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:
3. Sunday of Advent 
Jes 35:1-6a, 10: De som Herren har løst, vender nå tilbake.
Jak 5:7-10: Se på bonden!
Matt 11:2-11: Er du den som skal komme?
Mannen vi i vestlig, latinsk kristen tradisjon kaller Johannes Døperen, påkalles i Øst som προδρόμος, ‘forløperen’. Og det var Read More
Jak 5:7-10: Se på bonden!
Matt 11:2-11: Er du den som skal komme?
Mannen vi i vestlig, latinsk kristen tradisjon kaller Johannes Døperen, påkalles i Øst som προδρόμος, ‘forløperen’. Og det var Read More
Conversation with Ana Zarzalejos Vicens Below is an English version of a conversation you can read in Spanish here.
Are we living, right now, in a post-secular era?
I think so. I’ve said this in a couple of interviews over the last year. I think we see Read More
Are we living, right now, in a post-secular era?
I think so. I’ve said this in a couple of interviews over the last year. I think we see Read More
Desert Fathers 50 You can find this episode in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here.
There was a man of Read More
There was a man of Read More
2 Sunday of Advent A Homily given to conclude an Advent recollection at the Venerable English College.
Isaiah 11.1-10: The fear of the Lord is his breath.
Romans 15.4-9: Everything written teaches us about hope.
Matthew 3-12: Brood of vipers!
If there were courses in pastoral theology in Read More
Isaiah 11.1-10: The fear of the Lord is his breath.
Romans 15.4-9: Everything written teaches us about hope.
Matthew 3-12: Brood of vipers!
If there were courses in pastoral theology in Read More
3. Sunday of Advent
Jes 35:1-6a, 10: De som Herren har løst, vender nå tilbake.
Jak 5:7-10: Se på bonden!
Matt 11:2-11: Er du den som skal komme?
Mannen vi i vestlig, latinsk kristen tradisjon kaller Johannes Døperen, påkalles i Øst som προδρόμος, ‘forløperen’. Og det var dét han gjorde: han fløy forut for å gjøre veier, hjerter og sinn rede for Herrens åpenbaring. Mens Ordet som ble kjød ennå stod skjult, et anonymt nærvær midt i folkemassen, så Johannes med klarhet hvem han var: ‘Se Guds Lam som bærer verdens synd’, for det er nå engang ved å bære synden at Jesus tar den bort.
Johannes ser ut til å ha skjønt alt dette fra begynnelsen av. Blant julekortene vi utveksler i disse dager, finner vi kanskje et maleri et Murillo, Spanias store barokk-kunstner, som fremstiller Johannes som en elskelig, litt lubben pjokk lysende av glede i det han står og klemmer på et snøhvitt lam som om det var en lekekamerat: ‘Se, Guds Lam!’ Vi kunne kanskje selv ønske oss et utsyn på frelsesmysteriet som var like fredelig og håpefullt.
Men la oss ikke lure av lettvint triksing som vil omgjøre det bibelske drama til trivelig eventyr. Den virkelige frelseshistorien er fortettet, kompleks, ofte mørk, slik våre liv er det; nettopp derfor taler Bibelen med myndighet, om reelle og gjennomlevde ting.
Dagens evangelium er et godt eksempel. Tragisk er det, og dypt patetisk.
Forløperen løper ikke mer. Han vansmekter i fangenskap, falt til offer for en lurvete rettsprosess drevet av en svak mann og en stolt, sjofel kvinne. Snart vil han henrettes som følge av et infall fra et uansvarlig barn. Røsten som ljomet på øde steder og vekket folks halvdøde samvittighet til liv, har lenge vært taus. Noen få disipler er knyttet til Johannes ennå. Men ellers er han glemt, slik profeter har det med å glemmes.
Og livet går videre.
Johannes Døperens røst var ikke en tilfeldig del av ham, en form for aktivitet han stod fritt til å utøve eller avstå fra. Røsten var han selv, hans vesensdyp og identitet. Da levittene spurte ham, ‘Hvem er du?’, svarte Johannes: ‘Jeg er røsten av én som roper i ørkenen!’ (Joh 1.23). Vi trenger bare å tenke på noen av de tingene Jesus sier om seg selv: ‘Jeg er livet, oppstandelsen, vintreet’, for å kjenne styrken i ordet: ‘Jeg er røsten’.
Hva gjør så en inkarnert røst, skapt for å forkynne, når den tvinges til taushet? Den ransaker seg selv, og dét med rasende intensitet. Johannes’ hele eksistens fra han lå i mors liv hadde vært fokusert på Jesus. For Jesu skyld hadde han forlatt alt. For at Jesus skulle få vokse, ville Johannes avta for å bli, simpelthen, røst (jfr. Joh 3.30). Så spør han seg nå, når han ligger i Herodes’ lenker: ‘Har jeg da tatt aldeles feil? Har jeg sløst bort livet for ingen ting? Var valgene som lå til grunn for min tilværelse bygd på illusjon?’
Kjære Brødre og Søstre, hvem av oss har ikke iblant stilt seg selv den slags angstfylte spørsmål når livet går oss i mot, særlig om natten, kanskje, når vi ligger og snur oss uten å få sove, sånn ved tre-eller-fire-tiden, timen Ingar Bergmann kalte ‘vargtimmen’, når et Lam fremstår som en skrøpelig, ja bentfrem absurd alliert.
Spørsmålet Johannes stiller forblir dog ikke ubesvart. Og det han får høre er mer enn barnslig breking. Det er Løven fra Judas stamme som erklærer sin hensikt for ham og forsikrer ham om seier. Vi skal merke oss hvordan Jesus beroliger Johannes. Det er ikke med ømme klapp på skulderen og sentimentalt pjatt. Jesu svar kan virke bryskt, som om han sa: ‘Men lukk da øynene opp, mann, og se deg omkring! Stig ut av ditt indre fengsel, som du selv har nøkler til; betrakt virkeligheten slik den er: Blinde ser, lamme går, spedalske renses, døde oppstår. Hva tror du så alt dette egentlig betyr?’
Evangeliet fører oss ikke tilbake til Johannes’ fangehull. Det forteller oss ikke hvordan han mottok og opplevde svaret han fikk. Men vi kjenner ham godt nok til å danne oss et ansvarlig bilde. Forløperen hadde jo selv forutsagt alt dette på et vis. I Ænon, ved Salim, hvor der fantes my vann, ropte Johannes til mengden (Joh 3.29):
Den som har bruden, han er brudgom; men brudgommens venn, som står og hører på ham, gleder seg storlig over brudgommens røst. Denne min glede er nå blitt fullkommen.
Johannes forstod til slutt at, nei, han hadde ikke tatt feil; han hadde gjort det han skulle gjøre; han var ikke bare et siv rystet av vinden, men brudgommens venn, utstyrt og kledd til bryllupsfest, med en indre frihet som ingen idiotisk konge kunne trampe på.
Denne tredje søndagen i advent byr oss glede oss. Så er det godt å ha Johannes som forbilde, der han springer i forkant og viser oss hvordan gleden kan bevares selv i mørke, hvordan den blir fruktbar. Vi må tre ut av vår nærsynthet, se hinsides egne sår og skrammer, ikke hengi oss til depresjon og sorg. La oss oppøve våre ører til å høre Herrens røst, som ikke alltid taler høyt; øve opp øynene til å skjelne varsomme tegn på hans komme. For Guds rike, det vokser midt i blant oss. Gleden, den virkelige gleden, ikke pseudo-varianten vi kan kjøpe på nett, er innen rekkevidde. Morgenrøden kaller oss, hvis bare vi vil vende nattemørket ryggen.
Pilegrimene Jesaja så vende hjem til Sion med gledesrop var samme folk som hadde lidd i trelldom og eksil. De gledet seg nettopp fordi Herren hadde satt dem fri. Dette er relevant for oss alle: Enhver erfaring av ufrihet og begrensning er potensielt første akt i et frydefullt frelsesverk, hvis vi lar Gud handle fritt. La oss da gjør det, og lære å synge vår glede ut. Amen.
Jak 5:7-10: Se på bonden!
Matt 11:2-11: Er du den som skal komme?
Mannen vi i vestlig, latinsk kristen tradisjon kaller Johannes Døperen, påkalles i Øst som προδρόμος, ‘forløperen’. Og det var dét han gjorde: han fløy forut for å gjøre veier, hjerter og sinn rede for Herrens åpenbaring. Mens Ordet som ble kjød ennå stod skjult, et anonymt nærvær midt i folkemassen, så Johannes med klarhet hvem han var: ‘Se Guds Lam som bærer verdens synd’, for det er nå engang ved å bære synden at Jesus tar den bort.
Johannes ser ut til å ha skjønt alt dette fra begynnelsen av. Blant julekortene vi utveksler i disse dager, finner vi kanskje et maleri et Murillo, Spanias store barokk-kunstner, som fremstiller Johannes som en elskelig, litt lubben pjokk lysende av glede i det han står og klemmer på et snøhvitt lam som om det var en lekekamerat: ‘Se, Guds Lam!’ Vi kunne kanskje selv ønske oss et utsyn på frelsesmysteriet som var like fredelig og håpefullt.
Men la oss ikke lure av lettvint triksing som vil omgjøre det bibelske drama til trivelig eventyr. Den virkelige frelseshistorien er fortettet, kompleks, ofte mørk, slik våre liv er det; nettopp derfor taler Bibelen med myndighet, om reelle og gjennomlevde ting.
Dagens evangelium er et godt eksempel. Tragisk er det, og dypt patetisk.
Forløperen løper ikke mer. Han vansmekter i fangenskap, falt til offer for en lurvete rettsprosess drevet av en svak mann og en stolt, sjofel kvinne. Snart vil han henrettes som følge av et infall fra et uansvarlig barn. Røsten som ljomet på øde steder og vekket folks halvdøde samvittighet til liv, har lenge vært taus. Noen få disipler er knyttet til Johannes ennå. Men ellers er han glemt, slik profeter har det med å glemmes.
Og livet går videre.
Johannes Døperens røst var ikke en tilfeldig del av ham, en form for aktivitet han stod fritt til å utøve eller avstå fra. Røsten var han selv, hans vesensdyp og identitet. Da levittene spurte ham, ‘Hvem er du?’, svarte Johannes: ‘Jeg er røsten av én som roper i ørkenen!’ (Joh 1.23). Vi trenger bare å tenke på noen av de tingene Jesus sier om seg selv: ‘Jeg er livet, oppstandelsen, vintreet’, for å kjenne styrken i ordet: ‘Jeg er røsten’.
Hva gjør så en inkarnert røst, skapt for å forkynne, når den tvinges til taushet? Den ransaker seg selv, og dét med rasende intensitet. Johannes’ hele eksistens fra han lå i mors liv hadde vært fokusert på Jesus. For Jesu skyld hadde han forlatt alt. For at Jesus skulle få vokse, ville Johannes avta for å bli, simpelthen, røst (jfr. Joh 3.30). Så spør han seg nå, når han ligger i Herodes’ lenker: ‘Har jeg da tatt aldeles feil? Har jeg sløst bort livet for ingen ting? Var valgene som lå til grunn for min tilværelse bygd på illusjon?’
Kjære Brødre og Søstre, hvem av oss har ikke iblant stilt seg selv den slags angstfylte spørsmål når livet går oss i mot, særlig om natten, kanskje, når vi ligger og snur oss uten å få sove, sånn ved tre-eller-fire-tiden, timen Ingar Bergmann kalte ‘vargtimmen’, når et Lam fremstår som en skrøpelig, ja bentfrem absurd alliert.
Spørsmålet Johannes stiller forblir dog ikke ubesvart. Og det han får høre er mer enn barnslig breking. Det er Løven fra Judas stamme som erklærer sin hensikt for ham og forsikrer ham om seier. Vi skal merke oss hvordan Jesus beroliger Johannes. Det er ikke med ømme klapp på skulderen og sentimentalt pjatt. Jesu svar kan virke bryskt, som om han sa: ‘Men lukk da øynene opp, mann, og se deg omkring! Stig ut av ditt indre fengsel, som du selv har nøkler til; betrakt virkeligheten slik den er: Blinde ser, lamme går, spedalske renses, døde oppstår. Hva tror du så alt dette egentlig betyr?’
Evangeliet fører oss ikke tilbake til Johannes’ fangehull. Det forteller oss ikke hvordan han mottok og opplevde svaret han fikk. Men vi kjenner ham godt nok til å danne oss et ansvarlig bilde. Forløperen hadde jo selv forutsagt alt dette på et vis. I Ænon, ved Salim, hvor der fantes my vann, ropte Johannes til mengden (Joh 3.29):
Den som har bruden, han er brudgom; men brudgommens venn, som står og hører på ham, gleder seg storlig over brudgommens røst. Denne min glede er nå blitt fullkommen.
Johannes forstod til slutt at, nei, han hadde ikke tatt feil; han hadde gjort det han skulle gjøre; han var ikke bare et siv rystet av vinden, men brudgommens venn, utstyrt og kledd til bryllupsfest, med en indre frihet som ingen idiotisk konge kunne trampe på.
Denne tredje søndagen i advent byr oss glede oss. Så er det godt å ha Johannes som forbilde, der han springer i forkant og viser oss hvordan gleden kan bevares selv i mørke, hvordan den blir fruktbar. Vi må tre ut av vår nærsynthet, se hinsides egne sår og skrammer, ikke hengi oss til depresjon og sorg. La oss oppøve våre ører til å høre Herrens røst, som ikke alltid taler høyt; øve opp øynene til å skjelne varsomme tegn på hans komme. For Guds rike, det vokser midt i blant oss. Gleden, den virkelige gleden, ikke pseudo-varianten vi kan kjøpe på nett, er innen rekkevidde. Morgenrøden kaller oss, hvis bare vi vil vende nattemørket ryggen.
Pilegrimene Jesaja så vende hjem til Sion med gledesrop var samme folk som hadde lidd i trelldom og eksil. De gledet seg nettopp fordi Herren hadde satt dem fri. Dette er relevant for oss alle: Enhver erfaring av ufrihet og begrensning er potensielt første akt i et frydefullt frelsesverk, hvis vi lar Gud handle fritt. La oss da gjør det, og lære å synge vår glede ut. Amen.
Seeing
Reading Czesław Miłosz’s Nobel Prize Lecture from 1980, I am struck by this paragraph: ‘One of the Nobel laureates whom I read in childhood influenced to a large extent, I believe, my notions of poetry. That was Selma Lagerlöf. Her Wonderful Adventures of Nils, a book I loved, places the hero in a double role. He is the one who flies above the Earth and looks at it from above but at the same time sees it in every detail. This double vision may be a metaphor of the poet’s vocation. I found a similar metaphor in a Latin ode of a Seventeenth-Century poet, Maciej Sarbiewski, who was once known all over Europe under the pen-name of Casimire. He taught poetics at my university. In that ode he describes his voyage – on the back of Pegasus – from Vilno to Antwerp, where he is going to visit his poet-friends. Like Nils Holgersson he beholds under him rivers, lakes, forests, that is, a map, both distant and yet concrete. Hence, two attributes of the poet: avidity of the eye and the desire to describe that which he sees.’ Our time needs such panoramic seers and careful describers.
Coppélia
Coppélia, first performed in 1870, the year of the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War, tends to be advertised as a ‘comic ballet’ set to music by Delibes, of flower-duo fame. Coppélia is on the face of it absurd. A young man called Franz has the world’s loveliest fiancée, Swanilda. Everything is set for the wedding. But then Franz is intoxicated by a strange creature he sees in the village square, a life-like doll made by the local inventor-cum-magician Coppélius, who is untouched by human affections, living only for his designs. The drama of the ballet unfolds as Swanilda tries to win Franz back; yet such is Coppélia’s gracefulness that we are almost tempted to hope that Swanilda will fail and that love might somehow make the virtual real. This might all have seemed outlandish fantasy 150 years ago. Now the sight of a man made to choose between a virtual and an embodied-ensouled love is terribly real. I was struck by the power of this story when I saw it performed by students of the Roman Opera Ballet last week. Those youths showed us that the drama of Coppélia isn’t just some laughable old drivel; it is the stuff of contemporary tragedy.
Conversation with Ana Zarzalejos Vicens
Below is an English version of a conversation you can read in Spanish here.
Are we living, right now, in a post-secular era?
I think so. I’ve said this in a couple of interviews over the last year. I think we see it quite clearly in Northern Europe.
Obviously, we live in a time where cultural trends shift extremely quickly. And Catholics do like to be reassured. So we’re all very keen to say, ‘Oh, it was just a blip, this thing that happened when everyone seemed to be turning their back.’ Well, we might hope it is. But I think everything depends on how we greet the present providential moment, what sort of testimony we give, what sort of teaching we proclaim.
To what do you attribute a growing interest in Catholicism?
I think people feel attracted to it because it’s true. That’s the fundamental reason. And I think they increasingly feel let down by many other options. And, you know, with so much collapsing, in terms of old certainties and old institutions, with the great fragility of our political life, our cultural life, our ecological life, our financial lives, people are looking for parameters that stand some promise of resisting the flood.
Could one then argue that, well, this new curiosity regarding religion or the Catholic Church is like a life-raft for people who fear drowning, without occasioning real conversions?
No, no. I encounter such conversions almost on a daily basis. So I must simply say that such a claim would not correspond to empirical evidence.
In the Catholic Church we also see a search for what is often called a traditionalist movement, closely linked to the liturgy and to young people, causing generational tension in the Church. How do you see this?
This phenomenon occurs in some places, not everywhere. I think of Poland. I think of our own country. I wouldn’t say it is causing a lot of friction there. I think it’s connected with a search for parameters, for form, for a certain beauty. And the Church has all this.
As long as we celebrate the mysteries well, as long as we stick to the simple principle that when we celebrate the liturgy, we ‘do the red and say the black’, observing the rubrics and letting the Church’s words resound, not just our own little words — as long as we stick to this, it is compelling.
At times this is viewed as a retrograde phenomenon, opposed to the Second Vatican Council…
I think it’s time to be a little more relaxed with regard to these parameters, which more often than not don’t correspond to facts.
For instance, a lot was written about this year’s Chartres pilgrimage, a big walking pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres that takes place each Pentecost. It has a traditional, even traditionalist aspect. There were more people participating this year than ever before. Some who were there have remarked that the young taking part were impossible to categorise. They weren’t all rabid, type-cast traditionalists with ties and long skirts. Some of them might go to a charismatic service on a Saturday, then to a Latin Mass on Sunday, then go to feed the poor with Caritas on Monday. As long as we keep insisting on shoving people into narrow boxed categories, we’re just not going to understand what’s going on.
Do you think the narrative of progressive versus conservative is infiltrating the church?
I think it’s infiltrated it for a long time. And I think we must gently, kindly, perhaps even humorously subvert it.
I think of a German Benedictine scholar, a monk of Gerleve called Elmar Salmann. He taught at Sant’Anselmo for many years. I was present at his leave-taking lecture in Rome. He said, with characteristic lucidity: People have been trying for decades to classify me as either conservative or liberal. Then he said, in Italian, ‘I prefer to consider myself classico e liberante’. That’s a great example of how we can take this conversation to a deeper, more fruitful level.
Do you think we see an emergence of Christianity as a political identity?
There are certainly those who want to claim it as such. We need to take great, great care here, when it comes to the instrumentalisation of Christian symbols and of Christian vocabulary, and this whole rhetoric of a civilisational struggle.
The point we have to just keep hammering home is this: it is illicit to instrumentalise faith for any secular purpose. Faith is supposed to illumine and enrich and deepen the secular arena, but it can’t be held hostage to it.
So what would would you say is the responsibility of a Christian today?
I’m inclined to cite the counsel of Saint Antony: ‘Let Christ be the air you breathe!’ Try and live coherent, credible Christian lives; give an account of the hope that is in you; practise hospitality; bear witness to what it is to be a human being, alert both to the painfulness and the glory of the human condition; cultivate humble fascination for the mystery of God.
In a recent lecture you spoke about the linguistic discovery human beings can make when they realise ‘there is more to be said and other ways of saying it’. How can the Catholic Church, after letting many people down on account of abuse scandals, convince them that it is the custodian of eternal truths?
First of all by being truthful, by pursuing the work of reparation in justice and with tears. Perhaps that experience can teach us to be humbler, and thereby more hospitable.
Another great and joyful challenge for the Church now is to, to remain within the linguistic metaphor, to reacquire and be re-enthused by its own specific language
In the last 20 or 30 years, we in the Catholic Church have had the sense that the world has been running away from us. We’ve been trying to catch up with it and to learn to speak the way it speaks, to use the signs the world uses, to get ourselves onto TikTok and Instagram.
As long as we carry on like that, we risk condemning ourselves to irrelevance, because we’re always going to be at least 10 steps behind everyone else. The Church, a big body, moves slowly. By the time we catch up, the world has moved on.
But if we speak our own language, if we speak the language of Scripture, the language of the liturgy, the language of our ritual, the language of the sacraments, we can say astonishingly fresh, original, and beautiful things. People do listen to them.
You have written, among many things, about chastity and redemptive suffering. These aren’t exactly things that first come to mind when one thinks about what people today want to hear. So, do they listen?
I’ve been astounded by the reception of the chastity book, for instance. It’s three years now since it was published. For a long time not a day passed without letters and emails arriving, or even people coming to see me.
It has been moving to find myself standing before audiences of primarily young people in Oslo, in the United States, in Portugal, in Spain. I’ve found such openness and a real desire to engage with these questions.
What do you think that says about the search for the meaning of the body today?
I think it has a lot to do with it. In Portugal The Shattering of Loneliness and Chastity have been published as companion volumes. That makes sense, because the two books are really about the same thing, that is, about what it is to be a human being. The first one is about dealing with remembrance and about spiritual aspirations; the second one is about dealing with the hunger and the desires and the hopes of the body.
In your last book you speak of the Epic of Gilgamesh. You say that the protagonist could be our contemporary. You say he is ‘a megalomaniac, in love with his proficiency but unsure of his purpose, haunted by death, perplexed by his heart’s craving, courageous in the face of the absurd, yet weighed down by sadness’. Are these afflictions of the present moment, you think? Are contemporary men and women like that?
I think so. And I purposely use the Epic of Gilgamesh because it’s one of the earliest manifestations of literature available to us.
There is a little note of irony as well in my choice. Another theme of mine that I try to voice now and again is this: I’m just not convinced by our underlying doctrine of cultural exceptionalism, which seems to presuppose that we are just so different now; that no one can understand us; that we function on totally different terms and have nothing to learn from what anyone has said or experienced before us.
It’s just wonderful, then, to be able to point to this text, almost 3 ,000 years old, and say, well, ‘Look at that fellow. He’s just like you!’
Is that what you mean when you say that literature can save lives?
Partly. But my claim is mainly to do with simply the fact that literature, when it’s worthy of the name literature (because not every book is literature), is an attempt to articulate what life is really like.
I think it can save lives in the sense that it can help me to understand that I’m not alone, that someone’s been here before, that even if in my immediate circle of acquaintances no one may understand, or I may think that no one understands what is going on inside me, I may come upon a contemporary novel, or an eighteenth-century poem, or a page of the Metamorphoses of Ovid, and think, ‘Ah! But that’s me.’
And what about music?
Music takes us as close to eternity as we can come in this life. Music has this marvellous potential to express the ineffable. That which is beyond the reach of words can somehow be conveyed by music.
Still on the subject of culture, you have chosen to do a series on the wisdom of the Desert Fathers. Again I would say: this isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when you think of engaging with contemporary culture. What can they offer us today?
Oh, lots. Realism, wisdom, a firm spirit of faith, quite often a delicious self-irony, and a sense of the proportions of things.
What’s the biggest challenge prevents contemporary man from having an encounter with God.
I think the biggest challenge is that of believing we are loved.
What do you wish man, homo sapiens, would understood better about himself right now?
His potential for eternal life.
Are we living, right now, in a post-secular era?
I think so. I’ve said this in a couple of interviews over the last year. I think we see it quite clearly in Northern Europe.
Obviously, we live in a time where cultural trends shift extremely quickly. And Catholics do like to be reassured. So we’re all very keen to say, ‘Oh, it was just a blip, this thing that happened when everyone seemed to be turning their back.’ Well, we might hope it is. But I think everything depends on how we greet the present providential moment, what sort of testimony we give, what sort of teaching we proclaim.
To what do you attribute a growing interest in Catholicism?
I think people feel attracted to it because it’s true. That’s the fundamental reason. And I think they increasingly feel let down by many other options. And, you know, with so much collapsing, in terms of old certainties and old institutions, with the great fragility of our political life, our cultural life, our ecological life, our financial lives, people are looking for parameters that stand some promise of resisting the flood.
Could one then argue that, well, this new curiosity regarding religion or the Catholic Church is like a life-raft for people who fear drowning, without occasioning real conversions?
No, no. I encounter such conversions almost on a daily basis. So I must simply say that such a claim would not correspond to empirical evidence.
In the Catholic Church we also see a search for what is often called a traditionalist movement, closely linked to the liturgy and to young people, causing generational tension in the Church. How do you see this?
This phenomenon occurs in some places, not everywhere. I think of Poland. I think of our own country. I wouldn’t say it is causing a lot of friction there. I think it’s connected with a search for parameters, for form, for a certain beauty. And the Church has all this.
As long as we celebrate the mysteries well, as long as we stick to the simple principle that when we celebrate the liturgy, we ‘do the red and say the black’, observing the rubrics and letting the Church’s words resound, not just our own little words — as long as we stick to this, it is compelling.
At times this is viewed as a retrograde phenomenon, opposed to the Second Vatican Council…
I think it’s time to be a little more relaxed with regard to these parameters, which more often than not don’t correspond to facts.
For instance, a lot was written about this year’s Chartres pilgrimage, a big walking pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres that takes place each Pentecost. It has a traditional, even traditionalist aspect. There were more people participating this year than ever before. Some who were there have remarked that the young taking part were impossible to categorise. They weren’t all rabid, type-cast traditionalists with ties and long skirts. Some of them might go to a charismatic service on a Saturday, then to a Latin Mass on Sunday, then go to feed the poor with Caritas on Monday. As long as we keep insisting on shoving people into narrow boxed categories, we’re just not going to understand what’s going on.
Do you think the narrative of progressive versus conservative is infiltrating the church?
I think it’s infiltrated it for a long time. And I think we must gently, kindly, perhaps even humorously subvert it.
I think of a German Benedictine scholar, a monk of Gerleve called Elmar Salmann. He taught at Sant’Anselmo for many years. I was present at his leave-taking lecture in Rome. He said, with characteristic lucidity: People have been trying for decades to classify me as either conservative or liberal. Then he said, in Italian, ‘I prefer to consider myself classico e liberante’. That’s a great example of how we can take this conversation to a deeper, more fruitful level.
Do you think we see an emergence of Christianity as a political identity?
There are certainly those who want to claim it as such. We need to take great, great care here, when it comes to the instrumentalisation of Christian symbols and of Christian vocabulary, and this whole rhetoric of a civilisational struggle.
The point we have to just keep hammering home is this: it is illicit to instrumentalise faith for any secular purpose. Faith is supposed to illumine and enrich and deepen the secular arena, but it can’t be held hostage to it.
So what would would you say is the responsibility of a Christian today?
I’m inclined to cite the counsel of Saint Antony: ‘Let Christ be the air you breathe!’ Try and live coherent, credible Christian lives; give an account of the hope that is in you; practise hospitality; bear witness to what it is to be a human being, alert both to the painfulness and the glory of the human condition; cultivate humble fascination for the mystery of God.
In a recent lecture you spoke about the linguistic discovery human beings can make when they realise ‘there is more to be said and other ways of saying it’. How can the Catholic Church, after letting many people down on account of abuse scandals, convince them that it is the custodian of eternal truths?
First of all by being truthful, by pursuing the work of reparation in justice and with tears. Perhaps that experience can teach us to be humbler, and thereby more hospitable.
Another great and joyful challenge for the Church now is to, to remain within the linguistic metaphor, to reacquire and be re-enthused by its own specific language
In the last 20 or 30 years, we in the Catholic Church have had the sense that the world has been running away from us. We’ve been trying to catch up with it and to learn to speak the way it speaks, to use the signs the world uses, to get ourselves onto TikTok and Instagram.
As long as we carry on like that, we risk condemning ourselves to irrelevance, because we’re always going to be at least 10 steps behind everyone else. The Church, a big body, moves slowly. By the time we catch up, the world has moved on.
But if we speak our own language, if we speak the language of Scripture, the language of the liturgy, the language of our ritual, the language of the sacraments, we can say astonishingly fresh, original, and beautiful things. People do listen to them.
You have written, among many things, about chastity and redemptive suffering. These aren’t exactly things that first come to mind when one thinks about what people today want to hear. So, do they listen?
I’ve been astounded by the reception of the chastity book, for instance. It’s three years now since it was published. For a long time not a day passed without letters and emails arriving, or even people coming to see me.
It has been moving to find myself standing before audiences of primarily young people in Oslo, in the United States, in Portugal, in Spain. I’ve found such openness and a real desire to engage with these questions.
What do you think that says about the search for the meaning of the body today?
I think it has a lot to do with it. In Portugal The Shattering of Loneliness and Chastity have been published as companion volumes. That makes sense, because the two books are really about the same thing, that is, about what it is to be a human being. The first one is about dealing with remembrance and about spiritual aspirations; the second one is about dealing with the hunger and the desires and the hopes of the body.
In your last book you speak of the Epic of Gilgamesh. You say that the protagonist could be our contemporary. You say he is ‘a megalomaniac, in love with his proficiency but unsure of his purpose, haunted by death, perplexed by his heart’s craving, courageous in the face of the absurd, yet weighed down by sadness’. Are these afflictions of the present moment, you think? Are contemporary men and women like that?
I think so. And I purposely use the Epic of Gilgamesh because it’s one of the earliest manifestations of literature available to us.
There is a little note of irony as well in my choice. Another theme of mine that I try to voice now and again is this: I’m just not convinced by our underlying doctrine of cultural exceptionalism, which seems to presuppose that we are just so different now; that no one can understand us; that we function on totally different terms and have nothing to learn from what anyone has said or experienced before us.
It’s just wonderful, then, to be able to point to this text, almost 3 ,000 years old, and say, well, ‘Look at that fellow. He’s just like you!’
Is that what you mean when you say that literature can save lives?
Partly. But my claim is mainly to do with simply the fact that literature, when it’s worthy of the name literature (because not every book is literature), is an attempt to articulate what life is really like.
I think it can save lives in the sense that it can help me to understand that I’m not alone, that someone’s been here before, that even if in my immediate circle of acquaintances no one may understand, or I may think that no one understands what is going on inside me, I may come upon a contemporary novel, or an eighteenth-century poem, or a page of the Metamorphoses of Ovid, and think, ‘Ah! But that’s me.’
And what about music?
Music takes us as close to eternity as we can come in this life. Music has this marvellous potential to express the ineffable. That which is beyond the reach of words can somehow be conveyed by music.
Still on the subject of culture, you have chosen to do a series on the wisdom of the Desert Fathers. Again I would say: this isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when you think of engaging with contemporary culture. What can they offer us today?
Oh, lots. Realism, wisdom, a firm spirit of faith, quite often a delicious self-irony, and a sense of the proportions of things.
What’s the biggest challenge prevents contemporary man from having an encounter with God.
I think the biggest challenge is that of believing we are loved.
What do you wish man, homo sapiens, would understood better about himself right now?
His potential for eternal life.
Desert Fathers 50
You can find this episode in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here.
There was a man of venerable life: Benedict, blessed by grace and name, who from the time of his boyhood had the heart of an old man. For, surpassing his age by his behaviour, he gave his soul to no sensual pleasure, but, while still on this earth, he despised the world in its blossoming — which he could freely have enjoyed while it lasted — as if it were already withered. He was the offspring of a good family from the province of Nursia, and had been put to his studies at Rome. But when he saw that many in such studies went by way of the steep crags of vices, he pulled back the foot which he had, as it were, put on the world’s threshold, lest, if he touched any of the world’s knowledge, he too should afterwards wholly go over a great precipice. Despising, then, the study of letters, he left his father’s home and affairs, desiring to please God alone, and sought the habit which belongs to a holy way of life. He departed, therefore, knowingly unknowing and wisely untaught.
Antony’s biographer knew his subject personally. Benedict’s did not. He checked his sources, though, and was not a man given to carelessness. Gregory the Great wrote his life of Benedict while serving as pope. He says that, for research purposes, he consulted four men who had been Benedict’s pupils. He gives names and addresses. Readers might check his narrative if they pleased.
Gregory was seven, more or less, when Benedict died in 547. Their experiences overlapped. The world they lived in, to which they preached, was one and the same world, though it was changing.
Gregory introduces his hero with a lovely turn of phrase: ‘gratia Benedictus et nomine’. The Latin form of ‘Benedict’ means ‘blessed’, as when we sing at Mass: ‘Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini’. Gregory says Benedict’s name carried a premonition of his being. The promise inherent in him from birth was realised by grace.
This statement contains a whole theology of vocation. For if God does call a woman or man to a given state of life, is it not because he, the all-knowing Maker of all, wishes to crown his work of creation and purpose it optimally? People sometimes think that the pursuit of a vocation involves great mortification. But no: if the call is God’s, you will, by following it, find joyful fulfilment. As you grow into it, it will seem to you like a tailor-made garment. It will make you flourish. It will set you free.
A sense of being trapped made the boy Benedict seek his path determinedly. He was, like Antony, well-to-do, used to a certain ease. A clever boy, he was sent off to study. He did not need to earn a living. When Benedict settled in Rome, it was not any more the navel of the world. Constantine had removed the imperial capital to Byzantium in 330. Even when, later, the Western Empire regained some autonomy, it was not run from Rome, but from Ravenna. The city Benedict knew breathed the decadence of capitals once great that drift, despite themselves, like history’s flotsam, into backwaters. A certain grandeur will have remained, but the civic body was pockmarked. There were people nurturing virtue and learning; yet what struck Benedict most was urban vice. He saw how vice can acquire a momentum that draws people into self-destruction, causing them perversely to throw themselves off cliffs.
This was a fate he did not wish for himself. Withdrawing the foot he had tentatively placed on the threshold of secular life, he went into the woods. Benedict was no bore. It was not exuberance that repelled him. His view of human nature, he later showed, was not only fearless, but compassionate. What irked him in the world was the nurtured illusion that what blooms today will not have to whither tomorrow.
He had, Gregory writes, the heart of an old man already in his youth. What might that mean? It means, I think, that Benedict, like the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, could see that all is vanity when not held by some supernatural purpose. He saw ‘The invisible worm, / That flies in the night / In the howling storm’ to make the rose sick. He could delight in the rose; but could not force himself to pretend that it would flourish for ever. Longing for lasting things, he wished ‘to please God alone’, thereby to seek his own joy. Quite as James and John, one early morning by the sea, left Zebedee’s nets, Benedict abandoned his father’s home and affairs, with the security they offered and the culture they presupposed, to live otherwise.
Gregory describes his state of mind subtly. He calls Benedict ‘knowingly unknowing and wisely untaught’. To know what is not worth knowing, or what does not further my maturing right now, may have been a considerable challenge in Benedict’s day. Now it is Gargantuan. Bombarded from all sides with information, true and false, we are terrified of missing out.
Benedict’s example gives wholesome encouragement. It stands for a critical view of the turbulent, unsleeping city, of its rat-races and pleasure-hunts, inviting us to ask: Is this really what I want? Benedict could evaluate these things justly because he had the beginnings of wisdom, or, if you like, of philosophy. Untaught by conventions, he was open to fresh inspiration from on high. Faced with the world and its options, he did not just calculate. He prayed. And so got the courage he needed to choose independently, freely.
The Romans in their Decadence by Thomas Couture. Wikimedia Commons.
There was a man of venerable life: Benedict, blessed by grace and name, who from the time of his boyhood had the heart of an old man. For, surpassing his age by his behaviour, he gave his soul to no sensual pleasure, but, while still on this earth, he despised the world in its blossoming — which he could freely have enjoyed while it lasted — as if it were already withered. He was the offspring of a good family from the province of Nursia, and had been put to his studies at Rome. But when he saw that many in such studies went by way of the steep crags of vices, he pulled back the foot which he had, as it were, put on the world’s threshold, lest, if he touched any of the world’s knowledge, he too should afterwards wholly go over a great precipice. Despising, then, the study of letters, he left his father’s home and affairs, desiring to please God alone, and sought the habit which belongs to a holy way of life. He departed, therefore, knowingly unknowing and wisely untaught.
Antony’s biographer knew his subject personally. Benedict’s did not. He checked his sources, though, and was not a man given to carelessness. Gregory the Great wrote his life of Benedict while serving as pope. He says that, for research purposes, he consulted four men who had been Benedict’s pupils. He gives names and addresses. Readers might check his narrative if they pleased.
Gregory was seven, more or less, when Benedict died in 547. Their experiences overlapped. The world they lived in, to which they preached, was one and the same world, though it was changing.
Gregory introduces his hero with a lovely turn of phrase: ‘gratia Benedictus et nomine’. The Latin form of ‘Benedict’ means ‘blessed’, as when we sing at Mass: ‘Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini’. Gregory says Benedict’s name carried a premonition of his being. The promise inherent in him from birth was realised by grace.
This statement contains a whole theology of vocation. For if God does call a woman or man to a given state of life, is it not because he, the all-knowing Maker of all, wishes to crown his work of creation and purpose it optimally? People sometimes think that the pursuit of a vocation involves great mortification. But no: if the call is God’s, you will, by following it, find joyful fulfilment. As you grow into it, it will seem to you like a tailor-made garment. It will make you flourish. It will set you free.
A sense of being trapped made the boy Benedict seek his path determinedly. He was, like Antony, well-to-do, used to a certain ease. A clever boy, he was sent off to study. He did not need to earn a living. When Benedict settled in Rome, it was not any more the navel of the world. Constantine had removed the imperial capital to Byzantium in 330. Even when, later, the Western Empire regained some autonomy, it was not run from Rome, but from Ravenna. The city Benedict knew breathed the decadence of capitals once great that drift, despite themselves, like history’s flotsam, into backwaters. A certain grandeur will have remained, but the civic body was pockmarked. There were people nurturing virtue and learning; yet what struck Benedict most was urban vice. He saw how vice can acquire a momentum that draws people into self-destruction, causing them perversely to throw themselves off cliffs.
This was a fate he did not wish for himself. Withdrawing the foot he had tentatively placed on the threshold of secular life, he went into the woods. Benedict was no bore. It was not exuberance that repelled him. His view of human nature, he later showed, was not only fearless, but compassionate. What irked him in the world was the nurtured illusion that what blooms today will not have to whither tomorrow.
He had, Gregory writes, the heart of an old man already in his youth. What might that mean? It means, I think, that Benedict, like the Preacher in Ecclesiastes, could see that all is vanity when not held by some supernatural purpose. He saw ‘The invisible worm, / That flies in the night / In the howling storm’ to make the rose sick. He could delight in the rose; but could not force himself to pretend that it would flourish for ever. Longing for lasting things, he wished ‘to please God alone’, thereby to seek his own joy. Quite as James and John, one early morning by the sea, left Zebedee’s nets, Benedict abandoned his father’s home and affairs, with the security they offered and the culture they presupposed, to live otherwise.
Gregory describes his state of mind subtly. He calls Benedict ‘knowingly unknowing and wisely untaught’. To know what is not worth knowing, or what does not further my maturing right now, may have been a considerable challenge in Benedict’s day. Now it is Gargantuan. Bombarded from all sides with information, true and false, we are terrified of missing out.
Benedict’s example gives wholesome encouragement. It stands for a critical view of the turbulent, unsleeping city, of its rat-races and pleasure-hunts, inviting us to ask: Is this really what I want? Benedict could evaluate these things justly because he had the beginnings of wisdom, or, if you like, of philosophy. Untaught by conventions, he was open to fresh inspiration from on high. Faced with the world and its options, he did not just calculate. He prayed. And so got the courage he needed to choose independently, freely.
The Romans in their Decadence by Thomas Couture. Wikimedia Commons.
2 Sunday of Advent A
Homily given to conclude an Advent recollection at the Venerable English College.
Isaiah 11.1-10: The fear of the Lord is his breath.
Romans 15.4-9: Everything written teaches us about hope.
Matthew 3-12: Brood of vipers!
If there were courses in pastoral theology in the Baptist’s day, he seems not to have paid attention; or perhaps the manuals were different back them. His words are harsh, his warnings dire, his appearance fierce. Yet people flock to him. Why?
It’s curious: in history we find that times of decadence (and that of Herodian rule played out against the backdrop of Roman occupation must qualify as such) can produce a new search for probity. Historical analogies are suspect, for history does not ever, thank God, exactly repeat itself; yet we might, by way of illustration, think of the founding of Moral Rearmament, staking out a course based on ‘absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love’ in 1938, when much of the world was flirting with Hitlerism while the German capital, like that of many other nations, was wallowing in the kind of excess Christopher Isherwood described in his 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin.
The Forerunner was of character quite unlike that of Dr Frank Buchanan, the preacher of the Four Absolutes; but he would have approved them. There is no compromise in John’s proclamation. It is ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no’. The human heart needs such orientation when much of the world is content with ‘Maybe’ or, ‘Who cares?’ or even, ‘To hell with it all!’.
Do we not see a similar kind of rising alertness in our own day?
Such times are times of opportunity and risk. When lots of people at the same time seek firm direction, demagogues are in their element. Masses are easily seduced by rhetoric, by the satisfaction of moving, at marching pace, in the same direction as a cheering, unhesitating crowd. Even our noblest aspirations are easily perverted — that is, attracted off course.
Three aspects of John inspire confidence. First, he is an ascetic uninterested in advancement, wealth, or status for himself — he, the locust-eater! Secondly, he is a man of few words. He does not seduce people with discourses or attach them to himself. He reminds them of their responsibility for personal choices. It’s no good to say, ‘Oh, I voted like this or acted like that because all around me were doing the same’. No, each person, according to vocation and state, must produce ‘appropriate fruit’ and shun subterfuge. Thirdly, John’s message springs from tradition. In him the law and prophets culminate (cf. Lk 16.16). John does not put forward any private ideology; he is a contemporary herald of an ancient standard asking the people to consider afresh where it comes from and where it is going, what constitutes its identity, specificity, and mission. He reminds it that it will be held to account: ‘any tree which fails to produce good fruit will be cut down’.
As Christians in Advent, crying out with the voice of the Church, ‘Come, Lord, do not delay!’, we know ourselves bound by the Baptist’s preaching. It summons us to self-scrutiny. The Pharisees and Sadducees, a caste of clerics and theologians entrusted with the faithful exposition of God’s Word, are castigated: ‘Brood of vipers!’ Those of us ordained to sacred ministry must ask ourselves honestly: Am I, in every sense of the word, faithful?
John’s torchlight does not merely shine on the clergy, though. When tax collectors ask him, ‘What shall we do?’, he tells them: ‘Collect no more than is appointed’. When soldiers ask the same, he says: ‘Rob no one by violence or false accusation’. As for the multitude, hoi polloi, he exhorts everyone present: ‘He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none; he who has food, let him do likewise’ (cf. Luke 3.10-14).
There is plenty of matter, here, for all of us to pursue an examination of conscience.
Advent is a season of sweet consolation. It rings with the lovely cadences of: ‘Comfort, comfort ye!’ We brew, bake, and decorate; we write cards and buy gifts for those we love, and for some from whom we are estranged. It is good that we should.
Let us just beware of reducing Christian hope to pleasant sentiment. John, greatest among men, reminds us that the only comfort worth having, the only one that will last, is comfort based on justice — and to coherent justice the Biblical believer is obliged.
Isaiah in our first reading says the same. The wolf lying down with the lamb, the little boy leading the lion, the unlikely friendship of cow and bear: these aren’t features out of a Disney movie conjured up from fantasy; they ensue from the spreading abroad of the spirit of counsel and power, of judgement not by appearance but made with integrity.
The advent of divine consolation would provoke in us the advent of the fear of the Lord — a ‘fear’ that in Biblical language does not spell anxiety but reverence and a keen sense of our obligation, as beloved creatures, to our Creator. May such fear be our breath poured forth in songs of praise and just deeds, renewing in Christ’s name the face of the earth.
Mario Socrate as an uncompromising, somewhat wild John the Baptist in Pasolini’s immortal The Gospel According to St Matthew.
Isaiah 11.1-10: The fear of the Lord is his breath.
Romans 15.4-9: Everything written teaches us about hope.
Matthew 3-12: Brood of vipers!
If there were courses in pastoral theology in the Baptist’s day, he seems not to have paid attention; or perhaps the manuals were different back them. His words are harsh, his warnings dire, his appearance fierce. Yet people flock to him. Why?
It’s curious: in history we find that times of decadence (and that of Herodian rule played out against the backdrop of Roman occupation must qualify as such) can produce a new search for probity. Historical analogies are suspect, for history does not ever, thank God, exactly repeat itself; yet we might, by way of illustration, think of the founding of Moral Rearmament, staking out a course based on ‘absolute honesty, absolute purity, absolute unselfishness, and absolute love’ in 1938, when much of the world was flirting with Hitlerism while the German capital, like that of many other nations, was wallowing in the kind of excess Christopher Isherwood described in his 1939 novel Goodbye to Berlin.
The Forerunner was of character quite unlike that of Dr Frank Buchanan, the preacher of the Four Absolutes; but he would have approved them. There is no compromise in John’s proclamation. It is ‘Yes, yes’ or ‘No, no’. The human heart needs such orientation when much of the world is content with ‘Maybe’ or, ‘Who cares?’ or even, ‘To hell with it all!’.
Do we not see a similar kind of rising alertness in our own day?
Such times are times of opportunity and risk. When lots of people at the same time seek firm direction, demagogues are in their element. Masses are easily seduced by rhetoric, by the satisfaction of moving, at marching pace, in the same direction as a cheering, unhesitating crowd. Even our noblest aspirations are easily perverted — that is, attracted off course.
Three aspects of John inspire confidence. First, he is an ascetic uninterested in advancement, wealth, or status for himself — he, the locust-eater! Secondly, he is a man of few words. He does not seduce people with discourses or attach them to himself. He reminds them of their responsibility for personal choices. It’s no good to say, ‘Oh, I voted like this or acted like that because all around me were doing the same’. No, each person, according to vocation and state, must produce ‘appropriate fruit’ and shun subterfuge. Thirdly, John’s message springs from tradition. In him the law and prophets culminate (cf. Lk 16.16). John does not put forward any private ideology; he is a contemporary herald of an ancient standard asking the people to consider afresh where it comes from and where it is going, what constitutes its identity, specificity, and mission. He reminds it that it will be held to account: ‘any tree which fails to produce good fruit will be cut down’.
As Christians in Advent, crying out with the voice of the Church, ‘Come, Lord, do not delay!’, we know ourselves bound by the Baptist’s preaching. It summons us to self-scrutiny. The Pharisees and Sadducees, a caste of clerics and theologians entrusted with the faithful exposition of God’s Word, are castigated: ‘Brood of vipers!’ Those of us ordained to sacred ministry must ask ourselves honestly: Am I, in every sense of the word, faithful?
John’s torchlight does not merely shine on the clergy, though. When tax collectors ask him, ‘What shall we do?’, he tells them: ‘Collect no more than is appointed’. When soldiers ask the same, he says: ‘Rob no one by violence or false accusation’. As for the multitude, hoi polloi, he exhorts everyone present: ‘He who has two coats, let him share with him who has none; he who has food, let him do likewise’ (cf. Luke 3.10-14).
There is plenty of matter, here, for all of us to pursue an examination of conscience.
Advent is a season of sweet consolation. It rings with the lovely cadences of: ‘Comfort, comfort ye!’ We brew, bake, and decorate; we write cards and buy gifts for those we love, and for some from whom we are estranged. It is good that we should.
Let us just beware of reducing Christian hope to pleasant sentiment. John, greatest among men, reminds us that the only comfort worth having, the only one that will last, is comfort based on justice — and to coherent justice the Biblical believer is obliged.
Isaiah in our first reading says the same. The wolf lying down with the lamb, the little boy leading the lion, the unlikely friendship of cow and bear: these aren’t features out of a Disney movie conjured up from fantasy; they ensue from the spreading abroad of the spirit of counsel and power, of judgement not by appearance but made with integrity.
The advent of divine consolation would provoke in us the advent of the fear of the Lord — a ‘fear’ that in Biblical language does not spell anxiety but reverence and a keen sense of our obligation, as beloved creatures, to our Creator. May such fear be our breath poured forth in songs of praise and just deeds, renewing in Christ’s name the face of the earth.
Mario Socrate as an uncompromising, somewhat wild John the Baptist in Pasolini’s immortal The Gospel According to St Matthew.
Vocation
Homily given as part of an Advent Recollection at the Venerable English College.
Isaiah 30.19-26: When the Lord has given you the bread of suffering and the water of distress, he who is your teacher will hide no longer, and you will see your teacher with your own eyes. Whether you turn to right or left, your ears will hear these words behind you, ‘This is the way, follow it.’
Matthew 9.35-10.8: The harvest is rich but the labourers are few
The readings given us today explore the theme of vocation from different angles. We tend, now, to think of a vocation as an obstacle course laid by a mischievous providence to befuddle runners. We offer vocational guidance, discernment, and accompaniment. There are people who spend years working out their vocation, so that discernment to all intents and purposes becomes a vocation in its own right.
This points to a fallacy. It makes no sense to speak of ‘my’ vocation as if it were an acquisition, birthright, or part of a genetic code. A vocation is God’s.
He who, at first, brought something out of nothing by decreeing, ‘Let there be’ — ‘and there was’; he alone can call a person to new becoming in view of a work to be done.
Sometimes he calls directly by name: ‘Come, follow me!’ Sometimes he calls through intermediaries, as when Elisha is summoned through Elijah. Sometimes he uses the liturgy, as when Antony hears a word of Scripture in church and is convinced, ‘That’s for me’. And sometimes he simply uses circumstances, confronting a person with a need requiring a response that, to the morally and spiritually alert, is irresistible.
That is the scenario we meet in today’s Gospel: ‘The harvest is rich, the labourers are few.’ Are you one desiring to pick up tools and go into the field? Have you the required skills, health, and staying power? Then this may be the vocation around which you must, if you decide to follow it, freely configure the rest of your existence.
For a Yes like Isaiah’s, ‘Here I am, send me!’, to God’s call by way of a question, ‘Whom shall I send?’, must be dependable. It’s no good saying Yes today, No tomorrow. Even as Christ, the Son of God, ‘was not Yes and No; but in him it is always Yes’, as Paul splendidly wrote to the Corinthians, so our life’s task is to nurture readiness for wholehearted, constant consent.
The call is God’s; the Yes must be ours.
A call, I have said, is in view of a task. This is so even for contemplative recluses. Grace cannot be privatised; each member is called to move for the benefit of the whole body. The twelve are sent out to ‘cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out devils’ quite gratuitously: ‘You received without charge, give without charge.’
To learn to live in this way, unclingingly, surrendering all claims to entitlement, is the principal vocational challenge: the application of our Yes in principle to concrete situations and relationships. Patience is called for; and at the heart of ‘patience’, a Latin noun, lurks the root of passio.
To that, too, we must say Yes courageously.
Our Lord who came to set us free did so by way of oblation. His followers will at times, like him, be given the bread of suffering to eat, the water of distress to drink. At such times we learn what it means for us to call him; and that his mercy is sure. ‘Whether you turn to right or left, your ears will hear these words behind you, ‘This is the way, follow it.’
God does not abandon those whom he calls; he is faithful; when they call, he answers. Let’s never forget that. Let’s learn to live trustfully, cheerfully by that remembrance.
Sisters making their final profession in St Patrick’s cathedral on 6 August this year, saying yes – to Life!
Isaiah 30.19-26: When the Lord has given you the bread of suffering and the water of distress, he who is your teacher will hide no longer, and you will see your teacher with your own eyes. Whether you turn to right or left, your ears will hear these words behind you, ‘This is the way, follow it.’
Matthew 9.35-10.8: The harvest is rich but the labourers are few
The readings given us today explore the theme of vocation from different angles. We tend, now, to think of a vocation as an obstacle course laid by a mischievous providence to befuddle runners. We offer vocational guidance, discernment, and accompaniment. There are people who spend years working out their vocation, so that discernment to all intents and purposes becomes a vocation in its own right.
This points to a fallacy. It makes no sense to speak of ‘my’ vocation as if it were an acquisition, birthright, or part of a genetic code. A vocation is God’s.
He who, at first, brought something out of nothing by decreeing, ‘Let there be’ — ‘and there was’; he alone can call a person to new becoming in view of a work to be done.
Sometimes he calls directly by name: ‘Come, follow me!’ Sometimes he calls through intermediaries, as when Elisha is summoned through Elijah. Sometimes he uses the liturgy, as when Antony hears a word of Scripture in church and is convinced, ‘That’s for me’. And sometimes he simply uses circumstances, confronting a person with a need requiring a response that, to the morally and spiritually alert, is irresistible.
That is the scenario we meet in today’s Gospel: ‘The harvest is rich, the labourers are few.’ Are you one desiring to pick up tools and go into the field? Have you the required skills, health, and staying power? Then this may be the vocation around which you must, if you decide to follow it, freely configure the rest of your existence.
For a Yes like Isaiah’s, ‘Here I am, send me!’, to God’s call by way of a question, ‘Whom shall I send?’, must be dependable. It’s no good saying Yes today, No tomorrow. Even as Christ, the Son of God, ‘was not Yes and No; but in him it is always Yes’, as Paul splendidly wrote to the Corinthians, so our life’s task is to nurture readiness for wholehearted, constant consent.
The call is God’s; the Yes must be ours.
A call, I have said, is in view of a task. This is so even for contemplative recluses. Grace cannot be privatised; each member is called to move for the benefit of the whole body. The twelve are sent out to ‘cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out devils’ quite gratuitously: ‘You received without charge, give without charge.’
To learn to live in this way, unclingingly, surrendering all claims to entitlement, is the principal vocational challenge: the application of our Yes in principle to concrete situations and relationships. Patience is called for; and at the heart of ‘patience’, a Latin noun, lurks the root of passio.
To that, too, we must say Yes courageously.
Our Lord who came to set us free did so by way of oblation. His followers will at times, like him, be given the bread of suffering to eat, the water of distress to drink. At such times we learn what it means for us to call him; and that his mercy is sure. ‘Whether you turn to right or left, your ears will hear these words behind you, ‘This is the way, follow it.’
God does not abandon those whom he calls; he is faithful; when they call, he answers. Let’s never forget that. Let’s learn to live trustfully, cheerfully by that remembrance.
Sisters making their final profession in St Patrick’s cathedral on 6 August this year, saying yes – to Life!
Communion
Homily given as part of an Advent recollection at the Dominican church in Kraków following the launch of the Polish version of my book Chastity.
Jesus reached the shores of the Sea of Galilee, and he went up into the hills. He sat there, and large crowds came to him bringing the lame, the crippled, the blind, the dumb and many others; these they put down at his feet, and he cured them. The crowds were astonished to see the dumb speaking, the cripples whole again, the lame walking and the blind with their sight, and they praised the God of Israel. But Jesus called his disciples to him and said, ‘I feel sorry for all these people; they have been with me for three days now and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them off hungry, they might collapse on the way. Matthew 15 29-37.
There is an aspect of Christ’s life we tend to erase, abetted by exegetical and artistic tradition: the fact that he, as the Gospels present him, is almost always surrounded by a motley, unruly, demanding crowd of people.
Those who seek to get to know Jesus nowadays, to commune with him in prayer, are often anxious to ensure they have peace, solitude, and a predictable life. We easily think that prayer can only be found in some rural monastery or retreat house. It is good, by all means, to go to such places now and then to rest.
Christ himself bade his disciples rest — but he did immediately add: ‘for a while’ (Mk 6.31). The implication is clear: they’re afterwards to come back to the fray, for there, too, God can be found, worshipped, and beautifully served.
Today’s Gospel shows us Jesus assailed by ‘the lame, the crippled, the blind, the dumb, and many others’, that is to say, by people like us. The disciples are inclined to shoo them away: ‘Let them go and get themselves supper!’
Jesus, meanwhile, is concerned to console and feed them, moved by compassion for their need. This concern brings about the multiplication of loaves and fishes, a miracle foreshadowing the Eucharist. It shows how a little, once it is blessed and given in love, can go a long way.
The saint we commemorate, St Francis Xavier, was a man driven by Christlike compassion, wholly surrendered to his mission. In a letter to his friend Ignatius he speaks of how, on a mission to India, children ‘would not let [him] say [his] Office or eat or sleep’, wanting his attention, demanding to be instructed and fed. Like his divine Master, Francis gave himself over to the people who needed him in this way. Thus he became a shining example, not only of Christian virtue, but of Christian prayer.
During Advent we pray, again and again, ‘Come, Lord, do not delay!’ Our eyes are raised heavenward. Let us make sure we also look closely round about. For the Lord comes to us not just in sublime, spiritual realities; he comes no less in the ragged, the poor, the lonely. On the day of judgement, he will tell us (we have it on his authority): ‘Whatever you did not do to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.’
It is wholesome to nurture our spiritual lives in private; it is good, at times, to be quiet and at ease. Let us never forget, though, that the Lord whom we await says of himself, ‘My Father is always at work, and I too am working’.
The unruffled communion of the Blessed Trinity is not disturbed by constant engagement in the work of redemption and the fulfilment of history. On the contrary: these works are the natural expression and effluence of divine communion in charity.
‘The consolations of God’, wrote St Francis Xavier from Travancore in 1545, ‘are so great that they make all troubles sweet.’ That sweetness is what we seek. By living as Christ lived, we shall find it.
Amen.
Jesus reached the shores of the Sea of Galilee, and he went up into the hills. He sat there, and large crowds came to him bringing the lame, the crippled, the blind, the dumb and many others; these they put down at his feet, and he cured them. The crowds were astonished to see the dumb speaking, the cripples whole again, the lame walking and the blind with their sight, and they praised the God of Israel. But Jesus called his disciples to him and said, ‘I feel sorry for all these people; they have been with me for three days now and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them off hungry, they might collapse on the way. Matthew 15 29-37.
There is an aspect of Christ’s life we tend to erase, abetted by exegetical and artistic tradition: the fact that he, as the Gospels present him, is almost always surrounded by a motley, unruly, demanding crowd of people.
Those who seek to get to know Jesus nowadays, to commune with him in prayer, are often anxious to ensure they have peace, solitude, and a predictable life. We easily think that prayer can only be found in some rural monastery or retreat house. It is good, by all means, to go to such places now and then to rest.
Christ himself bade his disciples rest — but he did immediately add: ‘for a while’ (Mk 6.31). The implication is clear: they’re afterwards to come back to the fray, for there, too, God can be found, worshipped, and beautifully served.
Today’s Gospel shows us Jesus assailed by ‘the lame, the crippled, the blind, the dumb, and many others’, that is to say, by people like us. The disciples are inclined to shoo them away: ‘Let them go and get themselves supper!’
Jesus, meanwhile, is concerned to console and feed them, moved by compassion for their need. This concern brings about the multiplication of loaves and fishes, a miracle foreshadowing the Eucharist. It shows how a little, once it is blessed and given in love, can go a long way.
The saint we commemorate, St Francis Xavier, was a man driven by Christlike compassion, wholly surrendered to his mission. In a letter to his friend Ignatius he speaks of how, on a mission to India, children ‘would not let [him] say [his] Office or eat or sleep’, wanting his attention, demanding to be instructed and fed. Like his divine Master, Francis gave himself over to the people who needed him in this way. Thus he became a shining example, not only of Christian virtue, but of Christian prayer.
During Advent we pray, again and again, ‘Come, Lord, do not delay!’ Our eyes are raised heavenward. Let us make sure we also look closely round about. For the Lord comes to us not just in sublime, spiritual realities; he comes no less in the ragged, the poor, the lonely. On the day of judgement, he will tell us (we have it on his authority): ‘Whatever you did not do to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.’
It is wholesome to nurture our spiritual lives in private; it is good, at times, to be quiet and at ease. Let us never forget, though, that the Lord whom we await says of himself, ‘My Father is always at work, and I too am working’.
The unruffled communion of the Blessed Trinity is not disturbed by constant engagement in the work of redemption and the fulfilment of history. On the contrary: these works are the natural expression and effluence of divine communion in charity.
‘The consolations of God’, wrote St Francis Xavier from Travancore in 1545, ‘are so great that they make all troubles sweet.’ That sweetness is what we seek. By living as Christ lived, we shall find it.
Amen.