Chastity without Charity

For Iames the gentele iugeth in his bokes
That fayth withouten feet is feblore than naught
And as ded as a dore-nayl but yf the dedes folowe:
Fides sine operibus mortua est.
Chastite withouten charite worth cheyned in hell;
Hit is as lewed as a laumpe that no liht is ynne. (I.181-185)

For gentle James judges in his book
That faith without works is a feeble thing,
Dead as a doornail unless deeds follow:
Faith without works is dead
Chastity less charity will be chained in hell;
It is as useless as a lamp that bears no light. (Trans. Pearsall)

William Langlang, Piers Plowman

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As we draw closer to Lent, these words haunt me.

Two weeks ago I was on the bus, as is often, and most folks were quiet and enjoying the dark rainy ride home from a long day at work, save one woman on her phone. She had her newborn snuggled up to her in a Moby-wrap, and was talking to her partner(?) about their rent due and another issue involving a lawyer and more money going out of their pockets. It was likely uncomfortable to most because her business had instantly become their business. I imagine most people might have been upset as this one phone call was now their unsolicited phone call.

I knew I had a five-dollar bill in my billfold. It wasn’t a twenty or a fifty or even a ten. And it was more than just a crumpled single or a bit of change. It was enough to offer mercy, but hopefully not enough to make her feel uncomfortable to take it. “It’s not much,” I though over in my head, “but this may help you and your child more than I will help me.” The words were with me and well rehearsed. I even felt back in my wallet to make sure the bill was still there. It was, but as we drew nearer to the busstop, I grew tense. I worried that the gesture might embarrass her in front of so many people on the full bus. “I don’t want/need your charity,” I imagined her saying. She might even resent me and my offer, and give me a few words in reply for sticking my nose in her family’s financial business.

The bus stopped. The crowds and I exited as the mother and her son sat quietly to move on to the next terminal.

Langland’s words haunt me.

Langland is writing a poem about the world he sees around him, drenched in commerce and commodification. The Church, evinced its priests, monks, and friars are  everywhere in his society, but so too vice; the virtues are latent.

The poem’s main protagonist, Will, is all too often concerned with how he might save his soul (I.80).

Me too, Good Will.

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Vexilla Regis prodeunt

1 Vexilla Regis prodeunt;
fulget Crucis mysterium,
quo carne carnis conditor
suspensus est patibulo.

3 Quo vulneratus insuper
mucrone diro lanceae,
ut nos lavaret crimine,
manavit unda et sanguine.

4 Impleta sunt quae concinit
David fideli carmine,
dicendo nationibus:
regnavit a ligno Deus.

5 Arbor decora et fulgida,
ornata Regis purpura,
electa digno stipite
tam sancta membra tangere.

6 Beata, cuius brachiis
pretium pependit saeculi:
statera facta corporis,
praedam tulitque tartari.

9 O Crux ave, spes unica,
hoc Passionis tempore!
piis adauge gratiam,
reisque dele crimina.

10 Te, fons salutis Trinitas,
collaudet omnis spiritus:
quos per Crucis mysterium
salvas, fove per saecula. Amen.

1 Abroad the regal banners fly,
now shines the Cross’s mystery:
upon it Life did death endure,
and yet by death did life procure.

3 Who, wounded with a direful spear,
did purposely to wash us clear
from stain of sin, pour out a flood
of precious water mixed with blood.

4 That which the prophet-king of old
hath in mysterious verse foretold,
is now accomplished, whilst we see
God ruling the nations from a Tree.

5 O lovely and refulgent Tree,
adorned with purpled majesty;
culled from a worthy stock, to bear
those limbs which sanctified were.

6 Blest Tree, whose happy branches bore
the wealth that did the world restore;
the beam that did that Body weigh
which raised up Hell’s expected prey.

9 Hail Cross, of hopes the most sublime!
Now, in the mournful Passion time;
grant to the just increase of grace,
and every sinner’s crimes efface.

10 Blest Trinity, salvation’s spring
may every soul Thy praises sing;
to those Thou grantest conquest by
the Holy Cross, rewards supply. Amen.

[Thesaurus Precum Latinarum]

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mandatum novum

ἐντολὴν καινὴν δίδωμι ὑμῖν ἵνα ἀγαπᾶτε ἀλλήλους,
καθὼς ἠγάπησα ὑμᾶς ἵνα καὶ ὑμεῖς ἀγαπᾶτε ἀλλήλους.

Mandatum novum do vobis
ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos.

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.
Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. (13.34)

The Gospel of St John

–

Rembrandt van Rijn, “Christ Washing the Feet of His Disciples” (c. 1655)

See maundy

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teleology

Πάντων δὲ τὸ τέλος ἤγγικεν.
σωφρονήσατε οὖν καὶ νήψατε εἰς προσευχάς·

Omnium autem finis adpropinquavit
estote itaque prudentes et vigilate in orationibus

The end of all things is near;
therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers. (4.7)

The First Epistle of St Peter

–

Theophanes of Crete, “The Crucifixion” (1535)

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Christ enters Jerusalem

Exulta satis filia Sion!
Iubila filia Hierusalem!

Ecce rex tuus veniet tibi,
iustus et salvator,
ipse pauper et ascendens super asinum et super pullum filium asinae.

 

Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion!
Shout, Daughter Jerusalem!

See, your king comes to you,
righteous and victorious,
lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. (9.9)

The Book of Zechariah

–

Giotto di Bondone, “Christ enters Jerusalem,” Scrovegni Chapel, Padua (1305-06)

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compline

God our Father,
as we have celebrated today the mystery of the Lord’s resurrection,
grant our humble prayer:
free us from all harm
that we may sleep in peace
and rise in joy to sing your praise.
Through Christ our Lord,
Amen.

May the all‐powerful Lord grant us a restful night and a peaceful death.
Amen

–

“Compline”, Ely Cathedral, Cambridgeshire

–

com·pline
n., the last of the seven canonical hours recited or sung just before retiring.

[Middle English, alteration of compli, from Old French complie, from Medieval Latin hōra complēta, final hour]

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healing

My wounds are corruption and decay
because of my foolishness.
I am bowed down and bent,
bent under grief all day long.

For a fire burns up my loins,
and there is no health in my body.
I am afflicted, utterly cast down,
I cry out from the sadness of my heart.

Lord, all that I desire is known to you;
my sighs are not hidden from you.
My heart grows weak, my strength leaves me,
and the light of my eyes – even that has gone.

My friends and my neighbours
keep far from my wounds.
Those closest to me keep far away,
while those who would kill me set traps,
those who would harm me make their plots:
they plan mischief all through the day.

Psalm 37

–

In a world in which it is assumed we share no goods in common, medicine cannot help but seem to be but another impersonal institution that delivers services to consumers. Ironically, a medicine so determined cannot acknowledge that the body, which allegedly is the subject of the medical arts, is a storied body. For a storied body is not the body of “anyone,” but the body determined by a particular history of a particular community.

If the body is appropriately understood as a storied body, Berry argues that no hard and fast distinction can be drawn between the physical and the spiritual. That we currently make that distinction, according to (Wendell) Berry, only reflects how an understanding of the body as a machine has come to dominate our lives and, in particular, medical care. As a result Berry describes the contemporary hospital as a place where the world of love meets the world of efficiency, that is, the world of specialization, machinery, and abstract procedures, in a manner that those worlds are relegated to separate spheres. At best love can be expressed in such a context primarily as the attempt to get the “best medical care available” – but the “best medical care available” is not determined by a community of love.

Stanley Hauerwas, “The body of medicine and the Christian body”

[ABC Religion & Ethics, March 2012. Full text here]

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Healing of the Leper, Chapel of St. Sylvester, Ueberlingen (986-1000)

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Thursday of the Second Week of Lent

Today’s Gospel reading at Mass may be formative in this Lenten season:

Jesus said to the Pharisees, ‘There was a rich man who used to dress in purple and fine linen and feast magnificently every day. And at his gate there lay a poor man called Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to fill himself with the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. Dogs even came and licked his sores. Now the poor man died and was carried away by the angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried.

‘In his torment in Hades he looked up and saw Abraham a long way off with Lazarus in his bosom. So he cried out, “Father Abraham, pity me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in these flames.” “My son,” Abraham replied “remember that during your life good things came your way, just as bad things came the way of Lazarus. Now he is being comforted here while you are in agony. But that is not all: between us and you a great gulf has been fixed, to stop anyone, if he wanted to, crossing from our side to yours, and to stop any crossing from your side to ours.”

‘The rich man replied, “Father, I beg you then to send Lazarus to my father’s house, since I have five brothers, to give them warning so that they do not come to this place of torment too.” “They have Moses and the prophets,” said Abraham “let them listen to them..” “Ah no, father Abraham,” said the rich man “but if someone comes to them from the dead, they will repent.” Then Abraham said to him, “If they will not listen either to Moses or to the prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone should rise from the dead.”’ (16.19-31)

The Gospel of St Luke

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Lazarus and Dives, The Abbaye St. Pierre de Moissa

–

The following is a short essay I wrote for admission to Duke University’s Divinity School (February 2011):

St John Chrysostom (“the golden tongue”) articulates the Gospel of Christ in various sermons he preached in Antioch, where he served first as reader, then as deacon and priest, and then as the metropolis’ bishop. In one series, On Wealth and Poverty, Chrysostom focuses on St Luke’s parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. The sermons’ central theme is that, while the poor may suffer misfortune, it is the duty of the rich to give alms and do acts of charity both to ease the plight of the poor and to fend off the disadvantages that accompany earthy treasures.

Unlike Origen, who precedes Chrysostom’s ministry by a century, Chrysostom’s reading of the biblical witness is less allegorical in nature and a more literal than his Alexandrian predecessor. For Chrysostom, the Gospel contains an honest and realistic call to serve the poor through the giving of alms. The parable itself is a vision of a rich man, negligent of the poor mendicant before his house’s gates, and then dying and then suffering in Hell. Chrysostom’s states for the benefit of his congregation that the rich man’s sin lies not in his wealth of earthly possessions but in his hard-heartedness and lack of care for the beggar. For Chrysostom, the poor have advantages in their lack, as they have less distraction in their honest pursuit of holiness. And while the rich may be disadvantaged as to their wealth and its distractions, the rich may give alms to the poor and therefore help to secure their own lot of penance and holiness.

Notice that in his sermons Chrysostom does not lambast the rich. His congregation in Antioch, at that time the Empire’s third largest city, no doubt had many wealthy merchants and tradesmen, and it would be easy for Chrysostom to castigate them for their material excesses. But Chrysostom does not preach hell as much as he does heaven, offering these congregants encouragement towards the blessings that accompany giving to his city’s poor. Chrysostom does not use his words and his episcopal position to condemn, but to offer gospel, that is good news, for the poor and the rich alike. Most importantly, as he does at the end of each sermon, Chrysostom askes a blessing of thanksgiving to Christ: “May we all attain this salvation, by the grace and love of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

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Saint Joseph, pray for us

St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in ruins, March 1, 2012, in Ridgway, Ill. A pre-dawn twister flattened entire blocks of homes as violent storms ravaged the Midwest and South.

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Tuesday of the First Week of Lent

God willed that many things should be said by the prophets, his servants, and listened to by his people. How much greater are the things spoken by the Son. These are now witnessed to by the very Word of God who spoke through the prophets. The Word of God does not now command us to prepare the way for his coming: he comes in person and opens up the way for us and directs us toward it. Before, we wandered in the darkness of death, aimlessly and blindly. Now we are enlightened by the light of grace, and are to keep to the highway of life, with the Lord to precede and direct us.

The Lord has given us many counsels and commandments to help us toward salvation. He has even given us a pattern of prayer, instructing us on how we are to pray. He has given us life, and with his accustomed generosity, he has also taught us how to pray. He has made it easy for us to be heard as we pray to the Father in the words taught us by the Son.

So, my brothers, let us pray as God our master has taught us. To ask the Father in words his Son has given us, to let him hear the prayer of Christ ringing in his ears, is to make our prayer one of friendship, a family prayer. Let the Father recognize the words of his Son. Let the Son who lives in our hearts be also on our lips. We have him as an advocate for sinners before the Father; when we ask forgiveness for our sins, let us use the words given by our advocate. He tells us: Whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you. What more effective prayer could we then make in the name of Christ than in the words of his own prayer?

St Cyprian, bishop and martyr, On the Lord’s Prayer (full text here)

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Duccio di Buoninsegna, from Maestà (1308-11)

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