Dom Donald's Blog

Gospel for Sunday 29 January 2012

2012-01-29T06:25:00.001Z

St. Anne chapel

http://www.h2onews.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=224450518&catid=50&Itemid=14
Gospel for sunday 29 january 2012

Jesus came to Capernaum with his followers, and on the sabbath he entered the synagogue and taught.  The people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.  In their synagogue was a man with an unclean spirit; he cried out, "What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are--the Holy One of God!" Jesus rebuked him and said, "Quiet! Come out of him!"  The unclean spirit convulsed him and with a loud cry came out of him.  All were amazed and asked one another, "What is this? A new teaching with authority. He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey him."  His fame spread everywhere throughout the whole region of Galilee.  

Cistercian Founders 26 Jan 2012

2012-01-26T18:41:00.001Z

Sent: Thursday, 26 January 2012
Subject: Founders' Sermon - Fr. Mark

Sts Robert, Alberic and Stephen Chapter Sermon, 2012

What is it that makes us celebrate our founders? They lived in a very different age and time from our own. Much of their style of living seems worlds away from what we do today.
But if history is anything to go by, it is amazing how much those in the past can still teach us how to live and how to cope with the vagaries and problems of life, whatever the age we happen to be in.
Robert, Alberic and Stephen were like any other monks who were seeking to answer their call to seek God in a monastery. Monastic life has not changed all that much in the basics of community living, where there is a spirit of silence and a fair modicum of solitude even as they live together. There was an obvious structure to their day, centred as it was on the common work of God in choir. The day was designed for them by creating a balance between their prayer, reading and work. Because of their practical personal needs, there had to be a common awareness of the requirements of each other so that they had sufficient time to pray, to read or study. It was important that everyone respected that time for personal silence and the space for prayer and silence.
It is not always easy to find one’s own balance within the one set up for the whole community. It is also difficult to continue keeping such balance with the passage of time. That is why communities need from time to time to reassess how they live their monastic life.
What led Robert, Alberic, Stephen and some of the members of their community to uproot themselves from Molesme and go to the wilderness of Citeaux was their dissatisfaction with their practice of the Rule of St Benedict. Recent historical studies show that there were human elements in our founders which showed a tendency ― perhaps an over-tendency ― to move on to new fields in their zeal to seek God. Who is to be sure what is a genuine urging of the Spirit to make a radical move from their present circumstances and what may be, as is mostly the case, a temptation to be ignored. Novices routinely seek something ‘higher’ or ‘more spiritual’, like going to join the Carthusian. The same can be true of monks who have lived for a number of years in the monastery. In a time of renewal there are many examples when experiments failed to achieve anything worthwhile. That was the case in so many instances in the ‘60s.
But renewal within monasteries as well as attempting to set up new foundations somewhere else has been successful. The 11^th century saw much new life in many monasteries right across the board. This period was an era of renewal when fledgling attempts at setting up new religious communities where people could go to find God in a more radical way took root and flourished. Citeaux was one of these. Through the courageous efforts of Robert, Alberic and Stephen and their other companions the Cistercian form of monastic life was established and promoted. There have of course been other renewals since then. Each time the new reform has produced new growth and a more vibrant monastic life.
Perhaps celebrating the feast of our founders is a good opportunity to take a long look at what we had embarked on when we first entered the monastery and how we have journeyed over the years since then. Does the vision and willingness of Robert, Alberic and Stephen and the other Cistercians who later joined them in the Order still shine as clear for us today? Would we benefit from going back to look at what they had achieved in their renewal? Would some of their innovations still be of benefit to us in our own personal lives? It is by such simple steps that we can go forward and grow in our vocation. Such attempts help to find and put on Christ and help us to truly seek God.

Levinas Emmanuel - Monks of Tibhirine

2012-01-24T12:39:00.002Z

Precious photo Jan 1996

Email from friend . . .

Dear Donald,

I would like to thank you very much for your help.

The pages of the attachment are already very helpful.

They will become a part of the literature the students have to read.

. . .

Thanks for sending me the copy.

God bless you and your work.

Maarten

A Heritage Too Big
Volume 2
Scan of pages 91-95

per Fr. Donald, Nunraw Abbey

17. NOTE: Emmanuel Levinas

Emmanuel Levinas

in the Reading of Christian and Christophe

David Hodges, OCSO, Caldey

Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995), French philosopher, has exerted a considerable influence on a generation of continental philosophers and religious thinkers. Some of the concepts at the centre of his thought provided Fr. Christian and Fr. Christophe with a catalyst for the expression of their ideals and their understanding of the death at the hands of others which they felt to be approaching. Translations of Emmanuel Levinas and studies of his philosophy have become more widely available in the English speaking world in recent years. The following note indicates some of the references made to him in the writing of Christian and Christophe. (Ed.)

Dom Christian de Cherge, Superior of the monastery of Atlas in Algeria, who was martyred along with six other brothers of the community in 1996, wrote an extraordinary Testament before he died in which he envisaged meeting his death at the hand of a Muslim terrorist and forgave him in advance. He wrote of seeing God in the face of the other, even the assassin, drawing on the categories of the philosopher, Emmanuei Levinas, whom he had studied. He addresses his 'envisaged' assassin: "Qui, pour toi aussi je le veux ce merci et cet 'A-DIEU' en-visage de toi". "En-visage de toi", in whom I see the face of the Absolute Other, and in whom I go to God. God is seen in the face of the assassin, and death and the assassin are seen in the face of God. This could only be seen from the perspective of one who is himself a face of God's love for all. Here was a life totally given to God and to the other, - a vocation that can be seen with some assimilating of Levinas' categories and ideas, and christianising them: the face of the other; responsibility for the Other, even up to substitution and expiation for the other; responsibility for the actions of the other; a deep interiority allowing one to transcend self and to reach to exteriority; being-for-death as being-for-beyond-my death; death as but an opening to the Absolute other. Dom Christian goes further than seeing the face as an encounter with the Absolute other. He is bold enough to contemplate that after his death he will be able to: "immerse my gaze in that of the Father, and contemplate with him his children of Islam just as he sees them, all shining with the glory of Christ."

Levinas' category of the face needs some explanation:

"All great philosophers have one or more key intuitions around which they build a philosophy. One of the key intuitions of Levinas is "the face" (in French, le visage), the face of the other. Levinas wanted to build a philosophy which was not merely conceptual; the face escapes conceptualisation and appeals directly to the conscience. Access to the face is straightaway ethical. It escapes concept and essence. It enables me to escape from self. I do not dominate or absorb the other in this relationship. The face is naked, it is encountered in the total nudity of its eyes. It is not a potential threat but a stimulus to an encounter. It has an essential poverty. It is exposed as if inviting us to violence but at the same time the face is what forbids us to kill. It is not perception of features, it is signification without context; in this sense one can say that the face is not seen. It leads you beyond. It is in this that the signification of the face makes its escape from being, as a correlate of knowing. My relation to the face is straightaway ethical. The face is what one cannot kill, or it is that whose meaning consists in saying "thou shalt not kill." Of course murder is a banal fact, ethical exigency is not an ontological necessity, but this ethical peculiarity, the humanity of man, operates as a rupture of being (it breaks "the Totality"). It is significant even if being resumes and recovers itself. The face speaks inviting discourse, and response or responsibility is the authentic relationship with the other. This is its moral height over me. The first word of the face is "thou shalt not kill." There is a command in the appearance of the face. Starting from this ethical experience one can construct an ethics. Levinas' task is only to find its meaning ....

... One can see here Levinas' Jewish roots, even though he says that ethical truth is common. He is at home in the biblical language of Revelation and response. The encounter with the other in the face, reveals the Absolutely Other, it leads you beyond. Levinas says that the coming to mind of God is always linked in his analysis to the responsibility for the other person, and all religious affectivity signifies in its concreteness a relation to others." 38

Others have attempted to adapt Levinas to their own theological project. For Christian 39 and Christophe part of his thinking illuminated their own lectio divina and their situation They shared his thought with the members of the Ribat inter-faith group. They saw that the philosophy of Levinas can act as a bridge between the great religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam which all see God as relational and each person's primary relation with the other as ethical, imposing on each person an unavoidable and unconditional responsibility for the other. If we can utilise a common philosophy in our dialogue with one another this in a step towards unity and peace. "God is the ultimate manifestation of the other. I can only go towards God by being ethically concerned by and for the other person. The relationship with the other is a manifestation of the ultimate Other, the mystery of God. The Infinite does not' come to meet me but the idea of the Infinite is to be found in my responsibility to the other. 40

Meetings of Ribat at Tibhirine gave occasion for the Frs. Christian and Christophe to give expression to their ideals and hopes as refined in the particular crucible of their situation. Their vision of God, the love of others (Muslim neighbours) and the threat of death. Speaking on the theme of, "0 God, you are my hope in the face of all living people ", starting from that sense of 'face' in the Bible (there are approx. 400 occurrences of the word), both Christian and Christophe, find in this Jewish writer the words to express their own deeper understanding,

Christophe was still speaking of Levin as' ideas in his last letters to Fr. Philippe at Tamie.

"Those who have studied the work of Emmanuel Levinas - and Christopher was still talking to me about it in his last letter - will have recognised there one of that philosopher's basic concepts: "The other person is not the incarnation of God, but precisely by his face, in which he is disincarnate, is the manifestation of the height in which God is revealed." (Levinas, "Totalite et Infini" 41). "My relationship with God comes to me in the concrete form of my relationship with the other person, whose face, whose otherness, whose very strangeness speaks the commandment come from we know not where," (cf. "De Dieu qui vient à l'idee".) One is not, here, in the realm of representation but in that of revelation, and this very revelation obtains entirely, as if by chance, in the commandment of love - even of one's enemies." (Collectanea Cisterciensia, 58 - 1996, p.240).

In his conference at the Easter meeting of Ribat 1995 Christophe had said, "Yes, a future of Light awaits us and it is already given us to live: "Children of Light are we,"(c.f. Col. I, 23). Also: "I choose to keep myself on the threshold of your house,"(Psalm 83), it is a happiness which comes to me: "Happy the man who hopes in you! You', the sun, shield of light, of grace, of glory, my light and my salvation, I pray you: let your face - on the face of all who live -shine!"(psalm 118, 125), Myself ... and other people? Me and you, this face-to-face, if it does not receive an opening, a rupture, runs a strong risk of being only an illusion, or even a prison. I have not come out of myself and I have captured your glory and made it small, prostrating myself before the idol: "Me". To receive from you my being as a face - searching for your face- is freedom, an investiture which makes it impossible. for me to shy, away from my neighbour. (see ... E. Levinas!). In his face you look at me. Stranger, prisoner, naked, hungry, you call them to hope, it is up to me to put it to work. Hope, take heart! Take courage! Hope again, be strong!" It is a matter of life and death for your neighbour, wounded by the roadside. Let us go! ... 42

... Jesus, himself, raised up on the cross? Yes, this humble servant, despised, stared at, he will become the light, and he will be fulfilled. Him, in whom God is revealed to us ...

There this just man justifies the multitudes ...

He interposes himself as a face both filial and fraternal. Vulnerable, facing his executioners, as he is to the love of his Father, he is the first-born of a multitude of faces, attracting us, drawing us to him in his prayer of intercession, of interposing, and already of grace. Indeed, we do not see it, it is necessary to wait with perseverance, we groan interiorly with all the cosmos in impatient waiting." 43

Fr. Christian, on the very eve of his abduction, had presented some reflections referring to the views of Levinas to the members of the Ribat Meeting. The minutes of that Meeting, 25-28 March 1996 make a summary of his words continuing the theme, "O God, you are my hope in the face of all living people" :

"Fr. Christian prayed a little on this theme but it had never entered so deeply into his life. It is very concrete, it is the order of experience. Hope leads us towards that which cannot be seen. The face risks stopping anyone who sees it. Give thanks for the beauty of certain faces while going beyond them. The most unprepossessing faces, Hope transfigures. These are practical exercises in the human community and in the Communion of Saints. Job is the master of Hope, both in God and in Man, when all the ports are blocked.

He reflects on the reading from the Koran for Ramadan, gathering flowers, as it were, in these desert pages. He recalls the presence that Christmas night of the "Six Shepherds" who had led them in the arrangement of the first part of the liturgy in order to enter more fully into it, the same "shepherds" they welcomed at the guesthouse after the Eucharist. These six faces merge with the six faces of those others (terrorists) who had visited them on Christmas night two years earlier. ...

"One disarmed face can disarm another face. If one presents oneself disarmed and if one can believe that the other person can leave himself disarmed, that will happen and violence will then become improbable." (Levinas)

... The face is a mystery of daily poverty. The young people of the area were aware that the monks lived the same precarious existence as they did. The intention of straddling the future seems a false hope. In doing so one

can violate life, violate experience. We are called to present a good face to the other person, even if he has the right not to respond. The face which reveals itself today is not all one has with which to welcome the other

person."
.

And in his final Testament Christian's key concepts of the 'face of God' and 'a- Dieu' resonate directly with the amplified exposition of Levinas. Levina;" for example, writes, as did Christian, of a-Dieu, with a hyphen, to avoid the implication of adieu as a farewell. A-Dieu suggests movement towards God rather than termination, "Levinas frequently writes a-Dieu (to God) rather than Dieu in order to avoid the implication that the noun refers to a substance with a separate existence. Instead God is to be approached but never reached: the a of a-Dieu suggests movement towards God, whereas the more familiar word adieu suggests a farewell to God as an ontological category .... Whenever Levinas characterises God, he is obliged to exercise extreme caution with his language." 44

18. NOTE: Louis Massignon Louis Massignon in the Reading of Christian de Che rge

Donald McGlynn OCSO

Louis Masstgnon (1883-1962), an outstanding Orientalist scholar, was a dominant presence in the field of Islamic studies. He made a special study of Islamic mysticism and Sufism. He contributed greatly to the understanding of Islam within the Catholic milieu. "He recognised in Islam a genuine heritage from the kindred and ancestral faith of Abraham. And on this foundation he built his lifelong campaign for better mutual relationships between Christians and Muslims. The fruit of his efforts is to be seen in the eirenic references in the Vatican 11 documents.” . 45

While it may be true that Emmanuel Levinas was an important influence in biblical philosophy, it is well to note that Christian's search for a deeper interfaith dialogue was influenced more specifically, in its Islamic orientation, by another scholar, Louis Massingnon. In a significant way the particular tension of life at Atlas monastery and the challenge to genuine understanding of their personal vocation and of their relationship with Islam resulted in a meeting point of three great faiths, Jewish, Christian and Islamic. In Levinas there was a clear encounter with a powerful and specifically Jewish background greatly influenced by the Hebrew Bible. The need was even· more urgent, in the

___________________
Notes:

38 David Hodges, 'The relevance of the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas to Christian thought', Hallel (22) 1997:1, pp. 50-53.

39 E.g., see above p. 24

40 ibid, p. 53

41 English translation, Alphonso Lingis, 'Totality and Infinity', Pittsburgh, Dusquesne University Press, 1969, p.79.

42 Sept vies pour Dieu et l'Algerie, ed. Bruno Chenu, Bayard Editions, Paris 1996, p.162. 43 ibid, p.165

43 ibid p.165

44 Colin Davis, Levinas, Polity Press. Cambridge, 1996. p. 98.

45 Sidney H. Griffith, 'Thomas Merton and Louis Massignon', Merton Annual, No .3, p.156.

COMMENT

2012-01-24T11:20:00.000Z

Panorama of the Clyde

---- Forwarded Message -----
From: Anne Marie. . .
To: Donald . . .
Sent: Monday, 23 January 2012, 22:40
Subject: Pic of the day

We had a day out on Sunday to do some photography. Here is my favourite. A panorama of the Clyde.

Anne Marie

COMMENT

2012-01-24T11:19:00.000Z

----- Forwarded Message -----

From: William

Sent: Monday, 23 January 2012, 22:20
Subject: Re: [Blog] "Sunset. The Hour of Compline. Salve Regina." Thomas Merton

Dear Father Donald,

Unsleeping, your blog post delights me so much!

With my copy of the book by my bedside, and the window of my mind open to the night sky:

"The shadows fall. The stars appear. The birds begin to sleep Night embraces the silent half of the earth."

And "everything depends on our laying ourselves down "under the sweet stars of the world" and giving ourselves over to the hidden Wisdom of God."

With quiet inner joy,

. . .in Our Lord,

William

'Hagia Sophia, Holy Wisdom, who crowns Christ' Merton

2012-01-23T14:46:00.000Z

She crowns Him not with what is glorious, but with
what is greater than glory: the one thing greater than
glory is weakness, nothingness, poverty.

She sends the infinitely Rich and Powerful One forth
as poor and helpless, in His mission of inexpressible
mercy, to die for us on the Cross. (Merton)

«Wisdom will honour you if you embrace her she will place on your head a fair garland she will bestow on you a crown on of glory.» (Proverbs 4:8-9)

HAGIA SOPHIA

§.. One day Father Louis (Thomas Merton) our friend came from his monastery at Trappist Kentucky to bring an ill novice to the hospital in Lexington. (I had known Father Louis since 1955 when I visited him for the first time. Later we printed several of his books.) We had prepared a simple luncheon and I welcomed him to sit with us at table. From when we be sat he had a good view of the triptych on. the chest and he often looked at it. After a while he asked quite abruptly «And who is the woman behind Christ? said «I do not know;:yet.» Without further question he gave his own answer. «She is Hagia Sophia, Holy Wisdom, who crowns Christ.» And that she was - and is.

— Victor Hammer

"Hagia Sophia Crowning the Young Christ." A line-cut of Victor Hammer's triptych painting of the same title. Courtesy of the Estate of Victor and Carolyn Hammer, and the King Library Press, University of Kentucky.

"Sunset. The Hour of Compline. Salve Regina." Thomas Merton

2012-01-23T10:12:00.003Z

Hagia Sophia page 205-208

Sophia: The Hidden Christ of Thomas Merton

Christopher Pramuk (Author)

"Sunset. The Hour of Compline. Salve Regina."

"The Hour of Compline" invokes Hammer's image of the woman crowning the boy Christ. "It is she, it is Mary, Sophia, who in sadness and joy, with the full awareness of what she is doing, sets upon the Second Person, the Logos, a crown which is His Human Nature. Thus her consent opens the door of created nature, of time, of history, to the Word of God.” As Michael Mott observes, "Where Merton expects us to see the image from the painting" in these lines, "he also expects us to hear music.”¹²⁸ When the Salve Regina is sung by the monks at the Abbey of Gethsemani, all lights in the abbey church are extinguished except for one, directed at the image of Mary in a window over the altar. ¹²⁹

Yet Mary crowns her son "not with what is glorious, but with what is greater than glory: the one thing greater than glory is weakness, nothingness, poverty."¹³⁰ It is thus through Mary's wisdom and "sweet yielding consent" that "God enters without publicity into the city of rapacious men:” Indeed, her "sadness" and "full awareness of what she is doing" reflect a wisdom well beyond her years, a wisdom deeply attuned to the "wisdom and foolishness" that will one day cause a sword to pierce her own heart. "She sends the infinitely Rich and Powerful One forth as poor and helpless, in His mission of inexpressible mercy, to die for us on the Cross.”

It is Significant that Mary is depicted in Hammer's picture neither as the mother of an infant nor as a royal Queen of Heaven. Her crowning of the boy Christ, notes McCaslin, is "an act of feminine power;' subverting traditional depictions of "the Coronation of the Virgin" in which Mary is crowned by Christ, rather than she actively empowering him. In crowning the Child with his "human nature,” the poem reminds us "that all men and women come from a common womb (the earth, the Feminine) and are alike vulnerable, frail, and utterly dependent on the earth and the feminine matrix.”¹³¹ Moreover, by depicting the Child not as an infant but on the brink of adulthood, both the picture and the poem underscore our common humanity with Jesus-not only "as ones who have undergone birth,”¹³² as McCaslin suggests, but also as a people called to serve in a world riven by sin and contradiction. As the incarnation of divine Wisdom, "the Child goes forth to ... crucifixion and resurrection. As humanity the child goes forth, an Everyman or Everywoman, into exile from paradise.”¹³³

Mary, in her "wise answer;' accepts the contradiction. Through her understanding, God enters "without publicity" into human history. The final scene of the poem, as Michael Mott notes, is a scene of haunting "solemnity, great beauty, and a piercing loneliness.”¹³⁴:

The shadows fall. The stars appear. The birds begin to sleep Night embraces the silent half of the earth.

A vagrant, a destitute wanderer with dusty feet, finds his way down a new road. A homeless God, lost in the night, without papers, without identification, without even a number, a frail expendable exile lies down in desolation under the sweet stars of the world and entrusts Himself to sleep.”¹³⁵

McCaslin sees in these lines "a strangely modern figure of the exile or God as exile in us,”¹³⁶ -suggesting that human destiny in a world exiled from Sophia is not altogether different from that of Jesus, the Son of Man who "has nowhere to lay his head.” O'Connell makes a similar point, citing Philippians 2:6-11, Paul's striking hymn of kenosis, God's self-emptying in Jesus: "In identifying fully with the human condition, Christ is the perfect epiphany of Sophia, embodying and extending to all the redemptive mercy of God.”¹³⁷

The final scene of Hagia Sophia unforgettably reprises Merton's celebration of Pasternak, whose protest is "the protest of life itself, of humanity itself, of love" against the "reign of numbers,"¹³⁸ against the alienation and anonymity of mass society. What meaning can our lives have, after all, in "the vast expanses" of an evolutionary universe? Like the hospital patient in the opening section of the poem; like Mary, receiving with astonishment the message of the Angel Gabriel; like Joseph, who struggles in faith to make sense of it all; like Mary Magdelene, Peter, Nicodemus, John, all the hidden but crucial players in the narrative subtext of the gospels-when "night embraces the silent half of the earth;' everything depends on our laying ourselves down "under the sweet stars of the world" and giving ourselves over to the hidden Wisdom of God. Though our heads may pound with the clamor of many doubts and fears, and though it is more difficult than ever to see the stars, or even to remember to look for them through the glow of towering, sleepless cities, there is an inner music of Love, Mercy, and Understanding that rises up from the earth itself, Natura naturans, and from the still point of the human heart, asking to be set free in the world. She is Wisdom, our Sister: "God-given and God Himself as Gift.” When we attend to her tender voice and give our quiet consent, she effects in us a work greater than that of Creation: the work of new being in grace, the work of mercy and peace, justice and love.

Who, then, is Hagia Sophia? She is the Spirit of Christ but more than Christ. She is the Love joining the Father, Son, and Spirit that longs for incarnation from before the very beginning. She is Jesus our mother, and Mary, the Theotokos. She is the "pivot" (le point vierge) of nature, Natura naturans, and all creation in God from the beginning. Perhaps most of all, Merton's Sophia is our "true self;' when we (like Mary, seat of Wisdom) allow Christ to be birthed in us, and so realize the hidden ground of mercy, creativity, and presence in our very selves, the mystical Body of Christ. The moment her name awakens in us a sense of mercy, communion, and presence, Sophia is one Wisdom, one Child, one Meaning, one Sister" -is not symbolic, but real, more than literally real. The remembrance of Sophia opens onto a mystical political spirituality of engagement in the world.

Hagia Sophia COMMENT

2012-01-20T20:26:00.000Z

hagiaprayercard

Hi, Wiiliam,
It so happened that the COMPLINE of Thomas Merton in Hagia Sophia giving us our actual Compline.
And your underlining is enlightening. - and the pictures.
Thank you,
. . . . Donald
________________________________

--- On Fri, 20/1/12, William . . .

From: William
Subject: Re: [Blog] Hagia Sophia. Thomas Merton
To: "Fr Donald"
Date: Friday, 20 January, 2012, 19:36

Dear Father Donald,

hagiabroadside
What a joy and a delight to be sharing this wonderful book with you at one and the same time!

I cannot remember when any book held my fascination as this one has done.

With great excitement I found on the internet the image of Sophia (as on page 300), and one that has subtle variation [attachments].
And these are the lines of the poem highlighted below that capture it for me..."It is she, it is Mary, Sophia...."

Wonderful!

. . . in Our Lord,

William

IV. Sunset. The Hour of Compline. Salve Regina.
Now the Blessed Virgin Mary is the one created being
who enacts and shows forth in her life all that is hidden in Sophia.
Because of this she can be said to be a personal manifestation
of Sophia, Who in God is Ousia rather than Person.
Natura in Mary becomes pure Mother. In her, Natura
is as she was from the origin from her divine birth. In Mary Natura
is all wise and is manifested as an all-prudent, all-loving, all-pure person:
not a Creator, and not a Redeemer, but perfect Creature, perfectly
Redeemed, the fruit of all God's great power, the perfect expression
of wisdom in mercy.
It is she, it is Mary, Sophia, who in sadness and joy, with the full awareness
of what she is doing, sets upon the Second Person, the Logos, a crown
which is His Human Nature. Thus her consent opens the door of created
nature, of time, of history, to the Word of God.
God enters into His creation. Through her wise answer, through her obedient
understanding, through the sweet yielding consent of Sophia, God enters
without publicity into the city of rapacious men.
She crowns Him not with what is glorious, but with
what is greater than glory: the one thing greater than
glory is weakness, nothingness, poverty.
She sends the infinitely Rich and Powerful One forth
as poor and helpless, in His mission of inexpressible
mercy, to die for us on the Cross.
The shadows fall. The stars appear. The birds begin to sleep.
Night embraces the silent half of the earth. A vagrant, a destitute
wanderer with dusty feet, finds his way down a new road. A
homeless God, lost in the night, without papers, without
identifications, without even a number, a frail expendable exile
lies down in desolation under the sweet stars of the world and
entrusts Himself to sleep.

Hagia Sophia. Thomas Merton

2012-01-20T19:09:00.001Z

Thomas Merton

Hagia Sophia Written in 1963

I. Dawn. The Hour of Lauds.

There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a
dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden whole-
ness. This mysterious Unity and Integrity is Wisdom,
the Mother of all, Natura naturans. There is in all
things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence
that is a fount of action and joy. It rises up in word-
less gentleness and flows out to me from the unseen
roots of all created being, welcoming me tenderly,
saluting me with indescribable humility. This is at
once my own being, my own nature, and the Gift of
my Creator's Thought and Art within me, speaking
as Hagia Sophia, speaking as my sister, Wisdom.

I am awakened, I am born again at the voice of this,
my Sister, sent to me from the depths of the divine
fecundity.

Let us suppose I am a man lying asleep in a hospital.
I am indeed this man lying asleep. It is July the second,
the Feast of Our Lady's Visitation. A Feast of Wisdom.

At five-thirty in the morning I am dreaming in a very
quiet room when a soft voice awakens me from my
dream. I am like all mankind awakening from all the
dreams that ever were dreamed in all the nights of the
world. It is like the One Christ awakening in all the
separate selves that ever were separate and isolated
and alone in all the lands of the earth. It is like all minds
coming back together into awareness from all distractions,
cross-purposes and confusions, into unity of love. It is like
the first morning of the world (when Adam, at the sweet voice
of Wisdom awoke from nonentity and knew her), and like the Last
Morning of the world when all the fragments of Adam will return from
death at the voice of Hagia Sophia, and will know where they stand.

Such is the awakening of one man, one morning, at
the voice of a nurse in the hospital. Awakening out
of languor and darkness, out of helplessness, out of
sleep, newly confronting reality and finding it to be
gentleness.

It is like being awakened by Eve. It is like being
awakened by the Blessed Virgin. It is like coming
forth from primordial nothingness and standing in
clarity, in Paradise.

In the cool hand of the nurse there is the touch of all
life, the touch of Spirit.

Thus Wisdom cries out to all who will hear (Sapientia
clamitat in plateis) and she cries out particularly
to the little, to the ignorant and the helpless.

Who is more little, who is more poor than the helpless
man who lies asleep in his bed without awareness and
without defense? Who is more trusting than
he who must entrust himself each night to sleep?
What is the reward of his trust? Gentleness comes to
him when he is most helpless and awakens him,
refreshed, beginning to be made whole. Love takes him
by the hand, and opens to him the doors of another
life, another day.

(But he who has defended himself, fought for himself
in sickness, planned for himself, guarded himself, loved
himself alone and watched over his own life all night, is
killed at last by exhaustion. For him there is no newness.
Everything is stale and old.)

When the helpless one awakens strong as the voice of
mercy, it is as if Life his Sister, as if the Blessed Virgin,
(his own flesh, his own sister), as if Nature made wise
by God's Art and Incarnation were to stand over him and
invite him with unutterable sweetness to be awake and to
live. This is what it means to recognize Hagia Sophia.

II. Early Morning. The Hour of Prime.

O blessed, silent one, who speaks everywhere!

We do not hear the soft voice, the gentle voice, the
merciful and feminine.

We do not hear mercy, or yielding love, or non-resistance,
or non-reprisal. In her there are no reasons and no answers.
Yet she is the candor of God's light, the expression of His
simplicity.

We do not hear the uncomplaining pardon that bows
down the innocent visages of flowers to the dewy
earth. We do not see the Child who is prisoner in all
the people, and who says nothing. She smiles, for
though they have bound her, she cannot be a prisoner.
Not that she is strong, or clever, but simply that
she does not understand imprisonment.

The helpless one, abandoned to sweet sleep, him the
gentle one will awake: Sophia.

All that is sweet in her tenderness will speak to him
on all sides in everything, without ceasing, and he
will never be the same again. He will have awakened
not to conquest and dark pleasure but to the impeccable
pure simplicity of One consciousness in all and through all:
one Wisdom, one Child, one Meaning, one Sister.

The stars rejoice in their setting, and in the rising of
the Sun. The heavenly lights rejoice in the going
forth of one man to make a new world in the morning,
because he has come out of the confused primordial dark
night into consciousness. He has expressed the clear silence
of Sophia in his own heart. He has become eternal.

III. High Morning. The Hour of Tierce.

The Sun burns in the sky like the Face of God, but
we do not know his countenance as terrible. His light
is diffused in the air and the light of God is diffused
by Hagia Sophia.

We do not see the Blinding One in black emptiness.
He speaks to us gently in ten thousand things, in
which His light is one fullness and one Wisdom.
Thus He shines not on them but from within them.
Such is the loving-kindness of Wisdom.

All the perfections of created things are also in God;
and therefore He is at once Father and Mother. As
Father He stands in solitary might surrounded by
darkness. As Mother His shining is diffused, embracing
all His creatures with merciful tenderness and light.
The Diffuse Shining of God is Hagia Sophia.
We call her His "glory." In Sophia His power is
experienced only as mercy and as love.

(When the recluses of fourteenth-century England
heard their Church Bells and looked out upon the
wolds and fens under a kind sky, they spoke in their
hearts to "Jesus our Mother." It was Sophia that had
awakened in their childlike hearts.)

Perhaps in a certain very primitive aspect Sophia is
the unknown, the dark, the nameless Ousia. Perhaps
she is even the Divine Nature, One in Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost. And perhaps she is in infinite light unmanifest,
not even waiting to be known as Light. This I do not know.
Out of the silence Light is spoken. We do not hear it or see
it until it is spoken.

In the Nameless Beginning, without Beginning, was
the Light. We have not seen this Beginning. I do not know
where she is, in this Beginning. I do not speak of her as a
Beginning, but as a manifestation.

Now the Wisdom of God, Sophia, comes forth, reaching
from "end to end mightily." She wills to be also
the unseen pivot of all nature, the center and significance
of all the light that is in all and for all. That which is poorest
and humblest, that which is most hidden in all things is
nevertheless most obvious in them, and quite manifest, for it
is their own self that stands before us, naked and without care.

Sophia, the feminine child, is playing in the world,
obvious and unseen, playing at all times before the Creator.
Her delights are to be with the children of men. She is their sister.
The core of life that exists in all things is tenderness, mercy, virginity
the Light, the Life considered as passive, as received, as given, as
taken, as inexhaustibly renewed by the Gift of God. Sophia is
Gift, is Spirit, Donum Dei. She is God-given and God
Himself as Gift. God as all, and God reduced to Nothing:
inexhaustible nothingness. Exinanivit semetipsum. Humility as
the source of unfailing light.

Hagia Sophia in all things is the Divine Light reflected in them,
considered as a spontaneous participation, as their invitation
to the Wedding Feast.

Sophia is God's sharing of Himself with creatures. His outporing,
and the Love by which He is given, and known, held and loved.

She is in all things like the air receiving the sunlight. In her
they prosper. In her they glorigy God. In her they rejoice to reflect
Him. In her they are united with him. She is the union between them.
She is the Love that unites them. She is life as communion, life as
thanksgiving, life as praise, life as festival, life as glory.

Because she receives perfectly there is in her no stain.
She is love without blemish, and gratitude without
self-complacency. All things praise her by being themselves
and by sharing in the Wedding Feast. She is the Bride and the
Feast and the Wedding.

The feminine principle in the world is the inexhaustible source
of creative realizations of the Father's glory. She is His
manifestation in radiant splendor! But she remains unseen,
glimpsed only by a few. Sometimes there are none who
know her at all.

Sophia is the mercy of God in us. She is the tenderness
with which the infinitely mysterious power of pardon
turns the darkness of our sins into the light of grace.
She is the inexhaustible fountain of kindness, and would
almost seem to be, in herself, all mercy. So she does in us
a greater work than that of Creation: the work of new being
in grace, the work of pardon, the work of transformation from
brightness to brightness tamquam a Domini Spiritu. She
is in us the yielding and tender counterpart of the power, justice
and creative dynamism of the Father.

IV. Sunset. The Hour of Compline. Salve Regina.

Now the Blessed Virgin Mary is the one created being
who enacts and shows forth in her life all that is hidden in Sophia.
Because of this she can be said to be a personal manifestation
of Sophia, Who in God is Ousia rather than Person.

Natura in Mary becomes pure Mother. In her, Natura
is as she was from the origin from her divine birth. In Mary Natura
is all wise and is manifested as an all-prudent, all-loving, all-pure person:
not a Creator, and not a Redeemer, but perfect Creature, perfectly
Redeemed, the fruit of all God's great power, the perfect expression
of wisdom in mercy.

It is she, it is Mary, Sophia, who in sadness and joy, with the full awareness
of what she is doing, sets upon the Second Person, the Logos, a crown
which is His Human Nature. Thus her consent opens the door of created
nature, of time, of history, to the Word of God.

God enters into His creation. Through her wise answer, through her obedient
understanding, through the sweet yielding consent of Sophia, God enters
without publicity into the city of rapacious men.

She crowns Him not with what is glorious, but with
what is greater than glory: the one thing greater than
glory is weakness, nothingness, poverty.

She sends the infinitely Rich and Powerful One forth
as poor and helpless, in His mission of inexpressible
mercy, to die for us on the Cross.

The shadows fall. The stars appear. The birds begin to sleep.
Night embraces the silent half of the earth. A vagrant, a destitute
wanderer with dusty feet, finds his way down a new road. A
homeless God, lost in the night, without papers, without
identifications, without even a number, a frail expendable exile
lies down in desolation under the sweet stars of the world and
entrusts Himself to sleep.

Words 9,167 Return to Index of Thomas Merton's Marian Poetry