Luminous Darkness

One of the most wonderful things about being in the United Kingdom is the way that churches and communities celebrate Remembrance Day, 11 November, also of course known as Armistice Day. This was the day in 1918 when, at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month, the guns on the Western Front fell silent as the Allied Powers and Germany signed the armistice, and peace began to return to Europe with the end of the First World War. In the United States the day in known as Veterans Day. I have been in the UK for three years of Remembrance Day services, and I have been immensely moved at each one I have attended. In part, this is because of the way that many people are drawn into the church on this particular day, when they would not usually otherwise attend. (In fact, a good friend of mine only attends church once a year on Remembrance Sunday.) Additionally, while we have memorials to those who died in the Great War in the US, in the UK they are everywhere and the number of people who gave their lives from this country is staggering. I remember the memorials at my college at Cambridge that listed a fairly sizable percentage of several years worth of students – this country really lost a whole generation of young men.

This year, we had the annual College Feast on 11 November and celebrated a Solemn Eucharist beforehand for the feast day of St. Martin of Tours in our college chapel with our guest The Right Revered the Lord Bishop of Durham, Dr. Tom Wright. St. Martin was a fourth century saint who was impressed into military service as a young man in the Roman army, and whose first work of mercy was to cut his military cloak in half to give part away to a freezing man who came up to him begging outside the gates of Amiens. That night he had a vision of Jesus and was soon baptized. He later became bishop of Tours and was well-known during his lifetime for miracles of healing and exorcism.

I was talking with the bishop after the service and he wondered aloud whether the feast of St. Martin had been placed on 11 November deliberately in the 20th century in order to reflect on Armistice Day, since he is one of the few soldier-saints in the history of the church. I did some research into the matter and discovered that in fact, 11 November is the date in 397 either when St. Martin died, or when he was buried in the Cemetery of the Poor at Tours, having died on 8 November. (There seems to be some disagreement about the specifics of the matter.) It does indeed appear to be a happy, or perhaps very interesting, coincidence that this particular soldier-saint is commemorated on that particular day, and it certainly will give me pause for thought on future Remembrance Days.

On Sunday morning I had the pleasure of hearing a sermon delivered by Barry Morgan, Archbishop of Wales, who was delivering one of the University Sermons at King’s College Chapel. While hunting around online, I discovered that the Archbishop had recycled the sermon he delivered on Easter morning at Llandaff Cathedral for us, but I was not greatly worried by this since it means that I can link the text of the sermon, and also because it was an very good message. His main theme was the idea that, as he put it:

The suffering risen Jesus is to be found in the midst of suffering and in solidarity with all those who suffer. He is to be found amongst those who are cast out and crucified.

He went on to explore the concept that this suffering Jesus continues to exist in the world through our human actions towards each other, and in the end, tied this to some of the problems facing the Anglican Communion:

The Anglican Church worldwide has something to learn from this. There are people who seem to think that before you can be in communion with others your beliefs have to coincide or your personal morality has to be of a certain standard or you have got to be willing to sign up to certain minimum requirements be they scriptural, moral or doctrinal or publicly repent of your sins. On this view of things, one can only receive communion with and from those who think like us, behave like us or identify with the causes we hold dear or the beliefs that we subscribe to. The resurrection of Jesus is the total opposite of such ways of thinking and behaving. He takes people as they are, knowing the full extent of their betrayal of him and assures them that his friendship with them is undiminished. Communion is unbroken.

I encourage you to read the whole text of the sermon, as trying to summarize his message is not really feasible. However, the thing that caught me the most was his description of an particular image:

The Eastern Orthodox Church has a marvellous icon of the risen Christ behind barbed wire trying to tear it down, symbolising at one and the same time his destruction of death and captivity but with the palms of his hands bearing the marks of crucifixion symbolising his suffering and his identification with all those who suffer.

I have put a picture of this icon online so that you can see it. I would particularly like have an actual icon with this image so if anyone knows where I might obtain one, please let me know. Edit: See comments — I have now identified the artist.

One of the books I read last year was Gregory of Nyssa’s Life of Moses, a late fourth century work which uses the story of Moses recounted in the Hebrew Bible as a model or extended metaphor for the Christian spiritual ascent towards God. There are a variety of important themes in this work, but I have selected a few passages that explore the idea of apophatic theology, also known as the via negativa. This stream of theology asserts that God is beyond all intelligent understanding, and must be found in darkness by letting go of all senses and knowledge. The language is stunning, particularly Gregory’s use of paradox. Enjoy!

The contemplation of God is not effected by sight and hearing, nor is it comprehended by any of the customary perceptions of the mind. For no eye has seen, and no ear has heard, nor does it belong to those things which usually enter into the heart of man. He who would approach the knowledge of things sublime must first purify his manner of life from all sensual and irrational emotion. he must wash from his understanding every opinion derived from some preconception and withdraw himself from his customary intercourse with his own companion, that is, with his sense perceptions, which are, as it were, wedded to our nature as its companion. When he is so purified, then he assaults the mountain.

What does it mean that Moses entered the darkness and then saw God in it? What is now recounted seems somehow to be contradictory to the first theophany, for then the Divine was beheld in light but now he is seen in darkness. Let us not think that this is at variance with the sequence of things we have contemplated spiritually. Scripture teaches by this that religious knowledge comes at first to those who receive it as light. Therefore what is perceived to be contrary to religion is darkness, and the escape from darkness comes about when one participates in light. But as the mind progresses and, through an ever greater and more perfect diligence, comes to apprehend reality, as it approaches more nearly to contemplation, it sees more clearly what of the divine nature is uncontemplated.

For leaving behind everything that is observed, not only what sense comprehends but also what the intelligence thinks it sees, it keeps on penetrating deeper until by the intelligence’s yearning for understanding it gains access to the invisible and the incomprehensible, and there it sees God. This is the true knowledge of what is sought; this is the seeing that consists in not seeing, because that which is sought transcends all knowledge, being separated on all sides by incomprehensibility as by a kind of darkness. Where John the sublime, who penetrated into the luminous darkness, says, No one has ever seen God, thus asserting that knowledge of the divine essence is unattainable not only be men but also by every intelligent creature.

So, I have been reading this evening from St. John Chrysostom, one of the late 4th century Fathers of the Eastern Church, about the use of property and possessions. He has some interesting views about material possessions:

Say not then: “I am but spending my own, and of my own I live a voluptuous life.” It is not your own, but of others. Others’, I say, because such is your own choice: for God’s will is that those things should be yours which have been entrusted to you on behalf of your brethren. Now the things which are not your own become yours, if you spend them on others. But if you spend them on yourself unsparingly, your own things become no longer yours. For since you use them cruelly and say that it is fair to spend your own things entirely for your exclusive enjoyment, I say that they are no longer yours.

The wealth is not a possession, it is not property, it is a loan for use. For how can you claim that it is a possession if when you die, willingly or unwillingly, all that you have goes to others, and they again give it up to others, and these again to others. We are all sojourners … Property, in fact, is but a word; we are all owners of other men’s possessions … Those things only are our own which we have sent before us to the other world … Only the virtues of the soul are properly our own, as almsgiving and charity.

Certainly makes you think differently about the things that we own here, and of what use they really are. He talks a lot about the idea that there really is enough to go around in the world, but too much of what exists is held by too few people. I’m reading these texts for an essay about this topic: ‘Spiritual poverty is seen as in continuity with material poverty, but spiritual wealth as in discontinuity with material wealth’. Should be interesting too see where it goes.