Week 3 Monday (Year 2)

Readings: 2 Timothy 1.1-8 OR Titus 1.1-5; Psalm 95(96); Mark 3:22-30

[Homily on the ferial gospel reading, Mark 3.22-30]

Jesus leads our thoughts from one kind of power to a deeper, more radical kind. His first response to the criticism that he casts out demons by the prince of demons, is to appeal to political and military common sense: there is strength in unity, and kingdoms are built in that way. This is how that kind of power works, consolidating, integrating, uniting. If Satan is fighting against Satan then his kingdom is already coming to an end. So it's unlikely that what is happening through Jesus is the work of Satan since his work is opposed to Satan's.

A second, reasonable, thought is that this means the house of Satan is already occupied, his kingdom has been penetrated, Jesus' work is reaching inside, to undo the power of Satan. He is casting out demons, healing bodies and hearts, converting souls and minds. That all this is happening through him means the strong man has already been overcome.

In a third moment our thoughts are led deeper, to thinking about the power that changes minds and hearts, the power of truth and love. They are words easily used, perhaps more often than not glibly used, and it is crucial that we remember always that they apply in the first place to God, and to the Son he has sent. Any access we have to truth and love, to appropriating truth and love, to being able to receive truth and love - these are matters of understanding and freedom, and the power that touches and changes human understanding and freedom is the most radical kind of power.

 

This is where the Holy Spirit is at work, enabling the acknowledgement of truth and the choice of what is good. To be able to place an obstacle there, to paralyse and frustrate this power, is mysterious. This is the eternal sin, the blasphemy against the Holy Spirit that is beyond forgiveness. It means closing down completely our capacity for receiving truth and love, shutting ourselves off from the healing power of Christ, making ourselves impervious to God's mercy. In a word, hell.

So the movement of the Gospel reading is from common sense about warfare and politics, to recognising the contrast between the kingdom of Jesus and that of Satan, to a kind of shock in realising what sin might mean: a mind closed to truth, a heart resistant to goodness. At this point in the ministry of Jesus we begin to realise that his work will generate resistance and opposition, he will not always be celebrated and honoured. Whatever the reasons for it are, human beings will not always be ready to acknowledge what is true and to love what is good. And they will come to hate the one who offers them these things.

Already the shadow of a deeper engagement falls across the preaching of Jesus, an ominous premonition of what his battle with the power of evil might yet require.

Week 3 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: Isaiah 8:23b-9:3; Psalm 26/27; 1 Corinthians 1:10-13, 17; Matthew 4:12-23

We hear again one of the most beautifully poetic passages in the Bible - 'Land of Zebulun! Land of Naphtali! Way of the sea on the far side of Jordan, Galilee of the nations!'. If we were to go straight to the second part of today's gospel the call of the first apostles would seem quite spooky, as if a complete stranger suddenly turned up at the lakeside, called them away from their work and their families, and 'immediately' (we have it twice in Matthew's account) they left everything and followed him. It is hardly credible, on a human level.

People speculate about the physical presence of Jesus, how he might have made himself compelling for these men so that they were ready to do this, or of some powerful impulse of the Holy Spirit moving their minds and hearts from within so that they knew that this was what they should do. But reading the first part of the gospel passage opens another possibility which makes the response of the disciples more reasonable, more credible.

'Hearing that John had been arrested': this is a key moment in the unfolding of the mission of Jesus. We know that he and John the Baptist came on the scene together and that the mission of each is intimately bound up with the mission of the other. The moment of John's arrest is a sign, a trigger, for Jesus and it is from this moment that his public ministry began. The final act of the drama, in which they are both key players, has now begun.

We know that Jesus attached himself to the movement of thought and action that surrounded John the Baptist. He came to John for baptism. It is not unreasonable to think that Peter, Andrew, James and John were also associated with that movement. The gospels do not say that they were but neither do they say that they were not.

Let's imagine that Jesus had already met them, along with John the Baptist and that, like Mary, Simeon, Anna and others, they were people who looked for the salvation of Israel, people who looked for the coming of the Messiah. It is not unreasonable and it makes Jesus' return to Galilee, to seek out these men, a perfectly plausible course of action at a human level. He knew that something very significant had happened with the arrest of John. He knew that the time had come for the Messiah to begin his public work. He went to Galilee to call these men, also disciples of the Baptist, to be with him in his mission.

At the level of God's unfolding plan we also learn much from that first part of the gospel reading. The passage it quotes from Isaiah is a messianic text, written centuries before Jesus, to comfort and console an oppressed people, to offer to the people of that region words of encouragement and the promise of light and joy. Matthew quotes it to teach us that the longer term promise implicit in this text - its Messianic significance - is fulfilled in the arrival of Jesus in the very same territory of Zebulun and Naphtali.

This fulfilment is for the chosen people who carry the promises of God for the world. So Jesus begins to preach in the synagogues. But this fulfilment is also for all people. So Jesus begins to preach in the streets, on the hilltops and from the boats. He is a teacher and healer, bringing light wherever there is darkness and joy wherever there is illness.

The first part of the gospel gives us the triggers, then, that help us to understand the second part. One trigger is the arrest of John: Jesus knows that now he must take the lead in announcing the kingdom. He comes to Galilee to find men to help him, perhaps men he had already met in the circle of the Baptist. The second trigger is the text from Isaiah which Matthew implies is the key to interpreting the beginning of Jesus' public ministry. (In this it functions in the same way as the text from Isaiah 61 which, Luke tells us, Jesus read in the synagogue at Nazareth.) We know that Isaiah 8-9 is a messianic text and here is the Messiah, the One bringing light and joy, the source of unity for Paul's divided communities, the founder of the new Israel (Zebulun and Naphtali), the Saviour of humankind (Galilee of the nations).

And he continues even today to call people - you and me - to be with him in his mission.

Saint Francis de Sales - 24 January

Life and Teaching of St Francis de Sales

He was born at Savoy in 1567 and was ordained a priest in December 1593. As a seminarian he was already using Scupoli’s work. In 1602 he was consecrated Bishop of Geneva but because of the Protestant Reformation, of which Geneva was one of the main centres, he was unable to live there and spent most of his life at Annecy, just across the border in France. He travelled, preached and wrote tirelessly and was much sought after as a spiritual director. He was energetic in using the media of communication available in his day, publishing many pamphlets about the Catholic faith, and for this he is recognized as the patron saint of journalists. He died in 1622 and is buried at Annecy. Canonized by Pope Alexander VII in 1665, just forty years after his death, he was declared a doctor of the Church by Pius IX in 1887.

The writings of Francis de Sales reveal his own humanity in the first place, his knowledge of human nature, his compassion for men and women, and his understanding of the difficulties experienced by people trying to live the Christian life well. He also spoke from personal experience, informed by his earlier anxiety about his salvation, from his experience of conflict between Christian communities, from his experience of the challenges that faced him as a bishop as well as from what he learned through spiritual direction, both received and given.

With Francis de Sales the concerns of the modern world and the needs of lay Catholics begin to be felt: how to help Christians living in the world with various responsibilities to live a life of prayer and devotion. How are they to seek and to live out what Scupoli termed ‘perfection’ according to the possibilities and the duties of each person’s state in life? It has been said (by the Church historian Philip Hughes) that in Francis de Sales the French Renaissance is baptized. He represents a form of Christian humanism and succeeded, where Erasmus had failed, in ‘making humanism devout’ (this latter phrase seems to originate with Henri Bremond). Francis was much influenced by Ignatius Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, was directed for most of his life by Jesuits, and took another great saint of the 16th century, Charles Borromeo (1538-1584), as his model for how to live and work as a bishop. He was also familiar with the writings of Teresa (whom he refers to as ‘Avila’) and John of the Cross.

Charles Borromeo (1538-1584) became the paradigmatic bishop of the Tridentine church. His pastoral care and government were the model and inspiration for bishops and other leaders. Pope John XXIII, for example, in his work as a historian, prepared editions of the visitation charges of Charles Borromeo to his own diocese of Bergamo. Charles continued to shape and inform Church leaders, therefore, and in very significant ways right through to the Second Vatican Council.

To return to Francis de Sales: he is a bridge between the Renaissance and the modern period and one of the most important writers on Christian spirituality between the 17th century and the present day. To take just one example from the 20th century, the Irish Benedictine spiritual writer Blessed Columba Marmion was very much influenced by Francis de Sales and brings to his spiritual writings the same qualities of moderation and discretion. Francis continues to inspire and guide people through his writings of which the most important are Treatise on the Love of God, Conferences, and above all his Introduction to the Devout Life. We learn a lot about his spirituality, and also get a clear sense of his personality, from his collected Letters.

One of his main achievements was to move the principal concerns of the Christian spiritual life out of the context of cloistered religious life. He applied the fundamentals of the spiritual life to all Christians, recognizing the richness of the diverse vocations within the Church. His best-known work, Introduction to the Devout Life, was written for lay people rather than for monks, religious women, or priests. Perhaps this was the first treatise written specifically for the ‘ordinary Christian’. There had been books of prayers and other devotions intended for lay people produced in the Middle Ages but this was the first theological reflection on how the Christian person is to live a spiritual life in the circumstances of family life, daily work, social involvement, and so on. It first appeared in 1609 and the final edition with corrections made by Francis himself was published in 1619, just three years before his death.

For Francis, as for Lorenzo Scupoli, the devout life is not any kind of extraordinary grace or favour. Even the highest things promised by the great works on mysticism are not themselves virtues, he says, but rather rewards that God gives for virtues, or small samples of the joys of the future life. A purely intellectual contemplation, the essential application of the spirit, a supereminent life – one should not aspire to such graces, Francis says, because they are in no way necessary for loving and serving God well, which should be our only aim.

In fairness to them, Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross say the same thing and warn against becoming preoccupied with special experiences or para-normal phenomena in prayer. This is not what it is about: it is about turning away from sin, growing in virtue, and giving ourselves as fully as possible to loving and serving God, according to God’s will, and for the sole purpose of giving glory to God. With Francis de Sales the characteristic spirituality of the Catholic Reformation is fully established, informed by the great Spanish spiritual writers of the previous century, but given a more practical and pastoral application by him as by Scupoli and other Italian and French spiritual writers.

What Francis de Sales calls ‘true devotion’ does not consist in any particular spiritual exercise. He notes that people sometimes place their virtue in austerity, or abstinence, or almsgiving, or frequenting the sacraments, or prayer, or a certain sort of passive and supereminent contemplation – he takes the ground from under everybody by saying that those who do this are all mistaken. ‘They take the effects for the causes, the brook for the spring, the branches for the root, the accessory for the principal, the shadow for the substance.’ ‘For me’, he concludes, ‘I neither know nor have experienced any other Christian perfection than that of loving God with all our heart and our neighbour as ourselves. Every other perfection without this one is a false perfection.’

So true devotion or Christian perfection consists simply in fulfilling the twofold precept of charity taught by Christ (Matt 22:34-40). It is nothing other than the true love of God, a love which is true because it is the divine love itself making our souls beautiful. This love is also called grace, because it makes us pleasing to God. It is called charity, because it gives us the power to do good. And it is called devotion, because it not only makes us do good but makes us do it carefully, frequently and promptly. The three terms – grace, charity, devotion – are central to all Salesian spirituality.

Devotion, or holiness, is for all. Love is absolutely primary, and Jesus, meek and humble of heart, is its model and way. In practice Francis proposes the journey which had by then become standard for any Catholic or Christian spiritual quest. There needs to be purgation from sin and renunciation of all attachment to sin. The person must seek to avoid all ‘occasions of sin’ and confirm the seriousness of their intention by making a general confession. He proposes a schedule of spiritual exercises including morning and evening prayer, a daily examination of conscience, spiritual reading, and frequent reception of the sacraments of confession and Holy Communion.

Mental prayer, or meditation, should be part of the Christian’s daily activity. These exercises need to be adapted to the specific vocation of each person, for each one’s growth in virtue is connected with developing the virtues proper to their vocation. All must grow in charity, meekness and humility. All must turn away from sin and engage in the spiritual exercises recommended. But the particular regime, or spirituality, of each person depends also on each one’s commitments and relationships in the Church and in society.

Regarding prayer, Francis de Sales offers some guidelines on how to set about meditation or mental prayer, a way of approaching it which became common particularly with the influence also of Ignatius’s Spiritual Exercises. For Francis there should be a time of preparation in which we remember that we are in the presence of God, we ask God’s help, we place ourselves within the Biblical scene of whichever mystery from the life of Christ we wish to meditate (composition of place). There follows a time of meditation, thinking about the theme, the words of Christ in that moment, and the action involved in the event. One should then move to involve also the will in expressing affection and in considering resolutions to act with greater conformity to Christ. The conclusion should involve acts of thanksgiving, offering and petition. After the time of meditation there should be a moment of reflection and recollection before returning to the duties of one’s particular vocation and to implementing the resolutions made during the meditation. (He gives these schemes for meditation in Introduction to the Devout Life I.9-18 and II.2-9.)

He follows Ignatius in offering a series of sample meditations with advice about how to place oneself in the biblical scene, what points to ponder in each case and what resolutions to consider making. As one moves through these meditations there will be a need also to make ‘elections’, decisions about one’s way of living and perhaps also about one’s vocation. The ten meditations he presents in Introduction to the Devout Life I.9-18 he sees as preparation for a general confession, underlining that moment in which the person confirms the seriousness of their purpose in wanting to live a life of devotion.

Once a person is established in seeking to live the devout life, having undertaken the necessary via purgativa by turning away from sin and participating in the sacramental life of the Church, they can then concentrate on developing the virtues necessary to persevere in their desire and to grow in their love of God and neighbour. Book III of the Introduction to the Devout Life considers these virtues, not only with wise theological insight but also with shrewd psychological understanding. For example, is it the first time that we find a spiritual writer devoting a section of his work to ‘meekness towards ourselves’ (III.9)? Or dealing at such length on the importance of ‘friendship’ (III.17-22)? In the following book he considers the temptations that will come to discourage the person including simple ‘anxiety’ (IV.11), for which he can draw on his personal experience as a young man terrified at the prospect of his own damnation. He knows the difficulty of persevering in one’s good intentions and so recommends a substantial annual retreat in order to confirm and strengthen those intentions (Book V).

Salesian spirituality thus unifies all Christian morality and holiness around the great commandment of love. Perfection is not found in any particular spiritual exercise, practice or experience but rather in the love of God and neighbour. Perfection understood in this way is the vocation of all Christian people. Fundamental to growing in the observance of this commandment are mental prayer and the cultivation of the virtues proper to one’s state in life.

The heart of Christ mediates God and God’s love to human hearts and so the spiritual life means becoming conformed to the ways of Jesus’s heart. Francis succeeded in giving warmth to his spiritual doctrine, saying that only the language of the heart can ever reach another heart, a phrase which John Henry Newman later took as his motto, cor ad cor loquitur (heart speaks to heart). At the same time, Francis avoided sentimentality in his spiritual teaching for it is a doctrine that requires determination, self-sacrifice and unconditional surrender to God. Devotion, he says, ‘is nothing other than that spiritual agility and vivacity by which charity works in us, or we work with her aid, with alacrity and affection’.

The spirituality of Francis de Sales can be summarized in the contents of a letter written in 1604, five years before the appearance of Introduction to the Devout Life. The means of attaining perfection vary according to the diversity of callings, he says. Whether we are religious, widows or married persons, all must seek perfection, but not all by the same means. The principal means of uniting oneself to God are the sacraments and prayer and the ways by which we unite ourselves with our neighbour are very numerous. In whatever way we do it, we must practise love for our neighbor and express it outwardly. It can be done, for example, by visiting hospitals to comfort the sick, to have compassion for their infirmities and to pray for them. We can do it by fulfilling the duties we have towards our spouse and families. In everything charity must prevail and enlighten us so that we yield to the wishes of our neighbor in whatever is not contrary to the commandments of God.

Francis de Sales lived this spiritual teaching in his own life of prayer, preaching, writing and spiritual direction. In his letters we see how he listened and responded to each person according to their individual needs, showing great psychological insight as well as creativity in imparting his spiritual teaching. He helped people to distinguish between feelings and the will, as also between God and their awareness or non-awareness of God. In his Treatise on the Love of God we see him engaging with the mystical aspect of the spiritual life, relying in important ways on Thomas Aquinas, and explaining how the love of God arises, grows and develops in the human soul. While he speaks there about the higher experiences of union with God, this work also concludes with a consideration of ordinary life and the practice of the virtues needed every day if people are to persevere in prayer, carry out their duties, and grow in their love for God and neighbour.

His great friend Jane Frances de Chantal (1572-1641) summed up his personal spiritual condition in words that clearly echo those of the great Carmelites in their descriptions of union with God: ‘he kept his spirit within (an) inner solitude,’, she said, ‘living in the topmost point of the spirit, without depending on any feelings or on any light save that of a bare and simple faith’.

Week 02 Monday (Year 2)

 Readings: 1 Samuel 16.15-23; Psalm 50; Mark 2:18-22 

One of the shortest books of the Bible is the Song of Songs, a collection of love poetry that celebrates the love of a bride and a groom of ancient Israel. For example, the bride: ‘my beloved is mine and I am his; he pastures his flock among the lilies. Until the day breathes, and the shadows flee, turn, my beloved, be like a gazelle or a young stag on the cleft mountains’ (2:16-17). And the groom; ‘how beautiful you are, my love, how very beautiful. Your eyes are doves behind your veil. Your hair is like a flock of goats moving down the slopes of Gilead’ (4:1).

The Rabbis were somewhat taken aback by the explicit imagery to be found in these poems and decided that it should be understood as an ‘allegory’. In other words, it was not really about what it seemed to be about. It was actually concerned with the love affair that the Lord, the God of Israel, had been carrying on with His people for many centuries. The groom is God and the bride is Israel.

There are lots of other texts in the Jewish scriptures that helped to support this interpretation, many places where this is exactly how the relationship between God and Israel is described. God is besotted with this people and is totally taken by them. He is madly jealous when they go after other gods and does not hold back from expressing his anger at their infidelity (chapter 16 of Ezekiel is the most startling of these passages). The prophet Hosea speaks of God luring Israel to a deserted place where He can ‘speak to her heart’. There she will respond to Him as she did when she was young. There He will betroth her to himself forever in integrity, justice, tenderness, and love (Hosea 2).

It is all very beautiful and is taken up by Christians later on. There are many occasions on which Jesus refers to himself as ‘the bridegroom’. An example is today’s gospel reading. The Messiah was the bridegroom of Israel, the one sent by God to betroth the people to Him once again. His coming would be a nuptial event, a time of celebration and joy, the prelude to the great marriage-feast of the Lamb. All would be fresh and new: new clothes for the party, new wineskins for the bubbly and effervescent new wine, all things made new in this union of earth and heaven (Revelation 21-22).

Marriage remains ‘a great mystery’ for the early Christians, not in the sense in which we might be sometimes tempted to say that, but in the sense that the committed fidelity of bride and groom symbolises the relationship between Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5). Marriage is a symbol of God’s love for human beings and this is understood, in the Catholic Church, in the strongest possible sense. Marriage is one of those central symbolic actions we call ‘sacraments’. A sacrament does not merely point to some deeper reality beyond itself. In God’s design a sacrament makes that deeper reality actually present in and through the human words and actions involved. In other words the love between husband and wife does not merely point to some deeper and higher meaning. Their love becomes that deeper and higher reality while remaining as fully human as we know it to be. When a married man loves his wife, Christ loves the church. When a married woman loves her husband, the church loves Christ.

Christian monks and others were just as shocked as the Rabbis had been at the explicit imagery of the Song of Songs. They followed the Rabbis and decided the work was an allegory, this time for the relationship between the Christian soul (the bride) and Christ (the groom) as they are united in the higher reaches of mystical prayer. The most famous example is the Spiritual Canticle of Saint John of the Cross. It is based on the Song of Songs and celebrates – in what I believe is some of the most beautiful poetry ever written in Spanish – the desires, disappointments, anxieties and joys of love.

It seems as if there are four weddings then: the man and the woman, God and Israel, Christ and the Church, Christ and the Christian soul. But in reality they are all one. For every Christian is a member of the body of Christ which is the Church. The Church is the new Israel, the people of God in this time and place. And the man and woman whose relationship is sacramental are Christ and the Church, for this is what a sacrament means.

This is why marriage is such an important vocation within the Christian community. And because these four weddings are one, we can return to the Song of Songs and appreciate it not only for its allegorical meaning but for its literal meaning, as a poem that celebrates sexual love. Someone gave G.K.Chesterton a copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover thinking that the great Catholic apologist would be scandalised. On reading it, Chesterton is reported to have commented that ‘all it lacks is the sacrament of marriage’.

Week 02 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: Isaiah 49:3, 5-6; Psalm 39; 1 Corinthians 1:1-3; John 1:29-34

'I did not know him', says John the Baptist in today's gospel. He says it twice and yet he also points him out as the Lamb of God. In Matthew's account of the baptism of Jesus, which we read last week, John knows him very well. So how are we to take these two declarations, 'I did not know him'?

They have to mean something like this: 'I needed him to be pointed out to me first so that I could point him out to you'. Or: 'I did not know the full significance and meaning of his coming'.

One can have knowledge of Jesus Christ, know about him, and this knowledge can be extensive and accurate. A person might know a lot about the Biblical titles that are given to Jesus: Messiah, Lamb of God, Servant of the Lord, Chosen One of God, Light of the Nations. It is relatively easy to gather this knowledge and to understand how these titles are used throughout the Bible, how they were developed by Christians, how they might have been used by Jesus himself.

Perhaps John means 'I did not know how he would fill and complete and expand the meaning and content of ancient prophecies and titles'. It is only from what we know already that we can move to the knowledge of something new. So even with the knowledge of these Biblical titles, there is nothing apart from the Spirit of Jesus that would enable a person to conclude from them to the fact of Jesus, his work, his identity.

We might even claim to know more than John the Baptist in knowing what Jesus himself revealed and what the Church later came to believe about Him.

'I did not know him myself' is how one translation puts it. It then seems to mean 'I did not know him by myself', or 'I did not know him out of myself'. John needed a particular help of the Holy Spirit in order to recognise Jesus. And we can put on his lips these words also: 'I did not know the full reality of His divine mystery because that would be to claim to know God'. Whatever knowledge of God we can claim to have is only had through signs and witnesses and the inner teaching of the Holy Spirit. How else could we come to 'see' not just the human being pointed out by John, Jesus from Nazareth, but who He is?

Nevertheless John pointed him out. The defendant in a courtroom is the one pointed out by witnesses, to be sure of his identity. It is a particular person that is indicated. There is a famous pointing of the finger by Jesus in Caravaggio's Call of St Matthew. John, without knowing many things about Jesus, was nevertheless the one who picked him out, presented him to society, we might say.

'I did not know him'. I did not then know his significance for my life and for the life of the world. Knowing by addition will never get me there. It is another kind of knowing that we seek, another kind of enlightenment, the knowing we call faith. All who believe can endorse what the Baptist says: 'I did not know him by myself'. A particular kind of help is needed if we are to believe. It is with other eyes that we see the One on whom the Spirit remains and from whom the Spirit is given. But coming to believe, like all ways of knowing, requires teachers, signs and God teaching within, He who is the source of our capacity to appreciate truth. All who believe in Him become children of God which means witnesses in the power of the Spirit that illuminates, clarifies and brings to light, the Spirit of truth.

You will find here another homily for today

Saint Antony of Egypt - 17 January

THE SPIRITUALITY OF THE DESERT FATHERS AND MOTHERS

With the ending of the time of persecution and the ‘peace of the Church’ the kind of idealism and total dedication in following Christ that were available to Christians throughout the centuries of persecution were no longer offered in the same form. A desire for complete dedication and a radical following of Jesus led many to the edges of normal, civilised life and even into the desert to seek to be with Christ there.

Forms of ascetical and monastic life were not unknown even before this time in pagan as well as Jewish contexts. Augustine in his Confessions tells us about some of these, reporting in particular how what he heard about the dedication of monks in Egypt affected his own life. In Confessions Book VIII 6.14 he tells how a fellow African, Ponticianus, came to visit him in Milan and told him about ‘the monk Antony of Egypt, whose name was illustrious and held in high honour among (God’s) servants, though we had never heard it until this moment’. Augustine and his friends were amazed at what they were being told, while Ponticianus was amazed that Augustine had not yet heard of Antony:

His (Ponticianus’) discourse led on from this topic to the proliferation of monasteries, the sweet fragrance rising up to you from the lives of monks, and the fecund wastelands of the desert. We had known nothing of all this. There was even a monastery full of good brothers at Milan, outside the city walls, under Ambrose’s care, yet we were unaware of it (Confessions VIII 6.15).

Augustine and his friends had been considering how they might withdraw from ordinary life and live together with leisure for study and the pursuit of wisdom, as a community of friends sharing their resources, while also recognising the difficulties presented by celibacy and chastity (Confessions VI 11.18 – 16.26). Now Ponticianus told them about some friends at Trier who had come across The Life of Antony and were so moved by it that they gave up their plans to pursue careers in the Emperor’s service and gave themselves instead to the pursuit of friendship with God.

Hearing of Antony, and the effect of his example on others, provided the impulse for a fresh departure in Augustine’s journey of conversion. Now he was hearing about a more radical form of religious life, not one centred on the desire for leisure and study but one given in the first place to the love of holiness and to the service of God. Note that there are already ‘desert mothers’ included among the desert ‘fathers’: among the sayings of the early Christian monks are contributions from Sarah, Theodora, Syncletica, Matrona and Mary of Egypt.

It was above all the life of Saint Antony of Egypt (251-358) that made the desert form of religious life known throughout the Church, East and West. The life is attributed to Saint Athanasius, the great Bishop of Alexandria, and was translated into Latin by Jerome’s friend Evagrius. At about the age of twenty Antony chose to live a life of seclusion. He had already been thinking about the freedom needed to live a spiritual life when, listening to the gospel being read in church one day, he heard the Lord Jesus say to him ‘if you would be perfect go and sell all you have and then come, follow me’. He took this as the sign that he should seek to implement what he had been considering, sold all he had, gave the money to the poor (having first seen to the economic security of his sister), and then moved to the outskirts of town to live as far as possible without distractions.

The stages of Antony’s spiritual life have been identified as the reordering of life, spiritual warfare, and spiritual fatherhood. The reordering of life meant his disengagement, as far as possible, from the affairs of the world, in order to free himself from the attachments and duties that bound him to the world up to then. What happens initially on doing this, as Antony’s experience teaches so clearly, is that a person becomes aware of just how distorted and disordered their thoughts and desires have become. Saint Paul too had spoken about this in writing to the Romans:

For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God's law, indeed it cannot (Rom 8:5-7)

The asceticism required to help ‘the mind’ gain mastery over ‘the flesh’ involved manual work, charity, and prayer. The first helped him meet the necessities of living, the second was possible because he needed less, and the third was nourished particularly on Scripture. He realised very quickly how much he needed a discipline or training appropriate to the project he had undertaken.

This first stage of re-ordering life involved a twofold process, firstly coming to know himself better and the ways in which his thoughts and desires were confused, distorted, and directed; and secondly, through the grace of the Spirit coming to have thoughts and desires worthy of the calling to which he had given himself. The various ascetical practices in which he and the other desert monks engaged were designed to facilitate this change of mind, this ‘metanoia’, and to turn their thoughts and desires away from the world and towards Christ and his kingdom. The penitential disciplines, especially prayer, were aimed at keeping the mind pure in thought so that God could be known and even seen (Matthew 5.8).

This initial stage of ascetic purgation was followed by a second, that of spiritual warfare. Here the one seeking to follow Christ and to grow into Him has greater strength and so is ready for a deeper exploration of the roots of sin. This experience, particularly among the Desert Fathers, contributed to their understanding of the deadly sins (see section 2E below). What is involved is a battle with Satan and his angels whose points of entry into human hearts and lives are the places of vulnerability and weakness in human nature – fears, insecurities, conflicts, self-deceptions.

The people of Israel, in the course of their wandering in the desert, learned about these things in themselves. In the temptations of Jesus he is presented with these possibilities of pride, gluttony, and vainglory. But in him we see a human nature that has greater power than any of these things and he proves victorious over them all. The early chapters of the Gospel of Mark, for example, show us how Jesus has authority over all the forces of nature, whether these forces are animal, cosmic, or demonic.

The desert fathers saw a reference to the deadly sins in Jesus’ account of a house that has been swept and put in order only for the demon that had been driven out of it to return with seven demons more evil than himself (Matthew 12:43-45). The monk in the desert became aware, through this spiritual warfare, of the ways in which his house was still occupied by the enemy. He learned that he needed to re-double his efforts at prayer and rely ever more deeply on the grace of God’s Holy Spirit.

What resources did they have for responding to the challenges of the demons? One of the most important ones is what they call ‘talking back’. In this they followed the example of Jesus who in response to the temptations of Satan ‘talked back’ to him, and did so by quoting the scriptures. it is therefore the Word of God which is the main weapon of the monk in his struggle (Ephesians 6.17; Hebrews 4.12). Talking back is also what David does in many of the psalms which are particularly powerful in seeking God’s help and for repulsing demons. The psalms are Christological, they reveal human nature in all its different moods and moments, and are therefore formative of the person seeking to live towards union with God. So the recitation of the psalter moved to the centre as one of the central elements in all monastic spirituality.

When these two stages have been negotiated – ascetic purgation, spiritual warfare – the monk is ready to engage once more with the world. He is not now in danger as he was before he entered the desert. At the same time the danger is never completely removed: many of the stories from the desert are about monks who think they have finally gone beyond one or other of the deadly sins only to discover that they are still all too prone to it! But in this third stage they become teachers, even if they are still sinners and still engaged in the spiritual warfare. They have reached the stage of spiritual fatherhood (or motherhood) where they can gather disciples, as Antony did, and teach them what is involved in the spiritual journey.

Week 01 Friday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Samuel 8:4-7, 10-22a; Psalm 89; Mark 2:1-12

Who were the four men who carried the paralytic to Jesus? The gospels do not give us their names but some of the Fathers of the Church were sure that they must have been Peter, Andrew, James and John. We heard earlier this week about the calling of these first four apostles. In Mark's gospel this passage about the healing of the paralytic comes not very long after the calling of the apostles. Matthew's gospel tells us that they not only left everything to follow Jesus but that they did it immediately. It is not a crazy idea, then, to think that this is who brought the man to Jesus, the apostles getting down to the business of helping Jesus in his work.

If we follow this line of thought then we see what the apostolic task involves: it means bringing people to Jesus. This is all that the apostolic Church needs to do, the whole of its task. It is the task of those who belong, as Dominicans do, to a religious order that regards itself as apostolic (living the lifestyle of the apostles). In fact it is the task of every Christian because all who are baptised and confirmed in Christ are by that fact commissioned to be His witnesses and to do what they can to bring others to him.

The men need to be creative to get this particular individual into the presence of Jesus. He is paralysed and lying on a bed. The crowd has filled the place where Jesus was. There is no way they can squeeze in, not with a load as awkward as they are carrying. But someone thinks of the roof. It is another way to get the man into the presence of Jesus and this is what they do.

The gospel tells us that Jesus was preaching the word to the people gathered round him. In writing about the ministry of the Word, our service of the Word of God as preachers of the gospel, the Dominican constitutions use a lovely phrase: part of our work is to seek 'new ways to the truth', they say. The truth, of course, is Jesus. Our task then is to continue searching for new ways to get to Jesus, new ways to bring people to Him and to bring Him to people. There are many obstacles that can obscure our access, block our path, cloud our vision, and tempt us to turn away and give up trying to get to him. But the preachers, the apostles, those called to accompany Christ in his work must be ever active and endlessly creative, on the lookout for new ways of helping people to get into His presence.

We can become weighed down by the many difficulties and disheartened by the many challenges. Questions come from science and philosophy, questions come from politics and social trends, questions come from scandals and the counter witness of so many of us. Sometimes it can seem impossible, the task of speaking well about Jesus in the modern world, the task of witnessing to Him by a life that is prayerful and holy. But we must keep at it and like the men in the gospel be active, be creative, be imaginative about our work. And then be prepared for wonderful things to happen.