The first Day of Recollection following the lifting of the the Covid Lockdown took place at the Assumption Warwick Street on Saturday.
As usual, the day began with sung Lauds, followed by an excellent meditation by Father Mark Elliott-Smith, the Rector; Holy Hour before the Blessed Sacrament, and Sung Mass. It was the feast, in this City, of Saint Mellitus Bishop of London. It was also, of course, in the Universal Calendar, Saint Fidelis of Sigmaringen, of whom a relic in the care of the Order was exposed for veneration.
For those many members of the Order for whom, for many and varied reasons, travelling is still not possible, and who were thus unable to attend, and no doubt when lunch together is again possible it will become much easier, Fr Elliot-Smith's wonderful commentary is given below. It merits careful attention, and will help lead you through these continuing difficult times.
IT'S BEEN A FAIR WHILE I imagine since we have been able to do a morning of recollection in the flesh. And I certainly have begun to lose any affection I may have had for Zoom, so it’s rather good to be here. But I am aware that we might be out of practice at sitting around in a Hall for a spiritual conference, and one of Prince Philip’s bon mots comes to mind: ‘The mind cannot absorb what the backside cannot endure.’ I will keep that in mind.
I’ve just returned from a week in the Welsh marches with some friends. Yes, I’ve been on a staycation, and very nice it was to catch up with friends and to see some of the wonderful countryside in Shropshire, and being lucky with the weather.
And it was lovely. And the only but is this: that I enjoy travel, and I enjoy Southern Europe, and I am missing Rome, and Seville, and a host of other places where the Catholic sun doth shine. And for all the last year or so, they may as well have been on Mars. And lots of people have had it far harder: the hospitality industry, the students, the schoolchildren, the shops, barbers, those struggling with their mental healthy: all struggling to come through.
And now, at long long last, we might be beginning to see the first glimpses of something like the life we knew. And until now, we have been living off memories of what it was like.
And one particular memory came to me for a particular reason. I was Madrid a few years ago, and took the opportunity to visit the Prado. Towards the end, I saw the so-called black paintings of Goya, originally found on the walls of his house, and which he produced when he was in his early seventies. Such a contrast to his earlier work: the court paintings, the detailed studies of princes and royal families... But Goya had by now survived serious illness, had been caught up in all the political turmoil of the time, and was no doubt traumatized by much of what he had witnessed.
But these are brooding, terrifying, and creepy: a drowning dog, a witches Sabbath, two old men eating soup; malevolent faces and malevolent smiles. Well, they’re not cheery. Perhaps the most famous depicts Saturn devouring his son. The original myth, if you remember, was that Saturn had overthrown his father, and that it was prophesied that he in turn would be overthrown by one of his own children, and Saturn sought to escape the fulfillment of the prophecy by devouring his own children one by one. It’s pretty horrible, but the artist captures the horror and despair of Saturn vividly. It’s sometimes suggested that it was an allegory of the situation in Spain and how revolutions consume their own children.
The reason I mention this rather grisly subject, apologies! is that I read this week that Richard Dawkins, the grand old man of atheism and producer of many books on why he is right about everything, has had an award bestowed upon him in 1996 by the American Humanist Association revoked. It was, apparently, his most treasured award: Humanist of the Year.
The reason? He called into question, in an academic way, whether it was possible for people to self identify as male or female, black or white, when it might be politely said that the evidence to support their assertion was not overwhelming.
Now, it’s not my purpose to be involved in that minefield. Simply to suggest this: when a certain type of wokery has lost touch with common sense and reality it tends to overthrow its founding fathers, turn on them, cancel them. Germaine Greer found something rather similar some years ago. We shall wait and see, but I strongly suspect, some time down the line, that those who cancel their elders, will end up in the dock of their youngers for some thought crime as yet to be uncovered.
So, what’s going on?
A few weeks ago, we relived the events of Holy Week; Jesus is on trial before Pilate, and in John’s Gospel we hear Jesus words: “The reason I have come into the world, is to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”
And Pilate’s response: ‘Truth?... and what is that?’
Having heard Oprah Winfrey say recently ‘thank you for speaking your truth’, I can’t help asking myself whether our understanding of truth has, like Pilate’s, been derailed by subjectivity. My truth can only be my truth if it’s also your truth. I might interpret what I see differently to somebody else, I might draw different conclusions about a sequence of events, but if my version differs radically from somebody else’s, it’s not because I have a private truth, equally valid to the other person, it’s because I am more or less right, while the other person is more or less wrong, or vice versa.
This was essentially the warning that Pope Benedict gave us when, as Cardinal Ratzinger, he preached that famous homily on the eve of his own election: “We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognise anything for certain and which has as its highest goal one’s own ego and one’s own desires.’
This can happen when we become closed in on ourselves, lose our humility and forget that we are not masters of Truth but only its servants. We shouldn’t forget, by the way, that the Hebrew understanding of truth has its roots in solidity: that which is rock like and sure. It’s not so much a philosophical concept as an anchor, or a deep root, or a foundation. And for us, Truth is found, not in raw data, but a Person, Jesus, the Keystone, the rock on which our faith is built and in Him Creation, with all its wonder and glory, is redeemed and transformed. Science and Reason and Faith are not in opposition, but majestic harmony:
‘Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.’
How I wish those words from St John Paul II could be heard the world over: our desire for truth is God given, is intimately bound up with loving Him, and leads us ever deeper into the truth about ourselves: not ‘my’ truth, nor ‘your’ truth, but ‘the’ truth, bathed in the light of reason flowing from the seat of Divine Wisdom, and which alone is the source of human dignity, grace, justice, mercy, and knowledge.
Philosophy and the sciences function within the order of natural reason; while faith, enlightened and guided by the Spirit, recognizes in the message of salvation the “fullness of grace and truth” (cf. Jn 1:14) which God has willed to reveal in history and definitively through his Son, Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Jn 5:9; Jn 5:31-32).
The devil has been very busy lately: stirring up divisions in society, and undermining the concept of truth as eternal and unchanging, and repackaging it as not something we serve and seek, but rather create for ourselves. It’s wicked, because this counterfeit becomes a tool for the powerful and the loud, rather than Truth, which speaks with a still small voice.
It will be our work, as part of what I suspect will be the smaller church that then Fr Joseph Ratzinger foresaw way back in the 1960s, to be witnesses to the Truth in whatever way God calls us to. While the circumstances in which this happened might not be the ones he envisaged, I think that what he saw as inevitable has been hastened by the events of the last eighteen months. But he spoke, too, of the power that would flow from this humbled, renewed, and smaller Church: a Liturgy in which God, not self, is glorified and worshipped, hearts that beat to the rhythm of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and minds humbly attuned to the seeking of Truth in its fullness.
I have lost count of the times when people have spoken to me about their time during lockdown.
Some have struggled for reasons easy to imagine: restricted space, young family, uncertain future, limited income. Some have flourished: chance to read, to stop, to step back from the daily grind or daily commute.
On a purely practical level, Truth gives us an opportunity to love. If it is true that lockdown has been kind to some and harsh on others, and it is, it is part of our vocation to go about, with renewed vigour, the spiritual work of prayer for and the corporal work of mercy for those who have suffered.
So, while the devil might have been very busy, it is our chance to renew: charity and mercy, rooted in humble prayer and worship, is instantly recognisable as the real thing.
One Saint we might take a moment to reflect on is Philip Neri. Although he is most obviously associated with the Oratory he is, I think, a man for our times. Not only was he blessed with a natural charm and sweetness of nature, he was deeply committed to the revival of faith in very difficult times, largely achieved by a supernatural desire to love God and to good. He knew he couldn’t do it without help: ‘watch over me today because I will betray You and do all the evil in the world if You do not help me.’ His charity, humility, capacity to see the best in others, his desire to serve, to engage in the corporal works of mercy, all came together to become a formidable force for renewal.
If we are tempted to brood on the way in which society or the world is going, or on divisions in the Church, or corruption in high places, it is comforting to think that a small dose of concentrated holiness and joy is more than enough to put the evil one to flight.
Finally, let us turn to our Lady. She is the one, after all, who shows what it means to live by the truth. She points to her Son, and says ‘Do whatever He tells you.’ She is there, in the upper room, praying with the disciples before the descent of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit by Whose power she conceived and bore a Son, the Word, the Way, Truth and the Life.
May she pray for us as we seek to do our part in the renewal of the Church and Her divine Mission.
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