Five Years Catholic

By the time this post goes up, I should be in Prague, happily hanging out with the Wegener sisters.

Five years ago, on Pentecost (11 May), I was received into the Catholic Church. To commemorate this happy occasion, I wrote a poem:

Theandric acts and sacramental seals

have beaconed me; the locus of right vision

unshaken in the world’s great woes and weals,

still strength in times of rapture and misprision.

Pellucid words brought from the deepest days,

freighted with wealth and in anointment spoken,

memorial and presence, gift and praise,

give substance to the sign, the Body broken.

Five years ago my skin could feel the calling

indelibly engraved upon my soul,

the hope that after many times of falling

and fruitless searches I might be made whole.

The bishop’s act was human and divine:

through it the Word acceded to the Sign.

Blessed Pentecost!

Maximal Commitment

Lang leve de Koning!

Today, Queen Beatrix (now Princess Beatrix) has abdicated and ceded the throne to her son Willem Alexander. We watched the abdication ceremony and the inauguration of the new King, accompanied by Queen Máxima and their three beautiful daughters. The event was a great ceremony, for it is right and just that there should be much ado about sovereignty. Though the lion’s teeth have been drawn, there is still a plentiful supply of affection and longing for unity (a national unity, including our Caribbean domains and in friendship with other nations).

In his speech, the King thanked his old mother for the tireless and inspiring effort with which she had fulfilled her responsibility. He also proclaimed his happiness with the support of his wife, Queen Máxima; and he mentioned her awareness that her position implied personal limitations. Yet he continued: ‘To the utmost, she is prepared to place her many capacities in the service of my kingship and the kingdom of us all.’

At that moment, Queen Máxima – incidentally the first Catholic Queen of the Netherlands since it regained its independence from France in 1815 – struck me as a vivid image of the Church, or (in microcosm) the Christian soul. Aren’t we all the King’s bride? It is a destiny that can sometimes be constraining and demanding; it implies devotion and vigilant perseverance; and it also elevates, beautifies and beatifies us. It is the glory of the King in which we are meant to take part, the King who stands unmoving to receive the pledge of submission from every singular dignitary at the many-membred heavenly court.

As Psalm 45 describes the King:

God, your God, has anointed you

with the oil of gladness beyond your companions;

your robes are all fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia.

From ivory palaces stringed instruments make you glad;

daughters of kings are among your ladies of honor;

at your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir.

Warden in Lunacy

Almost a year ago (how time flies!), I read The Greater Trumps by Charles Williams. It is a book about the glorious movement of the Fool on the edge of the abyss. About Tarot cards, domination and surrender. About rising to adore the mystery of Love.

It is also specifically about people. And these people are like Tarot cards: once you get to know them, you do not easily forget them. There is Nancy, the girl who has fallen in love. There is her brother (or not, because he’s mostly absent). And their aunt Sybil, who is holy, but in such a way that you don’t really notice it unless you know the signs. And their father. He is the one to whom the title of this post refers, and the one with whom the book starts – as follows:

“…perfect Babel,” Mr. Coningsby said peevishly, threw himself into a chair, and took up the evening paper.

He then proceeds to ignore his smart-alecky daughter (whispering that Babel never was perfect); to disturb his sister, Aunt Sybil, because she looks comfortable and interested in her book; and to complain about the government raising taxes. He forbids Nancy from telling her brother to ‘Go to hell’, at least within his house. He also forbids her from answering back to Aunt Sybil, who at least is ‘a lady’ – at which Nancy throws back, in a spirit of hyperbole, that she’s a saint.

Lothair Coningsby does not like to be disturbed. Mania, whether heavenly or chaotic, is not allowed a place in his house. How appropriate, therefore, that he is ‘a legal officer of standing, a Warden in Lunacy’ (with the privilege of going in to dinner before the elder sons of younger sons of peers). He has an interest in trivial arguments. His hand’s line of life stops at forty, but (as Nancy remarks) ‘here he is still alive’. He also happens to be the legatee of the original pack of Tarot cards, which draws his family into a mystery tale that he never becomes conscious of.

Mr. Coningsby is a creature of habit. He happens to have the laudable religious habit of going to church on Christmas Day. Fortunately, when the family spends Christmas elsewhere, his host provides a car and chauffeur to enable him to go:

Mr. Coningsby held strongly that going to church, if and when he did go, ought to be as much a part of normal life as possible, and ought not to demand any peculiar demonstration of energy on the part of the churchgoer.

Sybil, he understood, had the same view; she agreed that religion and love should be a part of normal life.

One should read The Greater Trumps if only to sharpen one’s dialectical sense. The church scene, by the way, is unforgettable; a marvellous example of that ecstastic ‘actual.participation’ which a recent Council has encouraged. Put more simply, reading this book might make your heart larger.

And if it does, perhaps you will even come to appreciate the Warden in Lunacy. For the author views him several times through Aunt Sybil’s eyes, and then affirms that he is ‘as generous as he knew how to be’ – which would be damning with faint praise if it were damning. But his generosity is real. And at church Nancy sees him in a different Light:

He seemed no more the absurd, slightly despicable, affected and pompous and irritating elderly man whom she had known; all that was unimportant. He walked alone, a genie from some other world, demanding of her something which she had not troubled to give. If she would not find out what that was, it was no good blaming him for the failure of their proper relation. She, she only, was to blame; the sin lay in her heart whenever that heart set itself against any other.

Inauguration

On the day of the inauguration of Pope Francis, we had no class because it was the Solemnity of St. Joseph. This gave us all the opportunity to watch the papal Mass on the big screen. It was heartening to see so many people congregated in St. Peter’s Square. As for the liturgy, I was particularly intrigued by the Gospel reading, chanted in Greek by an Eastern Catholic Deacon. At the time we guessed that he was Eastern Orthodox, because Patriarch Bartholomew might not have approved of such prominence given to an Eastern Catholic. I am still trying to find out who the Deacon was and to which Church he belonged after all.

In the Pope’s homily (or Bishop of Rome, as he calls himself), there were two points which made an impression on me. One of them is the connection between St. Joseph’s office as protector of Christ (and the God-oriented sensitive realism with which he fulfilled it) and our own calling as Christians: ‘Let us protect Christ in our lives, so that we can protect others, so that we can protect creation!’ Concretely, this includes caring for our families and ‘building sincere friendships in which we protect one another in trust, respect, and goodness’.

The second point is the sentence which Pope Francis said twice: ‘We must not be afraid of goodness or even tenderness!’ Tenderness, which St. Joseph showed to the other members of the Holy Family (in his own carpenter’s way), is a prerequisite for care and protection. It is ‘not the virtue of the weak but rather a sign of strength of spirit’. We have to protect that strength in us, to keep watch against hatred, envy and pride: ‘Being protectors, then, also means keeping watch over our emotions, over our hearts, because they are the seat of good and evil intentions: intentions that build up and tear down!’ Being a protector means looking on other people ‘with tenderness and love’ and thus opening up ‘a horizon of hope’.

To speak personally: there are persons who are fire to the tinder of my protectiveness, not because of any immediate danger, but because they are in a crisis of vigorous self-questioning. To keep their horizon unobstructed is the task of the street-sweeper, the quiet worker who labours not for himself. And even if someone should ultimately labour for himself, the labour need not be lost.

For it is not merely an inner joy that we seek; it is the stormwind of peace on the horizon, the Perichoresis. Thus, at least, says the Office of Readings for St. Joseph, in the words of St. Bernardine of Siena:

In fact, although the joy of eternal happiness enters into the soul of a man, the Lord preferred to say to Joseph: “Enter into joy”. His intention was that the words should have a hidden spiritual meaning for us. They convey not only that this holy man possesses an inward joy, but also that it surrounds him and engulfs him like an infinite abyss.

Blessed Triduum to all!

Tu es Petrus

On the feast of the Chair of St. Peter (Cathedra S. Petri), and surrounded by the buzz about the upcoming resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, I would like to offer a few words on the subject. And what a subject he is!

I am a Catholic of the ‘Benedictine generation’. This is true on a chronological level: I was received into the Church when he had been reigning for three years. It is also true on a personal level: our Pope’s humility, shyness, patristic exegesis and academic clarity greatly appeal to me, as does his concern for the soul and structure of Europe.

So, on the one hand, I am sad that he is leaving. On the other hand, I admire him for it and I am happy for him. Besides, the idea of the quiet Pope, having accepted, fulfilled and renounced his duties all in due time, and now ending his life in monastic peace, reading and praying, should appeal to our religious sense of aesthetics. It reminds me of nothing so much as Bilbo Baggins, who was not destined to carry the Ring to the Fire and ‘the End of All Things’.

It is beautiful to see the precedent of Pope Celestine V thus transposed to the busy 21st century, which, notwithstanding its garrulous streams of commentary, has probably been touched somewhere deep by this unexpected news. (And this style of saying farewell, too, reminds me of Bilbo Baggins.)

I salute His Holiness, Pope Benedict XVI, with the words of Galadriel:

Namárië! Nai hiruvalyë Valimar.

Nai elyë hiruva. Namárië!

Corpus Traditum

This post is in honour of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose memorial we celebrate today.

Some time ago I was struck by the following text:

Without tradition, the Scripture of the New Covenant too would remain Old-Testamentic; it would have the character of law and promise, and would not be the Word-body of him who necessarily also, as eucharistic Life-body (which did not exist in the Old Testament), lives and works in his Church.

(Hans Urs von Balthasar, Verbum Caro, p. 19)

This, so casually tossed out, seemed to me to merit closer examination. In its context, Von Balthasar also claims that the denial of the sacrificial character of the Eucharist is consistent with the generally eschatological character of Protestantism. The general drift of both statements seems to be that Protestantism is a form of Christianity that looks forward to the definitive coming of the Messiah, but does not experience the same Presence of the Anointed in their midst.

Scripture in Protestantism, according to Von Balthasar, is approached as in the Old Covenant: it lays down moral commandments and guidelines to make people wise, and it promises a new heaven and a new earth, in which the just(ified) will dwell. It is law and promise. But it is not Word-body (Wortleib), existing in conjunction with Life-body (Lebensleib). Why is tradition necessary to make a Body out of Scripture? And what does ‘Body’ mean, if it can be applied to Scripture?

The fundamental sense of the phrase ‘body of Christ’ is simply the historical body which Jesus received from Mary, overshadowed by the Holy Spirit. With this body Jesus founded the Church, the mystical body of Christ, which incorporates humanity into the historical body (we are crucified with Him!). To demonstrate the strict unity of the historical and the mystical body, there are ‘two intermediate forms of corporeity’. They make the Logos, origin and measure of things, into the Way in which we can be incorporated into God; the Eucharist as Life, Scripture as Truth.

Scripture is not merely a universal human word or abstract wisdom; it transmits to us the word and spirit of Christ. It reaches out universally, without losing its concreteness; the same could be said about the Eucharist. But it is always reflects the revelation of the God-Man, the definitive Word which no Scripture can exhaust. To say (as I once heard a Reformed presuppositionalist do) that Scripture is as close a reflection of the mind of God as possible, is false; such an idea sees the Incarnation as serving Scripture, not the other way around.

The words which God spoke in the Old Covenant did have some sort of absolute quality; they could only be passed on, but not elaborated. Any tradition that grew up around them was not the expression of the fullness of the spoken word, nothing that would become an object of faith.

In the fullness of time, however, the fullness of divinity has appeared bodily; God does not merely speak from Heaven, but gives himself over (tradiert sich). In the same way as the self-gift on the Cross (which is also the gift of the Spirit to the Church), Christ gives Himself under the two corporeal forms of Scripture and Eucharist. These carry within themselves ever-new surprises. Because the Revelation infinitely surpasses Scripture, it gives a vitality to the Church which receives it (or rather, Him in it). Scripture is tradition: it is Christ’s self-tradition, it arises from tradition, and its authority could never be established without tradition. It is a ‘divine mirror of the divine revelation’, and certifies that the Truth is preached in the Church.

According to Von Balthasar, the handing-over and preaching of the truth in the Church would be made impossible without this security – as holiness would be without the Eucharist. This is certainly an interesting comparison.

In short, Scripture and Tradition mutually attest to each other and to the plenitude and faithfulness of God’s Christ.

Sitting in Judgment

When I was younger, I used to wonder vaguely what would happen if I were visited by my older self. Now that has been reversed: every now and then, I wonder vaguely what my younger self would say and do if he could see me now (the third person feels appropriate). I’m not sure when, or why, the change occurred. But at least I am not alone in the experience, for Wordsworth had it too:

                        …so wide appears

The vacancy between me and those days,

Which yet have such self-presence in my mind

That, sometimes, when I think of them, I seem

Two consciousnesses, conscious of myself

And of some other Being.

(Prelude, II.28-33)

The child dreams of himself as full-grown because he knows he is expanding; but at some point, one discovers that even the fullest growth is still severely limited. Even the eminent Cardinal Newman said that he who would know much must make up his mind to be ignorant of much. One coalesces into a particular shape, in the interplay of circumstance, self-determination, apollonic callings and apollyonic whisperings. And one’s wide-eyed young self still has many wide-open potentialities one no longer has.

Footfalls echo in the memory

Down the passage which we did not take

Towards the door we never opened

Into the rose-garden. My words echo

Thus, in your mind.

(T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets, Burnt Norton, I)

Thus one’s self at a different stage serves as some sort of yardstick, a measure against which to size up oneself, partly because it suggests a different possible way of life. Perhaps this is one good reason to have and raise children: to have an unromanticised, unpredictable younger self, who still has all the energy no longer possessed by the one whose very memory of childhood has aged with him. And to see what course he runs.