Christ Church

Fr. David Curry preached this homily to the St. John Vianney branch of the Societas Sanctae Crucis (SSC, Society of the Holy Cross) on 30 July, Feast of St John Vianney transferred.

“How readest thou?”

We commemorate St. John Maria Vianney, patron saint of parish priests, of all priests, of all confessors, and of every healing ministry, and of our branch of the SSC. Born in 1786, he survived the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. Ordained in 1815, he served as a curate for three years and then for forty-one years as the Parish Priest in Ars, celebrated as the Curé d’Ars. A most pious, devout, and faithful priest, he was not particularly distinguished by any intellectual gifts, had very little formal learning, and struggled with Latin, yet, as Simone Weil observes, his attention to the struggle to learn translated into his remarkable gifts of insight into the human heart and to the holiness of his witness in the rather spiritually barren climate of mid-nineteenth century France. An example for all priests, to be sure, but not in terms of things of outward show and spectacle but rather to the inward conversion of the soul united to God in love; he had a deep devotion to Mary and to Christ and his cross.

The Gospel reading from Luke highlights the theme of our watching and waiting upon the coming of the master, a fitting image for St. John Vianney seeking Christ in people’s souls, at once serving Christ and being served by him, and so entering into his blessedness, the blessedness to which our humanity is called. The glory of God, as Irenaeus puts it, is man alive, a living human being grounded in the vision of God. But what is that living human life? It is primarily ethical and spiritual but which always runs the risk of being reduced to the material and practical, and thus betraying or compromising the more radical nature of human redemption; namely its transformative qualities of being made more lovely in God’s eyes and thus becoming not less nor more than human or other than human but more Christ-like in our attention to Christ. “Be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds,” as Paul puts it. This signals the true purpose and dignity of our humanity; not its being denatured or dehumanized but its perfection.

In the Evening Offices, we have been reading from Luke. Earlier this week we had a reading from Luke 10. 25-42. A remarkable passage, it illustrates profoundly the essential ethical teaching of the Christian Faith expressed in two interconnected stories, the parable of the Good Samaritan and the scene of Martha and Mary with Jesus in Bethany. That story, it seems to me, bookends the radical beginning of the parable of the Good Samaritan captured in Jesus’ questions in response to the certain lawyer’s question which is intended to be subversive and sophistical. “Master, What must I do to inherit eternal life?,” he asks, but with the intent to trip him up. What Jesus does is wonderfully Socratic, for his questions in return actually draw out of the certain lawyer ethical truth in spite of himself. “What is written in the Law? Jesus asks him, and then adds, “How readest thou?” The lawyer is moved rightly despite his intention to quote Deuteronomy and Leviticus on the inseparable nature of the love of God and the love of neighbour, the Jewish Shema and the Christian Summary of the Law.

Jesus commends him: “Thou hast answered right; this do, and thou shalt live,” underscoring, it seems to me, the connection between reading or thinking and doing. “But he,” as Luke puts it, “willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?” The question is dismissive and cynical, undermining the ethical principle which he had just recognised. But the question launches the parable of the so-called good Samaritan, which articulates beautifully and compellingly the essential ethical teaching of the Christian Church and Faith.

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“His master praised the unrighteous steward”

Parables are a powerful heuristic devices, ways of teaching about ethical and spiritual matters. They appeal to our imaginations and convict our hearts so that we may learn to see ourselves in them but they are by no means simple. They require our serious attention.

In the course of any given year, there are in the classical Prayer Book and liturgical calendars anywhere from twenty-three to twenty-six Sundays after Trinity. Epiphany and Trinity Season both vary in length owing to the variable date of Easter. There are within the Trinity Season a number of intriguing and compelling parables that focus on the ethical life. The Parable of the Good Samaritan, read at Evening Prayer this week, is also the Gospel for Trinity 13. It is the classic illustration of the essential ethical teaching of the Christian faith as grounded in the love of God and the love of neighbour, something which Augustine highlights in his de doctrina Christiana. It shows the intimate connection between thinking and doing by way of questions that draw us into truth and direct our actions. Other parables, too, highlight how to think and act.

I have in mind two parables which teach us about how to think and act by way of examples from the negative: what notto do and be, as it were, from which we can learn how to think and act better as grounded in the love of Christ. On Trinity 22, there is the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant and, today, the Parable of the Unrighteous Steward. The one illustrates the necessity of forgiving others even as we have been forgiven by way of the servant who is forgiven a great debt but then refuses to forgive the paltry debt of another; a form of hypocrisy which highlights a betrayal of the good which God seeks for our humanity through the forgiveness of our sins. But perhaps even more disconcerting and yet intriguing is today’s Parable of the Unrighteous Steward. He is praised by his master, not for his unrighteousness, but for his prudence.

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“You have received a spirit of sonship”

The year was 524. The place was Pavia, a northern Italian town. The person, a scholar and public official, named Boethius, languishing in prison falsely accused of treason against the Arian king, Theodoric the Ostrogoth. He would be brutally killed. But not before writing one of the great intellectual and spiritual classics of the West, The Consolation of Philosophy. Along with his theological works, it would have an enormous influence upon the development of European culture and thought.

The word “person”, much invoked in the contemporary discourse of natural rights and identity politics, has its roots in the definition that Boethius provided in his treatise about the humanity and the divinity of Christ, Contra Eutyches. Distinguishing between nature and person is essential for understanding the unity of God and man in Christ and for thinking about the unity and difference of God as Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Boethius’ argument serves to illuminate an understanding of the names of God revealed in Scripture as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. From such language and terminology for God, there followed the application of the term to our humanity. For Boethius, following Augustine, man is imago dei which in the Christian understanding is imago Christi, imago Trinitatis. Being made in the image of God means being made in the image of the Trinity through the image of Christ in us. Such are some of the fruits of his labours by which he is known and through which we begin to know ourselves as selves; in short, as persons.

The word person derives from the Greek προσοπον and the Latin persona, originally in the context of ancient Greek tragedies. The terms refer to the masks worn by actors through which they spoke, as in sounding through, but as such conveying meaning and understanding of character. What is Boethius’s definition? “Person is an individual substance of a rational nature.” Compact, precise, and comprehensive, it highlights the spiritual and intellectual features of our humanity that embrace and contain the various aspects of human individuality. The theological context suggests that the language we use about ourselves has its roots in language about God, emphasizing that our humanity is radically incomplete apart from God. Even our language of political and social discourse is grounded in theology.

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