A Throne Fit for the King of Kings

As a postgame note on the Feast of Corpus Christi, I thought of a monstrance, but not just any monstrance.  In 2009, I had the good fortune to go to the south of France for the wedding of my friends Rachel and Sebastian.  Ticket prices worked out so that the best route that summer was to fly into Barcelona a couple of days early, giving me a chance to look around that amazing city.  As you might imagine, this involved crawling through many medieval churches.

I I had already been thoroughly impressed with Barcelona's cathedral when I made my way into the treasury off the cloister, but I was entirely unprepared for the Great Custodia, with its three sections standing more than five feet tall. Spanish cities are known for their large processional monstrances or custodia and Barcelona was particularly known for its fine work in gold and silver. The Custodia of Barcelona is the intersection of the two.




The monstrance proper is a triumph of 14th Century goldsmith's work. It sits on a silver gilt chair known as the throne chair of King Martin the Humane, though the chair, at least in its present form, is probably of a later date than the reign of King Martin, likely dating from the second half of the 15th Century. Above, there are two royal crowns. Over the centuries, contributions of jewels by the faithful, some of them of incredible quality, have come to cover a large portion of its surfaces. More than 2000 pearls and 1200 diamonds adorn the Custodia in addition to numerous other jewels.



Several pieces are displayed in the same case, including some particularly fine pectoral crosses and several larger jewels that can be affixed to the Custodia.


A jeweled sash in a nearby case, another royal gift, was fitted to be fastened around the throne-chair.


This sort of beauty and extravagance can still re-ignite the battle of the alabaster box--"Surely this could be sold and the money used to fund a five-year pilot program to demonstrate the effectiveness of ...." Thankfully, this does not seem to be an issue in Barcelona, which even as it continues to experiment with various architectural and artistic styles, seems to have never lost its love of beauty. Unlike many pieces of this caliber that spend their days in museum cases, the Custodia of Barcelona is still used each year in the city's main Corpus Christi procession. The Custodia invites us to consider the power of a faith that is not too intellectually proud to encompass a fairly literal interpretation of "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

Corpus Christi and the Mass as Worship and Instruction

The Rev'd Basil Maturin.

The Rev’d Basil Maturin has always been a great favorite of mine.  An Episcopal priest who once served at my old parish in Philadelphia, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church and in 1913 was appointed the Catholic chaplain to Oxford University. In 1915 he made a successful preaching tour of the United States, booking a return passage on the Lusitania. As the ship began to sink, he was seen moving among the passengers giving absolution. He did not take a life belt for himself and was last seen handing a child into a lifeboat with the words, "Find its mother."

Unlike many converts of his generation, Maturin resisted the temptation to browbeat his former compatriots with his new-found faith and he never lost his sense of mystery and beauty, the Anglican Oxford Movement’s great gift to nineteenth-century Christianity. As we approach the Feast of Corpus Christi tomorrow, when we remember the institution of the Mass, I always think of Maturin’s description of the Most Blessed Sacrament as being both worship and instruction:

Till the Truth has gone down into the heart and burns there like fire, and breathes there like air, it is lifeless. Now it is in worship that we learn our faith as we are drawn closer and closer to its Author; the learned man with his cultured mind kneels beside the beggar who cannot read, yet both believe the same. Now the Blessed Sacrament is the concentration of faith and worship, it is the presentation of the great dogmas of our faith in the language of the heart. 

Our Lord Himself prescribed one and only one form of worship in which all the great doctrines of our faith were taught. To that he bid men come to be taught almost unconsciously. Two great doctrines sum up Christian faith and life: God becomes man and gives us His nature. 

I can't doubt the meaning when I hear This is My Body. Other religions profess to satisfy the religious instinct: Christianity to give a gift to heal us—this is the life of Christ. Therefore the Altar has always protected the supernatural teaching of Christianity. If, then, we believe this, if Christianity is the fulfillment of the religious aspirations of humanity, if it is the divine means whereby God has chosen to reveal Himself to man, every detail of the Christian worship and teaching becomes of the utmost importance, for it safeguards the great truths of revelation.

Melchizedek offers bread and wine.

Fr. Faber on Aridity in Prayer

Frederick Faber, the great hymn writer of Faith of Our Fathers fame, wrote on many topics.  Earlier today, I ran across some verses he wrote on aridity in prayer.  Aridity is the demon that is always lurking for those of us who attempt to keep some regular discipline of the Divine Office and/or mental prayer.  There are the days when prayer is easy and full of consolation and then there are those when dry words stick to the roofs of our mouths and mental prayer seems to be no more than an echo chamber of our jumbled thoughts.

Faber was neither a systematic nor an ascetic theologian.  He wrote practical advice for those living in the world, often in the forms of hymns that served as catechesis on various aspects of the Christian life.  He once said, “Faith is letting down our nets into the transparent deeps at the Divine command, not knowing what we shall take.”  His advice on aridity in prayer is very much in the same spirit, seeing what seems to us to be fruitless as an opportunity for grace.

O for the happy days gone by,

When love ran smooth and free,

Days when my spirit so enjoyed

More than earth's liberty!

Then, when I knelt to meditate,

Sweet thoughts came o'er my soul,

Countless and bright and beautiful,

Beyond my own control.

What can have locked those fountains up ?

Those visions what hath stayed?

What sudden act hath thus transformed

My sunshine into shade?

This freezing heart, O Lord! this will,

Dry as the desert sand,

Good thoughts that will not come, bad thoughts

That come without command,—

But if this weariness hath come

A present from on high,

Teach me to find the hidden wealth

That in its depths may lie.

Thrice blessed be this darkness then,

This deep in which I lie,

And blessed be all things that teach

God's dear supremacy!

Richard, First Abbot of Fountains

The ruins of Fountains.  Thanks, Henry.

It has been a while since I have run across something so long that it needed to be posted here rather than on Facebook and the end of the semester has slowed me down in general, but one of the entries in yesterday's section of the Menology was that for Richard, fist abbot of Fountains in Yorkshire.  I will draw no contemporary moral for the story, though I'm sure there is more than one to be found about perseverence in adversity, etc.  Chalk this one up to just because.

In England, Blessed Richard, first Abbot of Fountains.  He had been Prior of St. Mary’s of York when the thirst of leading a more perfect life urged him to leave that house, along with twelve associates, to follow the Rule of Citeaux.  The had the happy encouragement of our Father St. Bernard, who wrote to them stating that is was indeed easier to find a multitude of seculars converted to a good life than to witness a religious pass to a better observance.  He even sent them the Monk Geoffrey of Ainai to initiate them into our discipline.  Under his guidance, they began to build cabins, and to chant, as the old monk instructed them.  Yet, for two years, they had to suffer the hardship of of so great poverty that their food consisted in the leaves of trees and wild herbs.  Finally, as history records, the Lord multiplied the brethren and, enlarging his vineyard, shed therein the dew of his benediction, so that the monastery materially increased in possessions, and, much more, spiritually in sanctity.  Its name became very famous, and the Princes of the land revered it.  However, Blessed Richard went to receive a still better reward in Heaven, and to enjoy forever the glory merited by his labors and virtues.

Richard died at Rome while attending the Second Lateran Council. Perhaps the moral of the story is that, despite the best of intentions, one is never beyond the reach and, perhaps, allure of bureaucracy and intrigue.

The Annunciation and the HIC Town of Nazareth

I
Inscription on the Altar of the Annunciation.

We know from the scriptures that Nazareth was a hick town (i.e. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”), but when I was there in the fall of 2006, I found it to be a hic town, as in the Latin for “here.” On the altar in the Basilica of the Annunciation, the inscription reads, “Verbum caro hic factum est”: “The Word was made flesh here.”

Nazareth.

Bethlehem is overshadowed by the tableau of the wise men and the heavenly host; the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem radiates the drama of the salvation; but the holy sites of Nazareth have a homely hic that may convey the reality of the incarnation more than those greater sites. It was here that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man. It was here that he spent most of his life, here that his family lived.

Ritual bath in the crypt of the Church of St. Joseph.

The grotto of the Annunciation in the Latin Basilica is built on the traditional site of Mary’s house. The Church of St. Joseph is built over the traditional site of the house where the Holy Family lived and in the crypt you can look down a shaft to see the tiled floor of its ritual bath. The Greek Cathedral stands over the site of the well where Mary drew water. Every place seems to cry out hic! There is none of the grandeur of Rome’s great churches and the shrines here lack the anthill bustle of the Holy Sepulcher. Instead, there are an infinity of little hiccups, from places associated with the Lord’s childhood to the precipice where the adult Jesus was rejected by his fellow townsmen.

The Church of Mary's Well.

It becomes just a bit harder to remake God in our own image in the face of these commonplace remembrances. In Nazareth, the Word defers to the reality of the flesh. Here God took on humanity, and Mary treasured up all of these things in her heart.

The Precipice.

Low Sunday: Are We Afraid Not to Be Doubting Thomases?

An old sermon for Low Sunday from seminary days asking fellow progressives whether they really doubt the resurrection or whether they actually fear the consequences of not doubting.  Many people certainly doubt, but I think there are also many educated folks who fear the social and intellectual consequences of believing.

*  *  *

Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, "We have seen the Lord." But he said to them, "Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe." Eight days later, his disciples were again in the house, . . . but Jesus came and stood among them, and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing." Thomas answered him, "My Lord and my God!"

            For many years it has been fashionable among some preachers to portray Thomas as the romantic doubting everyman.  In my tradition's lectionary, today's gospel is the same for all years on the second Sunday of Easter.  Each year I dread what sort of homey portrayal of Thomas to which I may find myself subjected.  Or how I might be told that Thomas's doubts are like my own grapplings.

              It seems all too rare that we reflect that Saint John uses the empirical Thomas's doubt as a foil for Thomas's subsequent confession, "My Lord and My God," which is the capstone of the fourth Gospel.  Thomas's confession finishes the declaration of John 1:1 that "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God."  The confession is the climax of the story, not the skepticism.

            While garden variety Thomas sermons annoy me, I recognize the reality to which they speak.  In my years at Harvard I have had discussion section with Thomas.  I have been Thomas.  Like the doubting apostle, our community is better known for what we can liberate, demythologize, and deconstruct than it is known for what we confess.  Too often, however, I question the honesty of some of our doubt.

 

            I do not question that many of us confess particular creeds, but I know that too often we have a reticence to speak of them.  We fear whom we might offend.  We fear who might ridicule us.  We fear that we may find ourselves on the community’s margins.

            Many of us spend evenings and weekends in convents and covens, but in our common life we seem to be afraid to transcend being clever.  We speak in the language of doubt and inquiry though many of us were brought here by faith.

 

            We are like Schopenhauer’s porcupines.  The philosopher tells the story of a group of porcupines caught in the open during a winter storm.  As the night progressed and the temperature dropped, the porcupines moved closer together for warmth.  As they moved closer, their quills began to prick one another.  The closer the porcupines drew together, the greater the pain.  Some, no longer able to bear the agony,  dropped our of the circle as the night progressed, but when morning came, only those who had drawn together despite of the discomfort had survived.

            We must become all too willing to risk discomfort and blood loss if we are to make our years in Andover Hall worthwhile.  We must risk confession.  Each week this chapel is the site of Zen meditation, Mass, and many other forms of prayer, but how often do we take that spirit beyond these doors and into our halls?  How often do we feign Thomistic objectivity, then confess in some upper room?  We like Thomas must engage our fellow porcupines.  Thomas did not believe the first reports of the resurrection, but he remained willing to return to the company of the disciples for a second time.

 

            For the most part, we have not come to Harvard Divinity School for ourselves only.  Many of us are preparing for lives as priests, preachers, advocates,  and educators.  How comfortable are we with letting our particular lights shine?  Have we hidden our lights under a basket of detached discourse or have we illuminated others?  In speaking of our beliefs, have we too often settled for being clever when we could have been clear?

            I recently reread Emerson’s "Divinity School Address."  Emerson warns the senior class of 1838 against the formalism which he feels has weakened the church.  He says:

To this holy office you propose to devote yourselves, I wish you may feel your call in throbs of desire and hope. . . For all our penny wisdom . . . it is not to be doubted that all men have sublime thoughts We mark with light the memories of the few interviews we have had with souls that made our souls wiser . . . that gave us leave to be what we inly were.

            Like poor maligned Thomas, Emmerson's contemporaries seized upon what he doubted, not the vision that he confessed.  What formalisms and etiquette do we hide behind that keep our colleagues and peers from seeing the confession behind the critiques?

            Emerson would, I think, share my impatience with the current Tommy-rot.  After Thomas's confession, Christ answers him:

Have you believed because you have seen me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.  

            Blessed are we when honest inquiry leads us to risk speaking from faith.  Blessed are we when we transcend being clever.

            Christians now enjoy the season of Easter, the great 50 day feast of the resurrection.  As my Christian brothers and sisters and those of other faiths celebrate the possibilities of new life in this season , I ask that we search our souls for the boldness and vulnerability in each of us that could transform our community.  I encourage you to risk the quills.  I ask that we may all overcome our crutch of detachment and liberate Thomas from the homiletic hell of doubt.

            Amen.

Richard Weaver on Simplicity as Barbarism

As the liturgy wars heat up once again, I am reminded of this favorite passage from Richard Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences in which he proposes that calls for simplicity are often symptoms of a narcissistic personality: 

"It is characteristic of the barbarian … to insist upon seeing a thing “as it is.” The desire testifies that he has nothing in himself with which to spiritualize it; the relation is one of thing to thing without the intercession of the imagination. Impatient of the veiling with which the man of higher type gives the world imaginative meaning, the barbarian and the Philistine, who is the barbarian living amid culture, demands the access of immediacy. Where the former wishes representation, the latter insists upon starkness of materiality, suspecting rightly that forms will mean restraint. . . .

"Every group regarding itself as emancipated is convinced that its predecessors were fearful of reality. It looks upon euphemisms and all the veils of decency with which things were previously draped as obstructions which it, with superior wisdom and praiseworthy courage, will now strip away. Imagination and indirection it identifies with obscurantism; the mediate is an enemy to freedom. . . .

"All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely torn off. All the superadded ideas, furnished from the wardrobe of a moral imagination, which the heart owns, and the understanding ratifies, as necessary to cover the defects of our naked, shivering nature, and to raise it to dignity in our own estimation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, absurd, and antiquated fashion. . . .

". . . or, when these veils are stripped aside, we find no reality behind them, or, at best, we find a reality of such commonplaceness that we would willingly undo our little act of brashness. Those will realize, who are capable of reflection, that the reality excites us is an idea, of which the indirection, the veiling, the withholding, is part. It is our various supposals about a matter which give it meaning, and not some intrinsic property which can be seized in the barehanded fashion of the barbarian."