'"By this means he moves them": on parables and the retrieval of reserve'

Here's some support for my thesis about koans, stories, puzzles, and allusion in general, in an interesting post from catholicity and covenant:

Today's Gospel reading at Mass - Mark 4:26-34 - could lead us to reflect on Isaac Williams' Tract 80, On Reserve in Communicating Religious Knowledge.   Specifically discussing the parables, Williams quotes Chrysostom:

"Had He not wished them to hear and to be saved, He would have been silent, and not have spoken in Parables. But by this means He moveth them, by speaking things overshadowed and darkened." (Homil. on St. Matt. xiii.)

 It's a beautiful approach to the parables - "this view of a parable as a veil of the truth", discourse couched in metaphors and imagery, purposefully without explicit interpretation, to challenge, engage and entice the imagination to a deeper, meaningful reflection on the Kingdom.  And, as Williams notes, it has considerably more credence than the lazy assumption (quite contradictory of Synoptic accounts) that the parables were 'difficult-teaching-made-easy-for-plebs':

It has been said indeed that they render moral truths more plain and easy, as well as more engaging; and that this was their purpose. But is this the case?

What is more, Williams emphasises, the 'parables as veil' coheres with the mode of revelation in the Incarnation:

The circumstances attending our Lord's  birth, and the important transactions at the early period of His life, we might have expected beforehand would have been more known to the Jewish nation, instead of being concealed, like the actions of apparently obscure persons ... There is something in the thought of our Saviour's being for thirty years among men, not known and not believed on, even by those about Him, and the witnesses of His early life, very remarkable and awful. And the great pledge and seal of the truth of the Gospel, the Resurrection itself, seems in such a striking manner to have been kept back, if I may so speak, from the gaze of the multitude, from the broad light of the common day. Its great manifestations break forth, as if indistinctly, and according to the great need of certain persons, the watchful and weeping Mary, then the penitent Peter, then (the perhaps aged) Cleopas ... Surely, in all this there is something of mysterious wisdom, which it is good for us humbly to consider.

The purpose of Tract 80, of course, was to lead mid-19th century Anglicans to ask what this meant for evangelisation, catechetics, pedagogy and formation - the need to recover reserve.  Reserve is a means of orienting our imagination towards, attuning our hearts and minds to, moving us to be open to the Mystery, the Way, the strangeness of that Water, that Bread and Wine.

 In an era when much Anglican reflection on evangelisation and catechetics has been determined by Mission-Shaped Church and accessibility, by HTB and Alpha, can catholic Anglicans aid in a retrieval of reserve which might allow the Crucified and Risen One to "occupy the imagination and affections" (a phrase from Williams' penultimate paragraph) of the citizens and consumers of postmodernity?

But....("The Secret")

Again from "A Hymn and a Secret," The Brothers Karamazov: 

"I will tell you all our secret," Mitya whispered hurriedly. "I  meant to tell you later, for how could I decide on anything without  you? You are everything to me. Though I say that Ivan is superior to  us, you are my angel. It's your decision will decide it. Perhaps  it's you that is superior and not Ivan. You see, it's a question of  conscience, question of the higher conscience- the secret is so  important that I can't settle it myself, and I've put it off till I  could speak to you. But anyway it's too early to decide now, for we  must wait for the verdict. As soon as the verdict is given, you  shall decide my fate. Don't decide it now. I'll tell you now. You  listen, but don't decide. Stand and keep quiet. I won't tell you  everything. I'll only tell you the idea, without details, and you keep  quiet. Not a question, not a movement. You agree? But, goodness,  what shall I do with your eyes? I'm afraid your eyes will tell me your  decision, even if you don't speak. Oo! I'm afraid! Alyosha, listen!  Ivan suggests my escaping. I won't tell you the details: it's all been  thought out: it can all be arranged. Hush, don't decide. I should go  to America with Grusha. You know I can't live without Grusha! What  if they won't let her follow me to Siberia? Do they let convicts get  married? Ivan thinks not. And without Grusha what should I do there  underground with a hammer? I should only smash my skull with the  hammer! But, on the other hand, my conscience? I should have run  away from suffering. A sign has come, I reject the sign. I have a  way of salvation and I turn my back on it. Ivan says that in  America, 'with the goodwill,' I can be of more use than underground.  But what becomes of our hymn from underground? What's America? America  is vanity again! And there's a lot of swindling in America, too, I  expect. I should have run away from crucifixion! I tell you, you know,  Alexey, because you are the only person who can understand this.  There's no one else. It's folly, madness to others, all I've told  you of the hymn. They'll say I'm out of my mind or a fool. I am not  out of my mind and I am not a fool. Ivan understands about the hymn,  too. He understands, only he doesn't answer- he doesn't speak. He  doesn't believe in the hymn. Don't speak, don't speak. I see how you  look! You have already decided. Don't decide, spare me! I can't live  without Grusha. Wait till after the trial!" 

  Mitya ended beside himself. He held Alyosha with both hands on his  shoulders, and his yearning, feverish eyes were fixed on his  brother's. 

  "They don't let convicts marry, do they?" he repeated for the  third time in a supplicating voice. 

  Alyosha listened with extreme surprise and was deeply moved. 

  "Tell me one thing," he said. "Is Ivan very keen on it, and  whose idea was it?" 

  "His, his, and he is very keen on it. He didn't come to see me  at first, then he suddenly came a week ago and he began about it  straight away. He is awfully keen on it. He doesn't ask me, but orders  me to escape. He doesn't doubt of my obeying him, though I showed  him all my heart as I have to you, and told him about the hymn, too.  He told me he'd arrange it; he's found out about everything. But of  that later. He's simply set on it. It's all a matter of money: he'll  pay ten thousand for escape and give me twenty thousand for America.  And he says we can arrange a magnificent escape for ten thousand." 

  "And he told you on no account to tell me?" Alyosha asked again. 

  "To tell no one, and especially not you; on no account to tell  you. He is afraid, no doubt, that you'll stand before me as my  conscience. Don't tell him I told you. Don't tell him, for anything." 

  "You are right," Alyosha pronounced; "it's impossible to decide  anything before the trial is over. After the trial you'll decide of  yourself. Then you'll find that new man in yourself and he will  decide." 

  "A new man, or a Bernard who'll decide a la Bernard, for I believe  I'm a contemptible Bernard myself," said Mitya, with a bitter grin. 

  "But, brother, have you no hope then of being acquitted?" 

  Mitya shrugged his shoulders nervously and shook his head. 

  "Alyosha, darling, it's time you were going," he said, with a  sudden haste. "There's the superintendent shouting in the yard.  He'll be here directly. We are late; it's irregular. Embrace me  quickly. Kiss me! Sign me with the cross, darling, for the cross I  have to bear to-morrow." 

  They embraced and kissed. 

"A hymn underground...."

From "A Hymn and a Secret," The Brothers Karamazov; it's the night before Mitya's trial.  His brother, the onetime monk Alyosha has come to visit him in prison. 

[Mitya] went up to Alyosha excitedly and kissed him. His eyes glowed. 

 "Rakitin wouldn't understand it," he began in a sort of exaltation; "but you, you'll understand it all. That's why I was thirsting for you. You see, there's so much I've been wanting to tell you for ever so long, here, within these peeling walls, but I haven't said a word about what matters most; the moment never seems to have come. Now I can wait no longer. I must pour out my heart to you. Brother, these last two months I've found in myself a new man. A new man has risen up in me. He was hidden in me, but would never have come to the surface, if it hadn't been for this blow from heaven. I am afraid! And what do I care if I spend twenty years in the mines, breaking ore with a hammer? I am not a bit afraid of that- it's something else I am afraid of now: that that new man may leave me. Even there, in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one may bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are all to blame for them. Why was it I dreamed of that 'babe' at such a moment? 'Why is the babe so poor?' That was a sign to me at that moment. It's for the babe I'm going. Because we are all responsible for all. For all the 'babes,' for there are big children as well as little children All are 'babes.' I go for all, because someone must go for all. I didn't kill father, but I've got to go. I accept it. It's all come to me here, here, within these peeling walls. There are numbers of them there, hundreds of them underground, with hammers in their hands. Oh, yes, we shall be in chains and there will be no freedom, but then, in our great sorrow, we shall rise again to joy, without which man cannot live nor God exist, for God gives joy: it's His privilege- a grand one. Ah, man should be dissolved in prayer! What should I be underground there without God? Rakitin's laughing! If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground. One cannot exist in prison without God; it's even more impossible than out of prison. And then we men underground will sing from the bowels of the earth a glorious hymn to God, with Whom is joy. Hail to God and His joy! I love Him!" 

 Mitya was almost gasping for breath as he uttered his wild speech. He turned pale, his lips quivered, and tears rolled down his cheeks. 

 "Yes, life is full, there is life even underground," he began again. "You wouldn't believe, Alexey, how I want to live now, what a thirst for existence and consciousness has sprung up in me within these peeling walls. Rakitin doesn't understand that; all he cares about is building a house and letting flats. But I've been longing for you. And what is suffering? I am not afraid of it, even if it were beyond reckoning. I am not afraid of it now. I was afraid of it before. Do you know, perhaps I won't answer at the trial at all.... And I seem to have such strength in me now, that I think I could stand anything, any suffering, only to be able to say and to repeat to myself every moment, 'I exist.' In thousands of agonies- I exist. I'm tormented on the rack- but I exist! Though I sit alone on a pillar- I exist! I see the sun, and if I don't see the sun, I know it's there. And there's a whole life in that, in knowing that the sun is there. Alyosha, my angel, all these philosophies are the death of me. Damn them! Brother Ivan-" 

 "What of brother Ivan?" interrupted Alyosha, but Mitya did not hear. 

 "You see, I never had any of these doubts before, but it was all hidden away in me. It was perhaps just because ideas I did not understand were surging up in me, that I used to drink and fight and rage. It was to stifle them in myself, to still them, to smother them. Ivan is not Rakitin, there is an idea in him. Ivan is a sphinx and is silent; he is always silent. It's God that's worrying me. That's the only thing that's worrying me. What if He doesn't exist? What if Rakitin's right- that it's an idea made up by men? Then if He doesn't exist, man is the chief of the earth, of the universe. Magnificent! Only how is he going to be good without God? That's the question. I always come back to that. For whom is man going to love then? To whom will he be thankful? To whom will he sing the hymn? Rakitin laughs. Rakitin says that one can love humanity without God. Well, only a snivelling idiot can maintain that. I can't understand it. Life's easy for Rakitin. 'You'd better think about the extension of civic rights, or even of keeping down the price of meat. You will show your love for humanity more simply and directly by that, than by philosophy.' I answered him, 'Well, but you, without a God, are more likely to raise the price of meat, if it suits you, and make a rouble on every copeck.' He lost his temper. But after all, what is goodness? Answer me that, Alexey. Goodness is one thing with me and another with a Chinaman, so it's a relative thing. Or isn't it? Is it not relative? A treacherous question! You won't laugh if I tell you it's kept me awake two nights. I only wonder now how people can live and think nothing about it. Vanity! Ivan has no God. He has an idea. It's beyond me. But he is silent."

"Tragic Worship"

Today, at First Things.  HT Beth.  This is interesting, because I found myself in tears this past week, at 7th Sunday of Easter; I couldn't get through any of the hymns or responses.  It was one of those incohate and unexpressable feelings:  on the way over, I had seen the statue in the image below; it stands at the front gate of a Catholic school-slash-"Center for Evangelization."  There's the sacred heart, right there - and the Christ-the-Redeemer-style blessing on all the world; to whom could this be speaking, if not to a crushed humanity living in a broken world?  I was thinking of the past out of which this image had come.

So my tears partly did come from this deep, gut-level understanding about the tragic nature of living.   But then:  it was Ascension, too - and "Crown him with many crowns," that hymn that's about human folly and tragedy and the totally unexpected, absurd, triumphant divine response to it.  The hymn about the mind-blowing nature of reality, that is - and the feelings accompanying that realization were overpowering.

(I've added some bolding - as well as the image - below.)

The problem with much Christian worship in the contemporary world, Catholic and Protestant alike, is not that it is too entertaining but that it is not entertaining enough. Worship characterized by upbeat rock music, stand-up comedy, beautiful people taking center stage, and a certain amount of Hallmark Channel sentimentality neglects one classic form of entertainment, the one that tells us, to quote the Book of Common Prayer, that “in the midst of life we are in death.”

It neglects tragedy. Tragedy as a form of art and of entertainment highlighted death, and death is central to true Christian worship. The most basic liturgical elements of the faith, baptism and the Lord’s Supper, speak of death, of burial, of a covenant made in blood, of a body broken. Even the cry “Jesus is Lord!” assumes an understanding of lordship very different than Caesar’s. Christ’s lordship is established by his sacrifice upon the cross, Caesar’s by power.

Perhaps some might recoil at characterizing tragedy as entertainment, but tragedy has been a vital part of the artistic endeavors of the West since Homer told of Achilles, smarting from the death of his beloved Patroclus, reluctantly returning to the battlefields of Troy. Human beings have always been drawn to tales of the tragic, as to those of the comic, when they have sought to be lifted out of the predictable routines of their daily lives—in other words, to be entertained.

From Aeschylus to Tennessee Williams, tragedians have thus enriched the theater. Shakespeare’s greatest plays are his tragedies. Who would rank Charles Dickens over Thomas Hardy and Joseph Conrad? Tragedy has absorbed the attention of remarkable thinkers from Aristotle to Hegel to Terry Eagleton.

Christian worship should immerse people in the reality of the tragedy of the human fall and of all subsequent human life. It should provide us with a language that allows us to praise the God of resurrection while lamenting the suffering and agony that is our lot in a world alienated from its creator, and it should thereby sharpen our longing for the only answer to the one great challenge we must all face sooner or later. Only those who accept that they are going to die can begin to look with any hope to the resurrection.

Yet today tragedy has, with few exceptions, dropped from popular entertainment. Whether it is the sentimentalism of the Hallmark Channel, the pyrotechnics of action movies, or the banal idiocy of reality TV, the tragic sensibility is all but lost. This is further compounded by the trivial way in which the language of tragedy is now used in popular parlance. As with defining moment and crisis, the words tragedy and tragic are now expected to perform Stakhanovite levels of linguistic labor. In a world where even sporting defeats can be described as tragedies, rarely do the terms speak of the catastrophic moral crises and heroic falls that lie at the heart of great tragic literature.

Yet human life is still truly tragic. Death remains a stubborn, omnipresent, and inevitable reality. For all of postmodern anti-essentialism, for all the repudiation of human nature, for all the rhetoric of self-creation, death eventually comes to all, frustrates all, levels all. It is not simply a linguistic construct or a social convention. Yet despite this, Western culture has slowly but surely pushed death, the one impressive inevitability of human life, to the very periphery of existence.

Pascal observed the problem in seventeenth-century France when he saw the obsession with entertainment as the offspring of the fallen human desire to be distracted from any thought of mortality. “I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room,” he said. And: “Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for miseries, and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries.”

Today the problem is even greater: Entertainment has apparently become many people’s primary purpose of existence. I doubt that it would surprise Pascal that the world has increased the size, scope, and comprehensiveness of distraction. It would not puzzle him that death has been reduced to little more than a comic-book cartoon in countless action movies or into a mere momentary setback in soap operas and sitcoms. Indeed, he would not find it perplexing that the bleak spiritual violence of mortality leaves no lasting mark on the bereaved in the surreal yet seductive world of popular entertainment.

But he might well be taken aback that the churches have so enthusiastically endorsed this project of distraction and diversion. This is what much of modern worship amounts to: distraction and diversion. Praise bands and songs of triumph seem designed in form and content to distract worshipers from life’s more difficult realities.

Even funerals, the one religious context where one might have assumed the reality of death would be unavoidable, have become the context for that most ghastly and incoherent of acts: the celebration of a life now ended. The Twenty-Third Psalm and “Abide with Me” were funeral staples for many years but not so much today. References to the valley of the shadow of death and the ebbing out of life’s little day, reminders both of our mortality and of God’s faithfulness even in the darkest of times, have been replaced as funeral favorites by “Wind Beneath My Wings” and “My Way.” The trickledown economics of worship as entertainment has reached even the last rites for the departed.

Yet tragedy is a vital part of entertainment. Aristotle in his Poetics famously argued for the personal and social benefits of tragic drama. The audience, swept up into the vertiginous moral crises, the magnificent flaws, and the catastrophic falls of the heroes, enjoyed the experience of catharsis—running the gamut of relevant emotions—without being agents in the events depicted on the stage. They left the theater cleansed by the experience and knowing more deeply what it means to be human. They were wiser, more thoughtful, and better prepared to face the reality of their own lives.

Of all places, the Church should surely be the most realistic. The Church knows how far humanity has fallen, understands the cost of that fall in both the incarnate death of Christ and the inevitable death of every single believer. In the psalms of lament, the Church has a poetic language for giving expression to the deepest longings of a humanity looking to find rest not in this world but the next. In the great liturgies of the Church, death casts a long, creative, cathartic shadow. Our worship should reflect the realities of a life that must face death before experiencing resurrection.

It is therefore an irony of the most perverse kind that churches have become places where Pascalian distraction and a notion of entertainment that eschews the tragic seem to dominate just as comprehensively as they do in the wider world. I am sure that the separation of church buildings from graveyards was not the intentional start of this process, but it certainly helped to lessen the presence of death. The present generation does not have the inconvenience of passing by the graves of loved ones as it gathers for worship. Nowadays, death has all but vanished from the inside of churches as well.

In my own tradition, the historic Scottish Presbyterian tradition, the somber tempos of the psalter, the haunting calls of lament, and the mortal frailty of the unaccompanied human voice helped to connect Sunday worship to the realities of life. There are indeed psalms of joy and triumph. The parents rejoicing in the birth of a child could find words of gratitude to sing to the Lord, but there are also psalms which allow bereaved parents to express their grief and their sorrow in words of praise to their God.

The psalms as the staple of Christian worship, with their elements of lament, confusion, and the intrusion of death into life, have been too often replaced not by songs that capture the same sensibilities—as the many great hymns of the past did so well—but by those that assert triumph over death while never really giving death its due. The tomb is certainly empty; but we are not sure why it would ever have been occupied in the first place.

Only the dead can be resurrected. As the second thief on the cross saw so clearly, Christ’s kingdom is entered through death, not by escape from it. Traditional Protestantism saw this, connecting baptism not to washing so much as to death and resurrection. Protestant liturgies made sure that the law was read each service in order to remind the people that death was the penalty for their sin. Only then, after the law had pronounced the death sentence, would the gospel be read, calling them from their graves to faith and to resurrection life in Christ. The congregants thereby became vicarious participants in the great drama of salvation.

There was surely catharsis in such worship: The congregants left each week having faced the deepest reality of their own destinies. Perhaps it is ironic, but the church that confronts people with the reality of the shortness of life lived under the shadow of death prepares them for resurrection better than the church that goes straight to resurrection triumphalism without that awkward mortality bit.

Bonhoeffer once asked, “Why did it come about that the cinema really is often more interesting, more exciting, more human and gripping than the church?” Why, indeed. Maybe the situation is even worse than I have described; perhaps the churches are even more trivial than the entertainment industry. After all, in popular entertainment one does occasionally find the tragic clearly articulated, as in the movies of a Coppola or a Scorsese.

A church with a less realistic view of life than one can find in a movie theater? For some, that might be an amusing, even entertaining, thought; for me, it is a tragedy.

Carl R. Trueman is Paul Woolley Professor of Church History at Westminster Theological Seminary.

The thing about "catharsis" is extremely to-the-point, in my view....

"The only thing which the mind can never exhaust...."

From T.H. White’s “The Once and Future King”; here the wizard Merlyn is smoking his pipe, and speaking to Wart (the young King Arthur):

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then – to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you. Look at what a lot of things there are to learn – pure science, the only purity there is. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime, natural history in three, literature in six. And then, after you have exhausted a milliard lifetimes in biology and medicine and theocriticism and geography and history and economics – why, you can start to make a cartwheel out of the appropriate wood, or spend fifty years learning to begin to learn to beat your adversary at fencing. After that, you can start again on mathematics, until it is time to learn to plough.”

What's interesting to me in this passage is - aside from the truth of the central premise - that there's not a bit of denial of reality in it.  There's no pretense that fear, loneliness, horror, despair, and torture won't and don't occur; there's no denial that we won't be afraid, lonely, horrified, or depairing.  There's merely (merely!) a desire to look reality in the face - and then to overcome the things that corrupt and destroy by the use of a surprising and indirect means.   Learning doesn't change the facts of reality; it changes you.  Learning, when you think about it, is nothing more or less than the transformation of the mind and soul.

Well, yes.

The Brothers Karamazov: "An unfortunate gathering"

"That is, in. brief," Father Paissy began again, laying stress
on each word, "according to certain theories only too clearly
formulated in the nineteenth century, the Church ought to be
transformed into the State, as though this would be an ad-
vance from a lower to a higher form, so as to disappear into it,
making way for science, for the spirit of the age, and civilisa-
tion. And if the Church resists and is unwilling, some corner
will be set apart for her in the State, and even that under con-
trol — and this will be so everywhere in all modern European
countries. But Russian hopes and conceptions demand not
that the Church should pass as from a lower into a higher type
into the State, but, on the contrary, that the State should end
by being worthy to become only the Church and nothing else.
So be it! So be it!"

"Well, I confess you've reassured me somewhat," Miiisov
said smiling, again crossing his legs. "So far as I understand
then, the realisation of such an ideal is infinitely remote, at the
second coming of Christ. That's as you please. It's a beautiful
Utopian dream of the abolition of war, diplomacy, banks, and
so on — something after the fashion of socialism, indeed. But
I imagined that it was all meant seriously, and that the Church
might be now going to try criminals, and sentence them to
beating, prison, and even death."

"But if there were none but the ecclesiastical court, the
Church would not even now sentence a criminal to prison or
to death. Crime and the way of regarding it would inevitably
change, not all at once of course, but fairly soon," Ivan replied
calmly, without flinching.

"Are you serious?" Miiisov glanced keenly at him.

"If everything became the Church, the Church would ex-
clude all the criminal and disobedient, and would not cut off
their heads," Ivan went on. "I ask you, what would become of
the excluded? He would be cut off then not only from men,
as now, but from Christ. By his crime he would have trans-
gressed not only against men but against the Church of Christ.
This is so even now, of course, strictly speaking, but it is not
clearly enunciated, and very, very often the criminal of to-day
compromises with his conscience: 'I steal,' he says, 'but I don't
go against Church. I'm not an enemy of Christ.' That's what
the criminal of to-day is continually saying to himself, but
when the Church takes the place of the State it will be diffi-
cult for him, in opposition to the Church all over the world,
to say: 'All men are mistaken, all in error, all mankind are the
false Church. I, a thief and murderer, am the only true Chris-
tian Church.' It will be very difficult to say this to himself; it
requires a rare combination of unusual circumstances. Now,
on the other side, take the Church's own view of crime: is it
not bound to renounce the present almost pagan attitude, and
to change from a mechanical cutting off of its tainted member
for the preservation of society, as at present, into completely
and honestly adopting the idea of the regeneration of the man,
of his reformation and salvation?"

"What do you mean? I fail to understand again," Miiisov
interrupted. "Some sort of dream again. Something shapeless
and even incomprehensible. What is excommunication? What
sort of exclusion? I suspect you are simply amusing yourself,
Ivan Fyodorovitch."

"Yes, but you know, in reality it is so now," said the elder
suddenly, and all turned to him at once. "If it were not for
the Church of Christ there would be nothing to restrain the
criminal from evil-doing, no real chastisement for it after-
wards; none, that is, but the mechanical punishment spoken of
just now, which in the majority of cases only embitters the
heart; and not the real punishment, the only effectual one,
the only deterrent and softening one, which lies in the recog-
nition of sin by conscience."

"How is that, may one inquire?" asked Miiisov, with lively
curiosity.

"Why," began the elder, "all these sentences to exile with
hard labour, and formerly with flogging also, reform no one,
and what's more, deter hardly a single criminal, and the num-
ber of crimes does not diminish but is continually on the in-
crease. You must admit that. Consequently the security of
society is not preserved, for, although the obnoxious member
is mechanically cut off and sent far away out of sight, another
criminal always comes to take his place at once, and often two
of them. If anything does preserve society, even in our time,
and does regenerate and transform the criminal, it is only the
law of Christ speaking in his conscience. It is only by recog-
nising his wrong-doing as a son of a Christian society — that
is, of the Church — that he recognises his sin against society —
that is, against the Church. So that it is only against the
Church, and not against the State, that the criminal of to-day
can recognise that he has sinned. If society, as a Church, had
jurisdiction then it would know whom to bring back from ex-
clusion and to re-unite to itself. Now the Church having no
real jurisdiction, but only the power of moral condemnation,
withdraws of her own accord from punishing the criminal
actively. She does not excommunicate him but simply persists
in motherly exhortation of him. What is more, the Church even
tries to preserve all Christian communion with the criminal.
She admits him to church services, to the holy sacrament,
gives him alms, and treats him more as a captive than as a con-
vict. And what would become of the criminal, O Lord, if even
the Christian society — that is, the Church — were to reject him
even as the civil law rejects him and cuts him off? What would
become of him if the Church punished him with her excom-
munication as the direct consequence of the secular law? There
could be no more terrible despair, at least for a Russian crim-
inal, for Russian criminals still have faith. Though, who
knows, perhaps then a fearful thing would happen, perhaps
the despairing heart of the criminal would lose its faith and
then what would become of him? But the Church, like a
tender, loving mother, holds aloof from active punishment
herself, as the sinner is too severely punished already by the
civil law, and there must be at least some one to have pity on
him. The Church holds aloof, above all, because its judgment
is the only one that contains the truth, and therefore cannot
practically and morally be united to any other judgment even
as a temporary compromise. She can enter into no compact
about that. The foreign criminal, they say, rarely repents, for
the very doctrines of to-day confirm him in the idea that his
crime is not a crime, but only a reaction against an unjustly
oppressive force. Society cuts him off completely by a force
that triumphs over him mechanically and (so at least they say
of themselves in Europe) accompanies this exclusion with
hatred, forgetfulness, and the most profound indifference as
to the ultimate fate of the erring brother. In this way, it all
takes place without the compassionate intervention of the
Church, for in many cases there are no churches there at all,
for though ecclesiastics and splendid church buildings remain,
the churches themselves have long ago striven to pass from
Church into State and to disappear in it completely. So it
seems at least in Lutheran countries. As for Rome, it was pro-
claimed a State instead of a Church a thousand years ago. And
so the criminal is no longer conscious of being a member of the
Church and sinks into despair. If he returns to society, often
it is with such hatred that society itself instinctively cuts
him off. You can judge for yourself how it must end. In many
cases it would seem to be the same with us, but the difference
is that besides the established law courts we have the Church
too, which always keeps up relations with the criminal as a
dear and still precious son. And besides that, there is still pre-
served, though only in thought, the judgment of the Church,
which though no longer existing in practice is still living as a
dream for the future, and is, no doubt, instinctively recognised
by the criminal in his soul. What was said here just now is
true too, that is, that if the jurisdiction of the Church were
introduced in practice in its full force, that is, if the whole of
the society were changed into the Church, not only the judg-
ment of the Church would have influence on the reformation
of the criminal such as it never has now, but possibly also the
crimes themselves would be incredibly diminished. And there
can be no doubt that the Church would look upon the crim-
inal and the crime of the future in many cases quite differ-
ently and would succeed in restoring the excluded, in restrain-
ing those who plan evil, and in regenerating the fallen. It is
true," said Father Zossima, with a smile, "the Christian society
now is not ready and is only resting on some seven righteous
men, but as they are never lacking, it will continue still un-
shaken in expectation of its complete transformation from a
society almost heathen in character into a single universal and
all-powerful Church. So be it, so be it! Even though at the
end of the ages, for it is ordained to come to pass! And there
is no need to be troubled about times and seasons, for the
secret of the times and seasons is in the wisdom of God, in His
foresight, and His love. And what in human reckoning seems
still afar off, may by the Divine ordinance be close at hand, on
the eve of its appearance. And so be it, so be it!"

"So be it, so be it!" Father Paissy repeated austerely and
reverently.

"Strange, extremely strange!" Miiisov pronounced, not so
much with heat as with latent indignation.

"What strikes you as so strange?" Father losif Inquired
cautiously.

"Why, it's beyond anything!" cried Miiisov, suddenly
breaking out, "the State is eliminated and the Church is raised
to the position of the State. It's not simply Ultramontanism,
it's arch-ultramontanism! It's beyond the dreams of Pope
Gregory the Seventh!"

"You are completely misunderstanding it," said Father
Paissy sternly. "Understand: the Church is not to be trans-
formed into the State. That is Rome and its dream. That is the
third temptation of the devil. On the contrary, the State is
transformed into the Church, will ascend and become a
Church over the whole world — which is the complete opposite
of Ultramontanism and Rome, and your interpretation, and is
only the glorious destiny ordained for the Orthodox Church.
This star will arise in the east!"

- The Internet Archive

"Flannery O’Connor on Emotional Jellyfish and the Repulsiveness of Truth (and Incarnation)"

Dave Zahl at Mockingbird posted this the other day:

From the collection of her letters, The Habit of Being, pgs 99-100, ht WH:

I can never agree with you that the Incarnation, or any truth, has to satisfy emotionally to be right (and I would not agree that for the natural man the Incarnation does not satisfy emotionally). It does not satisfy emotionally for the person brought up under many forms of false intellectual discipline such as nineteenth century mechanism, for instance. Leaving the Incarnation aside, the very notion of God’s existence is not emotionally satisfactory anymore for great numbers of people, which does not mean the God ceases to exist. M. Jean-Paul Sartre finds God emotionally unsatisfactory in the extreme, as do most of my friends of less stature than he. The truth does not change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally. A higher paradox confounds emotion as well as reason and there are long periods in the lives of all of us, and of the saints, when the truth as revealed by faith is hideous, emotionally disturbing, downright repulsive. Witness the dark night of the soul in individual saints. Right now the whole world seems to be going through a dark night of the soul.

There is question whether faith can or is supposed to be emotionally satisfying. I must say the thought of everybody lolling about in an emotionally satisfying faith is repugnant to me. I believe that we are ultimately directed Godward but that this journey is often impeded by emotion. I don’t think you are a jellyfish. But I suspect you of being a Romantic.

The Happy Prince

High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince. He was gilded all over with thin leaves of fine gold, for eyes he had two bright sapphires, and a large red ruby glowed on his sword-hilt.

He was very much admired indeed. “He is as beautiful as a weathercock,” remarked one of the Town Councillors who wished to gain a reputation for having artistic tastes; “only not quite so useful,” he added, fearing lest people should think him unpractical, which he really was not.

“Why can’t you be like the Happy Prince?” asked a sensible mother of her little boy who was crying for the moon. “The Happy Prince never dreams of crying for anything.”

“I am glad there is some one in the world who is quite happy,” muttered a disappointed man as he gazed at the wonderful statue.

“He looks just like an angel,” said the Charity Children as they came out of the cathedral in their bright scarlet cloaks and their clean white pinafores.

“How do you know?” said the Mathematical Master, “you have never seen one.”

“Ah! but we have, in our dreams,” answered the children; and the Mathematical Master frowned and looked very severe, for he did not approve of children dreaming.

One night there flew over the city a little Swallow. His friends had gone away to Egypt six weeks before, but he had stayed behind, for he was in love with the most beautiful Reed. He had met her early in the spring as he was flying down the river after a big yellow moth, and had been so attracted by her slender waist that he had stopped to talk to her.

“Shall I love you?” said the Swallow, who liked to come to the point at once, and the Reed made him a low bow. So he flew round and round her, touching the water with his wings, and making silver ripples. This was his courtship, and it lasted all through the summer.

“It is a ridiculous attachment,” twittered the other Swallows; “she has no money, and far too many relations”; and indeed the river was quite full of Reeds. Then, when the autumn came they all flew away.

After they had gone he felt lonely, and began to tire of his lady-love. “She has no conversation,” he said, “and I am afraid that she is a coquette, for she is always flirting with the wind.” And certainly, whenever the wind blew, the Reed made the most graceful curtseys. “I admit that she is domestic,” he continued, “but I love travelling, and my wife, consequently, should love travelling also.”

“Will you come away with me?” he said finally to her; but the Reed shook her head, she was so attached to her home.

“You have been trifling with me,” he cried. “I am off to the Pyramids. Good-bye!” and he flew away.

All day long he flew, and at night-time he arrived at the city. “Where shall I put up?” he said; “I hope the town has made preparations.”

Then he saw the statue on the tall column.

“I will put up there,” he cried; “it is a fine position, with plenty of fresh air.” So he alighted just between the feet of the Happy Prince.

“I have a golden bedroom,” he said softly to himself as he looked round, and he prepared to go to sleep; but just as he was putting his head under his wing a large drop of water fell on him. “What a curious thing!” he cried; “there is not a single cloud in the sky, the stars are quite clear and bright, and yet it is raining. The climate in the north of Europe is really dreadful. The Reed used to like the rain, but that was merely her selfishness.”

Then another drop fell.

“What is the use of a statue if it cannot keep the rain off?” he said; “I must look for a good chimney-pot,” and he determined to fly away.

But before he had opened his wings, a third drop fell, and he looked up, and saw—Ah! what did he see?

The eyes of the Happy Prince were filled with tears, and tears were running down his golden cheeks. His face was so beautiful in the moonlight that the little Swallow was filled with pity.

“Who are you?” he said.

“I am the Happy Prince.”

“Why are you weeping then?” asked the Swallow; “you have quite drenched me.”

“When I was alive and had a human heart,” answered the statue, “I did not know what tears were, for I lived in the Palace of Sans-Souci, where sorrow is not allowed to enter. In the daytime I played with my companions in the garden, and in the evening I led the dance in the Great Hall. Round the garden ran a very lofty wall, but I never cared to ask what lay beyond it, everything about me was so beautiful. My courtiers called me the Happy Prince, and happy indeed I was, if pleasure be happiness. So I lived, and so I died. And now that I am dead they have set me up here so high that I can see all the ugliness and all the misery of my city, and though my heart is made of lead yet I cannot chose but weep.”

“What! is he not solid gold?” said the Swallow to himself. He was too polite to make any personal remarks out loud.

“Far away,” continued the statue in a low musical voice, “far away in a little street there is a poor house. One of the windows is open, and through it I can see a woman seated at a table. Her face is thin and worn, and she has coarse, red hands, all pricked by the needle, for she is a seamstress. She is embroidering passion-flowers on a satin gown for the loveliest of the Queen’s maids-of-honour to wear at the next Court-ball. In a bed in the corner of the room her little boy is lying ill. He has a fever, and is asking for oranges. His mother has nothing to give him but river water, so he is crying. Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow, will you not bring her the ruby out of my sword-hilt? My feet are fastened to this pedestal and I cannot move.”

“I am waited for in Egypt,” said the Swallow. “My friends are flying up and down the Nile, and talking to the large lotus-flowers. Soon they will go to sleep in the tomb of the great King. The King is there himself in his painted coffin. He is wrapped in yellow linen, and embalmed with spices. Round his neck is a chain of pale green jade, and his hands are like withered leaves.”

“Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “will you not stay with me for one night, and be my messenger? The boy is so thirsty, and the mother so sad.”

“I don’t think I like boys,” answered the Swallow. “Last summer, when I was staying on the river, there were two rude boys, the miller’s sons, who were always throwing stones at me. They never hit me, of course; we swallows fly far too well for that, and besides, I come of a family famous for its agility; but still, it was a mark of disrespect.”

But the Happy Prince looked so sad that the little Swallow was sorry. “It is very cold here,” he said; “but I will stay with you for one night, and be your messenger.”

“Thank you, little Swallow,” said the Prince.

So the Swallow picked out the great ruby from the Prince’s sword, and flew away with it in his beak over the roofs of the town.

He passed by the cathedral tower, where the white marble angels were sculptured. He passed by the palace and heard the sound of dancing. A beautiful girl came out on the balcony with her lover. “How wonderful the stars are,” he said to her, “and how wonderful is the power of love!”

“I hope my dress will be ready in time for the State-ball,” she answered; “I have ordered passion-flowers to be embroidered on it; but the seamstresses are so lazy.”

He passed over the river, and saw the lanterns hanging to the masts of the ships. He passed over the Ghetto, and saw the old Jews bargaining with each other, and weighing out money in copper scales. At last he came to the poor house and looked in. The boy was tossing feverishly on his bed, and the mother had fallen asleep, she was so tired. In he hopped, and laid the great ruby on the table beside the woman’s thimble. Then he flew gently round the bed, fanning the boy’s forehead with his wings. “How cool I feel,” said the boy, “I must be getting better”; and he sank into a delicious slumber.

Then the Swallow flew back to the Happy Prince, and told him what he had done. “It is curious,” he remarked, “but I feel quite warm now, although it is so cold.”

“That is because you have done a good action,” said the Prince. And the little Swallow began to think, and then he fell asleep. Thinking always made him sleepy.

When day broke he flew down to the river and had a bath. “What a remarkable phenomenon,” said the Professor of Ornithology as he was passing over the bridge. “A swallow in winter!” And he wrote a long letter about it to the local newspaper. Every one quoted it, it was full of so many words that they could not understand.

“To-night I go to Egypt,” said the Swallow, and he was in high spirits at the prospect. He visited all the public monuments, and sat a long time on top of the church steeple. Wherever he went the Sparrows chirruped, and said to each other, “What a distinguished stranger!” so he enjoyed himself very much.

When the moon rose he flew back to the Happy Prince. “Have you any commissions for Egypt?” he cried; “I am just starting.”

“Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “will you not stay with me one night longer?”

“I am waited for in Egypt,” answered the Swallow. “To-morrow my friends will fly up to the Second Cataract. The river-horse couches there among the bulrushes, and on a great granite throne sits the God Memnon. All night long he watches the stars, and when the morning star shines he utters one cry of joy, and then he is silent. At noon the yellow lions come down to the water’s edge to drink. They have eyes like green beryls, and their roar is louder than the roar of the cataract.

“Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “far away across the city I see a young man in a garret. He is leaning over a desk covered with papers, and in a tumbler by his side there is a bunch of withered violets. His hair is brown and crisp, and his lips are red as a pomegranate, and he has large and dreamy eyes. He is trying to finish a play for the Director of the Theatre, but he is too cold to write any more. There is no fire in the grate, and hunger has made him faint.”

“I will wait with you one night longer,” said the Swallow, who really had a good heart. “Shall I take him another ruby?”

“Alas! I have no ruby now,” said the Prince; “my eyes are all that I have left. They are made of rare sapphires, which were brought out of India a thousand years ago. Pluck out one of them and take it to him. He will sell it to the jeweller, and buy food and firewood, and finish his play.”

“Dear Prince,” said the Swallow, “I cannot do that”; and he began to weep.

“Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “do as I command you.”

So the Swallow plucked out the Prince’s eye, and flew away to the student’s garret. It was easy enough to get in, as there was a hole in the roof. Through this he darted, and came into the room. The young man had his head buried in his hands, so he did not hear the flutter of the bird’s wings, and when he looked up he found the beautiful sapphire lying on the withered violets.

“I am beginning to be appreciated,” he cried; “this is from some great admirer. Now I can finish my play,” and he looked quite happy.

The next day the Swallow flew down to the harbour. He sat on the mast of a large vessel and watched the sailors hauling big chests out of the hold with ropes. “Heave a-hoy!” they shouted as each chest came up. “I am going to Egypt”! cried the Swallow, but nobody minded, and when the moon rose he flew back to the Happy Prince.

“I am come to bid you good-bye,” he cried.

“Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “will you not stay with me one night longer?”

“It is winter,” answered the Swallow, “and the chill snow will soon be here. In Egypt the sun is warm on the green palm-trees, and the crocodiles lie in the mud and look lazily about them. My companions are building a nest in the Temple of Baalbec, and the pink and white doves are watching them, and cooing to each other. Dear Prince, I must leave you, but I will never forget you, and next spring I will bring you back two beautiful jewels in place of those you have given away. The ruby shall be redder than a red rose, and the sapphire shall be as blue as the great sea.”

“In the square below,” said the Happy Prince, “there stands a little match-girl. She has let her matches fall in the gutter, and they are all spoiled. Her father will beat her if she does not bring home some money, and she is crying. She has no shoes or stockings, and her little head is bare. Pluck out my other eye, and give it to her, and her father will not beat her.”

“I will stay with you one night longer,” said the Swallow, “but I cannot pluck out your eye. You would be quite blind then.”

“Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “do as I command you.”

So he plucked out the Prince’s other eye, and darted down with it. He swooped past the match-girl, and slipped the jewel into the palm of her hand. “What a lovely bit of glass,” cried the little girl; and she ran home, laughing.

Then the Swallow came back to the Prince. “You are blind now,” he said, “so I will stay with you always.”

“No, little Swallow,” said the poor Prince, “you must go away to Egypt.”

“I will stay with you always,” said the Swallow, and he slept at the Prince’s feet.

All the next day he sat on the Prince’s shoulder, and told him stories of what he had seen in strange lands. He told him of the red ibises, who stand in long rows on the banks of the Nile, and catch gold-fish in their beaks; of the Sphinx, who is as old as the world itself, and lives in the desert, and knows everything; of the merchants, who walk slowly by the side of their camels, and carry amber beads in their hands; of the King of the Mountains of the Moon, who is as black as ebony, and worships a large crystal; of the great green snake that sleeps in a palm-tree, and has twenty priests to feed it with honey-cakes; and of the pygmies who sail over a big lake on large flat leaves, and are always at war with the butterflies.

“Dear little Swallow,” said the Prince, “you tell me of marvellous things, but more marvellous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery. Fly over my city, little Swallow, and tell me what you see there.”

So the Swallow flew over the great city, and saw the rich making merry in their beautiful houses, while the beggars were sitting at the gates. He flew into dark lanes, and saw the white faces of starving children looking out listlessly at the black streets. Under the archway of a bridge two little boys were lying in one another’s arms to try and keep themselves warm. “How hungry we are!” they said. “You must not lie here,” shouted the Watchman, and they wandered out into the rain.

Then he flew back and told the Prince what he had seen.

“I am covered with fine gold,” said the Prince, “you must take it off, leaf by leaf, and give it to my poor; the living always think that gold can make them happy.”

Leaf after leaf of the fine gold the Swallow picked off, till the Happy Prince looked quite dull and grey. Leaf after leaf of the fine gold he brought to the poor, and the children’s faces grew rosier, and they laughed and played games in the street. “We have bread now!” they cried.

Then the snow came, and after the snow came the frost. The streets looked as if they were made of silver, they were so bright and glistening; long icicles like crystal daggers hung down from the eaves of the houses, everybody went about in furs, and the little boys wore scarlet caps and skated on the ice.

The poor little Swallow grew colder and colder, but he would not leave the Prince, he loved him too well. He picked up crumbs outside the baker’s door when the baker was not looking and tried to keep himself warm by flapping his wings.

But at last he knew that he was going to die. He had just strength to fly up to the Prince’s shoulder once more. “Good-bye, dear Prince!” he murmured, “will you let me kiss your hand?”

“I am glad that you are going to Egypt at last, little Swallow,” said the Prince, “you have stayed too long here; but you must kiss me on the lips, for I love you.”

“It is not to Egypt that I am going,” said the Swallow. “I am going to the House of Death. Death is the brother of Sleep, is he not?”

And he kissed the Happy Prince on the lips, and fell down dead at his feet.

At that moment a curious crack sounded inside the statue, as if something had broken. The fact is that the leaden heart had snapped right in two. It certainly was a dreadfully hard frost.

Early the next morning the Mayor was walking in the square below in company with the Town Councillors. As they passed the column he looked up at the statue: “Dear me! how shabby the Happy Prince looks!” he said.

“How shabby indeed!” cried the Town Councillors, who always agreed with the Mayor; and they went up to look at it.

“The ruby has fallen out of his sword, his eyes are gone, and he is golden no longer,” said the Mayor in fact, “he is litttle beter than a beggar!”

“Little better than a beggar,” said the Town Councillors.

“And here is actually a dead bird at his feet!” continued the Mayor. “We must really issue a proclamation that birds are not to be allowed to die here.” And the Town Clerk made a note of the suggestion.

So they pulled down the statue of the Happy Prince. “As he is no longer beautiful he is no longer useful,” said the Art Professor at the University.

Then they melted the statue in a furnace, and the Mayor held a meeting of the Corporation to decide what was to be done with the metal. “We must have another statue, of course,” he said, “and it shall be a statue of myself.”

“Of myself,” said each of the Town Councillors, and they quarrelled. When I last heard of them they were quarrelling still.

“What a strange thing!” said the overseer of the workmen at the foundry. “This broken lead heart will not melt in the furnace. We must throw it away.” So they threw it on a dust-heap where the dead Swallow was also lying.

“Bring me the two most precious things in the city,” said God to one of His Angels; and the Angel brought Him the leaden heart and the dead bird.

“You have rightly chosen,” said God, “for in my garden of Paradise this little bird shall sing for evermore, and in my city of gold the Happy Prince shall praise me.”

- By Oscar Wilde.