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:
Conversation with Maggie Fergusson 
This interview appeared in the 7 June print issue of The Tablet. You can read it as a PDF here.
Nearly seven years ago now, new to The Tablet, I was sent to the Cistercian monastery of Mount St Bernard in Read More
Nearly seven years ago now, new to The Tablet, I was sent to the Cistercian monastery of Mount St Bernard in Read More
Desert Fathers 23 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.
Another brother put a question Read More
Another brother put a question Read More
Where’s the Bar? Listening to Fr Michael Suarez’s keynote address at UVA’s Final Exercises a couple of weeks ago, a clarion call for academic freedom and a reflection on the university’s role in society, I was struck by his reference to one of Read More
Homilettes During the ecumenical convention held in Silkeborg for a triduum starting on Ascension Thursday, I was asked to preside and preach at vespers in the church of Our Lady on Friday and Saturday.
Enda han var Sønn, lærte Jesus Kristus lydighet Read More
Enda han var Sønn, lærte Jesus Kristus lydighet Read More
Visitation Zephaniah 3.14-18: Zion, have no fear, let not your hand fall limp!
Luke 1.39-56: The child in my womb leapt for joy.
There’s a jubilation to Mary’s visitation of Elizabeth.
Mary ‘hurried’ across the mountain quite as Abraham ‘hurried’ when he, at noon Read More
Luke 1.39-56: The child in my womb leapt for joy.
There’s a jubilation to Mary’s visitation of Elizabeth.
Mary ‘hurried’ across the mountain quite as Abraham ‘hurried’ when he, at noon Read More
Reading Görres In a post about Görres you wrote, “Hers is a crucial voice for the present moment.” What do you find “crucial” about Görres’ voice for Catholics today?
I like the fact that she is analytical, utterly unsentimental, yet acutely sensitive. A learned, Read More
I like the fact that she is analytical, utterly unsentimental, yet acutely sensitive. A learned, Read More
Desert Fathers 22 You can find this episode in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here.
It was said about Abba Read More
It was said about Abba Read More
6. Sunday of Easter Acts 15.1-29: Some men came down from Judea and taught.
Revelation 21.10-23: The angel showed me the holy city, Jerusalem.
John 14.23-29: The Spirit will remind you of all I have said.
Dear confirmandi!
In the sacrament of confirmation you receive ‘the seal of Read More
Revelation 21.10-23: The angel showed me the holy city, Jerusalem.
John 14.23-29: The Spirit will remind you of all I have said.
Dear confirmandi!
In the sacrament of confirmation you receive ‘the seal of Read More
Conversation with Maggie Fergusson
This interview appeared in the 7 June print issue of The Tablet. You can read it as a PDF here.
Nearly seven years ago now, new to The Tablet, I was sent to the Cistercian monastery of Mount St Bernard in Leicestershire to interview its Abbot, Erik Varden, who had just published his first book, The Shattering of Loneliness. Sitting in glorious autumn sunshine, he told me that this place, his home of 17 years, was where he hoped to live out the rest of his life.
Just a week ago, on another gloriously sunny day, this time in Blackfriars, Oxford, Varden talked about how life has since changed for him utterly, in ways he could never have predicted, but which he now believes to have been providential. In 2019, the apostolic nuncio visited Mount St Bernard and asked him to move back to Norway, and to become Bishop of Trondheim. “It was a traumatic thing for me,” he admits. “You know, on the one hand, as a monk, one tries to live in a state of availability. We pray, a number of times each day, ‘Thy will be done’. We believe that the spirit works mysteriously through the Church, and this commission came to me very specifically, and I wanted to embrace it in the spirit of faith. But what surprised me was a great outpouring of grief: it was a real bereavement.”
He was also exhausted, and run down. “And, fortunately, well, I collapsed.” For months, on doctors’ orders, he rested in a French convent – a kind of “in between land” – “And that was a wonderful thing because I could get my grieving done. So when I finally arrived in Trondheim, in October 2020, I did so joyfully.”
Formidably intelligent, quick to laugh, and full of initiative – at Mount St Bernard he set up a commercial brewery to shore up the abbey’s finances – Varden, still just 51, is a great gift to the people of Trondheim. But is he still able to lead anything like a monastic life? “I still like to get up early, about five, and devote that first part of the day to prayer and reading. And my present life gives ample opportunity to practise obedience, more radically, in some ways, than in the monastery. In the monastery, the dynamic of obedience is largely predictable: a matter of being faithful to the rhythm of the day. Whereas the life of the bishop is largely unpredictable: you just don’t know who’s going to turn up, and to need you.” And then there’s hospitality, “a fundamental monastic duty, and a grace. This is a wonderful thing in Trondheim, particularly in the cathedral parish, with my collaborators there, there is a tremendous spirit of hospitality.” And what about community life? “Well, obviously I haven’t got a monastic community. But I’m fortunate in having two communities of the order in the diocese, so I visit them fairly regularly. And then there’s the cathedral community, the group of priests there. And I’m happy that we’ve been able to introduce Lauds and Vespers in the cathedral every day. So we gather for that.”
Trondheim is not strictly a diocese but one of four “territorial prelatures”, the others being Tromsø, Loreto and Pompei. It’s vast – 55,000 square kilometres – and Varden is responsible for about 18,000 Catholics from 130 nations (the ethnic Norwegians are a “vanishingly small minority, about four per cent”, while there are large groups from the Philippines, Poland, Vietnam, Eritrea. “When I preside at Sunday Mass, and look out over the congregation, it’s just wonderful because I’m looking at a cross-section of the world.”
And what moves Varden, when he meets with his flock, is “a yearning for the good, the true, the beautiful”. When the synodal process started, he went round his parishes, talking to people about what they wanted, and found that “the overall expectation was uniform in its maximalism: people just wanted more of everything: more churches, more masses, more teaching, more charitable enterprise, more liturgy, more sisters, more priests, more provision for youth and children”.
Young people are especially close to his heart. He is moved by their interest in liturgical patrimony, their longing for “a form of worship in which the transcendent, or an aspiration towards transcendence, is explicit”. And what does he learn from them? “Lots! Enthusiasm! I’m impressed by their commitment to friendship, their spirit of service, their very sincere search for the truth.” If a 17-year-old turns up in the cathedral bookshop asking, “Could you tell me what this faith is all about?”, Varden is delighted.
Years ago now, I drove Jean Vanier to Blackfriars to give a talk. Afterwards, he was given supper with the young friars. On the way back to London, he admitted that he had struggled with their being so intellectual: he was relieved he shared his life with men and women with learning difficulties, who lived more from their hearts than their heads. Anyone who has read Erik Varden’s books will know that he is formidably intellectual, his reading broad and deep. Is there a balancing act to be achieved between the head and the heart? “The monastic Fathers sometimes talk about the process of enabling the descent of the mind into the heart. I think the overcoming of that apparent dichotomy, and the discovery that the heart also possesses intellective faculties, is important. It’s rather like learning that we look out on the world with two eyes rather than one. And it’s interesting, isn’t it, that as physical beings so many of our vital functions are about the coordination of parallel limbs?”
But Varden is emphatic about the importance of our “carefully sifting” the material we admit into our consciousness through books and films. “It’s vital we don’t allow in rubbish. It’s one of the things that my first years in the monastery taught me. Obviously, in the monastic novitiate you find yourself cut off from lots of stimuli that you take for granted, and that feels wonderful for about three days. But then you realise how much stuff you are carrying inside you, how acute your visual memory is. I could remember scenes from films I’d watched that I wished I hadn’t, because they were unpleasant or violent, and these things had stuck.”
Of course, we do not always have control over what lodges in our memories. In his latest book, Healing Wounds, Varden writes this: “Such can be the legacy of trauma, especially trauma sustained early in life, that it seems to acquire an autonomous, ordering force in the forging of a destiny.” Is he confident that the Church is doing everything it can do to look after those who have suffered clerical abuse as young people, to learn from them, to ensure that the abuse scandal of recent years is never repeated in the future?
“It’s impossible to answer that question on behalf of the Church,” he says, “because it is an entity which is simply too large, and which operates in so many different modes and different places. But the immense advantage we’ve got now, to speak of this country and Norway, which are the situations I know best, is that we have clear criteria for what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour, and clear procedures for reporting abuse, and bodies equipped to process these procedures. And I think that gives us ground, not for complacency, but for considerable reassurance.” But we must also, he says, confront the legacy of abuse in terms of the “logic of sin”. “We need to recognise that here is a burden of inflicted evil, which needs to be redeemed. Though the redemptive sacrifice has been accomplished once and for all, it is still working itself out in the mystical body. And I would argue that we would do well to recover something of the notion, which seems very old-fashioned now, of reparation: that even after a sin has been confessed and forgiven, there will still be a burden to carry.”
In a more uplifting passage from Healing Wounds, Varden talks movingly of the widening embrace of the Church’s prayer, “for the Church, for catechumens, for the unity of Christians, for the Jews, for non-believers, for those in tribulation”. Over the past fortnight, there seems to have been a sense of all these groups feeling a vested interest in the new pope. Watching Pope Leo XIV appear on the balcony, he was moved when the cameras turned to the crowd, and “there was this girl, aged seven or eight, who just burst into tears – in the way we do when we see someone we love whom we haven’t seen for years, and we thought we might not see again, or when we come home after a painful absence. In all likelihood, she didn’t even know who this individual on the balcony was. But she knew that, well, now the Pope is there, we’ve got someone to look to and we’ve got someone to comfort us.” While “walls are being built and bridges exploded”, what the world sees in the Pope is “the possibility that humanity might be one”.
I would like Varden to speak about what we might expect of Pope Leo in terms of Augustinian spirituality, but I recall from our first interview that he doesn’t much like the word “spirituality”, except as an abstract noun. Instead, he speaks of the spirit of Augustine. “There’s a sense of honesty about him – a sane realism – regarding the human condition, in its sublime and its deplorable aspects. He understood the importance of friends, of not being self-sufficient. He took the science of theology extremely seriously.”
Above all, he had a capacity for joy. “He has a wonderful passage about the jubilus in music: in Gregorian chant you have complex parts, like the alleluia verses, where a syllable is just left to soar. And Augustine says it is an expression of that longing to rejoice which is structural to the human heart.”
It’s time to wrap up. But I want, just for a second, to return to Mount St Bernard. Is there really no part of him that looks over his shoulder and longs to be back there? He laughs robustly: “That would just turn me into a pillar of salt! I am where I am. The older I get, the more I believe in the extreme importance of an active consent to what is, not living in the conditional in terms of woulds and coulds and mights.” And yet he sometimes thinks of something that the Bishop of Stockholm, Cardinal Arborelius, said in an interview when he was appointed a cardinal. “A journalist asked what he would do when he retired, and he said, ‘Well, I hope to return to my community, if they’re prepared to receive a weary old man. Because I’ve been lent for a purpose, and when that purpose if finished, well, I’ll return to the norm.’”
The Catholic cathedral in Trondheim with the spires of Nidarosdomen, built as a shrine to house the relics of St Olav, in the background.
Nearly seven years ago now, new to The Tablet, I was sent to the Cistercian monastery of Mount St Bernard in Leicestershire to interview its Abbot, Erik Varden, who had just published his first book, The Shattering of Loneliness. Sitting in glorious autumn sunshine, he told me that this place, his home of 17 years, was where he hoped to live out the rest of his life.
Just a week ago, on another gloriously sunny day, this time in Blackfriars, Oxford, Varden talked about how life has since changed for him utterly, in ways he could never have predicted, but which he now believes to have been providential. In 2019, the apostolic nuncio visited Mount St Bernard and asked him to move back to Norway, and to become Bishop of Trondheim. “It was a traumatic thing for me,” he admits. “You know, on the one hand, as a monk, one tries to live in a state of availability. We pray, a number of times each day, ‘Thy will be done’. We believe that the spirit works mysteriously through the Church, and this commission came to me very specifically, and I wanted to embrace it in the spirit of faith. But what surprised me was a great outpouring of grief: it was a real bereavement.”
He was also exhausted, and run down. “And, fortunately, well, I collapsed.” For months, on doctors’ orders, he rested in a French convent – a kind of “in between land” – “And that was a wonderful thing because I could get my grieving done. So when I finally arrived in Trondheim, in October 2020, I did so joyfully.”
Formidably intelligent, quick to laugh, and full of initiative – at Mount St Bernard he set up a commercial brewery to shore up the abbey’s finances – Varden, still just 51, is a great gift to the people of Trondheim. But is he still able to lead anything like a monastic life? “I still like to get up early, about five, and devote that first part of the day to prayer and reading. And my present life gives ample opportunity to practise obedience, more radically, in some ways, than in the monastery. In the monastery, the dynamic of obedience is largely predictable: a matter of being faithful to the rhythm of the day. Whereas the life of the bishop is largely unpredictable: you just don’t know who’s going to turn up, and to need you.” And then there’s hospitality, “a fundamental monastic duty, and a grace. This is a wonderful thing in Trondheim, particularly in the cathedral parish, with my collaborators there, there is a tremendous spirit of hospitality.” And what about community life? “Well, obviously I haven’t got a monastic community. But I’m fortunate in having two communities of the order in the diocese, so I visit them fairly regularly. And then there’s the cathedral community, the group of priests there. And I’m happy that we’ve been able to introduce Lauds and Vespers in the cathedral every day. So we gather for that.”
Trondheim is not strictly a diocese but one of four “territorial prelatures”, the others being Tromsø, Loreto and Pompei. It’s vast – 55,000 square kilometres – and Varden is responsible for about 18,000 Catholics from 130 nations (the ethnic Norwegians are a “vanishingly small minority, about four per cent”, while there are large groups from the Philippines, Poland, Vietnam, Eritrea. “When I preside at Sunday Mass, and look out over the congregation, it’s just wonderful because I’m looking at a cross-section of the world.”
And what moves Varden, when he meets with his flock, is “a yearning for the good, the true, the beautiful”. When the synodal process started, he went round his parishes, talking to people about what they wanted, and found that “the overall expectation was uniform in its maximalism: people just wanted more of everything: more churches, more masses, more teaching, more charitable enterprise, more liturgy, more sisters, more priests, more provision for youth and children”.
Young people are especially close to his heart. He is moved by their interest in liturgical patrimony, their longing for “a form of worship in which the transcendent, or an aspiration towards transcendence, is explicit”. And what does he learn from them? “Lots! Enthusiasm! I’m impressed by their commitment to friendship, their spirit of service, their very sincere search for the truth.” If a 17-year-old turns up in the cathedral bookshop asking, “Could you tell me what this faith is all about?”, Varden is delighted.
Years ago now, I drove Jean Vanier to Blackfriars to give a talk. Afterwards, he was given supper with the young friars. On the way back to London, he admitted that he had struggled with their being so intellectual: he was relieved he shared his life with men and women with learning difficulties, who lived more from their hearts than their heads. Anyone who has read Erik Varden’s books will know that he is formidably intellectual, his reading broad and deep. Is there a balancing act to be achieved between the head and the heart? “The monastic Fathers sometimes talk about the process of enabling the descent of the mind into the heart. I think the overcoming of that apparent dichotomy, and the discovery that the heart also possesses intellective faculties, is important. It’s rather like learning that we look out on the world with two eyes rather than one. And it’s interesting, isn’t it, that as physical beings so many of our vital functions are about the coordination of parallel limbs?”
But Varden is emphatic about the importance of our “carefully sifting” the material we admit into our consciousness through books and films. “It’s vital we don’t allow in rubbish. It’s one of the things that my first years in the monastery taught me. Obviously, in the monastic novitiate you find yourself cut off from lots of stimuli that you take for granted, and that feels wonderful for about three days. But then you realise how much stuff you are carrying inside you, how acute your visual memory is. I could remember scenes from films I’d watched that I wished I hadn’t, because they were unpleasant or violent, and these things had stuck.”
Of course, we do not always have control over what lodges in our memories. In his latest book, Healing Wounds, Varden writes this: “Such can be the legacy of trauma, especially trauma sustained early in life, that it seems to acquire an autonomous, ordering force in the forging of a destiny.” Is he confident that the Church is doing everything it can do to look after those who have suffered clerical abuse as young people, to learn from them, to ensure that the abuse scandal of recent years is never repeated in the future?
“It’s impossible to answer that question on behalf of the Church,” he says, “because it is an entity which is simply too large, and which operates in so many different modes and different places. But the immense advantage we’ve got now, to speak of this country and Norway, which are the situations I know best, is that we have clear criteria for what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour, and clear procedures for reporting abuse, and bodies equipped to process these procedures. And I think that gives us ground, not for complacency, but for considerable reassurance.” But we must also, he says, confront the legacy of abuse in terms of the “logic of sin”. “We need to recognise that here is a burden of inflicted evil, which needs to be redeemed. Though the redemptive sacrifice has been accomplished once and for all, it is still working itself out in the mystical body. And I would argue that we would do well to recover something of the notion, which seems very old-fashioned now, of reparation: that even after a sin has been confessed and forgiven, there will still be a burden to carry.”
In a more uplifting passage from Healing Wounds, Varden talks movingly of the widening embrace of the Church’s prayer, “for the Church, for catechumens, for the unity of Christians, for the Jews, for non-believers, for those in tribulation”. Over the past fortnight, there seems to have been a sense of all these groups feeling a vested interest in the new pope. Watching Pope Leo XIV appear on the balcony, he was moved when the cameras turned to the crowd, and “there was this girl, aged seven or eight, who just burst into tears – in the way we do when we see someone we love whom we haven’t seen for years, and we thought we might not see again, or when we come home after a painful absence. In all likelihood, she didn’t even know who this individual on the balcony was. But she knew that, well, now the Pope is there, we’ve got someone to look to and we’ve got someone to comfort us.” While “walls are being built and bridges exploded”, what the world sees in the Pope is “the possibility that humanity might be one”.
I would like Varden to speak about what we might expect of Pope Leo in terms of Augustinian spirituality, but I recall from our first interview that he doesn’t much like the word “spirituality”, except as an abstract noun. Instead, he speaks of the spirit of Augustine. “There’s a sense of honesty about him – a sane realism – regarding the human condition, in its sublime and its deplorable aspects. He understood the importance of friends, of not being self-sufficient. He took the science of theology extremely seriously.”
Above all, he had a capacity for joy. “He has a wonderful passage about the jubilus in music: in Gregorian chant you have complex parts, like the alleluia verses, where a syllable is just left to soar. And Augustine says it is an expression of that longing to rejoice which is structural to the human heart.”
It’s time to wrap up. But I want, just for a second, to return to Mount St Bernard. Is there really no part of him that looks over his shoulder and longs to be back there? He laughs robustly: “That would just turn me into a pillar of salt! I am where I am. The older I get, the more I believe in the extreme importance of an active consent to what is, not living in the conditional in terms of woulds and coulds and mights.” And yet he sometimes thinks of something that the Bishop of Stockholm, Cardinal Arborelius, said in an interview when he was appointed a cardinal. “A journalist asked what he would do when he retired, and he said, ‘Well, I hope to return to my community, if they’re prepared to receive a weary old man. Because I’ve been lent for a purpose, and when that purpose if finished, well, I’ll return to the norm.’”
The Catholic cathedral in Trondheim with the spires of Nidarosdomen, built as a shrine to house the relics of St Olav, in the background.
Desert Fathers 23
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.
Another brother put a question to Abba Poemen, saying: ‘What can I do, for I am embattled by lust and carried away by anger?’ The elder said to him: ‘On account of this David said, “I smote the lion, I strangled the bear”, which is to say, I cut off anger and by labours I squeezed the life out of lust.’ He further said: ‘You cannot live according to God if you are a lover of pleasure and a lover of money.’
Catholics are supposed to be obsessed with questions of sex, locked, when it comes to this most intimate dimension of human existence, in intractable complexes. This assumption is voiced whenever representatives of the Church take their courage into both hands and make some statement on sexual morality. The secular establishment takes it for granted that we have nothing of value to say on this topic. It considers us compromised, first, by constitutional bigotry, then by ignorance, as if Catholics were somehow beyond biology. Scandals of abuse, an open wound on the Church’s body, have compromised our credibility further; what is more, they have made us reticent to speak, conscious of the risk involved in throwing stones when living in proverbial glass houses.
But must Christian discourse on sex involve throwing stones?
No! On this point we must insist. Christian moral doctrine is primarily concerned with thriving, dignity, and the just pursuit of freedom in Christ. This holds for our teaching on sexuality, too. Often we have failed to make this connection sufficiently clear. If people misconstrue our message, it may be because so much ink, and breath, has been spent expounding sexual mores at the expense of other vital aspects of virtue — and vice. I think of something Dorothy L. Sayers, that intrepid expositor of things-as-they-are, spoke on 23 October 1941 to the Public Morality Council at Caxton Hall, Westminster in an address called The Other Six Deadly Sins:
Perhaps the bitterest commentary on the way in which Christian doctrine has been taught in the last few centuries is the fact that to the majority of people the word ‘immorality’ has come to mean one thing and one thing only. The name of an association like yours is generally held to imply that you are concerned to correct only one sin out of those seven which the Church recognises as capital. […] I am reminded of a young man who once said to me with perfect simplicity: ‘I did not know there were seven deadly sins: please tell me the names of the other six.’
Our teaching on sex must be situated within a wider account of what it means to live a Christian life. The Desert Fathers offer us precious assistance in this regard.
Let us begin by clarifying some terms. The Fathers had few hang-ups about sex as such. They were not Manichees. Faced with dualists trends, they condemned them, the way Paphnutius, a follower of Antony’s, did at Nicaea, when he affirmed that a married man’s intercourse with his wife deserves the name of chastity. Nor were the Fathers inimical to eros. Theirs was an existence grounded in desire. They were concerned to channel, not to cancel, the body’s yearning. Like Job they hoped to see God in their flesh. The impulse against which they launched battle was that of lust.
Their Greek word for it was porneia. It has often been rendered ‘fornication’, but that is not an optimal option; fornication, after all, suggests an act involving two people, whereas porneia can perfectly well work its ravages in an isolated person’s affectivity and mind. In ancient Greek, porneia was a term for prostitution. The association is telling. It speaks of intimacy procured by way of a transactions in view of self-satisfaction, with little or no concern for mutuality. Eros presupposes yearning for another. Lust is merely concerned with fulfilment of want or felt need.
Our cultural climate inclines to idealise lust. We like to imagine lust as a playful expression of our true, innocent self, a path to freedom. The Fathers would have shaken their heads in disbelief. And indeed, when we look at the West over the past half-century and a bit, has ‘sexual liberation’ in fact made us free in this regard?
To the Fathers, lust stood for the opposite of freedom. Lust confers not vision but blindness. It locks me in myself, making me live in the world as if I were its sole significant subject, subsisting on arousal. Lust is easily the death of love. It envisages no encounter; it wants to get laid. There is something vampiric about lust. Contrary to appearances, it may not even be about carnal hunger primarily. It may be a round-about way of drawing into consciousness some ravenous soul-passion like rage or greed: a frustrated, potentially perverse means of self-affirmation. Poemen says that attempts to temper lust are unlikely to work unless, at the same time, I deal with my hidden reserves of anger — a sharp observation that could provide a hermeneutic key with which to interpret patterns of sexual abuse and manipulation we now recognise in many societal structures. This, though, would require us to relinquish our dearly-held mythology of the innocence of sex. That threshold remains high. Perhaps it cannot be crossed in an era that has abandoned, or forgotten, God, for which sex represents most people’s only intimation of transcendence? For without some such notion, be it an implausible pleasure myth, not even secular man can live.
Byzantine medallion of David slaying the lion, now in the Met Museum.
Another brother put a question to Abba Poemen, saying: ‘What can I do, for I am embattled by lust and carried away by anger?’ The elder said to him: ‘On account of this David said, “I smote the lion, I strangled the bear”, which is to say, I cut off anger and by labours I squeezed the life out of lust.’ He further said: ‘You cannot live according to God if you are a lover of pleasure and a lover of money.’
Catholics are supposed to be obsessed with questions of sex, locked, when it comes to this most intimate dimension of human existence, in intractable complexes. This assumption is voiced whenever representatives of the Church take their courage into both hands and make some statement on sexual morality. The secular establishment takes it for granted that we have nothing of value to say on this topic. It considers us compromised, first, by constitutional bigotry, then by ignorance, as if Catholics were somehow beyond biology. Scandals of abuse, an open wound on the Church’s body, have compromised our credibility further; what is more, they have made us reticent to speak, conscious of the risk involved in throwing stones when living in proverbial glass houses.
But must Christian discourse on sex involve throwing stones?
No! On this point we must insist. Christian moral doctrine is primarily concerned with thriving, dignity, and the just pursuit of freedom in Christ. This holds for our teaching on sexuality, too. Often we have failed to make this connection sufficiently clear. If people misconstrue our message, it may be because so much ink, and breath, has been spent expounding sexual mores at the expense of other vital aspects of virtue — and vice. I think of something Dorothy L. Sayers, that intrepid expositor of things-as-they-are, spoke on 23 October 1941 to the Public Morality Council at Caxton Hall, Westminster in an address called The Other Six Deadly Sins:
Perhaps the bitterest commentary on the way in which Christian doctrine has been taught in the last few centuries is the fact that to the majority of people the word ‘immorality’ has come to mean one thing and one thing only. The name of an association like yours is generally held to imply that you are concerned to correct only one sin out of those seven which the Church recognises as capital. […] I am reminded of a young man who once said to me with perfect simplicity: ‘I did not know there were seven deadly sins: please tell me the names of the other six.’
Our teaching on sex must be situated within a wider account of what it means to live a Christian life. The Desert Fathers offer us precious assistance in this regard.
Let us begin by clarifying some terms. The Fathers had few hang-ups about sex as such. They were not Manichees. Faced with dualists trends, they condemned them, the way Paphnutius, a follower of Antony’s, did at Nicaea, when he affirmed that a married man’s intercourse with his wife deserves the name of chastity. Nor were the Fathers inimical to eros. Theirs was an existence grounded in desire. They were concerned to channel, not to cancel, the body’s yearning. Like Job they hoped to see God in their flesh. The impulse against which they launched battle was that of lust.
Their Greek word for it was porneia. It has often been rendered ‘fornication’, but that is not an optimal option; fornication, after all, suggests an act involving two people, whereas porneia can perfectly well work its ravages in an isolated person’s affectivity and mind. In ancient Greek, porneia was a term for prostitution. The association is telling. It speaks of intimacy procured by way of a transactions in view of self-satisfaction, with little or no concern for mutuality. Eros presupposes yearning for another. Lust is merely concerned with fulfilment of want or felt need.
Our cultural climate inclines to idealise lust. We like to imagine lust as a playful expression of our true, innocent self, a path to freedom. The Fathers would have shaken their heads in disbelief. And indeed, when we look at the West over the past half-century and a bit, has ‘sexual liberation’ in fact made us free in this regard?
To the Fathers, lust stood for the opposite of freedom. Lust confers not vision but blindness. It locks me in myself, making me live in the world as if I were its sole significant subject, subsisting on arousal. Lust is easily the death of love. It envisages no encounter; it wants to get laid. There is something vampiric about lust. Contrary to appearances, it may not even be about carnal hunger primarily. It may be a round-about way of drawing into consciousness some ravenous soul-passion like rage or greed: a frustrated, potentially perverse means of self-affirmation. Poemen says that attempts to temper lust are unlikely to work unless, at the same time, I deal with my hidden reserves of anger — a sharp observation that could provide a hermeneutic key with which to interpret patterns of sexual abuse and manipulation we now recognise in many societal structures. This, though, would require us to relinquish our dearly-held mythology of the innocence of sex. That threshold remains high. Perhaps it cannot be crossed in an era that has abandoned, or forgotten, God, for which sex represents most people’s only intimation of transcendence? For without some such notion, be it an implausible pleasure myth, not even secular man can live.
Byzantine medallion of David slaying the lion, now in the Met Museum.
Where’s the Bar?
Listening to Fr Michael Suarez’s keynote address at UVA’s Final Exercises a couple of weeks ago, a clarion call for academic freedom and a reflection on the university’s role in society, I was struck by his reference to one of his teachers, Dorothy Bednarowska. He refers (at about ’16) to a run-in he had with her while still a research student. Critical of his priorities, she told him squarely: ‘You are wasting your time! You think the bar is here right in front of you, but excellence lies much higher, and you should be chasing it!’ Where, these days, are the voices, in society, in the Church, that urge us to pursue excellence? Does anyone still believe in it? Bednarowska, a founding fellow (alongside Iris Murdoch) of St Anne’s College in Oxford, taught generations of young people to read responsibly and intelligently. Content to let her students be her legacy, she never published. What is more, as an obituarist pointed out, ‘she actively enjoyed teaching’. Clearly formidable, she was unconcerned to leave a monument to herself. Hers is, in the best sense, a provocative legacy. I am glad to be confronted with it.
Homilettes
During the ecumenical convention held in Silkeborg for a triduum starting on Ascension Thursday, I was asked to preside and preach at vespers in the church of Our Lady on Friday and Saturday.
Enda han var Sønn, lærte Jesus Kristus lydighet ved det han led; så, da han hadde nådd fullendelsen, ble han opphav til evig frelse for enhver som gir seg inn under ham; og nå hilses han av Gud som yppersteprest ifølge Melkisedeks orden (Heb 5.8-10).
Kristus lærte lydighet ved det han led. Lærer vi ved det vi lider?
Det er ingen selvfølge. Spontant opplever vi lidelser som blinde skjebneslag. Lidelsen sårer vår rettferdighetssans: “Hvorfor meg?” Responsen er sunn, i og for seg; men den kan gjøre oss døve, tonedøve, i forhold til lidelsen; og lidelsen har gjerne noe å si oss. Vi må bare lytte nøye etter melodien. Kommer lidelsen vår vei, bør vi huske på å spørre den: “Hva betyr du?”
På norsk og dansk som på de romanske språk (og engelsk), er ordet “lydighet” semantisk forbundet med verbet “å lytte”. Sann lydighet forutsetter lydhørhet. Når Kristus “adlyder” kallet til å lide, underkaster han seg ikke servilt. Hans lydighet peker mot grunnlaget for hans forhold til Faderen, ved Ånden.
Sønnen lytter til Faderens røst. Han følger røsten av tillit, i kjærlighet, for den fører mot et salig, livgivende lys, også når enskilte etapper går gjennom mørke. Guds kall har iboende fullkommenhet. Det har kraft til å virke en frelsende, salige hensikt. Som det står i Jesaja:
likesom regnet og sneen faller ned fra himmelen og ikke vender tilbake dit, men vanner jorden og får den til å bære og gro […], således skal mitt ord være, som går ut av min munn; det skal ikke vende tomt tilbake til mig, men det skal gjøre det jeg vil, lykkelig utføre det jeg sender det til (Jes 55.11).
Gud er vår grenseløst elskende, trofaste Far. Hans forsyn er ufeilbarlig, hans mål salig. Prosedyrene hans kan virke paradoksale. I blant vil de medføre smerte. Det gjør nå engang vondt å være menneske i en verden såret av synd, overskygget av døden. Men døden er bekjempet, syndens makt er brutt.
Korset bevarer sitt brutale, grusomme aspekt, men er på samme tid et seierstegn. Når en flik av det legges på våre skuldre, når vi får yte vår skjerv i Kristi frelsesverk, la oss da huske Faderens ord — “Du er min sønn, den elskede; i deg er alt mitt velbehag” — for som lemmer på Kristi legeme, gjelder velsignelsen også oss.
Da kan vi adlyde tillitsfullt, verdig, fritt, ja, til og med med glede; da kan påskens fullendelse bli inkarnert realitet også i våre liv.
* * *
Dere er et utvalgt folk, et kongelig presteskap, et hellig folk, et folk som Gud kan kalle sitt eget, og skal forkynne storheten hos ham som har kalt dere fra mørket inn i sitt overveldende lys: Dere som før ikke var noe folk, dere som før var i unåde og som nå har funnet nåde (1 Pet 2.9-10).
Hva vil det si å være et folk? Spørsmålet opptar oss i disse dager. Politisk er det en glohet potet som fremkaller sterke, iblant foruroligende uttrykk i Tyskland, Frankrike, USA — og hos oss i Skandinavia.
Bibelsk sett oppstår et folk på grunnlag av et kall til en oppgave. Folkets samhold avhenger av trofasthet mot oppgaven og kallet. Mangler troskapen, rakner fellesskapet; da står folket der, med ett, som en tilfeldig hop av individer. En diabolsk splittende impuls hever da sitt hode: mistenksomhet, maktsyke og sjalusi oppstår.
Vi har lest et avsnitt fra 1. Petersbrev. Peters liv ble snudd opp-ned av et kall. Jesu ord til ham, “Følg meg, bli menneskefisker”, strukturerer evangeliets begynnelse. Peter får oppleve hvordan kallet former et liv, en ny identitet: “Du er Simon, du skal bli Kefas”. Peters bestemmelse er å innlemme andre i slik erfaring. Det er det petrinske oppdrag. Mot evangeliets slutt, etter påske, ser vi ham trekke i land en not med 153 store fisk, et bilde på Kirken. Fangsten er preget av mangfold, spenning, bevegelse. Allikevel går noten ikke i sønder, for den trekkes mot Kristus, den Oppstandne, som står på stranden og venter.
Kirken utgjør et folk, skriver Peter, når vi som var i unåde, finner nåde og velger å leve på nådens premisser, i sannhet og raushet. Folket består, ikke for selv å bekreftes, ikke for sin egen status’ skyld, men for å forkynne storheten til ham som har kalt oss ut av mørket inn i sitt overveldende lys.
Å gå fra mørke til lys kan være traumatisk. Først kan vi få inntrykk av å blindes. Øynene må tilvennes. Vi skygger for dem med hendene. Det kan være fristende å snu seg rundt, for å gi blikket hvile.
Går vi, som Guds folk, fremad mot hans lys for å forvandles, eller søker vi tilflukt i skyggefulle gjemmer, for der å bli ved det vante? Dét er spørsmålet vår enhet, vår hensiktsmessighet, og derved vår bestand som Guds folk, hans hellige folk, avhenger av.
Mount Tamalpaise sunrise by John Towner, on Unsplash.
Enda han var Sønn, lærte Jesus Kristus lydighet ved det han led; så, da han hadde nådd fullendelsen, ble han opphav til evig frelse for enhver som gir seg inn under ham; og nå hilses han av Gud som yppersteprest ifølge Melkisedeks orden (Heb 5.8-10).
Kristus lærte lydighet ved det han led. Lærer vi ved det vi lider?
Det er ingen selvfølge. Spontant opplever vi lidelser som blinde skjebneslag. Lidelsen sårer vår rettferdighetssans: “Hvorfor meg?” Responsen er sunn, i og for seg; men den kan gjøre oss døve, tonedøve, i forhold til lidelsen; og lidelsen har gjerne noe å si oss. Vi må bare lytte nøye etter melodien. Kommer lidelsen vår vei, bør vi huske på å spørre den: “Hva betyr du?”
På norsk og dansk som på de romanske språk (og engelsk), er ordet “lydighet” semantisk forbundet med verbet “å lytte”. Sann lydighet forutsetter lydhørhet. Når Kristus “adlyder” kallet til å lide, underkaster han seg ikke servilt. Hans lydighet peker mot grunnlaget for hans forhold til Faderen, ved Ånden.
Sønnen lytter til Faderens røst. Han følger røsten av tillit, i kjærlighet, for den fører mot et salig, livgivende lys, også når enskilte etapper går gjennom mørke. Guds kall har iboende fullkommenhet. Det har kraft til å virke en frelsende, salige hensikt. Som det står i Jesaja:
likesom regnet og sneen faller ned fra himmelen og ikke vender tilbake dit, men vanner jorden og får den til å bære og gro […], således skal mitt ord være, som går ut av min munn; det skal ikke vende tomt tilbake til mig, men det skal gjøre det jeg vil, lykkelig utføre det jeg sender det til (Jes 55.11).
Gud er vår grenseløst elskende, trofaste Far. Hans forsyn er ufeilbarlig, hans mål salig. Prosedyrene hans kan virke paradoksale. I blant vil de medføre smerte. Det gjør nå engang vondt å være menneske i en verden såret av synd, overskygget av døden. Men døden er bekjempet, syndens makt er brutt.
Korset bevarer sitt brutale, grusomme aspekt, men er på samme tid et seierstegn. Når en flik av det legges på våre skuldre, når vi får yte vår skjerv i Kristi frelsesverk, la oss da huske Faderens ord — “Du er min sønn, den elskede; i deg er alt mitt velbehag” — for som lemmer på Kristi legeme, gjelder velsignelsen også oss.
Da kan vi adlyde tillitsfullt, verdig, fritt, ja, til og med med glede; da kan påskens fullendelse bli inkarnert realitet også i våre liv.
* * *
Dere er et utvalgt folk, et kongelig presteskap, et hellig folk, et folk som Gud kan kalle sitt eget, og skal forkynne storheten hos ham som har kalt dere fra mørket inn i sitt overveldende lys: Dere som før ikke var noe folk, dere som før var i unåde og som nå har funnet nåde (1 Pet 2.9-10).
Hva vil det si å være et folk? Spørsmålet opptar oss i disse dager. Politisk er det en glohet potet som fremkaller sterke, iblant foruroligende uttrykk i Tyskland, Frankrike, USA — og hos oss i Skandinavia.
Bibelsk sett oppstår et folk på grunnlag av et kall til en oppgave. Folkets samhold avhenger av trofasthet mot oppgaven og kallet. Mangler troskapen, rakner fellesskapet; da står folket der, med ett, som en tilfeldig hop av individer. En diabolsk splittende impuls hever da sitt hode: mistenksomhet, maktsyke og sjalusi oppstår.
Vi har lest et avsnitt fra 1. Petersbrev. Peters liv ble snudd opp-ned av et kall. Jesu ord til ham, “Følg meg, bli menneskefisker”, strukturerer evangeliets begynnelse. Peter får oppleve hvordan kallet former et liv, en ny identitet: “Du er Simon, du skal bli Kefas”. Peters bestemmelse er å innlemme andre i slik erfaring. Det er det petrinske oppdrag. Mot evangeliets slutt, etter påske, ser vi ham trekke i land en not med 153 store fisk, et bilde på Kirken. Fangsten er preget av mangfold, spenning, bevegelse. Allikevel går noten ikke i sønder, for den trekkes mot Kristus, den Oppstandne, som står på stranden og venter.
Kirken utgjør et folk, skriver Peter, når vi som var i unåde, finner nåde og velger å leve på nådens premisser, i sannhet og raushet. Folket består, ikke for selv å bekreftes, ikke for sin egen status’ skyld, men for å forkynne storheten til ham som har kalt oss ut av mørket inn i sitt overveldende lys.
Å gå fra mørke til lys kan være traumatisk. Først kan vi få inntrykk av å blindes. Øynene må tilvennes. Vi skygger for dem med hendene. Det kan være fristende å snu seg rundt, for å gi blikket hvile.
Går vi, som Guds folk, fremad mot hans lys for å forvandles, eller søker vi tilflukt i skyggefulle gjemmer, for der å bli ved det vante? Dét er spørsmålet vår enhet, vår hensiktsmessighet, og derved vår bestand som Guds folk, hans hellige folk, avhenger av.
Mount Tamalpaise sunrise by John Towner, on Unsplash.
Visitation
Zephaniah 3.14-18: Zion, have no fear, let not your hand fall limp!
Luke 1.39-56: The child in my womb leapt for joy.
There’s a jubilation to Mary’s visitation of Elizabeth.
Mary ‘hurried’ across the mountain quite as Abraham ‘hurried’ when he, at noon in Mamre, received the angels who proclaimed the fulfilment of God’s promise (Genesis 18). Where the Lord is at work, things and interactions are set in movement.
The encounter we read about involves four persons. The two women great with child, one young, the other elderly, embrace. The two unborn children likewise greet each other.
‘The moment your greeting reached my ear, the child in my womb leapt for joy’, says Elizabeth. The word the evangelist uses is the same word we find in a Psalm of David which sings of Israel’s home-coming to Zion. When the Lord led his people home, ‘the mountains leapt like rams, the hills like young lambs.’ That is what we read in the Septuagint, the New Testament’s Old Testament.
The presence of God causes even granite to vibrate.
Let us take note that the first human subject explicitly to acknowledge the incarnation was an embryo.
The scene from that mountain village is historically unique. Yet the story of the encounter is paradigmatic of our circumstances. We receive, here at the altar of the Lord, the Body of Christ. Then we bear him, the Living One (Apocalypse 1.18), into the world.
Are we conscious of being, of being called to be, ambulant tabernacles?
We sometimes wonder how we might best witness to our faith in today’s society. It is not always a multitude of words that is called for. If Christ lives in us he himself will, by his presence, accomplish his work of blessing, exhortation, and healing. Reality, meeting him, will constitutionally leap for joy.
Our principal concern must be to resist every sin that threatens to suffocate his life in us. Francis of Sales had a phrase he used to tell people, and used as a heading for most correspondence: Vive Jésus! – ‘Let Jesus live!’
If we fix that phrase as our rule of live, and let God’s Word abide in us richly (Colossians 3.16), we shall witness to the Gospel whether we speak or keep silence, wake or sleep, live or die.
Amen.
The Visitation, a painting attributed to Rueland Frueauf the Elder (c. 1445 – 1507), previously attributed to Bartholomäus Zeitblom (1450 – 1521). In the Harvard Art Museums.
Luke 1.39-56: The child in my womb leapt for joy.
There’s a jubilation to Mary’s visitation of Elizabeth.
Mary ‘hurried’ across the mountain quite as Abraham ‘hurried’ when he, at noon in Mamre, received the angels who proclaimed the fulfilment of God’s promise (Genesis 18). Where the Lord is at work, things and interactions are set in movement.
The encounter we read about involves four persons. The two women great with child, one young, the other elderly, embrace. The two unborn children likewise greet each other.
‘The moment your greeting reached my ear, the child in my womb leapt for joy’, says Elizabeth. The word the evangelist uses is the same word we find in a Psalm of David which sings of Israel’s home-coming to Zion. When the Lord led his people home, ‘the mountains leapt like rams, the hills like young lambs.’ That is what we read in the Septuagint, the New Testament’s Old Testament.
The presence of God causes even granite to vibrate.
Let us take note that the first human subject explicitly to acknowledge the incarnation was an embryo.
The scene from that mountain village is historically unique. Yet the story of the encounter is paradigmatic of our circumstances. We receive, here at the altar of the Lord, the Body of Christ. Then we bear him, the Living One (Apocalypse 1.18), into the world.
Are we conscious of being, of being called to be, ambulant tabernacles?
We sometimes wonder how we might best witness to our faith in today’s society. It is not always a multitude of words that is called for. If Christ lives in us he himself will, by his presence, accomplish his work of blessing, exhortation, and healing. Reality, meeting him, will constitutionally leap for joy.
Our principal concern must be to resist every sin that threatens to suffocate his life in us. Francis of Sales had a phrase he used to tell people, and used as a heading for most correspondence: Vive Jésus! – ‘Let Jesus live!’
If we fix that phrase as our rule of live, and let God’s Word abide in us richly (Colossians 3.16), we shall witness to the Gospel whether we speak or keep silence, wake or sleep, live or die.
Amen.
The Visitation, a painting attributed to Rueland Frueauf the Elder (c. 1445 – 1507), previously attributed to Bartholomäus Zeitblom (1450 – 1521). In the Harvard Art Museums.
Reading Görres
In a post about Görres you wrote, “Hers is a crucial voice for the present moment.” What do you find “crucial” about Görres’ voice for Catholics today?
I like the fact that she is analytical, utterly unsentimental, yet acutely sensitive. A learned, intelligent woman, she was conscious of the riches of Catholic tradition, delighting in them; and she sought ways of making these known to her own times, proposing thoughtful answers to contemporary queries. She was lucid about the reforms of the 1960s, wary of facile optimism. Her notes from those years are a help to a serious, uncynical, hopeful rereading of history now.
From a recent conversation with Jennifer Bryson. See also previous entries here and here and here and here and here.
I like the fact that she is analytical, utterly unsentimental, yet acutely sensitive. A learned, intelligent woman, she was conscious of the riches of Catholic tradition, delighting in them; and she sought ways of making these known to her own times, proposing thoughtful answers to contemporary queries. She was lucid about the reforms of the 1960s, wary of facile optimism. Her notes from those years are a help to a serious, uncynical, hopeful rereading of history now.
From a recent conversation with Jennifer Bryson. See also previous entries here and here and here and here and here.
Desert Fathers 22
You can find this episode in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here.
It was said about Abba Macarios that when he spent time with the brethren he established as a rule for himself that he would, if wine was offered, partake of it for the brethren’s sake. But for a single cup [of wine] he would spend one day without drinking water. So the brethren served him [wine] to afford him relaxation; and the elder received it with joy in order to mortify himself. His disciple, however, seeing how things played out, said to the brethren: ‘For God’s sake, stop giving it to him, for if you do not he will discipline himself to death back in his cell!’ Learning what was going on, the brethren no longer offered it to him.
Each year on Ash Wednesday, set to embark on what the liturgy calls our season of spiritual warfare, we hear the Lord’s admonition from the Gospel of Matthew: ‘when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites’. We are not to appear glum, not to make a display of our asceticism. Instead we are told: ‘when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.’ The desert monks took this injunction literally. They could go to great lengths in order to keep their austerity hidden. We are told of Fathers, even very distinguished ones, who are put right when they fail even minimally in this regard. Vanity is to God-seekers a more insidious enemy than infractions of regulated fasting.
The Fathers stressed the importance to courtesy, too. If you go to visit somebody and find that your hosts, to honour you, have put on a spread that does not correspond to rules you have fixed for yourself, you risk causing offence by saying: ‘I’m sorry, but I cannot eat sausage rolls on a Wednesday in Lent!’ Not only will you fail to honour their hospitality; you belittle them by making them see they had forgotten some ascetic precept or other. You yourself may be left aglow with self-satisfaction. One walks a knife’s edge in such cases. Principles are important; but more beneficial still is readiness to transcend one’s individual fixed ideas.
Macarios knows it gives his brothers joy to offer him a glass on occasion. It is their way of giving him something back for all he gives them. Accepting their gesture, he shows he is part of their fellowship. He does not stay aloof. At the same time he knows that wine, even in modest amounts, does not further prayer. Notwithstanding his hosts’ good intention, social drinking compromises his purpose.
That is why he resolves to pay each glass back secretly, so to speak, by an act of self-renunciation. It is a radical one. We are often reminded how hot the desert is; the mere fact of living in it is a trial. Even seasoned monastics can be mesmerised by the thought of water-filled vegetables. One Father hung a cucumber from the ceiling in his cell to keep this preeminent object of desire before his eyes, to fight temptation. Israel’s children’s pining, during the exodus, for Egypt’s ‘cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic’ echo in the sayings of the Desert Fathers. To deprive oneself entirely of water for a whole day in such a place was an heroic, even dangerous feat, causing Macarios’s disciple to intervene to stop what he saw as plain madness.
The brethren had had no idea of Macarios’s agreement with himself. We imagine their distress: they thought they were being kind to an old friend, but in fact had caused him hardship. This points us to the first lesson we can draw from this story: when we offer hospitality, a gesture of kindness, or a gift, do we do it for others’ sake or for our own pleasure? Have we asked if they would like what we offer, or have we simply served it up on a plate, perhaps in a double portion? What Macarios teaches on the other hand is no less important. Great self-control is needed to accept with tact an offering that repels me, and to do it so whole-heartedly that the giver is thrilled. Such situations are not to do with dissemblance. Macarios demonstrates an ability to discern higher goods. A true ascetic will rejoice more in occasions to mortify self-will than in displaying the rigour of his or her observance.
The concern to show others honour, to avoid giving offence, is evidenced with countless variations in the literature. The story is told of Abba John on a journey. His guide lost his way. It was night. John’s companions said, ‘What to do? This fellow is getting us more and more lost!’ John said not a word. If he, so highly respected, did, he would humiliate his guide. So he pretended to be tired, unable to go on. The company rested until sunrise, when they could retrace their path. This is the spirit of the Fathers: rather to spend a night in uncertainty and cold than to belittle another.
Naturally, the pretext of charity can be instrumentalised as an underhand means to obtain what I want but should not have right now, rest or wine or whatever it is. There are no hard-and-fast rules. Each case is judged on merit. When a brother asked Abba Sisoes what to do when others would detain him, after church, for an agape, Sisoes said: ‘It is a difficult question’.
What matters is to ask it, then to seek a rational answer illumined by charity, not a dressed-up excuse for intemperance.
It was said about Abba Macarios that when he spent time with the brethren he established as a rule for himself that he would, if wine was offered, partake of it for the brethren’s sake. But for a single cup [of wine] he would spend one day without drinking water. So the brethren served him [wine] to afford him relaxation; and the elder received it with joy in order to mortify himself. His disciple, however, seeing how things played out, said to the brethren: ‘For God’s sake, stop giving it to him, for if you do not he will discipline himself to death back in his cell!’ Learning what was going on, the brethren no longer offered it to him.
Each year on Ash Wednesday, set to embark on what the liturgy calls our season of spiritual warfare, we hear the Lord’s admonition from the Gospel of Matthew: ‘when you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites’. We are not to appear glum, not to make a display of our asceticism. Instead we are told: ‘when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that your fasting may not be seen by men but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.’ The desert monks took this injunction literally. They could go to great lengths in order to keep their austerity hidden. We are told of Fathers, even very distinguished ones, who are put right when they fail even minimally in this regard. Vanity is to God-seekers a more insidious enemy than infractions of regulated fasting.
The Fathers stressed the importance to courtesy, too. If you go to visit somebody and find that your hosts, to honour you, have put on a spread that does not correspond to rules you have fixed for yourself, you risk causing offence by saying: ‘I’m sorry, but I cannot eat sausage rolls on a Wednesday in Lent!’ Not only will you fail to honour their hospitality; you belittle them by making them see they had forgotten some ascetic precept or other. You yourself may be left aglow with self-satisfaction. One walks a knife’s edge in such cases. Principles are important; but more beneficial still is readiness to transcend one’s individual fixed ideas.
Macarios knows it gives his brothers joy to offer him a glass on occasion. It is their way of giving him something back for all he gives them. Accepting their gesture, he shows he is part of their fellowship. He does not stay aloof. At the same time he knows that wine, even in modest amounts, does not further prayer. Notwithstanding his hosts’ good intention, social drinking compromises his purpose.
That is why he resolves to pay each glass back secretly, so to speak, by an act of self-renunciation. It is a radical one. We are often reminded how hot the desert is; the mere fact of living in it is a trial. Even seasoned monastics can be mesmerised by the thought of water-filled vegetables. One Father hung a cucumber from the ceiling in his cell to keep this preeminent object of desire before his eyes, to fight temptation. Israel’s children’s pining, during the exodus, for Egypt’s ‘cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions, and garlic’ echo in the sayings of the Desert Fathers. To deprive oneself entirely of water for a whole day in such a place was an heroic, even dangerous feat, causing Macarios’s disciple to intervene to stop what he saw as plain madness.
The brethren had had no idea of Macarios’s agreement with himself. We imagine their distress: they thought they were being kind to an old friend, but in fact had caused him hardship. This points us to the first lesson we can draw from this story: when we offer hospitality, a gesture of kindness, or a gift, do we do it for others’ sake or for our own pleasure? Have we asked if they would like what we offer, or have we simply served it up on a plate, perhaps in a double portion? What Macarios teaches on the other hand is no less important. Great self-control is needed to accept with tact an offering that repels me, and to do it so whole-heartedly that the giver is thrilled. Such situations are not to do with dissemblance. Macarios demonstrates an ability to discern higher goods. A true ascetic will rejoice more in occasions to mortify self-will than in displaying the rigour of his or her observance.
The concern to show others honour, to avoid giving offence, is evidenced with countless variations in the literature. The story is told of Abba John on a journey. His guide lost his way. It was night. John’s companions said, ‘What to do? This fellow is getting us more and more lost!’ John said not a word. If he, so highly respected, did, he would humiliate his guide. So he pretended to be tired, unable to go on. The company rested until sunrise, when they could retrace their path. This is the spirit of the Fathers: rather to spend a night in uncertainty and cold than to belittle another.
Naturally, the pretext of charity can be instrumentalised as an underhand means to obtain what I want but should not have right now, rest or wine or whatever it is. There are no hard-and-fast rules. Each case is judged on merit. When a brother asked Abba Sisoes what to do when others would detain him, after church, for an agape, Sisoes said: ‘It is a difficult question’.
What matters is to ask it, then to seek a rational answer illumined by charity, not a dressed-up excuse for intemperance.
6. Sunday of Easter
Acts 15.1-29: Some men came down from Judea and taught.
Revelation 21.10-23: The angel showed me the holy city, Jerusalem.
John 14.23-29: The Spirit will remind you of all I have said.
Dear confirmandi!
In the sacrament of confirmation you receive ‘the seal of God’s gift, the Holy Spirit.’ Before you present yourself one by one to be anointed with sacred chrism, the bishop prays a magnificent prayer over you all. He extends his hand in an ancient gesture. Moses stood like that, with hands outstretched, when the Israelites passed through the Sea of Reeds; and again when they fought Amalec, their archenemy who wanted to destroy them. One doesn’t stand like that that while just waiting for the kettle to boil. The body’s posture shows that something momentous is going on. A connection is made between heaven and earth. God’s power is invoked on a people exposed.
In your case, today, the bishop calls down ‘the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and piety, the Spirit of the fear of God’.
If we have the rudiments of Biblical culture, our inner eye will see a procession of kings and prophets, of holy women and men who show us what it means to receive the Spirit. We think of King David dancing Spirit-drunk before the Ark; or of Elijah who, on Horeb, sensed the Spirit like a gentle breeze once the stormwind and thunder had passed. We recall that the Spirit ‘in the beginning’, while the earth was formless and void, ‘hovered upon the waters’. And of course we think of Mary ‘overshadowed by power from on high’, who by the Spirit conceived the Son of God, our Saviour. In this context, in the light of so many extraordinary happenings, the description of the Spirit’s work in our Gospel may seem a little tame.
For what is the promise given us? That the Spirit will help us to remember.
You find yourselves at a stage of life that naturally invites you to look ahead. It is a rich, exciting time. There are lots of questions to be answered. What will I do with my life? What will I aim for? Which profession will I choose? Will I meet someone I can love wholeheartedly, with whom I can start a family? Does God call me to his service?
One can feel quite dizzy standing like this, questioning, face to face with apparently limitless possibility. In such a setting it may seem pointless and dull to think of what lies behind. And does it really matter what happened, what was said, yesterday when what concerns me is the course I’ll follow tomorrow? The times in which we live tell us firmly that, no, it matters not. The times encourage us to forget in order, instead, to dream.
But that is an error.
We can all work out why from experience, whether we’re young or old. Think, for example, of what happens when conflicts arise in a family or group of friends. Someone we trust does or says something ugly. We feel hurt, humiliated. Trust withers. Suspicion spreads in us like an acid fog. In order to live such experience well, what’s needed is not forgetfulness. On the contrary: we must remember. Not in order to nurture grudges; but to engage with what is. If injustice has occurred, it must be evidenced. Only thus can we lucidly deal with it and forgive. If we pretend that what happened did not in fact take place, we shall never finish with things. We shall drag them along, then, as overweight luggage. They will condition our movements even should we take the wings of the dawn and settle at the far end of the sea.
To distinguish between what is and what is not, between mendacity and truth, reality and illusion, is fiendishly hard right now. The media feed us with impressions that often cannot be tested. How are we to know what is, and what isn’t, fake news? How are we to know where certain assertions come from, especially when so much discourse is generated artificially by blind algorithms? The problem is a real one. You young people are exposed to it all the time.
It will only get earnester. You will have to position yourselves before bullish politicians who maintain their countries’ ‘greatness’ on the basis of seductive slogans and wishful thinking. In Europe we rearm because we fear, even here in Norway, an attack from the East, where it is held that boundaries which define us do not really exist. We need, then, people who remember where these boundaries came from, why they were set. More generally, we struggle ever more to define and describe what a human being us; what constitutes us as women and men; when a person is allowed to live and when he or she is signed off to be put down. Here, too, remembrance is called for — clear remembering of life’s origin and goal, of the purpose of existence.
The agency of the Spirit, our Lord says in the Gospel, will especially recall all that hehas said. Jesus, the living Son of God, incarnate of the Virgin Mary, is Truth. By him, God’s eternal Word, all things were made: ‘apart from him nothing of what is came to be.’
To ‘recall’ the words of Jesus is about more than learning a few pious phrases by rote. It is about acquiring a true perception of reality, about seeking stable criteria that let us understand, discern, and choose well in order, thus, to contribute to a society founded on rock, not on shifting sands or in the middle of a sinking, fetid swamp.
My friends, today you position yourself publicly. It is an honourable thing to do! You declare yourselves Catholic Cristians. You affirm that there is a division between truth and untruth, that not everything is relative; and you place yourselves squarely under the banner of truth. Stick to that banner.
Be women and men who remember where you come from, where you are going. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Then you yourselves will walk securely. You will be a blessing to others. Christ mentions, in the Gospel, two character traits that will mark those who ‘remember all that I have said’: fearlessness and peace. That’s rare fare these days. But fare the world is hungry for, anxious and restless as it is.
Boundless is the Father’s gift to us in Christ, bestowed by the Holy Spirit. Let yourselves be gifted freely. Live good lives based on freedom, justice, reason, truth. Show yourselves worthy of God’s grace poured out upon you. Amen.
Sometimes we must pass through thickets, or whole woods, to get a view of the horizon.
Revelation 21.10-23: The angel showed me the holy city, Jerusalem.
John 14.23-29: The Spirit will remind you of all I have said.
Dear confirmandi!
In the sacrament of confirmation you receive ‘the seal of God’s gift, the Holy Spirit.’ Before you present yourself one by one to be anointed with sacred chrism, the bishop prays a magnificent prayer over you all. He extends his hand in an ancient gesture. Moses stood like that, with hands outstretched, when the Israelites passed through the Sea of Reeds; and again when they fought Amalec, their archenemy who wanted to destroy them. One doesn’t stand like that that while just waiting for the kettle to boil. The body’s posture shows that something momentous is going on. A connection is made between heaven and earth. God’s power is invoked on a people exposed.
In your case, today, the bishop calls down ‘the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and strength, the Spirit of knowledge and piety, the Spirit of the fear of God’.
If we have the rudiments of Biblical culture, our inner eye will see a procession of kings and prophets, of holy women and men who show us what it means to receive the Spirit. We think of King David dancing Spirit-drunk before the Ark; or of Elijah who, on Horeb, sensed the Spirit like a gentle breeze once the stormwind and thunder had passed. We recall that the Spirit ‘in the beginning’, while the earth was formless and void, ‘hovered upon the waters’. And of course we think of Mary ‘overshadowed by power from on high’, who by the Spirit conceived the Son of God, our Saviour. In this context, in the light of so many extraordinary happenings, the description of the Spirit’s work in our Gospel may seem a little tame.
For what is the promise given us? That the Spirit will help us to remember.
You find yourselves at a stage of life that naturally invites you to look ahead. It is a rich, exciting time. There are lots of questions to be answered. What will I do with my life? What will I aim for? Which profession will I choose? Will I meet someone I can love wholeheartedly, with whom I can start a family? Does God call me to his service?
One can feel quite dizzy standing like this, questioning, face to face with apparently limitless possibility. In such a setting it may seem pointless and dull to think of what lies behind. And does it really matter what happened, what was said, yesterday when what concerns me is the course I’ll follow tomorrow? The times in which we live tell us firmly that, no, it matters not. The times encourage us to forget in order, instead, to dream.
But that is an error.
We can all work out why from experience, whether we’re young or old. Think, for example, of what happens when conflicts arise in a family or group of friends. Someone we trust does or says something ugly. We feel hurt, humiliated. Trust withers. Suspicion spreads in us like an acid fog. In order to live such experience well, what’s needed is not forgetfulness. On the contrary: we must remember. Not in order to nurture grudges; but to engage with what is. If injustice has occurred, it must be evidenced. Only thus can we lucidly deal with it and forgive. If we pretend that what happened did not in fact take place, we shall never finish with things. We shall drag them along, then, as overweight luggage. They will condition our movements even should we take the wings of the dawn and settle at the far end of the sea.
To distinguish between what is and what is not, between mendacity and truth, reality and illusion, is fiendishly hard right now. The media feed us with impressions that often cannot be tested. How are we to know what is, and what isn’t, fake news? How are we to know where certain assertions come from, especially when so much discourse is generated artificially by blind algorithms? The problem is a real one. You young people are exposed to it all the time.
It will only get earnester. You will have to position yourselves before bullish politicians who maintain their countries’ ‘greatness’ on the basis of seductive slogans and wishful thinking. In Europe we rearm because we fear, even here in Norway, an attack from the East, where it is held that boundaries which define us do not really exist. We need, then, people who remember where these boundaries came from, why they were set. More generally, we struggle ever more to define and describe what a human being us; what constitutes us as women and men; when a person is allowed to live and when he or she is signed off to be put down. Here, too, remembrance is called for — clear remembering of life’s origin and goal, of the purpose of existence.
The agency of the Spirit, our Lord says in the Gospel, will especially recall all that hehas said. Jesus, the living Son of God, incarnate of the Virgin Mary, is Truth. By him, God’s eternal Word, all things were made: ‘apart from him nothing of what is came to be.’
To ‘recall’ the words of Jesus is about more than learning a few pious phrases by rote. It is about acquiring a true perception of reality, about seeking stable criteria that let us understand, discern, and choose well in order, thus, to contribute to a society founded on rock, not on shifting sands or in the middle of a sinking, fetid swamp.
My friends, today you position yourself publicly. It is an honourable thing to do! You declare yourselves Catholic Cristians. You affirm that there is a division between truth and untruth, that not everything is relative; and you place yourselves squarely under the banner of truth. Stick to that banner.
Be women and men who remember where you come from, where you are going. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. Then you yourselves will walk securely. You will be a blessing to others. Christ mentions, in the Gospel, two character traits that will mark those who ‘remember all that I have said’: fearlessness and peace. That’s rare fare these days. But fare the world is hungry for, anxious and restless as it is.
Boundless is the Father’s gift to us in Christ, bestowed by the Holy Spirit. Let yourselves be gifted freely. Live good lives based on freedom, justice, reason, truth. Show yourselves worthy of God’s grace poured out upon you. Amen.
Sometimes we must pass through thickets, or whole woods, to get a view of the horizon.