My refuge and my fortress...

We must in all things seek God. But we do not seek Him the way we seek a lost object, a “thing.” He is present to us in our heart, in our personal subjectivity, and to seek Him is to recognize this fact. Yet we cannot be aware of it as a reality unless He reveals His presence to us. He does not reveal Himself simply in our own heart. He reveals Himself to us in the Church, in the community of believers, in the koinonia [liturgical assembly] of those who trust Him and love Him.

Seeking God is not just an operation of the intellect, or even a contemplative illumination of the mind. We seek God by striving to surrender ourselves to Him whom we do not see, but Who is in all things and through all things and above all things.

Thomas Merton: Seasons of Celebration. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1950: pp. 223-24

I think it's sad that there is so much fear in certain parts of the Christian community. No, I don't mean 'the fear of the Lord' - that would be a good and healthy thing. No, I mean paranoia, anxiety, suspicion. You can see some of it if you do a web search on say, "contemplative prayer" (double quotes for phrase search). On the first couple of pages, maybe half to two-thirds of the sites will be about contemplative prayer - my own Mercy Site will be in there somewhere - and rather less than half will be various sites dedicated to explaining the 'dangers' of contemplative prayer. Apparently there are people who believe that all there is to contemplative prayer is 'emptying the mind,' and that if one does that, there are legions of demons lurking ready to pounce and demonise the luckless pray-er.

Surely the God we serve, and in whose name we pray, be our prayer never so contemplative, is stronger than that? In any case, contemplative prayer, even that which is basically Christian zazen, is hardly just 'emptying the mind;' as Merton says, "[God] is present to us in our heart, in our personal subjectivity, and to seek Him is to recognize this fact. Yet we cannot be aware of it as a reality unless He reveals His presence to us. He does not reveal Himself simply in our own heart. He reveals Himself to us in the Church, in the community of believers, in the koinonia [liturgical assembly] of those who trust Him and love Him."

The Church is all of us, it is the community of believers past and present, the whole glorious thing, far greater than our local parish church, or our denomination, and far far greater than any demon. In his wonderful book The Screwtape Letters, CS Lewis describes the Church from the point of view of Screwtape the demon as "... spread out through all time and space and rooted in eternity, terrible as an army with banners." That is the Church within which we pray, and is at least partly why we pray within the church, and one of the reasons why, as Lewis also said somewhere, there is no such thing as a "freelance Christian," someone who is a Christian yet eschews anything to do with other Christians.

No, our God is good, and the Church is his idea. It is a practical community within which, despite the occasional wobbles of individual Christians, and even whole groups of Christians, God's promised grace in Psalm 91 is brought to bear on the "real world:"

You who live in the shelter of the Most High,
who abide in the shadow of the Almighty,
will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress;
my God, in whom I trust.’
For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler
and from the deadly pestilence;
he will cover you with his pinions,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.
You will not fear the terror of the night,
or the arrow that flies by day,
or the pestilence that stalks in darkness,
or the destruction that wastes at noonday.

A thousand may fall at your side,
ten thousand at your right hand,
but it will not come near you.
You will only look with your eyes
and see the punishment of the wicked.

Because you have made the Lord your refuge,
the Most High your dwelling-place,
no evil shall befall you,
no scourge come near your tent.

For he will command his angels concerning you
to guard you in all your ways.
On their hands they will bear you up,
so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.
You will tread on the lion and the adder,
the young lion and the serpent you will trample under foot.

Those who love me, I will deliver;
I will protect those who know my name.
When they call to me, I will answer them;
I will be with them in trouble,
I will rescue them and honour them.
With long life I will satisfy them,
and show them my salvation.

As Merton said on p. 52 of the book quoted above, "We possess the grace of Christ, who alone can deliver us from the 'body of this death.' He who is in us is greater than the world. He has 'overcome the world."

Amen! Alleluia!

Divine Mercy...

Tomorrow is Divine Mercy Sunday in the Roman Catholic calendar. Sr Faustina, who unknowingly I think founded this feast, recorded in her diary Jesus speaking these words to her: "My mercy is so great that no mind, be it of man or of angel, will be able to fathom it throughout all eternity."

Tomorrow, let's remember the mercy of Jesus that informed all his relationships, and even the most seemingly casual of contacts, like the woman at the well in John 4. And as we remember how the Lord himself said, (Matthew 5:7) "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy," let's recall again the words of St Isaac of Nineveh, the solitary, and sometime reluctant Bishop, of the 7th century AD:

An elder was once asked, “What is a merciful heart?” He replied:

“It is a heart on fire for the whole of creation, for humanity, for the birds, for the animals, for demons, and for all that exists. By the recollection of them the eyes of a merciful person pour forth tears in abundance. By the strong and vehement mercy that grips such a person’s heart, and by such great compassion, the heart is humbled and one cannot bear to hear or to see any injury or slight sorrow in any in creation.

For this reason, such a person offers up tearful prayer continually even for irrational beasts, for the enemies of the truth, and for those who harm her or him, that they be protected and receive mercy. And in like manner such a person prays for the family of reptiles because of the great compassion that burns with without measure in a heart that is in the likeness of God.”

and let's think again about the depths hidden in the few words of the Jesus Prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner"...

This side of Easter

It is not dutiful observance that keeps us from sin, but something far greater: it is love. And this love is not something which we develop by our own powers alone. It is a sublime gift of the divine mercy, and the fact that we live in the realization of this mercy and this gift is the greatest source of growth for our love and for our holiness.

This gift, this mercy, this unbounded love of God for us has been lavished upon us as a result of Christ’s victory. To taste this love is to share in His victory. To realize our freedom, to exult in our liberation from death, from sin and from the Law, is to sing the Alleluia which truly glorifies God in this world and the world to come."

Thomas Merton Seasons of Celebration . New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1950: pp. 156-57

Enter all of you, therefore, into the joy of our Lord, and, whether first or last, receive your reward. O rich and poor, one with another, dance for joy! O you ascetics and you negligent, celebrate the day! You that have fasted and you that have disregarded the fast, rejoice today! The table is rich-laden; feast royally, all of you! The calf is fatted; let no one go forth hungry!

Let all partake of the feast of faith. Let all receive the riches of goodness.

Let no one lament his poverty, for the universal kingdom has been revealed.

Let no one mourn his transgressions, for pardon has dawned from the grave.

Let no one fear death, for the Saviour’s death has set us free.

St John Chrysostom, Paschal Homily quoted by Karen Marie Knapp in From the Anchor Hold

Truly his grace and his mercy are without end "...if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many." (Romans 5:15) for "...mercy triumphs over judgement." (James 2:13)

We are as free today as feathers on the breath of God, to borrow St Hildegard's phrase... I pray God will never let me forget the immediate and absolute truth that that is how we are, forever, this side of Easter! Alleluia!

Easter Vigil

I love this service - almost my favourite of the whole year.

This morning was cold and crisp, just the beginnings of dawn as we lit the new fire by the side of the church porch, and the blackbirds singing from every direction. As we left after renewing our Baptismal vows, the sun was coming up, deep coppery red behind the trees.

He is risen! He is risen indeed, alleluia!

I can't remember a time when that truth has been so tangible, so absolutely real, as this morning. Lord Jesus, it just isn't possible to find a way to thank you...

Lord, by your cross and resurrection, you have set us free. You are the Saviour of the World.

(PS: Chris has posted some excellent photos of this - and an embedded sound clip! - on our church website... enjoy!)

Not long now...

before the first light of dawn comes over the ridge of the Purbeck hills. I'm listening to Brian Eno's beautiful 1'2, with its slow, open piano arpeggios and wordless choir, and the night garden outside the window is still as still.

The silence in the garden before dawn outside Jerusalem must have been absolute, in those last hours before dawn - the air still, no sound from the night birds. Just the whole of Creation, waiting.

I wrote the following, last year, and I'm sorry if anyone's read it before, but I can't find any better words this Easter:

"Tomorrow morning Jesus speaks our name, piercing our incomprehension with his recognition, his knowing, his comprehending us. Our part is to listen – listen into the anechoic disorienting silence, the dead room, the empty garden, long before dawn, “while it was still dark.” This is the time Mary set off, thinking she knew but not even knowing why she went, like we must go, not being able to know why till our Lord calls us by name, but going anyway, into the dark, into the place of tombs, the hortus conclusus, the garden closed to our senses but open to our going in. Listen... listen!"

Good Friday

Couldn't let today go without a post somehow, and yet what is there to say?

Honestly, I'm not trying to be cryptic, but I don't really have words for it somehow. I could describe the Cross service this morning, or the walk I took this afternoon, in the spring sunlight, but that's not it.

Ecce homo...

Watch with me...

For some reason only four of us stayed on to watch after Maundy Thursday communion, foot-washing etc. We finished by saying Compline together in the half dark of the side chapel. Strange silent fellowship of it - the thinning of time again. You could almost sense olive leaves overhead...

It's been a long and rather wonderful day, setting off early to go to the Cathedral for the Chrism Eucharist (renewal of vows and blessing of the oils) - +David preached a truly glorious sermon on unity in grace - and going on till the evening. The grieving stillness after the wonder of the Cathedral was right, somehow reflecting what today is...

Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
Congregavit nos in unum Christi amor...

Maundy Thursday tomorrow...

Getting closer... Even now it's still frightening to think of it. I suppose I find the foot-washing hard to handle for that reason - the mist of the time between is breaking down, it's like a prolonged anamnesis, un-forgetting after all these years. Time grows very thin towards Easter.

We do not have to save ourselves...

'The Christian has no Law but Christ. Our "Law" is the new life itself which has been given to us in Christ. Our Law is not written in books but in the depths of our own hearts, not by the pen of human beings but by the finger of God. Our duty is now not just to obey but to live. We do not have to save ourselves, we are saved by Christ. We must live to God in Christ, not only as they who seek salvation but as they who are saved.'

Thomas Merton Seasons of Celebration .
New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1950: p. 147

"We do not have to save ourselves, we are saved..." It's no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me, and Christ crucified: Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi...

Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens,
your faithfulness to the clouds.
Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains,
your judgements are like the great deep;
you save humans and animals alike, O Lord.

How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
They feast on the abundance of your house,
and you give them drink from the river of your delights.
For with you is the fountain of life;
in your light we see light.

Psalm 36:5-9

In him all Creation is made new - what is crucified at Easter, all that we see as lost, and broken, and hopeless, is truly raised imperishable on the Third Day...

'What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. '

1 Corinthians 15:42-47

Who are the palms for?

Just read a remarkable and uncomfortable post on the Country Contemplative's blog.

Don says, "At Mass today the Passion was read and during its reading and Fr. Bob’s homily I came to realize a significant point, at least for me. The crucified Jesus has become and abstraction. We go to Mass, go through the motions, worship the crucified Savior and don’t see the crucified in our midst. They include the folks on welfare, the wounded and crippled soldiers of our armies, the gay people, the disenfranchised of every sort. They are the crucified today. They are the presence of Jesus in our midst. Whoever is the acceptable victim in our midst can be the crucified Christ for us."

"To accept that sometimes we have to stir up trouble and become very unpopular is to take up a Cross. In Brazil the Bishop said, 'When I give money to the poor they call me a saint; when I ask why they are poor, they call me a Communist.' Surely this is the Franciscan way." Tim Tucker, Slogans and Labels, TSSF Studies UK.

To worship the crucified Christ in spirit and in truth is to see the crucified everywhere. Surely that is the point of Jesus' saying, "Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me." (Mt 25:40) And surely Paul's great concern for the poor and the marginalised in the very early church came from his decision "to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified." (1 Cor 2:2)

Jesus came that all who believe in him might not perish, and died that all might be free. His death is for, first of all, those who know no freedom. It doesn't matter whether slavery is the 18th century variety, or whether it is more up to date sexual or economic slavery, it is still radical unfreedom. And the Gospel is radical freedom. As Jesus quoted himself (Luke 4:18ff, quoting Isaiah 61)

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour."

Merton on Liturgy & Contemplation

Contemplation is a gift of God, given in and through His Church, and through the prayer of the Church. St. Anthony was led into the desert not by a private voice but by the word of God, proclaimed in the Church of his Egyptian village in the chanting of the Gospel in Coptic - a classical example of liturgy opening the way to a life of contemplation! But the liturgy cannot fulfil this function if we misunderstand or underestimate the essentially spiritual value of Christian public prayer. If we cling to immature and limited notions of "privacy," we will never be able to free ourselves from the bonds of individualism. We will never realize how the Church delivers us from ourselves by public worship, the very public character of which tends to hide us "in the secret of God’s face."

from Seasons of Celebration New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1950: pp 26-27

This wonderful quote explains perfectly just how different true contemplative prayer is from the kind of self-regarding "meditation as self-improvement" teachings it is so often confused with by the uninformed and the prejudiced. Not only is real contemplative prayer rooted and grounded in the common life of the church, it is done for a reason, it is done in obedience to God, and it is done for, on behalf of, our sisters and brothers, on behalf of the whole broken Creation itself. (See my article on intercession and contemplative prayer on The Mercy Site...)

Love Anyway...

Many thanks to Fr. Rick OFM for this wonderful quote from Mother Teresa. I'd read it before somewhere, and had then never been able to find it again...

She said:

People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centred.
Love them anyway!
If you are kind, people will accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway!
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and real enemies.
Succeed anyway!
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway!
Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.
Be honest and frank anyway!
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway!
People really need help but may attack you if you try to help them.
Help them anyway!
Give the world your best and it will hurt you.
Give your best anyway!

In the final analysis, it is between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.

Wow!

I just read through my last post, double-checking, and then let my eye run on to yesterday's post about the troubling times we live in. Then, looking back to my quote from Sister Abbess's post, I suddenly read the following, as if for the first time: "...grace is the true driving force of good, not external activism."

And there's my answer. I have known for the longest time that my true call is to prayer, while remaining exposed, in all the rawness that entails, to the pain of Creation, human and otherwise. When will I learn to be faithful to that call?

Maybe that's what Lent is all about for me, this year. Maybe God is giving me a real wake-up call. And maybe, just maybe, this is the Romans 8:28 aspect of all the illness and other nuisances this last couple of years?

Oh. There's a thought. Pray for me, gentle reader, please, that I will hear straight and true, and not get this all messed up with my own personal little hopes, fears and preconceptions.

Enclosure at Lent

There's a most moving post at Clare - Light on the Mountain, the blog of the Abbess of the Bethlehem Monastery of the Poor Clares at Barhamsville, Virginia.

What she has to say about blogging (or not, as the case may be) as an enclosed nun adds up, in fact, to a wonderfully concise summary of what enclosure is all about. Do go and read her last post while you can - it will only remain up for around 2 weeks.

Meanwhile, for those of you who miss the whole post (it would not be right to reproduce it in full here, since the Sister Abbess has decided it should only be up on her own blog for a while) here is the core of what she says about enclosure. It should find its way into a dictionary of spirituality somewhere, in my opinion...

Over the years, I have valued our enclosure as a means of eliminating the distractions that keep us from fulfilling our vocation to focus on serving God in worship and prayer for his people. I also value it for the message it gives to the world, saying that God has exclusive rights over the human being, that we have here no lasting city but are traveling to our true home in heaven, that we are more profoundly united to those we love in the heart of Christ than if we were physically close to them, and that grace is the true driving force of good, not external activism. But I was forgetting something important.

Enclosure is also our way of following Christ in his self-emptying. It is saying to the world in the words of the psalmist, “Not to us, Lord, not to us, but to your name give the glory”. We deny our selves, our ego, our desire to be seen, heard, admired in favor of a life “hidden with Christ in God”.

What's the time?

Lent being a time of penitence, and penitence having so much to do with reconciliation, I can't help but find myself continually thinking about non-violence, and what we can or should do to oppose the new totalitarianism in which we find ourselves post 9/11.

Both in this country, and in the USA, the traditional bastions of freedom and democracy, dawn police raids, the deportation of families whose children have been born and raised in our countries, wire-tapping, secret renditions, detention without trial, the manipulation and gagging of the free press, are becoming commonplace. At what point do we decide that we can no longer say, "It's not our business?" At what point do we decide that following our Lord involves more than saying, "Oh, what a shame?"

Like many who will be reading this, and like many Germans in the 1930s, I was raised to respect military honour, and the principle of fighting for what is right. My own father, a much-decorated RAF WWII veteran, who played his own part in the deployment of the cold-war nuclear deterrent, resigned from his post-service job with a major military contractor on moral grounds. We spent long hours, after his retirement, debating the morality of war, and I had, and still have, the highest respect for his integrity and his Christian witness.

Have we now reached the point, or are we approaching the point, where the old values don't apply? Like the many Germans from military backgrounds who finally, and at times at the highest cost, refused to support Hitler, are we being faced with asking the question, "Is this something completely different?" Does a new, and different, set of rules apply?

If it does, then everything is different, and the approach of Martin Luther King, or Mahatma Ghandi, or even of Sophie Scholl, may be the way to go. Armed opposition to injustice only makes matters worse, as thousands of Palestinians accidentally testify. There is a fascinating article on Sophie Scholl, and an equally fascinating debate in the comments section, at the National Catholic Reporter's NCR Café. Go read - prayerfully!

Perhaps some of you out there would like to comment on all this? I could do with some honest and prayerful debate. I have no intention here of thumping any tubs, but I can't just sit still and say nowt!

Back online...

Hopefully, my computer problems are now sorted out... after yet another motherboard transplant, and a new PSU. Oh, well...

If all this kit holds together now, I should be back to (reasonably) regular posts here. If everything suddenly goes dead, just pray for my hardware, again!

More computer problems...

Many apologies for not having posted here this month, and for not having replied to any emails from The Mercy Site - I'm still having hardware problems, which may turn out to be terminal! Not good, as a new PC is not in the budget at the moment, at all...

I'll do what I can, and I'll keep you informed as best I can with what's going on when I can borrow someone's machine to log on for a minute...

Lent continues, and in the open spaces of time God is gradually showing me things I hadn't seen before. I've been reading Sr Helen Julian's notes on The Cloud of Unknowing, and I think I'm beginning to understand just a little. That wonderful book has been impenetrable to me somehow since I first tried to read it many years ago, and it's really quite an adventure to be able to grasp a little of what The Cloud author is getting at... of which more as soon as I get the chance.

It's our TSSF Area Chapter on Saturday - I'm really looking forward to the renewal of vows, and to catching up with everyone... I'll try and post a word or two about it here sometime next week.

Receiving the gift of God's mercy...

Lent is a preparation to rejoice in God’s love. And this preparation consists in receiving the gift of God’s mercy - a gift which we receive insofar as we open our hearts to it, casting out what cannot remain in the same room with mercy.

Thomas Merton. Seasons of Celebration. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1950: p. 116

"Receiving the gift of God's mercy" - this reminds me so much of the secret working of the Jesus Prayer, how it softly works its transformations in the praying heart, without our even being aware that it's happening. All we know is that we pray the Prayer as best we can; and then one day we wake up, and we realise we have changed. Maybe we have changed only subtly - or maybe a deep and radical shift has come over us, and everything is different. We don't know how it happened. It is only the gift of God's mercy, that we had been praying for all this time...

"The heart is but a small vessel; and yet dragons and lions are there, and there poisonous creatures and all the treasures of wickedness; rough, uneven paths are there, and gaping chasms. There likewise is God, there are the angels, the heavenly cities and the treasures of grace; all things are there." St. Macarius, The Homilies.

"We don't say the Jesus Prayer, or enter wordless contemplation, to get 'some benefit.' We don't pray to reduce our stress, or strengthen our immune system, or lose weight, or add years to our life. On the contrary, we enter prayer to follow Christ, to become open to Him. His way is the Way of the Cross." Albert S Rossi. Saying the Jesus Prayer. St Vladimir's Orthodox Theological Seminary.

Merton - a suitable thought for Lent?

The Holy Spirit never asks us to renounce anything without offering us something much higher and much more perfect in return. Self-chastisement for its own sake has no place in Christianity. The function of self-denial is to lead to a positive increase of spiritual energy and life. The Christian dies, not merely in order to die, but in order to live...

Seasons of Celebration [SC]. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1950. p. 130.

Merton has put his finger on the fundamental agreement between the penitential understanding of Lent, and the life-affirming understanding of the season. It's like CS Lewis' picture of the demon of lust, having been killed by the angel, being transformed into a glorious, and rideable, stallion. (The Great Divorce Bles, 1946; Fount, 1977. pp. 89 ff) But Lewis' demonised ghost suffered when its familiar was killed, and we shouldn't think that the pain of that death will be more bearable in view of the life to follow - cf. Mark 8:34. I imagine it's a bit like trying to explain to a cow why she must have her feet trimmed, or to a little boy why he has to go to the dentist...

It's an odd thing, Lent...

It's an odd thing, but there really does seem to be "something in " the penitential quality of Lent. I know people sometimes say these days that they feel there's something life-denying about the idea of a penitential season anyway, and that it should be replaced with a celebration of being human, or something to that effect. I've plenty of sympathy with them: after all, we are fully human, as Jesus himself was in his time on earth, and he carries that humanity with him into the risen life he calls us into. His mercy is upon our humanity and our frailty, not on some perfected, bloodless, alchemical essence; and to pretend otherwise tends towards a very warped and jaundiced view of what it is to be human.

But - and it's a big but - the humanity we all inhabit, and on which Jesus' mercy rests, is a fallen, broken humanity this side of heaven, and different in many ways from the life we shall know with him in glory. And we need to recognise that. We need to truly take it on board, and look our own fallenness straight in the eye, and say, "Yes, that's me. It always has been, and without your grace, my Lord, it always would be."

Oh God, it hurts. It's so degrading, looking at the mess inside the pleasant, wholesome exterior. Come on, it is a mess. No good pretending otherwise.

Of course we are capable of good, and love, and self-sacrifice - increasingly so, as the pure water of the Spirit cleanses us, and the good leaven of Christ works its way through out dough. But we'll always let ourselves down, we'll always let him down, all the way to our dying day.

I used to think Paul was being a bit hypocritical, when he wrote in 1 Timothy 1.15: "The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners - of whom I am the foremost." But he's right, and it seems to me the further I go, the longer I go on trying to follow my Lord, the more I realise just how much mess there is still in me. In all of us, yes - but that doesn't lessen or somehow defuse that fact that it is there in me.

And this is what I think Lent is about - this Lent anyway, for me. If God is ever to do anything with me, I have to look straight at who I really am: not who I'd like to be, nor who I hope you might believe me to be, but who I actually am. And then there might be something approaching solid ground...