At the Basilica on Friday,
at the celebration of the patronal solemnity
of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary,
as we were approaching that most sacred moment
of holy communion,
in which we would receive Christ,
body and blood, soul and divinity,
as the schola began a sublime sixteenth-century motet
written by a composer with the unlikely name
of Clemens Non Papa—
which I’m pretty sure means something like,
“Clement-but-not-the-one-who-is-Pope”—
which had beautiful text from the Song of Songs:
I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys.
As the lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.
A fountain of gardens, a well of living waters,
and streams from Lebanon,
the drama of the liturgy,
as it so often does,
invited us into deep contemplation.
Meanwhile, in the pew in front of me,
a different sort of drama was unfolding
involving an infant, an energetic toddler,
two parents, a grandmother,
and a car seat that first fell noisily to the floor
and then wedged itself firmly between
the seat of one pew and the back of the next,
requiring many helping hands to dislodge it.
Needless to say, my attention was drawn away
from Clemens Non Papa’s motet
and whatever pious thoughts it might inspire in me,
and came to rest on the scene in the pew before me,
as the word “bedlam” came to mind,
more in an amused way than an annoyed one.
Then it occurred to me that though we associate
the word “bedlam” with chaos and disorder,
because of the famous (or notorious) Bedlam asylum
in early modern London,
the word is actually a medieval English version
of the name “Bethlehem”—
which in Hebrew means “the house of bread.”
Then I thought,
what more appropriate way to prepare
to receive Jesus the bread of life
than to ponder the bedlam
into which he was born,
displayed before me in the chaos and disorder
of ordinary folk bringing their lives
into the house of bread that is the Church?
St. John Henry Newman,
named this month by Pope Leo
as a Doctor of the Church—
which is a title that recognizes a saint
as a particularly important teacher
of the Christian faith—
speaks of the temptation of thinking
that the heart of Christianity lies
not in faith in God’s revealed mysteries
and obedience to God’s commands,
but in contemplation of
our own spiritual feelings,
in the sense of peace or joy or calm
that we discover when we look to
our own spiritual experience.
The problem with thinking this way,
Newman points out,
is not only that it shifts the focus
from God to us (that’s bad enough),
but also that we are not very good
at honestly perceiving our feelings,
and we can try to convince ourselves
that we have feelings of joy, peace, or calm
that we don’t actually have.
He astutely notes that even if
we keep a private spiritual journal—
a practice he thinks in many ways laudable—
we tend to write in it as if
someone would someday read it,
and we subconsciously edit ourselves,
so that what we write sounds suitably pious.
This focus on our own religious feelings—
what Newman calls “self-contemplation”—
leads either to glorying in ourselves
and in our own spiritual attainments,
or to “feverish anxiety” about one’s lack
of any such attainments.
Newman writes, “It need scarcely be said
that a contemplation of self is a frequent attendant,
and a frequent precursor of a deranged state
of the mental powers.”
The view that our life as Christians
is above all a matter of spiritual feelings
will, he says, “foster pride, invite hypocrisy,
discourage the weak, and deceive most fatally.”
But if Christianity is not
about our religious feelings,
then what is it about?
Well, it’s about Jesus.
It’s about turning our eyes
from ourselves
and toward Jesus.
The Letter to the Hebrews exhorts us,
“Let us…persevere in running
the race that lies before us
while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus,
the leader and perfecter of faith.”
Let us look not to ourselves
and our pious feelings
or lack thereof,
but to Jesus,
who endured the cross
and despised its shame,
“for the sake of the joy that lay before him.”
Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus,
for whom joy was not a passing feeling
or a spiritual emotion,
but the reality of divine love
that lay at the deepest foundation
of his existence.
Jesus’ life was not a life of pious thoughts,
of feelings of joy, peace, and calm,
but a life of fire and division.
He endured conflict and opposition,
“in order that you may not
grow weary and lose heart,”
and in doing so he has freed us
from the burden of having
to gin up spiritual feelings
while toddlers are squirming
and car seats are crashing,
while families are divided
and nations are clashing,
while our hearts are joyless or troubled,
and our minds are distracted or dimmed.
He is with us in our chaos and disorder;
he is with us in our yearning
for God’s fire to set ablaze
our hearts and our world.
He is daily born
into the bedlam of our lives
whether we can feel him there or not.
And we who are gathered here
in this house of bread,
this bedlam of his true presence,
bring our lives
in all their chaos and disorder
to welcome him again
as he is born here tonight
out of love for us,
we come to fix our eyes on him,
and we pray that God,
in his mercy,
would have mercy on us all.
