![]() I smiled when, on the escalator into the Arrivals lounge at Oslo’s airport, I saw this display. Coming to think of it, most of us could probably risk enjoying our religion a little more. Mahalia, a key player in the civil rights movement, had known hardship she had few illusions about life yet the visceral vocal power of this woman, who ‘took the beat from the nightclubs back to the church’ is charged with joyful zest. Thomas Dorsey said: ‘The key to Mahalia was very simple: she enjoyed her religion.’ Having grown up with Jackson’s voice (my mother had LPs), still feeling immensely comforted by it, I wonder if this is not what I’ve always sensed, somehow, without articulating it. If He’s showing you a little grace in the meantime, He probably won’t mind if you enjoy it.’ I thought of this while watching a decent documentary about Mahalia Jackson. In Marilynne Robinson’s Jack the eponymous hero, persuaded of his dissoluteness, ever expecting the worst, is told by a preacher: ‘Mr Ames, if the Lord thinks you need punishing, you can trust Him to see to it. ![]() Here is a society on the verge of a nervous breakdown.’ Unsettling light is thrown on things going on right now. Yet the compression of time is allowable, because the panic and the fawning dread ring all too true. To defend the film as accurate would be fruitless. ‘The humor’, wrote Anthony Lane in The New Yorker, ‘is so black that it might have been pumped out of the ground. The only ligament left holding it together is fear. We are given to observe the dissection of a body politic reduced to a corpse. Made up largely of theatrical actors, it confers on the film something of the dignity and intensity of a play performed on stage, which in turn justifies liberties taken with historical details and sequence. ![]() Quite how one might make of this subject a comedy had defied my imagination, but Iannucci did somehow manage. I thought it time to watch at last Armando Iannucci’s The Death of Stalin from 2018. The rehabilitation of Stalin has for years been a fixture of Russian public life. The old prayer to Who is Like God has lost none of its pertinence: defende nos in proelio. We are increasingly up against an epistemological battle. We are determined to be demiurges, claiming the right to create our own reality, then to demand, increasingly by means of litigation ( here‘s a current example), that others affirm our self-proclaimed reality as really real, enabling the triumph of subjective perception over what is objectively given. That is precisely what we now fail to acknowledge. In a text given us today in the office of readings, Gregory writes of Michael the Archangel: he is sent ‘so that by his action and name it may be given us to see that no one can do that which it is God’s prerogative to do’. This is in itself a useful insight for us, convinced as we are of our exceptionalism in every area. There are good historical reasons for this - in many respects, mutatis mutandis, the circumstances of his times resemble ours. Gregory the Great, bishop of Rome 590-604, speaks directly to our times. It is an arduous proposition, bidding us read whatever signs our times suggest in the fiery, purifying light of him who is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the same today, yesterday, always. St Paul meanwhile summons us to ‘put on the mind of Christ’ ( Philippians 2:5). In the Gospel Jesus says to the chief priests and the elders: ‘John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him’ ( Matthew 21:32). Make me walk in your truth, and teach me’ ( Psalm 25:4f.). ![]() In the words of the Psalm we respond: ‘Lord, make me know your ways. The Church is challenged: ‘You say, ‘The way of the Lord is not just.’ Hear now, O house of Israel: Is my way not just? Is it not your ways that are not just?’ ( Ezekiel 18:25). Today’s Mass readings follow a cycle established decades ago they are not specifically intended for the first retreat day of the Church’s synod yet their message to this assembly called to ‘walk together’ in the Spirit is inspiring. It is endlessly fascinating to see how the word of Scripture illuminates specific situations in unexpected ways.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |