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:
On Baptism – Conversation with Tibor Görföl 
Last autumn I had a lengthy conversation with Dr Tibor Görföl from Communio on baptism. The text of our exchange is now being published in the various language editions of the journal. Below you can find it in English and Read More
Conversation with Ulises Rodríguez Last summer I was interviewed by Ulises Rodríguez for his interesting, content-rich podcast La Encrucijada, which aims to be a place where philosophy, science and theology can meet. Our encounter, broadcast recently, touched on the following principal topics and questions:
What’s Read More
What’s Read More
Desert Fathers 12 Below is the text of the twelfth 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
2. Sunday of Lent C Gen 15.5-18: Terror seized him, great darkness.
Phil 3.17-4.1: Our homeland is in heaven.
Luke 9.28-36: The aspect of his face was changed.
In the Gospel narrative, the transfiguration on the mountain represents an exception. We otherwise see Jesus from conception to death Read More
Phil 3.17-4.1: Our homeland is in heaven.
Luke 9.28-36: The aspect of his face was changed.
In the Gospel narrative, the transfiguration on the mountain represents an exception. We otherwise see Jesus from conception to death Read More
Sign of Jonah Luke 11.29-32: The only sign it will be given is the sign of Jonah.
What is the sign of Jonah? It refers to resurrection, of course. Jonah’s three days spent in the belly of the whale is a figure of Christ’s Read More
What is the sign of Jonah? It refers to resurrection, of course. Jonah’s three days spent in the belly of the whale is a figure of Christ’s Read More
Desert Fathers 11 Below is the text of the eleventh 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
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.
On Baptism – Conversation with Tibor Görföl
Last autumn I had a lengthy conversation with Dr Tibor Görföl from Communio on baptism. The text of our exchange is now being published in the various language editions of the journal. Below you can find it in English and French.
TG It seems that nowadays we can observe in a lot of countries a decrease in the number of infant baptism, and in some countries, like in France, an increase in the number of adult baptisms. It seems to have something to do with baptism as a free decision for a human person. How do you evaluate this situation that more and more adult people start to ask for baptism? And how is it in Scandinavia and in Norway?
Erik Varden Well, obviously it’s a very positive thing that adults of their own free choice seek baptism, conscious of the grace to be found in that great sacrament. As for the fact that infant baptisms are going down in number, in some ways it’s logical given the slumping rate of practice. Of course, that’s a sadness, because one is conscious of children growing up without that inward compass which baptism magnetises, without that source of grace and joy and freedom that baptism is. It is all the more important then to provide vibrant environments that make the faith credibly present in societies, and to assume fully our task and mission as witnesses. In terms of the situation in Norway, I think it mirrors Western Europe as a whole. There is everywhere a sharp decrease in infant baptisms. Yet here in Norway we also see a trickle of young and not so young adults coming to the faith, sometimes from a residual Christian background, having been baptized as children, sometimes from absolutely nothing.
I think the important thing to remember is that baptism, like all the sacraments, is an assured channel of grace, and we wouldn’t want to be deprived of that channel, but grace also works freely beyond any parameters. The great task in these times is to see where grace is at work and to collaborate with it, certainly not to stand in its way.
TG It’s very easy for a lot of adult persons to forget about their baptism. Baptism is a noble tradition and a symbolic event which might be interesting and important for people, but afterwards they forget about it, especially when they were baptized as children. Do you think, as a bishop and as a priest, that the conditions of baptism should become stricter in the Church, or should it be just generally unconditionally available?
Erik Varden Well, obviously, they’ve never been unconditionally available, because there is always a catechumenate which is presupposed and a formation and what the Fathers used to call a mystagogy, a gradual introduction into the mystery. It seems to me that people looking for baptism seek that formation, they’re hungry for it. So I would speak less in terms of putting up greater barriers, more in terms of a commitment to share the full extent of the riches that the sacrament contains and carries – in terms of education and catechism, and in terms of a real participation in the liturgical assembly and of integrating individuals into the charitable and social life of the Church. We should always be aware that that to become part of the Mystical Body is also to become part of a concrete body.
TG In your latest book which is on chastity, talk about extensively about the drama of Christian life, also related to baptism, you talk about the change and transformation that people go through after they are baptized. In this context, rather surprisingly, you also refer to an ancient Syriac test, the Cave of the Treasures; there’s a long session in the book on that. How could you describe the transformation or the drama of Christian life that results from baptism in terms of experience and in terms of an inner transformation of the human person?
Erik Varden Well, obviously, a sacramental perspective is the opposite of a deterministic perspective. So, there is no set or standard trajectory. The Spirit blows where it wishes and how it wishes. It’s any pastor’s great privilege and joy to see the multiformity of manifestations of sacramental grace in individuals’ lives. So, I’d be wary of trying to outline, as it were, a standardized experience because I don’t think it exists. The wonderful thing about the sacraments is their blessed objectivity: the fact that we have the assurance that they do confer the grace for which they’re set up, whether we feel anything or not. So, if anything, in these times when we’re so fixated on what we feel and what we experience and how we experience it, it’s important catechetically and theologically to stress that transcendent aspect which doesn’t depend on feeling.
In my experience, in my pastoral and human experience, this comes in fact as a great liberation to many people, while at the same time it invites people to consent to the realization of the grace implanted in them as potential. You will also remember a Syriac baptismal text I quote in that same book, a text I think is simply fantastic. I think about it almost every day. It’s a liturgical text, a blessing over the newly baptized Christian just arising from the baptistry:
O brother! Sing praise to the Son of the Lord of all, who has made for you a crown more desirable than that of any king. Brilliant is your garment, brother, like the sun: and your face shines like an angel’s. Like an angel you rose up, beloved, from the baptistry by the power of the Holy Spirit. Brother, you have been granted access to the wedding chamber. Today you have put on anew the glory of Adam. Your garments are lovely, your crown beautiful. By the ministry of his priest, the Firstborn has prepared them for you. The fruit Adam did not taste in Paradise has been placed, today, in your mouth. Go in peace, son of the baptistry. Adore the Cross! It will preserve you.
If only we had the slightest inkling of what has already been given to us, and if we simply let that seed of grace grow! It’s not for nothing that the Gospel is full of agricultural parables. What matters is to nurture the consciousness of what one has in fact received, whether one feels anything or not, next to strengthen and steel the resolve to let that potential be realized, then to open people up to a transformation of experience according to God’s providential plan for individuals, preparing them to be surprised.
TG In your more or less Protestant environment, the Scandinavian environment is not experience highlighted more emphatically? When you talk about this objectivity of grace and the objectivity of the sacraments, is it not difficult to make yourself understandable in this environment?
Erik Varden No, if anything, I find that people are looking for that, and they’re relieved to find it, and to encounter the mystery as something which is real in itself, and doesn’t depend on an emotional projection.
I find, to most people, whether they come from a non-religious background or from a residual, or even from a very fervent Protestant background, the fact of being able to rest in the church’s sacramental life, and of being freed of that felt need to subjectively perform, is something many embrace with great gratitude.
TG You are also very often asked about your personal Protestant background and story.
Erik Varden Well, again, there wasn’t all that much of a story there. I was baptized as an infant, and I’m grateful for that, so that at a later stage in my life, grace had some sort of foothold by which to get access. I’m grateful to have received that, and I try to remember every now and again to pray for the pastor who baptized me. We must be careful to not exclude anyone from this source of grace.
TG In your book Entering the Twofold Mystery, you talk about the reality and the process of entering the body of Christ in relation to baptism. You have already referred to it – but what is the essence of this process of entering the Body of Christ, what does it really mean to become part of the Body of Christ? You don’t simply become a member of the church in an institutional sense.
Erik Varden That is why the notion we talked about earlier, mystagogy, is such a helpful term, a term to expound to people if it sounds a bit outlandish, because it means precisely that – an entrance into the mystery, the mystery not just as a notional conundrum, but as a personal mystery, as the fact of Emmanuel, of God with us It speaks of being, in Pauline terms, grafted onto the body and becoming a member of that body, thereby enabled to begin to discover what it might mean to live in Christ. This key Pauline expression is such a crucial dimensional statement, a paradigm of Christian living.
It’s essential to insist on baptism as an intimate and personal insertion into the personal mystery of Christ, while at the same time insisting that that insertion, precisely, isn’t restricted to a subjective and experiential aspect, but also has a juridical aspect in canon law. I remember once attending a ceremony of reception into the church when I was a student. When the priest had duly performed all the rites and the person was received and confirmed, he said brightly, “right, that’s it now, you’ll always be a Catholic; the only other thing you can be now is a lapsed Catholic”. The fact is that something happens both ontologically and juridically that defines me in a new way in terms of my relationship to this body, personal and collective. So, it matters always to make sure that we keep those dimensions together, which is challenging in our times, because no one now seems to have any inclination at all to keep more than one thought in one’s consciousness at any given time.
TG But what does it mean to live in Christ? It sounds very beautiful for a lot of people, but when you have to determine what is the content of this term, how can you define it?
Erik Varden I can’t define it, because it is of its nature ineffable. I can indicate it by pointing to the physiognomy and personality of Christ as revealed to us in Scripture, in the Gospels, and in the great prophetic foretellings of the Old Testament. That is why it is so important to contemplate the life of Christ, to contemplate the mystery of Christ, to pursue the Word both, as it were, “enbibled”, the Word as expressed in Scripture, and the Word in His incarnation and to begin to get some sense by fixing our gaze on Him, some sense of the length and the depth and the breadth and the height of what He represents. And to be inserted into the life of Christ is to consent to and to start to experience that extension of dimensions in my own being.
Saint Benedict speaks memorably towards the end of the prologue of his Rule about the enlargement, the broadening of the heart, which in Benedictine self-understanding and theology has always been a symbol of that existential enlargement, that capacity to live more deeply, to apprehend more profoundly, to feel more purely, and for my heart and my entire perception to become larger and larger in order to assume the proportions of God’s own heart, which is by definition without boundaries. So, to begin existentially, humbly, step by step, to enter into an experience of and a participation in eternity, is fundamental to embark on an initiation into the life in Christ.
TG You referred to the Benedictine tradition, and there is one more term in that tradition that might be important in relation to baptism – conversatio morum. What can the monastic tradition add to the understanding of the drama or process of human life, if you understand it as a conversatio morum? What can it offer for the broad assembly of the Church, this monastic idea?
Erik Varden I think conversatio morum, to some extent, is a descriptive rather than a prescriptive term, and it points towards a resolve always to remain in movement, never to stand still. There is an intrinsic dialectic in the Benedictine vows and in the monastic commitment. On the one hand, monks make a vow of stability, which is a vow not to run away, to remain fixed in one’s community, which will normally mean being fixed in a place. But complementing that, you have this vow of conversatio morum, which is a vow never to settle into resignation, never to think, oh, that’s enough, I’ve reached a sufficient goal, or I’ve had enough. The vow of conversatio is a readiness to let oneself be questioned, also in one’s perceived self-justification or one’s perceived sense of virtue. The narrative monastic tradition, the lives of the fathers, are full of stories of monks who seem to be paradigms of virtue, who are respected, admired, who sometimes have a certain admiration for themselves, who are then confronted with something entirely new, either through a direct divine intervention or through an experience of sin or through an experience of grace or through an encounter with another human being (think of the encounter of Mary of Egypt and Zosima), and then they are led to reconsider everything and to start realising, oh, “I thought I’d arrived and I haven’t really even started”.
I wish we had a little bit more of that consciousness installed into our sort of process-minded church. We’re surrounded by secular and political structures that work in terms of electoral periods of three or four years, and we constantly expect revolutions to take place within electoral periods, and when they don’t, which they can’t, we’re disappointed, and then we start again, and then we express our righteous indignation, and we’re caught in this illusory cycle. The perspective of conversatio morum is a much more realistic perspective in that it embraces by its nature the perspective of an entire human life to its natural death, and looks at the entire canvas of human life and looks forward to that as a process of constant incremental change into a personal perfection that corresponds to God’s providence, but isn’t an entire mystery to each one of us. So, to live within conversatio morum is constantly to give one’s consent to say yes to a process of becoming whose goal is unknown to me.
TG I think one the founders of Communio, Hans Urs von Balthasar, would be very glad to hear this.
Erik Varden Oh, well, I think he was very much on that wavelength.
TG One more thing in Balthasar that I wanted to address is that if you are baptized, then usually, in a way, you have to confirm or make concrete that baptism. You have to get confirmed at first, and then you have to decide which form of Christian life you want for yourself – it seems to be very difficult, if not impossible, to be just a “general” baptized Christian. How do you see the relation between baptism and the other sacraments that give a concrete shape to your life?
Erik Varden Well, obviously, baptism is the foundation. To some extent, baptism is what equips us for a mission, for a task, whatever that is. And as you said, that can take multiple forms. I suppose the important thing (and that’s why I think it’s very good that you’re placing your spotlight on baptism in this way) is to keep reminding us of what we have, in fact, received already. Because it is my experience in confession or spiritual direction that people quite often think that they’re constantly starting from scratch and feel great perplexity. By reminding them what they have, in fact, already received through the sacraments of initiation, you give them a sense of realising that there is already a launchpad there.
You talked about confirmation. The validity and effectiveness of baptism obviously doesn’t depend on confirmation, because it has its own integrity. But confirmation is intended as an awakening and as a challenge and as a summons, which is intrinsic to any human life and to the Christian life, as a summons to make significant choices. It’s telling us, look, you’ve been given this extraordinary resource and you carry within you an infinite source of grace and of life. What are you going to do with it? How are you going to make this grace fruitful and constructive, not only for yourself, but for the sake of the Body whose member you are? How can you pursue happiness, freedom, fecundity for yourself and at the same time be a blessing for others? That sense of commissioning is perhaps an aspect of the Christian life that we could accentuate a little bit more.
TG There is one more aspect of the sacraments that you seem to highlight rather intensively and it is the aspect of healing. Your new book with the title Healing Wounds which is the 2025 Lent Book, but also your other books deal extensively with this. Why do you think that wounds are so important today? And what sort of wounds do people have and what does healing mean at all?
Erik Varden Well, I’m consciously using that terminology also based on my understanding of sin, an understanding which I try to expand in my book on chastity. In the West, conditioned not least by 16th century controversies, we have a tendency to think of sin in terms of guilt. We think of sin in terms of a Dostoevskian scenario of crime and punishment. We get the balance sheets out and we do our sums. I’m not saying that that understanding is illicit or that it’s entirely useless, but it’s insufficient.
It is useful to recover consciously the more biblical and patristic understanding of sin as a primordial wound, as a loss, as a bereavement, as a kind of amputation in the sense of being cut off and yet yearning to become part. By setting out from the narrative paradigm of wounds seeking healing, we have a better chance of capturing the attention and the interest of our contemporaries. Because we live in times that in some ways are obsessed with wounds. And we live in a culture in the West very largely of victimization. We victimize ourselves or we victimize others. And much of our entertainment, whether in newspapers or in media or in films or in novels, is about a consideration of wounds.
But what our times are largely lacking is any perspective that wounds can actually be healed. That is why a Christian light on this dynamic is really, really important. Because Christianity and Judaism, so biblical religion, is extremely realistic with regard to human woundedness. But it’s constantly reminding us not to identify ourselves in terms of our wounds, not to fall for the temptation to say, “oh, I am the man with a withered hand”, or “I am the man who’s lying on a stretcher with no one to carry me into the water”, or “I am the man who endured this loss when I was a child”, or who was compromised in this way, or who received too much of this or too little of that.
Scripture isn’t uninterested in that factual basis of human experience. And it says, right, own that, own every aspect of your existence and your history without hiding anything or without trying to pretend that anything isn’t there. But be assured that there is no wound that cannot be healed. And be assured that what you’re made for and what you’re intended for, if not in this life, then in the next, is integrity, wholeness, and happiness.
TG And what does the contemporary Christian suffer from mostly, according to your pastoral experience?
Erik Varden I think hopelessness. I do think the awakening of hope is an immense task. The preparedness to live prospectively, to look ahead, to believe that there is something to look forward to. Not just in the banal sense of looking forward to having a beer this evening, or having a birthday next week, but of life, my own personal life and life as such, the life of world, having an intentional finality of it moving towards a goal, which isn’t just a disaster. We have to entertain that hopefulness while being at the same time entirely lucid and open-minded about the extremely disquieting state of the world we inhabit and for which we are held responsible.
TG As for the contemporary world, part of your mission seems to be to address the imagination of the contemporary culture. How do you imagine the relation between contemporary Christianity and contemporary non-Christian culture? How can you find ways to address anxieties, concerns, ideas, interests of people?
Erik Varden I’m a citizen of the contemporary world like everyone else. I’m interested in it because I like to live with my eyes open and my ears open. So I try to listen out for its significant statements. I’m not so much interested in just hearing the background noise because the background noise in any historical era is the same. It’s just got a different rhythm. But I’m interested in its essential statements. I’m interested in the questions people ask, even if they don’t ask them explicitly. I’m interested in the questions that are implicit in their statements, be they discursive statements or artistic statements or films or whatever. I’m interested in what people are afraid of. I’m interested in what they desire.
It’s a question I often ask in pastoral situations – what do you desire? For a preoccupying aspect of the world we live in now, certainly in this country, but I think more largely in the Western world, is desirelessness. That comes back to the absence of prospect we talked about earlier on. It’s particularly sad when you meet that in the young, when you run into 17-year-olds who feel that they’ve already sort of experienced everything, that there’s nothing left, when you see their existential fatigue. I listen to that and I try to prick it with a needle and to try and find the desire that must be there, because it’s implanted in our human nature by virtue of our iconic constitution, and to try and awaken that desire.
So I simply try to engage sympathetically with the world I inhabit. I get very quickly and very easily bored by attempts to just condemn the contemporary world, or to proclaim that it’s gone off the rails, it’s going nowhere. I’m much more interested in trying to really encounter the people whom providence puts on my path, sometimes without talking to them, but just looking into their eyes and seeing if the light is on or not, and if not, what could possibly illumine it.
This is a seemingly entirely banal thing to say: ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life’ – but we so easily forget, as Christians, about just the ardent intensity of that love, and that the love for the world isn’t a love for some sort of notional world that just exists in God’s mind, but it is a love for the world as it is in its waywardness, and its perversity, and its lostness, and its high aspirations. If we as Christians could only look out on the world with a bit more love, and again I don’t mean a feeling lovey-dovey love, I don’t mean being emotional or being endlessly affirming, but looking out on the world and seeing it as a world that merits to be saved by grace.
TG If at the end we return to baptism and to the situation in Scandinavia, how do you evaluate the ecumenical dimension of baptism? Baptism is our common ground. What are there fruits in terms of ecumenical relations in Scandinavia? How do you see prospects of this?
Erik Varden There are always fruits manifest or hidden, but I come back to your point from earlier on about confirmation. The main thing is to be intentional, about commitments, and also about obligations, to remember that baptism isn’t just a gift, but it is also a commission, and that it is a commission to live in the truth and to confess the truth.
I’m haunted by, and I very often think of that great phrase that John Paul II launched when he visited France in 1996 for the anniversary of the baptism of Clovis, and he preached at an open air mass, and he preached very graciously and very learnedly, and congratulated France on this great jubilee, and talked about her great mission, her civilizing mission to the world. But then at the end, wonderfully, with that rhetorical skill that was his great force, he said – dear France, permit me to ask this question. We are here to celebrate the millennial anniversary of a baptism, which you like to think of as your baptism, as the baptism of France. What have you done with your baptism? What’s become of it? What have you made of your baptism?
That is a question we must all ask ourselves on a regular basis. It’s what we must ask ourselves as Catholics, and it’s also what we must ask ourselves in ecumenical encounters. If we ask that question in truth, and if we answer it in truth, there is a real chance that that question and the grace it implies will bring us closer together
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Tibor Görföl : Il semble qu’aujourd’hui nous puissions observer dans de nombreux pays une diminution du nombre de baptêmes d’enfants et, dans certains pays, comme en France, une augmentation du nombre de baptêmes d’adultes. Cela semble avoir quelque chose à voir avec le baptême en tant que décision libre d’un être humain. Comment évaluez-vous cette situation où de plus en plus d’adultes demandent le baptême ? Et comment cela se passe-t-il en Scandinavie et plus spécialement en Norvège ?
Erik Varden : Il est évidemment très positif que des adultes demandent le baptême de leur plein gré, conscients de la grâce qui se trouve dans ce grand sacrement. Quant au fait que les baptêmes d’enfants diminuent en nombre, c’est assez logique étant donné l’effondrement de la pratique. Bien sûr, c’est une tristesse, car on se rend compte que les enfants grandissent sans cette boussole intérieure aimantée par le baptême, sans cette source de grâce, de joie et de liberté qu’est le baptême. Il est donc d’autant plus important de créer des environnements dynamiques qui rendent la foi crédible dans les sociétés et d’assumer pleinement notre tâche et notre mission de témoins. En ce qui concerne la situation en Norvège, je pense qu’elle reflète celle de l’Europe occidentale dans son ensemble. Il y a partout une forte diminution des baptêmes d’enfants, mais ici, nous voyons aussi un petit nombre de jeunes et moins jeunes adultes venir à la foi, parfois avec un arrière-plan chrétien résiduel, ayant été baptisés dans leur enfance, parfois sans aucun arrière-plan chrétien.
La chose importante à retenir est que le baptême, comme tous les sacrements, est un canal assuré de la grâce, et nous ne voudrions pas être privés de ce canal, mais la grâce agit aussi librement au-delà de tout cadre prédéfini. La grande tâche en ces temps est de voir où la grâce est à l’œuvre et de collaborer avec elle, certainement pas de lui faire obstacle.
T.G. Pour beaucoup, le baptême reste une tradition importante et un événement symbolique. Mais en grandissant, beaucoup de gens oublient leur propre baptême surtout s’ils ont été baptisés dans leur enfance. Pensez-vous, en tant qu’évêque et en tant que prêtre, que les conditions du baptême dans l’Église devraient devenir plus strictes, ou que le baptême devrait simplement être universellement et inconditionnellement disponible ?
Erik Varden : Le baptême n’a jamais été inconditionnel. Il a toujours fallu un catéchuménat, une formation et ce que les Pères appelaient une mystagogie : une introduction progressive au mystère. Il me semble que les candidats au baptême recherchent cette formation, ils en ont faim. Je parlerais donc moins de barrières plus grandes mais plutôt d’un engagement à partager toute l’étendue des richesses que le sacrement contient et porte – en termes d’éducation et de catéchisme, et en termes de participation réelle à l’assemblée liturgique et d’intégration des personnes dans la vie caritative et sociale de l’Église. Nous devons toujours être conscients que faire partie du Corps mystique, c’est aussi faire partie d’un corps concret.
T.G. : Dans votre dernier livre, qui porte sur la chasteté, vous parlez abondamment du drame de la vie chrétienne, également lié au baptême, vous parlez du changement et de la transformation que subissent les gens après leur baptême. Dans ce contexte, de manière assez surprenante, vous faites également référence à un texte ancien, syriaque, La Caverne des trésors ; il y a un long passage à ce sujet dans votre livre. Comment pourriez-vous décrire la transformation ou le drame de la vie chrétienne qui résulte du baptême en termes d’expérience et de transformation intérieure de la personne humaine ?
Erik Varden Il est évident qu’une perspective sacramentelle est à l’opposé d’une perspective déterministe. Il n’y a donc pas de trajectoire fixe ou standard. L’Esprit souffle où il veut et comme il veut. C’est le grand privilège et la joie de tout pasteur de voir la multiplicité des manifestations de la grâce sacramentelle dans la vie des individus. C’est pourquoi je me garderais bien d’essayer de définir, pour ainsi dire, une expérience standardisée, car je ne pense pas qu’elle existe. Ce qui est merveilleux avec les sacrements, c’est leur bienheureuse objectivité : le fait que nous ayons l’assurance qu’ils confèrent la grâce pour laquelle ils ont été créés, que nous ressentions quelque chose ou non. Ainsi, en ces temps où nous sommes tellement obnubilés par ce que nous ressentons, ce que nous vivons et comment nous le vivons, il est important, d’un point de vue catéchétique et théologique, de souligner cet aspect transcendant qui ne dépend pas des sentiments.
D’après mon expérience pastorale et humaine, beaucoup de personnes vivent ce fait comme une libération. En même temps, les gens sont invités à consentir à la réalisation de la grâce qui a été implantée en eux comme potentiel. Vous vous souvenez peut-être d’un texte baptismal syriaque que je cite dans ce même livre, un texte que je trouve tout simplement fantastique. J’y pense presque tous les jours. Il s’agit d’un texte liturgique, une bénédiction sur le chrétien nouvellement baptisé qui vient de sortir du baptistère :
Ô frère ! Chante les louanges du Fils du Seigneur de tous, qui t’a fait une couronne plus belle que celle d’un roi. Ton vêtement, mon frère, est brillant comme le soleil, et ton visage resplendit comme celui d’un ange. Comme un ange, tu t’es levé, bien-aimé, du baptistère par la puissance de l’Esprit Saint. Frère, tu as été admis dans la chambre nuptiale. Aujourd’hui, tu as revêtu à nouveau la gloire d’Adam. Tes vêtements sont beaux, ta couronne est magnifique. Par le ministère de son prêtre, le Premier-né les a préparés pour toi. Le fruit qu’Adam n’a pas goûté au Paradis a été mis, aujourd’hui, dans ta bouche. Va en paix, fils du baptistère. Adore la Croix ! Elle te préservera.
Si seulement nous avions la moindre idée de ce qui nous a déjà été donné, et si nous laissions simplement grandir cette semence de grâce ! Ce n’est pas pour rien que l’Évangile regorge de paraboles agricoles. Ce qui importe, c’est de nourrir la conscience de ce que l’on a reçu, que l’on en ressente quelque chose ou non, puis de renforcer et d’affermir la volonté de laisser se réaliser ce potentiel ; et enfin, il faut aider les gens à s’ouvrir à une nouvelle expérience selon la Providence de Dieu et les préparer à être surpris.
T.G. Dans votre environnement scandinave plus ou moins protestant, n’est-il pas difficile de parler de cette objectivité de la grâce et des sacrements ? N’est-il pas difficile de se faire comprendre dans ce milieu ?
Erik Varden Non, au contraire, je constate que les gens recherchent cela, et qu’ils sont soulagés de le trouver, et de rencontrer le mystère comme quelque chose de réel en soi, qui ne dépend pas d’une projection émotionnelle.
Je constate que la plupart des gens, qu’ils viennent d’un milieu non religieux, d’un milieu résiduellement chrétien ou même d’un milieu protestant très fervent, sont très reconnaissants de pouvoir se reposer dans la vie sacramentelle de l’Église et d’être libérés de ce besoin ressenti d’être subjectivement performants.
T.G. On vous demande aussi très souvent de parler de votre histoire et de vos origines protestantes.
Erik Varden Là encore, il n’y a pas grand-chose à dire. J’ai été baptisé quand j’étais enfant, et j’en suis reconnaissant, de sorte qu’à un stade ultérieur de ma vie, la grâce a eu une sorte de point d’ancrage par lequel j’ai pu y accéder. Je suis reconnaissant d’avoir reçu cette grâce, et j’essaie de me rappeler de temps en temps de prier pour le pasteur qui m’a baptisé. Nous devons veiller à n’exclure personne de cette source de grâce.
T.G. Dans votre livre Entering the Twofold Mystery [Entrer dans le double mystère], vous parlez de la réalité de devenir partie du corps du Christ par le baptême. Qu’est-ce qui est important dans ce processus, que signifie réellement être incorporé au corps du Christ ? On ne devient pas simplement membre de l’Église au sens institutionnel du terme.
Erik Varden C’est pourquoi la notion dont nous avons parlé plus tôt, la mystagogie, est un terme si utile, un terme à expliquer aux gens s’il semble un peu bizarre, parce qu’il signifie précisément cela – une entrée dans le mystère, le mystère pas seulement comme une énigme conceptuelle, mais comme un mystère personnel, comme le fait de l’Emmanuel, de Dieu avec nous. Il s’agit d’être greffé sur le corps, en termes pauliniens, et de devenir membre de ce corps, ce qui permet de commencer à découvrir ce que peut signifier vivre dans le Christ. Cette expression paulinienne clé est une déclaration cruciale, un paradigme de la vie chrétienne.
Il est essentiel d’insister sur le fait que le baptême est une insertion intime et personnelle dans le mystère personnel du Christ, tout en soulignant le fait que cette insertion, précisément, ne se limite pas à une expérience subjective mais qu’elle a également un aspect juridique dans le droit canon. Je me souviens d’avoir assisté à une cérémonie de réception dans l’Église, lorsque j’étais étudiant. Lorsque le prêtre a dûment accompli tous les rites et que la personne a été reçue et confirmée, il a dit avec éclat : “Voilà, c’est fini, vous serez toujours catholique ; la seule autre chose que vous puissiez être maintenant, c’est un catholique déchu”. Le fait est que quelque chose se produit à la fois ontologiquement et juridiquement qui me définit d’une nouvelle manière en termes de relation avec ce corps, personnel et collectif. Il est donc important de toujours veiller à garder ces dimensions ensemble, ce qui est un défi à notre époque, car personne ne semble avoir la moindre envie de garder plus d’une pensée à la fois, à un moment donné.
T.G. Mais que signifie vivre en Christ ? Cela semble très beau pour beaucoup de gens, mais lorsqu’il s’agit de déterminer le contenu de ce terme, comment le définir ?
Erik Varden Je ne peux pas le définir, car il est par nature ineffable. Je peux l’indiquer en montrant la physionomie et la personnalité du Christ telles qu’elles nous sont révélées dans l’Écriture, dans les Évangiles et dans les grandes prophéties de l’Ancien Testament. C’est pourquoi il est si important de contempler la vie et le mystère du Christ. Il faut adhérer à la Parole : à la fois à la Parole exprimée dans l’Écriture Sainte, et la Parole dans son incarnation. Alors on commence à saisir, en fixant notre regard sur Lui, une certaine idée de la longueur, de la profondeur, de la largeur et de la hauteur de ce qu’Il représente. Et être inséré dans la vie du Christ, c’est consentir à cette extension des dimensions dans mon propre être et commencer à en faire l’expérience.
Vers la fin du prologue de sa Règle, saint Benoît parle de façon mémorable de l’élargissement, de la dilatation du cœur qui, dans la compréhension de soi et la théologie bénédictines, ont toujours été un symbole de cet élargissement existentiel, de cette capacité de vivre plus profondément, d’appréhender plus profondément, de sentir plus purement, et de faire en sorte que mon cœur et toute ma perception deviennent de plus en plus grands pour prendre les proportions du cœur de Dieu lui-même, qui est par définition sans limites. Ainsi commencer existentiellement, humblement, pas à pas, à entrer dans une expérience et une participation à l’éternité est fondamental pour s’engager dans une initiation à la vie en Christ.
T.G. Vous avez fait référence à la tradition bénédictine, et il y a un autre terme dans cette tradition qui pourrait être important en relation avec le baptême – la conversatio morum. Que peut ajouter la tradition monastique à la compréhension du drame ou du processus de la vie humaine, si vous la comprenez comme une conversatio morum ? Que peut offrir cette idée monastique à chaque chrétien ?
Erik Varden Je pense que la conversatio morum, dans une certaine mesure, est une expression descriptive plutôt que prescriptive, et qu’elle indique une résolution de toujours rester en mouvement, de ne jamais rester immobile. Il y a une dialectique intrinsèque dans les vœux bénédictins et dans l’engagement monastique. D’une part, les moines font un vœu de stabilité, c’est-à-dire le vœu de ne pas s’enfuir, de rester fixé dans sa communauté, ce qui signifie normalement être fixé dans un lieu. Mais en complément, il y a ce vœu de conversatio morum, qui est un vœu de ne jamais s’installer dans la résignation, de ne jamais penser : “oh, c’est assez, j’ai atteint un but suffisant, ou j’en ai assez”. Le vœu de conversatio est une disposition à se laisser remettre en question, même dans sa prétendue suffisance ou dans son prétendu sens de la vertu. Les récits de la tradition monastique regorgent d’histoires de moines qui semblent être des modèles de vertu. Ils sont respectés, admirés, et parfois même éprouvent une certaine admiration pour eux-mêmes. Mais ensuite ils sont confrontés à quelque chose d’entièrement nouveau, soit par l’intervention directe de Dieu, soit par une expérience du péché ou de la grâce, soit par la rencontre d’une autre personne. Pensez par exemple à la rencontre de Marie l’égyptienne et de Zosime. Cela les amène à tout repenser et ils commencent à réaliser : “oh, je pensais que j’étais arrivé et je n’ai même pas commencé”.
J’aimerais que cette conscience soit un peu plus présente dans notre Église, qui est en quelque sorte axée sur les processus. Nous sommes entourés de structures séculières et politiques qui fonctionnent sous forme de périodes électorales de trois ou quatre ans ; nous nous attendons constamment à ce que des révolutions aient lieu en périodes électorales, et lorsqu’elles n’ont pas lieu, ce qui était prévisible, nous sommes déçus, puis nous recommençons, et nous exprimons notre juste indignation, et nous sommes piégés dans ce cycle illusoire. La perspective de la conversatio morum est beaucoup plus réaliste en ce sens qu’elle embrasse par nature la perspective d’une vie humaine entière jusqu’à sa mort naturelle, qu’elle considère l’ensemble de la vie humaine et qu’elle l’envisage comme un processus de changement progressif constant vers une perfection personnelle qui correspond à la providence de Dieu, mais qui n’est pas un mystère pour chacun d’entre nous. Ainsi, vivre dans le cadre de la conversatio morum, c’est constamment consentir à dire “oui”,à me laisser transformer dans un processus de devenir dont le but m’est inconnu.
T.G. Je pense que l’un des fondateurs de Communio, Hans Urs von Balthasar, serait très heureux d’entendre cela.
Erik Varden Je pense qu’il était tout à fait sur cette longueur d’onde.
T.G. Un autre aspect de Balthasar que je voulais aborder est que si vous êtes baptisé, vous devez généralement, d’une certaine manière, confirmer ou concrétiser ce baptême. Il faut d’abord être confirmé, puis décider de la forme de vie chrétienne que l’on souhaite pour soi-même – il semble très difficile, voire impossible, d’être simplement un chrétien baptisé“généralement”. Comment voyez-vous la relation entre le baptême et les autres sacrements qui donnent une forme concrète à votre vie ?
Erik Varden Eh bien, évidemment, le baptême est le fondement. Dans une certaine mesure, le baptême est ce qui nous équipe pour une mission, pour une tâche, quelle qu’elle soit. Et comme vous l’avez dit, cela peut prendre de multiples formes. Je suppose que l’important (et c’est pourquoi je pense qu’il est très bon que vous mettiez ainsi l’accent sur le baptême) est de nous rappeler sans cesse ce que nous avons, en fait, déjà reçu. Car je sais par expérience, dans la confession ou la direction spirituelle, que les gens ont souvent l’impression de repartir constamment à zéro et qu’ils se sentent très perplexes. En leur rappelant ce qu’ils ont déjà reçu à travers les sacrements de l’initiation, vous leur donnez le sentiment de réaliser qu’il y a déjà une rampe de lancement.
Vous avez parlé de la confirmation. La validité et l’efficacité du baptême ne dépendent évidemment pas de la confirmation, car il a sa propre intégrité. Mais la confirmation est conçue comme un éveil, un défi et une invitation à faire des choix importants, ce qui est intrinsèque à toute vie humaine et à la vie chrétienne. Elle nous dit : “Regardez, vous avez reçu cette ressource extraordinaire et vous portez en vous une source infinie de grâce et de vie. Qu’allez-vous en faire ? Comment allez-vous rendre cette grâce féconde et constructive, non seulement pour vous-même, mais pour le bien du Corps dont vous êtes le membre ? Comment pouvez-vous rechercher le bonheur, la liberté, la fécondité pour vous-même et en même temps être une bénédiction pour les autres ?” Ce sens de la mission est peut-être un aspect de la vie chrétienne sur lequel nous pourrions insister un peu plus.
T.G. Il y a un autre aspect des sacrements que vous examinez intensivement, c’est l’aspect de la guérison. Votre nouveau livre intitulé Healing Wounds [Guérir les blessures], qui est le livre de Carême 2025, mais aussi vos autres livres, traitent abondamment de ce sujet. Pourquoi pensez-vous que les blessures sont si importantes aujourd’hui ? Quel type de blessures les gens ont-ils et que signifie la guérison ?
Erik Varden Eh bien, j’utilise consciemment cette terminologie en me fondant également sur ma compréhension du péché, une compréhension que j’essaie de développer dans mon livre sur la chasteté. En Occident, conditionnés par les controverses du xvie siècle, nous avons tendance à penser au péché en termes de culpabilité. Nous pensons au péché en termes de scénario dostoïevskien de crime et de châtiment. Nous sortons les bilans et nous faisons nos comptes. Je ne dis pas que cette conception est illicite ou qu’elle est totalement inutile, mais elle est insuffisante.
Il est utile de retrouver consciemment la compréhension plus biblique et patristique du péché comme une blessure primordiale, comme une perte, comme un deuil, comme une sorte d’amputation dans le sens où l’on est coupé de la communauté et où l’on aspire pourtant à en faire partie. En partant du paradigme narratif des blessures en quête de guérison, nous avons une meilleure chance de capter l’attention et l’intérêt de nos contemporains. Car nous vivons à une époque qui, d’une certaine manière, est obsédée par les blessures. Et nous vivons dans une culture occidentale très largement axée sur la victimisation. Nous nous victimisons nous-mêmes ou nous victimisons les autres. Et une grande partie de nos divertissements, que ce soit dans les journaux, les médias, les films ou les romans, portent sur les blessures.
Mais ce qui manque le plus à notre époque, c’est la perspective que les blessures peuvent être guéries. C’est pourquoi il est vraiment, vraiment important d’apporter un éclairage chrétien sur cette dynamique. Parce que le christianisme et le judaïsme – c’est-à-dire la révélation biblique – sont extrêmement réalistes en ce qui concerne les blessures humaines. Mais ils nous rappellent constamment de ne pas nous identifier à nos blessures, de ne pas succomber à la tentation de dire : “oh, je suis l’homme à la main desséchée”, ou “je suis l’homme allongé sur une civière sans personne pour me porter dans l’eau”, ou “je suis l’homme qui a subi cette perte quand j’étais enfant”, ou qui a été compromis de telle ou telle manière, ou qui a reçu trop de ceci ou pas assez de cela.
L’Écriture ne se désintéresse pas de cette base factuelle de l’expérience humaine. Elle dit : “Appropriez-vous cela, appropriez-vous chaque aspect de votre existence et de votre histoire, sans rien cacher ou sans essayer de faire semblant que rien n’est là. Mais soyez assurés qu’il n’y a pas de blessure qui ne puisse être guérie. Et soyez assurés que ce pour quoi vous êtes faits et ce à quoi vous êtes destinés– si ce n’est pas dans cette vie, ce sera dans la prochaine – c’est l’intégrité, la plénitude et le bonheur”.
T.G. Dans votre expérience pastorale, de quoi souffre le plus le chrétien d’aujourd’hui ?
Erik Varden Je pense au désespoir. Je pense que l’éveil de l’espoir est une tâche immense. Il faut se préparer à vivre dans une perspective d’avenir, à regarder devant soi, à croire qu’il y a quelque chose à attendre. Pas seulement dans le sens banal de se réjouir de boire une bière ce soir ou de fêter son anniversaire la semaine prochaine, mais dans le sens où la vie, ma vie personnelle et la vie en tant que telle, la vie du monde, a une finalité intentionnelle et se dirige vers un but, qui n’est pas seulement un désastre. Nous devons entretenir cette espérance tout en étant parfaitement lucides et ouverts sur l’état extrêmement inquiétant du monde dans lequel nous vivons et dont nous sommes responsables.
T.G. En ce qui concerne le monde contemporain, une partie de votre mission semble consister à aborder l’imagination de la culture contemporaine. Comment imaginez-vous la relation entre le christianisme contemporain et la culture non chrétienne contemporaine ? Comment pouvez-vous trouver des moyens de répondre aux inquiétudes, aux préoccupations, aux idées, aux intérêts des gens ?
Erik Varden Je suis un citoyen du monde contemporain comme les autres. Je m’y intéresse parce que j’aime vivre les yeux et les oreilles ouverts. J’essaie donc d’être à l’écoute de ses déclarations significatives. Ce qui m’intéresse, ce n’est pas tant d’entendre le bruit de fond, car le bruit de fond est toujours le même, quelle que soit l’époque. Il a juste un rythme différent. Mais je m’intéresse à ses déclarations essentielles. Je m’intéresse aux questions que les gens posent, même s’ils ne les posent pas explicitement. Je m’intéresse aux questions qui sont implicites dans leurs déclarations, qu’il s’agisse de simples discours, d’expressions artistiques, de films ou autres. Je m’intéresse à ce dont les gens ont peur. Je m’intéresse à ce qu’ils désirent.
C’est une question que je pose souvent dans les visites pastorales : que désirez-vous ? Car l’un des aspects préoccupants du monde dans lequel nous vivons aujourd’hui – certainement dans ce pays, mais je pense plus largement dans le monde occidental – est l’absence de désir. Cela nous ramène à l’absence de perspectives dont nous avons parlé plus tôt. Il est particulièrement triste de rencontrer des jeunes de 17 ans qui ont l’impression d’avoir déjà tout vécu, qu’il ne reste plus rien et de constater leur fatigue existentielle. J’écoute cela et j’essaie de les aiguillonner, et de trouver le désir qui doit être là, parce qu’il est implanté dans notre nature humaine en vertu de notre constitution iconique, et d’essayer d’éveiller ce désir.
J’essaie donc simplement de m’engager avec sympathie dans le monde que j’habite. Les tentatives de condamner le monde contemporain ou de proclamer qu’il a déraillé, qu’il ne va nulle part, m’ennuient très vite et très facilement. Je suis beaucoup plus intéressé par la rencontre avec les personnes que la providence met sur mon chemin, parfois sans leur parler, mais en les regardant dans les yeux pour voir si la lumière est allumée ou non, et si ce n’est pas le cas, ce qui pourrait l’éclairer.
C’est une chose apparemment tout à fait banale de dire : “Dieu a tant aimé le monde qu’il a donné son Fils unique, afin que quiconque croit en lui ne périsse pas, mais ait la vie éternelle” – mais nous oublions si facilement, en tant que chrétiens, l’intensité ardente de cet amour, et que l’amour pour le monde n’est pas un amour pour une sorte de monde fictif qui existe simplement dans l’esprit de Dieu, mais c’est un amour pour le monde tel qu’il est dans son égarement, sa perversité, son état de perdition, et ses hautes aspirations. Si nous, chrétiens, pouvions simplement regarder le monde avec un peu plus d’amour, et encore une fois je ne parle pas d’un amour sentimental, je ne parle pas d’être émotifs ou sans cesse affirmatifs, mais regarder le monde et le voir comme un monde qui mérite d’être sauvé par la grâce.
T.G. Si, à la fin, nous revenons au baptême et à la situation en Scandinavie, comment évaluez-vous la dimension œcuménique du baptême ? Le baptême est notre terrain d’entente. Quels sont les fruits en termes de relations œcuméniques en Scandinavie ? Comment voyez-vous les perspectives à cet égard ?
Erik Varden Il y a toujours des fruits manifestes ou cachés, mais je reviens à ce que vous avez dit tout à l’heure à propos de la confirmation. L’essentiel est d’être clair sur ses obligations et ses responsabilités, de se rappeler que le baptême n’est pas seulement un don, mais qu’il est aussi une mission, à savoir la mission de vivre dans la vérité et de confesser la vérité.
Je pense très souvent à cette belle phrase que Jean-Paul II a adressée à la France lors de sa visite en 1996 pour l’anniversaire du baptême de Clovis ; il a prêché lors d’une messe en plein air avec bienveillance, il a félicité la France pour ce grand jubilé, et il a parlé de sa grande mission, de sa mission civilisatrice pour le monde. Mais à la fin, il a dit merveilleusement, avec cette habileté rhétorique qui était sa grande force : “Chère France, permettez-moi de poser cette question. Nous sommes ici pour célébrer le millénaire d’un baptême que vous aimez considérer comme votre baptême, comme le baptême de la France. Qu’avez-vous fait de votre baptême ? Qu’est-il devenu ? Qu’avez-vous fait de votre baptême ?”
C’est une question que nous devons tous nous poser régulièrement. Nous devons y faire face en tant que catholiques, et nous devons également l’affronter dans le cadre des rencontres œcuméniques. Si nous posons cette question en vérité, et si nous y répondons en vérité, il y a de fortes chances que cette question et la grâce qui l’accompagne nous rapprochent les uns des autres.
(Traduit de l’anglais par Corinne Marion)
Pietro Longhi, The Baptism (1755) from his series on the seven sacraments.
TG It seems that nowadays we can observe in a lot of countries a decrease in the number of infant baptism, and in some countries, like in France, an increase in the number of adult baptisms. It seems to have something to do with baptism as a free decision for a human person. How do you evaluate this situation that more and more adult people start to ask for baptism? And how is it in Scandinavia and in Norway?
Erik Varden Well, obviously it’s a very positive thing that adults of their own free choice seek baptism, conscious of the grace to be found in that great sacrament. As for the fact that infant baptisms are going down in number, in some ways it’s logical given the slumping rate of practice. Of course, that’s a sadness, because one is conscious of children growing up without that inward compass which baptism magnetises, without that source of grace and joy and freedom that baptism is. It is all the more important then to provide vibrant environments that make the faith credibly present in societies, and to assume fully our task and mission as witnesses. In terms of the situation in Norway, I think it mirrors Western Europe as a whole. There is everywhere a sharp decrease in infant baptisms. Yet here in Norway we also see a trickle of young and not so young adults coming to the faith, sometimes from a residual Christian background, having been baptized as children, sometimes from absolutely nothing.
I think the important thing to remember is that baptism, like all the sacraments, is an assured channel of grace, and we wouldn’t want to be deprived of that channel, but grace also works freely beyond any parameters. The great task in these times is to see where grace is at work and to collaborate with it, certainly not to stand in its way.
TG It’s very easy for a lot of adult persons to forget about their baptism. Baptism is a noble tradition and a symbolic event which might be interesting and important for people, but afterwards they forget about it, especially when they were baptized as children. Do you think, as a bishop and as a priest, that the conditions of baptism should become stricter in the Church, or should it be just generally unconditionally available?
Erik Varden Well, obviously, they’ve never been unconditionally available, because there is always a catechumenate which is presupposed and a formation and what the Fathers used to call a mystagogy, a gradual introduction into the mystery. It seems to me that people looking for baptism seek that formation, they’re hungry for it. So I would speak less in terms of putting up greater barriers, more in terms of a commitment to share the full extent of the riches that the sacrament contains and carries – in terms of education and catechism, and in terms of a real participation in the liturgical assembly and of integrating individuals into the charitable and social life of the Church. We should always be aware that that to become part of the Mystical Body is also to become part of a concrete body.
TG In your latest book which is on chastity, talk about extensively about the drama of Christian life, also related to baptism, you talk about the change and transformation that people go through after they are baptized. In this context, rather surprisingly, you also refer to an ancient Syriac test, the Cave of the Treasures; there’s a long session in the book on that. How could you describe the transformation or the drama of Christian life that results from baptism in terms of experience and in terms of an inner transformation of the human person?
Erik Varden Well, obviously, a sacramental perspective is the opposite of a deterministic perspective. So, there is no set or standard trajectory. The Spirit blows where it wishes and how it wishes. It’s any pastor’s great privilege and joy to see the multiformity of manifestations of sacramental grace in individuals’ lives. So, I’d be wary of trying to outline, as it were, a standardized experience because I don’t think it exists. The wonderful thing about the sacraments is their blessed objectivity: the fact that we have the assurance that they do confer the grace for which they’re set up, whether we feel anything or not. So, if anything, in these times when we’re so fixated on what we feel and what we experience and how we experience it, it’s important catechetically and theologically to stress that transcendent aspect which doesn’t depend on feeling.
In my experience, in my pastoral and human experience, this comes in fact as a great liberation to many people, while at the same time it invites people to consent to the realization of the grace implanted in them as potential. You will also remember a Syriac baptismal text I quote in that same book, a text I think is simply fantastic. I think about it almost every day. It’s a liturgical text, a blessing over the newly baptized Christian just arising from the baptistry:
O brother! Sing praise to the Son of the Lord of all, who has made for you a crown more desirable than that of any king. Brilliant is your garment, brother, like the sun: and your face shines like an angel’s. Like an angel you rose up, beloved, from the baptistry by the power of the Holy Spirit. Brother, you have been granted access to the wedding chamber. Today you have put on anew the glory of Adam. Your garments are lovely, your crown beautiful. By the ministry of his priest, the Firstborn has prepared them for you. The fruit Adam did not taste in Paradise has been placed, today, in your mouth. Go in peace, son of the baptistry. Adore the Cross! It will preserve you.
If only we had the slightest inkling of what has already been given to us, and if we simply let that seed of grace grow! It’s not for nothing that the Gospel is full of agricultural parables. What matters is to nurture the consciousness of what one has in fact received, whether one feels anything or not, next to strengthen and steel the resolve to let that potential be realized, then to open people up to a transformation of experience according to God’s providential plan for individuals, preparing them to be surprised.
TG In your more or less Protestant environment, the Scandinavian environment is not experience highlighted more emphatically? When you talk about this objectivity of grace and the objectivity of the sacraments, is it not difficult to make yourself understandable in this environment?
Erik Varden No, if anything, I find that people are looking for that, and they’re relieved to find it, and to encounter the mystery as something which is real in itself, and doesn’t depend on an emotional projection.
I find, to most people, whether they come from a non-religious background or from a residual, or even from a very fervent Protestant background, the fact of being able to rest in the church’s sacramental life, and of being freed of that felt need to subjectively perform, is something many embrace with great gratitude.
TG You are also very often asked about your personal Protestant background and story.
Erik Varden Well, again, there wasn’t all that much of a story there. I was baptized as an infant, and I’m grateful for that, so that at a later stage in my life, grace had some sort of foothold by which to get access. I’m grateful to have received that, and I try to remember every now and again to pray for the pastor who baptized me. We must be careful to not exclude anyone from this source of grace.
TG In your book Entering the Twofold Mystery, you talk about the reality and the process of entering the body of Christ in relation to baptism. You have already referred to it – but what is the essence of this process of entering the Body of Christ, what does it really mean to become part of the Body of Christ? You don’t simply become a member of the church in an institutional sense.
Erik Varden That is why the notion we talked about earlier, mystagogy, is such a helpful term, a term to expound to people if it sounds a bit outlandish, because it means precisely that – an entrance into the mystery, the mystery not just as a notional conundrum, but as a personal mystery, as the fact of Emmanuel, of God with us It speaks of being, in Pauline terms, grafted onto the body and becoming a member of that body, thereby enabled to begin to discover what it might mean to live in Christ. This key Pauline expression is such a crucial dimensional statement, a paradigm of Christian living.
It’s essential to insist on baptism as an intimate and personal insertion into the personal mystery of Christ, while at the same time insisting that that insertion, precisely, isn’t restricted to a subjective and experiential aspect, but also has a juridical aspect in canon law. I remember once attending a ceremony of reception into the church when I was a student. When the priest had duly performed all the rites and the person was received and confirmed, he said brightly, “right, that’s it now, you’ll always be a Catholic; the only other thing you can be now is a lapsed Catholic”. The fact is that something happens both ontologically and juridically that defines me in a new way in terms of my relationship to this body, personal and collective. So, it matters always to make sure that we keep those dimensions together, which is challenging in our times, because no one now seems to have any inclination at all to keep more than one thought in one’s consciousness at any given time.
TG But what does it mean to live in Christ? It sounds very beautiful for a lot of people, but when you have to determine what is the content of this term, how can you define it?
Erik Varden I can’t define it, because it is of its nature ineffable. I can indicate it by pointing to the physiognomy and personality of Christ as revealed to us in Scripture, in the Gospels, and in the great prophetic foretellings of the Old Testament. That is why it is so important to contemplate the life of Christ, to contemplate the mystery of Christ, to pursue the Word both, as it were, “enbibled”, the Word as expressed in Scripture, and the Word in His incarnation and to begin to get some sense by fixing our gaze on Him, some sense of the length and the depth and the breadth and the height of what He represents. And to be inserted into the life of Christ is to consent to and to start to experience that extension of dimensions in my own being.
Saint Benedict speaks memorably towards the end of the prologue of his Rule about the enlargement, the broadening of the heart, which in Benedictine self-understanding and theology has always been a symbol of that existential enlargement, that capacity to live more deeply, to apprehend more profoundly, to feel more purely, and for my heart and my entire perception to become larger and larger in order to assume the proportions of God’s own heart, which is by definition without boundaries. So, to begin existentially, humbly, step by step, to enter into an experience of and a participation in eternity, is fundamental to embark on an initiation into the life in Christ.
TG You referred to the Benedictine tradition, and there is one more term in that tradition that might be important in relation to baptism – conversatio morum. What can the monastic tradition add to the understanding of the drama or process of human life, if you understand it as a conversatio morum? What can it offer for the broad assembly of the Church, this monastic idea?
Erik Varden I think conversatio morum, to some extent, is a descriptive rather than a prescriptive term, and it points towards a resolve always to remain in movement, never to stand still. There is an intrinsic dialectic in the Benedictine vows and in the monastic commitment. On the one hand, monks make a vow of stability, which is a vow not to run away, to remain fixed in one’s community, which will normally mean being fixed in a place. But complementing that, you have this vow of conversatio morum, which is a vow never to settle into resignation, never to think, oh, that’s enough, I’ve reached a sufficient goal, or I’ve had enough. The vow of conversatio is a readiness to let oneself be questioned, also in one’s perceived self-justification or one’s perceived sense of virtue. The narrative monastic tradition, the lives of the fathers, are full of stories of monks who seem to be paradigms of virtue, who are respected, admired, who sometimes have a certain admiration for themselves, who are then confronted with something entirely new, either through a direct divine intervention or through an experience of sin or through an experience of grace or through an encounter with another human being (think of the encounter of Mary of Egypt and Zosima), and then they are led to reconsider everything and to start realising, oh, “I thought I’d arrived and I haven’t really even started”.
I wish we had a little bit more of that consciousness installed into our sort of process-minded church. We’re surrounded by secular and political structures that work in terms of electoral periods of three or four years, and we constantly expect revolutions to take place within electoral periods, and when they don’t, which they can’t, we’re disappointed, and then we start again, and then we express our righteous indignation, and we’re caught in this illusory cycle. The perspective of conversatio morum is a much more realistic perspective in that it embraces by its nature the perspective of an entire human life to its natural death, and looks at the entire canvas of human life and looks forward to that as a process of constant incremental change into a personal perfection that corresponds to God’s providence, but isn’t an entire mystery to each one of us. So, to live within conversatio morum is constantly to give one’s consent to say yes to a process of becoming whose goal is unknown to me.
TG I think one the founders of Communio, Hans Urs von Balthasar, would be very glad to hear this.
Erik Varden Oh, well, I think he was very much on that wavelength.
TG One more thing in Balthasar that I wanted to address is that if you are baptized, then usually, in a way, you have to confirm or make concrete that baptism. You have to get confirmed at first, and then you have to decide which form of Christian life you want for yourself – it seems to be very difficult, if not impossible, to be just a “general” baptized Christian. How do you see the relation between baptism and the other sacraments that give a concrete shape to your life?
Erik Varden Well, obviously, baptism is the foundation. To some extent, baptism is what equips us for a mission, for a task, whatever that is. And as you said, that can take multiple forms. I suppose the important thing (and that’s why I think it’s very good that you’re placing your spotlight on baptism in this way) is to keep reminding us of what we have, in fact, received already. Because it is my experience in confession or spiritual direction that people quite often think that they’re constantly starting from scratch and feel great perplexity. By reminding them what they have, in fact, already received through the sacraments of initiation, you give them a sense of realising that there is already a launchpad there.
You talked about confirmation. The validity and effectiveness of baptism obviously doesn’t depend on confirmation, because it has its own integrity. But confirmation is intended as an awakening and as a challenge and as a summons, which is intrinsic to any human life and to the Christian life, as a summons to make significant choices. It’s telling us, look, you’ve been given this extraordinary resource and you carry within you an infinite source of grace and of life. What are you going to do with it? How are you going to make this grace fruitful and constructive, not only for yourself, but for the sake of the Body whose member you are? How can you pursue happiness, freedom, fecundity for yourself and at the same time be a blessing for others? That sense of commissioning is perhaps an aspect of the Christian life that we could accentuate a little bit more.
TG There is one more aspect of the sacraments that you seem to highlight rather intensively and it is the aspect of healing. Your new book with the title Healing Wounds which is the 2025 Lent Book, but also your other books deal extensively with this. Why do you think that wounds are so important today? And what sort of wounds do people have and what does healing mean at all?
Erik Varden Well, I’m consciously using that terminology also based on my understanding of sin, an understanding which I try to expand in my book on chastity. In the West, conditioned not least by 16th century controversies, we have a tendency to think of sin in terms of guilt. We think of sin in terms of a Dostoevskian scenario of crime and punishment. We get the balance sheets out and we do our sums. I’m not saying that that understanding is illicit or that it’s entirely useless, but it’s insufficient.
It is useful to recover consciously the more biblical and patristic understanding of sin as a primordial wound, as a loss, as a bereavement, as a kind of amputation in the sense of being cut off and yet yearning to become part. By setting out from the narrative paradigm of wounds seeking healing, we have a better chance of capturing the attention and the interest of our contemporaries. Because we live in times that in some ways are obsessed with wounds. And we live in a culture in the West very largely of victimization. We victimize ourselves or we victimize others. And much of our entertainment, whether in newspapers or in media or in films or in novels, is about a consideration of wounds.
But what our times are largely lacking is any perspective that wounds can actually be healed. That is why a Christian light on this dynamic is really, really important. Because Christianity and Judaism, so biblical religion, is extremely realistic with regard to human woundedness. But it’s constantly reminding us not to identify ourselves in terms of our wounds, not to fall for the temptation to say, “oh, I am the man with a withered hand”, or “I am the man who’s lying on a stretcher with no one to carry me into the water”, or “I am the man who endured this loss when I was a child”, or who was compromised in this way, or who received too much of this or too little of that.
Scripture isn’t uninterested in that factual basis of human experience. And it says, right, own that, own every aspect of your existence and your history without hiding anything or without trying to pretend that anything isn’t there. But be assured that there is no wound that cannot be healed. And be assured that what you’re made for and what you’re intended for, if not in this life, then in the next, is integrity, wholeness, and happiness.
TG And what does the contemporary Christian suffer from mostly, according to your pastoral experience?
Erik Varden I think hopelessness. I do think the awakening of hope is an immense task. The preparedness to live prospectively, to look ahead, to believe that there is something to look forward to. Not just in the banal sense of looking forward to having a beer this evening, or having a birthday next week, but of life, my own personal life and life as such, the life of world, having an intentional finality of it moving towards a goal, which isn’t just a disaster. We have to entertain that hopefulness while being at the same time entirely lucid and open-minded about the extremely disquieting state of the world we inhabit and for which we are held responsible.
TG As for the contemporary world, part of your mission seems to be to address the imagination of the contemporary culture. How do you imagine the relation between contemporary Christianity and contemporary non-Christian culture? How can you find ways to address anxieties, concerns, ideas, interests of people?
Erik Varden I’m a citizen of the contemporary world like everyone else. I’m interested in it because I like to live with my eyes open and my ears open. So I try to listen out for its significant statements. I’m not so much interested in just hearing the background noise because the background noise in any historical era is the same. It’s just got a different rhythm. But I’m interested in its essential statements. I’m interested in the questions people ask, even if they don’t ask them explicitly. I’m interested in the questions that are implicit in their statements, be they discursive statements or artistic statements or films or whatever. I’m interested in what people are afraid of. I’m interested in what they desire.
It’s a question I often ask in pastoral situations – what do you desire? For a preoccupying aspect of the world we live in now, certainly in this country, but I think more largely in the Western world, is desirelessness. That comes back to the absence of prospect we talked about earlier on. It’s particularly sad when you meet that in the young, when you run into 17-year-olds who feel that they’ve already sort of experienced everything, that there’s nothing left, when you see their existential fatigue. I listen to that and I try to prick it with a needle and to try and find the desire that must be there, because it’s implanted in our human nature by virtue of our iconic constitution, and to try and awaken that desire.
So I simply try to engage sympathetically with the world I inhabit. I get very quickly and very easily bored by attempts to just condemn the contemporary world, or to proclaim that it’s gone off the rails, it’s going nowhere. I’m much more interested in trying to really encounter the people whom providence puts on my path, sometimes without talking to them, but just looking into their eyes and seeing if the light is on or not, and if not, what could possibly illumine it.
This is a seemingly entirely banal thing to say: ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life’ – but we so easily forget, as Christians, about just the ardent intensity of that love, and that the love for the world isn’t a love for some sort of notional world that just exists in God’s mind, but it is a love for the world as it is in its waywardness, and its perversity, and its lostness, and its high aspirations. If we as Christians could only look out on the world with a bit more love, and again I don’t mean a feeling lovey-dovey love, I don’t mean being emotional or being endlessly affirming, but looking out on the world and seeing it as a world that merits to be saved by grace.
TG If at the end we return to baptism and to the situation in Scandinavia, how do you evaluate the ecumenical dimension of baptism? Baptism is our common ground. What are there fruits in terms of ecumenical relations in Scandinavia? How do you see prospects of this?
Erik Varden There are always fruits manifest or hidden, but I come back to your point from earlier on about confirmation. The main thing is to be intentional, about commitments, and also about obligations, to remember that baptism isn’t just a gift, but it is also a commission, and that it is a commission to live in the truth and to confess the truth.
I’m haunted by, and I very often think of that great phrase that John Paul II launched when he visited France in 1996 for the anniversary of the baptism of Clovis, and he preached at an open air mass, and he preached very graciously and very learnedly, and congratulated France on this great jubilee, and talked about her great mission, her civilizing mission to the world. But then at the end, wonderfully, with that rhetorical skill that was his great force, he said – dear France, permit me to ask this question. We are here to celebrate the millennial anniversary of a baptism, which you like to think of as your baptism, as the baptism of France. What have you done with your baptism? What’s become of it? What have you made of your baptism?
That is a question we must all ask ourselves on a regular basis. It’s what we must ask ourselves as Catholics, and it’s also what we must ask ourselves in ecumenical encounters. If we ask that question in truth, and if we answer it in truth, there is a real chance that that question and the grace it implies will bring us closer together
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Tibor Görföl : Il semble qu’aujourd’hui nous puissions observer dans de nombreux pays une diminution du nombre de baptêmes d’enfants et, dans certains pays, comme en France, une augmentation du nombre de baptêmes d’adultes. Cela semble avoir quelque chose à voir avec le baptême en tant que décision libre d’un être humain. Comment évaluez-vous cette situation où de plus en plus d’adultes demandent le baptême ? Et comment cela se passe-t-il en Scandinavie et plus spécialement en Norvège ?
Erik Varden : Il est évidemment très positif que des adultes demandent le baptême de leur plein gré, conscients de la grâce qui se trouve dans ce grand sacrement. Quant au fait que les baptêmes d’enfants diminuent en nombre, c’est assez logique étant donné l’effondrement de la pratique. Bien sûr, c’est une tristesse, car on se rend compte que les enfants grandissent sans cette boussole intérieure aimantée par le baptême, sans cette source de grâce, de joie et de liberté qu’est le baptême. Il est donc d’autant plus important de créer des environnements dynamiques qui rendent la foi crédible dans les sociétés et d’assumer pleinement notre tâche et notre mission de témoins. En ce qui concerne la situation en Norvège, je pense qu’elle reflète celle de l’Europe occidentale dans son ensemble. Il y a partout une forte diminution des baptêmes d’enfants, mais ici, nous voyons aussi un petit nombre de jeunes et moins jeunes adultes venir à la foi, parfois avec un arrière-plan chrétien résiduel, ayant été baptisés dans leur enfance, parfois sans aucun arrière-plan chrétien.
La chose importante à retenir est que le baptême, comme tous les sacrements, est un canal assuré de la grâce, et nous ne voudrions pas être privés de ce canal, mais la grâce agit aussi librement au-delà de tout cadre prédéfini. La grande tâche en ces temps est de voir où la grâce est à l’œuvre et de collaborer avec elle, certainement pas de lui faire obstacle.
T.G. Pour beaucoup, le baptême reste une tradition importante et un événement symbolique. Mais en grandissant, beaucoup de gens oublient leur propre baptême surtout s’ils ont été baptisés dans leur enfance. Pensez-vous, en tant qu’évêque et en tant que prêtre, que les conditions du baptême dans l’Église devraient devenir plus strictes, ou que le baptême devrait simplement être universellement et inconditionnellement disponible ?
Erik Varden : Le baptême n’a jamais été inconditionnel. Il a toujours fallu un catéchuménat, une formation et ce que les Pères appelaient une mystagogie : une introduction progressive au mystère. Il me semble que les candidats au baptême recherchent cette formation, ils en ont faim. Je parlerais donc moins de barrières plus grandes mais plutôt d’un engagement à partager toute l’étendue des richesses que le sacrement contient et porte – en termes d’éducation et de catéchisme, et en termes de participation réelle à l’assemblée liturgique et d’intégration des personnes dans la vie caritative et sociale de l’Église. Nous devons toujours être conscients que faire partie du Corps mystique, c’est aussi faire partie d’un corps concret.
T.G. : Dans votre dernier livre, qui porte sur la chasteté, vous parlez abondamment du drame de la vie chrétienne, également lié au baptême, vous parlez du changement et de la transformation que subissent les gens après leur baptême. Dans ce contexte, de manière assez surprenante, vous faites également référence à un texte ancien, syriaque, La Caverne des trésors ; il y a un long passage à ce sujet dans votre livre. Comment pourriez-vous décrire la transformation ou le drame de la vie chrétienne qui résulte du baptême en termes d’expérience et de transformation intérieure de la personne humaine ?
Erik Varden Il est évident qu’une perspective sacramentelle est à l’opposé d’une perspective déterministe. Il n’y a donc pas de trajectoire fixe ou standard. L’Esprit souffle où il veut et comme il veut. C’est le grand privilège et la joie de tout pasteur de voir la multiplicité des manifestations de la grâce sacramentelle dans la vie des individus. C’est pourquoi je me garderais bien d’essayer de définir, pour ainsi dire, une expérience standardisée, car je ne pense pas qu’elle existe. Ce qui est merveilleux avec les sacrements, c’est leur bienheureuse objectivité : le fait que nous ayons l’assurance qu’ils confèrent la grâce pour laquelle ils ont été créés, que nous ressentions quelque chose ou non. Ainsi, en ces temps où nous sommes tellement obnubilés par ce que nous ressentons, ce que nous vivons et comment nous le vivons, il est important, d’un point de vue catéchétique et théologique, de souligner cet aspect transcendant qui ne dépend pas des sentiments.
D’après mon expérience pastorale et humaine, beaucoup de personnes vivent ce fait comme une libération. En même temps, les gens sont invités à consentir à la réalisation de la grâce qui a été implantée en eux comme potentiel. Vous vous souvenez peut-être d’un texte baptismal syriaque que je cite dans ce même livre, un texte que je trouve tout simplement fantastique. J’y pense presque tous les jours. Il s’agit d’un texte liturgique, une bénédiction sur le chrétien nouvellement baptisé qui vient de sortir du baptistère :
Ô frère ! Chante les louanges du Fils du Seigneur de tous, qui t’a fait une couronne plus belle que celle d’un roi. Ton vêtement, mon frère, est brillant comme le soleil, et ton visage resplendit comme celui d’un ange. Comme un ange, tu t’es levé, bien-aimé, du baptistère par la puissance de l’Esprit Saint. Frère, tu as été admis dans la chambre nuptiale. Aujourd’hui, tu as revêtu à nouveau la gloire d’Adam. Tes vêtements sont beaux, ta couronne est magnifique. Par le ministère de son prêtre, le Premier-né les a préparés pour toi. Le fruit qu’Adam n’a pas goûté au Paradis a été mis, aujourd’hui, dans ta bouche. Va en paix, fils du baptistère. Adore la Croix ! Elle te préservera.
Si seulement nous avions la moindre idée de ce qui nous a déjà été donné, et si nous laissions simplement grandir cette semence de grâce ! Ce n’est pas pour rien que l’Évangile regorge de paraboles agricoles. Ce qui importe, c’est de nourrir la conscience de ce que l’on a reçu, que l’on en ressente quelque chose ou non, puis de renforcer et d’affermir la volonté de laisser se réaliser ce potentiel ; et enfin, il faut aider les gens à s’ouvrir à une nouvelle expérience selon la Providence de Dieu et les préparer à être surpris.
T.G. Dans votre environnement scandinave plus ou moins protestant, n’est-il pas difficile de parler de cette objectivité de la grâce et des sacrements ? N’est-il pas difficile de se faire comprendre dans ce milieu ?
Erik Varden Non, au contraire, je constate que les gens recherchent cela, et qu’ils sont soulagés de le trouver, et de rencontrer le mystère comme quelque chose de réel en soi, qui ne dépend pas d’une projection émotionnelle.
Je constate que la plupart des gens, qu’ils viennent d’un milieu non religieux, d’un milieu résiduellement chrétien ou même d’un milieu protestant très fervent, sont très reconnaissants de pouvoir se reposer dans la vie sacramentelle de l’Église et d’être libérés de ce besoin ressenti d’être subjectivement performants.
T.G. On vous demande aussi très souvent de parler de votre histoire et de vos origines protestantes.
Erik Varden Là encore, il n’y a pas grand-chose à dire. J’ai été baptisé quand j’étais enfant, et j’en suis reconnaissant, de sorte qu’à un stade ultérieur de ma vie, la grâce a eu une sorte de point d’ancrage par lequel j’ai pu y accéder. Je suis reconnaissant d’avoir reçu cette grâce, et j’essaie de me rappeler de temps en temps de prier pour le pasteur qui m’a baptisé. Nous devons veiller à n’exclure personne de cette source de grâce.
T.G. Dans votre livre Entering the Twofold Mystery [Entrer dans le double mystère], vous parlez de la réalité de devenir partie du corps du Christ par le baptême. Qu’est-ce qui est important dans ce processus, que signifie réellement être incorporé au corps du Christ ? On ne devient pas simplement membre de l’Église au sens institutionnel du terme.
Erik Varden C’est pourquoi la notion dont nous avons parlé plus tôt, la mystagogie, est un terme si utile, un terme à expliquer aux gens s’il semble un peu bizarre, parce qu’il signifie précisément cela – une entrée dans le mystère, le mystère pas seulement comme une énigme conceptuelle, mais comme un mystère personnel, comme le fait de l’Emmanuel, de Dieu avec nous. Il s’agit d’être greffé sur le corps, en termes pauliniens, et de devenir membre de ce corps, ce qui permet de commencer à découvrir ce que peut signifier vivre dans le Christ. Cette expression paulinienne clé est une déclaration cruciale, un paradigme de la vie chrétienne.
Il est essentiel d’insister sur le fait que le baptême est une insertion intime et personnelle dans le mystère personnel du Christ, tout en soulignant le fait que cette insertion, précisément, ne se limite pas à une expérience subjective mais qu’elle a également un aspect juridique dans le droit canon. Je me souviens d’avoir assisté à une cérémonie de réception dans l’Église, lorsque j’étais étudiant. Lorsque le prêtre a dûment accompli tous les rites et que la personne a été reçue et confirmée, il a dit avec éclat : “Voilà, c’est fini, vous serez toujours catholique ; la seule autre chose que vous puissiez être maintenant, c’est un catholique déchu”. Le fait est que quelque chose se produit à la fois ontologiquement et juridiquement qui me définit d’une nouvelle manière en termes de relation avec ce corps, personnel et collectif. Il est donc important de toujours veiller à garder ces dimensions ensemble, ce qui est un défi à notre époque, car personne ne semble avoir la moindre envie de garder plus d’une pensée à la fois, à un moment donné.
T.G. Mais que signifie vivre en Christ ? Cela semble très beau pour beaucoup de gens, mais lorsqu’il s’agit de déterminer le contenu de ce terme, comment le définir ?
Erik Varden Je ne peux pas le définir, car il est par nature ineffable. Je peux l’indiquer en montrant la physionomie et la personnalité du Christ telles qu’elles nous sont révélées dans l’Écriture, dans les Évangiles et dans les grandes prophéties de l’Ancien Testament. C’est pourquoi il est si important de contempler la vie et le mystère du Christ. Il faut adhérer à la Parole : à la fois à la Parole exprimée dans l’Écriture Sainte, et la Parole dans son incarnation. Alors on commence à saisir, en fixant notre regard sur Lui, une certaine idée de la longueur, de la profondeur, de la largeur et de la hauteur de ce qu’Il représente. Et être inséré dans la vie du Christ, c’est consentir à cette extension des dimensions dans mon propre être et commencer à en faire l’expérience.
Vers la fin du prologue de sa Règle, saint Benoît parle de façon mémorable de l’élargissement, de la dilatation du cœur qui, dans la compréhension de soi et la théologie bénédictines, ont toujours été un symbole de cet élargissement existentiel, de cette capacité de vivre plus profondément, d’appréhender plus profondément, de sentir plus purement, et de faire en sorte que mon cœur et toute ma perception deviennent de plus en plus grands pour prendre les proportions du cœur de Dieu lui-même, qui est par définition sans limites. Ainsi commencer existentiellement, humblement, pas à pas, à entrer dans une expérience et une participation à l’éternité est fondamental pour s’engager dans une initiation à la vie en Christ.
T.G. Vous avez fait référence à la tradition bénédictine, et il y a un autre terme dans cette tradition qui pourrait être important en relation avec le baptême – la conversatio morum. Que peut ajouter la tradition monastique à la compréhension du drame ou du processus de la vie humaine, si vous la comprenez comme une conversatio morum ? Que peut offrir cette idée monastique à chaque chrétien ?
Erik Varden Je pense que la conversatio morum, dans une certaine mesure, est une expression descriptive plutôt que prescriptive, et qu’elle indique une résolution de toujours rester en mouvement, de ne jamais rester immobile. Il y a une dialectique intrinsèque dans les vœux bénédictins et dans l’engagement monastique. D’une part, les moines font un vœu de stabilité, c’est-à-dire le vœu de ne pas s’enfuir, de rester fixé dans sa communauté, ce qui signifie normalement être fixé dans un lieu. Mais en complément, il y a ce vœu de conversatio morum, qui est un vœu de ne jamais s’installer dans la résignation, de ne jamais penser : “oh, c’est assez, j’ai atteint un but suffisant, ou j’en ai assez”. Le vœu de conversatio est une disposition à se laisser remettre en question, même dans sa prétendue suffisance ou dans son prétendu sens de la vertu. Les récits de la tradition monastique regorgent d’histoires de moines qui semblent être des modèles de vertu. Ils sont respectés, admirés, et parfois même éprouvent une certaine admiration pour eux-mêmes. Mais ensuite ils sont confrontés à quelque chose d’entièrement nouveau, soit par l’intervention directe de Dieu, soit par une expérience du péché ou de la grâce, soit par la rencontre d’une autre personne. Pensez par exemple à la rencontre de Marie l’égyptienne et de Zosime. Cela les amène à tout repenser et ils commencent à réaliser : “oh, je pensais que j’étais arrivé et je n’ai même pas commencé”.
J’aimerais que cette conscience soit un peu plus présente dans notre Église, qui est en quelque sorte axée sur les processus. Nous sommes entourés de structures séculières et politiques qui fonctionnent sous forme de périodes électorales de trois ou quatre ans ; nous nous attendons constamment à ce que des révolutions aient lieu en périodes électorales, et lorsqu’elles n’ont pas lieu, ce qui était prévisible, nous sommes déçus, puis nous recommençons, et nous exprimons notre juste indignation, et nous sommes piégés dans ce cycle illusoire. La perspective de la conversatio morum est beaucoup plus réaliste en ce sens qu’elle embrasse par nature la perspective d’une vie humaine entière jusqu’à sa mort naturelle, qu’elle considère l’ensemble de la vie humaine et qu’elle l’envisage comme un processus de changement progressif constant vers une perfection personnelle qui correspond à la providence de Dieu, mais qui n’est pas un mystère pour chacun d’entre nous. Ainsi, vivre dans le cadre de la conversatio morum, c’est constamment consentir à dire “oui”,à me laisser transformer dans un processus de devenir dont le but m’est inconnu.
T.G. Je pense que l’un des fondateurs de Communio, Hans Urs von Balthasar, serait très heureux d’entendre cela.
Erik Varden Je pense qu’il était tout à fait sur cette longueur d’onde.
T.G. Un autre aspect de Balthasar que je voulais aborder est que si vous êtes baptisé, vous devez généralement, d’une certaine manière, confirmer ou concrétiser ce baptême. Il faut d’abord être confirmé, puis décider de la forme de vie chrétienne que l’on souhaite pour soi-même – il semble très difficile, voire impossible, d’être simplement un chrétien baptisé“généralement”. Comment voyez-vous la relation entre le baptême et les autres sacrements qui donnent une forme concrète à votre vie ?
Erik Varden Eh bien, évidemment, le baptême est le fondement. Dans une certaine mesure, le baptême est ce qui nous équipe pour une mission, pour une tâche, quelle qu’elle soit. Et comme vous l’avez dit, cela peut prendre de multiples formes. Je suppose que l’important (et c’est pourquoi je pense qu’il est très bon que vous mettiez ainsi l’accent sur le baptême) est de nous rappeler sans cesse ce que nous avons, en fait, déjà reçu. Car je sais par expérience, dans la confession ou la direction spirituelle, que les gens ont souvent l’impression de repartir constamment à zéro et qu’ils se sentent très perplexes. En leur rappelant ce qu’ils ont déjà reçu à travers les sacrements de l’initiation, vous leur donnez le sentiment de réaliser qu’il y a déjà une rampe de lancement.
Vous avez parlé de la confirmation. La validité et l’efficacité du baptême ne dépendent évidemment pas de la confirmation, car il a sa propre intégrité. Mais la confirmation est conçue comme un éveil, un défi et une invitation à faire des choix importants, ce qui est intrinsèque à toute vie humaine et à la vie chrétienne. Elle nous dit : “Regardez, vous avez reçu cette ressource extraordinaire et vous portez en vous une source infinie de grâce et de vie. Qu’allez-vous en faire ? Comment allez-vous rendre cette grâce féconde et constructive, non seulement pour vous-même, mais pour le bien du Corps dont vous êtes le membre ? Comment pouvez-vous rechercher le bonheur, la liberté, la fécondité pour vous-même et en même temps être une bénédiction pour les autres ?” Ce sens de la mission est peut-être un aspect de la vie chrétienne sur lequel nous pourrions insister un peu plus.
T.G. Il y a un autre aspect des sacrements que vous examinez intensivement, c’est l’aspect de la guérison. Votre nouveau livre intitulé Healing Wounds [Guérir les blessures], qui est le livre de Carême 2025, mais aussi vos autres livres, traitent abondamment de ce sujet. Pourquoi pensez-vous que les blessures sont si importantes aujourd’hui ? Quel type de blessures les gens ont-ils et que signifie la guérison ?
Erik Varden Eh bien, j’utilise consciemment cette terminologie en me fondant également sur ma compréhension du péché, une compréhension que j’essaie de développer dans mon livre sur la chasteté. En Occident, conditionnés par les controverses du xvie siècle, nous avons tendance à penser au péché en termes de culpabilité. Nous pensons au péché en termes de scénario dostoïevskien de crime et de châtiment. Nous sortons les bilans et nous faisons nos comptes. Je ne dis pas que cette conception est illicite ou qu’elle est totalement inutile, mais elle est insuffisante.
Il est utile de retrouver consciemment la compréhension plus biblique et patristique du péché comme une blessure primordiale, comme une perte, comme un deuil, comme une sorte d’amputation dans le sens où l’on est coupé de la communauté et où l’on aspire pourtant à en faire partie. En partant du paradigme narratif des blessures en quête de guérison, nous avons une meilleure chance de capter l’attention et l’intérêt de nos contemporains. Car nous vivons à une époque qui, d’une certaine manière, est obsédée par les blessures. Et nous vivons dans une culture occidentale très largement axée sur la victimisation. Nous nous victimisons nous-mêmes ou nous victimisons les autres. Et une grande partie de nos divertissements, que ce soit dans les journaux, les médias, les films ou les romans, portent sur les blessures.
Mais ce qui manque le plus à notre époque, c’est la perspective que les blessures peuvent être guéries. C’est pourquoi il est vraiment, vraiment important d’apporter un éclairage chrétien sur cette dynamique. Parce que le christianisme et le judaïsme – c’est-à-dire la révélation biblique – sont extrêmement réalistes en ce qui concerne les blessures humaines. Mais ils nous rappellent constamment de ne pas nous identifier à nos blessures, de ne pas succomber à la tentation de dire : “oh, je suis l’homme à la main desséchée”, ou “je suis l’homme allongé sur une civière sans personne pour me porter dans l’eau”, ou “je suis l’homme qui a subi cette perte quand j’étais enfant”, ou qui a été compromis de telle ou telle manière, ou qui a reçu trop de ceci ou pas assez de cela.
L’Écriture ne se désintéresse pas de cette base factuelle de l’expérience humaine. Elle dit : “Appropriez-vous cela, appropriez-vous chaque aspect de votre existence et de votre histoire, sans rien cacher ou sans essayer de faire semblant que rien n’est là. Mais soyez assurés qu’il n’y a pas de blessure qui ne puisse être guérie. Et soyez assurés que ce pour quoi vous êtes faits et ce à quoi vous êtes destinés– si ce n’est pas dans cette vie, ce sera dans la prochaine – c’est l’intégrité, la plénitude et le bonheur”.
T.G. Dans votre expérience pastorale, de quoi souffre le plus le chrétien d’aujourd’hui ?
Erik Varden Je pense au désespoir. Je pense que l’éveil de l’espoir est une tâche immense. Il faut se préparer à vivre dans une perspective d’avenir, à regarder devant soi, à croire qu’il y a quelque chose à attendre. Pas seulement dans le sens banal de se réjouir de boire une bière ce soir ou de fêter son anniversaire la semaine prochaine, mais dans le sens où la vie, ma vie personnelle et la vie en tant que telle, la vie du monde, a une finalité intentionnelle et se dirige vers un but, qui n’est pas seulement un désastre. Nous devons entretenir cette espérance tout en étant parfaitement lucides et ouverts sur l’état extrêmement inquiétant du monde dans lequel nous vivons et dont nous sommes responsables.
T.G. En ce qui concerne le monde contemporain, une partie de votre mission semble consister à aborder l’imagination de la culture contemporaine. Comment imaginez-vous la relation entre le christianisme contemporain et la culture non chrétienne contemporaine ? Comment pouvez-vous trouver des moyens de répondre aux inquiétudes, aux préoccupations, aux idées, aux intérêts des gens ?
Erik Varden Je suis un citoyen du monde contemporain comme les autres. Je m’y intéresse parce que j’aime vivre les yeux et les oreilles ouverts. J’essaie donc d’être à l’écoute de ses déclarations significatives. Ce qui m’intéresse, ce n’est pas tant d’entendre le bruit de fond, car le bruit de fond est toujours le même, quelle que soit l’époque. Il a juste un rythme différent. Mais je m’intéresse à ses déclarations essentielles. Je m’intéresse aux questions que les gens posent, même s’ils ne les posent pas explicitement. Je m’intéresse aux questions qui sont implicites dans leurs déclarations, qu’il s’agisse de simples discours, d’expressions artistiques, de films ou autres. Je m’intéresse à ce dont les gens ont peur. Je m’intéresse à ce qu’ils désirent.
C’est une question que je pose souvent dans les visites pastorales : que désirez-vous ? Car l’un des aspects préoccupants du monde dans lequel nous vivons aujourd’hui – certainement dans ce pays, mais je pense plus largement dans le monde occidental – est l’absence de désir. Cela nous ramène à l’absence de perspectives dont nous avons parlé plus tôt. Il est particulièrement triste de rencontrer des jeunes de 17 ans qui ont l’impression d’avoir déjà tout vécu, qu’il ne reste plus rien et de constater leur fatigue existentielle. J’écoute cela et j’essaie de les aiguillonner, et de trouver le désir qui doit être là, parce qu’il est implanté dans notre nature humaine en vertu de notre constitution iconique, et d’essayer d’éveiller ce désir.
J’essaie donc simplement de m’engager avec sympathie dans le monde que j’habite. Les tentatives de condamner le monde contemporain ou de proclamer qu’il a déraillé, qu’il ne va nulle part, m’ennuient très vite et très facilement. Je suis beaucoup plus intéressé par la rencontre avec les personnes que la providence met sur mon chemin, parfois sans leur parler, mais en les regardant dans les yeux pour voir si la lumière est allumée ou non, et si ce n’est pas le cas, ce qui pourrait l’éclairer.
C’est une chose apparemment tout à fait banale de dire : “Dieu a tant aimé le monde qu’il a donné son Fils unique, afin que quiconque croit en lui ne périsse pas, mais ait la vie éternelle” – mais nous oublions si facilement, en tant que chrétiens, l’intensité ardente de cet amour, et que l’amour pour le monde n’est pas un amour pour une sorte de monde fictif qui existe simplement dans l’esprit de Dieu, mais c’est un amour pour le monde tel qu’il est dans son égarement, sa perversité, son état de perdition, et ses hautes aspirations. Si nous, chrétiens, pouvions simplement regarder le monde avec un peu plus d’amour, et encore une fois je ne parle pas d’un amour sentimental, je ne parle pas d’être émotifs ou sans cesse affirmatifs, mais regarder le monde et le voir comme un monde qui mérite d’être sauvé par la grâce.
T.G. Si, à la fin, nous revenons au baptême et à la situation en Scandinavie, comment évaluez-vous la dimension œcuménique du baptême ? Le baptême est notre terrain d’entente. Quels sont les fruits en termes de relations œcuméniques en Scandinavie ? Comment voyez-vous les perspectives à cet égard ?
Erik Varden Il y a toujours des fruits manifestes ou cachés, mais je reviens à ce que vous avez dit tout à l’heure à propos de la confirmation. L’essentiel est d’être clair sur ses obligations et ses responsabilités, de se rappeler que le baptême n’est pas seulement un don, mais qu’il est aussi une mission, à savoir la mission de vivre dans la vérité et de confesser la vérité.
Je pense très souvent à cette belle phrase que Jean-Paul II a adressée à la France lors de sa visite en 1996 pour l’anniversaire du baptême de Clovis ; il a prêché lors d’une messe en plein air avec bienveillance, il a félicité la France pour ce grand jubilé, et il a parlé de sa grande mission, de sa mission civilisatrice pour le monde. Mais à la fin, il a dit merveilleusement, avec cette habileté rhétorique qui était sa grande force : “Chère France, permettez-moi de poser cette question. Nous sommes ici pour célébrer le millénaire d’un baptême que vous aimez considérer comme votre baptême, comme le baptême de la France. Qu’avez-vous fait de votre baptême ? Qu’est-il devenu ? Qu’avez-vous fait de votre baptême ?”
C’est une question que nous devons tous nous poser régulièrement. Nous devons y faire face en tant que catholiques, et nous devons également l’affronter dans le cadre des rencontres œcuméniques. Si nous posons cette question en vérité, et si nous y répondons en vérité, il y a de fortes chances que cette question et la grâce qui l’accompagne nous rapprochent les uns des autres.
(Traduit de l’anglais par Corinne Marion)
Pietro Longhi, The Baptism (1755) from his series on the seven sacraments.
Conversation with Ulises Rodríguez
Last summer I was interviewed by Ulises Rodríguez for his interesting, content-rich podcast La Encrucijada, which aims to be a place where philosophy, science and theology can meet. Our encounter, broadcast recently, touched on the following principal topics and questions:
What’s the difference between a bishop and a monk?
Silicon Valley’s secular monks.
Thomas Merton, Hindu and Christian monks.
What has the monastic tradition taught us about being human?
Is contemplation in competition with rational enquiry?
What is contemplation?
Is prayer a form of knowledge?
Does the monk lead a life of leisure or of work?
What has art to do with monasticism?
Why is there ugliness in Christianity?
Can we find God in the ordinary and mundane?
How to distinguish desire and longing?
Chastity: repression vs satisfaction.
How to begin looking for God?
You can listen to our conversation, conducted in English after a short introduction in Spanish, here.
Detail from an 18th-century chasuble at the Charterhouse of Miraflores.
What’s the difference between a bishop and a monk?
Silicon Valley’s secular monks.
Thomas Merton, Hindu and Christian monks.
What has the monastic tradition taught us about being human?
Is contemplation in competition with rational enquiry?
What is contemplation?
Is prayer a form of knowledge?
Does the monk lead a life of leisure or of work?
What has art to do with monasticism?
Why is there ugliness in Christianity?
Can we find God in the ordinary and mundane?
How to distinguish desire and longing?
Chastity: repression vs satisfaction.
How to begin looking for God?
You can listen to our conversation, conducted in English after a short introduction in Spanish, here.
Detail from an 18th-century chasuble at the Charterhouse of Miraflores.
St Joseph
2 Sam 7.4-16 Your throne will be established for ever.
Rom 4.13-22 The promise depends on faith.
Mt 1.16-24 Joseph did what the angel of the Lord commanded.
God entrusted our Saviour to the care of St Joseph. St Joseph was no doubt an outstanding man. Catholic tradition has expounded his outstandingness so thoroughly that he can seem a little unreal, almost like a caricature of virtue.
What I wish to focus on tonight is rather a matter of principle. However excellent he was, Joseph was an ordinary fellow, an artisan in stable circumstances, but without special status, wealth, or social security. He owned little enough to carry his livelihood with him on a donkey’s back from Galilee to Egypt and back. To this righteous country carpenter ready to up sticks, the almighty Creator of heaven and earth entrusted his only begotten Son and the Agent of the world’s redemption.
Today’s liturgy draws several lines between Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Jacob’s son, the first Biblical Joseph. This Joseph belonged to a higher social class — Jacob was a tribal chief — but lost all when his brothers coolly sold him into slavery. For years this Joseph lived uncertainly. When he landed in Pharao’s gaol, he must have assumed he would never be released. Yet precisely he became God’s providential instrument, the link that made it possible for God’s people to avoid perishing from starvation.
Why does God act in this way? Why does he not choose more secure, warrantable procedures? Based on his case history, the Lord would not stand a chance confronted with the terms of a modern insurance agency.
God is not bound by our ideas of what is, and what is not, reasonable. He is the God of the hundredfold. He is also a God who is at ease in hiddenness and fragility. That is something to recall today, when the Church in various parts of the word agonises on account of losing ground and thinks up drastic procedures to reclaim lost territory. There’s a risk that we end up, thus, following wrong tracks.
Both the older and the younger Joseph had to lose everything. They had to leave a life that gave them security in order to step out into the unknown. There they were made ready for service within God’s plan. It often happens that God prepares us for action, not by giving us things, but by taking things away from us. That is how we learn what faith is, and hope; that is how we learn what it means in practice to live by grace.
Joseph’s emblem is the lily. The lily represents purity. Joseph was chaste in the sense St Benedict asks the abbot of a monastery to be chaste. He is to pour out his life for his sons, but not for a moment is he to believe that they belong to him. In the freedom of our Lord Jesus Christ we see, as it were, a mirror image of Joseph’s paternal liberty. The lily also represents extravagance. Solomon in all his glory could not match the lily of the field. Let us, by following Joseph’s example, be pure and generous; let us trustfully follow the Spirit’s guidance, even if it leads us to experiences of loss for the sake of fidelity, even if it takes us into uncharted landscapes.
In this way God, through the Church, will be able to make use of us for his salvific purpose, whose mark is the cross.
I love the way Joseph is often shown, in art, illumining the incarnation. I spotted this carving in the cathedral museum in Burgos a few weeks ago.
Rom 4.13-22 The promise depends on faith.
Mt 1.16-24 Joseph did what the angel of the Lord commanded.
God entrusted our Saviour to the care of St Joseph. St Joseph was no doubt an outstanding man. Catholic tradition has expounded his outstandingness so thoroughly that he can seem a little unreal, almost like a caricature of virtue.
What I wish to focus on tonight is rather a matter of principle. However excellent he was, Joseph was an ordinary fellow, an artisan in stable circumstances, but without special status, wealth, or social security. He owned little enough to carry his livelihood with him on a donkey’s back from Galilee to Egypt and back. To this righteous country carpenter ready to up sticks, the almighty Creator of heaven and earth entrusted his only begotten Son and the Agent of the world’s redemption.
Today’s liturgy draws several lines between Joseph, the husband of Mary, and Jacob’s son, the first Biblical Joseph. This Joseph belonged to a higher social class — Jacob was a tribal chief — but lost all when his brothers coolly sold him into slavery. For years this Joseph lived uncertainly. When he landed in Pharao’s gaol, he must have assumed he would never be released. Yet precisely he became God’s providential instrument, the link that made it possible for God’s people to avoid perishing from starvation.
Why does God act in this way? Why does he not choose more secure, warrantable procedures? Based on his case history, the Lord would not stand a chance confronted with the terms of a modern insurance agency.
God is not bound by our ideas of what is, and what is not, reasonable. He is the God of the hundredfold. He is also a God who is at ease in hiddenness and fragility. That is something to recall today, when the Church in various parts of the word agonises on account of losing ground and thinks up drastic procedures to reclaim lost territory. There’s a risk that we end up, thus, following wrong tracks.
Both the older and the younger Joseph had to lose everything. They had to leave a life that gave them security in order to step out into the unknown. There they were made ready for service within God’s plan. It often happens that God prepares us for action, not by giving us things, but by taking things away from us. That is how we learn what faith is, and hope; that is how we learn what it means in practice to live by grace.
Joseph’s emblem is the lily. The lily represents purity. Joseph was chaste in the sense St Benedict asks the abbot of a monastery to be chaste. He is to pour out his life for his sons, but not for a moment is he to believe that they belong to him. In the freedom of our Lord Jesus Christ we see, as it were, a mirror image of Joseph’s paternal liberty. The lily also represents extravagance. Solomon in all his glory could not match the lily of the field. Let us, by following Joseph’s example, be pure and generous; let us trustfully follow the Spirit’s guidance, even if it leads us to experiences of loss for the sake of fidelity, even if it takes us into uncharted landscapes.
In this way God, through the Church, will be able to make use of us for his salvific purpose, whose mark is the cross.
I love the way Joseph is often shown, in art, illumining the incarnation. I spotted this carving in the cathedral museum in Burgos a few weeks ago.
Desert Fathers 12
Below is the text of the twelfth 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.
A brother came to Scetis, to Abba Moses, asking for a word from him. The elder said to him: ‘Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.’
This scenario defines the very genre of the Desert Fathers’ sayings. A monk comes along to see another monk, asking for ‘a word’. Sometimes the question is put on the basis of specific challenge. A fellow may be troubled by an apparently congenital vice, a persistent distraction, or a painful memory that will not go away. He seeks the counsel of someone experienced, who has already passed through the parched land in which he feels lost, eager to know how he might overcome temptation, become firm in faith, and find freedom. At other times, the questioner will ask for ‘a word’ in an open-ended manner, trusting in the elder’s ability to know what he needs to hear, letting the Holy Spirit act through the grace of the moment and of the encounter. That is what is going on here.
Abba Moses, a released slave and former bandit, was known for his non-judgemental charity and exemplary life. The visitor, confident in Moses’s discernment, asks for general wisdom to live by, no doubt hoping to glimpse something of the secret of the other man’s intimacy with God, his holiness.
Abba Moses’s answer may seem curt. It subverts the question. ‘What are you doing running around asking for advice’, he seems to say, ‘instead of confronting yourself and your own reality before the face of God.’ It is easy to have a mistaken idea of the monk’s cell. We may imagine it, perhaps, as a place of unfailing peace and spiritual graces, a bright, tidy room with a table, a chair, a nicely made bed and a pile of leather-bound books, a room in which a friendly candle flickers and a ginger cat sleeps soundly by the stove.
By all means, the cell can be like that, sometimes. It does have the aspect of a sanctuary. More fundamentally, though, it is a battle field, a spacial concentrate of the all-encompassing desert into which the monk retreats to shun distractions without and get to know the mess he carries within. The counsel to ‘go and sit in your cell’ is an exhortation to stop fidgeting. It was topical in Abba Moses’s day. It is urgent now. Have we not, in fact, almost entirely lost the ability to sit still? Our minds are restless. Our bodies, too. We keep looking for new models of self-improvement, new gurus, books and resources, constantly persuaded that we must be doing things, that the key to the riddle of existence ever eludes us.
Abba Moses tells the roaming seeker that he has been found. He advises him to focus on this fact. It makes sense. The questioner, a monk, has heard God’s call, felt the freshness of God’s Spirit. His task, now, is to let the Spirit work, convicting him ‘concerning sin and righteousness and judgment’, guiding him into ‘all truth’. Instead of practising spiritual tourism, seeking out abbas to ask for a word (so to to tell friends, ‘Now, Abba Moses, whom I happen to know, told me…’), he should be silent and patient, inclining the ear of his heart to own his deep need, to cry out for mercy, to receive God’s quiet healing touch, in this way to learn what thanksgiving is, and praise.
The cell in this story represents the place to which God’s providence assigns us: for some it will be a monastic enclosure; for some, marriage. For others it will be a task: a needy person to look after, a sickness to bear, a reconciliation to effect. The cell can at times seem like Peniel by Jabbok, where Jacob wrestled all night till daybreak with a messenger of God who left him limp. At other times it can be like that cave on Horeb where Elijah perceived the passing of the glory of the Lord of hosts. Whether our lot today is struggle or rest is not all that important. What matters is to let God act as he sees fit and not to miss his visitation because, instead of being peacefully present in our cell, our tent of meeting, we are out and about, driving downtown distributing questionnaires on the spiritual life to passers-by.
The kind of sitting Abba Moses speaks of is no passive waiting. No, patience is an active state of existence that enables concentration of energy, orientation of purpose. A frequent cause of unhappiness is the dispersal of vitality, a sense of being pulled in many directions at once, getting a little bit of this, a little bit of that, never enjoying anything entirely. Over time we are left frustrated and weary. Is it not significant that so many people one meets these days complain, first, of having no time, then, of being very tired?
We hear an intriguing resonance of Abba Moses’s words 1300 years later, in a fragment by Pascal, the French philosopher. Pascal wrote during the reign of Louis XIV, the Sun King, who introduced on a grand scale the dictatorship of fashion. Considering the foolishness people get up to surrendered to their vanity and superficial ambitions, Pascal reflected that, ‘all mankind’s misfortune is traceable to a single cause: inability to remain at rest in a room.’ ‘At rest’, en repos; Pascal, who knew the spirituality of the Desert, whose sister was a nun, could have written, ‘in hesychia’. To outstay agitation can be a daunting proposition, at first a cause of jitteriness, but is the foundation of wisdom, so of sound, free choice.
Blaise Pascal (1623-62). A copy of the painting of François II Quesnel, made for Gérard Edelinck in 1691. Wikipedia.
A brother came to Scetis, to Abba Moses, asking for a word from him. The elder said to him: ‘Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything.’
This scenario defines the very genre of the Desert Fathers’ sayings. A monk comes along to see another monk, asking for ‘a word’. Sometimes the question is put on the basis of specific challenge. A fellow may be troubled by an apparently congenital vice, a persistent distraction, or a painful memory that will not go away. He seeks the counsel of someone experienced, who has already passed through the parched land in which he feels lost, eager to know how he might overcome temptation, become firm in faith, and find freedom. At other times, the questioner will ask for ‘a word’ in an open-ended manner, trusting in the elder’s ability to know what he needs to hear, letting the Holy Spirit act through the grace of the moment and of the encounter. That is what is going on here.
Abba Moses, a released slave and former bandit, was known for his non-judgemental charity and exemplary life. The visitor, confident in Moses’s discernment, asks for general wisdom to live by, no doubt hoping to glimpse something of the secret of the other man’s intimacy with God, his holiness.
Abba Moses’s answer may seem curt. It subverts the question. ‘What are you doing running around asking for advice’, he seems to say, ‘instead of confronting yourself and your own reality before the face of God.’ It is easy to have a mistaken idea of the monk’s cell. We may imagine it, perhaps, as a place of unfailing peace and spiritual graces, a bright, tidy room with a table, a chair, a nicely made bed and a pile of leather-bound books, a room in which a friendly candle flickers and a ginger cat sleeps soundly by the stove.
By all means, the cell can be like that, sometimes. It does have the aspect of a sanctuary. More fundamentally, though, it is a battle field, a spacial concentrate of the all-encompassing desert into which the monk retreats to shun distractions without and get to know the mess he carries within. The counsel to ‘go and sit in your cell’ is an exhortation to stop fidgeting. It was topical in Abba Moses’s day. It is urgent now. Have we not, in fact, almost entirely lost the ability to sit still? Our minds are restless. Our bodies, too. We keep looking for new models of self-improvement, new gurus, books and resources, constantly persuaded that we must be doing things, that the key to the riddle of existence ever eludes us.
Abba Moses tells the roaming seeker that he has been found. He advises him to focus on this fact. It makes sense. The questioner, a monk, has heard God’s call, felt the freshness of God’s Spirit. His task, now, is to let the Spirit work, convicting him ‘concerning sin and righteousness and judgment’, guiding him into ‘all truth’. Instead of practising spiritual tourism, seeking out abbas to ask for a word (so to to tell friends, ‘Now, Abba Moses, whom I happen to know, told me…’), he should be silent and patient, inclining the ear of his heart to own his deep need, to cry out for mercy, to receive God’s quiet healing touch, in this way to learn what thanksgiving is, and praise.
The cell in this story represents the place to which God’s providence assigns us: for some it will be a monastic enclosure; for some, marriage. For others it will be a task: a needy person to look after, a sickness to bear, a reconciliation to effect. The cell can at times seem like Peniel by Jabbok, where Jacob wrestled all night till daybreak with a messenger of God who left him limp. At other times it can be like that cave on Horeb where Elijah perceived the passing of the glory of the Lord of hosts. Whether our lot today is struggle or rest is not all that important. What matters is to let God act as he sees fit and not to miss his visitation because, instead of being peacefully present in our cell, our tent of meeting, we are out and about, driving downtown distributing questionnaires on the spiritual life to passers-by.
The kind of sitting Abba Moses speaks of is no passive waiting. No, patience is an active state of existence that enables concentration of energy, orientation of purpose. A frequent cause of unhappiness is the dispersal of vitality, a sense of being pulled in many directions at once, getting a little bit of this, a little bit of that, never enjoying anything entirely. Over time we are left frustrated and weary. Is it not significant that so many people one meets these days complain, first, of having no time, then, of being very tired?
We hear an intriguing resonance of Abba Moses’s words 1300 years later, in a fragment by Pascal, the French philosopher. Pascal wrote during the reign of Louis XIV, the Sun King, who introduced on a grand scale the dictatorship of fashion. Considering the foolishness people get up to surrendered to their vanity and superficial ambitions, Pascal reflected that, ‘all mankind’s misfortune is traceable to a single cause: inability to remain at rest in a room.’ ‘At rest’, en repos; Pascal, who knew the spirituality of the Desert, whose sister was a nun, could have written, ‘in hesychia’. To outstay agitation can be a daunting proposition, at first a cause of jitteriness, but is the foundation of wisdom, so of sound, free choice.
Blaise Pascal (1623-62). A copy of the painting of François II Quesnel, made for Gérard Edelinck in 1691. Wikipedia.
2. Sunday of Lent C
Gen 15.5-18: Terror seized him, great darkness.
Phil 3.17-4.1: Our homeland is in heaven.
Luke 9.28-36: The aspect of his face was changed.
In the Gospel narrative, the transfiguration on the mountain represents an exception. We otherwise see Jesus from conception to death in recognisable, human shape. True, he did live in evident intimacy with the Father: to see him at prayer was deeply impressive (Mk 1.35). He said wonderful things: people exclaimed when they heard him, ‘No man has ever talked like this’ (Jn 7.46). He wrought great works: wherever he was, gawkers assembled in such numbers that there was no space to move (Mk 2.2.). Still, he was a man like others, a man at home in this world. The very fact that he was ordinary became for some a stumbling block: ‘Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?’ (Mk 6.3).
Theologically, meanwhile, the transfiguration represents a norm. On Tabor Peter and the Sons of Zebedee glimpse the mystery of Jesus’s divinity. They intuit who he, their Master and Friend, is. Thereby they realise how little they in fact know him. The light that not only surrounds him but suffuses him, right into his clothes, fills them with awe. At once they are ‘heavy with sleep’, writes St Luke. Mark tells us they were ‘terrified’ (Mk 9.6). One response may well be the expression of the other, as we ascertain later in the Gospel, on another mount, while Christ prays in Gethsemane.
The message of God’s exaltation and absolute otherness was part of the revelation to Abram from the beginning. We must remember that Abraham, our father, was the product of an age that recognised divine realities but conceived of them in material form. Think, for example, of the story of Jacob’s departure from Haran after years of toil in the service of his unsympathetic uncle, Laban. On the day when Jacob and his family set out towards Canaan, Laban was busy, out shearing his sheep. Rachel, his daughter, caught the opportunity to pinch his ‘household gods’, a group of figurines so modest in size that they could easily be hidden in a perfectly ordinary camel-saddle (Gen 31.19, 34). What we face here is an image of archaic religiosity that ties notions of transcendence to concrete things. Laban’s household gods are conceptually related to the figure of Thor that St Olav struck to smithereens down at Hundorp; or, for that matter, to the figures Madama Butterfly reverently carried in her little suitcase when she made her way up the hill, bearing her cultural heritage, to marry Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, that scoundrel.
What a contrast between such notions of easily packaged, portable divinity and the story of Abram’s encounter with the one, living, uncontrollable God!
When we meet Abram in today’s reading, he has already followed God’s call for some years. He has, on account of famine, spent time as a refugee in Egypt; he has been blessed by Melchizedek and interceded for Sodom. But an heir has not yet been given him. The accomplishment of God’s original promise, ‘I will make you into a great nation’ (Gen 12.2), seems remote.
But then the Lord comes to confirm his words: Abram’s descendants will be as numerous as heaven’s stars. By way of a pledge, God appears. The revelation happens inwardly first, in Abram’s soul. Note that the presence of God calls forth, in his case too, the shared effect of sleep and terror, great inner darkness. Then the Lord shows himself recognisably as flaming, devouring light. Abraham ‘feared God’, the Bible tells us (Gen 22.12), not in the sense that he wandered about being anxious, but in the sense that he recognised the abyss separating him, a creature of dust, from God’s uncreated, ineffably glorious being. Having caught sight of God, Abram learnt what adoration means.
Something similar happens on Tabor. In the human nature of Jesus God draws near to us and becomes accessible. ‘Let the little children come to me!’, Jesus cries out (Mk 10.14), and they do come, quite without complexes. Let us not, though, reduce Our Lord to a kindergarten uncle. He remains, even in his self-outpouring, ‘God from God, Light from Light’. When he encounters us at our level, it is not in order that we should remain there, simply affirmed in our present state; it is to pull us upward to himself, that we may establish a new life where he is. Our homeland is in heaven; here on earth, on this earth so dear to us, we are as if in a departure terminal. No one has a permanent abode in such a place, even if we’re fortunate enough to have access to the Senators’ Lounge.
By being transfigured to his disciples, Jesus gives them a new perspective on what they have so far experienced and on what lies ahead: at this point Calvary is clearly visible on the horizon. They realise that the Gospel is not just a project of self-improvement; it is the beginning of a new heaven and a new earth in which God will be all in all. The fact that Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets in person, so to speak, naturally appear within the radius of Jesus’s glory proves that death is not a matter of final consequence — death, in fact, is rather overrated.
To walk in God’s light is to walk beyond limitations of time and space, embraced by a greater reality, entrusted a task that reaches to the ends of a universe that for us appears infinite. ‘This is my Son, the Chosen One: Listen to him’, says the voice issuing from the cloud that, just as during Israel’s exodus, testifies to the Father’s presence.
Yes, that is exactly what we will do. For he alone lets us see reality in a true perspective. His word is truth. If we follow it truly, we shall not stumble, here or in eternity. Amen.
Phil 3.17-4.1: Our homeland is in heaven.
Luke 9.28-36: The aspect of his face was changed.
In the Gospel narrative, the transfiguration on the mountain represents an exception. We otherwise see Jesus from conception to death in recognisable, human shape. True, he did live in evident intimacy with the Father: to see him at prayer was deeply impressive (Mk 1.35). He said wonderful things: people exclaimed when they heard him, ‘No man has ever talked like this’ (Jn 7.46). He wrought great works: wherever he was, gawkers assembled in such numbers that there was no space to move (Mk 2.2.). Still, he was a man like others, a man at home in this world. The very fact that he was ordinary became for some a stumbling block: ‘Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?’ (Mk 6.3).
Theologically, meanwhile, the transfiguration represents a norm. On Tabor Peter and the Sons of Zebedee glimpse the mystery of Jesus’s divinity. They intuit who he, their Master and Friend, is. Thereby they realise how little they in fact know him. The light that not only surrounds him but suffuses him, right into his clothes, fills them with awe. At once they are ‘heavy with sleep’, writes St Luke. Mark tells us they were ‘terrified’ (Mk 9.6). One response may well be the expression of the other, as we ascertain later in the Gospel, on another mount, while Christ prays in Gethsemane.
The message of God’s exaltation and absolute otherness was part of the revelation to Abram from the beginning. We must remember that Abraham, our father, was the product of an age that recognised divine realities but conceived of them in material form. Think, for example, of the story of Jacob’s departure from Haran after years of toil in the service of his unsympathetic uncle, Laban. On the day when Jacob and his family set out towards Canaan, Laban was busy, out shearing his sheep. Rachel, his daughter, caught the opportunity to pinch his ‘household gods’, a group of figurines so modest in size that they could easily be hidden in a perfectly ordinary camel-saddle (Gen 31.19, 34). What we face here is an image of archaic religiosity that ties notions of transcendence to concrete things. Laban’s household gods are conceptually related to the figure of Thor that St Olav struck to smithereens down at Hundorp; or, for that matter, to the figures Madama Butterfly reverently carried in her little suitcase when she made her way up the hill, bearing her cultural heritage, to marry Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, that scoundrel.
What a contrast between such notions of easily packaged, portable divinity and the story of Abram’s encounter with the one, living, uncontrollable God!
When we meet Abram in today’s reading, he has already followed God’s call for some years. He has, on account of famine, spent time as a refugee in Egypt; he has been blessed by Melchizedek and interceded for Sodom. But an heir has not yet been given him. The accomplishment of God’s original promise, ‘I will make you into a great nation’ (Gen 12.2), seems remote.
But then the Lord comes to confirm his words: Abram’s descendants will be as numerous as heaven’s stars. By way of a pledge, God appears. The revelation happens inwardly first, in Abram’s soul. Note that the presence of God calls forth, in his case too, the shared effect of sleep and terror, great inner darkness. Then the Lord shows himself recognisably as flaming, devouring light. Abraham ‘feared God’, the Bible tells us (Gen 22.12), not in the sense that he wandered about being anxious, but in the sense that he recognised the abyss separating him, a creature of dust, from God’s uncreated, ineffably glorious being. Having caught sight of God, Abram learnt what adoration means.
Something similar happens on Tabor. In the human nature of Jesus God draws near to us and becomes accessible. ‘Let the little children come to me!’, Jesus cries out (Mk 10.14), and they do come, quite without complexes. Let us not, though, reduce Our Lord to a kindergarten uncle. He remains, even in his self-outpouring, ‘God from God, Light from Light’. When he encounters us at our level, it is not in order that we should remain there, simply affirmed in our present state; it is to pull us upward to himself, that we may establish a new life where he is. Our homeland is in heaven; here on earth, on this earth so dear to us, we are as if in a departure terminal. No one has a permanent abode in such a place, even if we’re fortunate enough to have access to the Senators’ Lounge.
By being transfigured to his disciples, Jesus gives them a new perspective on what they have so far experienced and on what lies ahead: at this point Calvary is clearly visible on the horizon. They realise that the Gospel is not just a project of self-improvement; it is the beginning of a new heaven and a new earth in which God will be all in all. The fact that Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets in person, so to speak, naturally appear within the radius of Jesus’s glory proves that death is not a matter of final consequence — death, in fact, is rather overrated.
To walk in God’s light is to walk beyond limitations of time and space, embraced by a greater reality, entrusted a task that reaches to the ends of a universe that for us appears infinite. ‘This is my Son, the Chosen One: Listen to him’, says the voice issuing from the cloud that, just as during Israel’s exodus, testifies to the Father’s presence.
Yes, that is exactly what we will do. For he alone lets us see reality in a true perspective. His word is truth. If we follow it truly, we shall not stumble, here or in eternity. Amen.
Sign of Jonah
Luke 11.29-32: The only sign it will be given is the sign of Jonah.
What is the sign of Jonah? It refers to resurrection, of course. Jonah’s three days spent in the belly of the whale is a figure of Christ’s sojourn in death. Mortality was for Biblical Israel so much tied up with the sea that St John tells us: at the last, when death shall be no more, the sea will be turned into glass, rendered harmless.
Jesus gives the sign a further slant when he says: ‘Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites’. The Ninevites did not witness his emergence from watery depths. They only saw what came next. Jonah for them was a preacher of repentance, a messenger of God’s sternness and promise. The sign of Jonah reminds us that new life, in this world as in the next, is not given merely for our personal enjoyment but for the bringing-together and saving of God’s people.
No divine gift, no call, is private. All is grace. All is to be freely received, freely shared. We need to learn to live with empty hands. That is what Lent sets out to teach us afresh each year. In a Lenten prayer attributed to St Ephrem we pray,
O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk. Give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to your servant.
That is: take from me, at whatever cost, all that imprisons me in myself; give me what opens me up to communion, freedom, friendship, love.
Praying that prayer with sincerity, we may become bearers of Jonah’s sign, bringers of light into darkness, weary sea-dogs turned into peaceful apostles.
15th-century illumination now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
What is the sign of Jonah? It refers to resurrection, of course. Jonah’s three days spent in the belly of the whale is a figure of Christ’s sojourn in death. Mortality was for Biblical Israel so much tied up with the sea that St John tells us: at the last, when death shall be no more, the sea will be turned into glass, rendered harmless.
Jesus gives the sign a further slant when he says: ‘Jonah became a sign to the Ninevites’. The Ninevites did not witness his emergence from watery depths. They only saw what came next. Jonah for them was a preacher of repentance, a messenger of God’s sternness and promise. The sign of Jonah reminds us that new life, in this world as in the next, is not given merely for our personal enjoyment but for the bringing-together and saving of God’s people.
No divine gift, no call, is private. All is grace. All is to be freely received, freely shared. We need to learn to live with empty hands. That is what Lent sets out to teach us afresh each year. In a Lenten prayer attributed to St Ephrem we pray,
O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust of power, and idle talk. Give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience, and love to your servant.
That is: take from me, at whatever cost, all that imprisons me in myself; give me what opens me up to communion, freedom, friendship, love.
Praying that prayer with sincerity, we may become bearers of Jonah’s sign, bringers of light into darkness, weary sea-dogs turned into peaceful apostles.
15th-century illumination now in the Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Desert Fathers 11
Below is the text of the eleventh 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 Mark said to Abba Arsenius: ‘Why do you flee from us?’ The elder said to him: ‘God knows that I love you. But I cannot be with God and with people. The myriads and chiliads on high have one will; human beings meanwhile have many wills. Therefore I cannot abandon God in order to walk among people.’
Arsenius cuts a dashing figure in the desert landscape. We know quite a lot about him. Born in Rome in the 350s into a Christian family, he received a fine education, acquiring great mastery in both Latin and Greek. Arsenius was ordained a deacon, set on a Roman clerical path. Then something unexpected happened. The emperor Theodosios heard of him and thought he would make a suitable tutor for his sons, the future emperors Arcadius and Honorius.
Arsenius was less than keen, but Pope Damasus encouraged him; so off he went to Constantinople, finding himself an honoured member of the imperial household, living in luxury. Arsenius gave himself fully to his task. Still, yearning for a different life, he felt out of sorts. In prayer he asked, ‘Lord, show me how I can be saved!’ He heard a voice that told him: ‘Arsenius, flee from human beings and you will be saved.’ Arsenius heeded. He left his secure position, status and wealth, and retired to the Egyptian desert. From being a grand personage, he became a nobody. He sought obscurity. The Fathers were sceptical at first. Would this cultivated la-di-da intellectual put up with the hardships of monastic life? Not only did they ascertain that he could. Arsenius was soon held in awe on account of his voluntary poverty, silence, self-exertion, and fervent prayer.
The pursuit of hesychia, ascetic peace, was his hallmark. The voice heard in Constantinople spoke to him in the wilderness, too: ‘Arsenius, flee, be silent, pursue peace, for these are the roots of sinlessness.’ Once an esteemed archbishop came out to see him, asking for a word. Arsenius asked, ‘If I do speak, will you follow what I say?’ The archbishop said, ‘Of course!’ Arsenius retorted, ‘Wherever you hear Arsenius is, don’t go there.’ Archbishops can be tenacious. This one later sent a servant ahead to ask Abba Arsenius if he would be received. Arsenius replied, ‘If you come, I shall open to you; if I open to you, I shall open to everyone. And then I shall not go on living here.’ The penny dropped. The archbishop left him in peace.
Admirable though Arsenius’s commitment is, we may ask if it is Christian to live like this. What about the commandments of love and service? Arsenius knew himself bound by them. When Abba Mark, puzzled, perhaps hurt, asked, ‘Why do you flee from us?’, the first thing Arsenius said was, ‘God knows that I love you!’ His was not a misanthropic flight. He made it clear that he would of course open the door to anyone who knocked, to offer hospitality and refreshment; only, he knew that what God asked of him was something different, a single-minded attention that life in a crowd would not allow. He sought the unification of his will, knowing he was vulnerable to distraction. Here his former life must be taken into consideration.
Arsenius was literate and articulate, of courtly habits. He knew how to please. Wishing to be a poor follower of the poor Christ, he was suspicious of these qualities, useful in their proper setting, but potentially obstacles to one summoned to a life of self-oblation. That is why God inspired in him the counsel: ‘flee, be silent, pursue peace’. From it we can draw two lessons. First we learn that natural gifts may at time stand in the way of supernatural maturing. If I am very good at something, and recognised by others as being good, I am tempted to define myself in terms of this gift. The gift is a blessing; but once I display it as a possession in search of admiration or power it may exercise corrupting influence. It takes purity of heart to negotiate great talent.
Arsenius was wary of his way with words, of his charm. So he withdrew to be cleansed, turned towards God’s purifying fire. The second lesson is this: God sometimes distils a particular vocation in a single imperative. To Arsenius the word was given: ‘Flee!’ Others may be told: ‘Cast off your chain!’, ‘Leave bitterness!’, ‘Forgive!’ It is good to pray at times: ‘Lord, what is your call to me?’ Then to listen, and obey.
Arsenius became, by staying true to his call, a transformed man. A brother who once passed by his cell happened to see Arsenius through the window. The old man was ‘entirely like a flame’. Amazed, the observer knocked. Arsenius came out. Seeing the brother marvelling, he asked, I’d think a little gruffly, ‘Have you been knocking long? Did you see anything?’ The other said, ‘No.’ So he talked with him a while and sent him away. His humility had become connatural. He kept his graces hidden. That is not to say that they did not bear fruit for the Church. St Paul reminds us that the Church is a body: ‘if one member is honoured, all rejoice together.’
An ancient liturgical poem celebrates the fruitfulness of Arsenius’s singular life:
By a flood of tears you made the desert fertile, and your longing for God brought forth fruits in abundance. By the radiance of miracles you illumined the whole universe! O our holy father Arsenius, pray to Christ our God to save our souls!
Amen to that.
Abba Mark said to Abba Arsenius: ‘Why do you flee from us?’ The elder said to him: ‘God knows that I love you. But I cannot be with God and with people. The myriads and chiliads on high have one will; human beings meanwhile have many wills. Therefore I cannot abandon God in order to walk among people.’
Arsenius cuts a dashing figure in the desert landscape. We know quite a lot about him. Born in Rome in the 350s into a Christian family, he received a fine education, acquiring great mastery in both Latin and Greek. Arsenius was ordained a deacon, set on a Roman clerical path. Then something unexpected happened. The emperor Theodosios heard of him and thought he would make a suitable tutor for his sons, the future emperors Arcadius and Honorius.
Arsenius was less than keen, but Pope Damasus encouraged him; so off he went to Constantinople, finding himself an honoured member of the imperial household, living in luxury. Arsenius gave himself fully to his task. Still, yearning for a different life, he felt out of sorts. In prayer he asked, ‘Lord, show me how I can be saved!’ He heard a voice that told him: ‘Arsenius, flee from human beings and you will be saved.’ Arsenius heeded. He left his secure position, status and wealth, and retired to the Egyptian desert. From being a grand personage, he became a nobody. He sought obscurity. The Fathers were sceptical at first. Would this cultivated la-di-da intellectual put up with the hardships of monastic life? Not only did they ascertain that he could. Arsenius was soon held in awe on account of his voluntary poverty, silence, self-exertion, and fervent prayer.
The pursuit of hesychia, ascetic peace, was his hallmark. The voice heard in Constantinople spoke to him in the wilderness, too: ‘Arsenius, flee, be silent, pursue peace, for these are the roots of sinlessness.’ Once an esteemed archbishop came out to see him, asking for a word. Arsenius asked, ‘If I do speak, will you follow what I say?’ The archbishop said, ‘Of course!’ Arsenius retorted, ‘Wherever you hear Arsenius is, don’t go there.’ Archbishops can be tenacious. This one later sent a servant ahead to ask Abba Arsenius if he would be received. Arsenius replied, ‘If you come, I shall open to you; if I open to you, I shall open to everyone. And then I shall not go on living here.’ The penny dropped. The archbishop left him in peace.
Admirable though Arsenius’s commitment is, we may ask if it is Christian to live like this. What about the commandments of love and service? Arsenius knew himself bound by them. When Abba Mark, puzzled, perhaps hurt, asked, ‘Why do you flee from us?’, the first thing Arsenius said was, ‘God knows that I love you!’ His was not a misanthropic flight. He made it clear that he would of course open the door to anyone who knocked, to offer hospitality and refreshment; only, he knew that what God asked of him was something different, a single-minded attention that life in a crowd would not allow. He sought the unification of his will, knowing he was vulnerable to distraction. Here his former life must be taken into consideration.
Arsenius was literate and articulate, of courtly habits. He knew how to please. Wishing to be a poor follower of the poor Christ, he was suspicious of these qualities, useful in their proper setting, but potentially obstacles to one summoned to a life of self-oblation. That is why God inspired in him the counsel: ‘flee, be silent, pursue peace’. From it we can draw two lessons. First we learn that natural gifts may at time stand in the way of supernatural maturing. If I am very good at something, and recognised by others as being good, I am tempted to define myself in terms of this gift. The gift is a blessing; but once I display it as a possession in search of admiration or power it may exercise corrupting influence. It takes purity of heart to negotiate great talent.
Arsenius was wary of his way with words, of his charm. So he withdrew to be cleansed, turned towards God’s purifying fire. The second lesson is this: God sometimes distils a particular vocation in a single imperative. To Arsenius the word was given: ‘Flee!’ Others may be told: ‘Cast off your chain!’, ‘Leave bitterness!’, ‘Forgive!’ It is good to pray at times: ‘Lord, what is your call to me?’ Then to listen, and obey.
Arsenius became, by staying true to his call, a transformed man. A brother who once passed by his cell happened to see Arsenius through the window. The old man was ‘entirely like a flame’. Amazed, the observer knocked. Arsenius came out. Seeing the brother marvelling, he asked, I’d think a little gruffly, ‘Have you been knocking long? Did you see anything?’ The other said, ‘No.’ So he talked with him a while and sent him away. His humility had become connatural. He kept his graces hidden. That is not to say that they did not bear fruit for the Church. St Paul reminds us that the Church is a body: ‘if one member is honoured, all rejoice together.’
An ancient liturgical poem celebrates the fruitfulness of Arsenius’s singular life:
By a flood of tears you made the desert fertile, and your longing for God brought forth fruits in abundance. By the radiance of miracles you illumined the whole universe! O our holy father Arsenius, pray to Christ our God to save our souls!
Amen to that.