The Burning Ones

One of the five books of the Torah, In the Wilderness (known to us as Numbers), relates that the people of God complained. They were dissatisfied because they had no bread and no water, and hated the manna which they did have. So God sent them a serpent plague, at which they relented and asked Moses to intercede. Moses, the prophet of angelic patience, interceded. Then the Lord told Moses to make a copper serpent and put it on a pole for the people to look at. Those who looked at the serpent were healed.

Now as I happened to be reading this passage (21,4-9) in two translations, I noticed that one had God telling Moses to make a ‘bronze serpent’, but the other a ‘fiery serpent’. Whence the difference? I glanced at the Hebrew text to see if the words were alike. This was not the case, but one of the words was oddly familiar.

The ‘fiery serpents’ that the Lord sent His people are, in Hebrew, ha-nechashim ha-seraphim. The last word’s meaning is related to ‘kindle’ or ‘burn’; it probably refers to the effect of the poison. God tells Moses to make a saraph (the Hebrew-English Tanakh translates ‘a seraph figure’) and put it on a pole. So Moses makes a copper serpent (nechash nechosheth).

Intrigued, I wanted to find out if there is any connection between the snakes and the angels. It seems that seraphim do not often appear in Scripture. They appear in this story and its flashback in Deuteronomy. Other than that, they are only mentioned in Isaiah – but in very different contexts. Twice the saraph appears as a dragon-like creature, a horrifying enemy:

Rejoice not, all Philistia,

Because the staff of him that beat you is broken,

For from the stock of the snake there sprouts an asp,

A flying seraph branches out from it.

(14,29)

Through a land of distress and hardship,

Of lion and roaring king-beast,

Of viper and flying seraph,

They convey their wealth on the backs of asses…

(30,6)

But in one passage, we suddenly find the seraphim at the Heavenly Court – hardly less terrible:

In the year that King Uzziah died, I beheld my Lord seated on a high and lofty throne; and the skirts of His robe filled the Temple. Seraphs stood in attendance on Him. Each of them had six wings: with two he covered his face, with two he covered his legs, and with two he would fly.

And one would call to the other,

“Holy, holy, holy!

The LORD of hosts!

His presence fills all the earth!”

The doorposts would shake at the sound of the one who called, and the House kept filling with smoke.

(6,1-4)

These ‘burning ones’ do not seem to have any serpentine features; they are like winged men. One of them purifies the prophet’s lips by pressing a live coal to it. It is therefore assumed that there is no direct connection between the snakes and the angels. But the double meaning of saraph (in one book!) remains intriguing.

Traditionally, the Seraphim have been identified as the highest order in the hierarchy of angels, because they ‘burn’ with love for God; they surpass even the Cherubim, who are characterized by wisdom and deep knowledge of God. Apparently love is higher even than wisdom.

By the way, if you were wondering what happened to the saraph that God commanded Moses to make: it turned out just a copper serpent after all. After it had served its purpose, the Israelites started worshipping it as an idol, which was reason for King Hezekiah to smash it (2 Kings 18,4). Yet it still burns in the Christian spiritual memory as an image of Jesus, the life-giver lifted up on the cross (John 3,14-15) in the wilderness of the world; the Son of Man and Son of God, who burned with zeal for his Father’s house, and offered up ‘this temple’ as the final burnt offering.

Measure for Measure

As you judge, so you will be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.

Judgmental men like to share their judgment that this passage from the Sermon of the Mount is frequently misinterpreted. And so it is, wrested from Jesus’s mouth as a paper shield against Christian scorn. The saying itself, however, is clearly a warning against arrogance and contempt, or positively put, an exhortation to mercy and forgiveness.

Since this text is so well-known even among non-Christians, it came as a surprise to me to find its parallel in the Gospel of Mark (4,24), which occurs among several parables comparing the kingdom of God to a seed. St. Mark remembers the saying about measuring in a different context:

Take care what you hear. The measure with which you measure will be measured out to you, and still more will be given to you.

Intriguingly, Jesus does not say here that men might fall short of (or exceed) the moral measure they use for others; instead, measure is related to gift. The measure (metron) is not twodimensional, but threedimensional: of content, not of extent. It is not only used for calculation, but also for reception, storage and sharing.

Storage of what? Take care what you hear: the measure is made to contain the word, sown, grown, and harvested. We are encouraged to open our ears, for if our heart rightly measures the word of Jesus as divine and life-giving, the word will be measured out to us – and still more will be given.

(Reader, if I am interpreting this wrongly – for it remains cryptic – grant, of your courtesy, the excess to my small measure!)

The Gospel of Luke seems to synthesize Matthew and Mark (6,37-38):

Stop judging and you will not be judged. Stop condemning and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap. For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.

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!