Struggle and Perfection

Ἔσεσθε οὖν ὑμεῖς τέλειοι ὡς ὁ πατὴρ ὑμῶν ὁ οὐράνιος τέλειός ἐστιν.

Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.

So ends the fifth chapter of St Matthew's Gospel. It, of course, is part of the discourse that Our Lord gave on the mountain setting not only the standards of social behaviour but, further, standards of intention, sincerity and modus vivendi. Following that sermon through from the Beatitudes right at the beginning to this statement, which is about a third of the way in, we are presented with standards which become progressively harder to the terrible "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you..." I don't see how one can read that statement and not shudder at its implications. To cap it all, we are to be Perfect as our Heavenly Father is Perfect. Well that puts the icing on the cake really, doesn't it?

We have had quite the interesting discussion about this on the Anglican Diaspora in particular with regard to the nature of repentance. I wish I could remember the precise wording, but I believe that one Desert Father was asked "what does it mean to repent?" and he replied "never to commit that sin again." Compare that with the Lord's edict, "go and sin no more."

Do we lose heart at these? The Lord teaches us that no less are the standards for Godly living and we can see these as legal, imperial edicts designed to impose the Will of an Imperial God and fear the consequences. One looks at the history of Christianity and Judaism and one can see attempts by moral authorities to control others by brow-beating them with absolutes and punishing with sword, rope, knife, axe and fire.

And then one can read the glorious Psalm cxviii (cxix) - all 176 verses of it - and realise that the Psalmist loves the decrees and commands devotedly, and yet he still manages to stray from them in the very last verse.

Perhaps then, we should understand these commandments of God as Absolutes only in the context of the Being of Our Absolute God whose being encompasses Eternity. Below, I make mention of the problem of tense whereby seeing a fixed progression of events one after another results in confusion. As temporal beings, we find ourselves bound in a fascinating matrix of cause and effect. Our tendency to sin is caused by the tendency of our fathers to sin, and the sins of our fathers do really affect the children to the third and fourth generation and far beyond. I would go as far to say that every sin that has been committed has affected every one of us, and that every sin that we ourselves commit affects everyone in our future (I could talk about the propagation of light-cones here, but I won't).

Clearly we struggle to keep the Lord's commands but we must understand that these commands have a freedom for us. I believe I see this freedom in the words that the Lord Himself uses.

Look at the word the Lord uses for "perfect" - τέλειοι - and compare this with one of the Seven Last Words from the Cross -Τετέλεσται- which defies a simple translation (and yet I, in my arrogance, tried here). This perfection is a fulfilment of intent, a becoming of what was intended, the end of growth, of a process. And this, for me, is key to the ideas of understanding the hard words of the Sermon on the Mount.

As temporal beings, we are in a process and we will continue in that process until we are perfected. I believe very strongly that this process for may of us will continue in a Purification after death which is called Purgatory. That is wherein our perfection lies. We have to go along with this process and by intending to go along with this process and allowing that growth to happen, nay, working for that growth to happen, then we find ourselves growing according to the edicts of the Sermon on the Mount. By seeking God, we become able to love our enemies, turn away from sin and do good. We don't become sinless at one point of time unless we are given grace so to be. We are to struggle and, even if we are sinless, we must struggle to be perfect.

Christ's ministry to us, while He walked with us, had to grow. It was not completed at the first utterance, or at the first miracle. No-one was saved at the moment of His birth, but He was expected to complete the same by His death.

His ministry was only truly perfected when He dangled, bled and died for us upon the cross, hence that glorious last word "Τετέλεσται". Christ as fully Human struggled to become perfect because He had given Himself up to the ravages of Time and although, being fully Divine, He was perfect, still He did not cling to that perfection, just as He did not cling to equality with God.

And He struggled. Dear God, how He struggled!

But He succeeded.

And saved us.

And He set the pattern for us. We have to wrestle with His words in the Sermon on the Mount. They are hard, and we cannot and should not just gloss over them in their being hard. We need to struggle with His words and put them into practice, continually repenting of our sins and being assured that in His love for us we WILL be forgiven. If there is no struggle in this life then we have settled for second best which is nothing at all. Our days should be filled with trying to bring the needle of our spiritual compass into line with Christ.

Further, if we try to eliminate all struggles from our worship of God and anaesthetise ourselves to this fact of hardship, then we are not giving all of ourselves to God - we will not be worshipping with all our hearts and minds and strength. How many Parishes have now given up on trying to teach the hard truth and deny their members struggles, and support them in their struggles through life? How many parishes dumb down so to "reach more people" by presenting them with an anodyne rather than give their struggles worth and meaning, removing the truth of the sheer foetidity of even the smallest sin and the spritual dangers to the soul?

We have to struggle and the Church exists to support that struggle, not relieve it because that relief comes through the perfection instigated and completed by God, first through his open arms upon the Cross and last through the painful, yet joyful, act of purification in Purgatory through which I fully believe the Divine Smile permeates to propel the inhabitants to their truly happy end. Look at the Beatitudes again: the blessed are those who struggle in life - the poor in spirit, the bereaved, the meek, those hungering and thirsting for righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers and those persecuted for righteousness' sake. Each one has a particular and hard struggle in life.

I do pray for people as they struggle that they may be given enough rest to revive them before they continue to fight their way to perfection. But I also pray that their struggles produce the most magnificent effects that fling them joyfully into the arms of their Creator.

It is truly worth any struggle.

Flesh and Faith, Appetite and Silence

Edward Bairstow's setting of "Let all mortal flesh keep silence." This is a hymn I rarely hear now. It's well known that this is part of the Liturgy of St James, one of the oldest liturgies that we have and still use in the Christian Church. I would have posted the Greek but for some reason my computer wants to transliterate it into English and it looks odd.

Actually, it's not surprising that this hymn is not flavour of the month for reasons that will become clear. If you like Moultrie's translation here it is:

1. Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
and with fear and trembling stand;
ponder nothing earthly-minded,
for with blessing in his hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
our full homage to demand.

2. King of kings, yet born of Mary,
as of old on earth he stood,
Lord of lords, in human vesture,
in the body and the blood;
he will give to all the faithful
his own self for heavenly food.

3. Rank on rank the host of heaven
spreads its vanguard on the way,
as the Light of light descendeth
from the realms of endless day,
that the powers of hell may vanish
as the darkness clears away.

4. At his feet the six-winged seraph,
cherubim, with sleepless eye,
veil their faces to the presence,
as with ceaseless voice they cry:
Alleluia, Alleluia,
Alleluia, Lord Most High!

It's a good verse form for the original test, which is better translated as

Let all mortal flesh keep silent, and with fear and trembling stand. Ponder nothing earthly-minded, for the King of kings and Lord of lords advances to be slain and given as food to the faithful. Before him go the choirs of Angels, with every rule and authority, the many-eyed Cherubim and the six-winged Seraphim, veiling their sight and crying out the hymn: Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia.

Bairstow follows this rather well.

This is sung at the Offertory before the gifts are placed upon the altar following an exhortation from the Deacon to stand upright!

And what a command: Be silent! Let everything be silent!

The trouble is, these days there isn't much in the way of silence. It's viewed very negatively by most folk. Silence is awkward. When Silence comes into a room full of people, there is a mad scramble in every person's mind to find something to say just to send Silence back out of the door. Why is there this antipathy to Silence? I suppose that the trouble with Silence is that frequently in silence we hear precisely the things we don't want to hear about ourselves and our lives. There is the danger that in the Silence we will learn just how little we are, how empty our lives are and how inconsequential some of our struggles might be. We may even be afraid that we will hear the voice of God and end up standing in fear and trembling.

Thinking biblically, off the top of my head, there seem to be four silences - the Silence at Creation, the Silence of Job before his Creator, the Silence of Christ before his accusers and the Silence in Heaven for about half an hour. Yet in each Silence we know a little more about God. What we learn isn't something that we actually can grasp, it's not really an intellectual knowledge, but we come close to God as He really is. There is Silence at the Creation because the only thing that makes a noise is God who breaks the Silence with his Fiat Lux!

Of course, the adept in prayer will be the first to tell you that hearing God speak is not like having a conversation with another human being. We can converse with Christ on the human level, but to converse with God, an entirely unique being, a being that is not as we are but bigger and fuller, well that's entirely different. We cannot expect to hear God in words (though we certainly cannot rule out the possibility - tolle, lege!) when we pray to Him. Indeed, it is in the Silence of prayer that He converses with us at a level our conscious mind cannot fathom. We are simply created deeper than we can ever really be aware. That depth is part of the image of God with which we are being created.

This is the same Silence that Job meets with - it's not the silence of one who is ashamed at the distress of another, but the silence of one who knows that words and argument mean nothing when facing the tragedies of human suffering. God has the compassion not to fob us off with platitudes, but to sit down in Silence and just be with us, thus preserving our integrity and God's respect for us.

Flesh hates this silence because it does not satisfy the fleshly appetite; it cannot be controlled or consumed or commanded in the same way that words can. Flesh will rail against the silence of God because it is not satisfied with anything that is not material. Flesh consumes only flesh, but cannot digest spiritual things. Our desire is for the pain to go away because we don't know how to be patient. The Lord Jesus Christ knew this even in the face of death by torture. He could have saved Himself, but was Silent in order to let the will of God happen. In turn, He was met with God's Silence on the Cross as He cried out the words of Psalm 22 - a cry of dereliction certainly, but following that psalm to its conclusion, ends in praise for God.

Again, the Lord is tempted by the pull of His flesh to resist the Silence, and yet He gives us of His flesh to eat in order that both our flesh and our spirit may be nourished. It is here that we return to the setting of this hymn "Let All Mortal Flesh". It occurs at the Offertory where they Mystery of the Sacrament unfolds - "Christ, Our God, to Earth descendeth, our full homage to demand."

I've often argued on this blog for Transubstantiation, and I know that many of my closest friends disagree with me about this. However, what I hope we all agree on is that we meet with God for real in some actual, more-than-physical, reality, whether we interpret that as substantial or not. I suspect most of our differences occur because we're coming in to the same thing from very different angles. Good! Let that be so! For the fact of the matter is the closer we come to God, the deeper the Silence. The Apocalypse is a mirror for the Mass and there is Silence in Heaven for about half an hour - a beautifully mystical statement at the opening of the Seventh Seal. As God reveals Himself more fully, the less we can actually sense. We are forced to walk by faith into the soundless expanse of God where the chatter of our minds and fears of our hearts have no place, no reality. Eat and drink of the Body and Blood of God unworthily and we actually lose reality!

We need Silence at Mass. We need Silence in the Church because that is where we meet with God. God's silence can be deeply infuriating but we can only travel with what we know by faith. God's silence infuriates because we expect something deeply definitive from God, an answer to our problems immediately. We have to accept God's decisions for our lives and to sit and listen. The minute we start filling the Silence with our own decisions, just to break that Silence, the more that we go wrong and stray from His way. God is not like us. His decisions and His Silence will baffle us, but that does not mean that we should suddenly start voting to amend the problematic situation and claim that this is the movement of the Holy Spirit.

If you want them, have your woman "priests" and "out and proud" bishops, your happy-clappy bands, meaningless hymns and liturgies, but they will only fill you full of noise and drive you further from the God who loves you because they all stem from a purely human understanding of appetite. These resolutions have been made because some members of the Church have been embarrassed by the Silence of God to "real world issues". They make us less real because they break God's Silence for Him! They are our impatience with God Who is infinitely patient with us.

We need to stand Silently.

We need to stand with fear and trembling because the effects of doing so raise us far beyond what we could ever imagine. See the Liturgy of St James for details or, better still, a Mass done well in your area.

Passive Professors and Holy Conviviality

O sacrum convivium!
in quo Christus sumitur:
recolitur memoria passionis ejus:
mens impletur gratia:
et futurae gloriae nobis pignus datur.

O Sacred Banquet
in which Christ is held:
the memory of His Passion is recollected:
the mind is filled with grace:
and the pledge of the glory to come is given to us.

St Thomas Aquinas
(my translation)

Even with the little Latin I have, what strikes me grammatically about St Thomas' words is that all the verbs are passive. Perhaps this is necessary for the focus to be on the opening three words, the object of devotion, the Sacred Banquet. It does however suggest something else to me.

I have recently lost an old acquaintance, Professor Paul Malliavin at a grand age of 84. I only met him once, but over breakfast we shared mathematical ideas and the elder gave the novice much encouragement, for which I am grateful even now after leaving the citadel of academia for the gymnasium of the classroom. Just one meal, a breaking of the fast, and I was changed.

Was the professor changed? Well, yes, in that he'd never met me before and afterwards he had some small knowledge of a frantic little English mathematician - that's definitely a change. Beyond that I know no more and I pray that the venerable gentleman is being/has been/will be transported to eternal rest in the Lord.

I don't know which tense to use. Is the tense important? In that my temporal life is ordered, this is how I make sense of the world around me, so tense is incredibly important if I am to make decisions or reflect on my encounters in life. There is however a point in which tense is irrelevant.

I am changed because of breakfast with Professor Malliavin and that change is clearly still affecting me because I am writing this now. One meal, and the change continues throughout my life. At that one moment in time,that one little continental breakfast in a hotel in Bielefeld, Professor Malliavin and I were living together, we were convivial, sharing that state of being called Life.

As Christians, this should not surprise us. We are partakers in a meal that changes us and, if we receive it correctly, it changes us for the better. It is an activity in which, despite our activity, we are entirely passive and carried along on the current of liturgy. We have to be aware of our own passiveness (yuk), to become aware of our internal Mary and focus away (just for a time) from our external Martha.

St Thomas focuses on the Sacrum Convivium as the subject of this beautifully poetic reflection on the Sacrament of the Mass on Corpus Christi. It becomes for him an Holy Conviviality, a sharing of Life set apart from living. In our action we cease to become active. In receiving the Sacrament, we are received; in grasping for God, we are grasped; in consuming the Lord, we are ourselves drawn into Who He Is even as He is drawn into who we are.

Notice also that, not only are we entirely passive here, but so is Christ through His own volition. He once allowed Himself to be broken by the actions of our wickedness, He allows Himself to be broken for us in the fraction, but nonetheless He is still wholly one Christ when we receive Him - our action has had only the effect of distributing Him to these who hunger and thirst for Him.

So we come to this meal - God with men - and all of us are passive, despite the illusion of any actions which are necessarily temporal and bound by tense. St Thomas reminds us that the grace of the Sacrament is beyond tense. but rather becomes a Sacrament of pure being/substance/essence - whatever you wish to call it - a Sacrament of pure Life despite activity, an Holy Conviviality.

O Sacrum Convivium