John H Armstrong

Gerard Manley Hopkins and the New Heavens and New Earth

For two days I have written about the sacramental poetic reflections of the nineteenth century English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Today I want to quote from several of his poems and append a few modest comments of my own.

God’s Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and share man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest deep down things;
And thought the last light off the back West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with arm breast and ah! bright wings.

One can sense something of Paul’s thought in Romans 8:18–25 in these words. The creation waits for the children of God to be revealed. It is now subjected to frustration but it will be liberated. This present state does not mean God is not discovered in his beauty and glory in the creation it simply means sin has impacted it adversely and redemption will reverse that impact. The phrase, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God” is one of the most memorable lines in all of English religious poetry and one every Christian could well meditate on fruitfully for the remainder of his life.

One of Hopkins most magnificent poems captures similar ideas but links them to the resurrection as our great hope. Here we have some of the most effective expression of real eschatology I know in our language.

That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the comfort of the Resurrection

In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal
diamond, is immortal diamond.

I have given only the final lines of this 300-plus word poem. But what lines these are. The world is not junk to be discarded at some future time. It has been redeemed and visited by the incarnate Christ. And I am to be, indeed I am, an immortal diamond. Rarely have I found language that so encourages me to know I am loved and redeemed. I am a joke but I am also an “immortal diamond.”

Here are a few more Hopkins poetic lines, gathered from many difference poems over the several decades of his writing poems, that inspire me to live, or understand, the faith better:

Knowledge is strong but love is sweet . . .

How shall I search, who never sought?
How turn my passion-pastured thought
To gentle manna and simple bread?

Of virtues I most warmly bless,
Most rarely see, Unselfishness.
And to put graver sins aside
I won a preference for Pride.

Jesu Dulcis Memoria

Jesus to cast one thought upon
Makes gladness after He is gone;
But more than honey and honeycomb
Is to come near and take him home.

Song was never so sweet in ear,
Word never was such news to hear,
Thought half so sweet there is not one
As Jesus God the Father’s Son.

Jesu, their hope who go astray,
So kind to those who ask the way,
So good to those who look for Thee
To those who find what must Thou be?

To speak of that no tongue will do
Not letters suit to spell it true:
But they can guess who have tasted of
What Jesus is and what is love.

Jesu, a springing well Thou art,
Daylight to head and treat to heart,
And matched with Thee there’s nothing glad
That men have wished for or have had.

Wish us good morning when we wake
And light us, Lord, with Thy day-break,
Beat from our brains the thicky night
And fill the world up with delight.

Be our delight, O Jesus, now
As by and by our prize are Thou,
And grant our glorying may be
World without end alone in Thee.

What an amazing tribute to the goodness and mercy of Jesus. I love the line which says, “Beat from our brains the thicky night and fill the world up with delight.” In fact I prayed these words as I wrote them.

Hopkins could also capture other biblical metaphors in ways that seize your mind very powerfully. Reflecting on Jesus words about the “log in your own eye” he wrote:

Are you beam-blind, yet to a fault
In a neighbor deft handed? Are you that liar
And, cast by conscience out, spendsavour salt?

The phrase “beam-blind” sends chills down my spine. I pray every day not to be “beam-blind.”

Finally, in his great poem The Wreck of the Deutschland, he writes:

Thou hast bound bones and veins in me, fastened me flesh,
And after it almost unmade, what man with dread,
Thy doing: and dost thou touch me afresh?
Over again I feel they finger and find thee.

Here we see the consciousness of a penitent joined with the action of divine grace. Here is the cry of the truly human person who longs for the fresh touch of God upon their human flesh.

Gerard Manley Hopkins: How Poetry Can Express Nature and Incarnation Sacramentally

Gerard Manley Hopkins was a Victorian Jesuit priest who found release from deep anxiety and pain through writing poetry. He learned how to express the tremendous power of the human heart through language that moves those who read his work with reflection. His priestly vocation gave a special vocabulary to the language he used. His deep inner struggle was eloquently chronicled in a verse where the very first lines he wrote as a priest captured this by saying: “Thou mastering me/God!”

What Hopkins was able to accomplish is rare, whether in a poet or any other Christian writer. He used sacramental language to celebrate the particularities of grace in nature. His voice, writes one student of his work, “was perfectly pitched at praise.” In the last few years of his life Hopkins wrote what are called his eight “Terrible Sonnets.” Here his authentic voice no longer uses indirect speech. He addresses God without formality and writes “O thou my friend.” There is a deep cry for help and comfort in these poems. He even asks for mercy rather directly and asks it of God alone. These poems have a disturbing quality but they are moving because they become so personal without falling into despair at all. They are sonnets of “desolation.” St. Ignatius saw this as a predictable part of the spiritual journey and Hopkins experienced both “the darkness of the soul” and the sense of relief that followed.

Hopkins best friend believed the disciplines of the Jesuits did not help him to gain peace and joy but Margaret R. Ellsberg writes: “Not everyone personally experiences God’s will, but Hopkins did, through discipline, intelligence, and no doubt grace. This plaintive sonnet (his final one before he died) is a monument to the personal integration of that experience with suffering.”

At the end of Hopkins’ terribly difficult life it seems poetry became a sacrament of flesh, word and spirit “charged by their interpenetration with each other. When his resistance broke, Hopkins’ highest gift was released” (Ellsberg).

What Hopkins teaches me is that sacramental language and poetic language share certain common tasks. The holy and the divine manifests itself in concrete created things through sacraments. Poetry, by using symbolism and metaphor condenses an unseen reality into human words. For Hopkins poetic words address, reveal and praise God and thereby become sacramental words because of the reality in them.

The question is rather basic. Is the physical accident simply a representation of the substance of a divine truth or is the physical accident itself the very truth? This debate still divides us but we need to be willing to think about it with fresh ears and eyes without the devices of the past lurking in every attempt at dialogue.

One thing is certain about Hopkins’ poetry—he was able to contemplate simple objects like flowers, trees, streams and landscapes and see the very presence and energy of God himself. Outward and visible beauty was a reflection of the invisible beauty of God to Hopkins. In this sense all of nature was sacramental to him. It was the visible sign of an invisible, creative energy that truly revealed the Creator.

In distinction to most evangelical poets Hopkins was more than a devotional poet. For him faith was the total reaction of the whole person to the whole of life. Man was created to serve and praise God and Hopkins did both, with both joy and pain. His attitude to God’s mystery is summarized in the paradox that can be seen in one of his greatest poems:

Thou art lightning and love, I found it, a winter and warm;
Father and fondler of heart Thou hast wrung:
Hast thy dark descending and most art merciful then.

There is a dynamism of nature in words like these. They reveal power and great glory. There is also a religious realism about this way of expression that I was never exposed to in my insular evangelical background. Maybe this is why Hopkins now appeals to me the way he does.

Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Life of One of Our Greatest Christian Poets

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) was an English poet disposed to great personal intensity and a type of stubbornness that Margaret R. Ellsberg (Created to Praise: The Language of Gerard Manley Hopkins. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987) says, “Ultimately molded itself as discipline.” Born in 1844 to a wealthy high Anglican family he was the first of nine children. He went to Highgate School where Samuel Taylor Coleridge once taught. He was a brilliant student but often challenged the system. He began to display strong tendencies to self-discipline and stringent moral ideals. Critics believe these tendencies can be seen in the poems he wrote over the course of his last five years of life.

Hopkins won a poetry prize at Highgate, was considered a superb scholar of the Classics, and then went to Oxford in 1863. While at Oxford he began an earnest search for perfection. To call him a “perfectionist” (in the modern sense) is an understatement. He wrote poems with titles like “Myself Unholy” and “The Habit of Perfection.” While Hopkins was at Oxford the Tractarian Movement was in full swing thus his conversion to Roman Catholicism coincided with this time period. (The Tractarian Movement involved a renewal of sacramentalism that led some prominent members of the Church of England to enter the Roman Catholic Church.) Hopkins said of himself, “If anyone ever became a Catholic because two and two make four [then] I did.” By this he meant that he was intellectually convinced of Catholic arguments and thus he would have become a Catholic no matter what inward or outward obstacles presented themselves. Donald McChesney says, “There was deep within his nature, a deep-seated hunger for absolute obedience.” He was called, while at Oxford, “the star of Baliol” (his college at Oxford), but upon his entry into the Catholic Church his stunning academic career ended. (Moderns have no idea or understanding of these times and the prejudice in England or America.)

Two years after his entry into the Catholic Church Hopkins became a Jesuit. He burned his poetry and entered a long period of silence. He began to write again only when his superior told him he could. He says of these next six years or so that he experienced natural beauty, peace and contemplation like no other period in his life. When he began to write again during these years he produced the very best of his poetry. During these particular years he developed a deep spirituality combined with a literary theory that worked very well for him. He began to see the whole world sacramentally and this led him to compose some of the richest poems on creation and nature that you will ever read. This is how I first came to appreciate Hopkins as a poet.

In 1884 Hopkins went to Dublin to be a professor of classics at John Henry Newman Catholic University. He was only forty but the image that he presented was that of a slight, overwrought priest suffering from chronic eyestrain, headaches, anemia and depression. He hated giving sermons, grading papers and the work he did. His health was broken. What he called “fits of sadness that were so severe as to resemble madness” finally led him to the comfort of the resurrection. A poem of this era is titled: “That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection.” He wrote of “the mortal trash of humanity” becoming “in a flash” “what Christ is . . . . Immortal Diamond.” Hopkins died in 1889, of typhus, at the age of forty-four. His dying words, amazing to most of us reading about his life today, were: “I am so happy.” In 1976 he was established in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey, the highest posthumous honor bestowed on an English poet. While other poets have long epitaphs his reads: “Immortal Diamond.”

What makes Hopkins so relevant to me is his use of sacramental language to describe creation and re-creation. Like Samuel Taylor Coleridge he saw poetry as a means for communicating spiritual truth at a deep and imaginative level. To be a part of the created world, the world that we can call objective fact, and to be in sacramental union with God, is “a condition that eludes language” (Margaret E. Ellsberg). I have come to profoundly agree with this perspective.

Tomorrow: How Hopkins Uses Poetry to Express Creation and Incarnation

Learning to Live In This World

It seems to me that one of the most difficult questions serious Christians routinely face is this: What am I to do with what this world has to offer me in light of the fact that I am a child of God, destined to spend my life in a world that is anti-God? Can anything good be gained from this world. The answer to this question has produced more movements and answers within the Christian tradition than we know what to do with. Some act as if there is nothing in this world worth anything at all but the fire of judgment. Others think this world is so touched by divine grace that almost everything in it, except for the obvious sins like immorality and murder, is to be used to the max. A friend recently suggested the following maxim to me: "A humble person takes whatever there is in the world that helps him to find God and leave the rest aside."

That is not quite as strong as I would prefer it to be but it helps me a great deal. The world is fallen but Christ redeemed it (Colossians 1:15-20). The world is not a friend to grace but grace is a friend to the world. Our problem is not primarily in this world, though this world is filled with much evil. Our primary problem is in our own hearts. If we could learn to positively use what truly helps us to find God we would all be better Christians for the effort. We may disagree about the details here but at least we would all have a sense of what we were actually looking for in the process.

What Would Jesus Do?

The word example is a translation of the Greek word tupos. From this Greek word you can see several of our common English words, e.g. type and typical. The Greek word actually meant to make a mark by striking a blow. This is how the typewriter got its name. A strike on paper was made by a key in the machine.

The most exemplary use of this word in the New Testament refers to Christ being our example, a type to us. After Jesus washed the feet of his disciples he urged them to follow his example (John 13:15). Peter spoke of Christ as the example of true forbearance. He also tells us that his suffering and sinlessness were both examples to us (1 Peter 2:21–22). He urged Christians to specifically follow him as their example, tupos.

But Paul went even further. As an apostle he assumed personal responsibility for being an example to other Christians. He instructed Timothy to do the same (1 Timothy 4:12). As a young minister Timothy was to be an example to the whole church. In Titus 2:1–5 Paul urges godly women to be examples to younger women. The principle works its way out in many relationships in the New Testament.

I could go on and on with numerous other examples of my point but these will suffice to show you that we are called to be examples to others in our faith and life. This is especially true if you are leading anyone else as a minister or church leader of some sort. A leader will be an example. You will either be a good one or a bad one. The more you are like Jesus the more you will become a good one. This is why ministry is always more than knowing facts and teaching them.

Most of us learned what we know by imitation. We learned, in other words, by example. Henry Drummond (1851–97) wrote to D. L. Moody: “To become Christlike is the only thing in the whole world worth caring for, the thing before which every ambition of man is folly and all lower achievement vain.”

But what does it mean to be Christlike? We cannot do his works, at least not in the fullest sense. He is unique thus his works are one with his true uniqueness. To follow him is not to imitate every action that he performed or to do every work that he did. I believe D. W. Lambert expressed the right sense of true imitation well when he wrote: “The Christian goal is not the outward and literal imitation of Jesus, but the living out of the Christ life implanted within by the Holy Spirit.”

The famous book, In His Steps, posed the question: “What would Jesus do in this situation?” I think that is a great question. Some Christian leaders attack this idea and mock it as deficient. I was inclined this way but no longer. So long as we clearly understand that his actions were unique the question is a good one. Congregational minister Charles M. Sheldon (1857–1946), the author of In His Steps, clearly meant it in this correct way. We thus should ask, “What is the Christ life in this/my context and how is the Spirit leading me, and empowering me, to actually do what he would do?”

What Is the Aim of the Christian Life?

I have frequently mentioned that one of the great benefits of reading both Western and Eastern Christian theology is that the body breathes best when it uses both lungs. Pope John Paul II used this expression when he referred to the Christian East and suggested by it that we truly needed one another. I have made this a part of my own journey for about five years now. Let me illustrate one profound way the East has helped me think more deeply about my life in Christ.

If you ask a Western Christian what is the aim of the Christian life I think most would say something about the glory of God. "The chief end of man is to love him and glorify him forever." I like that and believe there is much in this emphasis to commend itself. I also find it lacking something that is more specific and concrete. When I came across the writings of St. Seraphim of Sarov discussing the purpose of the Christian life I was stunned and then profoundly helped. He says, following Orthodox theology, that the whole purpose of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. Before you respond remember this is a deeply and consciously Trinitarian perspective.

Here is how St. Seraphim (icon at left) puts it:

Prayer, fasting, vigils, and all other Christian practices, however good they may be in themselves, certainly do not constitute the aim of our Christian life: they are but the indispensable means of attaining that aim. For the true aim of the Christian life is the acquisition of the Holy Spirit of God. As for fasts. vigils, prayer, and alms-giving, and other good works done in the name of Christ, they are only the means of acquiring the Holy Spirit of God. Note well that it is only good works done in the name of Christ that bring us to the fruits of the Spirit.

Vladimir Lossky, a great theologian of the Orthodox Church, says this statement may appear to be too simple but it "sums up the whole spiritual tradition of the Orthodox Church." Theodore, a disciple of St. Pachomius, said, "What is greater than to possess the Holy Spirit?"

I find this truth a great corrective and one that has a great deal of Scripture to commend it to us. I have long believed that Luke 11:13 was one of the most overlooked texts in the whole Bible, at least in the West. We have a very mechanical view of the Holy Spirit in much of Western Christianity, which is one reason the charismatic movement has so powerfully impacted many Christians in the West.

Checking My Dashboard for the Spirit of the Pharisees

We all know the Pharisees were the religious conservatives of Jesus’ day. We also know that the word Pharisee is today a virtual synonym for hypocrite. The Pharisee is synonymous with the critical spirit, the person who has answers and feels compelled to always remind people that they know more, and do more, than anyone else in the church.

The problem is that most of us never stop to find out where we might have become too much like the Pharisees. A few weeks ago I heard an excellent sermon in Plano, Texas, from my friend Rev. John McCracken (Trinity Presbyterian Church). John’s text was Luke 18:9-14 and his title was: “The Prayer God Won’t Answer.” John is an engaging, warm and solidly biblical preacher. He is very effective.

In the last part of John’s sermon he used an analogy of a car dashboard. He said we should pay attention when a warning light comes on and correct the problem under the hood. He asked, “How can I do a spiritual dashboard check and respond properly to the lights that come on in my heart if I pay attention?” He gave a list of several lights to watch for in terms of becoming a Pharisee. The first one was the most important and the one that hit me right between the eyes. Question: “How critical are you of others?” Ouch. I find it very easy to see your faults and miss my own. I find it a veritable pastime to flood light on people’s mistakes while I keep mine hidden in the closet. Another light John mentioned, that also struck me deeply, was this: “Don’t compare your life to others but always compare yourself to Jesus.”

I needed to check my dashboard and I am thankful my friend preached a sermon that was clearly aimed right at my heart. Thanks John!

The Simple, Godly Wisdom of Ian Thomas

I mentioned last week my visit with Stuart and Jill Briscoe. One of the subjects we discussed was the Capernwray Missionary Fellowship of Torchbearers, begun by the late Ian Thomas. I first met Major Ian Thomas through his book, The Saving Life of Christ. I later read several more of his books on the “deeper life.” I seem to recall reading all four of his books at some point. I went through a time when this emphasis seemed too mystical to my analytical mind. The older I have become the more I prize the “Christ life” in me by faith in the risen life of the Savior.

The late Ian Thomas was born in London on September 13, 1914 and died at 92 years of age on August 1, 2007. He is probably best known as the founder of both Torchbearers International and the Capernwray Missionary Fellowship of Torchbearers, both begun in the United Kingdom. Today there are Capernwray Fellowships in twenty-three locations around the globe. Major Thomas opened the twenty-third just four months prior to his death.

Stuart and Jill Briscoe were trained as young believers at Capernwray. This led to Stuart’s itinerant ministry in his twenties and thirties. As a result of his travels to America he was eventually called to pastor Elmbrook Church in Wisconsin, where he served for thirty years. Since 2000 he has traveled, with Jill, to missionaries and missions all over the world. The Briscoes give themselves to those who cannot afford to have such outside teachers serve in their midst, thereby carrying on the very ministry that Major Thomas gave to them so many years ago. Many others, perhaps much less known, have also gone and done likewise.

When I talked about Major Thomas with Stuart and Jill I heard a story about Major Thomas that moved me in a simple, powerful way. Stuart said Major Thomas said that we all should: (1) Go where you’re sent; (2) Stay where you’re put; (3) Give what you’ve got. That underscores a great approach to ministry that I have found to be true since I got to Wheaton in 1970. I came to Wheaton, Illinois, to go to school, following the leading of the Holy Spirit to a place I had never seen before. God sent me here and I very simply followed. Here I met the power of God in revival and my life was forever change. When I had many opportunities to leave this place, often for what seemed like much “greener pastures” (larger churches and better fields of service), I stayed. I did so because of my family, my sense of mission and my unique calling. (Everyone has a unique calling I believe.) Though I sometimes struggled with the Lord about my calling I learned, over time, to give all that I had to be the person God wanted me to be in this place. I eventually learned that place was not the big issue in service. The big issue is “giving what you’ve got.”

Alice: A Modern Monk?

Today's blog is written by my friend Ed Holm from Newport, North Carolina. For 33 years Ed taught school, first in the Baltimore County Schools in Maryland and then at Gramercy Christian School in Newport, North Carolina. He left teaching to become a parish administrator at his local church. Recently he returned to teaching by working at a home for troubled youth sponsored by the Methodist Home for Children. Ed is a graduate of St. Mary's Seminary & University (Baltimore) and holds a Masters in Theology degree. Ed is also a Third Order Franciscan monk in a group called The Company of Jesus. This article "Alice" is about a woman Ed worked with over 10 years ago. I found it so appropriate, following my own posts over the last four days, that I couldn't pass on letting others read it.

I have stumbled upon a rather wonderful little book called Lessons From the Monastery That Touch Your Life, by Basil Pennington, O.C.S.O. He is a Cistercian monk. Pennington suggests ways in which monastic practices might be incorporated into the secular lives that most of us live; ways in which the ordinary might be sanctified and become pathways to worship. Pennington has written this little book in response to an introduction he once received while attending a conference. The conference director, while meaning no harm, relegated Pennington and his fellow monks to being nothing much more than “old books on a shelf in a library.” At best, they were handy resources though which a modern person might view quaint antiquity but bore no relevance to life today. I suppose that the director held such old tomes to be of great intellectual value but of little practical use. Sadly, I think the director's perception is quite common, not only concerning monastic life, but concerning the value of scripture, contemplation and prayer in general as it is perceived by our culture. Faith is most always set on life's margins. But the very nature of faith itself flies in the face of such thinking. For the community of faith Christ is a fact, not a proposition. He is central and not marginal. Therein lies the rub between the culture and the Church.

I work with a wonderful saint named Alice who understands this dichotomy fully well. She is a custodian at my school. Alice follows the scriptural admonition to “pray unceasingly”. I don't think I have ever in fifteen years had a conversation with Alice that did not in some way allude to prayer. She prays for the teachers and the students, she prays for her church, she prays for my church, she prays for the neighborhood, she prays for her friends as well as her enemies. She prays particularly hard for her husband who does not share her piety and she prays for everyone and everything imaginable as far as I can determine. She comes into my office and smiles and tells me that she prays for me. I have walked by rooms where Alice is working alone and I have heard her praying aloud or singing a song of praise. It has gotten to the point that every time I see Alice, or even her cleaning cart, for that matter, I think about the subject of prayer. Alice is a sign of the Kingdom.

Those of us without the strength or courage of Alice are smaller, weaker signs, I suspect. We have too much to lose by confronting the culture which supports us. We are beholden and compromised. We are satisfied and perhaps even proud to be “books on a shelf.”  Alice is undaunted. Never one to flinch in the face of withering fire, she refuses to believe that everyone cannot have faith just like hers. She comes into my room and says things like, “I see you have been in the Word this morning Mr. Holm. I saw the book on prayer in your briefcase.” Or she will say,  “Have you got a Word for me today Mr. Holm” never thinking that one might live in a world where “a word” is something privately received and hidden under the bushel of ones self conscious fears. Sadly to say, most often I do not have “a word” for Alice because, unlike Alice, I neglected to start my day being fed by the Word. Not to worry, Alice always has a Word for me.

Sometimes my words and actions bespeak of a very poor spiritual witness. I will say things or do things that I wish I had not. Sometimes my comments have been cruel, unforgiving or diminishing of others. I have had the blessing on several occasions when I have been caught being the “other me” by Alice and I have seen the disappointment on her face and have felt shame. Indeed, her very presence is a work of righteousness that confronts my sin. Upon her lips I have seen the silent words of prayer, interceding for me or someone else in need of healing or forgiveness at that time. Alice, a valiant prayer warrior holds me accountable for my puny faith. Alice reminds me at those times that Christ is not a relic, an old book upon a shelf. I know His presence when Alice is around. That is why Alice is a saint.

Alice is a modern day monk praying for all others in all circumstances. The world needs people like Alice much more than it knows. The world needs monks and nuns and priests and saints and all of the faithful company of Heaven because, without them, our lives would suffer terrible spiritual poverty much greater than it suffers already. Without people like Alice faith would appear to be nothing more than a pleasant notion or a moment of wistfulness. Alice is an embodiment of faith. Her faith is incarnational in its blood, flesh and bone and she witnesses to a God she knows and one, she is sure, who knows and loves her.

The world holds tightly onto its disbelief but it cannot deny the substance of those who do believe and shine forth. Strangely, it is upon the human heart that God has chosen to make His strongest case for Truth. How fragile are the bearers of God's Word, and yet, how enduring; far greater than the loftiest tomes on library shelves is the power of one whose heart knows Christ. Thank you Alice for being that emissary from God's Kingdom. Thank you Jesus for Alice.

Friendship and Ecumenism in the Community of St. John, Part Four

My friend, Fr. Didier Marie, who I have written about in the previous three blogs, stressed time and again during my time with him that we must always move from the existence of a friend to the existence of THE Friend, Jesus. And when we know Jesus as THE Friend we can then move toward one another in His Spirit. The joy of God is found here, in the other. Joy is not primarily found in me seeking my own joy but rather in my seeking the joy of another. This truth is not understood by many Christians in our time, especially in popular evangelical teaching about self-esteem or in seeking to complete or maximize my own joy as the goal of my spiritual life, sometimes called Christian hedonism.

The Apostle John tells us that Jesus calls us His friends. Fr. Didier warned those who were priests that their role was never to entertain people in the Mass. The real priest must learn to “disappear” since “He must increase and I must decrease.”

Fr. Didier told some great stories about the founder of the Community of St. John, Fr. Philippe. I was moved by these stories and sad that I never got to meet Fr. Philippe. I was invited by the order to celebrate their thirtieth anniversary at the Vatican in 2005. I would have been afforded the joy of meeting this man but I had a commitment to teach a seminary course and felt I should not break my word. What attracted me to Fr. Philippe is what attracts me to my friend, Fr. Didier. He was transparent, real and human. He lived this way by joining, as I’ve already noted, the three great wisdoms: philosophical, theological and mystical.

Fr. Didier related accounts of how Fr. Philippe practiced friendship. (By the way, he was a close friend to John Paul II, the present pope, and the late Brother Roger, a famous Protestant monastic in France.) I privately spoke to Fr. Didier about Brother Roger and John Paul II. I was able to confirm how deep their friendship was on a personal level. I still recall how amazed I was when Cardinal Ratzinger, soon to become Pope Benedict XVI, communed Brother Roger first at the funeral Mass of Pope John Paul II. This act of love, which was not a surprise to those who knew about Brother Roger and John Paul, is a surprise to many “hard core” Catholics who insist that a person must always be a Catholic before they can be communed. An exception does not break a rule, I understand, but the fact is that this happened and behind it is a great story that will someday be better understood.

All of this is said to underscore a central point about friendship within Brother Didier’s relationship with me as a Protestant. He, like me, is deeply committed to ecumenism, not as a theory but as a way of life. He wants me as his friend and I want him as my friend because this friendship is at the heart of our love for the unity of Christ’s church. By coming close to one another, even for a few hours and only every few years, we come closer to Christ and his goal for all his people.

Within all of us is a deep sense of the need for spiritual order. If someone we love is to meet us at the airport we will be there and alert to look for them. So we must go to Jesus. Be alert and look for him. Go to chapel, prayer and communion with this desire. A materialistic vision will never satisfy us. Only a vision of Christ and his love for our friend will fulfill us. In each of us is a profound “potency.” This potency invites us to act in love. When we respond we go deeper into the love of Christ. Nothing can replace this. Theology is never a substitute for this. When we make the pursuit of theology a substitute for relationship we are truly dysfunctional human persons.

I came away from the Community of St. John, and the teaching and time with Fr. Didier Marie, realizing once again what I truly long for, especially in my earlier life when I saw theology and ministry in the so many wrong ways, was true friendship. I treasure my friends more than all the knowledge I have been afforded. I treasure time with friends as more important than reading my books, though I still have way too many books and read actively. The life of the mind is critical and there is far too little of this passion in our time. But the life of the mind will never satisfy us if we do not seek Jesus and others. Long to be a friend and long to draw close to Jesus as your true friend.