Advent

"The word that Isaiah son of Amoz saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. 

In days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills;all the nations shall stream to it. 
Many peoples shall come and say, ‘Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.’ For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples;
they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks;nation shall not lift up sword against nation,   neither shall they learn war any more." Isaiah 2, 1-4 NRSV

Advent is upon us and that is a good thing. It is a good thing because it is all to easy to how God enters into this world, in dramatic ways and in less dramatic, everyday ways. For me, the last two months of Ordinary time are times of incredible busyness as I return to school after a two month break and get back to the busy routine of a thriving Latin program. Advent hits me just after report cards and just as deadlines for registering for extra-curriculars are just coming due. The coming of advent is, for me, a reminder to watch for the ways that God is entering into my life daily and how I very often miss it entirely. 

It is, of course, very easy to get lost in the daily grind, so my experience is hardly an unusual one. Yet, I know that, for me, it is those daily advents which connect me to God and keep my perspective where it needs to me- off myself and onto what God is calling on me to be and to do where I am. Those daily advents connect me to those around me and keeps me from dwelling in my head and thinking that I am in control of the things and people in my life. Advents, whether they are of the daily variety or that of Christ, which, so far, is unique in human history, include more than a little layer of mystery because our sense of what is coming remains unknown until it is here. Who could have anticipated the coming of God's son in 1st century Judaea? And who expects the moment when the ordinary becomes extraordinary in the middle of a conversation or a class or a coffee with a co-worker, when the mystery of another person or of God's healing presence suddenly reveals itself unexpectedly? No one can plan for those little advents and, yet, they remain precious because they are the raw material for hope which is a precious commodity these days. 

Yet, Advent is more than even these little moments. There are bigger Advents as the passage of Isaiah which I quoted at the top of this post suggests. This passage of Isaiah is familiar, of course, to any of us who hang around our churches during Advent; so familiar that I wonder if we really get the wonder of the vision. Amid the chaotic world of the last years of the Judaic kingdom and the exile which followed, Isaiah dared to dream of a time in which Jerusalem would not only experience peace, but it would be the agent of peace throughout the whole world. That is incredible, given the reality that Isaiah was himself facing at the time. And it hasn't lost its power over centuries of war and injustice in the world for both Jews and all people. 

The reading of this passage at church today was also a reminder for me to look for the peace in the here and now. That, of course, calls me to face the injustice and hostility of others, but, even more so, my own. A few weeks ago, I had the occasion to reflect on my tendency to retreat into a stronghold to deal with my own failings as well as whatever difficult things occur to me from time to time. Now, that isn't all bad. We are constantly reminded that God is our stronghold, but I recognized that that defensiveness, occasioned by anxiety, also tends to cut me off from people and from finding ways to do good in the world. As I reflected further on this, a thought jumped into my head, just as the Eucharist was starting, that asked me 'what would peace look like?' And that thought has stuck in my head for the last few weeks. What this passage says about that question, I think, is not only that the weapons which my anxiety thinks I need will be transformed into the tools of peace and abundance, but, also, that I must rely on God's justice if I want to find peace, not on my control of the situation. And that is hard because I want to control things from inside my little fortress. The fact that my attempts to do that usually end badly is evidence of how effective a strategy that is. Perhaps it is time to trust in the new tools God has given me in order to get on with the work in front of me

So, Advent is here, not a moment too soon. 

Peace,
Phil

Sulpicius Severus, Letter II- To the Deacon Aurelius- Part 1

Here is the second of the three letters of Sulpicius Severus on St. Martin

Translation:
After you left me in the morning, I had settled down in my cell and that thought stole up to me which often has occupies me- the hope for the future and the aversion to the present; the fear of  judgement and the dread of punishment- and, what follows and from where the whole thought descends, the record of my sins returned to me, sad and worn out. (2) Then, after laid out my limbs, tired because of my anguished mine, on my little bed,, as I am mostly accustomed to do out of out of sorrow, sleep crept up- which as it is lighter and uncertain in the early morning, so it, wavering and doubtful, was scattered through my limbs, as what does not happen in any other sleep, almost awake, you perceive yourself sleeping--(3) When, suddenly, I seemed to see bishop Martin, adorned in a white toga, with a fiery face, eyes like stars and bright red hair. In this way, he seemed to have the appearance and form of a body in which I knew him so that, what is different is difficult for us to day, he could not be examined, while he could be recognized. Smiling at me, he held in his right hand that little book which I wrote about his life. (4) I, embracing his holy legs, as usually, I asked his blessing. I felt his hand placed on my head with a very soft touch, when, among the solemn words of blessing, he repeated that name of the cross in an intimate way. Soon, with my intent on him, I could not be satisfied with his face or his visage, suddenly being taken up, he was snatched from me until, in the immense vastness of the sky I followed him travelling in a sweet cloud. He was received into open heaven and could not be seen beyond.

(5) I saw, not much later, the blessed priest, Clarus, his disciple, who recently died, climb by that same road as his master. I, rashly desiring to follow, tried to struggle towards them on high and woke up. I, roused from sleep, began to congratulate myself on my vision which I had seen, when a young relative came to me, his face sadder for speaking and giving pain.

 (6) I said "What do you bear so sadly to say?"

 He said, "Two monks are here now from Turo. They announce that lord Martin is dead" I admit, I fell and I wept very much with tears springing up. Truly, even while I write this to you, brother, tears flow. Nor do I allow any solace for this, my unendurable pain. Truly, when it is announced to you, I wanted you to share  my grief, you who are an associate of my love.

(7)  I cam immediately to myself so that we mourn equally whom we love equally, although I know that, of all men, Martin must not be mourned. (He is one), after the world is conquered and the age triumphed over, to whom the crown of justice will be granted. (8) However, I am not able to rule over myself. I am in pain. Indeed, I sent ahead my patron, but I lost the solace of my present life.

Commentary:

Letter #2 is the first of the two letters dealing with the death of St. Martin and is clearly the most emotional of the two. As we'll see in the next segments, Sulpicius gives vent to his grief to a point which can legitimately be considered excessive even in the less emotionally inhibited context of the late Roman period. Indeed, the whole of the third letter is explained by the suggestion that perhaps he gets a bit carried away in this letter.

In our passage, however, we see a fairly standard after death appearance of the a saint to a faithful disciple. There is an echo of this in the Life of Martin, when Martin sees the rising of a far-off bishop. Here, Sulpicius is supernaturally blessed by Martin before the news of his death has reached Sulpicius' monastery. This is, of course, logical, given Sulpicius' role as St. Martin's literary agent and protector and, no doubt, would have the effect of building up Sulpicius' spiritual credentials for continuing in this capacity. This sounds needlessly cynical, perhaps, but there is a disturbing undertone to this story which makes one wonder.

Watch for the second installment of this letter in a short while.

Sulpicius Severus, Letter 1 Part 2

Welcome to the second installment of the first letter of Sulpicius Severus. The first installment can be found here. In this excerpt, we get a clear account of the incident which opponents of St. Martin were trying to use against him.

Translation:

9. but, however, I will not allow (myself) to hide that about which the question came to light and I will report the whole affair as it was done so that we will, by chance, seem to bypass intentionally that which could expose that blessed man to blame.

10. When, in almost the middle of the winter, Martin arrived at a certain diocese for a solemn custom, just as it is the custom for bishops to visit their churches, the clerics prepared a resting place in the sanctuary of the church and put much fire under a rough and weak floor. They  heaped up a bed with much straw. Then, when Martin placed himself to lie down, he shuddered at the unaccustomed softness of the soothing bed, seeing that he was accustomed to lie down on bare ground with one goat-hair cover spread over him. (11) Thus, disturbed as if having received an injury, he threw off the whole covering. By chance, it heaped part of the chaff which he had moved over the oven. He himself rested, as was his custom, on the bare earth due to the urging of his tiredness from the journey. As we said, at almost the middle of the night, the burning fire seized the burning straw through the broken flooring. (12) Martin, roused from his sleep unexpectedly, with a very great and two-fold danger, as was reported, hindered by the devil's ambush and urging, fled to the help of prayer more slowly than he ought. For, desire to break down the door, when, struggling for a very long time with the bolt with which he shut the door, he perceived a very serious fire around him to such an extent that the fire caught his clothes which he wore. (13) At last, coming to his sense, knowing that his help was not in flight, but in God, taking up the shield of faith and prayer, he turned himself and gave himself completely to God. he prayed with him unharmed in a circle of flames. The monks, who were at the door, after (hearing) the roaring,crackling sound of fire, broke down the bolted doors and, with the fire extinguished, brought Martin out the midst of the flames. although he was thought to have been consumed by such a long-lasting fire. (14) Yet, and God is the witness to my words, Martin himself reported to me and admitted not without a groan, that he was deceived in this situation by the skill of the devil so that, shaken out of sleep, he did not have a plan by which he might fight the danger through faith and prayer. Finally, for as long as the fire raged around him, he, disturbed in his mind, tried to break down the door. (15) When he sought the standards of the cross and arms of prayers, in the middle, the flames ceased and he, then noticed sprinkling water which fought the fire. From this, whoever reads this understands that Martin was tempted by that danger indeed, but he was truly proven by it.    

Commentary:

With this passage, after much rhetorical flourish, we finally get to the incident which has created the occasion for Sulpicius' discussion about saintly power and its limitations. The incident itself, I think, is reasonably simple to reconstruct. An accidental fire was caused by Martin throwing off what was, to his mind, overly soft bedding which fell into the furnace. The fire caught the walls and, while trying the obvious route of escape- the door-, Martin was injured. When he fell back into the room, aided by a mysterious 'dew', Martin found he was safe from the flames until the monks in the rest of the house were finally able to break into the room and save the beleaguered saint.

To us, this story seems almost trivial. Of course, Martin should have watched where was kicking his bedding, but past a warning about fire safety, is this really something to get so worked up over? There is, however, an odd hint of the supernatural implied in how Martin was saved from the flames. As long as Martin struggled against the door, he was, apparently, relying on his own strength. When Martin stopped fighting with the bolt and retreated into the midst of the fire, not only did he get away from the flames, but a sprinkling of water helped keep him safe. The suggestion is that the fire was, actually, a diabolical test of Martin's confidence in God  and that, as soon as he stopped acting on his own will to save himself and started praying, he was victorious. The fact that he didn't immediately see it as a spiritual trial is merely a confession of Martin's human weakness, especially, one must conclude, when roused from a sound sleep by a raging inferno. Of course, he overcame the temptation and the danger which is the point of  the power of his saintliness. Or, at least, this is what Sulpicius wants us to take from this story.

Of course, it is exactly this sort of spiritualizing natural events which drives many people these days crazy. Are we really expected to believe that God saved St. Martin from an everyday house fire because he prayed his way to safety? What about those faithful people, God only knows how many, who have died in fires over the ages? Were they not faithful enough? Doesn't this prove that faith, as conceived by Sulpicius and many of his peers, was merely some sort of magic which has no place in our scientific world of material cause and effect? Why shouldn't we just reject this story as yet another puerile miracle story?

I'm not sure if I have a definitive answer to these questions. Clearly, the conception of the 'holy man' which we discussed in the last post should influence how we read Sulpicius' interpretation of this event. To the 'holy man' and his supporters, even the most trivial thing is spiritual, so it is natural to look whether the spiritual forces of evil were in play during particular events in a way that we wouldn't in this post-Enlightenment age. And I do think we have to take this automatic spiritualizing of natural events as a warning when we are tempted to tell a person that their illness was the result of their lack of faith or other such nonsense. Or, for that matter, when we insist that the survival of one person amid a disaster was a sign of God's favour, when many others, possibly as faithful, perish. I'm not entirely sure I see the difference between this and Sulpicius' spiritualizing of this house fire.

What humbles me about this incident is the recognition that not all that much has changed in the world. It is easy to latch onto this episode's miraculous, almost magical character and use it to assure ourselves that we are so much smarter, so much less credulous than our ancestors. Yet, if we are entirely honest, we have to recognize that, as Christians, we can't escape the real question that Sulpicius raises here: what is the relationship between the physical dangers of this world and our spirituality. While I think, in his desperate attempt to depict St. Martin as a archetypical 'holy man', Sulpicius over-reads the spiritual into this story, his main point is that even godly people like the apostles suffer from the physical injury without losing their status as godly people. In many ways, Sulpicius seems to be trying to answer the age-old question of why do bad things happen to good people- or, at least, here, saintly people. To my eyes, it doesn't look, despite our presumed greater knowledge and sophisicated, like we have any greater insight into that question.

Peace, Phil

First Letter of Sulpicius Severus- Part 1

As promised here is the first installment of the 1st Letter of Sulpicius Severus:

Text:
(for those of you who are interested, here is the link to the Latin (p.138ff)

1. Yesterday, when many monks came to me, in the midst of continuous stories and a long conversation, mention of my little book which I published about the life of the blessed Bishop Martin came up. I listened with great pleasure that it was eagerly read by many. 2. Nevertheless, it is reported to me that someone, caught up by an evil spirit, had asked why Martin, who had raised the dead and drove flames away from houses, had himself recently been burned by fire and suffered a dangerous injury.

3. O that wretch, whoever he is! We recognize the treachery and speech of the Jews in his words, who mocked the Lord, placed on a cross, with these words "He saved others; he cannot save himself" (Matthew, 27,42). Truly, had that man, whoever he is, been born in those times so that he, who falsely abused the holy man of the Lord in the similar way for example, could speak to the Lord with those words. 5. What, then, who ever you are, is Martin not powerful for that reason? Is he not holy that that reason, because he was tried by fire?

O blessed man, similar in all things to the Apostles even in the insults of men! Without a doubt, the gentiles were reported to think this about Paul, when a viper bit him: "This man must be a murderer whom the fates did not allow to live after being saved from the sea" (Acts 28,4). He, after he shook off the snake into the fire, suffered no evil. Rather, when they saw nothing evil touched him, turning to him, they said he was God. Yet, by examples of this type, most unlucky of all mortals, you must prove your treachery so that, if scandal moved you because Martin seemed to be touched by the flame of a fire, you report his merits and spiritual power tainted because, surrounded by fire, he did not die.

6. Understand, wretch, understand what you do not know, that almost all holy men are more proven by their dangers. Indeed, I see Peter, powerful by faith, with stubbornly passed over the sea with his feet and pressed the unstable water with a human step. Nor did the prophet of the nations, whom the waves swallowed and restored him after three days and as many nights, emerging from the deep, seem to be less to me for that reason, whom the waves swallowed and restored him, . I do not know whether, as I may say, he who lived in the deep or who crossed over the depths of the sea was greater.

7, But I think you, you idiot, did not read this or, if you had read them, did you understand (these stories). Nor did the blessed Evangelist bring an example of this type by divine plan in his sacred letters unless that the human mind should be educated by these calamities of shipwrecks and serpents and, just as the Apostle reported, who was glorified by the nakedness, hunger and dangers of brigands, all of these things are common things to endure for holy men, but there was always power for the just to endure and conquer these things. While they endure through all their trials and, so much more bravely do they, who are always unconquered, conquer, by so much they endure more difficulties.

8. Hence, what is called the weakness of Martin, is full of worth and glory, if only because, being tried by a very dangerous fate, he overcame. In this respect, no one should be astonished that I left this out in my little book which we wrote about his life, when, in that very place, I admitted that I did not embrace all of his deeds: because If I had wanted to pursue everything, I would have published an immense volume to my readers. Nor were these things so few which he did that everything could be included. Nevertheless, I will not allow this to be hidden and I will report the whole story as it was done so that, by chance, we should seem to pass by intentionally this incident which could be presented for criticism against that blessed man.    

   
Commentary:

This letter raises several interesting issues. To start with, we get a glimpse of how Sulpicius' the Life of St. Martin was received. In a way, the Life of St. Martin is a peculiarity because, not only is it written when those who knew Martin were still alive, but, even more unusual, it was written when its subject was still alive. Martin was a highly controversial bishop in his days as the Life itself indicates, so it is inevitable that there would be critics of so laudatory a work as the Life. While Sulpicius makes it clear that most monastics liked his Life, he has to address criticism of his portrayal and, more importantly, his casting of Martin as an archetypal 'holy man' in the already developing monastic tradition emerging out of Egypt and Syria. The criticism is double-edged- first an attack on Martin's status as a holy man through what looks like a lapse in his spiritual power (virtus), but, just as importantly, an attack on Sulpicius' credibility because he failed to report this damaging evidence.

This last point has some point to it, of course. The Life is so laudatory, so positive in its claims for Martin that it is hard not to believe that Martin has his lapses as well. While contemporary Western society seems to have the daft notion that saints are perfect (probably nurtured by well meaning nonsense from within the Church), it is clear to anyone who investigates it that, while saints might reflect an extraordinary devotion to God, they had as many flaws as anyone else. Yet, what is interesting is the implication that the criticism of Sulpicius' omission of this story comes from a source which also knew Martin and his community well enough to dredge up this seemingly damaging evidence. There is no indication who the critic is, although it is difficult to believe that Sulpicius didn't know. The continued coy repetition of 'whoever he is' in the early part of the letter makes me thinks Sulpicius knew very well who the critic is, but he just didn't want to say. For my money, I wonder if it isn't Brice (later Martin's successor as bishop and, oddly, also a saint, but, at this time, a fierce critic of Martin who went so far as to question Martin's grip on reality) or someone associated with him. That is speculation and, given the opposition we know Martin stirred up, the criticism could have come from other directions.

Yet, the real point of this letter is not a critic catching Sulpicius out. The more important point is that this story forces Sulpicius to talk about the how we know a 'holy man'; a spiritual stereotype which governed much monastic literature in the fourth century. There has been quite a bit written about the holy man in Late Antiquity over the last thirty or forty years, so I can't hope to replicate that literature. However, briefly, the figure of the 'holy man' becomes important fairly early on in the history of monasticism with St. Anthony and various other Egyptian and Syrian monastics who adopted a severely ascetic lifestyle. Some of these figures began to emerge as spiritual leaders by virtue of their miraculous powers (as reported by the literature) and their wisdom developed through prayer. As a result, in their village communities, they became important intercessors with God, but, also, with the secular and ecclesiastical authorities on a whole range of issues. Indeed, both bishops and civil authorities all the way up to emperors would opt to visit these holy men in the hopes of receiving their blessing and, possibly, their support. The implication is that the monastic 'holy man' gained power through his special relationship with God, which allowed him to do all sorts of things; some miraculous, because of their special spiritual power.

Sulpicius' Life can be understood as an attempt to encourage the spread of monasticism in 4th century Roman Gaul by portraying him as a native-born 'holy man' in the tradition of the Desert Fathers. As a result, Sulpicius makes much of Martin's miraculous healings, supernatural battles with the 'gods' of the countryside and his dealings with Emperors and near-Emperors to buttress the claim that Martin had the extraordinary spiritual power, gained through his conquest of his own passions and faults. This conquest of his human limitations makes him a valued spiritual guide and, more importantly for Sulpicius' hope to encourage the ascetic life in Gaul, spiritual authority. So, it was important for Martin's spiritual authority to always be able to overcome the dangers put in his way. He does this throughout the Life, but, here, he seems to fail. Why is this a problem?

The problem with this failure is the unstated suggestion that this fire may have had a supernatural origin. It is a common place in hagiography that fire often is deployed by evil spirits, particularly when they arise suddenly and spread unpredictably fast. For example, in the Life, Sulpicius depicts Martin, while on one of his expeditions to clear of pagan altars, turned aside a tree set on fire by a demon which threatened to destroy a whole pagan village (Life, 14-). The irony, of course, must have been too good to resist, of course, that Martin who turned aside a flaming tree on one occasion proved to be helpless later one, when surrounded by flames. Where, one can almost hear being asked, is Martin's power now!

What is interesting with this criticism, however, isn't the deployment of evil spirits and/or demons to explain what would strike us as natural phenomena or coincidence. Rather, it is the implication that the saint demonstrates his power, at least partly, by his invulnerability whether physical or spiritual. The 'holy man', according to this view, has to have such power that he cannot be injured by the machinations of evil in this world. If he is, he is not really a 'holy man'.

Of course, this position, if it was truly held, is absurd. Sulpicius easily refutes it by noting the multitude of times that the Apostles or, even Christ himself, suffered from the attacks of evil in this world. Nobody can earn immunity from suffering in this world, so the implication that Martin's authority is somehow injured by being burned in a raging fire flies in the face of clear examples of holy men and women being injured or killed in this world. Sulpicius refers back to the Apostles and prophets to emphasize that God's holy ones might be injured, but those injuries were evidence of their endurance and faithfulness and turned out for their and the church's building up. And that is leaving off the voluntary suffering of Christ which used the force of evil to break evil's hold on the world.

Yet, this is the point when the 'who cares?' question needs to be asked. Isn't this just a moment in the arcane disputes about sainthood and who wins the prize in the ascetic Olympics (okay, you're sitting on a 10 foot pole. I'll beat that. I'll sit on a 50 foot pole! Luxury, you think a 50 foot pole is bad! I....). For me, however, what we're really talking about here is the problem of suffering and the Christian life. For so many people, both those practicing a faith and those not, faith serves as some kind of invisible shield from bad things. God is the cosmic cop who prevents bad things from happening to us because we have preferred status as his children. One look at the headlines in Egypt or a glance at a parish prayer list should make that claim an absurdity, but the delusion of faith giving immunity to suffering remains a prevalent temptation. If God himself doesn't avoid suffering or a saint can't avoid injury, then who are we to think we can? Faith isn't magic. It is, instead, a hope which will carry us through the suffering that is so much a part of this beautiful, but damaged world. Sulpicius' well-chosen examples reinforce this because the sufferings and failings of Paul, Peter, Jonah and others, ultimately, are made good in encouraging us to persevere in the face of difficulties. They represent a reflection of the Cross' divine 'judo' which takes the force of the evil in this world and uses it to overthrow it. And it is the hope implicit in this turning of evil to good that sustains me throughout the struggles that I experience in my ordinary life.

Watch for the second installment of this letter in a few days!

Peace,
Phil

St. Martin in the Letters of Sulpicius Severus

I've decided now that I've finally finished the three letters of Sulpicius Severus on St. Martin, that I'd publish a draft translation of them for comment or, at least, to help me think through some of the linguistic and/or historical issues with them. So, I'm intending to publish them, section by section with commentary, as it occurs to me. I should note that this is not incredibly well researched commentary, but just things that popped into my head as I translated. So, consider both it and the commentary as a work-in-progress.

There is, of course, a bit of a history to this project. Way back in 2009, I finished posting my translation of Sulpicius Severus', Life of St. Martin. You can find that translation and commentary series right here. My intention was that I'd do a few more revisions, work-up a decent translation and self-publish a serviceable Letters of Sulpicius Severus, the Dialogus by the same author, bits of the same author's Chronicle and Gregory the Great's much later biography of Martin. My rationale for this is that these works aren't generally as well known as the Life, but give important supplementary information. My observations on my preliminary reading of this material can be found in my Return to St. Martin post from last July.

translation as a gift to the two St. Martin-in-the-Field churches' I've attended (in West Toronto and London, Ont). However, last year, it got into my head that I'd like to add the other sources which discuss St. Martin such as the

So, the Letters are first. These are, presumably, part of a larger collection of letters which have not survived. I suspect that these letters survive because they were preserved with manuscripts which also contained the Life (I will check on that, of course). By any measure, they are peculiar. They pick up where the Life leaves off. Indeed, the First Letter purports to answer sceptical critics of the Life and of St. Martin, while St. Martin was still alive. In this letter, Sulpicius Severus rebukes an critic who scoffed at Martin's presumed status as a holy man because he had been injured in a fire whereas, if he was truly blessed and/or powerful, he should have escaped injury. The criticism exploits the common view of the monk as holy man who had almost magical powers because of God's favour. Sulpicius Severus rebukes this conception and, of course, defends his hero.

The next two letters deal with Martin's death. The Second Letter passes on the bad news to a colleague. Severus is in the depths of grief, so the writing is highly rhetorical and emotional. Modern readers might be a little put off by the extremes of emotion and rhetorical flash. Indeed, to judge from the introduction of the Third Letter, so were some contemporaries including, possibly, Severus' own mother. The Third Letter gives a more sober account of Martin's death, albeit with flashes of the grief from the previous letter.

My procedure with the Letters will be to break them into digestible chunks, publish the translation and commentary together. So, this will take a few weeks to manage, but I hope you'll enjoy exposure to the story of St. Martin as told by Sulpicius Severus.

Practical Patristics

Summer's here again and so is the time for blogging. Well, it isn't quite that bad, but close. Certainly, the summer is the time when I have the most time to reflect on what I've been reading and thinking for the times in the year in which there isn't much time to sit down and write.

What has come back into my mind is a slip of the tongue I made one day about a year or so ago, when I was talking to my wife about St. Vladimir's Popular Patristics series and said, instead, Practical Patristics. We laughed, of course, but it did get me thinking about what does Practical Patristics, actually, look like.

Of course, there are people (many people, I suspect) who might well think the idea of practical patristics is oxymoronic. Isn't patristics just a bunch of dead old white guys spouting off about stuff that no one actually cares about; that is, when they aren't actively oppressing anyone who doesn't agree with them? Didn't the Fathers put those darned angels on the pin for the scholastics to count because of their tedious philosophizing on the Christological and Trinitarian heresies? How would that be practical?

I get what people like this are saying. There are a lot of highly technical, highly philosophical patristic treatises on the fine points of Trinitarian theology, often including very difficult to follow polemics against those unfortunate enough to stray from the author's own sense of orthodoxy. I admit that, to this day, I haven't been about to get more than five pages into St. Cyril of Alexandria's On the Unity of Christ (also available through St. Vlad's Popular Patristic series). The fault, I hasten to add, isn't in St. Cyril, but in my own not particularly philosophical mind. I am still a fan of the hypostatic union and I think I get it, but don't ask for the philosophical underpinnings because, as soon as I think about it, my head starts hurting and I get sleepy.

Yet, focusing only on these works, as critics and academic fans alike often do, ignores not only the sheer variety of patristic writings, but the attention that the Church Fathers gave to the pastoral side of their ministries. It is a very different experience to read, say, St. Basil's technical treaties on the Holy Spirit and to read his sermons. Or, for that matter, consider all those sermons by so many Church Fathers which discuss the nitty-gritty of Christian life. St. Basil's or St. John Chrysostom sermons on social justice will curl your hair and make you wonder if you are giving enough or doing enough for the poor. I could multiply examples, but the practicality of these authors is difficult to escape.

Nor are the Father's only about moral admonition. Take the very way that they assume that theology is done; through the lens of prayer. This sounds odd to us in the modern age who seem to think that theology as an academic pursuit can be done in the absence of prayer or those who have thought (and may continue to think) that it is best done that way. Yet, the aridities of many modern theologians are part of the reason why theology has a bad name these days because one can detect the disconnect between faith and theology. The patristic example offers a way to fuse these back together and, I suspect, explains the modest revival among some evangelical, Catholic and Orthodox theologians of the past twenty or thirty years.

Furthermore, the modest revival in interest in the Desert Fathers- those monastic figures whose teachings come to us in collections of saying from the Egyptian and Syrian desert communities- also reveals the relevance of patristic teachings on prayer. The advice and insights given by these monastic writers are intensely practical guides to the obstacles to prayer which betray such a subtle understanding of human psychology that they remain useful even today. Indeed, one of the books which has fed my reflections in this post, Father Alexis Trader's Ancient Christian Wisdom and Aaron Beck's Cognitive Therapy, directly parallels the teachings of the Fathers on prayer with cognitive behavior therapy, which is one of the leading therapy methods for depression, addiction and anxiety. The parallels are intriguing and suggest a usefulness in the teachings of the Desert Fathers which is rather under appreciated.

Alright, but is any of this practical? It depends on perspective, I suspect. If we mean practical as in something which will make us money or famous, then, probably not. If we mean practical as in something that we can take from the pages of a book and actually apply it in real time, make it part of our Christian praxis, then, yes, I think so. One of the glories of patristic thinking is that firm belief that theory and practice (theoria and praxis) aren't at odds, but should constantly feed each other. The trick is figuring out how.

Wrongs that are so wrong that there is nothing you can do to make them right

Over the last few weeks, I've been mulling over a particularly striking phrase employed in a video of Stanley Hauerwas talking at Azuza Univeristy (the part I'm thinking about starts around the 9:45 minute point in the attached video). In a discussion of his discomfort with being called the best theologian in America, Hauerwas explains that "America is a country which has no idea of what to do with wrongs so wrong that there's nothing you can do to make it right". While his discussion goes on to what Hauerwas perceives as the American inability to come to terms with its past wrongs, I was struck with his phrase 'wrongs so wrong that there's nothing you can do to make them right'. That's a striking phrase in the Hauerwasian vein--provocative and memorable. Yet, I admit, on reflection, that its meaning isn't necessarily so clear.

What I think Hauerwas is getting at are wrongs that strike at the heart of who we are as people in a God-made world. That is, they challenge what God is trying to do in this world by elevating our self-interest and drive for power to the place that it overrides the justice and compassion that we are called to exercise in this world. They are, in that sense, the wrongs committed while we are imprisoned by the idolatry of ourselves and our place in the world. That makes them, I think, one of the multiple milestones that we hang over our own necks as we seek our will to the exclusion of God's and our neighbours. The fallout of these wrongs distort our relationships, create new conflicts, perpetuate old ones and, ironically, make it increasingly difficult to face up to our wrongs because of our need to create a self-justifying narrative to avoid admitting to our weakness and need for forgiveness. The result is that it is frightfully difficult to break out the cycle of these wrongs which are so wrong that there's nothing you can do to make them right', partly because it is easier to ignore them than to face up to our capacity for evil and partly because they tend to be the start of a string of such wrongs by all sides in a situation. So, these wrongs merely feed the cycle of violence, injustice and brokenness which characterizes not only the political realm which is Hauerwas' focus, but our communal and personal lives.

Anyone who reads Christian history knows that we, like most other groups of people, have any number of wrongs so wrong that there is nothing that we can do to make them right. It isn't difficult to generate a list: the Crusades, religious wars, treatment of Jews and other religious minorities etc.. Nor have we been immune from the temptation to whitewash them as we think about our past. That is, I think, one reason why ecclesiastical history has such a bad name in the historical profession because all too often our historians have tried to spin our wrongs to blame our victims and cast ourselves as the injured in too many cases. No wonder even a whiff of Christian theology is likely to cause other historians to dismiss what we have to say.

Yet, as Hauerwas points out, Christians have a unique understanding of these 'wrongs that are so wrong that there's nothing you can do to make them right' because of our participation in the passion of Christ. In fact, the Cross may represent the ultimate wrong that is so wrong that there's nothing we can do to make them right because it represents the moment when humanity rejected the Son of God and inflicted our injustice and violence on an entirely innocent God. There is nothing that we can do to make it up that humanity, nearly as one, cried 'Crucify Him' when they confronted God as Man.

What is more the phrase continues to percolate down from the level of our faith communities and into our own lives. Wrongs that are so wrong that there's nothing that we can do to make them right are also legion in the lives of individuals, Christian or not. We have all, I think, done damage to our relationships and each other by insisting on our own will and disregarding or overriding those around us whom we will hurt in consequence. We can come up with all sorts of excuses for that like "I felt led to do that' or the 'The Lord told me...' or 'I had no choice....' or 'I had to live my truth....', but the damage is no less real. Relationships break, resentment grows, the desire for revenge is sparked and soon we're in a tit-for-tat exchange of wrongs. Christian or not, this is a sad reality in our lives.

Yet, what is remarkable about Hauerwas' discussion is not that he identifies these wrongs, but that he identifies what solves it--the ability to be forgiven and the consequent commitment to speak truthfully about our wrongs. The temptation in these wrongs is to sweep them under the rug, possibly by affected cluelessness about the impact of our decisions, or denial that it even mattered, or by angrily blaming the person we have wronged, or by framing the resistance of those we've wronged as aggression, or by tireless self-flagellation without any attempt to seek forgiveness. All of these attempts to sweep aside these wrongs are founded upon a rejection of the humility needed to admit one's sins and seek forgiveness. It is hard to be honest enough to admit even to oneself the depth of our wrongs. And so the poison of resentment or self-righteousness can seep in our lives and blight everything we see and we love. Receiving forgiveness is a hard remedy to many of us, but the disease which results from these kinds of wrongs, not only in the one who suffers the wrong, but the one who perpetrates it, is so much worse.

Wrongs that are so wrong that there's nothing we can do to make them right, in whatever form they take, the collective or the individual, are scary things. They're scary because, not only because they reveal the truth of how we all sin and fall short of the the good God made us to do, but also because they are demonstration of our powerlessness in the face of our failings. No one goes out to commits these kinds of wrongs. They almost always appear when we seek our advantage or the advantage of those around us without regard for the bigger picture; when the good we seek becomes greater than the good God would have us do. It happens when what we seek becomes the idol and God and his children becomes the means to feed that idol. They are the relational fallout of our will to power and they can only be fixed by an equally scary emptying of our desires and 'needs' to seek the restoration of relationship through forgiveness. That effort demands both humility and rigorous honesty. And a hefty supply of divine help.