Seeing

Community Permeated By Beauty

Stanley Spencer painted several Resurrections. They portray his vision of the new community, of which we have been made a part. He does not imagine resurrection as a one-by-one event, paralleling our human experience of how people are individually and serially born, receive Baptism and die. Instead, Spencer sees resurrection as a community event, which may be more true to Scripture than what most of us anticipate.

Here we see several people in a churchyard busily tending the graves of departed loved ones. Suddenly, they are surprised by a reunion with those who have gone before. Departed fellow-members of the Body of Christ, their arms joyfully upraised in a dance, gather with the eucharistic community here on earth. Resurrection is an interactive celebration, involving not just those we have known and remember, but also those we have never met.

Spencer’s resurrection paintings reverse what we imagine. At death, we think of individual persons lifted-up, out of this world, into his presence with those on the other side. But Spencer depicts our reunion with them as taking place on this side! And he is profoundly right. For when we are baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection, we are baptized into the communion of saints, with whom we are now in active fellowship. Some of them first lived centuries ago. Others live with us today. Yet, in every eucharistic moment, we are all one and together, in the community of Jesus’ resurrection. His resurrection community is permeated by beauty, by the beauty of his holiness.

But who has seen or touched the resurrection of Jesus? Spencer helps us see the answer: All of us! All who now live in the fellowship of his resurrection. John speaks for us in his first letter, when he refers to “what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, … and touched with our own hands, concerning the word of life.” We think of the resurrection as something that happened to Jesus. Yet, we would not be celebrating his resurrection unless it also happened to the disciples.

His resurrection transforms every one of us. Not just one-by-one, and away, to dwell with the departed. Resurrection brings the company of the departed here, into our midst. Through Baptism, we can expect transformation within us, as individuals. We should also expect transformation between us in community! For in our fellowship with one another, we see and touch the beauty Jesus’ resurrection.

Resurrection: Rejoicing (1947), by Stanely Spencer (1891-1959). For the quote from John, see 1 John 1:1. Click here for a link to my Easter Sunday homily, on which this is based.

Fully Alive

An early Christian bishop, St. Irenaeus, left a saying dear to many: the glory of God is the human person fully alive.

We are called to be fully alive, and to realize God’s glory in our own being. To be fully alive is a gift rather than an attainment, and means experiencing an integration of body and mind, as well as heart and spirit. Such a synthesis is uniquely human. Angels lack bodies, and animals lack God’s breath or spirit within them.

When fully alive, we reflect how we were created in God’s image and likeness. We have lost likeness with God, yet God’s image remains within us. God seeks to restore us to likeness with him through his redemptive mission, to transform us and all Creation toward our End in him.

We explore varying interests and concerns on our journeys toward wholeness, and holiness. We recognize we are drawn to beauty. We sense what is right and good in our interaction with others. We become aware of our spiritual growth when we discern how truth involves more than analytical knowledge, and requires divine wisdom.

Some people conceive of beauty, goodness and truth as involving a hierarchical journey, where we ascend from beauty through the good toward truth. Thinking in this ‘layered’ way can have a negative consequence ~ leaving beauty behind.

Why? If pursuing the good takes us beyond beauty, and our desire for truth takes us beyond exploring the good, we may wrongly think that wholeness involves forgetting beauty. Mistakenly, we will conclude that growth toward inward beauty is not essential to our wholeness in God. We are then less able to accept genuinely godly art, music or literature.

The events we commemorate liturgically during Holy Week are not an optional overlay on what God has done for us in Creation. The redemptive mission of God, manifest on the Cross and in the Resurrection, makes possible being fully alive. We are restored and transformed through a beautiful self-offering, made by the One through whom all things were made. True human beauty cannot be grasped without a vision of divine glory, revealed fully in the face of Jesus.

[In relation to the above, see Gen. 1:26-8, for how we were created in God’s own image and likeness, and Gen. 2:7, for how, among all creatures, we are uniquely “in-breathed” with God’s breath/spirit (same word in Hebrew). In Christian doctrine, angels are spiritual persons without bodies; we are spiritual persons with bodies; animals are embodied but –however intelligent– are without a “spiritual” nature.]

Beauty and Authority

A noticeable antipathy toward “authority” pervades our culture. We think of authority as external to us, and as having the capacity to constrain our free choices and self-expression. Modern and ancient examples support this impression. Think of recent stories about the Port Authority of NY & NJ and the closure of traffic lanes leading to a major bridge. Or the Gospel centurion who referred to himself as “a man under authority,” who also had soldiers under him.

Given this, it may seem incongruous to mention the words “beauty” and “authority” in the same breath. But then, compare these sentences: “I was arrested by the authorities;” and, “I was arrested by her beauty.” Beauty has authority!

Years after studying with Oliver O’Donovan, I remain curious about an insight he offers concerning authority. Put in my own words, an authority is something that makes our responses or actions intelligible. When we defer to an older person, we are responding in part to the authority of age. If we set aside a long-held idea when presented with a compelling reason to see the matter differently, we respond to the authority of truth. The natural authority of beauty functions in a similar way. By selecting a stunning handmade cross for our church rather than one from a religious supply catalogue, we are responding to the authority of beauty.

These examples help us recognize how authority functions internally within us as we respond to the world. Authority is not simply a feature of our encounter with various officials and institutions, and it does more than compel. Authority invites responses by summoning our attention and prompting our discernment. This concept of authority imbues a prayer for the feast of The Transfiguration:

“O God, who on the holy mount revealed… your well-beloved Son, wonderfully transfigured, in raiment white and glistening: Mercifully grant that we, being delivered from the disquietude of this world, may by faith behold the King in his beauty…”

The beauty of the King arouses our deference by his appearance. As we look at him more and more, we disregard competing objects of attention. Beholding the fair beauty of the Lord, we will seek him in his temple (Ps 27).

The above painting, Transfiguration (2003), by Armando Alemdar Ara, is reproduced with permission from the artist. The prayer is a collect in the Book of Common Prayer, p. 243.

Toward a “Catholic” Vision [part 2]

In part 1, I shared how Ralph McMichael offers this brief but evocative definition of the word “catholic.”

Catholic means the whole truth, about the whole God, for the whole world.

Ralph’s concise definition calls for intentional follow-through. When we hear ‘catholic’ in conversation, we should anticipate and hope for an encompassing understanding of this word. This can be a first step in helping us to aim at a holistic (and therefore holy) vision of the world.

The challenge I find in Ralph’s definition is for all of us who are baptized to be “catholic” in a genuinely biblical, apostolic and ecclesial way. This means seeking and finding wholeness and holiness within the vocation we have received together in Baptism.

Embracing a larger concept of what it means to have a catholic vision opens us to
a more expansive vision of God’s Mission throughout the world. Jesus has embraced and empowered all of us to go out as grace-enabled participants in God’s continuing mission to redeem and transform the world.

We desire ‘wholeness.’ Encouraged by the culture around us, we think of achieving wholeness as our project, as our task to fulfill, or the solution to our therapeutic needs. Approached in a more encompassing way, wholeness is reconnected with God’s Mission in the world, rather than reduced to being a feature of our personal lives. God nurtures this greater wholeness through our life in community. We express God’s Mission best when we celebrate the Eucharist together.

God’s Mission is always greater than we can ask or imagine. It is not just for us, for our families and friends. God’s Mission enables us to live into the whole truth about the whole God for the whole world. As we live forward, into this wider vision, we will find that it involves beauty and goodness, as well as our perennial concern for what is true.

On this, his feast day, we can join St. Richard of Chichester (d. 1253) in his prayer, “Day by day, dear Lord, of thee three things I pray: to see thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, [and] follow thee more nearly, day by day.”

{St. Richard’s words are quoted from Hymn 654, The Hymnal 1982 / the photo above, from a Eucharist at St. Gregory of Nyssa, San Francisco, is by Mark Pritchard, (c) Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License}

The Arms of Love

Today we commemorate Charles Henry Brent, who in 1902 was called from a slum parish in Boston to serve as Missionary Bishop of the Philippines, arriving on the same ship as William Howard Taft, the territorial Governor and future President. Brent’s missionary vision was evident in his sustained commitment to minister to those at the margins, his work toward ecumenical unity among churches, and his pastoral oversight as a bishop. A much loved prayer written by Brent is now one of the prayers for mission in the Book of Common Prayer:

Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your Name. (BCP:101)

Through our small hands, his great arms of love still reach out to embrace the world, and touch everything within it. Through our hands those arms of love transform our work and our play, so that small activities and projects become part of his greater and divine work of love.

Not just through the hands of the priest who reaches out to hold a baby at the font, but also through the hands of a neonatal nurse who tends a newborn in the hospital; the hands of a teacher who writes a supportive comment on a young students worksheet, and a parent who tucks a child into bed at night.

The Lord of glory stretches out arms of love through the hands of painters who help us see light, the hands of poets who put down patterns of words to help us perceive what is true, and the hands of musicians who express harmonies rooted in a beauty more profound than we can create by ourselves.

I hope you see glimpses of those great arms of love at work through your hands.

(Shown above is John Singer Sargent’s bronze casting of a plaster study he did (around 1900) in preparation for his mural series at the Boston Public Library. Both the Hirshorn Museum in Washington and the Tate in London have examples.)

A Season of Glory!

Walking forward through Lent, with a vision of the Transfiguration behind us and a vision of the Resurrection before us, we journey through a landscape of Glory! Only recently have I come to view this season in this way. Long has it seemed dreary and gloomy, a series of weeks more characterized by what is not than by what is.

But now, I relish the drab Lenten array fabric and the absence of ornament, a spoken liturgy and the Psalm chanted in a minor key. I sense I am getting closer. I am seeing more of the world in a more-whole way, which gives me hope that I will see more of the world –including myself and others– in a holy way.

As Gerard Manley Hopkins reminds us, “Christ plays in ten thousand places, Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his, To the Father through the features of men’s faces.” [Hopkins: As Kingfishers Catch Fire]

So often Jesus bids us to behold! He invites us to see. We can open the eyes of our hearts to see through love. Willa Cather put this memorably, through the words of Father Vaillant, her slightly fictionalized portrayal of Archbishop Lamy of Santa Fe (in Death Comes for the Archbishop). “The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears hear what is there about us always.”

This is a season to see more clearly, and dearly, what is there about us always.

Toward Beauty

In Art, Faith and Life ~ STEPHEN HOLMGREN