Luminous Darkness

I have been spending a few weeks in Charleston, WV and whilst driving around the city I noticed that there was a very large Orthodox cathedral downtown, Saint George’s. I decided that I would definitely want to pay a visit, and ended up there this evening for Divine Liturgy in celebration of the Feast of the Transfiguration. The service was wonderful; celebrated fully in English with a quite decent choir and a celebrant with a spectacular singing voice. His delivery of the gospel lesson sent chills up and down my spine.

This is a centrally important feast in the Orthodox tradition, and perhaps is accorded a greater place in the liturgical year there than in any church in the West. This is largely due to the Orthodox understanding of this life and the next as a process of deification or theosis, where we become closer to and more like God.

During his sermon, the priest reminded us all that the whole point of the Transfiguration event was not so that Jesus could simply prove yet again that he was the Son of God, although it did certainly accomplish that. Rather, in that experience, Jesus shows the three disciples who he brings up the mountain what is possible for us as human beings. Everything that Jesus does in his life is to build us up and human beings, and this is no exception. Jesus’ transfigured body is what our bodies can be. What Jesus has by his divine nature we can have by grace. Most of us will not literally shine with divine energy in this life (although the saints have shown that it is possible), but it is something to begin to work towards now, knowing that our infinite approach towards the divine continues in the next life. The priest also noted that living a holy life is not just about morals and ‘doing the right thing’, but encompasses every aspect of our being, following the example set by Jesus.

I’ve written up a page to keep track of my travels visiting Anglican cathedrals around the world.

For anyone who was wondering about the messages that I posted over the days from 16-23 December, you can read about them at this Wikipedia page describing the Great O Antiphons. They are a series of prayers celebrating some of the attributes of Christ mentioned in scripture, and are believed to have been used since the early days of the Church. The hymn O Come, O Come, Emmanuel is a paraphrase of them.

See the real St. Nicholas at Canterbury!

The following was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 this morning at 07:45 as part of their ongoing “Thought for the Day” series. It was written and delivered by His Grace, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams.

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Good morning.

About three weeks ago, I sat and listened to two visitors from the Holy Land, both of them with harrowing stories to tell me of how the people they most dearly loved had been killed in the conflict raging there – a woman who had lost her son, a young man who had lost his brother. Stories that you could multiply by the thousand in the Holy Land today. But what was different was that the woman was Jewish and the young man an Arab Muslim; and they were travelling the world to tell their stories side by side.

Well there’s plenty of challenge still in the news from the Holy Land and the talks in coming weeks will have some hard business to transact, but I hope that they don’t forget brave people like these and others who belong to the Families Forum – that’s a network for those who have been bereaved through violence in Israel and Palestine and who are committed to joining together to work for peace. There are several such groups – as indeed there were in Northern Ireland in the darkest days there: people who are able to say, ‘I know the worst that war can do, and I am turning my back on revenge’.

Few statements could be more powerful. What my visitors were saying was that grief and desperate loneliness aren’t political things but human things. It’s that only when we can get to the humanity can we begin to get beyond the sterility of historic racial and religious conflicts. Facing the abiding realities of the human condition, facing death; your own, or that of someone you love, is something that puts everything else into perspective.

Change, real change, happens when we’re ready just to be human – not to use our suffering as another weapon against each other, not to argue about whose sufferings are worse, but just to recognise the same love and the same loss. Which is why my Jewish and Muslim visitors have been for me this year’s most important preparation for Christmas.

Christians believe that the most radical and total change in the history of the world happened when God began to speak to us in the voice of a human being – not the voice of a monarch or a philosopher or even a prophet, but the inarticulate voice of a child in need. When we start hearing the voice of God in the cries of the newborn child in the manger, we start being able to hear that voice in the raw humanity of other people. We can’t any longer write off the suffering of others on the grounds that they’re not really like us – because they’re Israeli and not Arab, Catholic and not Protestant or whatever.

Hard political talk can’t be avoided but God help us if that’s the only focus; we need the embodied signs of hope as well. And my two visitors from the land of Christ’s birth and death and resurrection were ambassadors for the freedom to listen without fear and anger and the freedom to act together. And that freedom – deepened and made universal and lasting – is what Jesus was born to achieve for us. This is the new humanity that is born with him on Christmas Day.

…how shall this be? For neither before thee was any like thee, nor shall there be after. Daughters of Jerusalem, why marvel ye at me? That which ye behold is a divine mystery.

…our King and our Law-giver, Longing of the Gentiles, yea, and Salvation thereof: come to save us, O Lord our God!

…yea, and Desire thereof, O Cornerstone that makest of twain [two] one: come to save man, whom Thou hast made of the dust of the earth!

…and Sceptre of the house of Israel; that openest and no man shutteth; and shuttest and no man openeth: come to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death!

…which standest for an ensign of the people, at whom the kings shall shut their mouths, unto whom the Gentiles shall seek: come to deliver us, make no tarrying!