Rowan Williams on the Transfiguration

The effect of hearing the story of Jesus’ transfiguration this morning — just before Lent — has the effect of framing the whole of Lent between two parallel stories. A story of Jesus going into a lonely mountainous place to pray, attended by his three closest friends: Peter; James; and John. A story in which Jesus, as He prays in solitude, enters into a mystery so great that His friends shrink from it and have no words for it. Because, you see, at the beginning of Lent we have that story of the transfiguration and at the end of Lent the story of Jesus going to pray alone in the garden of Gethsemane. The same story? Yes, but how very different. In both Jesus prays alone; in both there is a revelation of the Father; in both those three friends shrink in terror.

To frame the season of Lent in that way is to tell us that out Christian life is always, so to speak, lived between those two stories, between those two poles, those two moments of prayer and revelation. On the mountain of transfiguration, as the Gospel tells us, Peter, James and John see the veil lifted. They see, as it were, that behind and within the human flesh and blood of Jesus there is an unbearable light and glory: a radiance better than any light on earth. They see that His flesh and blood – though it is flesh and blood just like ours – is soaked through with that glory and brightness which is the work of God. They see that His human nature is shot through with God’s own freedom. And then at the other end of Lent they see that that radiance, that glory and brightness and liberty, is exercised and made real in accepting the pain of the cross for the love of humankind. They see that the blinding power of God is exercised not in crushing and controlling, but in the sacrifice of love. Perhaps it begins to make sense that we live between those two visions. We can’t understand the glorious brightness of God unless we see that God’s power and splendour is entirely focused on that sacrifice of love which sets us free and gives us life. And we can’t understand the darkness and the terror at the end of the story, at the end of Lent, unless we see that in the depths of that is the glory of God. And that, of course, is why St John, in his Gospel, again and again, refers to the crucifixion itself as Jesus being made glorious. The dazzling freedom of God, the total weakness of God, bound together, woven together, in one vision, in one person, in Jesus Christ.

 – Rowan Williams, Morning Sermon at Canterbury Cathedral, March 2, 2003

We Know All Things But the Truth

Step softly, under snow or rain,
    To find the place where men can pray;
The way is all so very plain
    That we may lose the way.

Oh, we have learnt to peer and pore
    On tortured puzzles from our youth,
We know all labyrinthine lore,
We are the three wise men of yore,
    And we know all things but the truth.

We have gone round and round the hill
    And lost the wood among the trees,
And learnt long names for every ill,
And served the mad gods, naming still
    The furies the Eumenides.

The gods of violence took the veil
    Of vision and philosophy,
The Serpent that brought all men bale,
He bites his own accursed tail,
    And calls himself Eternity.

Go humbly…it has hailed and snowed…
    With voices low and lanterns lit;
So very simple is the road,
    That we may stray from it.

The world grows terrible and white,
    And blinding white the breaking day;
We walk bewildered in the light,
For something is too large for sight,
    And something much too plain to say.

The Child that was ere worlds begun
    (…We need but walk a little way,
We need but see a latch undone…)
The Child that played with moon and sun
    Is playing with a little hay.

The house from which the heavens are fed,
    The old strange house that is our own,
Where trick of words are never said,
And Mercy is as plain as bread,
    And Honour is as hard as stone.

Go humbly, humble are the skies,
    And low and large and fierce the Star;
So very near the Manger lies
    That we may travel far.

Hark! Laughter like a lion wakes
    To roar to the resounding plain.
And the whole heaven shouts and shakes,
    For God Himself is born again,
And we are little children walking
    Through the snow and rain.

G. K. Chesterton, The Wise Men

Education as Life

Education in the Church’s doctrines is not merely a matter of abstraction or learning, a kind of theological grammar. Salvation in Christ is not simply a matter of the mind or of checking off a list of the correct ideas. Education in the faith requires witness, testimony to one’s relationship with Christ and how one came to know, love, and serve him. This can be presented in words, but it most powerfully displays itself in a way of life that demonstrates how the revelatory truths of the faith expressed in doctrines are concretized in actions and activities. Education in the Church’s faith falters and fails if it is not rooted in an invitation to accept a unique way of life. If the teacher does not embody this way of life in Christ-like behaviors, then the risk is that the doctrines might be presented correctly, but the meaning and mysticism of those doctrines will be thwarted.

~ Fr. Stephen Grunnow, “A Word from the Institute,” Evangelization and Culture, Autumn 2023

Love and Fidelity

What is love without fidelity? In the ultimate analysis, it is nothing but a lie. For the deepest meaning of ever love, the inner “word” uttered in love, is the orientation toward and giving of oneself to the beloved, a giving that knows no time limit. No fluctuation in the course of life can shatter it. Only a deep change in the beloved person can affect our love if it be true love. A man who would say, “I love you now, but how long it will last, I cannot tell,” does not truly love; he does not even suspect the very nature of love. Faithfulness is so essentially one with love, that everyone, at least as long as he loves, must consider his devotion an undying devotion. This holds good for every love, for parental and filial love, for friendship and for spousal love. The deeper a love, the more it is pervaded by fidelity.

~ Dietrich von Hildebrand, The Art of Living

In Your Hands

This is the law of life on earth:
for every thing that comes to birth,
man and woman, child and mother,
the life of each is in the other.

This is the law of life in Heaven:
we must forgive to be forgiven.
Hands that close and will not give,
cannot receive, and will not live.

Thus by Thy divine decree,
to each other, as to Thee,
we must say with trepidation,
“In your hands is my salvation.”

~ Peter Kreeft, “In Your Hands,” An Ocean Full of Angels

St. Augustine on the Incarnation

Man’s Maker was made man, that He, Ruler of the stars, might nurse at His mother’s breasts; that the Bread might be hungry, the Fountain thirst, the Light sleep, the Way be tired from the journey; that the Truth might be accused by false witnesses, the Judge of the living and the dead be judged by a mortal judge, Justice be sentenced by the unjust, the Teacher be beaten with whips, the Vine be crowned with thorns, the Foundation be suspended on wood; that Strength might be made weak, that He who makes well might be wounded, that Life might die. He was made man to suffer these and similar undeserved things for us, that He might free us who were undeserving; and He who on account of us endured such great evils, merited no evil, while we who through Him were so bountifully blessed, had no merits to show for such blessings. Therefore, because of all this, He who before all ages and without a beginning determined by days was the Son of God, saw fit in these latter days to be the Son of man; and He, who was born of the Father but not made by the Father, was made in the mother whom He had made, that He might sometime be born here on earth of her who could never have been anywhere except through Him.

~ St. Augustine, Christmas Sermon 191

A New Thing Comes

Even in the old days [God] never asked men to do what was reasonable. Men can do that for themselves. They can buy and sell, heal and govern. But then out of some deep place comes the command to do what makes no sense of all – to build a ship on dry ground; to sit among the dunghills; to marry a whore; to set their son on the altar of sacrifice. Then, if men have faith, a new thing comes.

~ William Golding, The Spire

The Rules of the Drink

Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable. Never drink when you are wretched without it, or you will be like the grey-faced gin-drinker in the slum; but drink when you would be happy without it, and you will be like the laughing peasant of Italy. Never drink because you need it, for this is rational drinking, and the way to death and hell. But drink because you do not need it, for this is irrational drinking, and the ancient health of the world.

~ G. K. Chesterton, Heretics