Dawn at the Banjo Pier–He is Risen Today, Alleluia!

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

He is risen indeed!

Alleluia!

Liminal…

Limen is the Latin word for threshold. A “liminal space” is the crucial in-between time—when everything actually happens and yet nothing appears to be happening. It is the waiting period when the cake bakes, the movement is made, the transformation takes place. One cannot just jump from Friday to Sunday in this case, there must be Saturday! This, of course, was always the holy day for the Jewish tradition. The Sabbath rest was the pivotal day for the Jews, and even the dead body of Jesus rests on Saturday, waiting for God to do whatever God plans to do. It is our great act of trust and surrender, both together. A new “creation ex nihilo” is about to happen, but first it must be desired. . . .

Remember, hope is not some vague belief that “all will work out well,” but biblical hope is the certainty that things finally have a victorious meaning no matter how they turn out. We learned that from Jesus, which gives us now the courage to live our lives forward from here. Maybe that is the full purpose of Lent.

Richard Rohr, from Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent, Saint Anthony Messenger Press, 2010

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Reading this passage from Rohr, I was suddenly reminded of an Easter Saturday poem I wrote many years ago. The weather’s wrong for this Easter – it was an early Easter that year on the North-East coast – but otherwise it says what I’m feeling better than I probably could today, in this glorious late spring sunshine…

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LIMINAL

Shallow sky’s thin edge
with sea and grey – lost
with pattern layers
into distance, thread cold
in no reckoned afternoon –
hatches its waiting
in a slow tide quick
with dunlin.

Stitched frail attributes
the day brought down
to no rain yet, or
given back over so long
to a rim the sea
asks across,
finding and finding
no thing to keep.

The land’s seasons fail
across surface, picked
over the rocks into stippled days.
Downshore, parallels repeat
out of seeing, as dim as far.
Wrack-line and sea’s edge,
limen and littoral hold,
patched and rotted with light.

Michael Farley, Lucy’s Ironworks, Stride Publications, 1990

How can God die?

PILATE: Claudia, Claudia, tell me—what was this dream of yours?

CLAUDIA: I was in a ship at sea, voyaging among the islands of the Aegean. At first the weather seemed calm and sunny—but presently, the sky darkened—and the sea began to toss with wind…

Then, out of the east, there comes a cry, strange and piercing…

(voice, in a thin wail:
”Pan ho megas thethnéke—
Pan ho megas thethnéke—”)

and I said to the captain, “What do they cry?” And he answered, “Great Pan is dead.” And I asked him, “How can God die?” And he answered, “Don’t you remember? They crucified him. He suffered under Pontius Pilate” …

(Murmur of voices, starting almost in a whisper)

Then all the people in the ship turned their faces to me and said: “Pontius Pilate”….

(Voices, some speaking, some chanting, some muttering, mingled with sung fragments of Greek and Latin liturgies, weaving and crossing one another:
“Pontius Pilate… Pontius Pilate… he suffered under Pontius Pilate… crucified, dead and buried… sub Pontio Pilato… Pilato… he suffered… suffered… under Pontius Pilate… under Pontius Pilate…”)

… in all tongues and voices… even the little children with their mothers…

(Children’s voices: “Suffered under Pontius Pilate… sub Pontio Pilato… crucifié sous Ponce Pilate… gekreuzigt unter Pontius Pilatus…” and other languages, mingling with the adult voices: then fade it all out)

…your name, husband, your name continually—“he suffered under Pontius Pilate”.

PILATE: The gods avert the omen.

CLAUDIA: This day is like my dream, Caius—this darkness at mid-noon… Hark! What was that?

PILATE: Nothing, Claudia, there is nothing to hear… Come away from the window.

Dorothy L Sayers: The Man Born to be King, Gollancz, 1943; Ignatius Press 1999

Maundy Thursday…

The sacrificial instinct is the deep recognition that something always has to die for something bigger to be born… we gradually get closer to what really has to be sacrificed—our own beloved ego—as protected and beloved as a little household lamb! We will all find endless disguises and excuses to avoid letting go of what really needs to die. And it is not other humans (firstborn sons of Egyptians), animals (lambs or goats), or even “meat on Friday” that God wants or needs. It is always our false self that has to be let go, which is going to die anyway.

Richard Rohr, from Wondrous Encounters: Scripture for Lent, Saint Anthony Messenger Press.

Slowly the sun begins to set over the hills behind the sea. I cannot understand how I have been blessed to live in this most beautiful place, this little liminal town on the bay at the very tip of the Isle of Purbeck, filled with sea-change and the pure light of an endless sky.

In a few minutes I shall walk down to St Mary’s Church for the Maundy Thursday evening service. I’m a little hungry, and as puzzled as I always am about how the Lord of all could have gone through these days of Easter for someone like me, for people like us all. God’s good hand is there in all of the creation that lives around us, the air we breathe, the gravity that turns the worlds. Through Jesus all things were made – it was his hands, the maker’s, healer’s, gentle hands, that were nailed to stained and riven wood, in a real place, on a recorded date, in bloody fact.

The air has its own grain…

The air has its own grain,
its patterns the eye cannot follow.
Long ago the gulls learned to read
these maps our senses guess at best.

It seems we walk in ways the heart opens,
that the mind cannot follow,
does not even read.
We are blind to our own steps.

God’s arm lies across our shoulders
softer than air itself,
a thing we have no senses for
but strong as death itself.

God’s touch outlasts the act of dying,
remakes stars,
and yet we cannot read it,
only follow

blind to our own heart
that knows as sure as love
what God’s hand says,
loose about our shoulders,

piercèd though with grace.

Michael Farley

What he is not…

Jesus’ whole life is a life that moves from action – from being in control, preaching, teaching, performing miracles – to passion, in which everything is done to him. He is arrested, whipped, crowned with thorns and nailed to the cross. All this is done to him. The fulfilment of Jesus’ life on earth is not what he did but rather in what was done to him. Passion.

Henri Nouwen, from a recorded conference

This is the essence of the Desert. The Desert is, spiritually as well as physically, a place of subtraction. In theology this is sometimes called apophasis, the process of describing God to ourselves in terms of what he is not, rather than trying to say what we conceive him to be. God is so far beyond our capacity to know him that any way we attempt to describe him to ourselves tends merely to limit our understanding still further. We cannot limit God, however we try to know him or speak of him, but we can limit ourselves. This way lies fundamentalism, religiosity and self-deception.

If we are trying to follow our Lord Jesus on the way of the Cross we must, like him, consent to being stripped of all that has defined us, all that we thought we were, all the good and useful things and talents and gifts that gave us value in our own and others’ eyes. This is a journey on which we can, truly, take nothing with us. It is a journey so like death that I’m not sure I can tell the difference. It certainly will not end except on the far side of the act of dying.

How am I worthy to follow my Lord so closely? I’m not. Only his grace leads me where I could not have conceived of walking; only his own blood can wash me clean enough to even see the stones of the path…

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy one me…

Desperately seeking…

We could not seek God unless He were seeking us. We may begin to seek Him in desolation, feeling nothing but His absence. But the mere fact that we seek Him proves that we have already found Him.

Thomas Merton, A Merton Reader, ed. by Thomas P. McDonnell, Image Books 1989; Bantam Doubleday Dell 1994, p. 134

O God, you are my God, I seek you,
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.
So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
beholding your power and glory.
Because your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise you.
So I will bless you as long as I live;
I will lift up my hands and call on your name.

My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast,
and my mouth praises you with joyful lips
when I think of you on my bed,
and meditate on you in the watches of the night;
for you have been my help,
and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy.
My soul clings to you;
your right hand upholds me.

(Psalm 63.1-8)

God is never hidden from us except by our own blindness – even though it may be the blindness of tears – but even then he comes asking, as Jesus asked Bartimaeus, ‘What do you want to me to do for you?’

Oh, Lord, let me always listen. Let me never turn away.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner…

Winter in April?

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvellous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.*

O Israel, hope in the Lord
from this time on and for evermore.

Psalm 131

This is being a strange Lent. You would almost think Holy Saturday had come early. The Holy Spirit’s wind seems to scour a barren expanse, like the surface of some far off, unexplored moon. Christ’s warmth, his living voice, seems more like a memory…

So much is happening that I cannot name, cannot even see clearly. It’s as though there is a ferment of change, and something like growth, that is occurring in a place inaccessible to my mind – to my conscious mind at least. Can you imagine something that is going on illuminated by a light imperceptible to your eyes? Ultraviolet, perhaps, or lower down the frequency spectrum: infrared, or radio waves? Somehow, I know that I am not supposed to peer too closely, that I am merely to trust.

Change the metaphor. A gardener prepares his vegetable plot. He marks out the ground, digs it over, breaks down the clods with his fork, and finally rakes the soil level. Now he can sow his seeds. He covers them over, waters them in. Now it is late autumn, getting on towards winter. For months now, he will do nothing. The beds lie quiet under frost and wind, rain and snow. There is nothing to see. And yet the gardener must trust the long process of vernalisation. How can do nothing. If he digs up the seeds to see what’s going on he will destroy them. He must wait, leaving it all up to weather and time. Come the spring there will be shoots. In the end, harvest.

How hard it is to wait! How I long to answer the anxious questions of friends, to speak of purpose and intention, to say something inspiring. I am dumb and helpless, foolish and indecisive. This seem not to worry God.

Pray for me – I’d appreciate that.

Falling into tears…

Only the tears of repentance are able to cleanse the soul – St. Anthimos of Chios

A soldier asked Abba Mius if God accepted repentance. After the old man had taught him many things he said, ‘Tell me, my dear, if your cloak is torn, do you throw it away?’ He replied, ‘No, I mend it and use it again.’ The old man said to him, ‘If you are so careful about your cloak, will not God be equally careful about his creature?’

Abba Sarmatas said, ‘I prefer a sinful man who knows he has sinned and repents, to a man who has not sinned and considers himself to be righteous.’

St Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church, McKinney, Texas

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All too often we forget the power of tears. Claire Bangasser has a wonderful post on the gift of tears, in which she writes:

‘Tears are another way, a tangible way of addressing our pain and our panic,’ explains John Chryssavgis. So, on many occasions, tears are the very best prayer I can tell my loving Beloved Godde. Tears are a grace, and not just a sign, as some think, that I am feeling sorry for myself.

Tears are also a sign of repentance, helplessness, or complete surrender to an impossible solution; an indication that my wilfulness leads me nowhere.

But more than that, tears are the moment when I fall in the arms of the Beloved, admitting powerlessness and my inability at controlling the overwhelming challenges in my life. They are a blend of shame, confusion, repentance, call for help, end of the rope, cul-de-sac, – you name it.

A few years ago now, I wrote myself on this strange gift:

I am slowly coming to realise that my perennial soppiness, or brokenheartedness, is just exactly the way God wants me to be, and that's pretty much that.

What do I mean by "perennial brokenheartedness"? Well for me, it appears outwardly in the way that I cannot ignore suffering, real  or fictional, human or animal, which gives rise to my rather antisocial inability to watch or read much in the way of TV, films or novels. Inwardly, it is an inability, especially in prayer, to turn my heart away from pain.

It gets embarrassing too. Once, years ago, appalled at my own hard-heartedness in prayer, I prayed for the gift of tears. Bad idea. That's the kind of prayer God seems to take a particular delight in answering. Now, of course, I can't stop my helpless tears when I pray, or get involved in certain sorts of conversations.

Of course I've often tried to minimise such things. Even these days, it's embarrassing enough for women to be this way. When men do it it's downright odd. Besides, the more I can minimise it to myself, the more I can insulate myself from the transferred suffering of others, as well as from whatever internal suffering of my own is going on.

This Lent God seems to be removing pretences from me like a shipwright scraping barnacles off an old trawler. It's most uncomfortable. It's also scary, since, accepting it, as I have to, as being from God, I have no alternative but to accept where it may lead. It's out of my hands.

You see, for me at any rate, this process seems to have a lot to do with what Jesus meant when he spoke of taking up one's cross to follow him. Jesus' accepting the way of the Cross is the original pattern. When we accept to follow where he leads, we cannot avoid this pain. It is the same as love. Naming evil as the absence of love, our only weapon against it is love, and love, confronting evil, is pain; ultimately, traced to its very root, it is the pain of the Cross.

I think this is even more true for me now than it was when I wrote it. Certainly what is clearer is the implication of my own repentance. It is not enough to grieve for, pray for, the sufferings of others. I need to repent also. I am of the same material as those who suffer, yes, but I am also of the same material as those responsible for their sufferings. I cannot stand aside and judge them, or even consider myself as separate from them. They breathe the same air, stand upon the same earth; if we are wounded, our blood flows equally red. What I pray for them, I pray for myself; if I pray for myself, shall I not pray for them also?

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner…

The cell of one’s heart…

A brother in Scetis went to ask for a word from Abba Moses and the old man said to him, ‘Go and sit in your cell and your cell will teach you everything.’

From the Catholic Information Network subsite, The Paradise of the Desert Fathers.

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I keep wondering what for us are our cells, if, like so many people of prayer in this century, we are called to a more contemplative life, and yet are not members of a formal religious community, nor vowed to a formal solitary life. I wrote about this earlier, and yet I am no more clear on the matter. I find I need increasingly to look for ways to ‘be on retreat in the midst of a crowd’ as someone memorably remarked in a Facebook comment on a friend’s post.

The formal practice of the Jesus Prayer, sitting for a period quietly repeating the Prayer, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner…’ often using a Latin rosary or a prayer rope, tends to lead, after a time, to the habit or practice of praying the Prayer – often it feels more like the Prayer praying itself – when one is engaged in other things: walking, perhaps, or some repetitive task. I wonder if allowing this to become more conscious may not be a door into the cell of one’s heart – a place of solitude not so dependent on external conditions as most kinds of contemplative prayer.

Transubstantiation…

This is what Abba Daniel, the Pharanite, said, 'Our Father Abba Arsenius told us of an [old man who had lived a long] life and of simple faith; through his naiveté he was deceived and said, "The bread which we receive is not really the body of Christ, but a symbol. Two old men having learnt that he had uttered this saying, knowing that he was outstanding in his way of life, knew that he had not spoken through malice, but through simplicity. So they came to find him and said, "Father, we have heard a proposition contrary to the faith on the part of someone who says that the bread which we receive is not really the body of Christ, but a symbol." The old man said, "it is I who have said that." Then the old men exhorted him saying, "Do not hold this position, Father, but hold one in conformity with that which the catholic Church has given us. We believe, for our part, that the bread itself is the body of Christ as in the beginning, God formed man in his image, taking the dust of the earth, without anyone being able to say that it is not the image of God, even though it is not seen to be so; thus it is with the bread of which he said that it is his body; and so we believe that it is really the body of Christ." The old man said to them, "As long as I have not been persuaded by the thing itself, I shall not be fully convinced." So they said, "Let us pray God about this mystery throughout the whole of this week and we believe that God will reveal it to us." The old man received this saying with joy and he prayed in these words, "Lord, you know that it is not through malice that I do not believe and so that I may not err through ignorance, reveal this mystery to me, Lord Jesus Christ." The old men returned to their cells and they also prayed God, saying, "Lord Jesus Christ, reveal this mystery to the old man, that he may believe and not lose his reward." God heard both the prayers. At the end of the week they came to church on Sunday and sat all three on the same mat, the old man in the middle. Then their eyes were opened and when the bread was placed on the holy table, there appeared as it were a little child to these three alone. And when the priest put out his hand to break the bread, behold an angel descended from heaven with a sword and poured the child's blood into the chalice. When the priest cut the bread into small pieces, the angel also cut the child in pieces. When they drew near to receive the sacred elements the old man alone received a morsel of bloody flesh. Seeing this he was afraid and cried out, "Lord, I believe that this bread is your flesh and this chalice your blood." Immediately the flesh which he held in his hand became bread, according to the mystery and he took it, giving thanks to God. Then the old men said to him, "God knows human nature and that man cannot eat raw flesh and that is why he has changed his body into bread and his blood into wine, for those who receive it in faith."Then they gave thanks to God for the old man, because he had allowed him not to lose the reward of his labour. So all three returned with joy to their own cells.'

From the Catholic Information Network subsite, The Paradise of the Desert Fathers.

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Sometimes we forget what an extraordinary thing we are part of in the Eucharist. Our Lord said, ‘This is my body, which is given for you,’ and ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood…’ not, ‘This might remind you of my body…’ or, ‘This cup symbolises…’ (Luke 22.19-20)

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On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of the conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews…

Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper & Row, 1982

Gentleness and mercy…

While Abba Macarius was praying in his cave in the desert, a hyena suddenly appeared and began to lick his feet and taking him gently by the hem of his tunic, she drew him towards her own cave. He followed her, saying, ‘I wonder what this animal wants me to do?’ When she had led him to her cave, she went in and brought her cubs which had been born blind. He prayed over them and returned them to the hyena with their sight healed. She in turn, by way of thank offering, brought the man the huge skin of a ram and laid it at his feet. He smiled at her as if at a kind person and taking the skin spread it under him…

One of the beloved of Christ who had the gift of mercy used to say, ‘The one who is filled with mercy ought to offer it in the same manner in which he has received it, for such is the mercy of God.’

From the Catholic Information Network subsite, The Paradise of the Desert Fathers.

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As I have tried, very falteringly, to follow Jesus these last 30-odd years, it has gradually been borne in upon me how much of the Christian life is, or should be, simply a matter of gentleness and mercy. However much we may study, meet in fellowship, write, discuss and even pray, unless we grow in gentleness we are not growing more like our Saviour.

I have so very far to go: I am still so prone to anger and to judgement, to defensiveness and assertiveness. Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Discipline and discipleship…

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
   remove the evil of your doings
   from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
   learn to do good;
seek justice,
   rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
   plead for the widow.

(Isaiah 1:16-17)

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Discipline follows from being a disciple. It is our effort to do as our Master does. Jesus gave space for the Father to give him what he needed. When you and I are fearful and anxious, we want to take control of our lives... When we follow Jesus we practice a discipline that gives space to let the Father touch us, forgive us and receive us.

Henri Nouwen

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Discipline, by perhaps almost as many within the Church as without it, tends to be seen as the opposite of freedom: as restriction, the enforcement of arbitrary rules, the abnegation of free-will, self-determination and honest thought. Chambers Thesaurus lists it as a synonym of punishment, castigation and strictness.

These things may be so in penal and educational contexts, at least in places. A quite different picture emerges when we read Nouwen’s words quoted above. Following Jesus is, at root, our only discipline, and it is a discipline that sets us free from the endless need to control our lives, defend ourselves, secure ourselves – free from the things we fear and that wake us in the night with chest-constricting worry, or keep us from love because we dare not risk the wounds. As Jesus said himself,

‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’ (Matthew 11.28-30)

Faith, works, and grace…

The roof of any house stands upon the foundations and the rest of the structure. The foundations themselves are laid in order to carry the roof. This is both useful and necessary, for the roof cannot stand without the foundations and the foundations are absolutely useless without the roof – no help to any living creature. In the same way the grace of God is preserved by the practice of the commandments, and the observance of these commandments is laid down like foundations through the gift of God. The grace of the Spirit cannot remain with us without the practice of the commandments, but the practice of the commandments is of no help or advantage to us without the grace of God.

St. Symeon the New Theologian, with thanks to the Balamand Monastery

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Slowly, I have begun to understand the truth of this: the old conflict, so dear to those who are grateful that they are not Catholics, between faith and works, is so neatly subverted here. Of course there is no conflict – and grace is the means by which any appearance of conflict is resolved:

But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God… (Ephesians 2.5-8)

I dunno…

Once some of the old men came to Abba Anthony and Abba Joseph was among them. Abba Anthony wanted to test them, and so he began to talk about the Holy Scriptures. He began asking the younger monks the meaning of one text after another and each replied as best he could. But he said to each of them, ‘You have not found the meaning of it yet.’ Then he said to Abba Joseph, ‘What do you say this text means?’ and he answered, ‘I do not know.’ Abba Anthony said, ‘Indeed, only Abba Joseph has found the true way, when he said he did not know.’

From: The Desert of the Heart: Daily Readings with the Desert Fathers ed. Benedicta Ward SLG, Darton Longman & Todd, 1988.

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O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,
   my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
   too great and too marvellous for me.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
   like a weaned child with its mother;
   my soul is like the weaned child that is with me.

O Israel, hope in the Lord
   from this time on and for evermore.

(Psalm 131)

Carry that weight…

They asked Abba Macarius, ‘How should we pray?’ And the old man replied, ‘There is no need to speak much in prayer; often stretch out your hands and say, “Lord, as you will and as you know, have mercy on me.” But if there is war in your soul, add, “Help me!” and because he knows what we need, he shows mercy on us.’

From: The Desert of the Heart: Daily Readings with the Desert Fathers ed. Benedicta Ward SLG, Darton Longman & Todd, 1988.

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This is the beginning of what we now know as the Jesus Prayer, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ The discipline is so simple that our sophisticated minds rebel against it – as no doubt did the minds of many of Macarius’ sophisticated Greek and Egyptian intellectual hearers – but it is simplicity alone that can carry the weight of of our brokenness, and the world’s:

Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

TS Eliot, Four Quartets: 4, Little Gidding

Avoiding responsibility?

One of the elders said: A monk ought not to inquire how this one acts, or how that one lives. Questions like this take away from prayer, and draw us on to backbiting and chatter. There is nothing better than to keep silent…

One of the elders said: Pray attentively and you will soon straighten out your thoughts.

from Thomas Merton, The Wisdom of the Desert, New Directions Publishing Corp., 1960

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How true this is – increasingly, this Lent, I find I’m being drawn to silence, to stillness, to withdrawing from the busyness of so much of church life. I am fortunate, in having only recently moved to this town, to be relatively free of the kind of commitments I too easily make, and so I’m able to do this without causing too much inconvenience to others. But it is hard, sometimes, because one is inevitably misunderstood, even in the kindest of ways, and it is hard to avoid hurting good people by one’s seeming rejection of things that are, in themselves, perfectly good and useful.

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‘Time after time, the old men brought [Abba Theodore of Pherme] back to Scetis saying, “Do not abandon your role as a deacon.” Abba Theodore said to them, “Let me pray to God so that he may tell me for sure whether I ought to function publicly as a deacon in the liturgy.” This is how he prayed to God: “If it is your will that I should stand in this place, make me sure of it.” A pillar of fire appeared to him, stretching from earth of heaven, and a voice said, “If you can become like this pillar of fire, go and be a deacon.” So he decided against it. He went to church, and the brothers bowed to him and said, “If you don’t want to be a deacon, at least administer the chalice.” But he refused and said, “If you do not leave me alone, I shall leave here for good.” So they left him in peace.’

The instant temptation is to say that figures like this were avoiding responsibility, or setting impossibly high standards to justify their refusal of office… The issue is not about whether or not someone should assume their ‘proper’ responsibilities in the church (or society for that matter); the primary responsibility in the desert is… responsibility for your own and each other’s growth and truthfulness before God.

from Rowan Williams, Silence and Honey Cakes, Medio Media / Lion Books, 2003

The warfare of Lent…

When a man walks in the fear of God he knows no fear, even if he
were to be surrounded by wicked men. He has the fear of God within
him and wears the invincible armour of faith. This makes him strong
and able to take on anything, even things which seem difficult or
impossible to most people. Such a man is like a giant surrounded
by monkeys, or a roaring lion among dogs and foxes. He goes
forward trusting in the Lord and the constancy of his will to
strike and paralyze his foes. He wields the blazing club of the
Word in wisdom.

St. Symeon the New Theologian, The Practical and Theological
Chapters, with thanks to the Balamand Monastery

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Let us charge into the good fight with joy and love without being
afraid of our enemies. Though unseen themselves, they can look at
the face of our soul, and if they see it altered by fear, they
take up arms against us all the more fiercely. For the cunning
creatures have observed that we are scared. So let us take up arms
against them courageously. No one will fight with a resolute
fighter.

St. John Climacus, with thanks to the Balamand Monastery

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I am Patrick, yes a sinner and indeed untaught; yet I am established here in Ireland where I profess myself bishop. I am certain in my heart that "all that I am," I have received from God. So I live among barbarous tribes, a stranger and exile for the love of God…

Before I was humiliated I was like a stone that lies in deep mud, and he who is mighty came and in his compassion raised me up and exalted me very high and placed me on the top of the wall…

St. Patrick

Saving sinners…

God is the life of all free beings. He is the salvation of all, of believers or unbelievers, of the just or the unjust, of the pious or the impious, of those freed from passions or those caught up in them, of monks or those living in the world, of the educated or the illiterate, of the healthy or the sick, of the young or of the very old. He is like the outpouring of light, the glimpse of the sun, or the changes of the weather which are the same for everyone without exception.

Abba Pambo said, “If you have a heart you can be saved.”

From: The Desert of the Heart: Daily Readings with the Desert Fathers ed. Benedicta Ward SLG, Darton Longman & Todd, 1988.

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I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God;for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now;and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. (Romans 8.18-27)

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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 for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience, making me an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life.To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen. (1 Timothy 1.15-17)

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Then Jesus cried aloud: “Whoever believes in me believes not in me but in him who sent me. And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me should not remain in the darkness. I do not judge anyone who hears my words and does not keep them, for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. The one who rejects me and does not receive my word has a judge; on the last day the word that I have spoken will serve as judge, for I have not spoken on my own, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment about what to say and what to speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I speak, therefore, I speak just as the Father has told me…” (John 12.44-50)