The Spring of Hope

Sermons for the Seasons of Faith

Douglas Dales

• Publisher: Sacristy Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781789591750
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Religionslehre

The Spring of Hope is a collection of sermons and reflections for a variety of occasions throughout the Christian year. Many of these were originally preached as part of online worship during the time of national lockdown in 2020. Douglas Dales invites readers to embark on theirChristianjourney in the company of saints and church fathers, and to find there new hope and courage for their lives as disciples of Christ in the twenty-first century.

Part 7

The Communion of Saints

42

Catherine of Siena

29 April

Catherine of Siena is one of the most significant saints of the European Middle Ages. Born in 1347, she felt the call of our Lord at the age of six as a profound love affair which governed the whole shape of her life thereafter. Despite the reservations of her mother, by 1359 at the age of twelve, she knew her own mind and committed herself to a contemplative life of consecrated virginity, joining the Dominican order as a lay sister in 1362. By the age of twenty, she was active in work among the sick of the city, gathering a small group of disciples and supporters, and beginning a remarkable correspondence of spiritual direction. These Letters reached far and wide and drew her into political affairs, as she rebuked clergy for their infidelities and urged the Pope to return from Avignon to Rome.

On 1 April 1375, Catherine received the stigmata in a vision, and this was followed by a number of further costly encounters with our Lord and his holy mother that became the foundation of her spiritual testament, the Dialogues. In 1378, she tried to bring peace to the city of Florence at the behest of the Pope, later making her way to Rome where she laboured hard for the unity of the Church. In 1380, aged thirty-three, Catherine had a heart attack and died on 29 April. She is buried in the church of S. Maria sopra Minerva in Rome, the only Gothic church in the city. She was canonized in 1461 and declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Paul VI in 1970. The outstanding authority and quality of her Life is remarkable: it was written by her spiritual director and friend, Raymond of Capua, who became Head of the Dominican Order. What is striking is that her whole spiritual development was accomplished within a very young life and was supported and guided by a coterie of fellow Christians, adept at nurturing the growth of her sanctity.

It is hard to do justice to the wealth of her spiritual legacy, but salient features of it offer inspiration and challenge today. The first is her strong sense of providence, the ability to look on the created world and the vagaries of human life through the loving eyes of God. The Lord placed this challenge before Catherine as a young teenager: “Do you know who you are and who I am? If you know these two things, you will have blessedness within your grasp.” He also provided the answer: “You are the one who is not, and I am he who is.” This conviction that knowledge of God and of self are inextricably connected became the foundation of her theology. The human person exists only because he or she is loved by God, in whose image and likeness that unique person has been created.

Human beings exist as a result of the overflowing goodness of God, and it is within the stream of this love that they are redeemed from all that mars the divine image within them. Memory, understanding and will are the active components of human consciousness, and these collaborate together in response to communion with God who is within. This communion of intelligent love overflows into love of others, within the love of God and for his sake. In this way, the life of human beings comes to mirror that of the Trinity itself; and belief in the Trinity permeates the prayers and teaching of Catherine. This belief also underlies Catherine’s supreme confidence in divine providence: Christ’s coming demonstrates the loving mercy of God for fallen humanity. Remade by Christ, human beings may become Christ-like, being always assisted by divine providence.

Catherine was deeply influenced by the memory and example of Francis of Assisi and those who followed him: her life is an embodiment of the spiritual theology of Bonaventura, as well as a faithful following of the teaching of Dominic. Her life was drawn deeply into the reality of Christ crucified, as her biographer relates in careful detail. The Lord set such a fire blazing within her heart that she herself told her confessor that she could not find words to express the divine experiences that she had. On one occasion she sensed that in some mysterious way Christ had removed her own heart and replaced it with his own. Never again could Catherine pray the words: “Lord, I give you my heart.” Instead the presence of Christ within her transformed her sense of the reality of his presence in the Eucharist, which became the focus of her spiritual life. Her heart moved in response to the self-giving of Christ in the sacrament, in fulfilment of the words in the psalm: “My heart and my flesh have rejoiced in the Living God.” She could testify that “my mind is so full of joy and happiness that I am amazed that my soul stays in my body”. This overflowed into her perceptions and love of others.

Catherine’s sense of the reality of the presence of Christ in the Eucharist was at times overwhelming. It also underpinned her contemplative intercession for others. Her encounters with Christ laid the basis for her receiving the stigmata while visiting Pisa, an experience that was witnessed by her friends, who saw her body move from being prostrate after receiving Holy Communion to kneeling upright with hands stretched out and light beaming from her face. She confided to her confessor, Raymond of Capua, who had been celebrating the Mass, that she had seen the Lord fixed to the cross coming towards her in a great light. Rays of blood streamed from his wounds to touch her hands and feet and her heart. She prayed that the stigmata would remain invisible, whereupon the rays of blood turned into rays of burning light.

The Life of Catherine of Siena is one of the most remarkable testimonies to the spiritual transformation of a young person, and it is corroborated by the profound theology of her Dialogues. This in turn is authenticated by the astonishing range of her Letters, almost 400 of them, most of which were dictated. What happened in her life was a work of divine grace, nurtured and interpreted within the spiritual life and theology of the Italian Church at the time. She and those who cherished her were conscious of her participation in the communion of saints. The question posed by the life of Catherine to each generation of Christians is simply this: how seriously do we take our own vocation to holiness, individually, as a community, and as a Church?

43

Alban the Martyr

22 June

Alban was probably the first saint of these islands of which I became aware when, as a small child, I used to go to St Albans with my mother to visit the elderly couple who had sheltered her during part of the war as an evacuee from London. Exploring the remains of the Roman city and climbing the hill to the great abbey church, with its haunting frescoes and battered shrine, gives to Bede’s account in his History of Alban’s martyrdom a vividness that still resonates in my memory.

In his history of how Christianity came to the English, Bede derived his account from the Gallic church, which treasured the memory of Alban among the martyrs. One of its early bishops, Germanus, visited the shrine in the fifth century. Bede also knew the more fabulous account by the British writer Gildas, but chose to omit it, beyond an interesting mention of others murdered at that time by the Roman authorities; they were Aaron and Julius, who were perhaps Jewish Christian merchants living in Caerleon in South Wales. Bede placed their martyrdom in the time of the emperor Diocletian, but it was probably earlier, perhaps under the emperor Severus early in the third century.

Bede is seldom generous to the British Christians who preceded the church of his own people, the Anglo-Saxons, but he recorded faithfully how miracles still occurred at the shrine of Alban, whose cult had survived the invasion and settlement of his own people: “Here when peaceful Christian times returned, a church of wonderful craftsmanship was built, a fitting memorial of his martyrdom.” In the Middle Ages, St Alban’s Abbey became a leading and important Benedictine monastery and a great centre of learning, having been refounded by Dunstan during the monastic renewal of the tenth century.

The English Church is unusual in having few martyrs from the early period of its foundation. Indeed it is interesting that Bede and those after him appropriated Alban from this much earlier Roman era. There are four early martyrs of our Church whom we now remember: Alban himself; Boniface, a missionary archbishop, who was murdered in the eighth century in Frisia and is now buried at Fulda in Germany; Edmund, King of East Anglia, murdered by the Vikings in the ninth century and buried at Bury St Edmunds; and Archbishop Alphege of Canterbury, taken hostage and also murdered by the Vikings early in the eleventh century, and buried in the cathedral in Canterbury beside the high altar, where a stone marks the spot today. This paucity of martyrs marks us out from the history of most Continental churches. If we set aside the later martyrs of the Reformation, Protestant and Catholic, and the more controversial figures of Thomas à Becket and King Charles I, we are thin on martyrs, though this is not true of the wider Anglican Communion.

Yet to visit any ancient church in Rome is to be reminded that many of these were founded on the sites of the martyrdom of early Christians. The very shape of a typical Roman basilica embodies this, with its subterranean confessio surmounted by the high altar over the place of the burial of the martyr. This is in imitation of the vision in Revelation, where the souls of those slain for the word of God and for the tenacity of their Christian witness lie under the altar of God in heaven (Revelation 6:9). The Greek word martyr means “witness”. So we must cherish the martyrs who lie under the altar of our own Church in England, remembering that all these four martyrs antedate the Great Schism in the eleventh century between the Eastern and Western churches, and so are revered by Orthodox as well as Catholic and Anglican Christians in our country. In the well-known words of Tertullian, who lived in North Africa in the third century, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church”. Many Christians are still suffering persecution across the world at the present time, and some have been killed as martyrs.

Alban’s story is a simple testimony to the power of example. According to Bede’s source, he sheltered a fugitive, discovered that he was a Christian priest, and was converted by his example: “When Alban saw this man occupied day and night in continual vigils and prayers, divine grace suddenly shone upon him, and he learned to imitate his guest’s faith and devotion.” When Roman soldiers came to arrest the priest, Alban went in his stead, disguised in the priest’s cloak. It would appear that he was a person of some standing in the Roman city of Verulamium, and his action caused deep embarrassment to the magistrates. They tortured him but failed to break his spirit, so they beheaded him on the hill outside the city, where later his shrine would be built. As Bede said in his History, “Its natural beauty suited it as a place now to be made holy by the shed blood of a holy martyr.” Death for Alban became the gateway to paradise, marked by a spring of water signifying eternal life.

I noticed also on a recent visit to St Alban’s Abbey with my young grandson that a fragment of his relics has now been returned from the church of St Pantaleon in Cologne and placed within the medieval shrine of the saint that stands behind the high altar, as a potent symbol of Christian reconciliation. For me, once standing in the presence of the relics of Alban the martyr in that church in Germany, there was a most personal and moving sense of reconciliation, fulfilling the prophetic words of the Christian poet Venantius Fortunatus, cited by Bede at the beginning of his account: “Albanum egregium fecunda Britannia profert—Noble Alban, fertile Britain’s son”. As we commemorate Alban, let us remember before God all our fellow Christians across the world who are enduring persecution for their faith at the present time.

44

Bonaventure

15 July

Bonaventure was born around the year 1217 in Bagnoregio, which is near Orvieto in Italy. He was educated at the University of Paris, where he also taught alongside his friend, Thomas Aquinas, for some years until 1257 when he was made Minister General of the Franciscans. This engaged him in a relentless labour of organizing, teaching and preaching, travelling on foot across the length and breadth of Europe to supervise the growing Franciscan movement. His commitment to this vocation prevented him from accepting the post of Archbishop of York in 1265, but in 1273 he was commanded by Pope Gregory X to become a cardinal and bishop. Bonaventure joined the pope at the second Council of Lyons, where he died on 15 July 1274.

As the leader of the Franciscans during a difficult period in their history, Bonaventure was regarded by many as virtually the second founder of the movement. Certainly all that he taught and wrote was intended to put the memory and legacy of Francis of Assisi on a firm biblical and doctrinal footing. Bonaventure was also concerned to raise the standard of learning and preaching among the Franciscans, in order to advance the mission of the gospel and also to protect the growing movement from criticism. He brought all his expertise and experience as an academic teacher of theology in Paris to bear upon the formation and nurture of those now in his pastoral care.

Bonaventure was unusual in that his mind was both sharply analytical and eloquently poetic. He also had a formidable memory, especially of scripture, and there is nothing that he teaches that is not rooted in the Bible. He distilled the wisdom of many who had gone before him, both his immediate mentors in Paris, and the great teachers of the Western Church, beginning with Augustine, whose theology was the paramount influence on Bonaventure’s own. Many rich strands of teaching flow like tributaries into Bonaventure’s thought, notably that of Gregory the Great, Anselm, Bernard of Clairvaux, and also the writings of the fifth-century Syrian theologian Dionysius, recently translated afresh into Latin, which exercised a distinctive influence on how Bonaventure structured his thought. To some extent, therefore, he was conveying the wealth of this spiritual tradition to his Franciscan hearers, but at the same time, he was transposing and transforming it. Bonaventure was in every way a brilliant communicator, and this is most evident in the many sermons that he composed and circulated as models for use in Franciscan preaching and ministry, and also in his masterly and extensive Commentary on St Luke’s Gospel.

Bonaventure is the most consistently Christ-centred of theologians, and the spiritual goal of Christian theology is never out of his sight. He did not regard the study of theology as an end in itself, let alone a simply academic exercise; nor did he consider it on a par with philosophy. He believed instead what Irenaeus of Lyons had actually declared many centuries before him in the second century: that the vision of God is the life of a person, and the glory of God is the living human being. Christian theology is concerned with the redemption and transformation of human nature by the Spirit of Christ, who became man so that human beings might become divine in him.

Bonaventure is rightly regarded as a supreme mystical theologian, in the sense that he believed and taught that experience of the transforming love of Christ is at the heart of all Christian thought and prayer. This love constrains a person, as it did in the case of Francis and Clare of Assisi, to the point of their participating spiritually in the redeeming suffering of the crucified Christ. Then the glory of God descends to transfigure a person, deifying him or her, and revealing that the soul is indeed made in the image and likeness of God and has a profound affinity with him. Bonaventure believed strongly that human beings are called to become by grace partakers of the divine nature in union with Christ.

Bonaventure took to heart and taught assiduously that, in the words of Augustine, God has made us for himself, and our hearts are empty and restless until they find their rest in him. The loving call of Christ is to enable a willing return to God, and this is the meaning of Christian life, thought and prayer; for Bonaventure, love always transcended learning. It is the work of reason to come to understand Christ, who is the truth, by faith as well as by thought, and so to come to perceive more deeply what is revealed by divine revelation in the Bible and mediated through the sacraments of the Church.

Bonaventure had a very positive expectation of what could be accomplished by the Holy Spirit in human nature. He himself embodied the truth that he taught, being very well loved as an outstanding Christian in his own lifetime and thereafter. He insisted that wisdom and contemplation have to be motivated by a burning desire for God, for his goodness and his love. This desire must order all other desires, and it must not be distracted by false values, moral, intellectual or spiritual.

Human beings are designed to be able, by the grace of the Spirit of Christ and through faith, reason and love, to apprehend the ground of truth in God, and also the meaning of reality as they experience it within the life of the Church that is set in the midst of human history. In Christ the end or goal of history is revealed to be in its midst and at its heart, at the cross of Calvary, but it is also within the human heart as the hidden place of divine encounter and spiritual ascent. All these mysteries and possibilities spring from the self-giving and revealing of God that is expressed in creation and scripture, and whose meaning and power are revealed in the incarnation, the cross and the resurrection of Christ. Herein is the measure of human redemption and sanctification by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and also the revealing of its eternal destiny.

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