Today is July 2, the 183rd day of the year; 182 days remain of 2010. It is the Feast of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary on the calendar of the Western Church; the Russian Orthodox today venerate St Job, the first Patriarch of Moscow. He died 403 years ago. On the calendar of Coptic (Egyptian) Christians, today is Baunah 25th, and the year is 1726; they are celebrating the feast of St Peter IV, the 34th Patriarch of Alexandria who died in 569. It is June 19th on the “Old Style” Julian calendar, and the 20th of Tamuz, in the year 5770 on the Jewish calendar. The ancient Romans called July 2nd “ante diem VI Nonas July.”
As ever, today's calendar of our past is chock-full of people and events great and small. Valentinian III, one of the last Roman Emperors, was born in Ravenna in 419. His claim to the imperial purple was unassailable: he was the son, grandson, great-grandson, cousin, and nephew (twice over) of Roman Emperors—but sometimes, the situation calls for more than just imperial genes. When he was proclaimed emperor Valentinian was only six years old, and the Empire was collapsing. During his reign the Romans lost their last footholds in Spain and Gaul (that's "France" to you and me), they were unable to prevent pirates from raiding Sicily at will, and the few Roman cities remaining in North Africa were lost to the Visigoths. As the empire wheezed towards its end, the response of the Emperor and his court was to repeatedly raise taxes on an already financially-strained populace—a frequent policy (then and now) of failing governments. Valentinian was assassinated when he was 30 years old by agents of a wealthy Roman who wanted to see what it was like to be emperor. That man was himself assassinated eleven months later by people who thought he was doing a worse job than Valentinian. “Uneasy rests the head…” Valentinian is gone, but not quite forgotten. He strutted on the stage 1300 years later in George Frederich Handel’s opera Ezio, and aficionados of the old "Prince Valiant" comic strip may recall Valentinian’s appearance there. In neither case did he cast a heroic shadow.
Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, who presided over Henry VIII’s pillaging of the medieval English Church, was born today in 1489. He was a befuddled theologian, but a master of English prose. To him we owe the unforgettable cadences of the Book of Common Prayer, with its elegant collects and stately litanies. Sadly, with Anglican liturgical “reforms” of the past 40 years, little of Cranmer’s linguistic bequest remains in the current versions of the Book of Common Prayer . The modern poet W H Auden cautioned that there was no one alive capable of revising the language of the Prayer Book and today's "revisers" have proved him right. Modern liturgical language seems principally inspired by phrases taken off fast-food wrappers. Can anyone doubt that the trite level of religion in the world today, which primarily assures us God is our "bud" and everything and anything we want to do is just fine by Him, is unrelated to the trite language we use in worship? Cranmer's line from the General Confession which reads "We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done" has become "we have done wrong and not done right." Our worship isn't profound because our thoughts aren't profound; our thoughts aren't profound because our language is "lite."
Sharing this natal day with Valentinan and the Archbishop is Walter Brennan, “Grampa” in the old television series The Real McCoys. He nicely rounds out today's trio.
Two other events drawn from the historical record demand mention: in this day in 1843, while a thunderstorm crackled over Charleston, South Carolina, a full-grown, live alligator fell from the clouds and landed near the front steps of old St John’s Church on Broad Street. After hurtling through the atmosphere and a relatively safe landing, the alligator was promptly killed by the citizenry. One hundred and four years later, Mr and Mrs Dan Wilmot witnessed a “large glowing object" zoom across the sky at "400 or 500 miles per hour." This was outside Roswell, New Mexico. A few days after their sighting, the public information office of the Roswell Army Air Field issued a press release claiming to have recovered the remains of a “flying disc.” People have been reporting "flying saucers" ever since. Perhaps it’s worth noting that Nostradamus died today in 1566.
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Walking the Labyrinth—I am delighted to return to the Labyrinth after an Eastertide hiatus. I return with an odd and perhaps unbelievable confession: I miss Lent.
If you’ve ever been on a retreat, one of the first things you probably remember is that you didn’t want it to end. The evening before leaving a retreat, most people begin to regret their immanent return to the everyday world. For many this might be the first time they’ve been able to turn their attention exclusively to their neglected spiritual lives. When the time comes to actually leave, it's often a time of tears—tears of sorrow at leaving; tears of joy at what they’ve received: rare glimpses of their own souls, friendships formed, insights gained and even occasional brushes against the One Who Is. Psychologists have a name for this, as they do for most things: Coming Down from the Mountain Syndrome (it’s possible to name things and not quite understand the thing you’ve named). It usually takes a few days to a week (depending on how long you spent in retreat) to acclimatize to the banality of the world—but we do. Still, sometimes for months or even years, afterward, we remember the time and cherish the memories.
Lent can be like that. Our prayer, fasting and almsgiving, the focus on our spiritual lives, time devoted to something other than ourselves, these and the other facets of Lent can make it a spiritually rich--dare I use the word--a spritually luxurious time. We may surprise ourselves when we become vaguely aware of a sense of regret at the approaching Feast of the Resurrection.
True joy is foreign to most of us. We all feel happy at times, maybe even a lot of the time. But true joy is a gift of the Spirit, St Paul tells us. My guess is that most of us wouldn’t know what to do with true joy. That’s part of the reason for our Lenten/Easter dilemma—certainly it’s mine. Of course, a lot of people will say “I know what true joy is” in a sort of knee-jerk response. But true joy doesn’t wax and wane, it simply “is,” it remains, it endures. It’s an ongoing, continuing Gift, given by the Lord to those He has prepared to receive it. And “preparation” is the key word. Joy is formed in us by a spiritual process. Eastertide, with its alleluias, the sustained joy of the liturgy which endures even when our personal Easter “highs” have evaporated, is the liturgical sign of that spiritual Gift of joy. Easter has meaning, though, because of the Three Days which precede it. Easter shines so brightly because Good Friday is so very dark.
In St John Chrysostom’s Easter Sermon, he calls one and all—those who have fasted through the season and those who have ignored the fast—all to come to the table. “The fatted calf has been slain; let all partake!” he cries. And we all do. But if we ignore the fast and show up only for the feast, we participate only in the flesh—we eat the Easter ham but miss the Easter Lamb—the One “slain from before the foundation of the world.”
The Easter Feast is the earthly sign of Heaven, and, despite what we may think, most of us aren’t ready for Heaven. We still need the fasting and praying and almsgiving that Lent exhorts us to. We need it to grow. We crave joy but most of us aren’t spiritually ready for it. It’s a Gift God gives to souls prepared to receive it. It’s nothing to be ashamed of that most of us have only occasional “foretastes” of joy; given the fallen world in which we live (and live oh, so willingly!), those foretastes can feed and sustain us through a host of “slings and arrows.”
God is preparing us for an eternity of joy, but as we each walk our earthly labyrinths, following sometimes with little more than blind faith (which, in spite of all that’s said against it, is sometimes the only thing that can sustain us), abiding joy seems elusive. It should. Until it’s been formed in us, until our souls have been prepared to receive and live in joy, we can’t endure it. It would be like looking at the sun all the time. “Now, we see through a glass, darkly,” St Paul lectures us, “but then,” when we’re ready, “we’ll see face to Face.” Seeing through a glass darkly is preparation, a mercy. Seeing darkly prepares us for the Day we’ll see clearly. Walking the Labyrinth—the one prepared for you—with its joys and sorrows, pains and pleasures, is full of foretastes of Heaven and reminders of earth. Each step, even the painful ones (perhaps I should say, especially the painful ones), on your labyrinthine walk is necessary. It’s taking you Home. I’m glad to be walking it with you again.
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Some of you followed my daily blog, “The Lenten Oasis,” through that season, and several have asked me to continue something similar. After ruminating like an old steer on it for the whole of Eastertide, I’ve decided to write another weekly blog in addition to “Labyrinthus.” I’ve titled it “When I Am Gray-Headed” after one of the verses in the Psalter that never fails to bring a smile to my face, Psalm 71.17. I am writing it for the “gray-headed,” those of “riper years,” and the spiritual challenges we face. You recall the Law of the Conservation of Energy from physics? Energy never disappears, it just changes shape. The same is true of the struggles and challenges (and opportunities!) of the spiritual life. They don’t disappear as we get older, they just change shape. The Seven Deadly Sins remain equally deadly and the growth in Grace remains just as promising as in our younger years, but both sin and Grace now look a bit different—they may have changed shape, but they’re still there, as pressing as ever. I’m thinking no one under fifty years old will be allowed to read this blog. How does that sound? I will begin “Gray-Headed” the first week of August. Let me know if you’re interested—I’ll be putting together a mailing list in the next week or so.
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