Unthinkable Wings

I've been doing a last bit of reference checking, having discovered that I was missing a reference to some Dominican hagiography. This has resulted in me spending the afternoon reading the Vitas Fratrum, a collection of anecdotes about the early days of the Dominican Order. There are a surprisingly large number of stories about Dominic changing water into wine, and an awful lot of ones about people being impressed by his cheerfulness in difficult circumstances (this is unusual in mediaeval hagiography, where there is a general tendency to think that smiling is vaguely dodgy). There is also a vaguely hilarious story about how he would make the rounds of the house at night, and tuck the brothers in if he thought they looked cold. (This, again, is an unusual motif).

More conventionally, we are told, he spent much time in prayer at night. I'm not sure why the following amuses me - apart from the wonderfully pragmatic Dominican attitude to rules - but it does:

"It was his custom to keep nightly watch in the church, and once while praying after the brothers had retired to rest, the devil showed himself under the guise of a friar praying before one of the altars. The blessed Dominic wondered at seeing him remain behind after the signal had been given, so he motioned with his hand for the brother to retire to rest, and the man bowed in return and withdrew. When matins was over he cautioned the brothers not to remain in the church once the signal had been given for retiring; nevertheless the pretended friar did the same thing a second and even a third night. On the third night St Dominic went up to him and rebuked him sharply... At this the devil cried out with great glee: "At last I have made you break your silence!" But the servant of God, seeing how he had been tricked, boldly replied, "Save your mirth for some better occasion, wretch, when it can perhaps profit you; and learn moreover that I am the master of this silence and can speak when I think fit to. You cannot hoodwink me on this score." Then the devil slunk away abashed...."
Vitas Fratrum, 2.15, trans Placid Conway.

And a very significant day in the calendar, even if you're not interested in the Annunciation, because it is (a) the old calendar New Year - and how much better as a beginning to the year than the gloom and exhaustion of January and (b) it's also the date on which the One Ring was destroyed and the Gondorian New Year (Tolkien, of course, did this deliberately, as a tiny gesture of piety and to offer a sort of typological parallel between the redemptive acts in LotR and the greater, truer story of redemption in the history of our salvation).

The 'point' of the Annunciation, anyway, is twofold: it celebrates the fact that God is with us as one of us, flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone, and it celebrates Mary's readiness to say 'yes' to God's costly and outrageous demands, which is the pattern and prototype for all openness to the love of God and of others, an attitude which is faithful and loving but not naive and unaware. It is an openness which sees both the world as it is, and how God wants to use us to transform it, as Mary sang in the Magnificat.

I just found a rather striking passage in Rowan Williams' book on the desert fathers, Silence and Honey Cakes:

"Only the body saves the soul. It sounds rather shocking put like that, but the point is that the soul (whatever that is) left to itself, the inner life or whatever you want to call it, is not capable of transforming itself. It needs the gifts that only the external life can deliver: the actual events of God's action in history, heard by physical ears, the actual material fact of the meeting of believers where bread and wine are shared, the actual wonderful, disagreeable, impossible unpredictable human beings that we encounter in and out of church. Only in this setting do we become holy - in a way entirely unique to each one of us."

I know, I know, I have just been moaning about how much I have to do and should not be faffing about on LJ, but I have to share my delight in the fact that today George Herbert (Priest, poet, 1633, lesser festival) is commemorated in the Anglican calendar, with a particularly fine collect. So have it, and also one of my favourite Herbert poems:


PRAYER. (I)

PRAYER the Churches banquet, Angels age,
Gods breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth ;

Engine against th’ Almightie, sinner's towre,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six daies world-transposing in an houre,
A kinde of tune, which all things heare and fear ;

Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,
Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,
Heaven in ordinarie, man well drest,
The milkie way, the bird of Paradise,

Church-bels beyond the stars heard, the souls bloud,
The land of spices, something understood.


King of glory, king of peace,
who called your servant George Herbert
from the pursuit of worldly honours
to be a priest in the temple of his God and king:
grant us also the grace to offer ourselves
with singleness of heart in humble obedience to your service;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

Amen.

From George Herbert, A Priest to the Temple, cap 35.

Another old custom there is of saying, when light is brought in, God send us the light of heaven, and the parson likes this very well, neither is he afraid of praising or praying to God at all times, but is rather glad or catching opportunities to do them. Light is a great blessing, and as great as food, for which we give thanks: and those that think this superstitious neither know superstition nor themselves.

I do love Herbert.

... just found this quotation from Tertullian, which I rather like (both in terms of ideas and in the witty way that it's expressed):

caro cardo salutis - the flesh is the hinge of salvation.