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:
Nightingale The ancients had an affinity for birds. Unexposed to our modern registers of fancy which let us broadcast our own voice, which let us fly, they were sensitive to birds’ fragility and strength, enchanted by the strangeness they bring near Read More
Desert Fathers 28 
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.
A brother who had taken Read More
A brother who had taken Read More
St Sunniva The feast of St Sunniva, Norway’s portmartyr, is kept today, 8 July. This sermon was preached last Saturday during a pilgrimage to Selja.
Proverbs 10:28-11:11: The hopes of the wicked come to nothing.
Matthew 10:26-33: There is nothing secret that will not Read More
Proverbs 10:28-11:11: The hopes of the wicked come to nothing.
Matthew 10:26-33: There is nothing secret that will not Read More
Desert Fathers 27 Once again, Jamie and I gather to address questions raised by people who follow the series, questions that impress us by their insight and sincerity. Some of the matters we consider are these:
Why may anger be a more fundamental sin Read More
Why may anger be a more fundamental sin Read More
Summer Break
Coram Fratribus will take a holiday for a couple of weeks. Thank you for visiting the site. I hope you get something from it.
With best wishes,
+fr Erik Varden
***
I remember one day in June.
The height of summer and the sun
still rising Read More
Coram Fratribus will take a holiday for a couple of weeks. Thank you for visiting the site. I hope you get something from it.
With best wishes,
+fr Erik Varden
***
I remember one day in June.
The height of summer and the sun
still rising Read More
Desert Fathers 26 You can find this episode in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here.
Two brothers went off to Read More
Two brothers went off to Read More
Learning to Pray This text was written as a preface to the Spanish edition of Dom André Poisson’s precious treatises on prayer, recently published by Rialp.
‘Lord, teach us to pray!’ This cry stirs in the heart of every believer. In Scripture, it is Read More
‘Lord, teach us to pray!’ This cry stirs in the heart of every believer. In Scripture, it is Read More
La Traviata Works of art affect us in different ways at different stages of our lives. Seeing La Traviata this evening I was moved, of course, by the drama of Violetta, a character showing that it is possible for the leopard to change its spots Read More
Nightingale
The ancients had an affinity for birds. Unexposed to our modern registers of fancy which let us broadcast our own voice, which let us fly, they were sensitive to birds’ fragility and strength, enchanted by the strangeness they bring near human society. I marvel at this poem in which Alcuin of York (740-804) mourns the disappearance of a nightingale that used to cheer him at night. Alcuin knew the greatest, most influential people of his age, including Charlemagne. He is said to have been the learnedest man of his generation. Yet he took the trouble to write this epitaph to a vanished wild creature. Thanks to it, we can hear the echo of its singing yet.
https://coramfratribus.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Alcuin-De-Luscinia.m4a
From Mediaeval Latin Lyrics by Helen Waddell.
https://coramfratribus.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Alcuin-De-Luscinia.m4a
From Mediaeval Latin Lyrics by Helen Waddell.
Desert Fathers 28
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.
A brother who had taken leave of the world and distributed his possessions to the poor, while keeping a bit for his own use, came to see Abba Antony. Having heard these things, Abba Antony said to him: ‘If you want to become a monk, go to such-and-such a village: buy meat and place it on your naked body, then come back here.’ The brother did as he was told. As a result, dogs and wild birds tore his body apart. Once he had returned to the elder, the latter asked if he had followed his counsel. The brother displayed his lacerated body. Then Abba Antony said: ‘Those who take leave of the world yet want to hang on to riches are torn apart just like this by demons who wage war on them.’
From the Acts of the Apostles we learn how the early Church constituted itself after Pentecost. The Apostles, having received the Holy Spirit as tongues of fire, preached and exhorted people in Jesus’s name. But the Christian project was not just about proclamation. It sought to lay foundations for a new model of society. ‘Save yourselves’, Peter told Israelites who had first thought he was drunk, so quaint was his enthusiasm, ‘from this corrupt generation’ (Acts 2.40).
In what way was it corrupt? The word Scripture uses is suggestive. Peter calls ‘this generation’ geneá skoliá. To be skoliós is to be twisted or tangled. The ancient Greeks gave the name skolión to a special type of drinking song sung at banquets for it was picked up by reclining guests following a zig-zag course. A generation described in these terms is one that can’t walk straight. It is not the Apostles, it turns out, who are sozzled; it is the world, wearily drunk on its self-sufficiency, pragmatic pleasure-seeking, thrills, and aimless meandering.
What the Church holds out instead is the prospect of a community that has a goal. Acts tells us how this course was defined: ‘All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts’ — all quite admirable: the Christians’ example earned them the esteem and goodwill of all. To stick to such a standard over time, though, costs. It just does not come naturally to us to share stuff, not to mention cash, with others. How can we know that they are really needy, and so deserving? How can we be sure they will loyally stand up for us when we have needs? It is tempting, and seems so sensible, to keep a little stash of private resources tucked away for rainy days, just in case.
And so we find the luminous reality of the first Jerusalem Church ominously darkened by the shades of Ananias and Sapphira. The two, whose story is told in the fifth chapter of Acts, were idealists set on pursuing the observance which the Christians practised and preached, laying their goods ‘at the apostles’ feet’ so that all might be held in common. That is how the early Church could be ‘of one heart and one soul’: people’s money was where their mouth were. Ananias and Sapphira, though, had through property sales come into some funds they somehow thought lay outside the apostolic covenant. While surrendering most of the money, they kept a certain sum back. It brought them to a bad end. When Peter confronted Ananias with his lying, Ananias promptly fell down and died. Three hours later Sapphira, Ananias’s wife, returned from running errands. Peter gave her a chance to put things right. He asked, ‘Did you and your husband sell the land for such and such a price’, that is, the amount given over to the community? Sapphira answered, ‘Yes, we did!’ Peter said, ‘Not, but you didn’t!’ Then she, too, fell down and died. ‘And great fear’, writes St Luke, ‘seized the whole church and all who heard of these things.’
Peter’s reproach was not motivated by pique that all the couple’s money had not been given to the firm whose managing director he was. He told Ananias: ‘While [the land] was yours, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, were not the proceeds at your disposal?’ Ananias could have done anything with it, that was his business. The scandal lay in the fact that he had pretended to make a total gift, yet had not.
This is likewise the essence of the story of the young man who came to see Antony. Antony asks with characteristic courtesy: ‘Do you want to be a monk?’ If the young fellow didn’t, he could carry all the shekels he liked. If he did, though, even a slight retraction of the oblation on which his life was premised would compromise him at every level. It would make of him a man torn apart, a man with a divided heart whose treasure may have been partly in heaven, yet partly fixed, too, in his pocket. The drastic lesson Antony taught was not by way of punishment. It offered enlightenment, saying: ‘Look, this is what you are doing to yourself! Stop while you can!’
St Paul writes in one of his letters: ‘Each of you must give as you have made up your mind’. If you want to throw a small coin into a beggar’s hat, that is estimable; but do not pretend to give all you have if you are giving only a part. There will, then, be no gratuity in your gift, or joy, or fecundity. This holds for any one who has made vows of consecration, whether in priesthood, religious life, or marriage.
A brother who had taken leave of the world and distributed his possessions to the poor, while keeping a bit for his own use, came to see Abba Antony. Having heard these things, Abba Antony said to him: ‘If you want to become a monk, go to such-and-such a village: buy meat and place it on your naked body, then come back here.’ The brother did as he was told. As a result, dogs and wild birds tore his body apart. Once he had returned to the elder, the latter asked if he had followed his counsel. The brother displayed his lacerated body. Then Abba Antony said: ‘Those who take leave of the world yet want to hang on to riches are torn apart just like this by demons who wage war on them.’
From the Acts of the Apostles we learn how the early Church constituted itself after Pentecost. The Apostles, having received the Holy Spirit as tongues of fire, preached and exhorted people in Jesus’s name. But the Christian project was not just about proclamation. It sought to lay foundations for a new model of society. ‘Save yourselves’, Peter told Israelites who had first thought he was drunk, so quaint was his enthusiasm, ‘from this corrupt generation’ (Acts 2.40).
In what way was it corrupt? The word Scripture uses is suggestive. Peter calls ‘this generation’ geneá skoliá. To be skoliós is to be twisted or tangled. The ancient Greeks gave the name skolión to a special type of drinking song sung at banquets for it was picked up by reclining guests following a zig-zag course. A generation described in these terms is one that can’t walk straight. It is not the Apostles, it turns out, who are sozzled; it is the world, wearily drunk on its self-sufficiency, pragmatic pleasure-seeking, thrills, and aimless meandering.
What the Church holds out instead is the prospect of a community that has a goal. Acts tells us how this course was defined: ‘All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts’ — all quite admirable: the Christians’ example earned them the esteem and goodwill of all. To stick to such a standard over time, though, costs. It just does not come naturally to us to share stuff, not to mention cash, with others. How can we know that they are really needy, and so deserving? How can we be sure they will loyally stand up for us when we have needs? It is tempting, and seems so sensible, to keep a little stash of private resources tucked away for rainy days, just in case.
And so we find the luminous reality of the first Jerusalem Church ominously darkened by the shades of Ananias and Sapphira. The two, whose story is told in the fifth chapter of Acts, were idealists set on pursuing the observance which the Christians practised and preached, laying their goods ‘at the apostles’ feet’ so that all might be held in common. That is how the early Church could be ‘of one heart and one soul’: people’s money was where their mouth were. Ananias and Sapphira, though, had through property sales come into some funds they somehow thought lay outside the apostolic covenant. While surrendering most of the money, they kept a certain sum back. It brought them to a bad end. When Peter confronted Ananias with his lying, Ananias promptly fell down and died. Three hours later Sapphira, Ananias’s wife, returned from running errands. Peter gave her a chance to put things right. He asked, ‘Did you and your husband sell the land for such and such a price’, that is, the amount given over to the community? Sapphira answered, ‘Yes, we did!’ Peter said, ‘Not, but you didn’t!’ Then she, too, fell down and died. ‘And great fear’, writes St Luke, ‘seized the whole church and all who heard of these things.’
Peter’s reproach was not motivated by pique that all the couple’s money had not been given to the firm whose managing director he was. He told Ananias: ‘While [the land] was yours, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, were not the proceeds at your disposal?’ Ananias could have done anything with it, that was his business. The scandal lay in the fact that he had pretended to make a total gift, yet had not.
This is likewise the essence of the story of the young man who came to see Antony. Antony asks with characteristic courtesy: ‘Do you want to be a monk?’ If the young fellow didn’t, he could carry all the shekels he liked. If he did, though, even a slight retraction of the oblation on which his life was premised would compromise him at every level. It would make of him a man torn apart, a man with a divided heart whose treasure may have been partly in heaven, yet partly fixed, too, in his pocket. The drastic lesson Antony taught was not by way of punishment. It offered enlightenment, saying: ‘Look, this is what you are doing to yourself! Stop while you can!’
St Paul writes in one of his letters: ‘Each of you must give as you have made up your mind’. If you want to throw a small coin into a beggar’s hat, that is estimable; but do not pretend to give all you have if you are giving only a part. There will, then, be no gratuity in your gift, or joy, or fecundity. This holds for any one who has made vows of consecration, whether in priesthood, religious life, or marriage.
St Sunniva
The feast of St Sunniva, Norway’s portmartyr, is kept today, 8 July. This sermon was preached last Saturday during a pilgrimage to Selja.
Proverbs 10:28-11:11: The hopes of the wicked come to nothing.
Matthew 10:26-33: There is nothing secret that will not become known.
In the Gospel our Lord tells us: ‘Have no fear’, ‘Be not anxious’, ‘Do not be afraid’ (Mt 10.26, 28, 31). We live, though, in fearful times. Mental health is parlous. Many are deeply troubled in body and soul. Ongoing wars open apocalyptic prospects. Strong migration, coupled with the fact that Europe just isn’t reproducing itself, makes the future uncertain: what sort of society is being formed? Then there is ecological menace. We have read about it for years. We know that the Poles are melting, but they are far away. The last few days’ extreme heat in Europe, causing illness and terrifying fires, brings the question closer: what will happen when parts of the earth become uninhabitable?
Spontaneously we might think that what is needed is money, sufficient means to work out a genuine political project, civilising enterprises, inventions that will let nature recover its balance. But is money enough?
You would expect, wouldn’t you, a bishop to ask a question like that, then to point towards spiritual values. By all means: I believe in spiritual values. I am happy to point towards them. But what causes this query to niggle me today comes from a different, frankly undevotional source.
The other day I listened to a long conversation Ross Douthat conducted on 26 June with Peter Thiel. Thiel is not just one of the world’s richest people; he is a sharp analyst, interesting to listen to. It impressed me, therefore, that he, who has cash enough to purchase anything he wants, kept expressing deep worry: worry concerning too slow technological advances, worry about societal tendencies and culture. Thiel is not the only one to feel this way. He referred to a recentish exchange with his colleague Elon Musk (richer still), and noted that Musk has lost hope in expeditions to Mars as a political project. Musk is said to have exclaimed, distraught: ‘There’s nowhere else to go!’
A confrontation with finitude and attendant risk, capital notwithstanding.
The fact that our time’s most moneyed men, who embody what most people would think of as spectacular good fortune, can look around, contemplate the world, and experience a kind of despair, feeling caught, makes me thoughtful. It challenges me as Christian to show concretely that I wish to live on different terms.
Those terms are shown us by the holy woman in whose honour we are gathered here on Selja.
Sunniva was an Irish princess raised a Christian, heir to the harvest of faith sown in her country by Gallic monks settled on rocks along the coast to sing Christ’s praise and by faithful bishops who taught the fullness of faith with wisdom and grace.
Sunniva’s father died while she was still young; it became her task to govern the land. She became an object of desire for strivers. We read that a viking chief, one of our ancestors, sought to conquer her — a significant detail in the light of the story’s development. Sunniva declined this man’s advances. Not only was he an uncouth heathen; Sunniva had, like St Cecilia and other Virgin Martyrs we name in the Roman Canon of the Mass, consecrated her life to the Lord. She had resolved to live and die a virgin. The viking went berserk. Unable to charm Sunniva, he tried to compel her. He robbed and pillaged in her territory. Sunniva saw that she had, for the sake of the people, to get away.
The way Sigrid Undset retells the story, Sunniva gathered her people around her. She had had enough, she said, of heeding the whims of ‘all those people who crave the passing pleasures of this brief life’. She did not wish, by remaining in Ireland, to put at risk those for whom she was responsible. Therefore she made a weighty decision: ‘I will no longer be a thrall carrying grief and anxiety on account of such things as my enemies can steal from me or devour by fire. I will rather act as befits a noblewoman. I declare myself free and surrender myself to the power and care of my Lord, Jesus Christ.’ On that basis she abandoned herself, as St Olav would do on Stiklestad a couple of hundred years later, into the Lord’s hands.
She and her retinue went on board ships that had neither sails nor rudders. Providence should be free to bear them where it pleased. And so she ended up here, in this inhospitable place, where she became a seed of Norwegian Christianity.
It touches me that the Godpleasingness of Sunniva was revealed, after her death, by two sensible signs: the first was a strange perfume emanating from the grotto right behind us, where she had died; the second was a gentle, kindly light that rested on this island. ‘I am the light of the world’, says our Lord; St Paul exhorts us to carry abroad ‘the fragrance that comes from knowing [Christ]’ (2 Cor 2.14). It isn’t aways a great deal of talking that will best witness to Christ’s grace. More compelling is a given life, a life lived faithfully unto death.
Sunniva was free to choose and act, and thereby graced with fecundity, precisely because she did not fear death. She had acquired the essential consciousness that defines a Christian: the certainty that death has lost its sting and is therefore nothing to make such a fuss about. What matters is not just to survive for a shorter or longer time. What matters is to live the measure of our days here on earth fully and in truth, in order to be readied to enter eternal life.
I thought of St Sunniva when Peter Thiel, in the interview, mentioned a freezing party he had attended in the early noughties, presenting offers to deep-freeze people until such a time when science, hypothetically, would have found an ambrosia that might ensure them endless existence. And it struck me how absurd our sophisticated, frightened, godless epoch appears when considered through the lens of the saints’ sovereign, strong testimony to liberty.
Let us follow their lead, then, and make right decisions in matters both great and small.
St Sunniva and her companions as Gösta af Geijerstam, a friend of Sigrid Undset’s, imagined them.
Proverbs 10:28-11:11: The hopes of the wicked come to nothing.
Matthew 10:26-33: There is nothing secret that will not become known.
In the Gospel our Lord tells us: ‘Have no fear’, ‘Be not anxious’, ‘Do not be afraid’ (Mt 10.26, 28, 31). We live, though, in fearful times. Mental health is parlous. Many are deeply troubled in body and soul. Ongoing wars open apocalyptic prospects. Strong migration, coupled with the fact that Europe just isn’t reproducing itself, makes the future uncertain: what sort of society is being formed? Then there is ecological menace. We have read about it for years. We know that the Poles are melting, but they are far away. The last few days’ extreme heat in Europe, causing illness and terrifying fires, brings the question closer: what will happen when parts of the earth become uninhabitable?
Spontaneously we might think that what is needed is money, sufficient means to work out a genuine political project, civilising enterprises, inventions that will let nature recover its balance. But is money enough?
You would expect, wouldn’t you, a bishop to ask a question like that, then to point towards spiritual values. By all means: I believe in spiritual values. I am happy to point towards them. But what causes this query to niggle me today comes from a different, frankly undevotional source.
The other day I listened to a long conversation Ross Douthat conducted on 26 June with Peter Thiel. Thiel is not just one of the world’s richest people; he is a sharp analyst, interesting to listen to. It impressed me, therefore, that he, who has cash enough to purchase anything he wants, kept expressing deep worry: worry concerning too slow technological advances, worry about societal tendencies and culture. Thiel is not the only one to feel this way. He referred to a recentish exchange with his colleague Elon Musk (richer still), and noted that Musk has lost hope in expeditions to Mars as a political project. Musk is said to have exclaimed, distraught: ‘There’s nowhere else to go!’
A confrontation with finitude and attendant risk, capital notwithstanding.
The fact that our time’s most moneyed men, who embody what most people would think of as spectacular good fortune, can look around, contemplate the world, and experience a kind of despair, feeling caught, makes me thoughtful. It challenges me as Christian to show concretely that I wish to live on different terms.
Those terms are shown us by the holy woman in whose honour we are gathered here on Selja.
Sunniva was an Irish princess raised a Christian, heir to the harvest of faith sown in her country by Gallic monks settled on rocks along the coast to sing Christ’s praise and by faithful bishops who taught the fullness of faith with wisdom and grace.
Sunniva’s father died while she was still young; it became her task to govern the land. She became an object of desire for strivers. We read that a viking chief, one of our ancestors, sought to conquer her — a significant detail in the light of the story’s development. Sunniva declined this man’s advances. Not only was he an uncouth heathen; Sunniva had, like St Cecilia and other Virgin Martyrs we name in the Roman Canon of the Mass, consecrated her life to the Lord. She had resolved to live and die a virgin. The viking went berserk. Unable to charm Sunniva, he tried to compel her. He robbed and pillaged in her territory. Sunniva saw that she had, for the sake of the people, to get away.
The way Sigrid Undset retells the story, Sunniva gathered her people around her. She had had enough, she said, of heeding the whims of ‘all those people who crave the passing pleasures of this brief life’. She did not wish, by remaining in Ireland, to put at risk those for whom she was responsible. Therefore she made a weighty decision: ‘I will no longer be a thrall carrying grief and anxiety on account of such things as my enemies can steal from me or devour by fire. I will rather act as befits a noblewoman. I declare myself free and surrender myself to the power and care of my Lord, Jesus Christ.’ On that basis she abandoned herself, as St Olav would do on Stiklestad a couple of hundred years later, into the Lord’s hands.
She and her retinue went on board ships that had neither sails nor rudders. Providence should be free to bear them where it pleased. And so she ended up here, in this inhospitable place, where she became a seed of Norwegian Christianity.
It touches me that the Godpleasingness of Sunniva was revealed, after her death, by two sensible signs: the first was a strange perfume emanating from the grotto right behind us, where she had died; the second was a gentle, kindly light that rested on this island. ‘I am the light of the world’, says our Lord; St Paul exhorts us to carry abroad ‘the fragrance that comes from knowing [Christ]’ (2 Cor 2.14). It isn’t aways a great deal of talking that will best witness to Christ’s grace. More compelling is a given life, a life lived faithfully unto death.
Sunniva was free to choose and act, and thereby graced with fecundity, precisely because she did not fear death. She had acquired the essential consciousness that defines a Christian: the certainty that death has lost its sting and is therefore nothing to make such a fuss about. What matters is not just to survive for a shorter or longer time. What matters is to live the measure of our days here on earth fully and in truth, in order to be readied to enter eternal life.
I thought of St Sunniva when Peter Thiel, in the interview, mentioned a freezing party he had attended in the early noughties, presenting offers to deep-freeze people until such a time when science, hypothetically, would have found an ambrosia that might ensure them endless existence. And it struck me how absurd our sophisticated, frightened, godless epoch appears when considered through the lens of the saints’ sovereign, strong testimony to liberty.
Let us follow their lead, then, and make right decisions in matters both great and small.
St Sunniva and her companions as Gösta af Geijerstam, a friend of Sigrid Undset’s, imagined them.
Desert Fathers 27
Once again, Jamie and I gather to address questions raised by people who follow the series, questions that impress us by their insight and sincerity. Some of the matters we consider are these:
Why may anger be a more fundamental sin than lust?
What does it mean to speak of redemption as somehow communal?
How might one endure persistent temptation without despair?
How can a life of radical prayer be at one with solidarity for all mankind?
You can watch the episode here, or find it as a podcast where you like to listen to such things.
Photograph: Mateusz Opila, EWTN Norge.
Why may anger be a more fundamental sin than lust?
What does it mean to speak of redemption as somehow communal?
How might one endure persistent temptation without despair?
How can a life of radical prayer be at one with solidarity for all mankind?
You can watch the episode here, or find it as a podcast where you like to listen to such things.
Photograph: Mateusz Opila, EWTN Norge.
Summer Break
Coram Fratribus will take a holiday for a couple of weeks. Thank you for visiting the site. I hope you get something from it.
With best wishes,
+fr Erik Varden
***
I remember one day in June.
The height of summer and the sun
still rising on one of those days
that calls all nature into song.
R.S Thomas
Coram Fratribus will take a holiday for a couple of weeks. Thank you for visiting the site. I hope you get something from it.
With best wishes,
+fr Erik Varden
***
I remember one day in June.
The height of summer and the sun
still rising on one of those days
that calls all nature into song.
R.S Thomas
Desert Fathers 26
You can find this episode in video format here – a dedicated page – and pick it up in audio wherever you listen to podcasts. On YouTube, the full range of episodes can be found here.
Two brothers went off to the market to sell their wares. Having parted company, one of them fell into lust. When the other brother returned, that one said to him: ‘Brother, let’s go back to our cell!’ But he said: ‘I’m not coming’. The other besought him saying, ‘Why, brother?’ He said: ‘When you left me, I fell into lust.’ His brother, wanting to gain him, said: ‘The same thing happened to me, too, when I left you. But let us go! Let us forcefully repent, and God will forgive us.’ They went and told the elders what had happened. The elders prescribed how they should do penance. And the one did penance for the other, as if he himself has sinned. When God, after a few days, saw what pains he took for love’s sake, he revealed to one of the elders that he who had sinned had been forgiven on account of the great love of him who had not sinned. This is what it is to give one’s life for one’s brother.
The fathers ate their bread in the sweat of their brow. To live, they had largely to be self-sufficient. They made saleable stuff, the production of which was compatible with their contemplative purpose: mats or ropes. Having built up a stock, they sold it. Trips into the city were called for. In this way the interface between desert and ‘world’ remained vibrant. It could lead to salutary encounters. At the same time it posed challenges. Alexandria did not provide the ascetic safeguards of Scetis. A monk out of his cell had to rely on his virtue being interiorised. It was not always.
This situation-bound story provides a parable into which we can easily read ourselves. Most of us conduct our daily lives within predictable parameters. We learn to negotiate these. Familiar boundaries steer our behaviour and choices. We know where temptations are, and occasions of sin, so take prudent precautions. Life seems safe enough. But what happens when we find ourselves in unfamiliar, unbounded places: alone on a trip, say, away from our community or family; sauntering unrecognised through a metropolitan red-light district; or just finding ourselves before an unguarded, unobserved computer? Is our virtue then reliable and firm?
We do not know exactly how the monk we read about ‘fell into lust’. Did he have an illicit encounter? If so, was he the seducer or did he succumb to seduction? Did he pursue porneia through some kind of pornography? Or was the sin of ‘lust’ a sudden conflagration in his mind that led to impure thoughts, and possibly deeds?
By not being specific, the apophthegmata exercise their pedagogy. These stories are not just historical exemplars; they are intended as mirrors of conscience. To work as such their applicability must be at once pointed and broad. The key thing to note is diabolical hopelessness induced in the brother. Looking at himself through the prism of what just happened, he thinks: ‘Good God! There is no way back!’ He is convinced that all his devout endeavours have been futile and insincere — else, how could he so easily have fallen? The thought of going back to the setting of his consecration, where once he pronounced a Yes! he had wished to be final, is unbearable. Not only does he feel, now, unworthy of his cell and the companionship of his faithful brother; the cell and the brother would be for him a reproach he reckons he could not endure. His mind is made up. He thinks: ‘I have rolled in mud: the mud is now where I belong’. Believing himself defined by his sin, he is sure he is beyond redemption’s reach.
This is where his companion comes to the rescue. This other fellow, returning from errands cheerfully and innocently run, sees his brother downcast. He instantly knows: something serious has happened. He owns at least to a degree a charism prized by the fathers: cardiognosis, the ability to read another’s heart in charity. He sees a humiliated man hurt in his convictions who thinks himself beyond repair, bound to remain an object of disdain. He knows: the only ointment that will work in this case is compassion — compassion not just by way of saying, ‘My poor friend, what an awful thing; still, pull yourself together’; no, compassion in the sense of taking on himself what the other carries, much as it was said about Antony: ‘He did suffer with the suffering’.
The enlightened monk knows it could be fatal, now, to look down on his brother. So he places himself at his level. Saying, ‘I did the same!’, he relieves him of thinking himself an outcast. Thus he inflames courage to repent, to start again. He assures his brother of God’s power and will to save. We may object: But did he not thereby tell a lie? Not if we adopt the fathers’ mindset. Antony said: ‘Our life and our death is with our neighbour.’ My brother’s burden is mine to help bear and repair. That is what life in the mystical body is like. In the intimate reality of monastic fellowship, or that of a married couple, this dynamic truly takes on flesh. Combined with the guilty brother’s confession and repentance, the pure monk’s vicarious penance was effective. ‘This is what it is to give one’s life for one’s brother’, a universal command. We read in Scripture that God ‘for our sake made him to be sin who knew no sin, that in him we might become the righteousness of God.’ That work carries on in the Church. It does not cancel justice, but infuses it with charity, letting the sweet aroma of Christ ascend as from a censer from the burnt coals of our life.
Koinonia – fraternal communion. An icon from the monastery of Bose.
Two brothers went off to the market to sell their wares. Having parted company, one of them fell into lust. When the other brother returned, that one said to him: ‘Brother, let’s go back to our cell!’ But he said: ‘I’m not coming’. The other besought him saying, ‘Why, brother?’ He said: ‘When you left me, I fell into lust.’ His brother, wanting to gain him, said: ‘The same thing happened to me, too, when I left you. But let us go! Let us forcefully repent, and God will forgive us.’ They went and told the elders what had happened. The elders prescribed how they should do penance. And the one did penance for the other, as if he himself has sinned. When God, after a few days, saw what pains he took for love’s sake, he revealed to one of the elders that he who had sinned had been forgiven on account of the great love of him who had not sinned. This is what it is to give one’s life for one’s brother.
The fathers ate their bread in the sweat of their brow. To live, they had largely to be self-sufficient. They made saleable stuff, the production of which was compatible with their contemplative purpose: mats or ropes. Having built up a stock, they sold it. Trips into the city were called for. In this way the interface between desert and ‘world’ remained vibrant. It could lead to salutary encounters. At the same time it posed challenges. Alexandria did not provide the ascetic safeguards of Scetis. A monk out of his cell had to rely on his virtue being interiorised. It was not always.
This situation-bound story provides a parable into which we can easily read ourselves. Most of us conduct our daily lives within predictable parameters. We learn to negotiate these. Familiar boundaries steer our behaviour and choices. We know where temptations are, and occasions of sin, so take prudent precautions. Life seems safe enough. But what happens when we find ourselves in unfamiliar, unbounded places: alone on a trip, say, away from our community or family; sauntering unrecognised through a metropolitan red-light district; or just finding ourselves before an unguarded, unobserved computer? Is our virtue then reliable and firm?
We do not know exactly how the monk we read about ‘fell into lust’. Did he have an illicit encounter? If so, was he the seducer or did he succumb to seduction? Did he pursue porneia through some kind of pornography? Or was the sin of ‘lust’ a sudden conflagration in his mind that led to impure thoughts, and possibly deeds?
By not being specific, the apophthegmata exercise their pedagogy. These stories are not just historical exemplars; they are intended as mirrors of conscience. To work as such their applicability must be at once pointed and broad. The key thing to note is diabolical hopelessness induced in the brother. Looking at himself through the prism of what just happened, he thinks: ‘Good God! There is no way back!’ He is convinced that all his devout endeavours have been futile and insincere — else, how could he so easily have fallen? The thought of going back to the setting of his consecration, where once he pronounced a Yes! he had wished to be final, is unbearable. Not only does he feel, now, unworthy of his cell and the companionship of his faithful brother; the cell and the brother would be for him a reproach he reckons he could not endure. His mind is made up. He thinks: ‘I have rolled in mud: the mud is now where I belong’. Believing himself defined by his sin, he is sure he is beyond redemption’s reach.
This is where his companion comes to the rescue. This other fellow, returning from errands cheerfully and innocently run, sees his brother downcast. He instantly knows: something serious has happened. He owns at least to a degree a charism prized by the fathers: cardiognosis, the ability to read another’s heart in charity. He sees a humiliated man hurt in his convictions who thinks himself beyond repair, bound to remain an object of disdain. He knows: the only ointment that will work in this case is compassion — compassion not just by way of saying, ‘My poor friend, what an awful thing; still, pull yourself together’; no, compassion in the sense of taking on himself what the other carries, much as it was said about Antony: ‘He did suffer with the suffering’.
The enlightened monk knows it could be fatal, now, to look down on his brother. So he places himself at his level. Saying, ‘I did the same!’, he relieves him of thinking himself an outcast. Thus he inflames courage to repent, to start again. He assures his brother of God’s power and will to save. We may object: But did he not thereby tell a lie? Not if we adopt the fathers’ mindset. Antony said: ‘Our life and our death is with our neighbour.’ My brother’s burden is mine to help bear and repair. That is what life in the mystical body is like. In the intimate reality of monastic fellowship, or that of a married couple, this dynamic truly takes on flesh. Combined with the guilty brother’s confession and repentance, the pure monk’s vicarious penance was effective. ‘This is what it is to give one’s life for one’s brother’, a universal command. We read in Scripture that God ‘for our sake made him to be sin who knew no sin, that in him we might become the righteousness of God.’ That work carries on in the Church. It does not cancel justice, but infuses it with charity, letting the sweet aroma of Christ ascend as from a censer from the burnt coals of our life.
Koinonia – fraternal communion. An icon from the monastery of Bose.
Learning to Pray
This text was written as a preface to the Spanish edition of Dom André Poisson’s precious treatises on prayer, recently published by Rialp.
‘Lord, teach us to pray!’ This cry stirs in the heart of every believer. In Scripture, it is made at a crucial juncture in the Gospel of Luke, just after Jesus had sent 72 of his disciples out ‘like sheep among wolves’ to proclaim his Gospel, telling them not to bring anything at all with them on the way: no purse, no bag, no spare sandals. The one thing they were to carry in abundance was peace. Such was their possession of peace to be that they could leave it behind in abundance wherever they passed and yet have undiminished reserves. From this peace healing would flow, and pardon.
The vassals of the Prince of Darkness, constitutionally disquiet, would be powerless confronted with this peace, swept off their perches. When the 72 returned and reported on the great works in which they had been instrumental, Jesus, who is peace, remarked: ‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.’ A single bright flash was all that was left of the stolen glory jealously displayed by this cosmic agitator, startled to find his host of troubling spirits disarmed by peaceful poor men.
The 72 were conscious that the peace they carried exceeded them. Its source lay outside themselves. It sprang from the presence in their midst of Jesus, who alarmed them all the more with predictions of his imminent departure. How might they continue to pursue his peace, and remain within its orbit, with him no longer there? The answer came one day after the encounter in Bethany during which Jesus told Martha, bustling, that Mary, her sister, who sat at his feet listening, had ‘chosen the better part’. In the light of these words, the disciples were moved when they ‘saw Jesus praying in a certain place’. He, their master and friend, displayed what ‘the better part’ stood for. He not only taught, but showed, what utter attention to the Father’s will looks like. This was how the disciples, too, wished to ground their existence. After he had finished praying, they said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray!’
Jesus’s response was immediate and precise. He gave his disciples the formula we know as the Our Father. It constitutes the core of Christian prayer. From the beginning of the Church, great teachers of the faith have expounded it, drawing out its various aspects. It is an excellent school of prayer to read the treatises by Fathers such as Tertullian, Cyprian of Carthage, and Augustine of Hippo. Sprung from these is the fine contemporary commentary, steeped in tradition, on the Our Father in the fourth part of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, an inexhaustible resource.
Jesus’s teaching on prayer amounted to more than the provision of a text for recitation, that is clear. It was the sight of Jesus praying that made the disciples wish to learn prayer. The words of prayer, which touch our reason and orient our will, point towards the breaking-open of our heart, the transformation of our being as we dare to aspire, even in this life, to ‘become participants of the divine nature’.
This existential dimension of prayer has attracted generous women and men at all times. It stands for the outwards manifestation of the inward truth, held in faith, that man is made in the image of God and will not find peace, or perfect joy, until his iconic potential is realised in a divine likeness wrought by grace made effective through human freedom. This dimension of prayer is sometimes called ‘contemplative’. People refer to it as ‘the prayer of quiet’, for words are not primary to it, or as ‘the prayer of the heart’, in as much as, by it, the intellect descends into the heart, where Scripture’s anthropology posits the centre of the human person.
Our patrimony offers us a wealth of guidance on how to proceed along this path of prayer. Indeed, the immensity of resources may seem overwhelming. Which ‘school’ of prayer should I choose? Should I follow the intimate counsels of St John of the Cross, the liturgical mysticism of the Cistercians, the exultant effusions of St Francis? Or dive into the boundless sea of the Philokalia? And how can I practise a deepening of prayer responsibly, on guard against both self-delusion and the illusions of the devil, who tries to trip up those who seek to grow in godliness?
Ideally we need an experienced guide, someone who has already passed through the landscape we prepare to enter, who knows its paths and pitfalls. Such guides are hard to find, however. There is no lack of persons with diplomas in ‘spiritual direction’: they are two a penny. But a true spiritual father or mother is a rarity. It was ever thus; but perhaps the sparseness is especially acute in our day.
That is why reliable books are such a blessing. A book can never replace a conversation; but immersion in the testimony of a man or woman of God can become conversation. A word carrying the message of truth become flesh does convey a presence, somehow. Exposure to such presence can turn into genuine friendship.
The past century has produced some very precious books. It is perilous to draw out some, for there will be others I overlook or of which I am ignorant. Nonetheless, I wish to highlight a handful that have been beneficial to me. They may help others. I think of the Spiritual Letters of Abbot John Chapman; of Metropolitan Antony Bloom’s School for Prayer; of The Spiritual Life and Prayer by Mother Cécile Bruyère; of Father, into Your Hands, a book by the Carmelite Wilfrid Stinissen. No single text has helped me more, however, than the one contained in this present volume. I discovered it in a Parisian bookshop a quarter of a century ago in a poorly bound edition that has long since come apart. The volume’s material fragility contrasts with the substance of its content. It gave me food for which I was ravenously hungry. There was a time when I knew this text more or less by heart.
Its two parts are dated: the first to Christmas 1983, the second to Advent 1988. The references are meaningful. Presented here is an account of prayer rooted in the mystery of God made man, revealed in the Gospel and defined with precision at the Council of Nicaea, whose 1700th anniversary we celebrate this year, called to appreciate afresh the consequences for human nature of the incarnation of the Word.
The first published version came out without an authorial signature in 2001. The author was discreetly designated as ‘a Carthusian’, following the custom of an order of monks that does not like to make a display of individuals. We are now free to say who he was. His name was Dom André Poisson. He was a man of my grandparents’ generation. In the archives of La Grande Chartreuse, his biography is summed up as follows, with Carthusian succinctness:
Étienne Poisson was born at Douce, in Maine-et-Loire, on 28 February 1923. After studies at the Polytechnic School, he made his first profession at La Grande Chartreuse on 2 February 1948, solemn profession on 6 October 1953. He was ordained a priest on 13 March 1954. He was made Sub-Procurator in 1957, Procurator in 1961. On 8 May 1967 he was elected Prior and General of the Order, dedicating himself to the aggiornamento of the Order following the indications of the Second Vatican Council. He resigned in 1997. The General Chapter of that year sent him to be Prior at the Charterhouse of the Transfiguration [in the USA] for two year. From there he went to Vedana [in Italy], as Chaplain to Carthusian nuns, in 1999. Having returned to La Grande Chartreuse in May 2001, he died there on 20 April 2005.
Our natural curiosity would like to know more: the story of his vocation, his spiritual graces and trials. We are avid to get a sense of his personality; to know how he evaluated developments in the Church and world during his long ministry, which spanned turbulent decades. But none of this is essential. Everything we need to know about Dom Poisson is contained in the text you hold in your hand. It is a sliver of a book, almost just a brochure. In these pages, though, you will find a concentrated depth of content that a less wise, less humble, less articulate writer would need multiple pages to express. We have here the distillation of intimate experience, presented graciously and lucidly, with a mixture of authority and diffidence. The authority springs from the status of the text as testimony: ‘This’, we are given to understand, ‘is how the living God has made himself known to me, and to his graciousness I bear witness.’ The diffidence springs from the knowledge that the mystery of God by definition transcends any particular account: ‘Such has been my way’, the author seems to say, ‘and I share the account of it for what it is worth, but you must find your own way — and God will help you if you let him, and trust him.’
Dom Poisson wrote these two brief treatises in the form of letters. Each of us can confidently read them as specifically addressed to himself or herself. In terms of content, they are self-explanatory. They need no exegesis from me; I would clutter their elegant essentiality with unnecessary verbiage. I rejoice, simply, to recommend this little book with all my heart. It opened my eyes to ‘the boundless riches of Christ’; it pierced my heart with the light of a trust I had previously only known notionally; and it gave me a sense of what it might really mean to profess with the faith of the Church, defined at Nicaea: ‘I believe in the resurrection of the flesh’. It could do this because its author speaks with authority, of things he knows.
Another twentieth-century Carthusian has written that a contemplative is ‘a man inebriated on pure water drunk from the source’. This book offers you a map pointing straight to the source as well as the bucket and rope you need to draw water for yourself. Draw and drink, deep draughts. You will come to understand, then, what Jesus meant when he said to the Samaritan woman: ‘Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never again be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life’.
Photograph from the website of the Charterhouse of Miraflores.
‘Lord, teach us to pray!’ This cry stirs in the heart of every believer. In Scripture, it is made at a crucial juncture in the Gospel of Luke, just after Jesus had sent 72 of his disciples out ‘like sheep among wolves’ to proclaim his Gospel, telling them not to bring anything at all with them on the way: no purse, no bag, no spare sandals. The one thing they were to carry in abundance was peace. Such was their possession of peace to be that they could leave it behind in abundance wherever they passed and yet have undiminished reserves. From this peace healing would flow, and pardon.
The vassals of the Prince of Darkness, constitutionally disquiet, would be powerless confronted with this peace, swept off their perches. When the 72 returned and reported on the great works in which they had been instrumental, Jesus, who is peace, remarked: ‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.’ A single bright flash was all that was left of the stolen glory jealously displayed by this cosmic agitator, startled to find his host of troubling spirits disarmed by peaceful poor men.
The 72 were conscious that the peace they carried exceeded them. Its source lay outside themselves. It sprang from the presence in their midst of Jesus, who alarmed them all the more with predictions of his imminent departure. How might they continue to pursue his peace, and remain within its orbit, with him no longer there? The answer came one day after the encounter in Bethany during which Jesus told Martha, bustling, that Mary, her sister, who sat at his feet listening, had ‘chosen the better part’. In the light of these words, the disciples were moved when they ‘saw Jesus praying in a certain place’. He, their master and friend, displayed what ‘the better part’ stood for. He not only taught, but showed, what utter attention to the Father’s will looks like. This was how the disciples, too, wished to ground their existence. After he had finished praying, they said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray!’
Jesus’s response was immediate and precise. He gave his disciples the formula we know as the Our Father. It constitutes the core of Christian prayer. From the beginning of the Church, great teachers of the faith have expounded it, drawing out its various aspects. It is an excellent school of prayer to read the treatises by Fathers such as Tertullian, Cyprian of Carthage, and Augustine of Hippo. Sprung from these is the fine contemporary commentary, steeped in tradition, on the Our Father in the fourth part of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, an inexhaustible resource.
Jesus’s teaching on prayer amounted to more than the provision of a text for recitation, that is clear. It was the sight of Jesus praying that made the disciples wish to learn prayer. The words of prayer, which touch our reason and orient our will, point towards the breaking-open of our heart, the transformation of our being as we dare to aspire, even in this life, to ‘become participants of the divine nature’.
This existential dimension of prayer has attracted generous women and men at all times. It stands for the outwards manifestation of the inward truth, held in faith, that man is made in the image of God and will not find peace, or perfect joy, until his iconic potential is realised in a divine likeness wrought by grace made effective through human freedom. This dimension of prayer is sometimes called ‘contemplative’. People refer to it as ‘the prayer of quiet’, for words are not primary to it, or as ‘the prayer of the heart’, in as much as, by it, the intellect descends into the heart, where Scripture’s anthropology posits the centre of the human person.
Our patrimony offers us a wealth of guidance on how to proceed along this path of prayer. Indeed, the immensity of resources may seem overwhelming. Which ‘school’ of prayer should I choose? Should I follow the intimate counsels of St John of the Cross, the liturgical mysticism of the Cistercians, the exultant effusions of St Francis? Or dive into the boundless sea of the Philokalia? And how can I practise a deepening of prayer responsibly, on guard against both self-delusion and the illusions of the devil, who tries to trip up those who seek to grow in godliness?
Ideally we need an experienced guide, someone who has already passed through the landscape we prepare to enter, who knows its paths and pitfalls. Such guides are hard to find, however. There is no lack of persons with diplomas in ‘spiritual direction’: they are two a penny. But a true spiritual father or mother is a rarity. It was ever thus; but perhaps the sparseness is especially acute in our day.
That is why reliable books are such a blessing. A book can never replace a conversation; but immersion in the testimony of a man or woman of God can become conversation. A word carrying the message of truth become flesh does convey a presence, somehow. Exposure to such presence can turn into genuine friendship.
The past century has produced some very precious books. It is perilous to draw out some, for there will be others I overlook or of which I am ignorant. Nonetheless, I wish to highlight a handful that have been beneficial to me. They may help others. I think of the Spiritual Letters of Abbot John Chapman; of Metropolitan Antony Bloom’s School for Prayer; of The Spiritual Life and Prayer by Mother Cécile Bruyère; of Father, into Your Hands, a book by the Carmelite Wilfrid Stinissen. No single text has helped me more, however, than the one contained in this present volume. I discovered it in a Parisian bookshop a quarter of a century ago in a poorly bound edition that has long since come apart. The volume’s material fragility contrasts with the substance of its content. It gave me food for which I was ravenously hungry. There was a time when I knew this text more or less by heart.
Its two parts are dated: the first to Christmas 1983, the second to Advent 1988. The references are meaningful. Presented here is an account of prayer rooted in the mystery of God made man, revealed in the Gospel and defined with precision at the Council of Nicaea, whose 1700th anniversary we celebrate this year, called to appreciate afresh the consequences for human nature of the incarnation of the Word.
The first published version came out without an authorial signature in 2001. The author was discreetly designated as ‘a Carthusian’, following the custom of an order of monks that does not like to make a display of individuals. We are now free to say who he was. His name was Dom André Poisson. He was a man of my grandparents’ generation. In the archives of La Grande Chartreuse, his biography is summed up as follows, with Carthusian succinctness:
Étienne Poisson was born at Douce, in Maine-et-Loire, on 28 February 1923. After studies at the Polytechnic School, he made his first profession at La Grande Chartreuse on 2 February 1948, solemn profession on 6 October 1953. He was ordained a priest on 13 March 1954. He was made Sub-Procurator in 1957, Procurator in 1961. On 8 May 1967 he was elected Prior and General of the Order, dedicating himself to the aggiornamento of the Order following the indications of the Second Vatican Council. He resigned in 1997. The General Chapter of that year sent him to be Prior at the Charterhouse of the Transfiguration [in the USA] for two year. From there he went to Vedana [in Italy], as Chaplain to Carthusian nuns, in 1999. Having returned to La Grande Chartreuse in May 2001, he died there on 20 April 2005.
Our natural curiosity would like to know more: the story of his vocation, his spiritual graces and trials. We are avid to get a sense of his personality; to know how he evaluated developments in the Church and world during his long ministry, which spanned turbulent decades. But none of this is essential. Everything we need to know about Dom Poisson is contained in the text you hold in your hand. It is a sliver of a book, almost just a brochure. In these pages, though, you will find a concentrated depth of content that a less wise, less humble, less articulate writer would need multiple pages to express. We have here the distillation of intimate experience, presented graciously and lucidly, with a mixture of authority and diffidence. The authority springs from the status of the text as testimony: ‘This’, we are given to understand, ‘is how the living God has made himself known to me, and to his graciousness I bear witness.’ The diffidence springs from the knowledge that the mystery of God by definition transcends any particular account: ‘Such has been my way’, the author seems to say, ‘and I share the account of it for what it is worth, but you must find your own way — and God will help you if you let him, and trust him.’
Dom Poisson wrote these two brief treatises in the form of letters. Each of us can confidently read them as specifically addressed to himself or herself. In terms of content, they are self-explanatory. They need no exegesis from me; I would clutter their elegant essentiality with unnecessary verbiage. I rejoice, simply, to recommend this little book with all my heart. It opened my eyes to ‘the boundless riches of Christ’; it pierced my heart with the light of a trust I had previously only known notionally; and it gave me a sense of what it might really mean to profess with the faith of the Church, defined at Nicaea: ‘I believe in the resurrection of the flesh’. It could do this because its author speaks with authority, of things he knows.
Another twentieth-century Carthusian has written that a contemplative is ‘a man inebriated on pure water drunk from the source’. This book offers you a map pointing straight to the source as well as the bucket and rope you need to draw water for yourself. Draw and drink, deep draughts. You will come to understand, then, what Jesus meant when he said to the Samaritan woman: ‘Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never again be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life’.
Photograph from the website of the Charterhouse of Miraflores.
La Traviata
Works of art affect us in different ways at different stages of our lives. Seeing La Traviata this evening I was moved, of course, by the drama of Violetta, a character showing that it is possible for the leopard to change its spots and for a life to begin again on fresh terms; but I was especially struck by the late insight of Germont, Alfredo’s father, who for the sake of social ambition forced apart two people who loved one another and were able to make each other happy. Owning his mistake he exclaims: Oh, malcauto vegliardo! Il mal ch’io feci ora sol vedo! — ‘Oh, rash old man! Only now do I see the harm I have done.’ It’s way too late, though.
Oh, to weigh the consequence of one’s words and actions in due time.
Oh, to weigh the consequence of one’s words and actions in due time.