The photo above is the unfinished nave of Siena Cathedral; the Duomo. It is one of the most spectacular Gothic Cathedrals in Italy. The ordinary citizens of Siena helped to cart the black and white stone used in its construction from quarries on the outskirts of the city. In 1339 the citizens decided to build a new nave to the south with the aim of making it the biggest church in Christendom. Alas it was not to be because plague killed off most of the population. Today its a carpark, but the initial stages of the nave were under construction.

The Cathedral is perched high above Siena dwarfing the houses and buildings below it. That it was never finished holds an important lesson for us Christians. We’re all members of an unfinished Church. As God’s people we will never be quite perfect, at least not on this side of heaven. Ours will always be an incomplete church, striving towards perfection, but continually falling short like the incomplete nave of the Duomo. So often our cherished plans come to nothing, and in the end we die leaving so much unfinished. We are perpetually unfinished, and we all sense there is so much more to do, to learn, to accomplish and to become.

Spiritually we are always beginners, never arriving, continually failing and having to start over again. That great unfinished nave of Siena Cathedral symbolizes our incomplete lives that come to an end with so much left undone, unexplored and lacking. There’s a wonderful verse in St Paul’s Letter to the Philippians.

“For us our homeland is in heaven , and from heaven comes the saviour we are waiiing for, the Lord Jesus Christ, and he will transfigure these wretched bodies of ours into compies of his glorious body. He will do that by the same power with which he can subdue the whole universe.” (Phil 3:20&21.)

The God who call us

We tend to think of God as the Creator, but the Bible lays the greater emphasis on the Creator who calls. As a rule we think of creation as making. Or more exactly God makes the world since creation is a continuing process.  The conception of a Maker-God runs through revelation and philosophy.

There are however hints of the vocational conception of creation in the Genesis story.

Michaelangelo’s  painting of Adam awakening to life is a remarkable expression of this. I remember being deeply affected the first time I saw it high above me in the Sistine Chapel. It’s a vocational calling into life which finds an echo in our own experience. Michaelangelo has caught the concrete dialogue of invitation and response in terms of a mutual sharing. It’s all there in the Scriptures , but the creative artist has brought it to life.

The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,  is the God who calls, and the man who finds favour with God is the man who responds to this call. God also creates the will within a man to answer God’s call, or so I have found it in my own life.

The God of the New Creation as revealed in the New Testament is rather a calling God rather than a making God. Creation in the entire Bible, Old and New Testaments is almost always understood in terms of the salvific re-creation of man.  Salvation is never seen as imposed on man, but rather as a vocation to which man freely responds.

The supreme example is the call of the Blessed Virgin Mary to become the Mother of the Incarnate Word – And the Word was made flesh.

Another example  is the calling of those first disciples by the Sea of Galilee and St Paul on the Road to Damascus. 

The patient loving inviting God , finally revealed in Christ Jesus  tended to be overshadowed by the Judgemental God of the Old Testament.

It’s important to remember that the God who calls the religious man or woman, humanity, is the calling God of universal creation. The religious call is but an intensification of the universal forward movement of all createdthings.  We need to keep this in mind in the discussion of the religious life and vocation otherwise the whole atmosphere of the discussion becomes  ‘ stuffy and churchy’.

When the religious person forgets his kinship with nature, earth and the seasons, with his origins, it leads to an inordinately pious and limited view of life. We won’t attract people to the loving Jesus, but to a truncated distortion of existence. Much evangelism is forgetful of Nature, of the wonder of Earth and the starry heavens.

Fogou at Carn Euny, Sancreed Nr Penzance. A fogou is a sacred chamber beneath the earth. There are several in West Cornwall and this is one of the best preserved. I took this photograph last year. Its difficult of access and one prays not to meet a car coming in the opposite direction. Dad first took us there when we were children. But it has ever since fascinated me and has a spiritual message.

Our remote ancestors looked deep beneath the earth for images of spirituality. The Catholic priest and poet Fr Gerard Manley in his poem God’s Grandeur wrote the following lines.

 “And for all this nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;”

 

St Mary Undercroft Crypt in Canterbury Cathedral

The crypt, the cave, the cairn, the well, are among the ancient earth sites that still remain as testimonies to this deep spirituality, sometimes called chthonic. They also represent our personal experiences of the spirit which are often discovered in the caves and crypts of memory. Powerful bodily emotions and feelings, frequently cause long forgotten memories to surface in our waking minds. The human soul has been compared to a cave – hidden, dark, mysterious and unfathomable. The beauty of the soul is shrouded in emotional haze and mist. The depths of the mind and soul reach down to our earliest origins in our mother’s womb…that inner sea from which we first emerged as human beings. 

 True spiritual strength isn’t always to be found in broad day light on the mountain top. For religion to be grounded,  it must also reach deeply into the tortuous patterns of personality and life.  The Lord may indeed be enthroned in the heavens, but it is often out of the depths that we cry to him. Neither should we forget that each of us was formed in the depths of the earth as Psalm 139 reminds us.

 ¹³ For You formed my inward parts;
         You covered me in my mother’s womb.
 ¹⁴ I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
         Marvelous are Your works, 
         And that my soul knows very well.
 ¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from You,
         When I was made in secret, 
         And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
 ¹⁶ Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
         And in Your book they all were written, 
         The days fashioned for me, 
         When as yet there were none of them.

 It is an elusive law of the Spirit that we cannot safely go on high unless we also visit the depths.  Without attention and cultivation, deep thoughts can remain raw and wild. Spiritual people often ignore those wild and raw imaginings and thinking themselves “holy” are plagued by bigotry, aggression and sexual confusion. Zealotry (fanaticism) in all its manifestations is the very enemy of our Lord’s generous and loving nature. Our depths are the very locations of the soul where we learn and breathe compassion

I’ve lost my faith – What can I do?

Every so often one comes across people who will tell you sorrowfully that they have lost their faith. My immediate reaction is to inquire when it was lost. Believe me, after many years of being a priest, if I haven’t at times experienced the absence of God, then I would be living in cloud cuckoo land. We do lose track of him and mistakenly think we no longer believe. 

 Personally I don’t think faith can ever be lost, but God can be hidden from us. We imagine that he has gone away and left us. It’s much more common than most of us would care to admit. Paradoxically the people who have come to me with this problem haven’t abandoned either their prayers or Eucharistic worship. This is always a hopeful sign. Seeming loss of faith is a Christian affliction. I speak from experience.

 In his Talks of instruction, Meister Eckhart said –

  “Do exactly what you would do if you felt most secure (in faith). I can give you no better advice than to find God where you lost him. As it was when you last had him, so let it be now that he has disappeared and so you will find him again.”

 Meister Eckhart was born in 1260 and died in 1328. He was German and a member of the Dominican Order of Preachers. Although he lived so long ago, he has been a constant companion and over the years I have turned to his German Sermons over and over again.

 All of us have had peak moments when we have experienced God’s presence. It’s often that which has started us on the Christian journey. In my own life it was a moment in St Paul’s Cathedral when God called me to the priesthood. Nothing was further from my thoughts at the time. It was a hot July day and I was walking back to my digs in Bloomsbury. I happened to go into the Cathedral to cool down. It was the moment that changed by life.

 We also need to remember that God is free and there are times when he withdraws his presence and it is for our good. It’s also for our growth. Imagine a parent that never allowed a son or daughter to experience his or her individuality. Instead of bemoaning that we no longer believe we must take a positive step and ask God what he would have us do. It’s a question that St Paul asked God in Acts. “Lord what would you have me to do? We may not receive a direct answer. God doesn’t work in that kind of way. He works more often than not in an oblique way, rather as the setting sun casts a long shadow. 

God is absent, dead, or so it seems to us, until round the next bend of the road, we find him again alive. Once again he makes himself known.

“Lord I want to touch the hem of your garment. I know you’re still there and I will go on trusting and loving you

I often sit on the cliffs and meditate on the waves as they move towards the shore. They follow each other only to break on the rocks with spectacular beauty. The first picture is taken near Lands End, the other on Paphos Cyprus.

Wherever we travel the effect of the ocean remains constant. Its a source of inspiration, always in movement, even when still. Ripples on the surface reflect the sunlight. 

Every human life is made up of a series of waves following one after the other. Childhood, youth, early adulthood, middle age, and so on until old age and the wave breaks or just quietly dies. Yet waves are only the movment within the mass of water. The essential; volume remains the same. Wave patterns are a motion of energy beneath the water’s surface. Circumstances and events in our lives affect the waves as we journey through time. Some peak early, others crash on the shore breaking only at the very limits.

God sees the entire wave movement of our unique life from birth to death and all that is in between. He gives to our existence an eternal dimension we call soul. Spirit isn’t the same as soul, because it is the operative agent that creates and evokes soul.

At the Incarnation God sent forth his own wave into the sea of humanity, that wave who embraces the entire human race, past, present and future. The very Spirit of God animated the Soul of Christ Jesus which broke at the extreme limits of human endurance at Golgotha, the Place of a Skull. But the death of that wave couldn’t be the end. Through the power of the Spirit it rose up again and its effects have been flowing around  the world ever since that initial impetus of love . Whoever it touches is immediately bathed in its warmth, transformed and united in the Great Sea of God’s life.

St Columba’s Prayer (521 – 597

1. “Columcille fecit.”
Delightful would it be to me to be in Ulster
On the pinacle of a rock,
That I might often see
The face of the ocean;
That I might see its heaving waves
Over the wide ocean,
When they chant music to their Father
Upon the world’s course;
That I might see its level sparkling strand,
It would be no cause of sorrow;
That I might hear the song of the wonderful bar
Source of happiness;
That I might hear the thunder of the crowding
Upon the rocks;
That I might hear the roar by the side of the church
Of the surrounding sea;
That I might see its noble flocks
Over the watery ocean;
That I might see the sea-monsters,
The greatest of all wonders;
That I might see its ebb and flood
In their career;
That my mystical name might be, I say,
Cul ri Erin;
That contrition might come upon my heart
Upon looking at her;
That I might bewail my evils all,
Though it were difficult to compute them;
That I might bless the Lord
Who conserves all
Heaven with its countless bright orders,
Land, strand and flood;
That I might search the books all,
That would be good for my soul
At times kneeling to beloved Heaven-
At times psalm singing;
At times contemplating the King of Heaven
Holy the chief;
At times at work without compulsion
This would be delightful.
At times plucking duilisc from the rocks
At times at fishing;
At times giving food to the poor;
At times in a carcair:
The best advice in the presence of God
To me has been vouchsafed.
The King whose servant I am.

Celtic Cross outside Phillack Church Hayle Cornwall

Not far from where I live, there is a granite strewn hill. It’s a “thin place”. A thin place is where heaven meets earth evoking the presence of the Creator. For the Christian, nature has a sacramental dimension. Because pervaded by the Spirit it conveys God’s love.  There amidst the granite rocks silhouetted against the blue sky and surrounded by gorse, the living landscape speaks of God. There are many such places in Britain. At the foot of the hill there are remnants of the ancient woodland that originally covered a much wider area.

Around 80 per cent of Britain is thought to have been originally forested. When the Romans arrived this was cut down to 50 percent. To-day it is only 5 percent.

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote, “It is not so much for its beauty that the forest makes a claim on men’s hearts, as for that subtle something, that quality of air, that emanation from old trees, that so wonderfully changes and renews a weary spirit.”

St Bernard of Clairvaux  (1090 – 1153) wrote in one of his letters, “believe me, you will find more lessons in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you what you need to learn from the masters.”

Many years later Shakespeare in As You Like it wrote

“ And this our life exempt from public haunt,
Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
I would not change it.”

When Shakespeare wants characters to learn something of the truth about their selves; to reach authenticity, he sends them to the woods. In many of the plays, he sends them into nature where, they learn that the “civilized” world is full of human mischief, not to mention dishonesty and outright treachery. Out in nature, minus the trappings of court life, it is possible to find “good in everything.” It’s possible to see a Stratford boy, working in London, brushing up against Court characters, and observing them, keeping them at arms-length, not dazzled by the titles and pomp, but measuring the artificiality of their conduct.

“All things came into being through Him,” (John 1:3)

From the summit of the hill, in the far distance, the eye can see the ocean sparkling in the spring sunshine, the crests of waves moving slowly towards the shore.

But it is the trees, the silence, broken only by birdsong that evoke “a presence that disturbs me with joy.” That’s a line written by a much loved poet.

William Wordsworth expresses this intuition in his poem ‘Lines written above Tintern Abbey.

“And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.”