Prefer nothing to the Love of Christ

It was a dream that I was dead and I was watching myself. I saw myself going to the foot of a mountain and climbing up, though I didn’t really have to climb, I was lifted up. I knew I was going to my judgment. I was going up the mountain and I was afraid. I was thinking. “This is it. I am going to be judged. They’re all going to be there and they’re going to see everything that I’ve done…” But when I arrived there was just Jesus. I couldn’t see his face but he was definitely there and he looked rather traditional, like a monk with a cowl over his face. There was light behind him so I couldn’t see his face. And all he did was give me a huge hug. And it said volumes – I am still reading stuff into it. The first thing he said was, “You silly man. Why are you so worried? Did you think I didn’t love you? I do love you. Nothing matters, you’ll do as you are. — Gerard Hughes, SJ (1924-2014)

‘Prefer nothing to the love of Christ’ is probably the best-known sentence in the Rule of Saint Benedict, following closely after the first opening word of the Rule: “Listen”. Benedict teaches us that faith is connected to the inclination of the heart and our active listening. “Listen, with the ear of your heart”; not just with your ears or brain, but with the deepest part of your being, “the ear of your heart”. The first word of Benedict's ‘Rule for Monks’ is a verb, a command, situated in the human heart. Listen to what God and the people God speaks through are saying to you; faith needs to be heard not just by the brain.

“Our real journey in life is interior.” —Thomas Merton

The Good News, the Gospel, is an invitation to an eternal relationship with God. Monastic wisdom reveals the difference between living faith and a moralistic code, law, or set of directives. An inward-oriented faith seeks to transform the person (conversion) towards a loving relationship with God, others, and creation. An interior faith seeks healing and redemption. Monastic men and women often feel directly called by God to conversion. When a monk is tonsured, he declares himself “dead to the world” and focuses on a new life in Christ. The monastic seeks to live out his baptismal vows radically. But this is only the beginning. By living a life of conversion and seeking healing, the monk or nun tries to open themselves. It is God who works inside the person, and this is a long process. Few have been granted a “fast-track” through the grace of God. For most of us, it takes our whole life. And when you think you have finally achieved it, you can start again; you have fallen. In the Benedictine way, we call this “conversatio morum”, a vow the Benedictine monastic makes at the beginning of monastic life.

“The vow of conversatio morum expresses our hope that, after a lifetime of learning to die to ourselves so as to live for God, we will be truly ‘converted’, transformed into the image of Christ, so that we too may dwell in the presence of God, in the company of all the Saints. Our vow of conversatio morum is really a commitment to pursue holiness.” — Nuns of Conception Abbey.

The journey of conversion, redemption, and growth is for all Christians, laypeople as well as religious; we are all invited into a relationship with God through Christ. The word 'conversion' is too often used to indicate the need for the conversion of others, as if conversion is a one-off event. You do it once, and then go off converting others. How absurd!

“The older I get, the more I meet people, the more convinced I am that we must only work on ourselves, to grow in grace. The only thing we can do about people is to love them.”—All the Way to Heaven: The Selected Letters of Dorothy Day

Dorothy Day, one of the founders of the Catholic Worker movement and a Benedictine oblate, emphasises that it is in meeting others—the homeless person, the poor man or woman, or the stranger—that we ourselves can be changed or converted. “The closer we are to the poor, the closer to Christ’s love,” she wrote in 1942. Later, she wrote, “The mystery of the poor is this: That they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him. It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love. The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love.”

I don't think faith can be achieved through a handbook or even Bible studies. While these might satisfy our appetite and need for knowledge, faith has a deeply mystical side to it. Foremost, faith needs to be relational. The heart needs to be open to receive the Word of God, which reveals itself through the Holy Spirit. If faith remains on the level of knowledge, it doesn’t take root! A set of laws does not bring anyone closer to the truth in Christ (which is always love!). The Word, the seed, needs to grow in fertile soil—the human heart. That is where the passions are, where suffering happens, and where the battle occurs between choosing God or the self (anxiety). A person might feel attracted to the clear and structured life of a monastery, a strict moral rule book, or a simplistic ‘Biblical’ ideology, but let us not confuse that with faith in Christ.

Mary of Egypt

Another, albeit different, great example is St Mary of Egypt. A woman called by God to faith and redemption even though she hardly had any knowledge of the Bible or Church teachings. She met Christ through an image, the icon of his mother at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, where she was during the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross. However, she felt blocked from entering the church, which made her understand her own brokenness in the face of God and eternity. Her willingness to love Christ led her to a full life in Christ. She chose the life of a desert mother, understanding that this is where she would find inner peace. The way of Mary of Egypt became one of penitence and finding inner peace in solitude. Mary of Egypt was so imperfect that she would be scorned by many Christians today; some would even be tempted by the devil to stone her, yet she was a woman clearly loved and cherished by God.

‘Biblical’ Ideology

The problem with faith as a moral system or ideology in Christianity finds some origins in Augustine’s concept of “original sin,” which led Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) to his satisfaction theory of atonement in Cur Deus Homo. Much later, in the 16th century, the German Augustinian friar Martin Luther (1483-1546) and the French lawyer Jean Calvin (1509-1564) framed salvation in a rigid ‘legal’ framework. Someone sins, does something wrong, thus breaks the law, and so punishment is needed, or someone has to pay this debt. In theology, we call this ‘penal substitution atonement’. But where is God’s grace in this? This is mostly a wrathful God.

The retired Canadian Orthodox Archbishop and Monk Vladika Lazar recently said, “What the doctrine has done to Western Christianity has been to reduce the Christian faith to a legal code of correct behaviour which is void of the element of internal struggle (askesis; podvig) for inner transformation and the transfiguration of the heart and mind of the believer. This legal code is expressed not in genuine morality but in a selfrighteous and arrogant system of dead moralism when Christianity is reduced to an ideologically based programme of ‘correct behaviour.’ It is rendered lifeless and meaningless.” At least for some, evangelical theology has moved on in the last century. Orthodox theology never agreed with penal substitution atonement, and within Catholic theology, alternative visions have always existed. Examples are found in the writings of John Eriugena (815-877), later in the writings of the Franciscan Duns Scotus (1265-1308), in the “Christus Victor,” or in the pre-Augustinian views on atonement of the early church.

To return to Dorothy Day, it was not an ideology or moral system that brought her back to faith in God (she already had a great sense of morality), but rather love and beauty: “As she described it, the beauty of the created world convinced her that there must be a Creator. The joy of human love helped her to realise the beauty of divine love… She came to see that her life – and all our lives – are a search for love, a search for a love that is Supreme, for God.” — U.S. R.C. Archbishop J.H. Gomez

The purpose of the Christian life is to grow closer to God, and let there be no doubt about this: God loves the sinner. It is God’s will for all humankind to be saved (there is no predestination!). For Benedict, Christian life, and the monk's life, is a school of serving the Lord. In other words, it is a school in learning to love, which we do by learning to become humble. To prefer nothing to the love of Christ implies that we open ourselves up to learning to know Christ. The love of Christ that comes before all else keeps us from judging others.

My personal relationship with God becomes clearer as I struggle in life with myself and in my response to who God calls me to be. First, I needed to learn to see and know my true self before understanding my relationship with God. God loves my true self, not my false self. And learning about myself often happened in relationship with other people. I have made many mistakes throughout my journey and one needs to ask for forgiveness. We will fail at times, if not all the time.

“We need to fall, and we need to be aware of it; for if we did not fall, we should not know how weak and wretched we are of ourselves, nor should we know our Maker's marvellous love so fully.” — Julian of Norwich

To love God, to love neighbour, stranger, and enemy demands the presence of the Holy Spirit in the heart, a deep sense of humility, and a relationship with God. How do we find God? It all begins with listening with the ear of your heart.

Feeling Seen

I Stand Here Ironing – Tillie Olsen

‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’ – John Keats, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’

They will welcome refugees

And ask, Who is my neighbour?

Beauty is truth, truth beauty

I stand here admiring

The greatest affront to them

a handsome Arab father

laughing   cooking food to share

abundantly   a citizen

of cities that are legend

and living stone   his children

planting roses   promises

Beauty is truth, truth beauty

I stand here admiring

They will welcome refugees

And ask, Who is my neighbour?

Your place is to have no place

Your face is an enclosure

opened by greater powers

You hold out an empty plate

Petitioner   the natural

condition for you   loser

They want to feel compassion

They will welcome refugees

And ask, Who is my neighbour?

Beauty is truth, truth beauty

I stand here admiring

The children look like children

in family photographs

of my family   could be

children of my family

this should not make a difference

but it does   oh   subtle   fall

all dead   are equally real

Author bio: Anthony V. Capildeo OPL is a Trinidadian Scottish writer of poetry and non-fiction. Recent work includes Polkadot Wounds (Carcanet, 2024), and an essay series on touch and mourning. They are Writer in Residence at the University of York.

Politicians must rule in favour of God’s will for planet Earth

Researchers have concluded that industrial and agricultural emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other GHGs threaten to change the climate rapidly over the next 100 years and beyond. This may have dramatic consequences for both people and the environment. Much uncertainty remains, but the message is clear: climate change poses a risk to future generations, and this risk needs to be taken seriously. While the first steps to combat climate change have been taken, the most difficult decisions still lie ahead. It is not just governments that must act: progress will only be made if there is widespread support from all sectors of society, including local authorities, NGOs, relevant industries, communities, and individuals. For policy-makers it means incorporating climate change considerations into their day-to-day and long-term decisions. For corporate executives, it means including the potential costs of both climate change and actions to minimise them in their business and investment calculations. For individual citizens, it means favouring climate-friendly products and services and adopting climate-friendly habits and lifestyles.

Indeed, climate change exists here and now - there is mounting evidence that it may already be responding to humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, the issue of climate change is a reality for today’s world.

The international community must act, and we must reconstruct a reverence for God’s creation that allows us to have the strength and courage to do everything we can to respond to climate change. The international community has made some momentum on climate change, yet it must do more. The issue was addressed in the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Since the Convention entered into force in 1994, governments have been quantifying their national greenhouse gas emissions and developing strategies for dealing with climate change. Tougher emissions – control targets, more rigorous national policies, and intensified international co-operation have been high on the agenda, especially since the Kyoto conference in December 1997 and the subsequent debates. Governments adopted the Convention in response to the dramatic progress scientists have made in understanding how the Earth’s atmosphere system works. So while there has been some progress, it is a shame that Trump has taken the USA out of the Paris Accord, a revolutionary agreement. Clearly, certain politicians – even those who claim to be Christians – are not understanding the threat of climate change for what it is.

A religious perspective, then, might give policy-makers and politicians the incentive to act over the long-term to help resolve this critical issue. Genesis gives us two creation narratives – the first proclaiming, “and God called the Light Day” (Genesis 1:5) and the second stating, “Lord God made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew” (Genesis 2:5.) These both tell the story of creation, but with a contrasting style. In God, creation has a depth of meaning that shows that man-made climate change can not be declared as the work of God. Just as the scorching east wind, like the Arabian sirocco, destroyed plants and grass, so God was understood to destroy human pride (see Psalm 103:15-18; Jeremiah 4:11). Just as a plant springs up, fresh and green, only to be withered before the blast of the hot desert wind, so human empires rise, only to fall before the face of God.

Examining the Bible helps us to realise, then, that man’s obsession with consumption is negatively affecting God’s creation. Namely, our effect on the environment has led to pollution and a slow destruction of the environment. This moral failing and the immoral activities of humans on earth seems to be separating man from God. The failings involve extraction of natural resources without regard for future generations, and turn our resources into merely something to barter and exchange. For example, pollution is contributing to complications with our natural health. In addition, unsafe production methods - full of human errors due to use of artificial systems – create a mode of consumption which is certainly not compatible with what God intended.

The dogmatic notion that God has ceded the earth to man, and therefore it is the right of man to plunder and abuse the resources without concern for God’s spiritual creations, can be interpreted as disobedience to God’s will and what he had intended for mankind. We must understand the grace of God and the interior help of the Holy Spirit must intercede and assist in our personal decisions as well as those of policy-makers, moving the heart and turning it to God as well as opening the eyes of the mind and giving us joy. Surely this will allow Christians to long for truth as well as an understanding of it. Through looking after God’s creation and realising how we have affected our natural environment, we will be able to reconstruct our relationship with God.