Follow thou me

An audio version of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.

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Today's gospel (Matthew 8: 18-22) contains two very brief dialogues between Jesus and two of his would-be followers. To the first of these who offers to follow the Lord, Jesus tells him that the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. To the second, who must first go to bury his father, Jesus tells him to let the dead bury their own dead.

In a way, the second of these is the easiest to understand. Jesus’ language is hyperbolic, of course, but we are used to that by now: if your eye offends you, pluck it out. If Jesus is savage here, it is no doubt because it is what He perceived the man needed to hear; not because there was anything unpraiseworthy in burying his own father. Indeed, since the Lord commanded the Jews to honour their father and their mother, one might even say that burying his father was part of the man's fulfilment of the law. There is some circumstance behind this request that the gospel does not communicate to us; there is some hidden agenda or attachment that slows this man down in the following of the Lord. And the Lord, because he loves the man so much, is brutally frank with him.

It is the first of these dialogues which is more complex and yet, perhaps, more important, because it touches on a more subtle fault then mere attachment to family. That at least is human. But what is the problem with the first questioner? After all, his offer to follow the Lord seems to be supremely generous. Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go. It is not just that the man is offering to become a disciple of the Lord. He seems here to have taken account of the literal vagaries of Jesus’ ministry: wherever you go. Well, perhaps he had - at a very material level. The scribe must have noted Jesus’ wanderings between the various towns and villages of the Holy Land. What he had perhaps not noticed is that the following of Jesus was not going to be merely an outward journey. It was destined more particularly to be an inward journey, a journey into those twin mysteries that surround us: the enthralling mystery of the Eternal Godhead and the bewildering mystery our deeply flawed selves; a journey into life, but also a journey into the night. If we tell the Lord that we would follow Him wherever He goes, we have to know exactly what that means. Perhaps like many things in the Christian life, however, its full meaning escapes our limited understanding.

So, was the Lord sending this man away? Not definitively or ultimately. The fact is that there are different ways to follow the Lord. Some of us may be called to follow Him wherever He goes in every sense of the word, taking nothing with us, being stripped of everything we otherwise cling to in ways we have not even begun to imagine. Yet others may be asked to become other kinds of follower; there is more than one kind of flower in the garden of the Lord. In the Christian life and in the galaxy of spiritualities, everything is good, but not everything is good to do. This is a paradox that can be hidden from us by our religious enthusiasm. Perhaps indeed this was the problem with the scribe: he was not a follower but an enthusiast.

But, what does this paradox mean for us? Everything is good in the galaxy of spiritualities, but not everything is good to do. What this means simply is what St Paul means when he says that there are many gifts but only one Spirit. Since all the gifts come from the one Spirit, does that mean we are called to embrace them all, or that we may embrace them all? Not at all. St Therese of Lisieux amuses us when she says that she chooses everything, and of course in the spirit it seems to her that she rejoiced in everything because she recognised everything as coming from the Lord. But, in point of fact, she could not choose everything. She chose to be a cloistered nun; which meant that she chose a path that led not to the marriage bed go to the convent choir; not to a physical maternity with its human perimeters made literally of blood, sweat and tears, but to a spiritual maternity which only a few years years after her death would see her statue standing in what seems like almost every single Catholic church around the globe, and millions upon millions of Catholics finding in her example and her prayers a rich resource in the following of Jesus. She chose so little; and yet her fruit has been extraordinarily abundant. Humanly, she did next to nothing; spiritually, she practically bust the bank.

Everything is good, but not everything is good to do. The following of Jesus is good, but not if we're trying to follow him in a way that is wayward, or that He does not call us to. This should be a caution to us all. There is a kind of appetite that comes from religious enthusiasm which leads into a spirituality of addition; we have one devotion, but we must add another; we do one ministry but we must do another; we accept one apostolate but there is another that must be done. The great problem with such a spirituality of addition is that it leads to a spirituality of division: it divides our energies in ways that the Lord did not plan for us; it depletes us rather than renews us.

The calling of the Lord is always to embrace our gifts with the spirituality of multiplication; it is a story of loaves and fishes. We are given little but, by faith, that little can become something abundant. We must not think about this in terms that are too human. We are not all meant to bestride the world; we may only be meant to make a difference to the person next to us. What a calamity it would be for us if through religious enthusiasm and through an all-too-human embrace of our calling, we missed the realities in front of us.

Lord, I will follow you wherever you go - this should not be our prayer. But rather, Lord where are you leading me? To which question, we might have to content ourselves with the answer he gave to St Peter when St Peter inquired about St. John's destiny: What is that to thee? Follow thou me.

The Father of reinvention

A recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.

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Today’s gospel (Luke 15: 3-7) relates for us again the parable of the Good Shepherd. The comparison is simple: which one among Jesus’ listeners would not have gone in search of a lost sheep in order to bring it home? Sheep must have been prized livestock in the culture of the time, useful for milk, for wool, and of course for meat. There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, concludes the Lord, than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

This parable speaks to us about the heart of our God who comes in pursuit of us, the divine sheepdog after the sheep, the very hound of heaven, in order to bring us home when we wander. But if there is one thing we might question in this gospel, it is why there should be more rejoicing over the return of one sinner then over ninety-nine people who never went astray. Of course, we cannot be jealous of the redeemed sinner; we are all redeemed sinners in fact. But we might, along with the elder brother of the prodigal son, wonder why the Father rejoices more at the return of the son who hurt him most.

This paradox is sometimes called the “happy fault”, and it is happy not only because it can be repaired, but because it reveals more of who and what God is than if the rebellion had never taken place. What would we know of God's mercy, what would we know of His loving kindness, His condescension and compassion, were it not for how He has responded to His wayward children? Perhaps this is one of the reasons why self-knowledge is so important in the spiritual life; for by knowing ourselves, even in our very worst moments, God teaches us who He is himself, the one who loves us and deals with us not only according to our needs but also according to the depths and heights of His own mystery of love and compassion. He casts on us the eye of a Creator whose work has been spoiled by another’s hand; and now we see not only His redemptive generosity but also the extraordinary inventiveness of the One who invented everything, clawing back from the destructive forces of sin a rediscovered beauty with the preciousness the Japanese accord to broken and mended pottery.

May we all be yielding, receptive clay in the hands of our beloved Creator, and the Son His very image, the merciful and good Shepherd sent to redeem us from sin.

The charism as measure

A recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.

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Today’s gospel (Matthew 7: 1-5) is a famously sobering passage from the teachings of Jesus: Judge not, that you be not judged. Our judgements on others, says Jesus, will be the measure of God’s judgement on us. We must first take the log out of our own eye before we point out the faults of others.

This passage is important first in the moral life but not only at that level. We very frequently do not have all the information needed to pass judgement, although that rarely seems to stop us. We should say of course that there is judgement and judgement: one that is objective about the actions that we see performed, and another which is more speculative about the inner intentions behind the actions. The first kind of judgement is sometimes a sheer necessity since indifference or inaction to evil deeds is itself a position of moral compromise. Refusing to be party to the actions of another does not mean we are judging their intentions.

In the command of judge not, there is of course an emphasis on the gap between our accusations and our own actions where we do not live up to the measure we impose on our neighbour. But those wayward judgements already arise from prior mistakes in our own minds and hearts. The first of these mistakes is rash evaluation about a situation. If someone’s action seems wayward to us, the first thing to do is not to judge but to gather more information; to seek to understand; to bridge the gap between our understanding and what we have observed.

But the second of the mistakes that precede this judgement is righteous entitlement. It is the unconscious feeling that our position entitles us to pass this judgement, perhaps even that our judgement is legitimized by being our judgement, for we would know wouldn’t we, we the wise, we the experienced, we who have a fresh pair of eyes, we who are not held back by ingrained habit?

All this should matter not only to those who are serious about the moral life but those who are committed to some form of spiritual life that comes with promises or even vows. This criterion we could set down with this gospel in mind: I am not the judge of my brother or my sister with regard to the charism. Rather, it is the charism which is the measure of us all.

In this light, we can only keep on saying O Mary help us to say yes, no matter how unpleasant the prospects before us are.  

 

 

The restless heart

A recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.

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Today's gospel (Matthew 6: 19-23) gives us a series of injunctions from the Lord, but this time concerning our hearts and minds. First, He tells us not to treasure those things that do not last but rather to lay up our treasures in heaven. Second, He tells us something vital about the eye being the lamp of the body, but in this case the eye is a kind of metonym, standing for the way in which we look at things. It is our perspectives that can make the difference between light and darkness in our souls.

The juxtaposition of these commands about the heart and the mind in Jesus’ teachings are a reminder to us that, as St Irenaeus says, the glory of God is man fully alive. For what is the foundation of that fullness of life, except a heart which is fixed on the Lord himself and a mind which is full of the light of Christ? As Saint John Paul II taught, there is kind of anthropology in Christian doctrine that tells us as much about what it is to be human as it does about our path back to God. And the heart and the mind are vital in this respect.

To take the heart first, the greatest of the theological virtues is charity for, as we noted recently on this blog, our faith and hope will one day pass away, but the charity that is now in our hearts is the same charity that, please God, we will live in for eternity. The light of faith will one day become the light of glory, and the hope of possessing heaven will be fulfilled in its possession, but the love of the Lord which began in our hearts at baptism is unending for it is a kind of share in the very life of the Eternal One who made us and calls us to share His happiness. Herein lies the mystery of the wayward human heart which is so distracted, so attracted to the things of this world; not merely the physical things but the immaterial ones as well; not just the gaudy trinkets, the flash cars and holidays, but reputation, esteem, and the gratifications that feed our worst instincts. You cannot begin to serve the Lord until you have lost your reputation, says St Teresa of Avila somewhere, but she could equally have used some of these words from today's gospel: you cannot begin to serve the Lord if you are storing up treasures on earth.

In the end, this waywardness comes less from the attraction of this earth and more from our failure to cast our minds upon the Lord. Here is where the second part of today's gospel extract is important.

The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light.

And there is our problem in a nutshell: our eyes are not healthy. We need a whole education in shedding the limitations and the blind spots that the wounds of original sin and those caused by our own faults impose on us. We recognise such blind spots perhaps in people who are palpably depressed or anxious, and yet they themselves cannot see these problems – the intervening of a diseased mind in their perception of truth. They have to make a conscious effort to challenge the unhealthy perspectives that their minds cast upon the world. But the same is true of those who are neither depressed nor anxious, but in whom the eye – the mind – is wayward. And that is all of us. Ignorance is one of the wounds of original sin, but through our personal sins and faults, through our useless excuses, and through the repeated lies that we comfort ourselves with, we render our minds dull to the light. Lacking discernment, we too easily imagine that our fantasies are God’s appointed will, or in our pride we strike and miss but fail to learn the lessons.

The healing of the mind in the light of Christ, the healing of our judgement through the theological virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit: these are vital elements in our Christian journey. Love is the greatest of the virtues but ours must be a love that is founded on truth: truth about God and the honest truth about ourselves, read every day in the Scriptures, and reflected on in prayer. The Father's forming action in our daily lives is not only a reshaping of our hearts but it is a reshaping of our minds and a healing of our blindspots and errors. Four of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit - wisdom, understanding, knowledge, and counsel – are precisely gifts of the mind, designed to bring our minds to health, so that our hearts will be full of light and not darkness.

Some people want to make religion only a matter of the heart, and our spiritual activities an endless hamster wheel of devotions or noisy pedagogies. Yet, in truth, to come close to the Lord is to become still, to be filled with His silence and His love, so that His light might shine in our hearts. For our hearts are restless until they rest in Him.

Our model in this is, as ever, the Virgin Mother who kept all these things in her heart, and no doubt meditated on them night and day. Hers was a mind, therefore, full of light, and her treasures were not of this earth. Her fiat was to the truth of the call of God who answered her yes by ravishing her heart.

Becoming the Word made flesh in Mary

 A recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.

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Today's gospel (Matthew 5: 38-42) comes again from the Lord’s sermon on the mount. Like other extracts from this sermon which we read at this time of year, it contains a series of injunctions to the disciples concerning their behaviour. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. If anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. These words of the Lord have inspired both heroic lives among the saints, and sometimes ill-conceived attempts at carrying them out. Like any words of scripture, they need to be read not simply according to the letter but according to the spirit, and to be placed back in the context of the whole Christian life. There are times when Jesus turns the other cheek, but there are also times when He speaks truth to authority. There are times when He overturns tables in just anger, and times when He meekly suffers the violence of scoundrels. What is the spiritual reality at the heart of these words?

For COLW, the answer to that question lies simply in recalling the words of St Elizabeth of the Trinity according to whom we are called to become another humanity for Christ in which He can renew His whole mystery. The spirit behind the words of the Lord in this extract is captured in fact later in this chapter when Jesus says: be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect. For if our lives reflect the goodness of God our Father, then we will be reshaped in the image of Christ who is Himself the image of the Father. And if the perfection of the Father is too great for us to imagine, we can find the perfect image of Jesus captured in the example of Mary, our mother and our model.

If we look then again at today's gospel extract, we can see other demands moving beneath its surface. In refusing to seek revenge for slights, in setting aside our claims to justice, in opening our hands and letting our goods flow freely through them into the hands of others, we are called to turn ourselves with greater freedom and greater obedience to surrender to the Father’s forming action. Our problem is that we cling on to the things of this world as if we did not seek another Kingdom. We wish to keep a tight grip on our tinsel crown whereas the Lord wishes to give us a golden one. But if we can just open our fingers, return good for evil, and live for a moment in the shoes of others, we are more likely to escape from the narrowness that our selfishness demands and embrace the open heartedness that enables us to say our fiat to the Lord.

And if all these things seem very difficult, the truth is that we need not plan to do them for the day ahead, nor indeed for the hour ahead, but simply for the moment in which we live - the only moment which God gives us to live in. This conversion is of course beyond our power to bring about on our own, but through Mary's intercession and the grace of Christ and through humble perseverance, it lies within the realm of possibility that we may yet become in a more perfect way the Word made flesh in Mary.

The thanksgiving sacrifice

 A recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.

Today’s gospel (Matthew 5:27-32) offers a series of commands from the Lord during His sermon on the mount. Adultery, He says, is not just a matter of action but begins with the thoughts of the heart. He incites His listeners to sever or lose any member of their body that leads them into sin. Finally, He points out the moral implications of divorce which the people of Israel had been permitted to do by Moses.

Jesus is of course speaking here about sins or faults of which we are conscious. But at the heart of all these commands lies a reality that runs throughout all Christian moral teaching: that our conduct is not simply an outward display or performance but something that engages us entirely from our hearts. Our souls and our bodies are shattered by sin. We are pulled apart in a hundred different directions, and our conscious desires overlap with our unconscious ones, our genuine needs with our dissonant ones. Part of our Christian mission, since we have renounced Satan and all his works, is to try with the grace of God to gather these fragments together again, or rather to allow the Lord to do this work in our hearts.

And yet we are tempted, nevertheless, by the lure of our own disintegration.  We see and approve the better things of life but the worse things we follow. Or as Saint Paul says, the good that we would do we do not, and the evil that we would avoid that we do. Such realities in our daily existence are a reminder that we do not simply need a teacher, but a Redeemer and a healer of our souls.

Some may be tempted to dismiss the severity of the injunctions of Jesus in this passage. Of course, when He speaks about cutting one's hand off or plucking out one’s eye, He is using hyperbole. And yet, it may be that we can indeed metaphorically sever those things that are not so much members of our body but which have become dear to us. Many years ago, a priest told me that Jesus Himself recommended throwing out the television; today, he might have said the mobile phone. Smiling at my confusion, the priest then reminded me about this passage where Jesus says to pluck out one's own eye. It may not be practical to dispose of all our entertainment technologies, but a great example is set by the digital minimalist movement who have, as it were, plucked out their own digital eyes simply for the human benefits minimalizing their use brings to the individual. How much more seriously should we take this challenge, we who seek another Kingdom?

I will offer you a thanksgiving sacrifice, O Lord, says today's response to the Psalm. This line should be our daily meditation as we face the necessary restrictions and penances that we are called upon to perform, whether through denial or through undertaking some unpleasant duty. And that is as it should be, for the Lord himself commands us: if any man would follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. And in another place, He says, Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also.

 

Mary’s lessons

 A recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.

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Today’s gospel (John 19:25-34) recounts three distinct moments in the passion and death of Jesus. First, we see the double-sided gift of Mary to the Beloved Disciple and the Beloved Disciple to Mary. Second, we see the thirst of Jesus on the cross and His being given vinegar to drink. Last, we witness the thrust of the Roman soldier’s lance into the side of our Saviour, bringing forth what, according to St John, were blood and water; three distinct scenes only one of which is seemingly related to the mystery that is marked today in the liturgy for Mary, Mother of the Church.

To understand the first scene, we should recall that much in the gospel is “not about what it’s about”. There is always something else going on, just as there is in our daily lives, woven not only from the obvious but from every unconscious motive that runs beneath our conscious activities. In appearance, Jesus provides for His mother who is about to be left without a protector in the moment of His earthly death. Take care of mother for me is what He might have said, given that John was already the son of Salome, a devoted mother, who, as we know, doubled up as the disciple’s ambitious, professional cheerleader. But of course, Jesus does not say that. His words are much more distinctive and imply something else. Behold your mother: but mother in what sense? Here is where the appearances begin to cede to questions that are perhaps answered by the parallel line spoken to His mother: Behold your Son. These are not just requests but commands. John and Mary undoubtedly knew each other, and no doubt already had a relationship, given that John was the Beloved Disciple. Now, that relationship was transformed in two ways. First, it was no longer distant, as might be the relationship of a mother with her son’s friends; instead, it became truly filial. Second, it was henceforth meant to be a reciprocal relationship. Take care of mother for me would create a relationship of need and dependence, of Mary relying on John for support. Behold your mother and behold your son creates a two-way relationship, a situation of exchange and affection, a rapport that is both earthly and spiritual. Mary no doubt did depend hereafter on John for material support. But the relationship was designed to be so much more, just as John’s presence and that of Mary at the foot of the cross was so much more that it appeared. Mary, who suffered no birth pangs with Jesus, gives birth to her spiritual children in this moment, in the agony of witnessing the execution of her Son. How could this moment not have been for her the most exquisite blend of both separation and union: earthly separation from Jesus and spiritual union to His mystical body, brought into the world as it were, in this final physical and spiritual contraction of her fiat, pronounced so many springs ago in a quiet house in Nazareth?

The following two scenes in today’s gospel extract, apparently unrelated to this one, can in this light unfold in another sense. For they offer to Mary, now a mother again, a new pedagogy of the Father, two lessons delivered to shape this new dimension of her motherhood.

In the first, she is bidden to attend to the spiritual pains and pangs of her new children, articulated for her by her own beloved Son:  I thirst. Do we not all in some sense thirst for the Lord, all of us who are trying in our own feeble way to walk after Him? Our hearts are made for you, Lord, and are restless until they rest in you, says St Augustine. Jesus’ thirst was physical and spiritual, for He thirsts for our love and for our safety. In contrast, our thirst before the cross is spiritual and existential for in longing for the Lord, we are also longing for the true meaning of our lives, which are so often betrayed by the self-referential choices that we daily make. To feel that thirst, as to feel hunger, is in fact a sign of health. To know we lack something is to be one step ahead of those who feel nothing at all, even if there comes a time when our thirst can become as it were an object of faith, and we must choose to thirst. Behold your children, Jesus commands Mary. And, how can she now obey His command – as she always does - without recognising that spiritual thirst in us, and wishing to come to our aid?

The second lesson for Mary can be observed in the last scene of the gospel where the Roman soldier drives a spear into Jesus’ side, releasing the gathered fluids in his thorax. The blend of blood and water in this moment has been seen in many senses by spiritual writers down the years, not the least important of which is the commingling of humanity and divinity, in Christ through the incarnation, and in us through the gift of His grace to us. But let us take it here in another sense.

To begin with, why was there water coming from Jesus’ side? The physical cause is probably the distress of crucifixion which causes a large build up of fluid around the lungs and the heart, pericardial and pulmonary effusion. It looked like water, but it could simply have been the colourless serum associated with any trauma to the body. Perhaps, however, we might see in this instance an example of our hidden wounds. Cleanse me of my hidden sins, prays the Psalmist. But it is our hidden wounds that do the serious damage. We see the physical wounds of Christ and we are touched by their severity; yet beneath the surface, there is the extreme trauma of the crucified man whose inner system is overwhelmed by the sufferings of the body. Mary’s observation of this lancing of Jesus’ side is like an appeal to her, a lesson to her maternal heart, to come to the aid of our deepest wounds, the ones that reflect out deepest hurts, the ones that arise from our most severe traumas, inflicted by others and by ourselves.

Beneath the surface lies a world of hurt. As Mary looks upon her Son and sees His inner sufferings gushing forth as it were from His side, we can trust in her maternal concern for us with our deepest injuries.

Mother, behold your sons and daughters, whom you have brought forth in such pain. Bear us unto life in the Lord and guide us in the lessons of the Father’s forming action.

Holy Mary, Mother of God and Mother of the Church, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.

 

 

 

The breath and the voice of the Shepherd

 A recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.

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There is a choice of texts for today’s gospel, and I choose here John 20: 19-23. Jesus comes to the disciples in the upper room on the Monday after His Resurrection. Peace be with you, He tells them. Having shown them His wounds, He invokes His peace upon them a second time and grants them the power to forgive (and retain) sins. The Holy Spirit will be given to the Apostles on the Day of Pentecost in a scene that is well known to all. This extract from the gospel – the gift of the Holy Spirit on the day after the Resurrection - is a reminder, however, of several things.

First, it is a sign that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. We are here in the very centre of the mystery of the outpouring of God’s life that wells up in the begetting of the Son and the procession of the Holy Spirit: all persons not only co-equal but co-eternal. We will spend our eternity – please God – contemplating and partaking of this festival of love, this conviviality of joy that is the eternal inner life of our maker and Lord. To know this mystery is eternal life for to know it eternally is to possess it eternally. And here, in this dark room, in the midst of a frightened band of wearily imperfect men, Jesus reveals to them so discreetly this truth at the heart of the faith.

The second thing this scene reminds us of is the mystery evoked by the words preceding absolution in the Sacrament of Confession: He sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins. Grace, the work of the Holy Spirit, heals and elevates. It may elevate, though God may leave us with certain wounds to remind us of our dependence on Him; yet, grace must heal for to be forgiven is to have the cause of our woundedness removed. To forgive is to cleanse. The coming of the Holy Spirit must necessarily involve this removal of sin if His presence is to remain with us. The Holy Spirit may move anyone through particular charisms; Caiphas the High Priest was moved by the Holy Spirit. Yet in those in whom He plans to abide, sin must be driven out.

And the third thing this scene reminds us of is indeed our dependence on Him. Behold these men, who will later be called the pillars of the Church, now cowering for fear in a darkened room, gripped by doubt, resigned to the disaster that had befallen them, hearts barely lifted by the report of His victory over death. How are we not like them, gifted with faith and yet imperfect in so many ways, with our failures in gratitude, forgetful of blessings, our carelessness regarding His privileges? Anyone who knows what dumb, stubborn animals sheep are will know it was no compliment for Jesus to compare His people to sheep…

Yet, here He comes for us once more, and we hear the dogged footsteps of our pursuing Saviour, as Francis Thompson recalls them:

But with unhurrying chase,

And unperturbèd pace,

Deliberate speed, majestic instancy,

They beat—and a Voice beat

More instant than the Feet—

‘All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.’

 

Peace be to us, then, this Pentecost. Our loving Saviour bids that it be so.

 

Overcoming the world

 A recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.

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Today’s gospel (John 16: 29-33) comes again from the discourse after the Last Supper and really breaks down into two sections. In the first, the apostles declare that they know who Jesus is because, they say, He has spoken plainly. Now, they can declare He came from God. In the second section, Jesus responds to their profession by a disconcerting prophecy about their inconstancy. Nevertheless, He assures them that in the end all their troubles need not discourage them for He has conquered the world.

As in so many parts of the gospel, we find in this extract the followers of the Lord looking desperately for anchor points to which they can attach themselves, measures by which they can walk. Jesus has often spoken in parables. In this very discourse, He has spoken in sometimes mystical language. In the words He speaks just before this extract begins, it is not especially clear in fact that He has spoken more plainly. Perhaps what matters more here is it the apostles believe that He has spoken plainly. And when their profession comes, when they say that this is why we believe that you came from God, it comes perhaps with just a soupcon of pride. The apostles are still in a kind of rabbinical school mode, labouring over their teacher’s words with the aim of mastering them. We know there was competition amongst them for the top seats; perhaps there was also competition amongst them to be top of the class. And yet this attitude too was far from appropriate. They had always wanted to walk by their own lights and found themselves frustrated time after time by being unable to map the logic of the Lord they thought they knew. It is so interesting to observe that many words about faith which come from the hearers of the Lord come from those outside this inner circle. Lord, I believe; help my unbelief, says the father of the boy possessed; only say the word and my servant will be healed, says the centurion who is not even a Jew.

In this scene, in sum, the apostles’ human confidence was high, and they were ready to declare they had understood His origins. And how did the Lord respond to their apparent progress? By prophesying their failure:

Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone.

The Lord is unimpressed by this self-measurement of the apostles. He is unimpressed by our own self-assessment. He wants our honesty, not our exaltation. And yet these sentiments would be difficult to decipher in the apostles’ words had not the Lord punctuated their declaration with the ironic question: do you now believe? There is a paradox here, as there so often is in the gospel. The Lord enlightens us, but it is not up to us to measure the light, nor to issue our own tasting notes for the delights of the Lord. This is the mistake of the apostles. Now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech! sounds like the beginning of a profession of faith, but there is something too self-congratulatory in their observation. It almost sounds like they are saying: now we get it; now we master it; now we can run on our own; now we are sufficiently prepared. This then is perhaps why the Lord serves their hubris with a prophecy to deflate them on the spot.

What are we to learn from this error of the apostles if not that not all those who believe they are making progress are really making progress? The lights the Lord gives us should be held like treasures to be cherished, not wielded like tools as if we were suddenly artisans of distinction. The problem here is not only a lack of humility on our part; it is that our ways are not the Lord’s ways. All our efforts to be worthy and to be ready for the service that He calls us to are only part of the story in which we become the docile instruments of his Kingdom. The foundation of that story is not our competence, and it is not even our loving and humble gaze upon the Lord, although this is our chief duty. Rather, He is the foundation and He is our sufficiency; unless the Lord builds the house, they labour in vain who build it. It does not matter how good our intentions are, nor how right our cause is. Our peace must come through Him; not through our own appraisal of our selves. Even then our spiritual sterility, our inability to convert the world and call it to His service, cannot be a measure of our failure: the Lord reaps where He has not sown, and gathers where He did not scatter. They also serve who only stand and wait.

If these realities are a blow to our pride, we can take consolation in the assurances that Jesus gives to the disciples: I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. Undoubtedly, this was a consolation first given to his own mother who, at the moment when she said to Him in Jerusalem: Child, why have you treated us like this? must have had time to reflect on the limitations of her own nature. She, above all the children of God, possessed docibilitas in the highest degree, and yet the Lord allowed her to undergo this trial, perhaps to give her a taste of something that every other human knows by personal experience: the bitterness and desolation of losing the Lord.

To follow her example and that of the apostles, it only remains for us to let the Lord overcome the world, especially where it lodges in our hearts and minds.