Light is Sown

11 Light is sown for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart.
Psalm 97 Geneva Bible

This verse tells us several things about God, the believer and the relationship between them. God gives light and joy to the believer in the form of a seed. He can do this because He is Light and He is Joy. He does this moreover in response to the believer's overtures to Him. The believer readies himself for these gifts by being righteous and upright in heart offering these things to the Lord as the prelude to God's generous giving. And because this is a relationship and not a static exchange of gifts each giving calls forth further giving. The more light and joy is sown the more righteousness and uprightness grows.

Because the words are familiar to us we readily assume that we understand what they mean in this context. This is not necessarily the case. When Christians think of righteous persons part of the image called up is that of the Pharisees or of the Puritans. A strait-laced, joyless and condemnatory kind of people. The idea of righteous slips very easily into the idea of self-righteous. I think that the clue to the psalmists meanings for 'righteous' and 'upright' are to be found in the addition of the words 'in heart.' This is the righteousness of those who recognise the meaning of the prophecy "For I desired mercy, and not sacrifice, and the knowledge of God more than burnt offerings." (Hosea 6:6) The heart-knowledge of God, the God of mercy, is what constitutes righteousness and the deeds that flow from this knowledge are what constitute the right acts that prompt the sower of seeds to plant light and joy.

It is a persistent metaphor this use of the idea of 'light' and, again, there is some risk that we take it so much for granted that it becomes somewhat banal to us. I remember when I was being received into the Church the priest, Father John, who was preparing me was fond of illustrating lessons with examples from his Irish boyhood. One anecdote he repeated several times was the experience in rural Ireland in, I suppose, the 1940's leaving a house at night in a place without electricity or street lighting of any kind. The darkness was profound, the way was uncertain and rough and the sudden springing up of light from a torch had a life saving, landscape transforming impact to it that partook of the miraculous. The light of God has, if we allow it to have, such an impact upon our internal landscape.

Considering light in the form of a seed is rather more of a mixed metaphor. For Christians, though, it has a meaning which the psalmist would not have considered. "I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds." (John 12:24)  The seed of light which God sows in the heart of the believer is the Lamb that was slain and is now alive. He sows Himself, He is the Light and when He is sown He becomes our righteousness, our uprightness. This is the reciprocal arrangement, the more He grows within us the more light we become and the more seed is sown.

Beyond a certain point all multiplicity is resolved into unity and so light and joy become the same thing because they come from the same source. In this life here below though it is but seldom, if ever, that we experience this blessed union in God, through God because of God. So it is worth considering joy in its independent aspect as we can experience it here and now in the gift of it that the Father through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit gives us. Because it is a hidden gift it is a deep joy, a joy that forms a permanent underlayer to everything that we do and are waking and sleeping, unless, that is, we kill grace in our soul by committing acts of mortal sin. This kind of joy is about more than laughter and wine and good times though it certainly can include these things. It is a manifestation of the theological virtue of hope and a banishing of despair.

When my parents died I was possessed by grief, my sorrow was beyond the power of my words to describe. Yet throughout those times I was never dispossessed of joy. Because the seeds within remained within and did not cease to be tokens of the Divine Presence I never ceased to be in communion with Him. I may not have felt that communion, He may not have sent me tokens of His presence but He was present and that made a difference and that was the joy that did not depart even in the presence of suffering and loss.

Perhaps the most perfect illustration of this psalm verse can be found in the person of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the time of the Annunciation. Light and joy were sown in her by the words of the Archangel Gabriel and by her glad and free consent to them. And then Light Himself and Joyfulness Himself became literally the seed within her womb, a womb which contained Him whom heaven itself could not contain. And these things were sown in her because she above all other creatures of God was righteous and upright in heart. In her is our model, through her came our salvation, who can resist saying with the angel Hail Mary, full of grace?

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Love Me Too Little

" For my own part, I will gladly spend and be spent on your souls’ behalf, though you should love me too little for loving you too well. "
2 Corinthians 12:15

As I understand it the Catholic argument from Natural Law goes something like this. Each person has, as a given, a conscience, which is where the basic guide to right conduct and right living dwells within their mind and heart. Additionally each person is endowed with reason which enables them to approve the urgings of their consciences as being compatible with rational analysis of situations. Therefore when a person acts in accord with both conscience and reason then they will be living lives which are good, virtuous and productive of moderate levels of happiness. All of this can exist apart from divine revelation, which means that it is theoretically possible to live lives more or less pleasing to God without ever having heard about Jesus or His gospel. The Catholic Church does not hold to the notion that it is a necessary condition of the moral life to be a Christian.

As you might expect this argument is neither atheistic, the intervention of God is required at all points, nor without caveats. The conscience is only a given because God gives it, humans only possess reason because God has endowed them with it. To be willing to listen to one's conscience and then to have the strength to act upon it both require an active gift of the grace of God. Moreover, the wounding effects of Original Sin mean that we are easily tempted to ignore our conscience and pervert our reason in order to pursue a greedy, selfish or lustful agenda all of our own. Conscience Alone and Reason Alone or the two together apart from divine revelation are unreliable guides because they depend upon ourselves understanding them aright and we are unreliable judges in our own cases.

What revelation, especially that contained in the person of Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Mary, gives us is a reliable guide. A standard arrived at through the honest and sincere exercise of conscience and reason is a "good enough" standard. The standard derived from revelation exceeds that infinitely, it is a "good measure, pressed down and shaken up and running over" (Luke 6:38) and it is unfailingly reliable since based not upon ourselves but upon the perfect one.

The Apostle Paul expresses his willingness to spend himself in the service of the Corinthians without expecting much of anything in return. Many might see in this an admirable thing but would note that there is nothing particularly Christian about it. Mothers spend themselves recklessly on behalf of their children if the need arises. Revolutionaries risk everything in the service of a cause whose success they do not expect to see. Nurses and doctors will volunteer to put themselves at risk to being healing and comfort to those in dangerous situations or with highly contagious diseases. Is there anything uniquely Christian about this?

Well, only this, Paul is making himself vulnerable and spending himself on behalf of the souls not the bodies, emotions or feelings of the Corinthians. He is motivated by the desire to help the Christians of Corinth enter into a deep personal relationship with the unseen God in an as yet unexperienced eternity. The Church identifies three particular characteristics which it calls theological virtues, faith, hope and love, and the Apostle displays all three of them here. He is willing to spend himself for the Corinthians regardless of their feeling for him because he loves them. He has hope that, by the grace of God, he will succeed, in bringing himself and others into the kingdom of heaven, he has faith that the means which will bring this about, which he is spending himself in bringing to Corinth, are fully contained in the revelation of God through Jesus Christ.

In short, St Paul is staking everything upon his conviction that Christianity is true and he is doing so exclusively to benefit other people. Again it could be argued that other causes provoke similar types of conduct in other people. Which brings us to the characteristic part of the Apostle's fundamental motivation which is contained in the word 'gladly.' Some may sacrifice themselves grimly or determinedly. Some may do so gladly in the sense of 'freely and without hesitation.' When St Paul use the word he means 'with gladness' 'joyfully.' The sacrifice is not one whereby he gives up his happiness that others may be happy. It is a fundamental condition of his happiness that he act in this fashion and failing to so act is what will make him grim and gloomy. The more fully we resemble Christ then the more fully we enter in His joy. And since the summit and purpose of His mission was to be broken and abandoned on the Cross of Calvary in order to spend and be spent for the sake of sinners then when we do the same we are clothed with Him and He inhabits our hearts, illumining them with the light of eternal love. This is clearly a way of being glad which we can only recognise and desire as a result of revelation and grace. And it is too a higher, better and objectively superior way to anything that conscience and reason apart from revelation can offer.

No human creature ever entered more fully into the life of Christ and so expressed the theological virtues at their furthest limit than Mary, the Mother of God. Standing at the foot of His Cross her total love for Him caused her to feel every agony that He felt such that there were two sinless people crucified on Golgotha that day. But, as if that were not enough, there was more, her love for Jesus extended to those for whom He was dying, ie all of us, so that in love and for love she offered up her sufferings on that dreadful mountain to God as a superabundant sacrifice to be added to the treasuries of God's grace. Even in those dreadful moments of Passion and death for her Son she never lost her faith that the revelation to her from God through Gabriel would come true and that Jesus would yet reign on the throne of David nor her hope that she would be by His side in heaven and on earth. In this Mary is our great role model and if we feel, as we should feel, that we are far from successfully imitating her she is also our most sweet advocate who will entreat her Son on our behalf to send us the graces we require to be conformed to Him through being like her.

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Christian Meditation- Part Four

When I go into my house, I shall repose myself with her: for her conversation hath no bitterness, nor her company any tediousness, but joy and gladness
Book of Wisdom 8:16

The light of thy countenance O Lord, is signed upon us: thou hast given gladness in my heart.
Psalms 4:7

In Parts 1-3 we looked at the verse from the Book of Wisdom (conventionally ascribed to Solomon) as a practical guide to meditation. Now we have arrived at the joy and gladness which flows from conversation with Wisdom (personified as female by Solomon)

Joy is one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit and should be an experience of any Christian who lives by faith whether they meditate or not. Moreover, since faith is a permanent condition, joy should never be absent from the heart of a Christian. That being so then this joy must be something which can co-exist with suffering and depression since many Christians experience these, indeed suffering is unavoidable in life. So, how can one be joyful and anguished at the same time?

As with most things in Christianity the key to the puzzle is love. Faith is not simply a  'head thing,' the intellectual assent to the propositions of the Nicene Creed, it is a relationship of love between a believer and her God. A life of faith, then, is a life of love. When a child breaks his leg her mother suffers agony and pain right along with him because she loves him. The love causes the pain but also exists as a permanent unbreakable foundation to their relationship. Joy has come into her life at a deep level with her child and does not depart so long as the child lives and has not rejected her whatever traumas and disasters occur along the way. So it is with faith, love and joy. Whatever occurs along the way in a Christian's journey so long as they have faith then they have a confidence that underlying everything  else that happens the love of God is present to them and they are present to Him. This confidence is joy.

It can also be characterised as gladness since along with faith and love there is always hope. Whatever situation a Christian finds themselves in or see's their loved ones facing they have a sure and certain hope that either in time or in eternity God will display His infinite kindness, gentleness and mercy. For the Christian there is no tunnel which does not have a light at the end of it. It is important to emphasise that though this joy and gladness are always present so long as one has faith we are not always aware of it consciously. If we have twenty levels there may be times when it is absent, or appears to be, from nineteen of them. It is no sin to be depressed or to be stressed or afraid. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus went through all these emotions and with good reason. Likewise Mary at the foot of the Cross stands as a model showing us one in whom there was both an agony beyond words to describe combined with a serene faith that the promises of God would be fulfilled in and through her Son. The ladder that links us to heaven may sometimes have frayed to be the merest of threads but so long as it, that is to say we, do not break then we are linked to heaven at all times and all places and so at some level we will be in a condition of joy and gladness.

So much for the life of faith, what of meditation? Much Christian writing on this subject contrasts the abject state of the benighted sinner with the ecstatic experiences of union with God which meditation leads us towards. It depicts what we are fleeing from and what or whom we are travelling towards. My aim is a more modest one. Peak experiences are by their very nature rare events, a normal period of meditation does not include being raised up to the third heaven or having a vision of angels. Moreover, if our aim is ecstasy then we could easily be tempted to practice meditation in order to enjoy spiritual experiences rather than doing so for no other reason than to express our love for and to God through Jesus Christ. I wish here to talk about the hodden grey of daily meditation year in and year out not the gorgeous technicolour butterfly wings of the days when we are able to fly freely in the light of God's Sun.

Most times a period of meditation is like a kiss from a spouse before we go to work, a telephone call from a child who lives a hundred miles away, a Christmas card from our best friend. The conversation we have with Wisdom is seldom about the complex problems of life or the great mysteries of heaven. It is the feather light touch of a presence which at once reminds us of our shared past, holds a promise for the shared future and gives us in the moment in which we are, the only point of time about which we can be certain, a contact with that which we above all other things adore being in contact with be it never so brief or never so faint. Joy and gladness flows inevitably from such a conversation. It is present with us as we converse, and we carry it with us for the rest of the day not merely as a memory of joy but as actual joy itself.

In Part Three I talked about the Dark Night of the Soul where Wisdom chooses to make her presence within our heart-house take the form of apparent absence. Is it possible to say that joy and gladness flow from this conversation where the only words heard are "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" Well, the object of meditation is neither to experience the hodden grey nor the technicolour flight of the alone to the Alone. The object is to make ourselves present to God and say 'behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to your word' and then wait. So long as we are not waiting for 'experiences' or 'ecstasies' but simply for Him and simply because we love Him then however dreary the desert, however arid the months and the years of waiting may be then every moment spent sitting and waiting is a moment where we spend ourselves for love alone. I have some experience of those who sit by the bedside of a dying loved one. It is a great torment to them to do this, and it is a service for which they receive no earthly reward. Yet they would not give it up for worlds and it is a service the gladly and freely give. If the only way to express your love is to hold the hand of the one you love while they die then that is what you will do. In times to come it will be a joyful and glad memory to you that you have known this person and done this thing. In the Dark Night you hold the hand of one who is as if dead but is, in truth, alive and wild horses could not prevent you from doing this, because you love Him so much.

In Part Five I hope to look at Mary and Christian Meditation.

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Running down the beard

Behold, how good and pleasant it is
    when brothers dwell in unity!
2 It is like the precious oil upon the head,
    running down upon the beard,
upon the beard of Aaron,
    running down on the collar of his robes!
2
Psalm 133


29 and plaiting a crown of thorns they put it on his head, and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him they mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” 30 And they spat upon him, and took the reed and struck him on the head.

Matthew 27


The psalm is a Song of Ascent, sung by pilgrims on their way to Zion to rejoice together in one of the festivals of God. In it David, an ancestor of Jesus, refers back to the first anointing of the first High Priest-
12 And he poured some of the anointing oil on Aaron’s head, and anointed him, to consecrate him.
Leviticus 8:12

It is a joyous song and brings together three great occasions for happiness among God's people. A remembrance of the past institution of the priestly office to forever offer praise and thanksgiving to the One who rescued His people from slavery and bondage, an enjoyment of the present companionship and love of the pilgrim people and a looking forward to the celebrations in the Holy City before the Tabernacle of the Blessed One. One can easily imagine the caravan of returning exiles or those of the diaspora blending their voices together in the same sort of harmony with which they had blended their lives and their journeys together for many days, perhaps weeks or even months and now the end of all their efforts was in sight.

How different and how radically similar was the anointing of our Lord and Saviour. The blood trickling down His scalp from the cruelly stabbing thorns driven ever deeper by the blows from His mock sceptre. This harmony of mockery from the brotherhood of Roman soldiery. This final anointing of the ultimate High Priest.  

In contemplating this mystery of the Crowning with Thorns we too can see three occasions for happiness since we have a God who can bring good out of evil and great good out of great evil. By His Passion and Death Jesus took up His role as both High Priest and Sacrifice being forever before the Father that we might be forever freed from the penalty rightly due for our sins and our selfishnesses.  We can see that never for  moment in the deepest depths of His passion was Jesus separated in love and tenderness from Mary His suffering Mother. The bonds of love united them so strongly to each other that each felt the suffering of the other. And through Mary we too can be firmly united to our Lord whether He is visible before us or hidden from our sight. Love acknowledges no barriers of time, place or distance. And we can see that at the end of this dreadful journey, through the torment and the Cross awaits the Resurrection and the Ascension, Jesus goes before us and we can rejoice that He will not leave us bereft but extends to us the sure and certain hope that one day we shall accompany Him.

The Song of Ascent on our lips is the one that David sung but it is of David's Son that we think while we sing. And the Zion to which we ascend is a holier mountain and a more pure city. There we will find rest for our souls. 

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