Present in-deed through joyful service

Deeds speak louder than words. Gestures, even the simplest and seemingly insignificant – like giving a cup of cold water to someone who is thirsty, as Jesus assures, (cf. Mt 10:42) – can be worthwhile.  Actions can be revealing, that is, they uncover a deep, inner meaning and hidden truth that no words can describe adequately. They pertain to the rich texture and complex context of human communication. Nevertheless, the intention, even more than the meaning, expressed in the language of actions and gestures, not infrequently requires to be discovered, deciphered and discerned, unless the person carrying them out declares his or her intention lest this be misunderstood.

A striking example of this is the declaration made by St Francis when he stripped off his clothes in front of the bishop and townspeople of Assisi and his father, Pietro di Bernadone, an affluent cloth merchant:

Until now I have called you father here on earth, but now I can say without reservation, Our Father who art in heaven (Matt. 6:9), since I have placed all my treasure and all my hope in him.” (St Bonaventure, The Life of St Francis, Ch. 2, 4)

His whole life “was perfect poetry in action,” as Simone Weil rightly says. This poetry, however, stemmed from his stark awareness of God fathering the world’s beauty, rather than, as Weil stated, “in order to have immediate contact with the beauty of the world.” (Waiting on God, Collins, 1971, p.116.)

Without Francis’ declaration of self-dedication to God, what would this gesture have been – an act of sheer foolishness, a display of exhibitionism, an expression of disrespect to shock the sensibilities or prudish sense of the people of his time, an assertion of self-determination for freedom, an exaggerated attitude of perfectionism or outright rebellion against his family, especially his father?

Perhaps it was all of this, for human beings are notoriously driven by motives that are very complex and conceal energies tangled in a skein of unruly emotions, disordered desires and passions that cloud a clarity of mind so that genuine effective action becomes impeded. The poet T.S. Eliot pointed perspicaciously to a shadow that falls mysteriously between and fragments the different components of our experience in living, which should be held together as an integral whole instead of becoming unfulfilled through spiritual and psychological disintegration in an, as it were, twilight zone of paralysis or dreamlike futile condition of inertia, infertility and impotence (cf. The Hollow Men, V). Despite its nothingness and insubstantial vacuity this shadow paradoxically thwarts the deep potential etched into being human to participate in God’s creative act of bringing about his kingdom of love, for which Jesus taught us to pray not with a monotonous multiplicity of empty words to impress others or ourselves that we are praying, but, rather, to make our work prayer – and, moreover, for we ourselves to be pray-ers, worshippers in spirit and truth whom the Father seeks (cf. Mt 6:7; Jn 4:24).

The new orientation in Francis’ life sprang not from his seeking for meaning, but from profoundly realizing that he was being sought by God. Thus, even in the medley of whatever were Francis’ mixed motives, his words state a decisiveness about the transformed direction in living he was impelled to undertake, a direction inspired and sustained by grace that was utterly Godward.

A new shrine is now being inaugurated in Assisi in order to commemorate Francis' act of stripping himself naked. Yet, there is always a danger of clinging to threads of memories… or even of being attached to tattered material keepsakes, such as the relics of the garment Francis discarded or the mantle with which he was covered by bishop Guido… Jesus, after all, commanded Mary Magdalene not to cling to him for he was risen and going towards the Father… He told Thomas, however, to approach and touch his wounds as a lesson to find him in suffering humanity.

Francis enacted the double command encapsulated in ancient Israel’s teaching about loving God and neighbour (cf. Dt 6:4 and Lev 19:18). He discovered how to live in perfect freedom and joy through following Jesus, the divine Word made flesh, who showed how love is indivisible (cf. Mk 12:29-31). The disciple of love, John, grasped and articulated Jesus’ whole teaching thus: ‘If any one says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him, that he who loves God should love his brother also’ (1 Jn 4:20-21). Francis not only refers to this teaching and incorporated it into his Letter to all the faithful (first version) (cf. Chapter 1, paragraph 1), but he lived it fully.

This crucial teaching continues to offer us today a challenging lesson about being present and joyously free in serving others. In encouraging and bestowing his blessing on the bishop, the entire diocesan community and pilgrims about the opening of the new shrine in the city of the Poverello (“little poor man”), Pope Francis recalls what he said on his first visit here on October 4, 2013:

The new Assisi Shrine is born as prophecy of a more just and supportive society, while it reminds the Church of her duty to live, in the footsteps of Francis, despoiling herself of worldliness and clothing herself in the values of the Gospel. I confirm what I said in the Hall of Spoliation: “We are all called to be poor, to strip ourselves of ourselves; and to do this we must learn to be with the poor, to share with one deprived of the necessary, to touch the flesh of Christ! A Christian is not one who fills his mouth with the poor, no! He is one who encounters them, who looks at them in the eyes, who touches them.” Today it is more necessary than ever for Christ’s words to characterize the path and style of the Church. If in so many traditionally Christian areas of the world estrangement from the faith is verified, we are therefore called to a new evangelization. The secret of our preaching is not so much in the force of our words but in the fascination of our witness, sustained by grace.  

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Image above:

Scene of Francis’ stripping himself

Fresco in the Upper Basilica of St Francis, Assisi

(attributed to the school of Giotto)

May – Month of Mary

Part   II: Mary guides the faithful to the Eucharist

 

In his poem for May, Rosa Mystica, Gerard Manley Hopkins develops this image in such a way that he finds that its real point of reference, as Mary’s unswervingly ever was, is Christ:

            Is Mary the rose then? Mary the tree?

But the blossom, the blossom there - who can it be? -

Who can her rose be? It could be but One:

            Christ Jesus our Lord, her God and her son.

In the gardens of God, in the daylight divine,

Show me thy son, mother, mother of mine.

The last line here may be regarded as alluding to a petition expressed in that lovely hymn Ave Maris Stella from the 8^th or 9^th century: “Show thyself a mother” (‘Mostra te esse matrem’). As the true Mother of all the living, since the same hymn reverses the archangel Gabriel’s greeting “Ave” to “Eve”, Mary’s delight is to introduce humankind to her divine Son, whose presence in the Eucharistic continuation of the Incarnation graciously reveals and unites us as members of his Mystical Body.

 

The image of the rose suggests yet another line of reflection from that in the first part of these considerations for this month of Mary. The significance of this most beautiful flower as a symbol of human intelligence is intuited by contemplatively gazing out on the infinite, beyond our prosaic perceived horizons. The Italian poet Giacomo Leopardi (1798-1837) fixed his gaze in such a direction, as he looked across a hedge near Loreto. In an instant of quasi-mystical intuition, he discerned the unique significance of the human vocation as consisting in looking towards the infinite. This significance, permeated by its transcendent dimension, is nothing other than a certain nostalgia for God. Nothing can ultimately distract the human spirit from this sense, which is experienced along the whole human itinerary of living, in which each one of us is called to be, in the French Jewish convert to Christianity Léon Bloy’s memorable expression, “a pilgrim of the eternal,” rather than becoming immersed and drowned in the ephemeral flotsam and jetsam of  materialism.

 

Mary in her virginal seeking to fulfill God’s will on earth as it is in heaven shows us, as a Mother, how to discern the beauty of creation. She kindly leads us to Christ, who taught us not to escape our responsibility to cultivate this world, but to remain in it while not becoming corrupted by its tawdry false values. This does not mean being starry-eyed dreamers. Rather, we have the task of caring for creation, which is an urgent contemporary concern today, as constantly emphasized by Pope Francis. In his Encyclical Letter, Laudato Sì (24 May 2015, Solemnity of Pentecost), taking his inspiration from his namesake’s joy-filled praise of God for his work of restoring creation to its real significance, he points to Mary’s divine Son Jesus who “lived in full harmony with creation” (paragraph 98). At the end of this truly challenging letter to all people today, Pope Francis states:

Mary, the Mother who cared for Jesus, now cares with maternal affection and pain for this wounded world. Just as her pierced heart mourned the death of Jesus, so now she grieves for the sufferings of the crucified poor and for the creatures of this world laid waste by human power… Hence, we can ask her to enable us to look at this world with eyes of wisdom (paragraph 241).

 The most obvious significance of Mary’s title Rosa mystica is the Rosary, in which the various mysteries of our Redemption are meditated. Pope Francis said “the Rosary is the prayer that always accompanies my life: it is also the prayer of simple people and saints...it is the prayer of my heart”. At a General Audience last year in October (the month of the Rosary), he explained that the Rosary is “a synthesis of Divine Mercy”: “With Mary, in the mysteries of the Rosary we contemplate the life of Jesus which irradiates the mercy of the Father. Let us rejoice in His love and forgiveness, let us recognize it in foreigners and in those who are needy, let us live His Gospel every day”. 

In a short but significant journey Pope Francis follows his three predecessors in making a pilgrimage to the Marian shrine of Fatima, to mark the centenary of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s six appearances in successive months beginning on the 13^th of May 1917 to three shepherd children, Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco, the latter two he is adding to the list of saints. Addressing German pilgrims  the Wednesday prior to this pilgrimage, the Holy Father said “let us entrust ourselves to Mary, Mother of hope, who invites us to turn our gaze towards salvation, towards a new world and a new humanity.” 

The 13^th of May is also doubly significant for members of two Congregations of the Blessed Sacrament and all lay associates of this religious family, founded by St Peter-Julian Eymard, “that eminent apostle of the Eucharist”. For this day is when Eymard, who had spent seventeen years in the Society of Mary, had in 1856 the joy of realising, as he said, that “Mary led him to the Eucharist.” These words recall what St John Paul II would point out: “Mary guides the faithful to the Eucharist” (Encyclical Letter, Redemptoris Mater [25 March 1987, Solemnity of the Annunciation], paragraph n.44). On this same day Eymard’s Congregations of the Blessed Sacrament likewise celebrate the Feast of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament. While this title, which according to the tradition in the Blessed Sacrament Congregation was used by their founder, he also honoured Mary by another title: Our Lady or Queen of the Cenacle, which more profoundly and richly celebrates her prayerful presence together with the disciples and the women at the beginning of the Church at the outpouring of the Holy Spirit (cf. Acts of the Apostles, 1:14). It was in that same Upper Room or Cenacle where Jesus gave us himself in the Eucharistic mystery. St Peter-Julian Eymard, inspired by Mary’s attitude of prayerful recollection of the Word made Eucharist, came to realise the importance of acquiring the deepest meaning of the “interior cenacle” in us as fostered by adoration and also, especially, by receiving Communion, the grace of which impels us to serve all God’s children and the least of his creatures in love.

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Image above:

Stained-glass window in the General House of the Blessed Sacrament Congregation, Rome.

 

See also my reflections in Second Spring, May 2017: “All is Grace A Spiritual Reflection” –

Online: https://www.secondspring.co.uk/2017/05/07/all-is-grace/

 

May – Month of Mary

(Part I Rose in a Mystery)

May is dedicated to Mary because, as Blessed John Henry Newman explains in his meditations on the invocations to her in the Litany of Loreto: just as the earth harmonises with all nature during this season bursting forth in celebrating the beauty and joy of the Paschal Mystery of Christ, who has triumphed over death, so it is most fitting for Christians to praise God’s greatest work of art, Mary, the ‘Mystical Rose’. 

But, why is Mary called the Rosa Mystica? The reason is really quite simple. It is because this most mysteriously beautiful flower of the earthly garden, which is regarded as a perfect emblem of love, appropriately symbolises Mary, whom the poet Wordsworth called “Our tainted nature’s solitary boast”. (“Ecclesiastical Sonnets”, pt. ii, No. xxv. The Virgin.) None better than Mary, who is also addressed as the “Seat of Wisdom” (Sedes Sapientiae), understood the privilege of being especially cultivated and enveloped by the wonderful mystery of God’s love. The hidden mysteries of divine love were treasured in Mary’s heart and also unfolded in her life (cf. Lk 2:19, 51), which opened beauteously, like a rose’s blossoming, in response to the Spirit’s dew of grace. This is expressed in a 16^th century German hymn, which alludes to Isaiah’s prophecy (cf. Is 11:1): Es ist ein Ros entsprungen, translated in English as Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming, a Christmas carol. Like her, the woman wrapt in silence, the community of faith is plunged into contemplating the wonderful divine design of restoring all creation in Christ. 

This truly contemplative spirit creatively flourishes in the finest works of art, for it participates profoundly in God’s delight with his creation which he found very good and beautiful in so far as it is an “epiphany” of beauty, reflecting the image of his glory. (Cf. St John Paul II’s Letter to Artists, Easter 1999, 1.) Thus, for example, the greatest architects of the Middle Ages did not weary of admiring the mysteriously fascinating form of the rose, which they integrated into their designs of the windows of the soaring Gothic cathedrals, like that of Florence, Santa Maria del Fiore. The West window of these magnificent buildings was like an eye focused on the sacred place of the East towards which the Church is oriented in celebrating the mystery of God’s saving love illuminating our lives as the Light of the world. 

Faithful to this traditional perspective, Dante could thus describe what he learned to behold from his guide to the highest realms of Paradise, St Bernard, who told him:

Now to that face which most resembles Christ

Lift up thy gaze; its radiance alone

Can grant to thee the power to look on Christ.

(English translation by Dorothy L. Sayers and Barbara Reynolds Cf. Paradiso XXXII 85-87)

A little after these lines the same Florentine poet recalls the Archangel Gabriel’s greeting to the Virgin of Nazareth: “Ave, Maria, gratia plena”. He goes on to say that grateful admiration for her generous cooperation with God’s design of salvation resounds for all eternity of heaven in the song of the saints and blessed. (Cf. Paradiso XXXII, 97.99.) It would be no exaggeration, thus, to say that this poet’s Paradise ultimately has an entirely Marian form, as the Swiss theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar observes (cf. The Glory of the Lord. A Theological Aesthetics, Vol. III, [ET] T & T Clark, Edinburgh, 1986, p.82.) This does not mean, however, that the joy of heaven does not consist in praising and thanking God for his own being and work of love. In fact, the whole of Dante’s Paradiso itself offers a most rich witness to the deepest attitude of praising the glory of divine love. From the beginning to the last strophe of Dante’s masterpiece of piety in poetry it is clear that the poet passes from the statement of a somewhat dry Aristotelian concept regarding “the first unmoved Mover” to the often cited richly evocative expression of the highest Christian contemplation:

The love that moves the sun and the other stars. (Paradiso, XXXIII, 145.)

The undertaking of the spiritual journey – from Hell to Purgatory up to Paradise - which Dante himself made in Holy Week of the first Jubilee Year (1300) and which he invites the reader to make in any age, entails nothing other than that movement called conversion of heart. All the saints, and even the Queen of heaven in a manner par excellence from the beginning of her immaculate life, exemplify this movement, through which they participate in the mystery of the Risen Lord’s Passover. Thus in Dante’s perspective, not only the Virgin Mary, but also all the redeemed together with her form a single resplendent rose, which reflects the rays of the glorious light of the divine kingdom of love. “This is the supreme image,” according to von Balthasar, “of Dante’s inspiration.” (The Glory of the Lord, loc.cit., p.77.)

Mary was also the inspiration of the young Jesuit poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who in the opening stanza of one of his poems written as a May-day homage to be placed in her honour by the statue in the grounds of the Jesuit college, St Mary’s Hall Stonyhurst, wrote:

The rose in a mystery - where is it found?

Is it anything true? Does it grow upon ground?

It was made of earth’s mould but it went from men’s eyes

And its place is a secret and shut in the skies.

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Image above:

The Virgin Mother and Child surrounded by saints - Fra Angelico, Altarpiece, San Marco, Florence.