The Canticle of Hezekiah

The canticle used in this morning's Morning Prayer has taken on a much more personal significance over the past week or so. Here it is, in the King James rather than the Revised Standard Version:

I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave: I am deprived of the residue of my years.

I said, I shall not see the LORD, even the LORD, in the land of the living: I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the world.

Mine age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd's tent: I have cut off like a weaver my life: he will cut me off with pining sickness: from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me.

I reckoned till morning, that, as a lion, so will he break all my bones: from day even to night wilt thou make an end of me.

Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter: I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes fail with looking upward: O LORD, I am oppressed; undertake for me.

What shall I say? he hath both spoken unto me, and himself hath done it: I shall go softly all my years in the bitterness of my soul.

O LORD, by these things men live, and in all these things is the life of my spirit: so wilt thou recover me, and make me to live.

Behold, for peace I had great bitterness: but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back.

For the grave cannot praise thee, death can not celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth.

The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day: the father to the children shall make known thy truth.

The LORD was ready to save me: therefore we will sing my songs to the stringed instruments all the days of our life in the house of the LORD.

So, time to turn to this day's work.
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Why This Waste?

Long Catholic blog rant. If you really want to read it, click on the link at the bottom of the post.

Before Mass this morning I attended a talk about John's Gospel. The talk itself was very interesting, but not what prompts this post. In the course of it the priest (a Jesuit provincial) referred to John's account of the pound of ointment poured out over Our Lord's feet, and Judas's objection to it "Why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor?"

He said (I translate freely while quoting from memory), "Judas had got behind what we might call the Jesus project - a world of justice and peace - but had not developed a loving relationship with Jesus himself" - and contrasted this with what we know of Peter and John.

This jogged something in my mind. One of the blogs I read so regularly that it's listed in the sidebar is written by a parishioner of the parish of Our Lady of the Rosary in Blackfen, on the outer fringes of London's estuary sprawl into Kent. Anybody who regularly reads British Catholic blogs, or the Tablet, will be aware that a couple of weeks ago the Tablet took it upon itself to have a go at her parish priest for saying one Sunday Mass not only in Latin but according to the old missal (which the Pope said a year or two ago could now be done without seeking special permission from the bishop every time). This is alongside a Saturday evening Mass, a Sunday morning family Mass, and a Sunday evening hymnless Mass all in English, so really it looks as though every taste is catered for, but some folk seem to be offended that anything "preconciliar" should happen in an ordinary parish at all, and this is music to the Tablet's ears (I used to read my mother's copies of the Tablet fairly regularly, because they were in the house, and am grateful that, indirectly and without their knowledge, they made it possible for me to spend half a year teaching English at a junior seminary in Malawi; these days I just give it the occasional glance while waiting for old books to be brought out of the strongroom in the Theology faculty library, if L'Osservatore Romano is already taken).

What another blogger I regularly read, in an alternative view from across the estuary, has dubbed "the tradosphere" (a portmanteau of "traditionalists" and "blogosphere") was briefly in an uproar about the Tablet's "hatchet job" (the wikipedia page was even "semiprotected" to stop a rash of hostile editing). My own experience of the "old Mass" (it's the same Mass, of course, always new and aways ancient, but you know what I mean) has never been encouraging - having an avid celebrant promise that “the Mass our martyrs died for” won’t take over fifteen minutes and you don’t actually have to listen to any of it, does nothing to endear the form; nor does being told that floods, famines and earthquakes could have been averted by people receiving communion without touching it with their hands - but I certainly got a great deal out of the way the Oratorians said Mass in Oxford, following the missal of Pope Paul VI in Latin and with a gentle, careful, painstaking devotion that I (perhaps mistakenly) mentally associate with Newman; and I can well believe that there are those who derive the same sort of benefit from the "preconciliar" missal when it's not gabbled through in an undertone.

I hadn't blogged about this because it's really none of my business (or the Tablet's either, for that matter), but one thing about the article did bother me, in a niggling, sub-conscious sort of way, and this morning's talk brought what it was into focus. It was the mention of "complaints about their priest’s refusal to support Cafod, [and] his expenditure on traditional vestments". Never mind the fact that collections do go to other charities, or that the vestments are often salvaged or hand-me-downs, really it only changes three letters of one word: "Why was not this vestment sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor?"
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The Faith of a Ten-Year-Old

Last week’s “Faith evening” (see here for the one before) was about the Good Shepherd. The initial talk by a diocesan director of catechetics (as I think she is - could be wrong on the exact job description) was very good indeed, quite making up for the lack of Redemptorists in the (post)modern parish mission. Still, I wouldn’t expect any less: she used to be a religion teacher at my wife’s school, where her absence is sorely missed. Then there was a hymn, a coffee break, and it was time to “share our faith experiences” with the rest of our table. The first session was about our images of God, this second session was about our personal faith journey (the emphasis is still very much on “us”). The assumption seemed to be that we were Catholics by accident of birth and socialization -- something that might have been true in Belgium thirty years ago, but surely not at any time since? (And of course, not in England since 1535!)

So here’s stage one of my "personal faith journey".

The religious education of children is based almost entirely on stories that are hard to distinguish from children’s stories: the Fall, the Tower of Babel, Noah’s Ark, the testing of Abraham, Jacob and Esau’s birthright, Joseph’s captivity, Moses in the bullrushes, the Walls of Jericho, David and Goliath, the Infancy narratives, Christ’s parables. When I was about nine or ten I was given a book of “Norse Myths and Legends”, and something of a crisis of faith ensued. The stories of the ancient Norsemen were much more exciting than the stories to be found in most children’s bibles. If religion was going to be a set of archetypal stories to people my imagination with, I’d much rather have the Norse myths (I’d guess this view is pretty widespread among my contemporaries). I don’t recall ever talking to anybody about this at the time, and I was conscious of not wanting to shock my parents, and also of not wanting to be open to persuasion by others until I’d thought it through for myself.

This last Saturday I was teaching my second confirmation class, and asked the children who they would go to if they had questions about their Faith. Several said their parents, one said a teacher (a particular teacher, and one I’d reckon is a good choice: the day before the Feast of St Francis she showed her class of 8 year-olds Brother Sun, Sister Moon), one said “I’d think about it quietly and see what answer came to me” (a ten-year-old illuminist?), and two said “I’d look it up in a book” (quick! get those boys catechisms!).

My own attitude at that age was a combination of the illuminist and the bookish. During Mass I prayed for faith (because I still loved Jesus, even if ancient pagans had better stories), and I read the Bible: an (Anglican) uncle had given me a Good News Bible as a First Communion present. In so far as I can consciously tell, what more than anything kept me believing in the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, was biblical texts like Leviticus 14:33-53, or Deuteronomy 20:2-9. This is plainly a God not so much into stories and more into people’s actual lives (something that can’t really be said about the gods of the Norse pantheon). Perhaps I was turning into a historian even then, but I’ve never understood why Leviticus and Deuteronomy have the reputation of being dry reading.
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