The following article was invited for "Views from the Choir Loft" on the CC Watershed liturgical music resource and publisher website (February 11, 2015)
DURING THE 1980s, a great friendship developed between the Catholic Diocese of Bruges (Brugge, in Belgium) and the Anglican Diocese of St Edmundsury & Ipswich, facing each other on opposite sides of the North Sea, four hours away by ferry. Not only were there friendly ecumenical visits and dialogue (it had been in Belgium in the 1920s that Cardinal Mercier had conducted the Malines Conversations to explore the possibility of reunion, through an “Anglican Church, united not absorbed), but also spiritual exchanges: Bruges houses the shrine of the Holy Blood, with its world famous Procession each Ascensiontide, and the Anglican Cathedral in Bury is adjacent to the site of the Shrine of St Edmund King & Martyr, England’s first patron saint. In 1989 I heard about a retreat for English priests (Catholic and Anglican) arranged every year at the Benedictine Abbey of St Andries at Zevenkerken, just outside Brugge. Famed for its school and history of theological scholarship it had been a medieval foundation, closed under the French Revolution that swept the old Austrian Netherlands and refounded in an independent Belgium as part of the Beuronese monastic renewal and mission movement. It was also a centre for the Liturgical Movement. A monk of Maria-Laach Abbey in the Rhineland was the architect, and the community formed the Benedictine Belgian Annunciation Congregation along with two other monasteries associated with the Liturgical Movement, Keizersberg (Mont-César at Leuven, to which Lambert Beauduin belonged) and Blessed Columba Marmion’s Maredsous. Those with old missals and chantbooks will recognise the Abbey of Zevenkerken more easily as the editorial seat for the liturgical works of the Desclée press: the Abbaye de St André les Sept-Églises, at Bruges (the nave, aisles and chapels of the remarkable Abbey Church correspond with the seven principal basilicas of the city of Rome).
Following the permission of vernacular language at worship in the wake of the Second Vatican Council, northern Belgium translated the liturgical books into Flemish, the local version of Dutch spoken by the majority. This coincided with the decline of French as the main language of public life, St André les Sept-Églises became Zevenkerken St Andries; and the Abbey’s relationship with the historical Liturgical Movement as part of a French-speaking world changed. Now it was part of Flemish-speaking Church with close relations to the Catholic Dutch to the north in the Netherlands. What was striking to an English visitor was the vigour of the psalmody, in a liturgical translation from the early 1970s, Het Boek der Psalmen, a collaboration of Dutch and Flemish Benedictines and Cistercians, set to newly composed simple tones in the eight modes, with antiphons. Anyone knowing the Coverdale psalter in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer could become familiar with the import and rhythmic structure of the Dutch text.
But Dutch, like French, is familiar with another and very historic way to sing the psalms: the metrical psalms of the Genevan Reform. It was Dom Lambert Beauduin who realised that the singing of psalms and the reading of the Scriptures in divine worship was the greatest bond between Catholics and Protestants; at the monastery he founded at Amay (now at Chevetogne) he not only provided for the celebration of the Slav-Byzantine rite but also increased the readings from Scripture at the offices to intensify desire for recovering unity with Christians of the post-Reformation traditions by a demonstrable and liturgical enrichment of Scriptural fare, especially from the Old Testament. While the psalms at the western offices at Amay were of course in Latin, by the time of the liturgical changes after Vatican II, across Belgium and the Netherlands there emerged a new possibility to make use of the 400 year old liturgical patrimony of the Protestants – not only reading the Scriptures in the vernacular but also singing psalms in famous metrical versions, integral to Dutch-speaking religious and musical culture, and even familiar to Catholics. Thus at Lauds, Vespers and Readings at Zevenkerken, one of the psalms is a metrical version sung to an exhilarating tune from Geneva or Strasbourg. It made me think that such singing as this must have been why the Reform in Geneva was at first so exciting—no organ, no choir, no harmony, but a strong and rhythmically engaging monody in which all participated as one Body and internalised the words of the Psalms, not in their translated Scriptural form but as memorable verses.
The melodies struck me as especially powerful because, despite being a Church musician (I was precentor of the Anglican St Edmundsbury Cathedral at the time), I hardly knew them. The English tradition of metrical psalms is different, employing different metres more suited to the way the language works in metred verse. Perhaps the most famous is “The Old Hundredth” Psalm, All people that on earth do dwell, which has outlasted its update. Another is The Lord’s my Shepherd, well known in Scotland but all but forgotten in England until Princess Anne chose it for its tune and descant at her wedding. So, despite the Dutch-French-Swiss psalms and their tunes being so appealing, it was not easy to imagine how to make us of them in English worship. Those that had not died out were associated with an old-fashioned way of singing hymns, already losing ground to new kinds of worship songs. Thanks to one of those retreats at Zevenkerken, within a few years I made my journey to the full communion of the Catholic Church and was ordained priest in 1995. I continued to take part in the retreats alongside my old Anglican friends in this Belgian Catholic Benedictine abbey and the metrical psalms of the Dutch Reform, gladly appropriated by the Dutch and Flemish Catholics, approached me in a new way.
Having grown up in a liturgical Church where there is a great deal of singing—the classic English hymns, the ordinary of the Eucharistic rite, and the canticles and psalms of the Office—it dismayed me that the reforms in the Catholic rite had hardly engendered the restoration of the Mass as normatively a solemn sung celebration as I had been used to in the Church of England or, for that matter, the Catholic places of worship I had visited on the Continent. In England, as in Ireland, Low Mass had given way to a spoken mass with hymns (and not the best of what the English religious culture had to offer by any means, let alone appropriately selected and deployed) and new worship songs: not even the proper chants either in Latin or English (I had been used to the propers in English translation arranged to Gregorian chants, but suggesting we used these, even provisionally or as ancillary to the songs, was dismissed as belonging to the past). I was most dismayed by the gradual/responsorial psalm almost invariably being said by a reader instead of sung with the leading of a cantor. And with nearly always the same tune for the Alleluia (the simple beauty of the chant from the office at the end of the Paschal Vigil now debased from overuse all but every day), Lent was no relief because the Gospel Acclamation was rarely sung by a cantor, let alone with the involvement of the people.
It struck me then that those wonderful Reform tunes beloved at Zevenkerken could at last be put to use in English Catholic worship. So I adapted the texts of the Lenten Acclamations in the Lectionary for each of the three years into metrical form and harmonised four of the tunes. I make no claims for the verses, but at least they have been used to make singing the Lenten Acclamations possible.
Here is the link to the resource, from which it can be downloaded:
* * Website • Lenten Gospel Acclamations to Four Genevan Psalm Tunes
15 February 2015
Monastery of Chevetogne, Belgium
My good friends at the Monastery of Chevetogne, of which I am an oblate.
Interview for "Both Lungs" at Royal Doors
Brent Kostyniuk came over to London in early 2014, attended our Liturgy, and just interviewed me for his column, Both Lungs, which is about Christians of East and West needing each other and learning from each other. It is syndicated to the English-language Ukrainian resource page, Royal Doors. Here is part one.http://www.royaldoors.net/2015/02/fr-mark-woodruff-bi-ritual-faculties/
Back in September, Both Lungs recalled a particularly uplifting Divine Liturgy I attended while on holidays in London. The celebrant was Father Mark Woodruff who had been ordained in the Latin Church, but who had bi-ritual faculties. This month, Both Lungs visits with Father Mark to get a different perspective on the Eastern Church and its relationship with the West.
Father Mark’s interest in the East began through ecumenical work. “For many years, I have been involved with Catholic ecumenical engagement. In England in the past we concentrated on unity among Western Christians, but in the last ten to fifteen years the presence of Eastern Christians new to the United Kingdom, Catholic and Orthodox alike, has altered the perspective of what and who we mean by Christian Unity. There are also increased numbers of English-speaking people becoming Orthodox.”
“At one point, I was asked to be a trustee of the Society of St John Chrysostom (SSJC), an historic Catholic association which promotes awareness of the Eastern Catholic churches and reconciliation between Catholic and Orthodox, East and West. Because of decades of Catholic focus on western ecumenism, it had declined but there was now renewed interest in the East – we started inviting Orthodox churches to celebrate Vespers in Westminster Cathedral, which provoked great interest.” He adds that with increased immigration, Roman Catholics, especially in major towns and cities, were becoming more aware of Eastern Catholics.
“Shortly after I became a trustee of SSJC, we started to hold our meetings at the Ukrainian [Catholic] Cathedral, were made extremely welcome, and invited more and more to participate at the Liturgy. It also helped the Ukrainian community to gain regular contact with other Catholics and, of course, with a little English occasionally in services, it was of interest to Ukrainian Catholics who were living and working in the UK, also raising children whose first language was now English, to hear that their religion was not only from abroad but could also relate to life and faith in England.”
With the arrival in England of a new Ukrainian Catholic bishop, Bishop Hlib Lonchyna, a new approach to the use of English in liturgies developed. Father Mark explains, “It was clear to Bishop Hlib that past generations of Ukrainian Catholics in Britain had grown up without those who had become Anglophone having their needs met, other than through a language that they were growing away from, even if strong cultural links and identity persisted. There was also the question of how the Ukrainian parishes collaborate with their local Roman Catholic churches and other national chaplaincies or communities of Eastern Churches – how do we play our part in the wider Church’s mission to society? How do we evangelize as all churches must, and can we present the Christian faith and the life of the Church in the Byzantine Church’s tradition to people who would not otherwise know about Christ? Bishop Hlib and I discussed this and he made a request to my own bishop, now Cardinal Vincent Nichols, for a petition to the Congregation for the Eastern Churches for a faculty to enable me to serve in the Byzantine rite for the sake of the pastoral need of the Ukrainian Catholic Church here in London.”
After a period of preparation and building on his existing familiarity with the Byzantine rite, Father Mark began his new role in the Ukrainian Catholic Church. “In December 2013 we established a regular monthly Divine Liturgy in English at the Cathedral of the Holy Family, which is right in the heart of central London. This was to be experimental, to see if it met any demand, to see if it was feasible, to see whether we might do anything differently or instead. Our Liturgy is when London’s West End is heaving with shoppers, at 4:00 pm on the second Saturday of each month. We make it a Liturgy of Sunday by anticipation and this is gradually getting known about both inside the Ukrainian church community, the local Latin parishes, and through the networks of the Society of St John Chrysostom and the Centre for Eastern Christianity at Heythrop College, London’s Jesuit theology faculty. There is now a small regular community – mainly Ukrainian English speakers, some new to the Church and curious about the Eastern tradition as possibly their way forward into the Body of Christ, some visitors passing through, some keen Roman Catholic supporters and some who have just found that we offer a spiritual home that they couldn’t find elsewhere.”
Today, Father Mark feels very at home with the Ukrainian Catholic Church. “I now take part at the Liturgies on the major feasts, not just as a guest (which is a constant delight and honour) but also a bit more as an adopted part of the family, so it means there is more English heard on such occasions. Everyone speaks Ukrainian, of course, but clearly there are children who are at school and who are growing up speaking English too. Their children will firmly have English as their first language, and so even now it is good to make the message heard that their Church is an integral part of the Catholic Church in Britain.”
Finally, Father Mark reflects on his particular experience of West meeting East, Both Lungs working together. “For my part, I have learned to say the Lord’s words that the priests sing together in the anaphora in Ukrainian, as this underlines our communion, and the unity of East and West too. It’s a simple matter of respect too. But I think it’s important to stress the English language dimension too. People are very kind at my attempts at some Ukrainian, but my Christos rozhdayatsya – Christ is Born – when we were blessing and anointing the faithful at the end of the Nativity liturgy occasioned much mirth and good will.”
Next month, Father Mark Woodruff talks about what Both Lungs means to him.
Homily for the Encounter of the Lord and Meatfare Sunday, Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family, London, 15 February 2015
The story of the Lord’s Encounter in the Temple (Luke 2.22-40) is familiar to us all, and much loved. There is the Holy Family; there is a lovely old gentleman, who is just like the wise old monks and priests we know. There, too, is the wonderful old lady whom we all recognise – always faithfully at Church, praying; never putting herself forward, she will do anything for anyone; and the rest of the Church relies on her, because, when other people come in and want to catch up on the stream of gossip that yet they instantly forget, here she is saying her prayers even though she has lived just as long and suffered much – we will never know and she will never say – her presence among the others is patient, her demeanour constant, her face ever so slightly illuminated, her intercessions concentrated, her humanity deep. It is a scene that could have happened a few moments ago, as an exhilarated and exhausted mother brings her first child to Church for the first time and people come up to see and bathe in the delight of a new baby and quietly congratulate the exultant new parents.
Except to say, it was not quite like that. In the West, one of the names for today’s feast is the Presentation of the Lord, and in the East it is known as the Encounter of Our Lord. But who is really being presented; who is encountering whom?
We have to remember that, when this was all taking place, in the Temple’s Holy of Holies it was dark. In the first Temple, before the exile in Babylon, the sanctuary had famously been a place of flashing brilliance: here was where the high priestly King had sat upon the Throne surrounded by the splendours of the court and the royal rites. It had seemed in those days that God Himself was present (Psalm 46.7); and the clouding incense, the gleaming light and the sonorous music told the people that their God was still with them (Matthew 1.23), just as he had gone before them in the wilderness as they made their forty-year pilgrimage to the Promised Land –a Pillar of Cloud by night and a Pillar of Fire by night. Then it all changed. The Holy of Holies was cleared of its sacred objects and ceremonies; the Throne and the Tablets of the Law were destroyed when the people were taken off to Exile and Babylon; and in the new Temple some of the old ones, who could remember what had gone before, observed that the Glory of the Lord never came back. But half a millennium later, a Child whom we know, but they did not, to be a Son of King David’s line, enters the Temple and is spotted by the last in a long line of prophets who had spent decades and then centuries waiting for usurper kings and false priests to fall and in their stead the departed Presence of God in glory to return. Thus to Herod’s Holy of Holies, where nothing happens but in hiding once a year, to the Temple where all the rites have to take place in the open air or subdued lighting, approaches the Light of the World, that long expected Glory of the People of God.
Now Mary and Joseph present their Child in fulfilment of His own Law. But then it is Simeon who presents himself in turn to the Messiah, the Anointed King and Divine Son. Likewise it is Anna (who bears the same name as the mother of the Mother of God) who presents herself to Him and announces Him as the longed for Redeemer. They encounter Him in the Temple, but more truly it is He who encounters them. Through them He encounters the whole of the People, their kings and priests who for age after age concealed the brightness of God’s worship and service. Through them, too, He encounters the entire world, and our preference for lurking in shadows and working in darkness, we who live and think as though the last thing we need is a Redeemer.
Yet look at the story again. The same Child will make the same journey again; and so we will understand what the Light is truly to reveal and the glory is clearly to show. In thirty years’ time it will not be the Mother of God who carries Him to the Temple to fulfil God’s will, but a donkey. Instead of a pair of turtledoves offered in loving pride and generosity, there will be money-changers whose entire profits will amount to no more than thirty pieces of silver. Instead of a holy man consumed by the Spirit with a heart brimming with love and hope at the keeping of God’s age-long promise, a High Priest convicts the Lord for breaking His own Law. Instead of an old lady with a beautiful soul praising God, the superstitious wife of the Roman governor is frightened of bad luck if any harm should come to Him.
So today it is a story leading up to the Passion that we are being told. The Lord is entering his Temple not to reign as a King like Herod, but to undermine the falsehood to self-serving government that darkens the people’s vision of God: “My Kingdom,” He will say, “is not of this world.” (John 18.36) The Lord is entering His Temple not to grab at authority (Philippians 2.6), but to turn it round into something more potent; “My house,” He will say, “shall be a House of Prayer for all.” (Matthew 21.13) The Lord is entering His Temple not to reclaim His old Throne but to mount a new one: “I, when I, am lifted up,” He will say, “shall draw all people to Me.” (John 12.32) The Lord is entering His Temple not to offer doves on the altar, but to offer Himself in sacrifice on the Cross.
Nor does the inner meaning of the Encounter end here. The Apostle tells us that according to the old Law of God, you are guaranteed to know a priest is a priest, with the power to offer sacrifice and take away the darkness in which we hides ourselves away from God, because we know his father was a priest before him and his father before him all the way back to Aaron the brother of Moses. But Jesus is not of this tribe and yet has become a priest. How can we know? The Apostle (Hebrews 7.11-17) says that this is not by a time-honoured legal stipulation, but by a new order – not descent, but through the power of an indestructible life. In other words, we know that the sacrifice in His own Blood that Jesus offered on the Cross was accepted, because He was vindicated when he was raised from the dead. In other words, the life that Jesus gave could not be destroyed, but destroyed its own destroyer. So what Simeon saw in the Child Who encountered him in the Temple was the Lord Whose glory would rise again. The Redeemer recognised by Anna was the Light of the World, Whose Resurrection casts all the darkness to behind the Cross.
So, what of us? The Apostle tells us to have the same mind in us as was in Christ Jesus (Philippians 2.5). In other words, he wants us to be beings who come into the world from a different dimension, to be the people who do not now look for the Light, but who embody it and bring it to others. We are to be the Lord in His people; we, too, are to be the Light of the World (Matthew 5.14-16): not part of its dark story, but endlessly and indisputably the glory of humanity. Je ne suis pas Charlie: je suis Siméon. I am Simeon guided by the Spirit, bringing consolation, courage and strength in a world of woe where dark purposes need exposure to the Light; you too. Je ne suis pas Charlie: je suis Anna. I am Anna – you too - who never leaves the Temple of the heart, where there is always prayer and praise; where there is always looking to be as Christ; and always there is redemption to get back what is abandoned, hopeless, “unrealistic”, irrelevant, “past history”. Not so with God! “He became the first-born of the dead to save us from the Abyss”, (Troparion of the Resurrection, Tone 3)” the Liberator of our souls, who grants us resurrection.” (Troparion of the Encounter)
In a matter of days Great Lent begins. Our Church gradually prepares us for its coming – first we feast, then we forego meat, then dairy foods, and also the oil and wine of gladness. We are helped to concentrate on what matters, with nothing in our minds or bodies to stand between us and the Light. Subduing our bodies a little helps to strip away our darkness, not so that we can be diminished, but so we can be free; not so that we can be preoccupied with our appetites and scruples, but so we can live to God; not so that we can serve our selfish wishes, but instead meet the needs of others that have been consigned to darkness and, if only they could see, would be thrilled at seeing the Sun of Righteousness (cf. Troparion of the Encounter). So towards Easter, this Lent may you reflect the dawn of Christ in His Kingdom, and be His Light in the world.
Except to say, it was not quite like that. In the West, one of the names for today’s feast is the Presentation of the Lord, and in the East it is known as the Encounter of Our Lord. But who is really being presented; who is encountering whom?
We have to remember that, when this was all taking place, in the Temple’s Holy of Holies it was dark. In the first Temple, before the exile in Babylon, the sanctuary had famously been a place of flashing brilliance: here was where the high priestly King had sat upon the Throne surrounded by the splendours of the court and the royal rites. It had seemed in those days that God Himself was present (Psalm 46.7); and the clouding incense, the gleaming light and the sonorous music told the people that their God was still with them (Matthew 1.23), just as he had gone before them in the wilderness as they made their forty-year pilgrimage to the Promised Land –a Pillar of Cloud by night and a Pillar of Fire by night. Then it all changed. The Holy of Holies was cleared of its sacred objects and ceremonies; the Throne and the Tablets of the Law were destroyed when the people were taken off to Exile and Babylon; and in the new Temple some of the old ones, who could remember what had gone before, observed that the Glory of the Lord never came back. But half a millennium later, a Child whom we know, but they did not, to be a Son of King David’s line, enters the Temple and is spotted by the last in a long line of prophets who had spent decades and then centuries waiting for usurper kings and false priests to fall and in their stead the departed Presence of God in glory to return. Thus to Herod’s Holy of Holies, where nothing happens but in hiding once a year, to the Temple where all the rites have to take place in the open air or subdued lighting, approaches the Light of the World, that long expected Glory of the People of God.
Now Mary and Joseph present their Child in fulfilment of His own Law. But then it is Simeon who presents himself in turn to the Messiah, the Anointed King and Divine Son. Likewise it is Anna (who bears the same name as the mother of the Mother of God) who presents herself to Him and announces Him as the longed for Redeemer. They encounter Him in the Temple, but more truly it is He who encounters them. Through them He encounters the whole of the People, their kings and priests who for age after age concealed the brightness of God’s worship and service. Through them, too, He encounters the entire world, and our preference for lurking in shadows and working in darkness, we who live and think as though the last thing we need is a Redeemer.
Yet look at the story again. The same Child will make the same journey again; and so we will understand what the Light is truly to reveal and the glory is clearly to show. In thirty years’ time it will not be the Mother of God who carries Him to the Temple to fulfil God’s will, but a donkey. Instead of a pair of turtledoves offered in loving pride and generosity, there will be money-changers whose entire profits will amount to no more than thirty pieces of silver. Instead of a holy man consumed by the Spirit with a heart brimming with love and hope at the keeping of God’s age-long promise, a High Priest convicts the Lord for breaking His own Law. Instead of an old lady with a beautiful soul praising God, the superstitious wife of the Roman governor is frightened of bad luck if any harm should come to Him.
So today it is a story leading up to the Passion that we are being told. The Lord is entering his Temple not to reign as a King like Herod, but to undermine the falsehood to self-serving government that darkens the people’s vision of God: “My Kingdom,” He will say, “is not of this world.” (John 18.36) The Lord is entering His Temple not to grab at authority (Philippians 2.6), but to turn it round into something more potent; “My house,” He will say, “shall be a House of Prayer for all.” (Matthew 21.13) The Lord is entering His Temple not to reclaim His old Throne but to mount a new one: “I, when I, am lifted up,” He will say, “shall draw all people to Me.” (John 12.32) The Lord is entering His Temple not to offer doves on the altar, but to offer Himself in sacrifice on the Cross.
Nor does the inner meaning of the Encounter end here. The Apostle tells us that according to the old Law of God, you are guaranteed to know a priest is a priest, with the power to offer sacrifice and take away the darkness in which we hides ourselves away from God, because we know his father was a priest before him and his father before him all the way back to Aaron the brother of Moses. But Jesus is not of this tribe and yet has become a priest. How can we know? The Apostle (Hebrews 7.11-17) says that this is not by a time-honoured legal stipulation, but by a new order – not descent, but through the power of an indestructible life. In other words, we know that the sacrifice in His own Blood that Jesus offered on the Cross was accepted, because He was vindicated when he was raised from the dead. In other words, the life that Jesus gave could not be destroyed, but destroyed its own destroyer. So what Simeon saw in the Child Who encountered him in the Temple was the Lord Whose glory would rise again. The Redeemer recognised by Anna was the Light of the World, Whose Resurrection casts all the darkness to behind the Cross.
So, what of us? The Apostle tells us to have the same mind in us as was in Christ Jesus (Philippians 2.5). In other words, he wants us to be beings who come into the world from a different dimension, to be the people who do not now look for the Light, but who embody it and bring it to others. We are to be the Lord in His people; we, too, are to be the Light of the World (Matthew 5.14-16): not part of its dark story, but endlessly and indisputably the glory of humanity. Je ne suis pas Charlie: je suis Siméon. I am Simeon guided by the Spirit, bringing consolation, courage and strength in a world of woe where dark purposes need exposure to the Light; you too. Je ne suis pas Charlie: je suis Anna. I am Anna – you too - who never leaves the Temple of the heart, where there is always prayer and praise; where there is always looking to be as Christ; and always there is redemption to get back what is abandoned, hopeless, “unrealistic”, irrelevant, “past history”. Not so with God! “He became the first-born of the dead to save us from the Abyss”, (Troparion of the Resurrection, Tone 3)” the Liberator of our souls, who grants us resurrection.” (Troparion of the Encounter)
In a matter of days Great Lent begins. Our Church gradually prepares us for its coming – first we feast, then we forego meat, then dairy foods, and also the oil and wine of gladness. We are helped to concentrate on what matters, with nothing in our minds or bodies to stand between us and the Light. Subduing our bodies a little helps to strip away our darkness, not so that we can be diminished, but so we can be free; not so that we can be preoccupied with our appetites and scruples, but so we can live to God; not so that we can serve our selfish wishes, but instead meet the needs of others that have been consigned to darkness and, if only they could see, would be thrilled at seeing the Sun of Righteousness (cf. Troparion of the Encounter). So towards Easter, this Lent may you reflect the dawn of Christ in His Kingdom, and be His Light in the world.
08 February 2015
A Candlemas Hymn
I was recently told there were no hymns for the Feast of the Presentation of Christ (known in the East as the Feast of Encounter with the Lord, i.e. Simeon's and Hannah's in the Temple). This assertion is demonstrably mistaken, but it got me thinking. I looked up the text of the motet, Maria wallt zum Heiligtum, by Johannes Eccard (1553-1611) in the well known translation by John Troutbeck (1832-1899), When to the Temple Mary went, finding it was not a good translation and also realising that its metre means it cannot be used as a conventional hymn.
Regardless of whether what follows is 'good', I set my hand to a fresh translation that would fit to a triple 10.10. tune, such as Unde et Memores or Song 24, Old 50th, or even Yorkshire (Stockport).
When Mary to the Temple brings her Child,
The Christ foretold to Simeon is revealed;
As arms that aged in waiting hold the Boy,
The Spirit thrills his voice with ageless joy:
Rejoicing now I go on Heaven’s way:
Saviour, Your people’s Glory, World’s true Day.
Lord Jesus Christ, now hold us through our days,
And show our greatest joy to be Your praise.
Help us, at life’s last hour, depart in peace
With Simeon raised in song by love’s increase:
Rejoicing now I go on Heaven’s way:
Saviour, Your people’s Glory, World’s true Day.
Maria wallt zum Heiligtum und bringt ihr Kindlein dar,
das schaut der greise Simeon, wie ihm verheißen war.
Da nimmt er Jesum in den Arm und singt im Geiste froh:
Nun fahr' ich hin mit Freud,
dich, Heiland, sah ich heut,
du Trost von Israel, das Licht der Welt.
Hilf nun, du liebster Jesu Christ, dass wir zu jeder Frist
an dir wie auch der Simeon all uns're Freude han
und kommt die Zeit, sanft schlafen ein und also singen froh:
Nun fahr' ich hin mit Freud,
dich, Heiland, sah ich heut,
du Trost von Israel, das Licht der Welt.
Johannes Eccard, 1553-1611
trans. Mark Woodruff, February 2015
Regardless of whether what follows is 'good', I set my hand to a fresh translation that would fit to a triple 10.10. tune, such as Unde et Memores or Song 24, Old 50th, or even Yorkshire (Stockport).
When Mary to the Temple brings her Child,
The Christ foretold to Simeon is revealed;
As arms that aged in waiting hold the Boy,
The Spirit thrills his voice with ageless joy:
Rejoicing now I go on Heaven’s way:
Saviour, Your people’s Glory, World’s true Day.
Lord Jesus Christ, now hold us through our days,
And show our greatest joy to be Your praise.
Help us, at life’s last hour, depart in peace
With Simeon raised in song by love’s increase:
Rejoicing now I go on Heaven’s way:
Saviour, Your people’s Glory, World’s true Day.
Maria wallt zum Heiligtum und bringt ihr Kindlein dar,
das schaut der greise Simeon, wie ihm verheißen war.
Da nimmt er Jesum in den Arm und singt im Geiste froh:
Nun fahr' ich hin mit Freud,
dich, Heiland, sah ich heut,
du Trost von Israel, das Licht der Welt.
Hilf nun, du liebster Jesu Christ, dass wir zu jeder Frist
an dir wie auch der Simeon all uns're Freude han
und kommt die Zeit, sanft schlafen ein und also singen froh:
Nun fahr' ich hin mit Freud,
dich, Heiland, sah ich heut,
du Trost von Israel, das Licht der Welt.
Johannes Eccard, 1553-1611
trans. Mark Woodruff, February 2015
11 January 2015
Homily for the Sunday after Nativity, Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral of the Holy Family, London, January 10, 2015
St Paul tells us that the Gospel he proclaims is not of earthly origin, from no human source (Galatians 1.11). When we hear this, our present-day assumption is that he means it comes from “the other side”, that it is supernatural, that it is in the department we separate off to one side of human life, the department we call religious.
But it is not what he means. Yes, he said he had a religious experience; yes, he was speaking of a profound spiritual incident that changed everything he thought and altered everything he did from then on. This is why he called it “not of earthly origin”, because it certainly did not come from anything he had experienced in the world before.
What he was really speaking about is that the impact made upon him that came from Jesus Christ, a real human being born of Mary, yet who came from the Father: the Man from heaven. The revelation he had was of the same order as the disciples after the Resurrection. It was inexplicable in earthly terms as far as they knew them - because the dead man that they all saw was not merely a resuscitation, but instead the same person they had known now living in a new creation. It was shedding its brilliance in this world, but was not being determined by it.
St Paul had been accused of making up his new found proclamation from his own changed tunes, or from schemes he had devised with other people. He was accused of inventing a new kind of preaching about Jesus that was different from the original Kingdom proclaimed by the Lord Himself. To this day, he is accused of founding a new religious institution, the Church, against the spiritual intentions and teaching of Jesus. Thus he was also blamed for not consulting the apostles before beginning his preaching, of being vain in pursuing his personal version of the infant Church’s mission, and thus undermining the authority of the Twelve. But it is all nonsense, then and as now. The other apostles found now fault with it and realised it was fundamentally the same as their own gospel. This was not so much because of the words and terms to be used, or the way they were expressed, but because for all of them it was clearly about a Person, who had come into the world as its Light.
Peter, the rock on whom Christ built His Church, saw this. James, the Lord’s own brother, corroborated it. Paul had truly been in the Light of the same Person as had shone through them too: the Son of Man, the Lord’s anointed, the Son of God, Emmanuel-God-with-Us, the Master, the Good Shepherd, the Ascended Lord of Earth and Heaven, the Way, the Truth and the Life.
Most of us do not have such dramatic revelations as St Paul’s and our encounter of religion feels much of the time as though it is firmly bound up with earthly origins, ideas and people. But think again of how it was for St Peter and St James. James, who we remember today (Galatians 1.19) knew Jesus all his life in such a very human way, as a relation in the same household and family. For James, therefore, the revelation that came to Paul in a flash came through a lifetime of growing up together from boyhood through adolescence, during which familiarity did not breed contempt but formed the close bond of affection and admiration that we can understand from our own families and life-long friendships. St James knew he had grown up with heaven – he would not realise it all the time, for it would have been like second nature. Thus for all that it was in earth, it was of no earthly origin. Jesus his brother was God among Us. For St Peter, the relationship was more recent. He began with being spellbound by a charismatic teacher coming to find St Andrew and then him on the shore of Galilee where they worked as fishermen. After that, it was a series of incidents in which Peter is brought up short by Jesus, Who shows him where he has not grasped the Kingdom of God, culminating in the one where he misjudges the purpose of the Lord’s Arrest, first in the garden and then in the palace courtyard to which he follows Jesus, but where he also denies Him not once but three times. And yet this was all the outward symptom of a deep inner connection with Jesus, the way in which the Lord intrigues those who seek Him out, so that the faulty foundations in Peter’s life of faith can be reconstructed by the resurrection and bear the life-long confidence in Christ to be built on them, a confidence that will one day cost him in turn not less than everything.
All of us, perhaps, have experienced a little of what it is like to know Jesus like St Paul, St James, or St Peter, to find ourselves in the presence of the Man from Heaven and to be changed as a result. Most of us have been growing up in our faith and belief in Him like St James. All of us have been trying to comprehend Him, yet repeatedly found ourselves letting Him down like St Peter, but nonetheless persevering and finding our way through to some kind of constant faithfulness. There may have been the flash of light, perhaps just once in our lives, like St Paul, a vision or an experience of God’s closeness to us, that has stood us in good stead all the way through and irrevocably altered the way we think and live. Perhaps it is a mixture of all three.
The point is that, whoever we are and whatever the Christian life is like for each one of us, our fellowship in the Church and the Christian faith itself are about the Lord Who came to the world with no earthly origin, in order to have the one thing he lacked - human nature - and to work within our human nature our human redemption, so that there could be human fellowship in the life of God Himself.
What the Lord meant to St Peter, St James, St Paul, St Joseph whom we also remember today (Matthew 2.13), and pre-eminently to the Mother of God was that to meet Christ in His Church is to be at the very entrance of heaven into the world, and the world into heaven: “I am the gate –whoever enters through me will be saved. My sheep will come in and go out and find pasture. I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10. 9-10)
In other words, today’s celebration of the Sunday after the Nativity is a feast of our rebirth as human beings in the Spirit of Christ, Who is born among us in the flesh. What had an earthly origin thus receives the eternal living that is heaven’s. Today the Lord of no earthly origin shows us how He takes on the form of human beings, so that we creatures can take on the form of God. He shows that just as God can unite with human nature in one and the same Person, so human beings can enter into and be part of the life of God. It does not require us to leave the world to live with God in His heavenly Kingdom, just as it did not require Christ to be unheavenly to convert the human Paul. “For God is with us” (Isaiah 8-9, from Great Compline on Christmas Night), and with God is how we are too.
But it is not what he means. Yes, he said he had a religious experience; yes, he was speaking of a profound spiritual incident that changed everything he thought and altered everything he did from then on. This is why he called it “not of earthly origin”, because it certainly did not come from anything he had experienced in the world before.
What he was really speaking about is that the impact made upon him that came from Jesus Christ, a real human being born of Mary, yet who came from the Father: the Man from heaven. The revelation he had was of the same order as the disciples after the Resurrection. It was inexplicable in earthly terms as far as they knew them - because the dead man that they all saw was not merely a resuscitation, but instead the same person they had known now living in a new creation. It was shedding its brilliance in this world, but was not being determined by it.
St Paul had been accused of making up his new found proclamation from his own changed tunes, or from schemes he had devised with other people. He was accused of inventing a new kind of preaching about Jesus that was different from the original Kingdom proclaimed by the Lord Himself. To this day, he is accused of founding a new religious institution, the Church, against the spiritual intentions and teaching of Jesus. Thus he was also blamed for not consulting the apostles before beginning his preaching, of being vain in pursuing his personal version of the infant Church’s mission, and thus undermining the authority of the Twelve. But it is all nonsense, then and as now. The other apostles found now fault with it and realised it was fundamentally the same as their own gospel. This was not so much because of the words and terms to be used, or the way they were expressed, but because for all of them it was clearly about a Person, who had come into the world as its Light.
Peter, the rock on whom Christ built His Church, saw this. James, the Lord’s own brother, corroborated it. Paul had truly been in the Light of the same Person as had shone through them too: the Son of Man, the Lord’s anointed, the Son of God, Emmanuel-God-with-Us, the Master, the Good Shepherd, the Ascended Lord of Earth and Heaven, the Way, the Truth and the Life.
Most of us do not have such dramatic revelations as St Paul’s and our encounter of religion feels much of the time as though it is firmly bound up with earthly origins, ideas and people. But think again of how it was for St Peter and St James. James, who we remember today (Galatians 1.19) knew Jesus all his life in such a very human way, as a relation in the same household and family. For James, therefore, the revelation that came to Paul in a flash came through a lifetime of growing up together from boyhood through adolescence, during which familiarity did not breed contempt but formed the close bond of affection and admiration that we can understand from our own families and life-long friendships. St James knew he had grown up with heaven – he would not realise it all the time, for it would have been like second nature. Thus for all that it was in earth, it was of no earthly origin. Jesus his brother was God among Us. For St Peter, the relationship was more recent. He began with being spellbound by a charismatic teacher coming to find St Andrew and then him on the shore of Galilee where they worked as fishermen. After that, it was a series of incidents in which Peter is brought up short by Jesus, Who shows him where he has not grasped the Kingdom of God, culminating in the one where he misjudges the purpose of the Lord’s Arrest, first in the garden and then in the palace courtyard to which he follows Jesus, but where he also denies Him not once but three times. And yet this was all the outward symptom of a deep inner connection with Jesus, the way in which the Lord intrigues those who seek Him out, so that the faulty foundations in Peter’s life of faith can be reconstructed by the resurrection and bear the life-long confidence in Christ to be built on them, a confidence that will one day cost him in turn not less than everything.
All of us, perhaps, have experienced a little of what it is like to know Jesus like St Paul, St James, or St Peter, to find ourselves in the presence of the Man from Heaven and to be changed as a result. Most of us have been growing up in our faith and belief in Him like St James. All of us have been trying to comprehend Him, yet repeatedly found ourselves letting Him down like St Peter, but nonetheless persevering and finding our way through to some kind of constant faithfulness. There may have been the flash of light, perhaps just once in our lives, like St Paul, a vision or an experience of God’s closeness to us, that has stood us in good stead all the way through and irrevocably altered the way we think and live. Perhaps it is a mixture of all three.
The point is that, whoever we are and whatever the Christian life is like for each one of us, our fellowship in the Church and the Christian faith itself are about the Lord Who came to the world with no earthly origin, in order to have the one thing he lacked - human nature - and to work within our human nature our human redemption, so that there could be human fellowship in the life of God Himself.
What the Lord meant to St Peter, St James, St Paul, St Joseph whom we also remember today (Matthew 2.13), and pre-eminently to the Mother of God was that to meet Christ in His Church is to be at the very entrance of heaven into the world, and the world into heaven: “I am the gate –whoever enters through me will be saved. My sheep will come in and go out and find pasture. I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” (John 10. 9-10)
In other words, today’s celebration of the Sunday after the Nativity is a feast of our rebirth as human beings in the Spirit of Christ, Who is born among us in the flesh. What had an earthly origin thus receives the eternal living that is heaven’s. Today the Lord of no earthly origin shows us how He takes on the form of human beings, so that we creatures can take on the form of God. He shows that just as God can unite with human nature in one and the same Person, so human beings can enter into and be part of the life of God. It does not require us to leave the world to live with God in His heavenly Kingdom, just as it did not require Christ to be unheavenly to convert the human Paul. “For God is with us” (Isaiah 8-9, from Great Compline on Christmas Night), and with God is how we are too.
04 January 2015
Homily for Christmas Day, Mass of the Day, St Mary's Church, Cadogan Street, Chelsea
It must have been about twenty years ago – you couldn’t do it nowadays – but it was on the radio all one Christmas week: three modern day Wise Men decided to retrace the steps of the Magi from old Mesopotamia, taking their time on camels or donkeys, camping their way through Iraq, Baghdad, Jordan and finally into Palestine and on to Bethlehem. The modern Magi were three scientists, whose expertise corresponded to the knowledge and interest of the Wise Men of old: one was a chemistry professor; another was an astronomer; and the third was a theologian.
The BBC thought they would have a cracking programme, as three great people made a journey in search of the Jesus that the Wise Men were seeking, full of insight and clever conversation from three completely different disciplines colliding in flashes of brilliance: perfect radio. What happened was rather different. After a week or so, the modern Magi got used to each other and fell into a rhythm. A few days more and they had run out of things to say. When they came back, they said how for much of the time, as they walked and rode, their thinking calmed and they just made their way through the Middle East toward Bethlehem in each other’s company in silence. But it was not that they were lost for words. It was more that they were infused, you might say, with being tranquil. They spoke when they needed to and when they had something to say. But otherwise, they were content to rest in the silence they had come to share.
And here we are today, like many before us, coming to seek out the Word made Flesh; and we find He is likewise saying nothing. But we are paying close attention, straining to hear any sound or inkling of the Word that we might miss. To the first Christians who spoke Greek, this title of Jesus’s – The Word (John 1.1) – meant something a little more than ‘word’ means to us. They would also have understood it in something like the way we talk of a rationale, God’s reason for being God, God’s reasoning in his desire for us to come to be part of Him. There had been many words in prophets, laws and Temple liturgies; but now God was going to explain Himself and reveal His reasoning , His rationale, His reason for being Himself - a God Who saves His creation from its self-destruction - not in phrases and arguments to justify His purposes, but in a Person. Actions, we tell ourselves, speak louder than words. And here it all is: the ‘Wording’ from God in flesh and blood, not breathed out onto the air, but full of unspoken meaning.
Jesus often resorts to being the Word in this way in the stories that we love throughout the Gospels. We have the parables and the pronouncements of healing; but when it counts, the Word we first beheld in His manger once again creates the space of silence around Him. So the Archangel appearing to Mary who is to be Mother of God says to her, as the first thing to be achieved, “Peace.” (Luke 1. 28) When the storm is at its height on the Sea of Galilee and the disciples are frightened for their lives, the Lord says, “Peace, be still.” (Mark 4.39) When He works His great miracles of healing, He tells those who have been saved to say nothing of what has happened to them and instead, we might say, to live in the moment and let the work of the Kingdom of Heaven speak for itself. (Mark 1. 44) When the woman is accused of adultery, while her accusers take their rage out on her, the Lord proceeds through silence to the foregone conclusion of mercy (John 8. 6). When He Himself is accused before the High Priests, King Herod and Pontius Pilate, He says little in response to their interrogation and public denunciation (Mark 14. 61). All the words happen around Him, as the Word of God in Person speaks for itself. As He is led to His Cross, the Lamb to the slaughter, He opens not His mouth (Acts 8.32). What He is doing and being is all that there is to say.
Then there were all those times when Jesus is wandering through Galilee with His disciples and, next, going up to Jerusalem, to the events that would lead to His Cross and in the end the dumbfounding Resurrection. We know quite a little of His talks to the people and what He said when He taught and healed. Yet we hardly know most of what He may have said in the vast tracts of time spent with His closest friends, the future apostles. Surely this is because it must have been for these disciples like it was for the three modern Magi: on their wanderings to encounter Jesus, they found themselves in a rhythm of silent company. We are told that Jesus would go off to pray on His own (Luke 5.16). But when He was with them He still had this habit of silence. Sometimes He would ask a question and wait without expectation of an answer. Sometimes we was just being the man of quiet, leaving mysteries up in the air, setting silence around Him as you wondered. Thus to the disciples he was not just their teacher, but their Master, their spiritual master.
You can imagine that disciple who had followed Jesus for months and years, yet who had neared a conclusion that he was still very much at the beginning of the way to the Kingdom of Heaven, as Jesus spoke so much of it that He seemed to be living in it even here and now. You can hear all his anxiety bursting out: “Lord, teach us how to pray.” (Luke 11.1) In the text of our Gospel, the Lord’s answer follows immediately, as He reveals to them the words of the Lord’s Prayer. I expect it was somewhat different. Likely there followed silence, into which the disciples’ attention was drawn ever more closely, as there gradually emerged the words of the prayer for how to live on earth as in heaven, how to live with God and in the world, and how God’s Kingdom comes when it becomes our will to desire only the will of God. This was no conversation. This was all happening in that rhythm of company and quiet that the Modern Magi discovered on their route to Bethlehem.
For us, Christmas with its joys and celebrations is full of energy, of tasks and meeting family and friends; and that is how it should be. We have little time to settle into the rhythm of company on our way with God; but we can still be very clear-sighted that a quiet presence lies on the heart of this feast, and the rationale for the coming of the Word in Person is for Him to be with us, so that we may repeatedly desire nothing but to be with Him and fulfil His will for us. This awareness has another name: prayer. Praying, for us with our busy minds and our lives packed with activity, is difficult for many; it is just as difficult for priests as it is for lay people: we are all in this together and getting us to pray truly is God’s life’s work. It can be a less than obvious path to find, or a hard journey to make, until we realise that praying is not just about thinking holy things over, or coming up with words, or performing devotions, though all these have a part to play: praying is spending time in the company of God. More truly it is God spending his eternity in our company. Certainly our mind wanders; certainly we are lost for words. But which one of us in a long marriage, or with our family, or in our friendships, has not known times with another human being we know so well when, likewise, there is nothing to say for the moment and it is all right to say nothing, all right just to be in the other’s company? For, when we find there are no words, we may fret that no words are coming to the surface, but we do not walk away from our family, or give up on our friendships as unsuccessful, or fruitless. Instead, we stay and we go with the moment. It is the same with praying.
It is does not even matter in our praying if there is argument, recrimination and estrangement, just as intense as the highest expressions of love and devotion. It is the same in human families and friendships. What matters is the rhythm of company that endures in the other’s presence. It does not depend on us, our mood, our worthiness, or our effort. If it did, we should fail at every attempt. And I am sure there are times when each of us feels that praying is difficult, we are failures at it and might as well just give it up. How good the devil is at discouraging us, when we think to ourselves, “I believe, but I can’t get the hang of this praying thing; it’s not really for me”; or “It isn’t my personal spirituality,” or, “I’m spiritual, but not religious.” All these are justifications for obscuring ourselves from realising that we live at every moment with God who is present to us. Yet praying is not a burden, or a technique. To begin, our part is a simple. It is just to recall that we are lost without Him, to ask for His help and mercy, and decide again and again to stay in that company which has come to seek out our company, not because we are deserving, but out of His love. Beyond that, looking for the words to say, or coming up with reasons, is not our worry. Ours is to trust the One Who keeps our company. Distractions come and go; the imagination wanders; every thought, grudge, problem, sin, or fantasy can intrude and then pass on their way. But the Saviour who is Lord of all that happens out in the world is also Lord of all that happens within us. This is why he is in our company not only when we pray but also while we do and say and are whatever it is; for praying is not our being with God, but our God being with us – Emmanuel means God with us (Matthew 1.23). And who can separate us? (Romans 8.39)
Mindful that He is there, and time and again deciding to call on His help to stay with Him, we can be assured the Lord is building a certain quiet space inside our soul (Mark 1.35), in which the presence of the One we love can breathe and take on a life of its own within us. The English classical scholar and hymn writer, Edwin Hatch (1835-89), put it this way:
Breathe on me, Breath of God, until my heart is pure,
Until with Thee I will one will, to do and to endure.
Or, as St Paul said of all this, “It is not I who live, but Christ who lives within me.” (Galatians 2.20)
This space is where we drop into the rhythm of His company, just as the Magi found on their way with the Word of God. By the same token, it is why it is so important that we must make our churches sacrosanct oases of stillness, not places for our noises, of conversation and activity, but places full of those moments when people encounter God’s company on our journey and drop into the natural rhythm of the soul, the soul alongside its Creator Who is come to be with us and while He is with us to open us to heaven (Luke 3.21).
In the next parts of our Liturgy there will be frequent moments of silence among the rites and the singing, during which God will make His approach known to us in the love and joy we experience and the holiness we are being drawn into. Then, at the end, many of us will go to the Crib, to pray for our loved ones and those in need, pour out our devotion and unburden our hearts to the Christ Child who is also our Redeemer. When you do so, I ask you a favour. In the silence of the company of the Word of God with us, please remember the suffering Christian Church of the lands through which the Wise Men of old and the Modern Magi rode. Today the members of the Chaldean, Melkite and Syriac, Assyrian, Armenian Churches in Syria and Iraq, Orthodox and Catholic alike, are facing expulsion, persecution, martyrdom and extermination in the lands where Christ has been praised since the beginning of the life of the Church in history. In the midst of our celebration and happiness, please pray that the Light of Christ will long shine bright in the lands where Christianity was born, that He will make the way to the future for His people there clear and confident, and that the God Who is silent is the Word of God dwelling richly within them (Colossians 3.16), God with us, as near now as He was when He was found in Bethlehem, as when He mounted the Cross to suffer death for our sake, and when He rose past the death He had destroyed, promising to endure with us to the end of time (Matthew 28.20).
The BBC thought they would have a cracking programme, as three great people made a journey in search of the Jesus that the Wise Men were seeking, full of insight and clever conversation from three completely different disciplines colliding in flashes of brilliance: perfect radio. What happened was rather different. After a week or so, the modern Magi got used to each other and fell into a rhythm. A few days more and they had run out of things to say. When they came back, they said how for much of the time, as they walked and rode, their thinking calmed and they just made their way through the Middle East toward Bethlehem in each other’s company in silence. But it was not that they were lost for words. It was more that they were infused, you might say, with being tranquil. They spoke when they needed to and when they had something to say. But otherwise, they were content to rest in the silence they had come to share.
And here we are today, like many before us, coming to seek out the Word made Flesh; and we find He is likewise saying nothing. But we are paying close attention, straining to hear any sound or inkling of the Word that we might miss. To the first Christians who spoke Greek, this title of Jesus’s – The Word (John 1.1) – meant something a little more than ‘word’ means to us. They would also have understood it in something like the way we talk of a rationale, God’s reason for being God, God’s reasoning in his desire for us to come to be part of Him. There had been many words in prophets, laws and Temple liturgies; but now God was going to explain Himself and reveal His reasoning , His rationale, His reason for being Himself - a God Who saves His creation from its self-destruction - not in phrases and arguments to justify His purposes, but in a Person. Actions, we tell ourselves, speak louder than words. And here it all is: the ‘Wording’ from God in flesh and blood, not breathed out onto the air, but full of unspoken meaning.
Jesus often resorts to being the Word in this way in the stories that we love throughout the Gospels. We have the parables and the pronouncements of healing; but when it counts, the Word we first beheld in His manger once again creates the space of silence around Him. So the Archangel appearing to Mary who is to be Mother of God says to her, as the first thing to be achieved, “Peace.” (Luke 1. 28) When the storm is at its height on the Sea of Galilee and the disciples are frightened for their lives, the Lord says, “Peace, be still.” (Mark 4.39) When He works His great miracles of healing, He tells those who have been saved to say nothing of what has happened to them and instead, we might say, to live in the moment and let the work of the Kingdom of Heaven speak for itself. (Mark 1. 44) When the woman is accused of adultery, while her accusers take their rage out on her, the Lord proceeds through silence to the foregone conclusion of mercy (John 8. 6). When He Himself is accused before the High Priests, King Herod and Pontius Pilate, He says little in response to their interrogation and public denunciation (Mark 14. 61). All the words happen around Him, as the Word of God in Person speaks for itself. As He is led to His Cross, the Lamb to the slaughter, He opens not His mouth (Acts 8.32). What He is doing and being is all that there is to say.
Then there were all those times when Jesus is wandering through Galilee with His disciples and, next, going up to Jerusalem, to the events that would lead to His Cross and in the end the dumbfounding Resurrection. We know quite a little of His talks to the people and what He said when He taught and healed. Yet we hardly know most of what He may have said in the vast tracts of time spent with His closest friends, the future apostles. Surely this is because it must have been for these disciples like it was for the three modern Magi: on their wanderings to encounter Jesus, they found themselves in a rhythm of silent company. We are told that Jesus would go off to pray on His own (Luke 5.16). But when He was with them He still had this habit of silence. Sometimes He would ask a question and wait without expectation of an answer. Sometimes we was just being the man of quiet, leaving mysteries up in the air, setting silence around Him as you wondered. Thus to the disciples he was not just their teacher, but their Master, their spiritual master.
You can imagine that disciple who had followed Jesus for months and years, yet who had neared a conclusion that he was still very much at the beginning of the way to the Kingdom of Heaven, as Jesus spoke so much of it that He seemed to be living in it even here and now. You can hear all his anxiety bursting out: “Lord, teach us how to pray.” (Luke 11.1) In the text of our Gospel, the Lord’s answer follows immediately, as He reveals to them the words of the Lord’s Prayer. I expect it was somewhat different. Likely there followed silence, into which the disciples’ attention was drawn ever more closely, as there gradually emerged the words of the prayer for how to live on earth as in heaven, how to live with God and in the world, and how God’s Kingdom comes when it becomes our will to desire only the will of God. This was no conversation. This was all happening in that rhythm of company and quiet that the Modern Magi discovered on their route to Bethlehem.
For us, Christmas with its joys and celebrations is full of energy, of tasks and meeting family and friends; and that is how it should be. We have little time to settle into the rhythm of company on our way with God; but we can still be very clear-sighted that a quiet presence lies on the heart of this feast, and the rationale for the coming of the Word in Person is for Him to be with us, so that we may repeatedly desire nothing but to be with Him and fulfil His will for us. This awareness has another name: prayer. Praying, for us with our busy minds and our lives packed with activity, is difficult for many; it is just as difficult for priests as it is for lay people: we are all in this together and getting us to pray truly is God’s life’s work. It can be a less than obvious path to find, or a hard journey to make, until we realise that praying is not just about thinking holy things over, or coming up with words, or performing devotions, though all these have a part to play: praying is spending time in the company of God. More truly it is God spending his eternity in our company. Certainly our mind wanders; certainly we are lost for words. But which one of us in a long marriage, or with our family, or in our friendships, has not known times with another human being we know so well when, likewise, there is nothing to say for the moment and it is all right to say nothing, all right just to be in the other’s company? For, when we find there are no words, we may fret that no words are coming to the surface, but we do not walk away from our family, or give up on our friendships as unsuccessful, or fruitless. Instead, we stay and we go with the moment. It is the same with praying.
It is does not even matter in our praying if there is argument, recrimination and estrangement, just as intense as the highest expressions of love and devotion. It is the same in human families and friendships. What matters is the rhythm of company that endures in the other’s presence. It does not depend on us, our mood, our worthiness, or our effort. If it did, we should fail at every attempt. And I am sure there are times when each of us feels that praying is difficult, we are failures at it and might as well just give it up. How good the devil is at discouraging us, when we think to ourselves, “I believe, but I can’t get the hang of this praying thing; it’s not really for me”; or “It isn’t my personal spirituality,” or, “I’m spiritual, but not religious.” All these are justifications for obscuring ourselves from realising that we live at every moment with God who is present to us. Yet praying is not a burden, or a technique. To begin, our part is a simple. It is just to recall that we are lost without Him, to ask for His help and mercy, and decide again and again to stay in that company which has come to seek out our company, not because we are deserving, but out of His love. Beyond that, looking for the words to say, or coming up with reasons, is not our worry. Ours is to trust the One Who keeps our company. Distractions come and go; the imagination wanders; every thought, grudge, problem, sin, or fantasy can intrude and then pass on their way. But the Saviour who is Lord of all that happens out in the world is also Lord of all that happens within us. This is why he is in our company not only when we pray but also while we do and say and are whatever it is; for praying is not our being with God, but our God being with us – Emmanuel means God with us (Matthew 1.23). And who can separate us? (Romans 8.39)
Mindful that He is there, and time and again deciding to call on His help to stay with Him, we can be assured the Lord is building a certain quiet space inside our soul (Mark 1.35), in which the presence of the One we love can breathe and take on a life of its own within us. The English classical scholar and hymn writer, Edwin Hatch (1835-89), put it this way:
Breathe on me, Breath of God, until my heart is pure,
Until with Thee I will one will, to do and to endure.
Or, as St Paul said of all this, “It is not I who live, but Christ who lives within me.” (Galatians 2.20)
This space is where we drop into the rhythm of His company, just as the Magi found on their way with the Word of God. By the same token, it is why it is so important that we must make our churches sacrosanct oases of stillness, not places for our noises, of conversation and activity, but places full of those moments when people encounter God’s company on our journey and drop into the natural rhythm of the soul, the soul alongside its Creator Who is come to be with us and while He is with us to open us to heaven (Luke 3.21).
In the next parts of our Liturgy there will be frequent moments of silence among the rites and the singing, during which God will make His approach known to us in the love and joy we experience and the holiness we are being drawn into. Then, at the end, many of us will go to the Crib, to pray for our loved ones and those in need, pour out our devotion and unburden our hearts to the Christ Child who is also our Redeemer. When you do so, I ask you a favour. In the silence of the company of the Word of God with us, please remember the suffering Christian Church of the lands through which the Wise Men of old and the Modern Magi rode. Today the members of the Chaldean, Melkite and Syriac, Assyrian, Armenian Churches in Syria and Iraq, Orthodox and Catholic alike, are facing expulsion, persecution, martyrdom and extermination in the lands where Christ has been praised since the beginning of the life of the Church in history. In the midst of our celebration and happiness, please pray that the Light of Christ will long shine bright in the lands where Christianity was born, that He will make the way to the future for His people there clear and confident, and that the God Who is silent is the Word of God dwelling richly within them (Colossians 3.16), God with us, as near now as He was when He was found in Bethlehem, as when He mounted the Cross to suffer death for our sake, and when He rose past the death He had destroyed, promising to endure with us to the end of time (Matthew 28.20).
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