Gospel of St. Cuthbert to return home

Cuthbert of Lindisfarne:
Fresco in Durham Cathedral

I am delighted by the news that the Gospel of St. Cuthbert is returning home to Durham Cathedral.

Rather ironically, I was just reading about this very book in "In Search of England" by Michael Wood – an excellent book, by the way, for anyone interested in English history and heritage.

I would love to see Cuthbert's Gospel in person – it is said to be remarkably beautiful, and was worn by St. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne (my favorite saint, pictured at right) around his neck while on his travels around Northumbria. So I'm delighted to see the book returning home to Durham, and hope to someday see it in person in the world's most beautiful cathedral, which is home to the shrine of Cuthbert. It would be a return trip for me as well, having visited the cathedral and shrine in 1994, and I've been wanting to go back for a long time – now I have an even better reason to do so.

[Cuthbert] was wonderfully forbearing and his courage in bearing hardship in body and mind was unsurpassed [...] . Such was his zeal for prayer that sometimes he kept vigil for three or four nights in a row without ever sleeping in his bed. Whether he was praying alone in some hidden place or reciting the psalms, he always did manual work to fight off the heaviness of sleep.

From the "Life of St. Cuthbert", The Venerable Bede

On All Saints’, we are all saints

Note
This sermon was originally written for All Saints' Day in 2008, but since the liturgical year A is back, this is as good a time as any to repost it.

Sermon for All Saints’ Day, Year A

Revelation 7:9-17, Psalm 34, 1 John 3:1-3, Matthew 5:1-12

This being All Saints’ Day, the obvious question is, “what is a saint?” Most people probably think of saints being guys running around with halos around their heads. After all, that’s what you see in icons and paintings like the ones of Jesus and Mary hanging on the wall behind me.

So I brought my own halo tonight. Just some tinfoil, doesn’t look like much, but it’ll do. It looks much like the one in this picture:

Of course, I notice some of you giggling a little. A ring of tinfoil doesn’t make a saint, does it? The halo itself as a ring around someone’s head looks a little ridiculous. Did the saints of old really run around with rings around their heads?

So let’s do a little bit of art history here. The idea of the halo-as-ring is actually relatively new. A halo is more properly called a nimbus, and the original purpose of the halo in art was not to represent something like this ring of tinfoil, but this:

...a candle, or more particularly its radiant glow. Early artists, and indeed the authors of the Gospels or even Jesus Himself, tended to speak in symbols and metaphor, and the halo itself is a metaphor for the inner light.

Jesus is portrayed in the Transfiguration as being a figure of radiant light. In early hagiographies, saints are described as having faces shining, as if they themselves were lamps or lanterns. The artists of the Middle Ages weren’t interested in literal portrayals of people, so they made symbolic portrayals of an idealized, stylized world. Rather than try to paint a radiant glow, they resorted to painting gold disks or just circles, like this:

If you’ve ever seen the ring around the Moon on a wintry night, you’ll know exactly where they got that from. There’s the origin of the halo.

Fast-forward to the Renaissance, and artists like Giotto and da Vinci were slowly “rediscovering” perspective. Realism, rather than symbolism, was the order of the day. The problem is that in the course of time, artists – indeed everyone – had forgotten what the reasoning behind the icons was, and thought that the symbol was to be taken literally. So when they began to paint in perspective, they tried to paint the halo in perspective, as a disc attached to the back of the person’s head, like in this painting by Giotto:

...then later as a ring, like in this painting, where da Vinci is showing off his talent by painting softly glowing rings in perfect perspective.

The problem is only that they didn’t know what it was they were painting. In the passing of the centuries, the original purpose of the halo was forgotten, the whole mentality of the people had changed. The point had been lost with time.

The irony is that the quest for realism stunted our sense of reality as badly as those people of the Dark Ages ignorant of science. Today we are very literal in our way of thinking – a product of the Renaissance and Enlightenment, when we learned to use logic and science to achieve great things. The result is that our metaphors for people change as our environment changes. We are surrounded by machines and computers, and thus we compare ourselves to machines and computers. We don’t think in animalistic terms very well anymore. We don’t think in symbols well anymore, either. We have unwittingly degraded ourselves to machines. Modern medicine arguably treats people as a machine as well. A pain in your leg means your leg is broken and needs to be fixed. A pain in your heads means…well, we won’t go there.

So we need to not just be logical and rational, but to reconnect with more ancient ways of thinking, to rediscover how people thought in those days, as an additional tool to understand. That tool is symbolism.

The symbol we have here today in church is a powerful one. The symbol is the ultimate sacrifice by Jesus Christ for us. We celebrate that symbol in the form of the Eucharist, in the partaking in bread and wine that we believe become the Body and Blood of Christ – not in a literal mechanical sense, that is, you can’t take the consecrated bread and wine and put them under a microscope and see blood cells or skin cells. But in a symbolic sense. The reality behind those things is changed. Mere bread and wine become powerfully precious to us, representing God Himself and the sum of His Creation in our midst.

It is a serious mistake to say “well, it’s not literally true”. Symbols have power, because they explain things that other methods of communication can’t achieve. In the same way our bodies are more than mere machines, so too is this Universe of ours something more than mere molecules. It’s more than the sum of its parts. Symbols give us a glimpse of something else, of the inner light that infuses every particle of our world. The Universe itself lives and breathes, and we with it.

The letter of John that we read today says it in a very straightforward way. “We should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. […] When he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” Holiness, or seeing God, is thus about seeing the totality of reality. Each of us alone is blind to the vast majority of reality. Each of us casts only a tiny bit of light into the darkness, because we only see just that tiny bit of truth. We don’t see the whole truth. And light is the essence of enlightenment.

God is revealed to us when we open our eyes wide, as wide as we can, fearless of the consequences of the truth. Each of us can share our little bit of light. Each of us carries with us a halo, our own nimbus – some brighter than others, but still, each one of us has it within us. Even though each of us may be little more than a small candle, our light put together – our shared Truth – makes the world ever brighter. We see more as we not only open our own eyes, but we learn to see with the eyes of others. Reality itself is transformed. All of that is communicated by the symbols of the Eucharist. Communion is God revealed.

In the Beatitudes we heard in the Gospel, Jesus reels off a list of all the people who are blessed. It is not an exclusive list. What Jesus is doing is reminding us that even the most downtrodden, pain-ridden, suffering, poor leper of a person carries blessings and truth within them. Every human being has value, no matter how low their station. We need to see through the eyes of everyone, not just through our own. No exceptions.

In the end, each and every one of us is a saint, or has saintliness within us. We celebrate All Saints’ to celebrate the limitless potential of our own sainthood, by remembering those who went before us.

So rather than look at things merely in literal terms, I’d like you to look at the world in symbolic terms. That’s when the poetry of Creation takes shape and begins to sing, with each of us a voice in the chorus. Then the vision expressed in Revelation will come true: For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Amen.

The problem of Jansenism

You may have noticed (of course you did!) that I renamed the link to my parish in the bazillions of links down below. Previously we didn't have a name at all, aside from "Old Catholic Parish of Hannover-Lower Saxony". Now that we finally have our very own church, it was high time to pick a proper name.

The parish has been at it for literally years, with no sign of progress and a couple reverses. But this time there was enough determination to finally just pick one that it went through. The new name is "Marie Angélique", named for Maria Angélique Arnauld. Who's she, you ask? Go ahead and read her entry on Wikipedia.

I have to say, I ain't happy.

She seems to be a wonderful person. She was the major force behind reforming the Order of Port-Royal, a nunnery that had pretty much gone all to pieces and where standards were virtually non-existent -- indeed from the sound of things, it had more to do with a home for juvenile delinquents than a nunnery, and in some descriptions it even sounds like it was practically a bordello when she took over. Thanks to her, the nunnery was thoroughly cleaned up and revitalized. Truly a remarkable feat, and one that deserves to be remembered.

But there is something about her connections that seriously bothers me. While I've talked to our priest many times about it, and have accepted that that is the new name and that's that, I still am uncomfortable with the choice because of her connections to Jansenism. You can read up about it on Wikipedia, but I'll sum up my complaints here.

Take Blaise Pascal, a close associate of hers and another leading Jansenist. He wrote (emphasis mine):

And yet it pleases God to choose, elect, and discern from this equally corrupt mass, in which he sees only demerit, a number of men of each sex, age, condition, complexion, from every country and time, in short, of all sorts. God has distinguished His Elect from the others, for reasons unknown to men and to Angels, by pure mercy, without any merit involved. [...] God, through an absolute and irrevocable will, willed to save His Elect with a purely gratuitous goodness; He abandoned the others to their evil desires, to which He could with perfect justice abandon all men. In order to save His Elect, God sent Jesus Christ to satisfy His justice and merit from His mercy the grace of Redemption...

In other words, there is pretty much no such thing as free will, at least not according to Cornelius Jansen or his adherents. Jansenism was roundly condemned by Rome as heresy, mainly because of that denial of the free will of humanity to choose to turn to God. Certainly the opposite extreme, Pelagianism, is also full of problems. But Rome and the Orthodox Church are quite clear on what they see as problematic. Take this article from +Kallistos Ware, a former Anglican who is now an Orthodox bishop and metropolitan in England, where he states:

Grace and Free Will. As we have seen, the fact that man is in God’s image means among other things that he possesses free will. God wanted a son, not a slave. The Orthodox Church rejects any doctrine of grace which might seem to infringe upon man’s freedom. To describe the relation between the grace of God and free will of man, Orthodoxy uses the term cooperation or synergy (synergeia); in Paul’s words: "We are fellow-workers (synergoi) with God" (1 Cor. 3:9). If man is to achieve full fellowship with God, he cannot do so without God’s help, yet he must also play his own part..."
[...]
The west, since the time of Augustine and the Pelagian controversy, has discussed this question of grace and free will in somewhat different terms; and many brought up in the Augustinian tradition — particularly Calvinists — have viewed the Orthodox idea of ‘synergy’ with some suspicion. Does it not ascribe too much to man’s free will, and too little to God? Yet in reality the Orthodox teaching is very straightforward. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in"(Revelation 3:20). God knocks, but waits for man to open the door — He does not break it down. The grace of God invites all but compels none.
[...]
Orthodoxy, holding as it does a less exalted idea of man’s state before he fell, is also less severe than the west in its view of the consequences of the fall. Adam fell, not from a great height of knowledge and perfection, but from a state of undeveloped simplicity; hence he is not to be judged too harshly for his error. Certainly, as a result of the fall man’s mind became so darkened, and his will-power was so impaired, that he could no longer hope to attain to the likeness of God. Orthodox, however, do not hold that the fall deprived man entirely of God’s grace, though they would say that after the fall grace acts on man from the outside, not from within. Orthodox do not say, as Calvin said, that man after the fall was utterly depraved and incapable of good desires. They cannot agree with Augustine, when he writes that man is under ‘a harsh necessity’ of committing sin, and that ‘man’s nature was overcome by the fault into which it fell, and so came to lack freedom’. The image of God is distorted by sin, but never destroyed; in the words of a hymn sung by Orthodox at the Funeral Service for the laity: ‘I am the image of Thine inexpressible glory, even though I bear the wounds of sin.’ And because he still retains the image of God, man still retains free will, although sin restricts its scope. Even after the fall, God ‘takes not away from man the power to will — to will to obey or not to obey Him’ (Dositheus, Confession, Decree 3. Compare Decree 14). Faithful to the idea of synergy, Orthodoxy repudiates any interpretation of the fall which allows no room for human freedom.
[...]
Most orthodox theologians reject the idea of ‘original guilt,’ put forward by Augustine and still accepted (albeit in a mitigated form) by the Roman Catholic Church. Men (Orthodox usually teach) automatically inherit Adam’s corruption and mortality, but not his guilt: they are only guilty in so far as by their own free choice they imitate Adam."

This quote is from his book entitled The Orthodox Way, which I highly recommend -- very interesting and insightful as an introduction to the Orthodox Church. This kind of understanding of God seems both far more satisfying and more loving than the cruel God who damns people from the get-go, while also being more rational. What would be the point of condemning people in advance? It simply makes no sense and can't be reconciled with a truly loving, caring God interested in His Creation.

Here is another quote, this time from the Orthodox Church in America (OCA), about the sin of Adam and the redemption through Christ:

The sufferings and death of Christ in obedience to the Father reveals the super-abundant divine love of God for his creation. For when all was sinful, cursed, and dead, Christ became sin, a curse, and dead for us -- though he himself never ceased to be the righteousness and blessedness and life of God Himself. It is to this depth, of which lower and more base cannot be discovered or imagined, that Christ has humiliated himself "for us men and for our salvation." For being God, he became man; and being man, he became a slave; and being a slave, he became dead and not only dead, but dead on a cross. From this deepest degradation of God flows the eternal exaltation of man. This is the pivotal doctrine of the Orthodox Christian faith, expressed over and again in many ways throughout the history of the Orthodox Church. It is the doctrine of the atonement -- for we are made to be "at one" with God. It is the doctrine of redemption -- for we are redeemed, i.e., "bought with a price," the great price of the blood of God (Acts 20:28; 1 Cor 6:20).
[...]
In Orthodox theology generally it can be said that the language of "payment" and "ransom" is rather understood as a metaphorical and symbolical way of saying that Christ has done all things necessary to save and redeem mankind enslaved to the devil, sin and death, and under the wrath of God. He "paid the price," not in some legalistic or juridical or economic meaning. He "paid the price" not to the devil whose rights over man were won by deceit and tyranny. He "paid the price" not to God the Father in the sense that God delights in His sufferings and received "satisfaction" from His creatures in Him. He "paid the price" rather, we might say, to Reality Itself. He "paid the price" to create the conditions in and through which man might receive the forgiveness of sins and eternal life by dying and rising again in Him to newness of life (See Rom 5-8; Gal 2-4).

I don't know about you, but that sounds far more coherent and loving than a God that just decides to create billions of people who will burn in the fires of Hell with no chance whatsoever to change that.

Fair enough: Marie Angélique herself may or may not have had much to do with Jansen and may or may not have shared his views. She does seem to have been a remarkable and formidable woman. I've also been told that modern theologians, including Roman Catholic ones, have reappraised Jansenism and think Rome's criticism at the time was wildly overblown. The "five points" of Jansenism that she was forced to condemn were at least technically not really what Jansen himself proposed, and she was badly mistreated and unjustly abused, when there should be tolerance for other viewpoints. And guilt by association is really playing dirty pool, no matter who does it.

But given her close association with leading Jansenists, and the close association of Port-Royal with Jansenism, it still makes me very uncomfortable to say the least, especially when I read what Jansenists themselves wrote. Go to the source and read Jansen's original paper for yourself. Read Pascal's writings as well, as linked and quoted above. I think you'd have to agree than the views expressed are difficult to digest at best, and I'd much rather stay distant from such viewpoints. To make it absolutely clear, I don't condemn her, Jansen, or anyone else, and it is not my place to do so. It is simply a matter of who I want to be associated with, whose views I can support and agree with. By choosing her name, there is an implied endorsement of her views or the views of her order, and that is why I'm uncomfortable.

I would have much rather have taken a simple name associated with Christ Himself, as was the tradition in the early church. The Good Shepherd is a good example, being one of the earliest representations of Christ in iconography, or just plain "Christ Church" (which unfortunately is already taken in Hannover). One of the suggested names was "Taufe Jesu", or "Baptism of Christ", which I thought was ideal given that our church is the first Old Catholic church to be built with a full baptismal pool. And it would avoid the kind of associations that any individual saint would inevitably conjure up.

But alas, it was not to be. I missed my opportunity to raise the issue, and by the time I did so, it was simply too late to stop the momentum. The proverbial bus was long gone by the time I got there. So in a lot of ways I only have myself to blame.

Being a "good Catholic" as I try to be, I have to accept the will of the church as expressed through our parish assembly meeting, and live with it. It's not something that would make me jump leagues or whatever. But it's still disappointing. Here's hoping that she can do us some good with the Big Guy upstairs and pray for us, and forgive my doubts about her.