A COMFORTING THOUGHT

I couldn't resist sharing this.

"My spiritual director likes to say there's good news and there's better news.  The good news is there is a Messiah. The better news is it's not you. So, it's not all up to you."

Fr Martin, SJ

Thanks to St Matthias, Somerset N.J.

LESS IS MORE, BUT MORE IS EVEN MORE

Several of you may have seen the delightful little prayer that circulates on the Internet as being by Thomas More, and that begins "Lord, give me a good digestion, and something to digest". Alas, it is not, and cannot be, by More; its language, its humour and its sentiments are thoroughly twentieth century. Mind you, as Fr Germain Marc'hadour has pointed out, More would probably have enjoyed seeing a prayer of his own so parodied.
The one prayer we know is by More was written in his own hand in a book in the Tower of London, some time before his execution. It is both wry and moving, and I reproduce it here from the website of the Amici Thomae Mori, where there are also discussions of the apocryphal digestion prayer. First, rather than the usual Holbein portrait,  I thought I'd reproduce the Holbein sketch for a More family portrait, the painted version of which is lost. It does show More with his delightful entourage, where wit and humour were close friends with prayer and devotion. In the prayer itself I have modernised the spelling, something I don't often do, but in this case it will make it easier to follow and digest. 

1          Give me thy grace, good Lord

To set the world at naught

2          To set my mind fast upon thee

And not to hang upon the blast

of men’s mouths

3          To be content to be solitary

Not to long for worldly company

4          Little by little utterly to cast off the world

And rid my mind of all the business thereof

5          Not to long to hear of any worldly things

But that the hearing of worldly fantasies may

be to me displeasant

6          Gladly to be thinking of god

Piteously to call for his help

7          To lean unto the comfort of god

Busily to labour to love him

8          To know mine own vility [vileness] & wretchedness

To humble & meeken myself under the

mighty hand of God

9          To bewail my sins past

For the purging of them patiently to

suffer adversity

10        Gladly to bear my purgatory here

To be joyful of tribulations

11        To walk the narrow way that leadeth to life

To bear the cross with Christ

12        To have the last thing in remembrance

To have ever afore mine eye my death that is

ever at hand

13        To make death no stranger to me

To foresee & consider the everlasting fire

of hell

14        To pray for pardon before the Judge come

To have continually in mind the passion that

Christ suffered for me

15        For his benefits incessantly to give him thanks

To buy the time again that I before have lost

16        To abstain from vain confabulations

To eschew light foolish mirth & gladness

17        Recreations not necessary to cut off

Of worldly substance, friends, liberty, life and

all, to set the loss at right nought for the winning of Christ

18        To think my most enemies my best friends

for the brethren of Joseph could never have done

him so much good with their love & favour as

they did him with their malice & hatred

19        These minds are more to be desired of

every man than all the treasure of

all the princes & kings Christian & heathen,

were it gathered & laid together

all upon one heap

MIRACLES

Fr Alexis Helg

 "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the miracles had been performed in Tyre and Sidon which occurred in you, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the judgment than for you.…” (Luke 10:13-14)

This, today’s reading in the Catholic (and now Anglican also) Lectionary, received an excellent comment in the admirable Prions en Eglise booklet from Fr Alexis Helg, a Swiss religious in the Order of St John. He writes about reacting to miracles, which clearly the cities St Luke mentions got wrong. Do we, he wondered, get it right? Can we discern miracles when we see them?

This got me thinking. First: as we know, the Age of Miracles is over. What that means I doubt if anyone is quite sure. I suppose, in a way, they were (or were seen as, or were – as in Chorazin -- not seen as) a sort of Close Encounters of the First Kind: something overwhelming and against all we know of the laws of Nature. Six large amphorae of water suddenly turn into Chambolle-Musigny; a blind man suddenly becomes sighted; a paralytic takes up his camp-bed and dances down the road singing; a man several days dead comes lurchingly to life. And hundreds of ordinary bystanders see it happening, and the news goes viral. That was then; this is now. I don’t want to go into the 19^th-century style rationalist “explanations” of the miracles; if I can believe Christ rose from the dead I can believe the others. But that was then, this is now. Why did that Age end?

Perhaps a better question is: why did it happen in the first place? If, as we now believe, God does not suddenly appear on all the world’s video screens, overwhelming the planet, because He is love and that is not the way love works; if love can work only in freedom of response; then why bother with all those miracles back then?

One possible explanation is that they were a result of the Hypostatic Union, i.e. of the unique combination of divinity and humanity in Yeshua Bar-Yousuf, the carpenter from Nazareth alias Son of God. Imagine his very human burst of feeling upon seeing an exhausted paralytic begging in the dust and 110º heat, or upon  hearing that one of his best friends, still young, was dead. We can share that; what we can’t share is that in God, Will is Act: so when he feels it, something happens: the poor bugger gets up and walks, Lazarus stumbles forth, blinking.  

(One of the alarming but often likeable things about Jesus’ humanity is his fits of sheer temper: the passage from Luke above surely is one, as, I suspect, is the terrifying passage about bringing not peace but a sword, and the Great Whupping of the merchants in the Temple.)

This explanation of the miracles would explain why they ceased (though not why one or two generations of Apostles still managed them). Now, says Fr Helg astutely, we need to look more closely around us to see miracles, and when we do see them, we need to learn to connect them with God as we live in a world that does not do so naturally. But – I would ask Fr Helg – how should we so connect them? If we do not believe that God micromanages creation – and we need to not believe this in order to stay sane: does God allow Daech? does God allow the suffering of terminal Parkinsons patients? is sickness punishment for sin? --, then how should we connect the miracles we may observe with Him?

I don’t have an answer for this, or not a reasonable one at least. The one thing that occurs to me is that our unconscious sometimes understands things for which our (and I mean our collective) reason is not ready. When we see a miracle, something in us may connect it with God, and if that happens, we instinctively give thanks. That instinct may some day be justified by a new understanding that our minds can confirm; meanwhile, it may be a deep truth implanted in our human spirit by a Spirit rather more Divine. 

HORROR -- MERCY

I was going to juxtapose an image of Daech (ISIS/ISIL) beheading, but could not bring myself to. Imagine it, in relation to Grünewald's Crucifixion, and to this post.

Father, they slaughter and behead --

We wail barbarity and sin --

Outraged and chilled, we count the dead --

What do you see, who look within?

You whom no man had ever seen --

You sent your Son, that we might know --

He touched our souls and they were green --

What do you see, who look below?

We took him and we whipped him well --

We nailed him up -- such was his bond --

Dying for us, with us to dwell --

What do you see, who look beyond?

And yet he rose and walks the earth --

To weary pilgrims still a guide --

Giving his treasure to our dearth --

What do you see, who look beside?

In every body washed ashore --

In every soul that lives in hell --

We meet your Son for ever more --

What do you see, who know us well?

Their cruelty may ravage on --

The depth of Heaven knows your tears --

But we must pass your mercy on --

For Him who sees, and loves, and hears.

RK

Image: Matthias Grünewald, outside of the Isenheim Altarpiece (ca. 1515)