The Nazarene by Sholem Asch

 Asch (1880 – 1957) was a Polish-Jewish, dramatist, and essayist in the Yiddish language who settled in the United States. I was introduced to his writings in his novel, The Prophet. I've always been attracted to the Old Testament and the way it describes the development of faith in the people of God. The revelation of God to the Israelites is intricately entwined with their very earthy and natural relationship with creation. The development of humanity through the centuries has had the effect of pulling us away from the natural world. Our work lives and our play lives are being drawn into a world of high-tech effects, rapid changes and into a world of video fantasy. I look at my being drawn into biblical worlds as a yearning to return to the experience of the natural. Longing for connection between my mind and my body to the natural world around me, connecting me to the Earth, plants, animals and my fellow human beings; connecting all of God's creation to our past and lighting my imagination to a picture of the road that humanity took to be where we are today. This is the draw I feel to the Biblical world.

Asch has written a number of novels that depict the Jewish and early Christian world. One of his more controversial novels is The Nazarene is one I’m currently reading. His fellow Jews were not all happy about his depiction of Jesus. He tells the story of Jesus through a narrator who is transported to Israel during Jesus's life by a mystic Pan Viadomsky. The novel is divided into three sections each one having a different point of view from which to experience Jesus's life. Part one of the novel provides a picture of Palestine through the eyes of Cornelius, a military governor of Jerusalem under Pontius Pilate. Part two depicts Jesus’s world through the eyes of Judas Iscariot. Part three through the life of Joseph, the son of a sheep herder who desired to have one of his sons become a student of the Torah. At the age of 13 his father took him to a Rabbi Nicodemus to begin his education.

The book could be considered to be three novels: the book is 698 pages in length. The beauty of the writing however carries the reader through the stories effortlessly. The author has a way of putting flesh and mentality on the biblical characters he's portraying. I hope to do several posts on some of the text from the third part that I found particularly appealing.

I’ll start with the narrator's description of one aspect of the culture in Judea during the time of the Herods.

“Thus Greek and Roman went hand-in-hand. And it was a powerful alliance. All the measures taken by our Rabbis to halt the advance of this demoralization were vain; the poison spread through thousand secret channels into the heart of Jewish life. It affected the daily conduct of the Jews; it was manifest in the meals they prepared, their clothing, their headdress and their choice of ornaments. But there was something deeper: a change in the attitude toward the body. This was, among many Jews, no longer regarded primarily as the vessel the soul, but as an intrinsic treasure, a gift of God to man. The influence of the Greeks crept into our language, too, and the Aramaic dialect of Jerusalem began to sprout Greek words.

But it must not be thought that this influence was wholly one-sided. Many Greeks, observing at close range the pious modesty of Jewish life at its best, learning for the first time the nature of the Jewish faith, with its central concept of the single and living God, were deeply affected in turn. They were moved by the lyric expression of the desire for life beyond death, and they meditated on the universal hope which was embodied in the Messianic idea. The Greek mood of fatality was disturbed, the Greek mind set in motion among unaccustomed thoughts by the measureless devotion of the Jew to his God, by the voluntary acceptance of the strong discipline, by the tragic struggle against the temporal and the destructive, springing from deep faith in the divine and the timeless. It was as though a cold Greek statue had ceased to stand in moveless indifference, but had been touched with spirit, so that the lines trembled and the original harmony was disrupted. There was something extraordinary in the juxtaposition of Greek and Jew; two hostile worlds felt an inner longing for each other. They were like the complementary halves of a single being which had long regarded each other as enemies, and which now, brought into intimate contact on the soil of Judea, were beginning to discover in the midst of warfare a unifying principle.

The song of that contact between the two worlds was heard in its most harmonious form in the house of Joseph Arimathea.“

I'll close this post with a prayer from part two of the book. It is typical of prayers that preceding sections of part two describing Jesus’ world through the eyes of Judas Iscariot.

“Blessed art thou, O father in heaven, that thou hast chosen our portion that we may serve thee, and that thou hast not made us as the peoples of the world into idolaters which bow down and worship the work of their hands. Have compassion, father in heaven, on thy creatures and open their eyes, so all of them may see that thou alone art king of all the worlds, and that there is none beside thee."

The Mighty Oak

the Mighty Oak

Now mighty can mean big, tall, broad and strong. But, mighty can also mean tenacious. What you see here is a White Oak tree in all its mature splendor, a mighty Oak.

I contrast these two meanings of mighty because I’m excited to announce that the reports of the death of my baby oak tree, started from an acorn, have been premature. The tree was viciously attacked last spring by a savage chipmunk, squirrel, rabbit or some such other wild beast. All of the tender shoots and leaves were eaten in this attempted arborcide (I just made that word up). In the throes of grief I refused to remove it from the ground, hoping against hope that it would miraculously recover from this devastating blow.

This spring the little shaver was not showing any signs of life. I became resolved to finally remove it. A little warm weather lured me to the back yard again. I was resolved to remove the beautiful ornate fence I had place around my tree (which had very large openings that allowed the savage attack to begin with). But, my heart leapt (or leaped, maybe both) for joy when to my great and grateful surprise tender shoots were once again springing to life.

Here you can see this tenacious little life springing from the ground. The mighty Oakus lives on!

C. S. Lewis and the Real Presence

Leanne Payne was founder of Pastoral Care Ministries. She was a noted scholar of the writings of C. S. Lewis and participated in cataloging the letters of C. S. Lewis for the Wade Collection at Wheaton College. The following is from her book "Real Presence: The Christian Worldview of C.S. Lewis as Incarnational Reality"

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The Scriptures teach that Christ listened to the father; trusting the Holy Spirit, (Jn 14:16-17, Lk: 4:1, 4:14, 5:17, Acts 1:1-2) He taught and healed through the power of the Spirit. The apostles learned this from Him. This capacity to collaborate with the Holy Spirit is also given to us. Herein we see the artist and the Christian brought together. The artist to free the work, must get self out of the way; he must die to self. So it is with the Christian. To do the works that Christ commanded, he must first get self out of the way; he must die to the "old man." And, just as the Spirit gave form and beauty back to the earth which "was without form, and void" when "darkness was upon the face of the deep," so the Christian, listening to God and collaborating with the Holy Spirit, frees the souls of men. Chaotic, fallen, like the earth after the angelic fall, without form and void, the soul cries out to be delivered from chaos, to be given back its form and beauty. The Christian, proclaiming liberty to the soul held captive, calls forth the real person; he frees the prisoner as Michelangelo freed the “Moses”. The true artist and the true Christian collaborate with the spirit: "The spirit comes into us and does it.

This is Lewis’s mysticism.

Intro to Frank Lake

Frank Lake (6 June 1914 – 10 May 1982) was one of the pioneers of pastoral counselling in the United Kingdom. In 1962, he founded the Clinical Theology Association with the primary aim to make clergy more effective in understanding and accepting the psychological origins of their parishioners’ personal difficulties. However, the training seminars in pastoral counselling, which he began in 1958, eventually enlisted professional and lay people in various fields from various denominations. Many thousands of people attended the seminars.

In spite of our attempts to cure our ills we come to the realization that after all, we are merely human, we cannot address all the ills which afflict us, we come to the conclusion which is so succinctly expressed in the following quote from Frank Lane’s text on clinical theology.

‘The nature of the help God gives through His Church is to make what cannot be removed, creatively bearable. Paul's thorn of weakness in the flesh remained. Resting in the power of God, he could glory in his infirmity. It is natural, and it is, I think, spiritually desirable, that we should at first strive and pray, as Paul did, to have our weakness and negativities removed. But the utmost of personal effort and of professional skill may disappoint our hopes in this direction. What then? There are no lectures in medical course to inform the doctor of that paradoxical movement of the Spirit which can turn decisively away from the evidently vain hope of a cure, to a courageous bearing, and more, to a creative using of the pain and loss that cannot be cured. There is a strength which is made perfect in weakness. Without the prior weakness this particular endowment of strength could never be experienced. Pastoral practice, recognizing a certain inevitability of failure in this entirely laudable object, extends itself to ensure that the inward man is concurrently renewed from day to day.

The natural man in us tends to reject the paradox that mental pain and spiritual joy can exist together in us, without diminishing either the agony of the one or the glory of the other. The whole personality may be afflicted by a sense of weakness, emptiness, and pointlessness, without diminishing in the least our spiritual power and effectiveness. This is possible because Christ is alive to reenact the mystery of his suffering and glory in us. So far as our own subjective feelings are concerned, any inner directed questioning of our basic human state may produce the same dismal answer as before; the cupboard is bare. While we regard our humanity as a container which ought to have something good in it when we look inside, we miss the whole point of the paradox. We are not meant to be self-contained, but channels of the life and energies of God Himself. From this point of view our wisdom is to let the bottom be knocked out of our humanity, which will ruin it as a container at the same time as it turns it into a satisfactory channel.” Clinical Theology, Vol. 1, p. xxv.

Pray to God that he cure all those weaknesses that we are aware of and those that we fail to see, through his grace, we become capable of overcoming.

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More from the Little Flower

Therese presents for me a new way to understand what Jesus meant in the story of the rich young man and his instruction to give all he has away. She along with Balthasar provides much to meditate on in two passages from Romans. Mining the thought of the Little Flower provides an inexhaustible source of golden wisdom. The text below in quotes, except for the Scripture quotes, is from the writings of St.Therese and the rest from Balthasar's Two Sisters in the Spirit (pp. 257- 259).

The mentality that confronts Therese so frequently in the Catholic asceticism of her day … is the Old Testament mentality of justification by works ….

This attitude assumes that man’s relations with God are based entirely upon justice, and this limited conception of justice … can only imagine one ideal – to step up one’s own achievements so as to produce a corresponding increase in God’s favors. But this ideal overlooks … the very basis and raison d’etre of God’s testament with the chosen people: Abraham’s faith, which implicitly includes hope and love as well.

God first revealed himself as the God of justice, not as the God of love. And besides wishing  to prepare humanity for love by means of the law, God also wished the failure of the law and its works to demonstrate what happens when men rely upon their own achievements apart from the Cross of Christ. (Rom 5:20)

Therese inserts her New Testament theology and asceticism at the exact point where the transition takes place. Her “little way” to “little sanctity” at first appears … as one way among many others and she contrasts it particularly with the “great ways” of the “great saints” …. These great saints have done mighty deeds for God, but they are so superior as to discourage Therese …. But the more she gets to know the little way, the more she realizes … that it is the only way.

… as time goes on and she assumes the role of David, armed with a sling and venturing into the open to attack the Goliath of “great sanctity”. “The great saints have gained heaven by their works; myself I wish to imitate the thieves, I wish to take it by a trick, a trick of love that will give me entry, me and other poor sinners.”

And what is this trick? “It is quite simple. Hold nothing back. Distribute your goods as soon as you get them …. If at the moment of death, I were to present my little coins to have them estimated at their true worth, our Lord would not fail to discover dross in them that I should certainly go and deposit in Purgatory.” And now she transfers  … her amused gaze … toward God, teasing the God of justice: “When I think of the good God’s statement: ‘I shall come soon and bring my reward with me, repaying everyone according to his works’, then I say to myself that he will find himself very much embarrassed with me, because I have no works! So he will not be able to repay me according to my works. Very well, then, I trust he will repay me according to his works.”

Therese is here preaching a lesson straight from the gospel of Paul: “Now to him that works, the reward is not reckoned according to grace but according to debt. But to him that works not, yet believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is reputed to justice, according to the purpose of the grace of God” (Rom 4:4-5).

And: “ since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God they are justified by his grace as a gift , through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus …. (Rom 3:23-24)

Little Doctrines from the Little Flower

I am awed when I see the gift the "good God" had given St.Therese. What has taken me seventy-five years merely to appreciate, St.Therese so readily understood and practiced.
The following is from Two Sisters in the Spirit, by Hans Urs von Balthasar. The text below within quotation marks is taken from St.Therese's writings; all else is Balthasar's.

“Jesus does not demand great deeds but only gratitude and self-surrender. ‘I will not’ he says, ‘take the goats from out of your flocks, for all the beasts of the field are mine …. Shall I eat the flesh of bullocks, or shall I drink the blood of goats? Offer to God the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.’ See, then , all that Jesus lays claim to from us; he has no need of our works but only  of our love.”

It is generally recognized that “cosmetics for the soul”, “that overwrought, incessant measuring, counting, calculating, touching and examining one’s own ‘perfection’, that most dangerous distraction of attention from God to the ego under the pretext of tender conscience, and even humility”, constitute a special danger for those living the monastic life and, particularly for contemplatives, constitute the universal “temptation to perfection”

As a child Therese was trained to “collect” merit; Marie taught her to do so: “I can still hear you saying to me, ‘Look at the shopkeepers, how much trouble they give themselves to make money, whereas we can amass treasure for heaven without giving ourselves so much trouble; all we have to do is to gather diamonds with a rake’. And off I went, my heart filled with joy, overflowing with good resolutions.” And in her early letters, we see the child busy at this work of collecting: “every day I try to do all the ‘practices’ I can, and do my best not to let any opportunity pass. From the bottom of my heart, and as often as possible , I say the little prayers: they are sweet-scented like roses …, my thanks to Sister Therese of St. Augustine for her dear little rosary of practices….”

But gradually, without it being noticed, the meaning of the word changes and surrenders its kernel of Christian truth; the treasure is love, but love is the prodigality that knows neither to count nor reckon. “it’s very simple. Hold nothing back; distribute your goods as soon as you get them. As for myself. If I live to be eighty years old, I shall still be as poor. I do not know how to make economies; everything I have I give away immediately to buy souls.”

Progress does not come through acquisitions but through losing everything; it does not mean climbing, it means descending. A novice sighs: “When I think of everything I still have to acquire!” [Therese] “You mean, to lose! Jesus takes it upon himself to fill your soul in the measure that you rid it of your imperfections. I see that you have taken the wrong road; you will never arrive at the end of your journey. You are wanting to climb a great mountain, and the good God is trying to make you descend it; he is waiting for you at the fertile valley of humility.”

St. Therese on Saints

In his study of St. Therese in Two Sisters in the Spirit, Balthasar offers this characterization of St. Therese’s view of the vocation of the saints.

“The true saints are those whose ardor in their earthly mission is fed solely by the eternal, heavenly life that they have tasted but has been so painfully withdrawn. They do not turn their backs on the world in order to enjoy the rest of heaven in advance. Rather they live a life of intense longing and move the world by the strength of that heaven that has first been granted to them and then closed to them. They hang crucified between this world and the beyond; exiles from earth but not yet in their heavenly home, their position serves as a kind of pulpit, and their whole life is a sermon. It does not matter whether the preaching takes the form of action or contemplation – this decision is left to God; in both cases, their position is the same, stretched between earth and heaven. And the longer they hang there, the more intimate the presence of heaven within them, for nothing brings a person nearer to God than hanging there.” p. 212