Author: CCW

“Art thou he that should come or do we look for another?”

Among the many great and imaginative features of Dante’s poetic and theological Summa, The Divine Comedy, there is the amazing poetic invention of the Vestibule of Hell, a place deliberately designed by God, Dante suggests, for those souls unworthy of either Heaven or Hell! They are “a dismal company of wretched spirits” barely worthy of mention, who willed and then unwilled their will, unable to commit to anything. They follow for eternity the whirling banners of the ages, chasing first this and then that, utterly distracted and endlessly fickle. Vergil, the pilgrim Dante’s guide, explains that “they’re mingled with the caitiff angel-crew/Who against God rebelled not, nor to Him/were faithful, but to self alone were true.” Heaven has cast them forth and Hell rejects them too!

“But to self alone were true.” That is a haunting indictment of much of our contemporary world where being true to yourself has often been touted as the highest virtue, taking literally Polonius’ tendentious advice in Shakespeare’s Hamlet. What we have forgotten is what Dante knew. You cannot be true to yourself without being true to God and to the good order of his creation. Self-knowledge requires knowledge of others and of an objective order without which no knowledge is possible.

(more…)

Print this entry

“For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour,
who is Christ the Lord”

All the fuss and rush and busyness of this time of year, it seems to me, cannot hide the real wonder and mystery of Christmas. Somehow, it breaks through even in a world that is torn and divided, religiously and politically, socially and economically. It is easy, of course, to be cynical and despairing about Christmas, to see it as overly commercialized and caramelized with sentimentality and hype. No doubt, it is. And no doubt, too, some of us can’t wait until all the fuss and bother is over and done with for another year. Throw out the tinsel with the tree!

And yet, there are “the hopes and fears of all the years” that are found even in the busyness of the season. There are the hopes and desires of our humanity for peace and joy, the hopes and aspirations for truth and righteousness in a world that seems, at times, so false and frightening, so dark and disturbing. There is much, no doubt, that distresses and perplexes. And yet, the strong notes of something more make their presence felt in story and song, if we would but sit and listen. There are the things that abide even in the passing of the season. They are about the things of God with us. Emmanuel means God with us.

“For unto you is born this day,” St Luke proclaims with a kind of excitement and urgency, “a Saviour who is Christ the Lord.” It is a remarkable statement. It opens us out to hope and joy, to something more beyond the depressing realities of our daily lives.

It is the burden of the Christian witness to proclaim Messiah’s birth, to celebrate “the Word made flesh”. It is the message of the season of Christmas, to be sure, but one which connects with those universal “hopes and fears” in human hearts and gives them voice and meaning, allows them to take flesh, as it were, and live in us. Peace and joy, truth and righteousness are not empty words and meaningless concepts. No. They are the ideals that dignify and adorn our humanity, ideals that challenge and convict our hearts. The things that abide are the things that won’t go away. Perhaps we need the crazy business of the Christmas season to remind us, yet again, of the things which really matter, the things which abide even in the face of our distracted and weary busyness.

(more…)

Print this entry

“That we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope”

Scripture speaks to Scripture, opening out to us the Word that carries hope in its breath. The Holy Scriptures are “written for our learning,” St. Paul exclaims, and Archbishop Cranmer prays the same in the wonderful Collect that adorns this day and this week, a Collect that embodies a whole approach to the Scriptures. It encapsulates a way of understanding the Scriptures. They are writings that teach us “that we through patience and comfort of [them] might have hope.”

Hope is one of the great lessons of the Scriptures. Why? Because hope is precisely something which is not dependent upon us. The hope to which the Scriptures awaken us is real hope, the hope that has realized the utter limitations of human endeavour, the hope that has faced the empty abyss of ourselves and the vanity of our actions, the hope that has considered the reality of sin and death. Of suffering and hardship. Looking into the things of judgment and condemnation, hope also looks up to God and to the coming of God into our midst.

The coming is hope itself. We look for what we do not see. We wait for it. In the coming of Christ we look for what we do not see in ourselves but see in him, namely, the redemption of our wounded and weary humanity, of our dark and suffering world. But it takes the Word proclaimed and celebrated to awaken us and to sustain us in the hope of the Gospel and in the hope that we might begin to see this even in our selves.

(more…)

Print this entry