Words on the Word
Erik Varden is a monk and bishop, born in Norway in 1974. In 2002, after ten years at the University of Cambridge, he joined Mount Saint Bernard Abbey in Charnwood Forest. Pope Francis named him bishop of Trondheim in 2019.
Please find below a selection of homilies:
Desert Fathers 43 
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 priest made his way Read More
A priest made his way Read More
29 Sunday C Exodus 17.8-13: But Moses’s arms grew heavy.
2 Timothy 3.14-4.2: Be urgent in season and out of season.
Luke 18.1-8: The need to pray continually and never lose heart.
In our second reading Paul exhorts Timothy to ‘be urgent in season and Read More
2 Timothy 3.14-4.2: Be urgent in season and out of season.
Luke 18.1-8: The need to pray continually and never lose heart.
In our second reading Paul exhorts Timothy to ‘be urgent in season and Read More
Light-Filled Lamp A wonderful text from St Columbanus’s Instructions in today’s vigils: ‘I am a lowly creature but I am still his servant, and I hope that he will choose to wake me from slumber. I hope that he will set me Read More
Desert Fathers 42 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.
Isaac the Theban went to Read More
Isaac the Theban went to Read More
A Conversation in Lisbon My book Chastity was recently published in a fine Portuguese version.
I was fortunate on that occasion to engage in a conversation with my translator, Joana Viana Lopes, and a group of young people at the Catholic University in Lisbon, being on Read More
I was fortunate on that occasion to engage in a conversation with my translator, Joana Viana Lopes, and a group of young people at the Catholic University in Lisbon, being on Read More
28 Sunday C 2 Kings 5:14-17: Now, please, accept a present from your servant.
2 Timothy 2:8-13: He is always faithful, for he cannot disown his own self.
Luke 17:11-19: One of them turned back praising God.
Our readings invite us to reflect on the Read More
2 Timothy 2:8-13: He is always faithful, for he cannot disown his own self.
Luke 17:11-19: One of them turned back praising God.
Our readings invite us to reflect on the Read More
Desert Fathers 43
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 priest made his way to a certain hermit in order to offer for him the sacred mysteries. But someone went to the hermit and talked the priest down, saying he was a sinner. When [the priest] arrived as was his custom, the hermit, who was scandalised, did not open the door to him. So the priest went away. Meanwhile a voice came from God to the hermit. It said: ‘Men have usurped my judgement.’ Finding himself as in ecstasy, [the hermit] saw a golden well, a bucket of gold, a gold cord and an abundance of pure water. He also saw the man who was drawing and distributing the water. He was a leper. And even though [the hermit] wished to drink, he did not do so because the one who drew the water was leprous. Again the voice came to him: ‘Why are you not drinking the water? What does it matter who draws it? This man is merely drawing and distributing.’ The hermit came to himself. Seeing the sense of the vision, he called the priest and invited him, as he had previously done, to offer the sacred mysteries for him.
We may have wondered how solitaries partook of the Church’s sacraments. This saying gives us a clue. It presents us with the office of itinerant chaplains making the rounds of hermitages to celebrate the Eucharist for non-ordained hermits. A bond formed in this way between anchorites and settled communities, a bond intended to be of charity.
The spirit of detraction, however, could cause such bonds to snap.
We are presented with a scene of village gossip. It is a tragic, for it involves men vowed to an angelic life, that is, a life supposed to be of pure intention. One hermit goes to visit another to share some titbit of a rumour picked up in the market about one of the chaplains. The other man, whose mind should have been on higher things, exclaims, ‘Well, I never!’, delighting in being righteously shocked, pleased to manifest to all the world that he, an anchorite of devout renown, would have no dealings with a public sinner. Drawing a chest in front of his door, he refuses to grant the priest access. He would rather fast from communion in the Lord’s Body and Blood than allow his reputation to be tainted in the eyes of desert busybodies.
Can such situations really arise among consecrated persons? Yes, alas. They originate in that obscuring of vision which comes about as a result of sin, keeping us from seeing things and people as they are, projecting upon them instead our own perceptions, of course to our own advantage. Not for nothing did St Bruno, whose Charterhouse is the Western Church’s closest equivalent to the desert’s mode of life, speak of monastic life as a process by which ‘an eye is acquired’. The process of conversion is tantamount to the gradual removal of cataracts that keep us from seeing clearly, causing us instead to fumble in a universe made up of moving shades.
The monk in this story, ungracious and unmerciful, does not take the trouble to confront the priest with accusations made against him; he entrusts himself to his blindness. How marvellous that God responds by letting him entertain a vision full of light, made up of gleaming objects and the joyful sound of water poured.
There are multiple lessons in this illumination. The first is explicit and Biblical. St Paul put it firmly in his letter to the Romans: ‘Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God’. We are free, of course, to evaluate human behaviour and to position ourselves before it; but to condemn another is to usurp a divine prerogative.
The vision does not say whether the priest was guilty of a misdemeanour or not. It asks us to view the matter theologically. Faced with the infinite purity of God, and of his gifts, any human being is unclean. Think of Isaiah in the temple. Think of Peter when, in a flash, he saw Jesus for who he is and exclaimed: ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.’ Disproportion must be taken for granted. Even when the dispenser of grace is objectively compromised, human filth just does not have the power to contaminate God-given grace. In Latin theology this line of thought is summed up in the principle, ex opere operato. It is hard to render literally. An adequate paraphrase might be: ‘the work itself is efficacious’. The Church teaches that a sacrament’s beneficial impact, when celebrated validly, does not depend on the celebrant’s or the recipient’s worthiness: it is, for being humanly mediated, an act of God. As such it is imbued with intrinsic potency. That is why God in the vision asks the hermit: ‘What is the intermediary to you? Do you really think a sullied human instrument can obstruct my divine, salvific design?’
The story ends edifyingly. The hermit opens his door and asks the priest in. We are prompted to confront our censoriousness. We are also given hope in the face of disappointment. There has, alas, been no shortage within living memory of bishops and priests bringing shame on the ordained ministry. Their legacy calls for justice, conversion, and tears. Let us not for a moment, though, think, that an unworthy steward can sabotage God’s design. Oh, no. Providence is infallible. God, who can make something out of nothing, can bring good out of evil. Further, he can make the leprous clean.
Christus Pantrocrator from Subiaco. Christ is the Judge of All, and the only judge who knows the full truth of anything, or anyone.
A priest made his way to a certain hermit in order to offer for him the sacred mysteries. But someone went to the hermit and talked the priest down, saying he was a sinner. When [the priest] arrived as was his custom, the hermit, who was scandalised, did not open the door to him. So the priest went away. Meanwhile a voice came from God to the hermit. It said: ‘Men have usurped my judgement.’ Finding himself as in ecstasy, [the hermit] saw a golden well, a bucket of gold, a gold cord and an abundance of pure water. He also saw the man who was drawing and distributing the water. He was a leper. And even though [the hermit] wished to drink, he did not do so because the one who drew the water was leprous. Again the voice came to him: ‘Why are you not drinking the water? What does it matter who draws it? This man is merely drawing and distributing.’ The hermit came to himself. Seeing the sense of the vision, he called the priest and invited him, as he had previously done, to offer the sacred mysteries for him.
We may have wondered how solitaries partook of the Church’s sacraments. This saying gives us a clue. It presents us with the office of itinerant chaplains making the rounds of hermitages to celebrate the Eucharist for non-ordained hermits. A bond formed in this way between anchorites and settled communities, a bond intended to be of charity.
The spirit of detraction, however, could cause such bonds to snap.
We are presented with a scene of village gossip. It is a tragic, for it involves men vowed to an angelic life, that is, a life supposed to be of pure intention. One hermit goes to visit another to share some titbit of a rumour picked up in the market about one of the chaplains. The other man, whose mind should have been on higher things, exclaims, ‘Well, I never!’, delighting in being righteously shocked, pleased to manifest to all the world that he, an anchorite of devout renown, would have no dealings with a public sinner. Drawing a chest in front of his door, he refuses to grant the priest access. He would rather fast from communion in the Lord’s Body and Blood than allow his reputation to be tainted in the eyes of desert busybodies.
Can such situations really arise among consecrated persons? Yes, alas. They originate in that obscuring of vision which comes about as a result of sin, keeping us from seeing things and people as they are, projecting upon them instead our own perceptions, of course to our own advantage. Not for nothing did St Bruno, whose Charterhouse is the Western Church’s closest equivalent to the desert’s mode of life, speak of monastic life as a process by which ‘an eye is acquired’. The process of conversion is tantamount to the gradual removal of cataracts that keep us from seeing clearly, causing us instead to fumble in a universe made up of moving shades.
The monk in this story, ungracious and unmerciful, does not take the trouble to confront the priest with accusations made against him; he entrusts himself to his blindness. How marvellous that God responds by letting him entertain a vision full of light, made up of gleaming objects and the joyful sound of water poured.
There are multiple lessons in this illumination. The first is explicit and Biblical. St Paul put it firmly in his letter to the Romans: ‘Why do you pass judgment on your brother? Or you, why do you despise your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God’. We are free, of course, to evaluate human behaviour and to position ourselves before it; but to condemn another is to usurp a divine prerogative.
The vision does not say whether the priest was guilty of a misdemeanour or not. It asks us to view the matter theologically. Faced with the infinite purity of God, and of his gifts, any human being is unclean. Think of Isaiah in the temple. Think of Peter when, in a flash, he saw Jesus for who he is and exclaimed: ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man.’ Disproportion must be taken for granted. Even when the dispenser of grace is objectively compromised, human filth just does not have the power to contaminate God-given grace. In Latin theology this line of thought is summed up in the principle, ex opere operato. It is hard to render literally. An adequate paraphrase might be: ‘the work itself is efficacious’. The Church teaches that a sacrament’s beneficial impact, when celebrated validly, does not depend on the celebrant’s or the recipient’s worthiness: it is, for being humanly mediated, an act of God. As such it is imbued with intrinsic potency. That is why God in the vision asks the hermit: ‘What is the intermediary to you? Do you really think a sullied human instrument can obstruct my divine, salvific design?’
The story ends edifyingly. The hermit opens his door and asks the priest in. We are prompted to confront our censoriousness. We are also given hope in the face of disappointment. There has, alas, been no shortage within living memory of bishops and priests bringing shame on the ordained ministry. Their legacy calls for justice, conversion, and tears. Let us not for a moment, though, think, that an unworthy steward can sabotage God’s design. Oh, no. Providence is infallible. God, who can make something out of nothing, can bring good out of evil. Further, he can make the leprous clean.
Christus Pantrocrator from Subiaco. Christ is the Judge of All, and the only judge who knows the full truth of anything, or anyone.
Genie
In a brisk piece, Nicola Shulman reflects on ‘the overcompensating sense of self-importance that flourishes in the dark of self-doubt’, a sense likely to erupt ‘with all the towering egotism and sweet relief that a genie might feel after a thousand years in a small brass receptacle’ when some perceived slight rubs the lamp.
It is useful, then, to pay due attention to the surging of pride within us.
It may potentially point the way towards a wound that needs anointing and could be healed, if we’d let it be.
By intercepting the genie we might also, quite simply, prevent ourselves from being silly.
It is useful, then, to pay due attention to the surging of pride within us.
It may potentially point the way towards a wound that needs anointing and could be healed, if we’d let it be.
By intercepting the genie we might also, quite simply, prevent ourselves from being silly.
29 Sunday C
Exodus 17.8-13: But Moses’s arms grew heavy.
2 Timothy 3.14-4.2: Be urgent in season and out of season.
Luke 18.1-8: The need to pray continually and never lose heart.
In our second reading Paul exhorts Timothy to ‘be urgent in season and out of season’. Timothy, who was bishop of Ephesus, was to ‘convince, rebuke, and exhort, unfailing in patience and in teaching’, ever ready, ever armed, like a soldier for battle, to fight for the good. In the Gospel Jesus tells the story of the persistent, bothersome widow who nags day and night so that a cynical bureaucrat lets her have her will for his own convenience’s sake. The point of the parable is to show that we must ceaselessly pray. Never must we grow tired. ‘My Father is still at work’, says Jesus after healing the man who for 38 years had been lying by the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem: ‘My Father is still at work. I, too, work’ (John 5.17).
When our God, the King of the Universe, is ceaselessly working, then we, too, his creatures and servants, must surely do likewise?
Well, that’s a thought. But how tired we often are, how worn out! We live in an exhausting time. A record number of people hit the wall, burn out. We often hear ourselves and others say, ‘I’m so exhausted’. So ingrained is the habit that if someone doesn’t profess, within a few minutes of a conversation starting, to exhaustion, people are likely to think, ‘He must be a right layabout!’
What tires us so? Society moves at a terrific speed. The gadgets we carry beep, chirp, and vibrate day and night: there’s constantly something going on! We do not want to miss out. We wish to show ourselves engaged, hard-working. But do we have to live like this?
Not necessarily.
A few years ago a friend of mine started a career in finance in London. In the office people were working 12, 13, 14-hour days. He did as much for a while, then asked himself: ‘What for?’ There must be more to life. He made a decision. Short of a crisis, he started leaving work at 6. He went to dance lessons. Ballroom dancing! That’s what he wanted. There were a few raised eyebrows in the office, but not only did he not lose his job: he became more productive.
Perseverance presupposes balance. Work presupposes rest. Our God, ‘still at work’, rested on the seventh day and bade us, bids us, keep the Sabbath holy (Exodus 20.8). O blessed commandment! It lets us catch our breath. More essentially, it relativises the importance of productivity. Too easily we make of the work of our hands, or of work itself, an idol. Rest frees us from this trap. It permits us to drop our shoulders and to look up.
Somehow our work must be imbued with rest. It takes a while to learn this, but it can be done. It is the way to stop being a faceless cog in a machinery and to become instead a conscious, free agent.
The widow in the Gospel is a worker. Her campaign is also an example of prayer. Prayer, too, is a mixture of effort and rest. The Lord shows us both. In the wilderness, tempted by Satan, he led a fierce battle. When his disciples found him in prayer at daybreak, he was in peaceful communion with his Heavenly Father. Prayer in the life of a Christian must become like respiration. It is obvious that we cannot always hyperventilate. So by all means, pray always. But remain at rest, grounded in God’s peace, which the world cannot give.
Our first reading speaks of Israel’s battle against Amalek. The Amalekites were descendants of Esau, a people that did not wish to let Jacob’s sons complete their journey, which God had ordained, from Egypt to Canaan. The historical conflict was real. Further, the Amalekites acquired symbolic significance. ‘To fight the Amalekites’ means to fight all that in us and about us that hinders our essential progress, keeping us from reaching the goal to which God calls us.
Moses, the people’s teacher and interpreter before God, watches over the battle his hands raised in blessing. He must ‘be urgent in season and out of season’, an image of devout attention. However, no one can stay standing like that, with hands up in the air, indefinitely. Remember: Moses was already an old man.
The image Scripture then puts before us is wonderful:
they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat upon it, and Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side; so his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.
In just this way we are called to support each other. A believer is not abandoned to his or her own limited resources. A believer is borne by God’s ‘everlasting arms’, of course; but also by the people of God, which for us Christians is to say, by the Church.
Thank God we are not all fragile at once. We can be a staff to one another. When I stumble, I hope you will give me a hand. Should you stumble, I’ll step in. We must look out for one another with alertness and care. It is comforting to live like this. It can also be demanding. It requires us to let go of a sense of self-sufficiency, an illusion to which we cling absurdly.
From the beginning, God has been pleased to realise his purpose in this world not through individual contracts, but by making a covenant with a people. The people is called to move as one, as a body. Being members of that body (1 Corinthians 12.12-27), we are caught up in a rhythm in which continuous movement is allied to unshakeable peace. This is the mystery of the Church, put before us in the image of Moses flanked by Aaron and Hur, one on his left side, the other on his right.
Let’s strive to live up to that image in our community here. If we do, the Lord will find faith on earth when he comes. And fidelity.
In the name of Christ! Amen.
2 Timothy 3.14-4.2: Be urgent in season and out of season.
Luke 18.1-8: The need to pray continually and never lose heart.
In our second reading Paul exhorts Timothy to ‘be urgent in season and out of season’. Timothy, who was bishop of Ephesus, was to ‘convince, rebuke, and exhort, unfailing in patience and in teaching’, ever ready, ever armed, like a soldier for battle, to fight for the good. In the Gospel Jesus tells the story of the persistent, bothersome widow who nags day and night so that a cynical bureaucrat lets her have her will for his own convenience’s sake. The point of the parable is to show that we must ceaselessly pray. Never must we grow tired. ‘My Father is still at work’, says Jesus after healing the man who for 38 years had been lying by the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem: ‘My Father is still at work. I, too, work’ (John 5.17).
When our God, the King of the Universe, is ceaselessly working, then we, too, his creatures and servants, must surely do likewise?
Well, that’s a thought. But how tired we often are, how worn out! We live in an exhausting time. A record number of people hit the wall, burn out. We often hear ourselves and others say, ‘I’m so exhausted’. So ingrained is the habit that if someone doesn’t profess, within a few minutes of a conversation starting, to exhaustion, people are likely to think, ‘He must be a right layabout!’
What tires us so? Society moves at a terrific speed. The gadgets we carry beep, chirp, and vibrate day and night: there’s constantly something going on! We do not want to miss out. We wish to show ourselves engaged, hard-working. But do we have to live like this?
Not necessarily.
A few years ago a friend of mine started a career in finance in London. In the office people were working 12, 13, 14-hour days. He did as much for a while, then asked himself: ‘What for?’ There must be more to life. He made a decision. Short of a crisis, he started leaving work at 6. He went to dance lessons. Ballroom dancing! That’s what he wanted. There were a few raised eyebrows in the office, but not only did he not lose his job: he became more productive.
Perseverance presupposes balance. Work presupposes rest. Our God, ‘still at work’, rested on the seventh day and bade us, bids us, keep the Sabbath holy (Exodus 20.8). O blessed commandment! It lets us catch our breath. More essentially, it relativises the importance of productivity. Too easily we make of the work of our hands, or of work itself, an idol. Rest frees us from this trap. It permits us to drop our shoulders and to look up.
Somehow our work must be imbued with rest. It takes a while to learn this, but it can be done. It is the way to stop being a faceless cog in a machinery and to become instead a conscious, free agent.
The widow in the Gospel is a worker. Her campaign is also an example of prayer. Prayer, too, is a mixture of effort and rest. The Lord shows us both. In the wilderness, tempted by Satan, he led a fierce battle. When his disciples found him in prayer at daybreak, he was in peaceful communion with his Heavenly Father. Prayer in the life of a Christian must become like respiration. It is obvious that we cannot always hyperventilate. So by all means, pray always. But remain at rest, grounded in God’s peace, which the world cannot give.
Our first reading speaks of Israel’s battle against Amalek. The Amalekites were descendants of Esau, a people that did not wish to let Jacob’s sons complete their journey, which God had ordained, from Egypt to Canaan. The historical conflict was real. Further, the Amalekites acquired symbolic significance. ‘To fight the Amalekites’ means to fight all that in us and about us that hinders our essential progress, keeping us from reaching the goal to which God calls us.
Moses, the people’s teacher and interpreter before God, watches over the battle his hands raised in blessing. He must ‘be urgent in season and out of season’, an image of devout attention. However, no one can stay standing like that, with hands up in the air, indefinitely. Remember: Moses was already an old man.
The image Scripture then puts before us is wonderful:
they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat upon it, and Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side, and the other on the other side; so his hands were steady until the going down of the sun.
In just this way we are called to support each other. A believer is not abandoned to his or her own limited resources. A believer is borne by God’s ‘everlasting arms’, of course; but also by the people of God, which for us Christians is to say, by the Church.
Thank God we are not all fragile at once. We can be a staff to one another. When I stumble, I hope you will give me a hand. Should you stumble, I’ll step in. We must look out for one another with alertness and care. It is comforting to live like this. It can also be demanding. It requires us to let go of a sense of self-sufficiency, an illusion to which we cling absurdly.
From the beginning, God has been pleased to realise his purpose in this world not through individual contracts, but by making a covenant with a people. The people is called to move as one, as a body. Being members of that body (1 Corinthians 12.12-27), we are caught up in a rhythm in which continuous movement is allied to unshakeable peace. This is the mystery of the Church, put before us in the image of Moses flanked by Aaron and Hur, one on his left side, the other on his right.
Let’s strive to live up to that image in our community here. If we do, the Lord will find faith on earth when he comes. And fidelity.
In the name of Christ! Amen.
St Teresa
Teresa is a witness to the beautiful dimension of faith. When she speaks of it, she is categorical: ‘The fact of seeing Christ left an impression of his exceeding beauty etched on my soul to this day: once was enough’. This beauty is disturbing, even dangerous. To behold it is to be struck down. It is to walk thenceforth, like Jacob out of Jabbok, with a limp. Teresa illustrates what this means when she speaks of her transverberation, when her heart was pierced by an angel with a fiery lance. The moment has acquired emblematic force in the mystical and aesthetic canons of the West. Bernini’s marble account of it still both enchants and shocks, yet is, for all its formal perfection, but an outsider’s limited view. Teresa stresses the exquisite beauty of the angel, an emissary sent from before the burning holiness of God. The impact on her of this beautiful encounter is complex. So physical was the transfixing that her innards seemed to be drawn out when the lance retreated. So spiritual was it that it left her ‘completely afire with a great love of God’. She makes no apology for not defining the ratio of embodied and transcendent experience. Paradox alone can convey what she went through, as she sums up: ‘It is not bodily pain, but spiritual, though the body has a share in it – indeed, a great share.’ Small wonder that for days she was left as in a stupor. From a talk given ten years ago at the Brompton Oratory.
Light-Filled Lamp
A wonderful text from St Columbanus’s Instructions in today’s vigils: ‘I am a lowly creature but I am still his servant, and I hope that he will choose to wake me from slumber. I hope that he will set me on fire with the flame of his divine love, the flame that burns above the stars, so that I am filled with desire for his love and his fire burns always within me! I hope that I may deserve this, that my little lamp should burn all night in the temple of the Lord and shine on all who enter the house of God! Lord, I beg you in the name of Jesus Christ, your Son and my God, give me a love that cannot stumble so that my lamp can be lit but can never go out: let it burn in me and give light to others.’
https://coramfratribus.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Columbanus.m4a
https://coramfratribus.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Columbanus.m4a
Desert Fathers 42
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.
Isaac the Theban went to a monastery. There he saw a brother who had fallen. And he judged him. When he went back to the desert, an angel of the Lord came and took up position before the door of his cell, saying: ‘I will not let you enter.’ [Abba Isaac] besought him and said: ‘What is this about?’ The angel answered him and said: ‘God has sent me to you to say: “Ask him: Where do you command that I should cast the fallen brother?” At once Abba Isaac prostrated himself, saying: ‘I have sinned! Forgive me!’ The angel said: ‘Get up. God has forgiven you. But from now on take good care not to judge anyone before God has judged him’.
Before us is an example of cursory judgement. Such are easily made. We see someone in church, at a party, crossing the road; we hear somebody else whisper, ‘There goes such-and-such. Do you know what he did?’
Lapping up the gossip, we are swift to condemn. Condemnation brings a moment’s satisfaction. Inwardly we may make a sigh of relief. To have someone to look down on gives us a satisfying sense of having reached a certain height. We might even spiritualise our reaction and rehearse a formula like that of the man who, long ago, went up to the temple to pray, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector’, quite unaware of how grotesque we have become.
A penchant for judging in this way may remain with us even when we have made some progress in the spiritual life, when our eyes are opened to behold God’s angels. Abba Isaac ascertained this on his way back from a visit paid to an unnamed monastic community. Walking happily home, looking forward to the peace and quiet of his cell, his sanctuary, he might, for all we know, have quite forgotten about the fallen brother. Nothing suggests that he was obsessed with him, or even that he had made some sort of public pronouncement. He had simply seen a man about whom he had heard certain things, in whom a certain degradation was perceptible, or about whom he had suspicions, and had judged him in his heart, thinking: ‘Dear God, another one of those!’ or ‘Why do these weaklings need to bring the side down?’
Then he found his sanctuary closed to him, guarded by an angel like the cherub posted by God east of Eden after Adam’s fall, with a flaming sword turning every way. We have had occasion to notice it already: the angels who appear to the Desert Fathers are straight-talking creatures whose utterance is salted. By putting to Issac a sardonic question, the angel makes the elder see the extent of his presumption. Isaac realises that he had, by judging his brother, usurped a divine prerogative, yielding to Luciferian pride. I am impressed by the indignation God conveys through his emissary. The message is clear: ‘Who do you think you are?’
To Isaac’s credit, he repents forthwith, unconditionally. Jumping off his high horse, he throws himself on the ground and makes an exemplary confession, that is, confession that admits, ‘I have sinned’, without blaming the weather or a headache or distractions or whatever. Isaac is basically humble and kind. His harshness had been a blip, a concession made perhaps unawares to the Old Adam set on blocking the birth in us of the New.
The angel is pleased. When he next speaks, it is with a different tone of voice. ‘The Lord’, we read in a Psalm is ‘merciful and gracious’, ‘he will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger for ever’. This episode bears the Scriptural affirmation out. The angel takes leave by addressing to Isaac a word of exhortation: ‘Do not forget this salutary humiliation’. All our falls, although painful and perhaps hideous in themselves, carry potential to become sources of grace in as much as we learn from them and recommit ourselves to the path of conversion.
The way we look at others can be a precious source of self-knowledge when we learn to attend to it well. If I incline to judge certain people, or categories of people, harshly, it is very possibly because, at some subliminal level, I find myself standing accused: my prompt judgment may well be an act of self-defence by means of attack. It would be well if instead I saw it as an invitation to be healed, forgiven, or reconciled. Dorotheus of Gaza, that wonderful man, tells a story that may help us reflect on our habits and patterns of response to people we encounter:
A fellow happens to be standing at a street-corner at night. I do not say he is a monk; he could be anybody living in the town. Three men pass by. One of them thinks: ‘That man is waiting to go off to do something lecherous!’ The second one thinks: ‘He is a robber!’ The third one thinks: ‘Ah, this man has clearly just called out to his friend from the next house and is waiting for him to come down so that together they may go somewhere and pray!’ Do you see: all three have seen the same man standing in the same place, yet their thoughts about him differ widely.
Dorotheus’s point is that the three observers do not in fact engage with the nocturnal watcher: they project onto him what is in their heart, for ill as well as for good. We shall benefit from examining closely the way in which we evaluate others. Instead of judging them falsely, we may be helped to judge ourselves in truth.
Isaac the Theban went to a monastery. There he saw a brother who had fallen. And he judged him. When he went back to the desert, an angel of the Lord came and took up position before the door of his cell, saying: ‘I will not let you enter.’ [Abba Isaac] besought him and said: ‘What is this about?’ The angel answered him and said: ‘God has sent me to you to say: “Ask him: Where do you command that I should cast the fallen brother?” At once Abba Isaac prostrated himself, saying: ‘I have sinned! Forgive me!’ The angel said: ‘Get up. God has forgiven you. But from now on take good care not to judge anyone before God has judged him’.
Before us is an example of cursory judgement. Such are easily made. We see someone in church, at a party, crossing the road; we hear somebody else whisper, ‘There goes such-and-such. Do you know what he did?’
Lapping up the gossip, we are swift to condemn. Condemnation brings a moment’s satisfaction. Inwardly we may make a sigh of relief. To have someone to look down on gives us a satisfying sense of having reached a certain height. We might even spiritualise our reaction and rehearse a formula like that of the man who, long ago, went up to the temple to pray, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector’, quite unaware of how grotesque we have become.
A penchant for judging in this way may remain with us even when we have made some progress in the spiritual life, when our eyes are opened to behold God’s angels. Abba Isaac ascertained this on his way back from a visit paid to an unnamed monastic community. Walking happily home, looking forward to the peace and quiet of his cell, his sanctuary, he might, for all we know, have quite forgotten about the fallen brother. Nothing suggests that he was obsessed with him, or even that he had made some sort of public pronouncement. He had simply seen a man about whom he had heard certain things, in whom a certain degradation was perceptible, or about whom he had suspicions, and had judged him in his heart, thinking: ‘Dear God, another one of those!’ or ‘Why do these weaklings need to bring the side down?’
Then he found his sanctuary closed to him, guarded by an angel like the cherub posted by God east of Eden after Adam’s fall, with a flaming sword turning every way. We have had occasion to notice it already: the angels who appear to the Desert Fathers are straight-talking creatures whose utterance is salted. By putting to Issac a sardonic question, the angel makes the elder see the extent of his presumption. Isaac realises that he had, by judging his brother, usurped a divine prerogative, yielding to Luciferian pride. I am impressed by the indignation God conveys through his emissary. The message is clear: ‘Who do you think you are?’
To Isaac’s credit, he repents forthwith, unconditionally. Jumping off his high horse, he throws himself on the ground and makes an exemplary confession, that is, confession that admits, ‘I have sinned’, without blaming the weather or a headache or distractions or whatever. Isaac is basically humble and kind. His harshness had been a blip, a concession made perhaps unawares to the Old Adam set on blocking the birth in us of the New.
The angel is pleased. When he next speaks, it is with a different tone of voice. ‘The Lord’, we read in a Psalm is ‘merciful and gracious’, ‘he will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger for ever’. This episode bears the Scriptural affirmation out. The angel takes leave by addressing to Isaac a word of exhortation: ‘Do not forget this salutary humiliation’. All our falls, although painful and perhaps hideous in themselves, carry potential to become sources of grace in as much as we learn from them and recommit ourselves to the path of conversion.
The way we look at others can be a precious source of self-knowledge when we learn to attend to it well. If I incline to judge certain people, or categories of people, harshly, it is very possibly because, at some subliminal level, I find myself standing accused: my prompt judgment may well be an act of self-defence by means of attack. It would be well if instead I saw it as an invitation to be healed, forgiven, or reconciled. Dorotheus of Gaza, that wonderful man, tells a story that may help us reflect on our habits and patterns of response to people we encounter:
A fellow happens to be standing at a street-corner at night. I do not say he is a monk; he could be anybody living in the town. Three men pass by. One of them thinks: ‘That man is waiting to go off to do something lecherous!’ The second one thinks: ‘He is a robber!’ The third one thinks: ‘Ah, this man has clearly just called out to his friend from the next house and is waiting for him to come down so that together they may go somewhere and pray!’ Do you see: all three have seen the same man standing in the same place, yet their thoughts about him differ widely.
Dorotheus’s point is that the three observers do not in fact engage with the nocturnal watcher: they project onto him what is in their heart, for ill as well as for good. We shall benefit from examining closely the way in which we evaluate others. Instead of judging them falsely, we may be helped to judge ourselves in truth.
A Conversation in Lisbon
My book Chastity was recently published in a fine Portuguese version.
I was fortunate on that occasion to engage in a conversation with my translator, Joana Viana Lopes, and a group of young people at the Catholic University in Lisbon, being on my way to attend the plenary of the CCEE in Fátima.
You can watch the conversation, conducted in Portuguese and English, here.
Is it possible to speak of chastity today? I was asked. It would seem that it is.
You may also want to glance at this interview with Ecclesia.
Photograph: Alexandra Viana Lopes
I was fortunate on that occasion to engage in a conversation with my translator, Joana Viana Lopes, and a group of young people at the Catholic University in Lisbon, being on my way to attend the plenary of the CCEE in Fátima.
You can watch the conversation, conducted in Portuguese and English, here.
Is it possible to speak of chastity today? I was asked. It would seem that it is.
You may also want to glance at this interview with Ecclesia.
Photograph: Alexandra Viana Lopes
28 Sunday C
2 Kings 5:14-17: Now, please, accept a present from your servant.
2 Timothy 2:8-13: He is always faithful, for he cannot disown his own self.
Luke 17:11-19: One of them turned back praising God.
Our readings invite us to reflect on the ratio between felt need and expressed gratitude. It is a matter that touches our lives every day; it is intrinsic to any social contract, any community, any family. In the Western world, we tend to materialise need. It is part of the commercialisation of society. We tell ourselves, and are glad to be told, that there’s always something we can buy (or download) to satisfy our every need. We cast ourselves as consumers, which means we think of ourselves as being in charge. The principle holds: ‘The customer is always right.’ It is nice to be always right!
As long as I look to purchase a product, and have the money to pay for it, I wield the might of capital. I can dictate terms. I don’t have to ask for things. I can order them. By indulging this habit, there’s a risk that we come to conceive of life, even of relationships, ever more in terms of transactions – or ‘deals’, as one says these days.
This tendency manifests itself extremely now. But it isn’t new. It is lodged in fallen human nature. Think of Naaman. An official of the king of Syria, he was smitten with leprosy. A Hebrew slave told him about Elisha, a known healer. Naaman lit up. Imagine a chronic sufferer told that nothing can be done for him at home, who then hears of a new cure in Switzerland. Of course he gets on the first plane! Naaman set off with his retinue, laden with precious gifts. He was a man of means, expecting an obsequious welcome and thorough treatment, ready to pay.
Elisha worked on different terms. He wasn’t a merchant. He was a minister of grace. When Naaman arrived, Elisha didn’t even go out to see him. He sent a message, asking Naaman to bathe in the Jordan. Naaman was furious. Couldn’t he have bathed at home?! Only the persistence of his staff made him heed Elisha’s counsel. Which worked. The leprosy left him. That is where our reading picks up the story. Naaman returns to Elisha expecting, as it were, to pay the invoice. ‘Please’, he says, ‘accept a present from your servant.’ Elisha says, ‘No thanks.’ He would have Naaman understand that his healing had been a gift.
The right response to a gift isn’t a cheque. It is thanksgiving. Saying thanks is hard for many. A person’s capacity for gratitude is a pretty infallible index of his or her inner freedom and maturity. The immature are ungrateful. They consider things due to them and kick up a fuss, or sulk, when they don’t get what they want. When they do get it, they simply feel affirmed in the rightness of their expectation.
We know how tedious this attitude is in others. Do we notice it in ourselves? Where do we stand with regard to our own sense of entitlement? The question matters in a welfare society. Norway is famous for its high taxation; also for its affluence and social security. Do I think of myself as a citizen or as a client of society? A citizen has duties; a client makes claims. It is easier to be a client. The model can be transferred onto our sense of Church membership. When it makes inroads there, it can be fatal. It sours relationships, saddens hearts, kills life.
Gratitude, then, is something to be practised. It is an excellent habit to ask at the end of each day: ‘What has happened to me today that I have cause to be grateful for?’ The annoying things that have disappointed, hurt, or frustrated us recall themselves; about them we needn’t worry. The gracious things are more discreet. They need to be called forward, acknowledged, named. When they are, they release a sweetness of joy that may take us by surprise.
English happily allows us to hear (in a way Norwegian doesn’t) the mutual resonance of two key New Testament terms that form the foundation of the Christian life: I think of grace and gratitude. In both Latin and Greek the semantic link between these terms is obvious. If we try, we can verify that link experientially, too. To live by grace, to become gracious, is to learn there are things that can’t be bought, only gratefully received; to learn to say ‘thank you’ is a way of growing in grace. It is a dignified, splendid thing to be able to receive a gift freely; even as it is a dignified, splendid thing freely to give. And what a relief to step outside the consumerist paradigm, into the paradigm of grace!
In today’s Gospel a group of sick people turn to our Lord Jesus Christ for healing. All of them were healed. All were pleased to be healed. But 90% took their healing for granted, simply walking off back into the grey anonymity of ordinary, ungrateful life. One only felt the need to give thanks, filled with jubilation, ‘praising God at the top of his voice’. Such a one shows what it means to live according to the heart of God, where all is grace. Let us, too, be people with the maturity and freedom to give thanks, thereby bringing gracious, joyful warmth into a world that, surrendered to its own devices, easily turns hostile and cold.
Elisha Refusing Naaman’s Gifts by Lambert Jacobsz (ca. 1598 – 1636), in the Leiden Collection. Naaman’s astonishment is well rendered. Never before has his credit card been turned down!
2 Timothy 2:8-13: He is always faithful, for he cannot disown his own self.
Luke 17:11-19: One of them turned back praising God.
Our readings invite us to reflect on the ratio between felt need and expressed gratitude. It is a matter that touches our lives every day; it is intrinsic to any social contract, any community, any family. In the Western world, we tend to materialise need. It is part of the commercialisation of society. We tell ourselves, and are glad to be told, that there’s always something we can buy (or download) to satisfy our every need. We cast ourselves as consumers, which means we think of ourselves as being in charge. The principle holds: ‘The customer is always right.’ It is nice to be always right!
As long as I look to purchase a product, and have the money to pay for it, I wield the might of capital. I can dictate terms. I don’t have to ask for things. I can order them. By indulging this habit, there’s a risk that we come to conceive of life, even of relationships, ever more in terms of transactions – or ‘deals’, as one says these days.
This tendency manifests itself extremely now. But it isn’t new. It is lodged in fallen human nature. Think of Naaman. An official of the king of Syria, he was smitten with leprosy. A Hebrew slave told him about Elisha, a known healer. Naaman lit up. Imagine a chronic sufferer told that nothing can be done for him at home, who then hears of a new cure in Switzerland. Of course he gets on the first plane! Naaman set off with his retinue, laden with precious gifts. He was a man of means, expecting an obsequious welcome and thorough treatment, ready to pay.
Elisha worked on different terms. He wasn’t a merchant. He was a minister of grace. When Naaman arrived, Elisha didn’t even go out to see him. He sent a message, asking Naaman to bathe in the Jordan. Naaman was furious. Couldn’t he have bathed at home?! Only the persistence of his staff made him heed Elisha’s counsel. Which worked. The leprosy left him. That is where our reading picks up the story. Naaman returns to Elisha expecting, as it were, to pay the invoice. ‘Please’, he says, ‘accept a present from your servant.’ Elisha says, ‘No thanks.’ He would have Naaman understand that his healing had been a gift.
The right response to a gift isn’t a cheque. It is thanksgiving. Saying thanks is hard for many. A person’s capacity for gratitude is a pretty infallible index of his or her inner freedom and maturity. The immature are ungrateful. They consider things due to them and kick up a fuss, or sulk, when they don’t get what they want. When they do get it, they simply feel affirmed in the rightness of their expectation.
We know how tedious this attitude is in others. Do we notice it in ourselves? Where do we stand with regard to our own sense of entitlement? The question matters in a welfare society. Norway is famous for its high taxation; also for its affluence and social security. Do I think of myself as a citizen or as a client of society? A citizen has duties; a client makes claims. It is easier to be a client. The model can be transferred onto our sense of Church membership. When it makes inroads there, it can be fatal. It sours relationships, saddens hearts, kills life.
Gratitude, then, is something to be practised. It is an excellent habit to ask at the end of each day: ‘What has happened to me today that I have cause to be grateful for?’ The annoying things that have disappointed, hurt, or frustrated us recall themselves; about them we needn’t worry. The gracious things are more discreet. They need to be called forward, acknowledged, named. When they are, they release a sweetness of joy that may take us by surprise.
English happily allows us to hear (in a way Norwegian doesn’t) the mutual resonance of two key New Testament terms that form the foundation of the Christian life: I think of grace and gratitude. In both Latin and Greek the semantic link between these terms is obvious. If we try, we can verify that link experientially, too. To live by grace, to become gracious, is to learn there are things that can’t be bought, only gratefully received; to learn to say ‘thank you’ is a way of growing in grace. It is a dignified, splendid thing to be able to receive a gift freely; even as it is a dignified, splendid thing freely to give. And what a relief to step outside the consumerist paradigm, into the paradigm of grace!
In today’s Gospel a group of sick people turn to our Lord Jesus Christ for healing. All of them were healed. All were pleased to be healed. But 90% took their healing for granted, simply walking off back into the grey anonymity of ordinary, ungrateful life. One only felt the need to give thanks, filled with jubilation, ‘praising God at the top of his voice’. Such a one shows what it means to live according to the heart of God, where all is grace. Let us, too, be people with the maturity and freedom to give thanks, thereby bringing gracious, joyful warmth into a world that, surrendered to its own devices, easily turns hostile and cold.
Elisha Refusing Naaman’s Gifts by Lambert Jacobsz (ca. 1598 – 1636), in the Leiden Collection. Naaman’s astonishment is well rendered. Never before has his credit card been turned down!