The Self Without Bad Traits

It is often said that cultivating good is more important than fighting evil. If, above all else, I’m striving to secure my house by ever improving ways against fire, hurricane, flood, thieves, mice, fungus, woodworms, etc., instead of comfortably arranging the interior, living in it will never be good. If, above all else, we look for and punish small and big wrongdoers in the state, instead of developing science and the economy, the country will never become prosperous. If, above all else, we desire to eliminate wrong theological convictions in the church, instead of cultivating the life of the spirit, good habits and mutual love, the church will ossify. These truths are well-known in the spiritual, political and economic life. By destroying evil, in all these cases we too often involuntarily destroy what is good as well. Is it like that in the case of one’s personal internal work?

I strive to work on myself. I go to confession. After each confession I try to do better, and still there are bad inclinations in myself, which tempt me to commit new sins. Oh, if good God took away all flaws of my character, how much more good I could do!

But hey, is it really so?

Perhaps there are such among the readers who can act on pure love of doing God’s will. There were such saints. Probably they do exist today as well, and there may be such among the readers of “Praca”. These reflections are not meant for them, but for people like myself, full of bad inclinations and egoism.

I know that the ideal disciple of Christ does good not because of a calculation, in order to be saved, but from pure love of good. I too like good and truth and respect God’s will, but when I put my efforts to even some minor thing, somewhere in the background of my consciousness there is the conviction that I will be rewarded for that small sacrifice in the life to come. And that conviction makes me glad and encourages me to work.

A certain saint, upon observing this in himself, was so struck by it that he no longer wanted to do good things, for – as he did them of egoism – they were devoid of any moral value – ceased to be good. And then he thought that this was a demonic temptation and decided to do things that are good regardless of the motivation. Whether I do something from the love of God and man or of myself (expecting to be rewarded) – if I only do something good – I serve the world. But let us return to the main topic.

If I imagine that in some miraculous way all viciousness were taken from me, all desire to criticize others, would I still have any reason to be interested in other people, or would others – perhaps with the exception of some figures worthy of reverence – become absolutely indifferent to me? I would cut myself off from people.

If I completely cease to be gluttonous, if it were completely indifferent to me what I eat, when and how much, would I be able, by a sense of reason, to eat in a manner that would allow me to fulfill any will – God’s or my own?

Most common human flaws were listed as the seven cardinal sins, which together form egoism and constitute the basis of all sins. These are, as we well know: wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. These are not good traits, but when I think that all were to be taken from me, I realize that my personality would crumble to pieces. Only a small spark of the self would be left, but helpless, dull, desiring nothing – doing nothing.

Perhaps I exaggerate a little bit, for there is in me a little bit – not much, but some – true love of God and doing his will. Perhaps, then, my personality wouldn’t fall apart completely, yet it would certainly be overcome by serious psychological depression.

What should I do, then?

Instead of fighting the evil that is in me, I should cultivate the seeds of good that are there already, and slowly transform bad traits into good ones. In the first place I should serve the good. So I will utilize my bad traits for service to God. May my pride lead me to be ever more active in the service of good. May greed lead me to earn as many merits in the eyes of God as possible.  May impurity, sensuality encourage me to give warmth and love to those that I desire. For the erotic inclination was given to man in order that he may learn to love. May envy become my motivation to surpass others in receiving God’s grace. May Gluttony contribute to forming rational eating habits of my own and caring for those who suffer hunger. May wrath be directed at all injustices that I encounter and may it learn to speak not in helpless anger but in haste to help where I may help. And may laziness lead to a rational way of handling and preserving my energy and strength, to the ability of finding the right forms of necessary rest instead of additionally wasting energy and time by succumbing to exhausting forms of entertainment and addictions.

If I act like that, only the effects of my actions will be good. The forces driving my actions will at the beginning be little noble, egoistic. But after doing so for a long time, some actions will become my habits. I will start to cherish them, like them. And in this way the love of good, of God, will slowly grow in me. And then all egoistic forces and those listed as the seven cardinal sins, as well as other, less important ones, will cease to be necessary as motivations. Unused, they will wither. The force driving my actions will be only the strife for the highest good, the desire to do God’s will.

When shall it happen? Perhaps not in this life. But I should strive for it and not wait for the next. After death, I won’t have such a life, such opportunities to work on myself as I do now anymore. And my present aspirations, my practical efforts will form a basis for what will be able to grow in the next life.

Angels act upon pure love of doing God’s will. Humanity shall become the tenth angelic choir. Through baptism we became the brothers of Christ. Some day he will remove all traces of evil from us, but we shouldn’t ask him to do it before the time comes.

Br. Pawel, “Praca nad Soba” 51 (2008), p. 1-4.

Book of Amos 5:8, Apocalypse 21:2-7, St. John’s Gospel 10:11-16

God didn’t have it easy with me the last couple of days. Time and again, I would ask him if he really thinks that he needs Pawel more than we do. You may consider it strange, for people often say that dealing with the death of our loved ones is easier for us Christians. Yes, in some sense it is easier, but on the other hand the awareness that we offer what happened to God, regardless of how it strikes us, doesn’t alleviate the pain, the loss, the sense of being left alone, even orphaned. It’s one of the paradoxes related to the passing of a man who was a great paradox himself. Paradox will be one of the key words in this reflection. When we asked the Rev. Greg Neal, who only a month ago stood with Br. Pawel at the altar of St. Martin’s[1], to help us prepare the liturgy for tonight as we thought we didn’t have enough time to do it ourselves before departing from the Netherlands, he chose also the lessons, and explained why. With regard to the Old Testament Lesson from Prophet Amos, he referred of course to one of Pawel’s two main callings, Astronomy. To Amos’ statement, “He who made the Pleiades and Orion,” one would like to add: “he who made Rudnicki’s comet and the supernovae Pawel discovered.” He, whose creating power goes beyond what we can see. It was to studying his creation that Pawel devoted a great part of his life. Every time we were preparing for a service like today, we went through a ritual of sorts: first, we prepared the liturgy, the lessons, and then sent them to Cracow by email, always on the Monday preceding the Saturday on which the service were to be held, because Pawel said, “do it then as on Monday I’m a Theologian, and from Tuesday to Thursday an Astronomer, so otherwise I wouldn’t have enough time to prepare.”

Br. Pawel in his partisan uniform.

I browsed many internet comments below various articles devoted to Pawel, and it was stated repeatedly that he was drawn to God by Astronomy. Some found it odd, some logical. Yet it wasn’t entirely like that, for the events that initiated the spiritual transformation of Pawel – born to a Communist/Socialist family, son of Lucjan Rudnicki, a famous Communist author and of a Polish Socialist Party activist – were more existential than strictly intellectual. I have here in mind in the first place the spiritual experiences he had when he fought in the guerilla armies, first in the People’s Guard[2] and then in the People’s Army. For Pawel was one of those who were “on the wrong side” according to today’s historiography,  those who should not be spoken of as they allegedly didn’t “fight for Poland.” I remember some discussions we had, difficult conversations when for example he didn’t let it be spoken ill of such a controversial person like Mieczyslaw Moczar[3], because he was his commander. Pawel, a Righteous Among The Nations, an honorary citizen of Israel, felt a bond with someone like Moczar, one of those behind the 1968 events[4]. As I said, paradox will be the key word in this reflection. It was this series of spiritual experiences, about which Pawel spoke relatively little – he described them in his spiritual biography – that opened him up to another dimension of reality, the one that cannot be studied by a telescope or a magnifying glass, or a microscope. Into this realm too he journeyed in his characteristic way – he combined such an amazing number of spiritual traditions that no orthodoxy and no heresy would combine them like this one man. I will name only a few.

Anthroposophy[5]

Pawel was one of the greatest Anthroposophists Poland had – it is a spiritual school drawing from the third pillar of European culture, beside the classical and the Christian ones, the pillar of Western esotericism, the Rosicrucian tradition, the tradition of Boehme, etc., etc. It is also an attempt to study, to gain concrete spiritual knowledge of those worlds which our senses cannot penetrate – an attempt to open the inner eye. For this need was in him too. He wanted to be a scholar also with regard to the spiritual world.

Looking for a church for himself

Pawel told many times that he went to the Orthodox Church first – in times that were difficult for it, when it was only reestablishing itself after World War II in an extremely complicated situation. At last he found himself in the Mariavite Church, however. He told that he was fascinated by two things. First, the way the priest looked like: wearing simple, as for those times, vestments, and second, the simple, spiritual piety that he demonstrated in his sermon and in conversation.

One can hardly not associate this with Pawel himself, the way he was with us. In today’s Gospel we heard about Christ – the Good Shepherd. It is also a calling for us all – to be shepherds for others – and especially for those whose vocation is to be leaders in the Church. The way Pawel did it, was the way of the Good Shepherd indeed. What I have in mind is the way he celebrated the liturgy – simple, free from redundant decorative elements, and at the same time revealing  a profound experience, a deep awareness of the meaning of each word. Each word of the liturgy, when spoken by Pawel, was full of meaning, was something to be savored, something one had to stop and think about, something that cannot be spoken lightly, because it opens up new spiritual worlds to us. And how did we remember him from the retreats of the Polish Episcopal Network? Whenever we were working on the program, he would send us an email and ask gently, “Will there be time for me to speak about this or that?” It was always only an offer. I remember especially well his last talk at the retreat in Pulawy, where he spoke of his problem with forgiving, and how, step by step, he had been overcoming it and how he had been gradually succeeding in discovering some gift, some opportunity to learn in every difficult person he had to forgive.

Does it mean that we should see the difficult fact of Pawel’s absence among us as an opportunity to learn something? In a sense the time of the exam is coming. The teacher is gone and we will have to show how much we learned as his disciples. Yet we will take this exam aware that He who is the Lord of life and death says, “To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life.” Without cost, for free. Pawel was a man who devoted a great part of his writing, his theological and spiritual work to the issue of “work on oneself.” Sometimes we laughed that Work on Oneself is his fourth name, “Konrad Maria Paweł ‘Work on Oneself’ Rudnicki.”  Sometimes when you listened to what he said about the necessity of spiritual growth, you would ask yourself if there was a place for the “without cost” – for a gift, for receiving, opening oneself up to grace. Yet who listened to Pawel carefully, certainly understood that work on oneself was not an instrument to gain entrance to heaven, but was meant to make us able to open up to this gift, this living water, to stand before God in a truly conscious manner – as the receiving one, but also as the one who is supposed to do something with the gift she received, let it grow. It is another paradox located in the very heart of Christian spirituality, which is certainly a spirituality of grace, gift, this “without cost” – in a moment we will approach the table and receive the bread that is nothing else but a gift – and yet we will receive it in order to go into the world and be witnesses of our allegiance to the Gospel. So it is at the same time a spirituality of work, an active spirituality.

“And I have other sheep.” One and a half year ago we held the conference initiating the Polish Episcopal Network. About 25 persons said they would come. It was raining on that Saturday. When we arrived together with our guests – Bishop Pierre Whalon and his wife, Melinda, Prof. Daniel Siemiatkoski who came from Oxford – we saw only five people. When I was opening the conference, I didn’t know where to look, how could I look in the eyes of the bishop whom I requested to come from Paris to meet five persons. Yet Pawel was among them, Pawel who thought that since the Episcopal Church granted him, a Polish Mariavite, the permission to minister as a priest in the 60s and 80s, since it offered him an opportunity to do what he considered a need of his soul – being a priest – he should accompany the Polish Episcopal Network when it was taking its first steps in Poland. He saw this as a kind of debt. One and a half year later it is we that owe him. He was with us indeed every time, on every opportunity. He didn’t celebrate a service only once – in January, when he really couldn’t walk. I came then to Sw. Filipa street[6] with reserved sacrament that he had consecrated specially for this occasion at a Mass he celebrated in his study.

Br. Pawel celebrates his last Episcopal Eucharist assisted by the Rev. Gregory Neal.

“And I have other sheep.” Pawel was a Mariavite. The Work of Great Mercy, Mariavite Spirituality, really became a part of him. He was certainly a troublesome Mariavite for many other Mariavites, and especially Mariavite Bishops, yet a Mariavite in his heart and in his soul nonetheless. And still, during this one and a half year I never doubted that he was also a priest in the Episcopal Church. The license he received in the 60s, which he showed then to Bishop Pierre, was not merely a piece of paper. It was a testimony of his deep bond with us, with the Polish Episcopal Network, with the Episcopal Church, with Anglicanism – with those other sheep, who came God knows whence, sometimes four, sometimes five, sometimes twenty (he would be surprised to see so many today). A month ago someone told me after the service – as it turned out, the last one Pawel celebrated – that he finally feels at home in a church. I think that it is such a church and that it should remain such – among other things for the sake of those who don’t feel well in any other church. The question is, how are we going to make it happen without you, Pawel?

Amen

After a year we must admit, alas: we probably didn’t…

[1] St. Martin’s Lutheran Church in Cracow where we sometimes held our services. In October 2013 we celebrated there the first anniversary of regular Episcopal services in Cracow. The service was presided by Fr. Rudnicki, and the sermon was preached by our dear friend from the United Methodist Church, the Rev. Dr. Gregory S. Neal. Unfortunately, it turned out to be the last service presided by Pawel.

[2] The People’s Guard, and later the People’s Army, were Communist partisan forces. Today their veterans are ignored or even treated as traitors or Soviet agents.

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mieczysław_Moczar

[4] In 1968 took place an internal conflict among Polish communists. One camp comprised a nationalistic group, people who fought in the partisan forces during the war, led by Mieczyslaw Moczar, and the other a more cosmopolitan and liberal group, people who spent the war in the Soviet Union. Because many of them were Jewish and supported Israel, Moczar and his party used anti-Semitic slogans. As a result of this campaign, many Jews, especially the intelligentsia, left Poland.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Polish_political_crisis

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthroposophy

[6] It is where we held our services.

zadecydowałem, że nie będę już prowadził bloga DSTP. Dziękuję Wam wszystkim za okazaną przez tyle lat wierność. Opublikowane teksty będą nadal dostępne. Blog jako taki również będzie dalej istniał.

Życzę Wam wszystkiego dobrego,
Pradusz (Jarek Kubacki)

—

Dear Readers,

I decided to stop editing and writing on the blog. Thank you all for your fidelity all those years. Published materials will remain accessible. The blog as such will continue to exist as well.

I wish you all the best,
Pradusz (Jarek Kubacki)

First of all, it’s not fair that Thomas has been known in the tradition as the “doubting” one. Was he somehow special, did he have any characteristic that distinguished him from other disciples, for example particularly strong skepticism? Certainly not. It was his situation that was different.

According to the Gospel no single disciple believed someone else’s word, believed a message, someone else’s story. Everyone wanted and had to check, find out for themselves. Peter and John ran to the tomb and only when they saw it empty did they grasp the meaning of the Scriptures and that God was supposed to raise Jesus from the dead (John 20:8-10).

By the way, it may seem strange to us, that inability to comprehend – how is it possible that they didn’t get Jesus’ hints, so straightforward and clear to us? That he would point to his mission again and again, and they nonetheless succumbed to despair and didn’t await his resurrection, didn’t now that he prophesied it? In the Hebrew tradition they grew up in and to which Jesus constantly referred, the Messiah was the triumphant King of Peace, the Chosen One, like Jesus at the moment of his glory upon entering Jerusalem on the donkey. The suffering servant from Isiah is someone else. These traditions hadn’t been combined before. The disciples had to know that Jesus was referring to those prophecies, for they new the Scriptures well. But apparently it was too incomprehensible, or perhaps too difficult, to grasp the implications: the Messiah had to suffer, die, and, in the categories of this world, be defeated and crashed. So everything, human psyche and their tradition, made it difficult for them to comprehend. And they experienced something horrible, the passion and death of Jesus, events that could shake even the strongest conviction, the strongest expectation, the strongest faith in prophecy.

Mary on the other hand believed only when Jesus, whom he had first taken for the gardener, addressed her by her name (John 20:14-16). And the disciples gathered behind the locked door, afraid and low-spirited, saw Jesus and his wounds with their own eyes, didn’t they? (John 20:20) Thomas is not exceptional, is not a black, skeptical sheep. He simply wasn’t in the right place at the right time, “was not with them when Jesus came” (John 20:24; it is what I had in mind by saying that his situation was different). His encounter with the Risen One, his experience, was not different from the experience of the other disciples. In a sense he demonstrated something that applies to all.

It came to my mind that Thomas and his “doubts” fit perfectly the logic of the story that was written down “for us to believe than Jesus is the Messiah” (John 20:30) It is he, Thomas, that we identify with, for because of his straightforwardness the theme of doubt focuses on him. And in the story he, the doubting one, the one the reader identifies with – the reader who didn’t see Jesus, for she was not with the disciples, was she? – finally believes. So we too are more likely to believe, even though we don’t experience precisely what he did. In a sense Thomas doubted for us, so that we may find a place for ourselves in the story more easily. So perhaps Thomas was in a way sacrificed by the stigmatization as “the doubting one” in the tradition for our sake. Perhaps.

Jesus finally says, “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29) When he appeared before the disciples for the first time, he said “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” (John 20:21) This is for me one of the keys to this story. Those who haven’t seen are outside, behind the locked door, in the world. This is the world to which Jesus sent his disciples as his father sent him. Jesus desires that the world believes, but he didn’t show himself to the whole world, did he? Why? Wouldn’t it be simpler that way? For this world is full of people looking for a direct experience (and especially in our times). If they knew him in the glory of his deified body, looked into his brilliant face, saw the wounds and how he goes through the locked door – wouldn’t they believe? Wouldn’t it be better? For Jesus would certainly not only be able to achieve bilocation, which has been mastered even by the more spiritually advanced disciples of his, but even multilocation. Omnilocation. Why make the disciples undergo the difficulties of preaching, which at that moment turned out to be too much for them (for after a week they were still behind the locked door), and deprive people of this ultimate experience, giving them only the testimony of the disciples? Is this about a trial? Does God test the devotion of the disciples to preaching and the readiness of others to accept it? Is this about earning salvation, the fact that nothing comes easily, that there are no shortcuts?

I am convinced that it is not God’s desire to test us and put us to trials. He doesn’t want to torment us. He gives his grace freely. And this is what it’s all about, these two fundamental realities, I believe – grace and freedom. I don’t now personally – and we don’t know as a community, our theological and philosophical legacy notwithstanding – what grace and freedom precisely are. But we know, for it is the fundamental meaning of Pascha, that God is a liberator. He leads out of slavery. We know also that he doesn’t want us to be his slaves but his children and brethren. Beings he desires to include in the communion of the Trinity. That is why he cannot use violence and force, cannot be a puppeteer on a high throne. The mystery of the Incarnation consists in the human sin, the human tendency to self-destruction, the fatum that freedom has become to men, being transformed and enlightened from within, the human being gaining freedom without violence, without being forced to anything, without a magical intervention into his spirit, which would equal a command on the part of God. In the Incarnation God becomes man and destroys destruction and death, giving us a chance for the same by means of communion with him. It is God who doesn’t take any shortcuts and doesn’t command anything, doesn’t use his might. Instead, he humbles himself and suffers. Grace is not violence, it is the opposite.

If Jesus showed himself to everyone, wouldn’t he in a sense overwhelm them by his might? Would we recognize him as the Messiah he truly is? Yes, he showed himself to the disciples, but they followed him already when he was only a wandering preacher contested by the mighty of this world. He was not a supernatural being that can walk through locked doors.

We, the readers of the Gospel, change our identification, as it were. For sometimes we are the world that haven’t seen and should believe, and sometimes the disciples that believe and have to go into this world (but do they?). We are in reality both at the same time, all the time. The witness we should give consists in human presence – such as Jesus showed us by his life. We have to be for each other and share with each other – our experience, our bread and wine – so that we may know Christ as he truly is: a Messiah who refrains from violence, who doesn’t force anything, whose grace is the opposite of a command. Only when we travel this way here on earth – as the world and as the disciples – will we be ready to see Jesus in his deified body and take our own deified body, not fearing that we won’t understand whom God truly is and wants to be.

The difficult truth about the Judeo-Christian tradition is that it questions everything we see as trustworthy, rational, normal. It’s abnormal! The Pharaohs of this world don’t allow for their slaves to be so easily taken from them (think about Putin, for example!). Poor roaming preachers like Jesus usually don’t change the course of history. Rather, they end up in the dustbin of history and are forgotten. This is what this world is like, and everyone who sees it otherwise hasn’t, apparently, grown up yet. And we shouldn’t think that we can make anything easier by changing the literal approach to the Paschal stories to one more metaphorical or “spiritual”. The idea that Jesus lives forth in his disciples and followers is actually equally problematic as the vision of the open, empty tomb. It only seems a little less shocking, a little easier to comprehend…

But Easter is about incongruence. Easter is a breakthrough, exodus from the world as it is, the adult world, where one incessantly estimates probability and tries to properly asses consequences. Easter is a call to build upon the least probable, least trustworthy, weakest foundation. A foundation that cannot be described otherwise than by statements that are pure absurd from the logical point of view. It was excellently put by the ancient theologian Tertullian: “I believe because it is absurd.” Easter means exodus. Exodus from reality that can be predicted. From reality that can be shaped to one’s liking if only one has enough power. To celebrate Easter is crazy. It means embracing visions of which we know that they don’t come true. Departing on a journey while knowing that we won’t achieve our goal.  Challenging systems that can crush us without any problem. And finally shouting to the face of death: “although I have no idea what it actually means, I’m nonetheless convinced that LIFE IS STRONGER THAN YOU!” Do we want to live “like never before?” Then it is the only way. For we haven’t lived like that ever before, I haven’t, because I finally believed all the stories told me to explain what it means to be adult, and cautiously started accepting the laws of adulthood. Only what seemed possible was possible. It is of course a self-fulfilling prophecy if we ignore in advance anything that seems impossible. But Easter seems to be saying: “why not try the impossible if what’s possible doesn’t work anyway?” Do you remember: “Let imagination rule?”* And actually still worse: what we cannot imagine should lead us – “the white spot”**, Mary Magdalene’s “woman talk”… Liberated slaves turned out to be the chosen people in order to give witness that God never sides with the slave drivers. The risen powerless outcast, who, with the greatest possible insubordination, was called he Son of God to show that only he is the Lord, and not the mighty emperor in Rome…

*”Let imagination rule” was the slogan of the first truly progressive cabinet in the post-war history of Holland (1973-77) led by the leader of the social democratic party Joop den Uyl and composed of social democrats, radicals, progressive democrats and two confessional parties – a Catholic and a Protestant one.

**The term “white spot” is a reference to the words of a contemporary Lutheran theologian, Marcel Barnard. In his book “Wat het oog heeft gezien” he reflects on the Apostle’s Creed inspired by masterpieces of world painting. The chapter devoted to the resurrection was inspired by Giotta di Bondone’s fresco Nori me tangere. Bernard writes: “The true Pascha escapes observation. Noting is to be seen. So nothing can also be imagined apart from the empty place, a white spot. Giotto’s Risen One tends to be like that.”

This is the second reflection I wrote for the website tezeusz.pl (here you can find info about it in English) upon today’s readings. It is a part of their “online retreat” series for Lent.

Although I was taught not to mix narratives of different Evangelists, I cannot help but turn to Johan Sebastian Bach’s “St Matthew Passion” when reading John’s announcement of Judas’ treason. I associate Lent inextricably with two things: my favorite daffodils blossoming and the “Passion” of Bach – “the fifth Evangelist.” (Here you can listen to one of my favorite renditions – conducted by Stephen Cleobury.)

So also this time I read John’s story with Bach’s masterpiece sounding in my ears, even though the cantor from Leipzig wrote also “St John’s Passion,” which however never fascinated me in the same degree. ..

Listening to the “Passion” used to be for me in the first place a family event – a certain household ritual. In his modest record collection my grandpa had a recording of the “Passion” conducted by Günther Ramin in 1941. Later when I learned about various complexities of history, I imagined the boys from the magnificent St Thomas Choir in Leipzig that sang it wearing Hitlerjugend uniforms, which made the experience even more dreadful. Today I know that the Choir management succeeded in obtaining an exemption from membership in this organization for the singers, but it surely wasn’t able to isolate the boys completely from the influence of the ideological poison which penetrated all areas of life in the III Reich. What did they think when expressing by song the indignation and wrath at the traitor? (With the same passion and bravura as their successors in this recording from the 1990s?)

Did they associate “das mördische Blut” (“the murderous blood”) with the refrain of the nazi song they must have heard multiple times?

“Wetzt die langen Messer auf dem Bürgersteig,
laßt die Messer flutschen in den Judenleib.

Blut muss fließen knüppelhageldick
und wir scheißen auf die Freiheit dieser Judenrepublik”

(“Sharpen the long knives on the pavement,
let the knives slip into the Jew’s body.

Blood must flow, a whole lot of it,
and we shit on the freedom of this Jew Republic.”)

Not without a reason the Good Friday was a terrifying day for European Jewish communities. The fanatic “Christian” mob would organize bloody pogroms – heated by anti-Jewish messages that were abundant in liturgies, sermons and folk “Passion plays.”  Why do I write about this? Because I believe that we must never stop reminding ourselves that religion not only doesn’t protect against committing horrible crimes, but often induces them. Although there is surely a vast quality difference between Martin Luther’s anti-Judaism and the atrocious anti-Semitism of the national socialists, in practice the first undoubtedly often transformed easily into the latter. Did the magnificent chorals of the “Passion,” rediscovered by the German composer of Jewish descent, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, prepare the ground for songs about slipping knives “in den Judenleib?” We could have a very long discussion about this. But regardless of the outcome of this discussion, I think we can make one conclusion. Religiosity, regardless of how deep and genuine it is, doesn’t guarantee that people will act in a humane manner. When depraved of the humanistic element, the awareness that the human being – and their commonwealth – is indeed the “measure of all things,” it may initiate crimes. Not only doesn’t religion protect against anything. It also needs a “humanistic correction” itself – continuous reminding that it is the face of the other in all its openness and vulnerability that reveals God to us, constantly pleading: DON’T KILL ME, DON’T HURT ME, like Emmanuel Levinas emphasized. I think, by the way, that it’s a good topic for Lenten reflections and examination of conscience. And I think it may have more to do with the story of Judas’ and his treason than we would suspect at the first glance…

Regardless of all these remarks and reflections, I’ve always seen the “Passion” as something personal. Especially after the death of my grandparents it sounded “only for me,” like daffodils blossomed “only for me” on my birthday in April. How great was my surprise when I realized after moving to Holland that here it is listened (and often sang) by… almost everyone, completely irrespective of their worldview. In a country where people asked about their denomination most often respond with “I’m nothing” or “I’m pagan,” millions go each year to concern halls and churches in order to listen to the “Passion” for three hours, and thousands take up the discipline of rehearsing for many months in order to take part in one of the multiple amateur renditions in the country. (Even if they don’t sound so perfectly as this wonderful version conducted by Tom Koopman, of course.) This way, through the “fifth Evangelist” and the admirers of his masterpiece, its Gospel message truly becomes “a light for the Gentiles” (see Isaiah 49,6),  demonstrating at the same time that Jesus Christ and his story don’t belong to any single religious or church tradition. The experience of performing the “Passion” with people who in a large part don’t have and don’t won’t to have anything to do with institutional Christianity, and still experience it in a very profound manner, is a great medicine for imposing any limits on Him. He will always destroy the limits from within – for example by the power of Bach’s music. A Dutch journalist who died a few years ago, Martin van Amerongen – a typical example of a left wing liberal intellectual (“to make it even worse” of Jewish descent), so a kind of a wicked wizard from fairytales for very naughty kids told by the religious right of all kinds – was a great expert in Bach’s works. He told an interesting story in his great essay about the “Passion.” For decades the best known Dutch rendition of Bach’s masterpiece was the “Passion” (performed with great solemnity and pathos) conducted by Willem Mengelberg. (You can listen to it here.) The performance began at 7:30 pm on Fridays. Amsterdam Jews would celebrate then the beginning of Sabbath at the near Synagogue. Immediately after the service they would go to the concert hall – with the rabbi and cantor leading them – to listen to the “Passion.” Although they were always late for the first choral, they made it before the first recitative of the Evangelist…

As we talk about the universal character of the story of Jesus, we have to say that the topic of treason is among the most universal themes it contains. I don’t know if there is anyone who can say that they never betrayed anyone or anything: somebody else, oneself, some conviction. Perhaps my vision of the human condition is overly pessimistic, but I honestly doubt that’s the case. In any case I cannot say this about myself. Bach, together with his lyrics writer (for Mr. Picander, in everyday life the head of the Leipzig post office, doesn’t rather merit the title of a poet), found a sophisticated way to emphasize that no listener should think the story is not about them. When Jesus proclaims that one of the present will betray him, the question “Lord, is it me?” is asked eleven times. Only Judas doesn’t ask it. He will do it a bit later. But even before he brings himself to ask the question, the choir already has the answer – in the choral “Ich bin’s, ich sollte büssen.” (“It’s me, it’s me who should be punished,” which can be found here.)
Like in Greek tragedies, the choir speaks here on behalf of us all and on behalf of us all confesses guilt. This confession gives a peculiar dimension to the outburst of wrath at the traitor (“’Sind Blitze, sind Donner in Wolken verschwunden?”) which I mentioned at the beginning, but which comes a little later in the “Passion”, after the arrest of Jesus. When the choir calls for hell to open its abyss and devour Judas, in the light of the earlier confession of guilt it calls… for itself to be punished (and thus for us all). The natural mechanism of looking for a “scape goat” often obscures this. It’s the “others” who are always guilty: the Jews, the Muslims, the liberals, the Freemasons, the left or the right wing. Yet Bach and Picander try their best to make this impossible for us. It is us in the dock. Moreover, we are pleading guilty…

This makes it all the more important to ask the question which has been bothering me for many years: WHAT ACTUALLY DID JUDAS’ TREASON CONSIST IN? Judas brought the servants of the archpriest to the Garden of Olives, where Jesus was praying, and pointed him with a kiss. A dramatic moment, certainly, but, from the point of view of the logic of the story, was it truly necessary? For Jesus wasn’t unknown. Recognizing him, even in the dark, wouldn’t be that difficult.

Another, perhaps more important question is WHAT MADE JUDAS DO IT? In any case not greed. The infamous 30 pieces of silver were worth so little that they look more like an excuse than a true motive for treason. So what was it REALLY about?

Personally I don’t ascribe low motives to Judas (such as for instance Peter’s when he denied Jesus out of simple fear).  I see him rather as someone completely devoted to his Master and unfalteringly believing in his power. His attitude is the attitude we often identify with true faith, unfortunately: based on the conviction that God is almighty and everything will be well if it only pleases him to “turn to action,” like at the touch of a magic wand. And this is what Judas tries to cause: Jesus, the Messiah of God, should finally start acting. Confronted with the might of the archpriest he will finally have to use his own might and crash his servants. For aren’t there in the Bible visions of a vengeful God turning into dust the enemies of the chosen people? Judas not so much betrays as provokes – to action. His desperate deed is in reality a cry: “DO SOMETHING FINALLY, DEMONSTRATE YOUR MIGHT!” How deep must his disappointment have been when he realized his plan failed. Jesus let himself be arrested and led “like a lamb to the slaughter.” Who doesn’t know the disappointment when it turns out that our faith doesn’t solve anything, doesn’t help, doesn’t serve anything concrete? That the fact we stand “on the right side” doesn’t guarantee a “happy end.” For the God Jesus calls his Father doesn’t grant victories but GIVES “ONLY” HIMSELF. He takes the side of the oppressed, but only as one of them – meaning to wake up the conscience of the oppressors by his vulnerability. In the “Passion” Judas finally understands this truth, which makes him sing the moving aria “Gebt mir meinem Jesum wieder” (“Give me back my Jesus”), which comes as tough from the other world, because the Evangelist had already told us about his suicide. (You can listen to it here beautifully sang by Walter Berry in 1971.)

And what about us? Do we see our faith as a sort of an “insurance” for ourselves, or are we able to accept that Jesus doesn’t want to be a Messiah who fights and conquers his (or actually our) enemies and grants victory to “our team?” Will we let him surprise, be truly different – as a Messiah for all – in order for salvation, in accordance with Isaiah’s prophecy, to reach to the ends of the earth, go beyond all limits and encompass all reality?

I was asked to write a reflection for the website tezeusz.pl (you can find info about it in English here) upon tomorrow’s readings. It is a part of their “online retreat” series for Lent.

The accustomed ears of the first listeners easily picked up from these words something that for us is no longer that obvious – the reference to the mysterious NAME OF GOD, which resounded for the first time from the ‘burning bush’ when the Holy One revealed himself to Moses, sending him to lead the people out of slavery: JHWH – I AM…

In the course of the ages the NAME was made into a philosophical statement: ‘I AM WHO I AM,’ thus ‘I take my being only from myself’ or ‘I am being as such.’ It’s worth asking, however, of what use were ontological speculations to Moses? When a mission of liberation is given to someone, is their first need to look into the mystery of being? Or is it rather true, like some claim, that the basic message of the NAME was far more practical: God wanted to assure the one he sent that he would accompany him and the people in their upcoming wanderings through the desert? So: I WILL BE WHOM I WILL BE, I WILL BE WITH YOU EVER AS THE COMPANION OF YOUR JOURNEY, WHEREVER IT TAKES YOU!

In the ecumenical congregation where I’ve been ministering for almost nine years we finished yesterday another series of ‘household conversations,’ this time about ‘Where our faith has lead us?’ I listened for three consecutive days to stories of my ‘parishioners’ about their lives, experiences, choices and trials. The biggest impression made on me the question asked by a certain lady of about 80 years old: ‘It’s all very nice, but how can we EXPERIENCE it?’ From many conversations I had with her during the last couple of years I know that on the one hand she must be called a truly ‘spiritual’ person, and on the other she’s still struggling with what many mystics have gone through: ‘the dark night of faith,’ where ‘the heavens are closed’ and ‘God is silent.’ She existentially experiences that she is ‘from below,’ from ‘this world’ and doesn’t have immediate access to the other dimension of reality which she longs for. It is very easily to dismiss this experience with cheap, worn up declarations, but it can also be seen as a special gift which is supposed to open us up for a difficult mystery.

In St. John’s Gospel Jesus says ‘If you don’t trust (for such is the original meaning of the word ‘believe’) that I AM/WILL BE [WITH YOU], you will die, missing the goal (because to miss the mark/goal is the basic meaning of the word ‘sin’). I’ve believed for a long time that it’s not about the moment of physical death. One can also ‘die’ in the midst of life, losing faith in its meaning and goal. Jesus points to the fact that if we don’t trust that God is present in our lives, we will die – succumbing to the conviction of the pointlessness and meaninglessness of everything. But the words the Evangelist had Jesus say tell us something more. This presence is inseparably related to him. And here lies a good opportunity for all who would like to make these words into a weapon against others. ‘See,’ they say barely concealing triumph, ‘It was clearly said here that you have to believe in Jesus as the Son of God, the only Savior, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity!’ And faith understood as trust turns into faith consisting in accepting a bunch of doctrines into which the original existential experience was turned in the course of the Church’s history. Maybe that’s not the point? Maybe we should stop burdening the Evangelist’s words with all the meanings ascribed to them by dogmatics, and try to get to the original experience?

The original experience of Christianity is the experience of God’s closeness in the human being. Not in some special ‘sacred circumstances,’ not in ‘signs’ that make us fall on our knees in awe, but in the human being: the neighbor, one of us – Jesus of Nazareth. Of course, this experience was from the outset put into hundreds of different statements and ‘clarifications,’ which gave birth to what we call the church doctrine (and actually a whole series of mutually exclusive doctrinal statements of which some have been judged ‘right’ and some ‘false’). But the point is that we must not forget that it is not doctrine that saves. It is not doctrine that saves and liberates us, but the basic experience behind it, the experience of the closeness of the Holy One. A peculiar closeness, for… a human one. Not some exceptional – divine – one, but an ordinary, everyday presence of another human being, which was made real in Jesus of Nazareth for his disciples, and is still made real in everyone who reflects something of his life in their lives– consciously following his example or simply putting into practice his dream concerning us all, the whole reality – the dream movingly (though maybe a little too lofty for our taste today) expressed once by Karol Grycz-Smilowski:

He [Jesus] dreamed a beautiful vision of a new man and a new society that is finally aware of the spiritual foundations of being and doesn’t leave its dark caves of sinister systems in order to prey only, but will make its aim the highest of spheres.

But when we say that it was in him – this particular man from Nazareth – that God came as close to us as possible, we cannot forget what happened to him. ‘When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I AM.’ The reading from the Book of Numbers gives us the first hint about what happened. The people wandering through the desert were being bitten by snakes.  The Lord told Moses to make a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. Everyone who looked at it was healed and lived. The story brings to mind the way sympathetic magic works, whose echo remains for example in homeopathy. But the word ‘pole’ brings too mine something else: the cross on Calvary. ‘Wait a moment,’ someone could say, ‘I’ve always thought that the cross was rather a tool of humiliation, degradation, and here it’s spoken of UPLIFTING/ELEVATION?’ I would like to quote here Fr. Jerzy Klinger, a renowned Polish Orthodox theologian untimely deceased in 1976:

In reality, if we consider their meaning as a ‘cosmic’ event, the Cross and the Resurrection make an inseparable whole in the New Testament … We find this truth expressed by St. John even better than by St. Paul when he speaks of the Passion of Jesus as the ‘hour’ of his ‘glorification.’ ‘The uplifting of Jesus is for John at the same time and in the same degree his elevation on the Cross and in glory.’

This intuition of John is movingly shown in icons. In them, the Crucified one is not depicted dying or already dead, as is often the case in the West. In icons Jesus is not dying but ‘dancing’ – already experiencing the ‘great mystery of faith,’ which proclaims that death never has the last word if you live like he did – sharing your life with others until the very end, making it nourishment for others. The Good Friday, remaining a tragic event, reflecting not only the fate of Jesus but of all who fall prey to ‘sinister systems,’ in its deepest sense already is Easter and the Ascension.

This vision corresponds to the experiences of first Christians. A few days ago I received the latest issue of the Dutch Mennonite journal ‘Doopsgezind.nl,’ and found there the article ‘Is Easter a Feast?’ The author writes:

The Christian Church of the first centuries was formed by a minority, often a persecuted minority. It didn’t have anything to celebrate except for the power of the crucified Christ. There was no glorious victory over anything, but a deep faith that Jesus, the Crucified Jesus, didn’t succumb to the might of the powerful. As we read in the story of Jesus’ temptation in the desert, he renounced egoism, riches, power. And thus gained the upper hand of the devil.

We have to do with an amazing paradox here. Jesus is victorious, because… there is no victory, at least not in the categories of this world. His victory, the only victory, is the moral victory of someone who shows with their life that we really don’t have to ‘leave the dark caves of sinister systems to prey only,’ that we can, in accordance with God’s dream, be human with others and for others, share our life, truly forgetting about ourselves and our egoistic interest. But such a victory is ‘celebrated’ only on the cross, for we have made the world a place where only the powerful and fit win, if only they use their power with skill…

Let us now try and combine this all into a picture. Jesus calls that we trust God’s NAME. That is, trust that the Holy One will be present in our lives, will accompany us in our journey. Yet this presence – contrary to what we may expect – is not the presence of a God who miraculously helps us solve our problems, but the presence… of a human being. God is present in the human way and no other. This is what we discover in the man from Nazareth: the humanity of our God. The God shown to us by the Scriptures, the one Jesus calls his Father, of whom he feels inseparable, actually doesn’t want to be God. His dream, his goal, is to be a human being – as human as possible. And there comes the time to take the last step: on the one hand logical, and on the other extremely difficult. It is this humanity, because it’s so fulfilled, complete, lived to the very end, to its limits, that leads directly to the cross. It finds its culmination in the cry: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ There is no God anymore – no  God of our expectations and dreams, a God who can be useful, solve anything for (and instead of) us. There is the loneliness of a dying man who confirms his faithfulness to humanity by his death – the humanity God dreamed of. The heavens are closed, God left his throne and allowed us to nail him to the pole of humiliation. Good Friday – with its stripped altars, the open empty tabernacle – is the peak of God’s revelation in our lives! And at the same time it reveals, more clearly than anything else, what being human is about: being thrown into this world without consent, torn by doubts, lonely and (sometimes) transcending loneliness by attempting to enter into a relationship with an other in the hope that it will finally be a long-lasting, profound relationship. For it is through this that our way to the ‘highest of spheres’ leads, whatever they mean…

No, what I wrote is not an answer to the question my ‘parishioner’ asked. These reflections I direct in the first place to myself. This Lent is for me a time I truly experience as wondering through the desert – of the painful necessity to abandon dreams and plans which have given meaning to my life the last couple of years, a time of returning to what I believed until recently I had left behind me for good. Everything is upside down. Nothing is as it seemed. What is left? Faithfulness to oneself and the hope that the void that surrounds me is the way God reveals himself in my life. A human God, weak and confused as myself, but faithful. For he cannot renounce his NAME…

I often see on your Facebook page memes depicting Episcopalians perpetually looking for something in a book (I even remembered that it’s “The Book of Common Prayer” because of them). Only I don’t know what it’s about; does it present Episcopalians as people having instructions and guidelines for every function and action in life? What is this about?

For a moment I was speechless. Is it possible that somebody really thinks of us as people “having instructions and guidelines for every possible function and action in life?” After a moment’s consideration I concluded however that it’s not something to be surprised by. The special relationship of Anglicans and their Prayer Book can cause misunderstandings, especially among people who had not come in touch with Anglican spirituality before. So I decided to write a few words about it.

A church without qualities?

In the years 1921-1942 the Austrian modernist writer, Robert Musil, wrote the novel “A Man Without Qualities.” Its main character, Ulrich, is a man without a clear identity, clearly defined individual features, or perhaps in a strange way indifferent to them. Sometimes Anglicanism is described in similar terms. To a degree it is correct. I talked about this in the sermon preached at the retreat of the Polish Episcopal Network in Kiekrz near Poznan in September 2012:

One of the reasons we have gathered here is to learn about the Anglican tradition. So there is nothing strange in the fact that as the hosts, yesterday and the day before yesterday, we have been confronted with questions about the “specificity” of this tradition, about its characteristic elements. What do Anglicans believe in?  What is their position on this or that issue? How do they pray? This all comes down to one basic question: What is Anglicanism actually? Step by step it became clearer and clearer that the characteristic feature of Anglicanism is… that it has actually never wanted to have any characteristic features, that it simply wanted to be Christian – in a sense without predicates, without redundant defining features. And when some predicates were used, they actually pointed at the impossibility of putting on us any label known from the history of the church. So we talked for example about the Anglican churches being (both) Catholic and Reformed. Catholic, because they stress the continuity of the Christian tradition since its very beginning, and Reformed, because they are aware of the need to deal with it with criticism, which is exemplified not only by the 16th century Reformation, but also many subsequent reforms and changes. If we fulfilled our task well, in the course of these conversations one more thing should have become apparent – that, according to Anglicans, the question about what Christianity is can be often not answered otherwise but by another question, which then in its turn brings forth yet another question, etc., etc…

People seeking “hard identities,” expecting the church to give them answers to all possible questions, will be without a doubt disappointed at the Anglican way of being Christian. Against the background of other Reformed traditions, Anglicanism is distinguished by the lack of documents such as the Augsburg Confession, the Second Helvetic Confession, Luther’s Small and Large Catechisms or the Heidelberg Catechism. That is why it’s often difficult for us to define our church’s peculiar features. But the problem is not that there are none! Contrary to what may seem, the Anglican Churches are not “Churches without qualities.” The thing is that they are not to be found in any doctrinal document. Their medium and form of expression is the liturgy – the way we worship together “in the beauty of holiness.” Anglicanism can be seen as an incarnation of the ancient principle “lex orandi, lex credendi.” (Paraphrasing: “the way you pray is the way you believe.”) In this regard it has a lot in common with Orthodoxy. As often as one hears the words “Orthodoxy is liturgy” one hears the statement of the Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey (1904-1988) who said that Anglican theology “is done to the sound of church bells.” That is why our “symbolical book” is not a confession or a catechism but a prayer book.

So far so good, but in practice it turns out that the Anglican commitment to the BCP leads to misunderstandings.

Is it really a “prayer book?” 

Perhaps we should start with the name. What do we associate the word “prayer book” with? I have a strong impression that most Polish people upon hearing the word see a book with more or less kitschy “holy pictures” sticking out of it, laying on the shelf beside grandmother’s wool hat. I’d like to emphasize that, the irony notwithstanding, it is not my intention to offend anyone. The point is only that the book we call the BCP is – despite similarity of names – something else. Already at the first glance you can see that it combines features of a breviary and a missal, but contains also a range of elements exceeding those categories. Sometimes it seems to me that it would be more appropriate to speak about it as of “an Anglican’s vade mecum/handbook/manual,” containing the minimum of what you have to take departing on “the Anglican journey.” So the term “prayer book” does not cover all that it is, but the fact that this minimum has a form of a collection of liturgical prayers, and not for example a theological treatise, is very meaningful. For it shows that from our point of view it is fundamental that prayer shapes doctrine, even though we are aware of the mutuality between doctrine and liturgy (that is, that they influence each other).

Misunderstandings and problems

The fact that somebody I know recently interpreted this as an expression of depreciating theology’s role in the church surprised me no less than the commentary on Facebook which inspired me to write this text. Theology is very important to that person and this made him distance himself from the words we wrote in the information leaflet of the Polish Episcopal Network:

The specificity of Anglicanism is based on liturgy rather than on theological speculations. That is why the only really appropriate answer to the question what Anglicanism is about is: come to our service in order to “worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness” (Psalm 28). You’re welcome!

My surprise resulted in the first place from the fact that I too consider myself to be a man for whom theology is very important. Before I used to meet rather with the accusation of being “too much a theologian” than with the suspicion that I depreciate the meaning of theological reflection. The Anglican tradition, even if it didn’t give birth to that many theologians comparable to Luther, Bonhoeffer or Barth (but also in continental Protestantism they weren’t born daily!), doesn’t question the value of good theology to the church too. Not without a reason at the conference of the Polish Episcopal Network in January we devoted so much attention to the formation of our leaders, including theological formation. Although it’s not only about education, there is no doubt that even in our difficult Polish circumstances that put certain limits on us in this regard, the Polish Episcopal Network doesn’t want to be a community where will alone, without any preparation, is enough to become a leader. Despite all difficulties, we feel obliged to realize what Bishop Pierre Whalon of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe wrote some time ago:

Another aspect of the Anglican method is an emphasis on education and scholarship. Of course, we share this with other Christians: a church that does not teach is no church at all. But our peculiar approach to tradition requires communal reasoning, and we think this must be as widely informed as possible.

It has always been important to Anglicans that this emphasis on education and scholarship shouldn’t regard theology alone. That’s why the Anglican method has often made the impression of being strongly rooted in general humanistic reflection, in literature, art, poetry or sciences. But it certainly doesn’t mean depreciation of theology as such. What then did we want to express by the statement that caused doubts and even rejection? In the first place the fact that there is no single Anglican theology. There are many and from the very beginning they were done in a possibly broad ecumenical context – in dialogue with representatives of other traditions. And precisely because of this variety no single one of them can be seen as a distinguishing feature of Anglicanism. But all their authors, proponents and opponents, were and are united by one thing – a common liturgical tradition.

Last year eight years passed since I began my ministry in the ecumenical base community Kritische Gemeente IJmond in the Netherlands. The history of the base movement is inseparably bound to changes in the liturgy. It can be said, of course simplifying the matter somewhat, that its first representatives were the most eager proponents of the post-Vaticanum II liturgical reform in the Roman Catholic Church. In any case the freedom of approach to traditional liturgical forms, including their thorough revision or even complete rejection and replacement by new ones, became one of the leading slogans of the base movement. The possibility to depart from traditional liturgical forms, even if in their place came nothing or an intuitive commitment to forms developed by the KGIJ itself in the course of the forty years of its existence, is for most members a litmus test of freedom as such. Already from the way I write about it you can certainly see that I have doubts regarding this approach. And indeed: the encounter with the base movement was the impulse that pushed me towards the Anglican tradition, which has a different approach to the liturgy. What does “different” mean, though?

People who see the Episcopal Church in the first place as liberal, giving its members lots of room for their own spiritual search, are surprised by a certain “liturgical rigidity” they encounter in the Polish Episcopal Network. It cannot be ruled out that it is due to a kind of “neophyte zeal.” If we chose Anglicanism, we try to do everything “properly” and perhaps not always fully use all possibilities of creative use of the liturgy. It is in any case something we should think about, in my opinion. But on the other hand I believe that one should first work out certain habits, and only then – consciously – perhaps depart from them. Be it as it may, Anglicanism understood as the Polish Episcopal Network understands and practices it undoubtedly won’t find favor not only in the eyes of the seekers of “clear answers and unquestionable truths.” Also people who treat the liturgical “play” in the first place as a set of limiting rules and boring, soulless forms won’t find it easy to find their place among us, unless they are ready to revise their  approach.

This said, I would like to emphasize that we think it important that the liturgy remains, according to the original meaning of the word, a work of the people, not protected by any taboo. Please read these words as an encouragement to speak to the officiants when you think that I or the others forget about this. This doesn’t change the fact, however, that Episcopalians certainly won’t become proponents of replacing traditional liturgical forms with improvised prayer, which results not from rigidity but all I wrote above the meaning of liturgy as the medium and keystone of the Anglican tradition. A Lutheran or a Presbyterian, even if they feel to a degree bound by the liturgies of their churches, have it easier to depart from them, because they can always say that what they do doesn’t violate the content of their symbolical books. Also a Roman Catholic can allow himself a significant outburst of “creative diarrhea” in the liturgy (which doesn’t mean they should) as long as they don’t violate the dogmas of their church. Anglicans, however, don’t have either symbolical books or THEIR OWN dogmas (only accepts the teaching of the ancient church). They only have their “handbook.” The key to understand the meaning of the BCP in the Anglican tradition is, I think, this very fact that it is much more than only a prayer book. Perhaps its worthwhile to ponder on this in the group of translators of the BCP into Polish. Shouldn’t we look for another word to express the content and importance of this book?

As we have it about the title, we should also notice its another aspect. It is a book of COMMON prayer. What it tries to regulate pertains thus to the official worship of the COMMUNITY. Of course the BCP can also be used by individuals and it’a a good Anglican custom. Not without a reason Bishop Pierre Whalon said at our first conference that an Anglican is someone who prays from the BCP. On the other hand we should always remember that the Episcopal Church doesn’t tell anyone how their personal prayer life should look like. It only tries to unify forms of common worship. There is absolute freedom, for example, with regard to prayers with which each of us begins or ends our day and no church body will ever attempt to limit this freedom.

I would like to say a little more about another aspect of this freedom. Reading the BCP, and especially using it as it was meant to be used, we’ll easily notice that its so called “rubrics,” which fulfill a role similar to stage directions in a play, instructing how we should celebrate the liturgy, are very often suggestions rather than rules. So also an officiant who keeps to the rubrics still can make a lot liturgical choices of their own. In the Polish circumstances it is still not visible enough, because the translation work is going on and many liturgical and prayer “options” are not available in our language yet. We hope that once the Polish version of the BCP is completed, it will become clearer in how many ways we can shape the liturgical life of Polish Episcopalianism not exceeding the limits defined by the BCP – which are indeed very broad.

And will there come a moment to create a Polish Book of Common Prayer, which wouldn’t be a translation? At the January conference of the Polish Episcopal Network Bishop Pierre drew a broad perspective for the development of the Network. In the long term it should lead towards establishing an Episcopal Church in Poland in its own right. Such a church could of course take up the difficult task of composing its own book of prayer.

There is no single Book of Common Prayer

This last theme leads me to something I should have maybe began with. The point is namely that talking about a single Book of Common Prayer is actually equally misleading as talking about a single Anglican church, which is alas still often the case. As there is no single church, but a communion of 38 local Anglican churches, there is likewise a whole family of Books of Common Prayer with many branches. They all have one ancestor in the Book of Common Prayer composed by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer in 1549. Then the BCP underwent many changes, which led eventually to the 1662 version, until this day officially used in the Church of England. Over time came new local Books of Common Prayer, which started new branches of the BCP family. The 1979 American BCP, which we use in the Polish Episcopal Network in Polish translation, comes from the first BCP used in the Episcopal Church from 1790. It was based on the English edition of 1662 and the Scottish liturgy from 1764. Over time several revisions of the text were made, which led to the 1979 edition. It should be added that in Anglicanism a once authorized text can be thenceforth used always, also when the church introduces a new liturgy. So Anglicans don’t need special “indults” to use old rites as is the case in the Roman Catholic Church. So for example in the Hague parish of the Church of England on every first Sunday of the month the Holy Communion is celebrated also from the 1662 BCP – and we try to be there as often as possible. Interestingly, this liturgy has a “Polish trace,” for the Polish reformer John a Lasco (1499-1560) influenced the shape of the BCP. It is because of him that the Anglican liturgy contains the Ten Commandments, which, alternating with the Commandments of Love, are the Summary of the Law used to “examine the conscience,” which should lead to acknowledging one’s sinfulness before God and the need of grace and mercy.

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The few words  I originally planned to write turned out to form one of longer posts on the blog. It is so when one thinks about writing something for a very long time. Thanking all who inspired me, I hope that my reflections will be on their part an inspiration to further reflection and discussion.

We realize that we should be careful with such associations. An easy comparison to the terror of the Inquisition and – the incomparably more tragic – crimes of national socialism can lead to a trivialization of evil and over time make us lose any sense of proportion. And yet we admit that it’s difficult to resist such comparisons when we see Tomasz Terlikowski first chopping Swiatoslaw Nowicki’s and Magdalena Walulik’s book “Tarot Apokalipsy” (“Tarot of the Apocalypse”) into pieces and then throwing it, together with the Tarot cards that came with it, into the fire place.

What happened? Światosław – a philosopher, known scholar of Hegel, esoteric, astrologist and, which we fondly admit, our friend – sent a copy of his book to the Polish conservative Catholic website Fronda.pl, which caused a commotion among the editors. The “Frondists” consulted Br. Marcin Radomski, OFMCap. His reaction, as quoted on the website, can hardly be considered anything less than shocking. Its first words are: “A Christian should have no doubts: Tarot cards may and should be burned as related to the worship of evil.” How to comment such a statement?

Let’s begin with Tarot itself. Its career in the European culture was extraordinary at the very least. The Catholic theologian Cardinal Hans Urs von Balthasar writes:

The origin of the Tarot is obscure, as is the historical background of its symbols … The attempt to trace them back to Egyptian or Chaldean wisdom remains fantastic, whilst to explain the use and spread of the cards by way of wandering gypsies is plausible. The oldest surviving cards date from the end of the 14th century. Correspondences between the Tarot symbols and the Cabbala, astrology and the Hebrew alphabet were established relatively late, towards the end of the 18th century – supposedly first of all by the French archaeologist Court de Gebelin (1728-1784).

Source: Anonymous, “Meditations on the Tarot: A Journey into Christian Hermeticism”, translated by Powell R., New York 2002, p. 662

As you can see, the cardinal of the Holy Church of Rome and one of the most prominent Roman Catholic theologians of the past century had quite a few doubts about the Tarot. In the same text however, which is the afterword for Valentin Tomberg’s book “Meditation of the Tarot” (we posted an excerpt from the book here), von Balthasar emphasizes that “repeated attempts have been made to accommodate the Cabbala and the Tarot to Catholic teaching.” Undoubtedly one of the most important and original attempts was Tomberg’s book itself. Let’s quote some comments about it. Abbot Basil Pennington, OCSO writes: “It is without doubt the most extraordinary work I have ever read. It has tremendous spiritual depth and insight.” Another Trappist, Abbot Thomas Keating, OCSO called it “the greatest contribution to date toward the rediscovery and renewal of the Christian contemplative tradition of the Fathers of the Church and the High Middle Ages.” Maybe the most telling was the remark of the famous Benedictine, Fr. Bede Griffiths, who called the “Meditation” “the last word of wisdom.” All these things were said, let us remind once again, about a book which taken up the most fundamental themes of the Christian faith and spirituality using the symbolism of the Tarot. Is any better proof needed to show that Br. Radmoski, who relates Tarot only to the worship of evil, doesn’t know what he is talking about?

But the problem is bigger than just the Christian attitude to the Tarot and, more broadly, to the esoteric tradition. We were most shocked by Br. Radomski’s claim that a Christian should not have any doubts. It makes us want to ask what Christianity is for him actually. Is it still faith or rather an extremely dogmatic ideology? And here comes another association – with the recent letter of the Polish bishops about “the gender ideology.” There too religion becomes an ideology fighting other ideologies. We think that it is not sensible to debate such views. But without doubt we should counter them with a vision of our own. Defining the term “comprehensiveness,” Urban T. Holmes III writes in his book “What is Anglicanism” about the “priority of a dialectic quest over precision and immediate closure.” He advocates “[a] sense of community of thought as opposed to a well-defined, definitive position.” We too describe our faith like that, and probably not only because we are Anglican, even though it was in Anglicanism that we found a place to experience and share it with people of a similar attitude (however often of very different opinions). Doubts are an inseparable part of faith thus understood. They protect us from definitive positions, which makes it clear that the last word is not ours.

Seeing Tomasz Terlikowski, whom we know also as translator of great books of Russian religious thinkers, author of insightful articles in the journal “Semper Reformanda,” a keen observer and commentator of reality, in the role of an amateur inquisitor is not only very painful and shame-inducing when we realize that in the eyes of some he represents the Christian attitude. This sad and horrifying film makes us aware once more that something bad is happening in the church, that some Christians – afraid of the world and less and less able to initiate dialogue with it – are destroying the best cultural traditions of Christianity and replacing them with an aggressive sectarianism.

Obviously this scene is also simple buffoonish foolishness meant to achieve the short-term goal of tightening the ranks in the fight against all possible perils: secularization, gender, homosexuality, leftism and the esoteric. Realizing this is hopeful – in the first place because this time Heinirch Heine’s prophecy perhaps won’t come true. The Fronda boys are most probably not fit for true inquisitors. What will happen, however, if the war banner will be taken over by others, more determined and unscrupulous? In the history of the world it happened more than once that what began with apparently innocent foolishness ended with tragedy…

* We learned from his own comment on Facebook that – contrary to the suggestion on Fronda.pl – it wasn’t Swiatosław Florian Nowicki who sent his book to the website.

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