la vérité de la chair humaine’ — notre chair comme elle est avec ses élans, ses désirs, ses pesanteurs — afin que nous, confessant avec tout notre être notre Dieu et Rédempteur, soyons participants de sa nature divine. L’évangile, c’est cela: la possibilité d’une humanité illuminée, non par un faux, ennuyeux gnosticisme, mais par un feu divin qui renouvelle jusqu’à la moelle notre chair et notre esprit, consumant tout attachement ténébreux, tout mensonge, tout compromis avec le mal, nous rendant aptes à connaître Dieu.
La transmission crédible de cette bonne nouvelle est une tâche urgente. Amen.
* * *
One of the gems the liturgy offers us for this feast is the hymn assigned for Vigils, Iam cæca vis mortalium. The text is written by Prudentius, a contemporary of Augustine’s. Born in Spain to a Christian family, Prudentius, too, lived in Milan while Ambrose was archbishop there. Being an excellent civil servant, he was called to the emperor’s court in Constantinople. There he may have come across Arsenius, tutor to the imperial princes.
Like Arsenius, Prudentius found the atmosphere at court noxious. He retired from it to live a life of asceticism — and poetry. He thought the Christian world needed a new language with which to express the specificity of its vision of the universe, of history, of man. Prudentius dedicated himself to this task until his death in 408, at sixty.
Though raised a Christian, Prudentius was familiar with what a pagan world looked like. He witnessed the campaign of Julian the Apostate to breathe new life into ancient Roman religion; he saw what happens to society when Christianity is eclipsed. When he invoked ‘the blinded reason of mortals’, cæca vis mortalium, he knew what he was talking about. I find his hymn’s second stanza impressive:
Hæc dum sequuntur perfidi
prædonis in ius venerant
et mancipatam fumido
vitam barathro immerserant.
It speaks about perfidious people who betray a revealed, liberating light in order, rather, to divinise the work of their hands; who hand themselves over gullibly to the Ravager, the monotonous Father of Lies, who usurps divine prerogatives. In that way they give themselves up to a life of servitude spent in a smoky, prospectless abyss.
This backdrop, presupposing the smoke of pagan sacrifices (which our hypermodern world likewise pursue in its way with abandon), reveals the splendour and admirable contrast of the mystery we celebrate today. Not only has God remembered his creation to save it. He has assumed our condition to renew it from within, inaugurating a new creation.
Today’s collect concisely sums up the dynamic: when the Word became incarnate in Blessed Mary, he assumed ‘the truth of human flesh’ — our flesh as it is with its yearning, desire, and heaviness — so that we, confessing our God and Redeemer with our whole being — might become partakers of his divine nature.
This is what the Gospel is about: the possibility of man illumined, not by some tedious faux gnosticism but by divine Fire renewing our flesh and spirit to the core, burning up all dark attachments, all lies, all compromises with evil in order to make us fit to know God.
The credible transmission of this good news is an urgent task. Amen.
The prisoners’ chorus in Fidelio (from a 2013 production in the Theater an der Wien) – an image of mankind enclosed in abyssal imprisonment, longing for the day, for light.
O welche Lust, in freier Luft
Den Atem leicht zu heben!
Nur hier, nur hier ist Leben!
Der Kerker eine Gruft.
Bruckner
There’s a sequence in the recording of Celibidache’s rehearsal for his 1992 performance of Bruckner’s Seventh with the Berlin Philharmonic in which the maestro three times shouts, ‘Viola!’ as if his life, no, as if the structure of the universe depended on it. Bruckner’s music does call for careful balance. This very equilibrium, and Bruckner’s habit of working in repeated patterns, can make it difficult to listen to recordings – at least that is what I find. But to hear Bruckner live! One is transported into a beneficent universe, conscious of a richness of sound as elaborate, often as daring, as Wagner’s or Mahler’s, yet ordered and put to a high purpose. Stepping back onto the pavement this evening after hearing a compelling account of Bruckner’s Third I was filled with peaceful happiness. I felt as if I were somehow emerging from a liturgical act, moved to give thanks.