by CCW | 18 March 2015 10:00
This is the third of four Lenten reflections on Poets, Preachers and the Passion of Christ. The first reflection is posted here[1], the second here[2], and the fourth here[3].
The poets and preachers of our Anglican tradition help us in the spiritual journey of Lent by opening us out to the nature of penitential adoration. As Lancelot Andrewes notes in his Good Friday sermon in 1605, we are always to be “looking unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our faith” but most especially upon Christ crucified. Paul, he says, “knew many, very many things” yet he decided “to know nothing … except Jesus Christ and him crucified.” “The perfection of our knowledge is Christ; the perfection of our knowledge in or touching Christ, is the knowledge of His Cross and Passion.” Somehow it is our comfort, the strengthening of our faith.
The Fourth Sunday marks the midpoint of the Lenten journey. Variously known as Mothering Sunday, because of the Epistle reading from Galatians about “Jerusalem which is above is free; which is the mother of us all,” and, Refreshment Sunday, because of the Gospel story from John about the feeding of the multitude in the wilderness, and Laetare Sunday, because of the Introit at Mass from Isaiah 66. 10, “Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her,” it recalls us to the end of the Lenten journey; in other words to its purpose and meaning. It opens us out to “the comfort[s] of thy grace by which we may mercifully be relieved” as the Collect for The Fourth Sunday in Lent puts it, even given the knowledge “that we, who for our evil deeds do worthily deserve to be punished.” The juxtaposition of punishment and comfort is instructive about the dialectic of redemption.
Tonight, too, is The Feast of St. Patrick, which somehow can be allowed to pass without celebration, even in Lent! Yet, the Saints are part of our spiritual journey; “the cloud of witnesses” that compass us about in our “running the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith.”
George Herbert in his poem on Lent speaks of it as a “deare feast.” It is on The Fourth Sunday in Lent and the week which it graces that perhaps we get a glimpse of what that means. As he begins the very last poem of his collection of poems known as the Temple, a poem called Love (III), “Love bade me welcome” and, indeed, that captures the meaning of Lent as the pilgrimage of Love. Laetare Sunday reminds us that the Love of God provides for us. The end of the journey is equally what sustains and provides for us in the way of the journeying. The eschatological, meaning the last things, and the eucharistical, pertaining to communion, are inescapably connected. They are about our being gathered to God. As Andrewes says in a Nativity Sermon “even thus to be recollected at this feast by the Holy Communion into that blessed union, is the highest perfection we can in this life aspire unto. We then are at the highest pitch, at the very best we shall ever attain to on earth, what time we newly come from it; gathered to Christ, and by Christ to God.”
The Lenten Sundays anticipate and prepare us for Holy Week. They do so by looking back to the stories of the Old Testament and by looking ahead to the events of Christ’s Passover, the events of Holy Week. The Fourth Sunday looks back to the provisions God makes for the people of Israel in the wilderness journey of the Exodus and looks ahead to the Last Supper. Part of the meaning of the Passion is found in the providence of God who provides for us, at once making so much out of so little and, even more, making something out of the destructive nothingness of human evil. The provisions extend beyond the events to become the means of our participation in the divine life here and now. Such is the meaning of our sacramental life.
Yet, for as Herbert says, “Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back.” Why? “Guiltie of dust and sin.” The imagery is profound. It recalls us to Creation and to the Fall, to our being the dust into which God has breathed his spirit and to our turning from God to the dust at the insinuations of the serpent. Even more, it reminds us of the words of the rituals of Ash Wednesday and the words from Genesis used in the imposition of ashes. “Remember, O man, that dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return.” The story of redemption is about our being the dignified dust that God has embraced and made his own in Christ’s Incarnation; dust that has a place in the heaven of God.
“But quick-ey’d Love, observing me grow slack/ From my first entrance in,/ drew nearer to me,” the poem continues, rich in theological imagery. Love draws nearer to us even as we withdraw, “guiltie of dust and sinne.” There is the awareness in ourselves of the distance between God and us. “But quick-ey’d Love” draws near “sweetly questioning,/ if I lack’d any thing.” Divine love seeks us out, bids us welcome and sweetly questions us about our need. It is a powerful image about the Love of God who seeks our good and engages us in dialogue. Love in the poem is personified and put in capitals. Love is God.
In the second stanza, the individual soul, the first person voice of the poem, says in response to Love, “A guest, I answer’d, worthy to be here.” Following upon the knowledge of being “guiltie of dust and sinne,” this is the knowledge of the self which is called contrition, a sense of sorrow and sadness and unworthiness which is constantly recalled in The Prayer of Humble Access in the communion liturgy of The Book of Common Prayer. “We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, Trusting in our own righteousness … We are not worthy So much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table.” But “Love said, You shall be he.”
Love proclaims us worthy to be welcomed by Love. Yet the dialogue continues as the penitential “I” replies, “I the unkinde, ungratefull? Ah my deare, I cannot look on thee.” This is the moment of confession, the confession of our sins, of our unkindness and our lack of gratitude that makes us unable to look on Love. The response of Love here is wonderful. “Love took my hand, and smiling did reply, / Who made the eyes but I?” We are recalled to God as our Creator and ultimately to his purpose in our creation. But contrition and confession must be about a deeper understanding of what sin makes. John Donne recalls a famous saying of Augustine in one of his sermons on the penitential psalms. “God makes man; man makes sin.” Here the penitential “I” is convicted of that truth, the truth of our untruth, and responds in the third stanza with the words “Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them,” acknowledging our misuse of God’s creative gifts, and signaling the consequence of separation from God. “Let my shame/ Go where it doth deserve.” Contrition and Confession are here intimately connected.
Love answers with a question that opens us out to redemption, to the justifying righteousness of Christ, to the theology of atonement. “And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?” Through the witness of the Scriptures we are recalled and made aware of the Passion and Sacrifice of Christ. What we are meant to know is the divine love. That is meant to move our hearts beyond contrition and confession by opening us out to the theological theme of satisfaction as expressed for instance in the Eucharistic prayer that connects Communion with the Passion. “Jesus Christ take[s] our nature upon him” and “suffer[s] death upon the Cross for our redemption; mak[ing] there, by his one oblation of himself once offered, a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world.” Powerful language that, like the poem, signals the divine knowledge that moves our hearts beyond our own self-condemnation. The penitential “I” can now respond, “My deare, then I will serve.”
The image is that of serving at a table and recalls the story of Abram and the three men or Angels that are also said to be the Lord appearing to him “under the shade of the oak of Mamre” (Genesis 18). He offers hospitality but stands by and waits upon them. It is the setting for the promise of a son, the promised son, to Abram and Sara, his wife. Here, in Herbert’s poem, Love (III), the penitential “I” is moved at least to the idea of service. But no. Something more is given to us out of the Love of God, the love which “bore the blame” for our sins and follies. “You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat.” We are reminded of Christ’s words and actions at the last Supper on the night of his betrayal, the eve of his Passion. We are recalled to Christ’s service and sacrifice whose meat is to do the will of him who sent him.
Contrition, Confession and Satisfaction are the recurring patterns in our liturgy. They turn upon the interrelation of the doctrines of justification and sanctification. As John Donne remarks Contrition, Confession and Satisfaction belong to “a perfect and entire repentance.” Andrewes, too, speaks about the compunction that leads to comfort, to our being strengthened by the love of Christ pierced on the Cross. The compunction which complements the concept of contrition is about how we are pierced in contemplating Christ pierced on the Cross and find comfort in our sorrows. “Comfort is it by which, in the midst of all our sorrows, we are comfortati, that is strengthened and made the better able to bear them all out.” It requires our serious attention to the Passion which is exactly Andrewes’ point.
When fixing both the eyes of our meditation “upon Him That was pierced,” – as it were one eye upon the grief [our contrition for what we have done that he suffers for us], the other upon the love wherewith He was pierced, we find by both, or one of these, some motion of grace arise in our hearts; the consideration of His grief piercing our hearts with sorrow, the consideration of His love piercing our hearts with mutual love again. The one is the motion of compunction which they felt, who when they heard such things “were pricked in their hearts.” The other, the motion of comfort which they felt, who, when Christ spake to them of the necessity of His piercing, said, “Did we not feel our hearts warm within us?” That, from the shame and pain He suffered for us; this, from the comforts and benefits He thereby procured for us.
The Scriptural references are to the story of Christ on the Road to Emmaus where he teaches us about the Resurrection by way of his Passion opening their eyes and making himself known to them “in the breaking of the bread.”
Herbert’s poem speaks at once of the heavenly banquet that is eschatological but is equally eucharistical. We journey with Christ, the journey is to God and with God. The food of our spiritual wayfaring is already the sacramental form of our participation in the love of God, the Love that bades us welcome. It is our comfort and our joy. And so we may say with the penitential “I” of Herbert’s poem, “So I did sit and eat.”
Fr. David Curry
The Feast of St. Patrick
March 17th, 2015
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