I hope nobody will mind, in honour of St. George, patron of England, my use of this picture of Rudgwick in Sussex to represent all of England:
At Rudgwick, W. Sussex (Easter Sunday, 2015)
Also, remembering the words of G. K. Chesterton, who is always right, here is a picture of an English post-box, an English telegraph-pole, an English traffic-cone and an English bicycle in an English fog:
“No one can be good critic of England who does not understand fogs. And no one can be a really patriotic Englishman who does not like fogs.” Burnt Fen, Suffolk. (Probably).
By the way, there has been a St. George’s day treat for those of us who hold that fine creed that railways are England’s greatest gift to the world (G. K. Chesterton possibly excepted) and also that nobody really minds when they are turned into a big toy. Four generations of locomotives (one the Flying Scotsman), each in their day the last word in speed on the Great Northern / East Coast main line from London to Edinburgh, have run in parallel from Thirsk to York. The BBC reports here. It is admittedly at least partially a publicity stunt for the new trains that are shortly being introduced… but it’s a fun publicity stunt!
All right, one more post for BXVI’s ninetieth birthday! For it is truly right and just that the Pope Emeritus should have received visitors from his homeland — the (regional) prime minister of Bavaria and Alpine mountain troops — and that they should have brought with them pretzels, beer and music for a party that included his brother.
And he was moved to these words (as transcribed here) when called upon to extemporise a speech:
Mein Herz ist erfüllt von Dankbarkeit für die neunzig Jahre, die der Liebe Gott mir geschenkt hat. Da waren auch Prüfungen und schwere Zeiten, aber in allen hat Er mich immer weiter geführt, herausgeholt, sodass ich weiter gehen konnte und von Dank erfüllt bin, vor allem auch dafür, dass Er mir eine so schöne Heimat geschenkt hat, die jetzt unter euch bei mir präsent ist. Bayern ist schön von der Schöpfung her. Das Land ist schön durch die Kirchtürme, die da sind, die Häuser mit den Balkons, mit Blumen, die Menschen, die gut sind. Es ist schön, weil man dort um Gott weiß und weiß, dass Er die Welt geschaffen hat und dass dies so richtig ist, wenn wir sie mit Ihm gestalten. So danke ich euch herzlich für diese Gegenwart Bayerns, die ihr mir vermittelt, eines Bayerns, das weltoffen, lebendig, fröhlich ist, aber es deswegen so sein kann, weil es im Glauben seine Wurzeln findet. Euch allen vergelt’s Gott, vom Ministerpräsidenten angefangen bis zu euch allen. Ich freue mich, dass wir uns so schön beim blauen Himmel Roms versammeln konnten, der an den weiß-blauen Himmel der Bayernfahne auch erinnert, und es ist ja der gleiche Himmel. Ich wünsche euch allen viel Segen Gottes. Bringt meine Grüße mit nach Hause, wie dankbar ich für euch bin und wie gern ich in meinem Herzen immer noch in Bayern herumwandere und lebe und hoffe, dass dies so bleiben wird. Vergelt’s Gott.
My unburnished translation:
My heart is filled with gratitude for the ninety years that God has given me. There have been trials and hard times, but in all of them He has always led me forwards and called me forth so that I could carry on; and I am filled with gratitude above all that He gave me such a beautiful homeland, which is present to me now through you.
Bavaria has been beautiful ever since its creation. The country is lent its beauty by the church towers that there are; the houses with their balconies, with flowers; the people who are good. It is beautiful because God is known to people there, and they know that He created the world and that it will be at rights if we build it with Him. So I give you heartfelt thanks for this Bavarian presence that you share with me, a Bavaria that is open to the world, alive, joyful — and that can be thus because it has its roots in faith. Thanks to you all, from the [regional] prime minister to all of you. I am glad that we have been able to have such a lovely gathering under the blue sky of Rome, which is also a reminder of the blue-white heavens of the Bavarian flag, and indeed it is one and the same Heaven.
To you all I wish God’s blessing. Take home my greeting: how thankful I am for you and how I still love to wander in Bavaria in my heart, and live and hope that it will always be so. Vergelt’s Gott.
‘Vergelt’s Gott’ means ‘may God repay it’, or ‘may God reward you for it’. My translation falls apart at the seams not least when translating ‘Himmel’ which in German means the sky and Heaven alike.
Of course we are all aware of the intelligence of the mind that produced these words, and, indeed, there it is lying just under the surface. But what strikes me first about this speech is its homeliness. German has a better word: Gemütlichkeit, which translates as ‘cosiness’ in one sense, and ‘conviviality’ in another, but in yet a third a comfort deeper than comfort. It derives from the noun Gemüt, meaning ‘disposition’, or ‘mind’, or ‘soul’, so what is gemütlich is homely and comfortable to the very depths, and answers the longings of the very soul. No wonder the Bavarian guests are addressed in the familiar second person, ihr and euch… He is simply Fr. Ratzinger, a diocesan priest of Munich-Freising, a humble worker in the vineyard of the Lord.
Sad news from the city of Lincoln. The BBC reports that Ruddocks, a stationer’s which has occupied this shop on the High Street continuously since 1904, closed down on Easter Saturday. The owner, Henry Ruddock, though ‘immensely sad,’ is pragmatic: he cannot, he says, “put sentiment in the till.” The business itself is actually nearly two hundred years old, having been in operation before 1820 and in the hands of the Ruddock family since 1870.
I bought some postcards from this shop on a trip to Lincoln a few years ago. A traveller from afar, I had no idea of its history and distinction then. But these things must have a way of making themselves felt, since I recognised the establishment when I read the news, two hundred miles away. I remember being struck by its elegant frontage, and the quiet dignity of the lettering, and I suppose it was also a breath of fresh air to see a family name — one of Philip Larkin’s ‘established names’ — and so I took the (rather inelegant) photograph above.
I suppose it is in part to Ruddocks that I owe my personal impression, hatched at the foot of the hill and consolidated by the time I reached the Cathedral at the summit, that cathedral-crowned Lincoln is nearly the ideal city, and certainly my favourite, though I have only visited it once. (I’m sure the locals would say there are plenty of faults, too!) I think this because all the trades and businesses ascend the hill in a single sweep, to be unified under the cathedral that lends the city its unity and purpose. (Tradition holds that it is because of Lincoln’s High Street that we speak of districts or institutions going ‘uphill’ or ‘downhill’). Thus at the foot is the river Witham, with the rolled-up sleeves of the workaday railway and the wharves of Brayford Pool. Further up are the market, the cafés and the shops like Ruddocks. Higher still are the Crown Court and the Council chambers. All this is consecrated by the Cathedral at the summit: by far the city’s highest and greatest building, as it should be. That Lincoln’s cathedral is also one of England’s three or four most precious and beautiful (and was for three hundred years the tallest building in the world) is in some ways only a bonus…
Lincoln Cathedral and the Brayford Pool, with all trades in between.
I think that the end of Ruddocks is a twofold cause for sorrow: firstly that such a venerable family business should have been lost, and secondly that it should have been lost to Lincoln of all cities. If we but knew what we do when we cheat and choose those temples of desolation, the distribution centre, the chain store and the retail outlet.
Happy Easter! Having followed the world’s Saviour out into the desert of Lent and along the way of the Cross, now we too may rise as he did. Yes, we the Church are audacious enough to stake all we stand for on the truth that Jesus Christ, who was man and God, rose wholly and bodily from the dead and, in doing so, defeated death itself. This is the central belief which we hold and profess with a straight face, and the reason we have firm hope in everlasting life. Otherwise, to paraphrase St. Paul, we might as well all give up and go home.
To assent to this truth turns our view of the world upside down and inside out. But that is what the Church is for. As G.K. Chesterton says, it is not the tenets of the Church but the world’s dull, secular logic that is the wrong way up.
Now for some music: the Arnold Singers from Rugby School sing Simon Lindley’s arrangement of one of our best Easter hymns at the church of St Mary the Virgin, Hanbury (from the BBC’s Songs of Praise):
Today is also a double cause for celebration, being Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI’s ninetieth birthday… As I shall never tire of saying again and again and again, I am proud to number among the Benedict generation who came of age in faith under his gently staunch, warmly courageous teaching. It is largely to Joseph Ratzinger that we owe the Catechism of the Catholic Church, the lucid, intellectual, meticulous compendium of the faith which is the place for anyone, inside or outside the Church, to take their questions. From his writings the dawn of faith will break in many minds. And, as Pope, his visit to the United Kingdom in 2010, in which he saw hope in this country where we ourselves had forgotten it, and during which he accordingly encouraged us with a challenging, invigorating message, was a milestone in my life and in the history of the Church in Great Britain. Herzliche Glückwünsche und Gebete, lieber Benedikt, zu diesem herrlichen runden Geburtstag!
Paradox follows paradox along the path of Holy Week. This is the evening of the Last Supper, the very institution of the Eucharist. Yet no sooner is Mass said than the Tabernacle itself is emptied. The church is already a bare shell, awaiting the only day of the year when there is no Mass: the zero of Good Friday.
Maurice Duruflé’s setting of the Tantum Ergo (one of the Quatre Motets sur des Thèmes Grégoriens):
With the arrival of Holy Week comes around again one of the best hymns in the English language. It is also one of the hardest to sing, not at all because it is too technical or too complex, but rather because, in tight, lean verse (see how lightly those flawless rhymes wear their music), it expresses itself rather too simply and starkly for comfort. It would be one of the finest poems ever written — a beautifully-wrought match of meaning and metre, which John Ireland’s music perfects — even if it did not also grasp so unflinchingly, so firmly and so painfully the truth at the paradoxical heart of the Christian faith: the ‘love to the loveless shown that they might lovely be.’ This hymn has not lost an iota of its charge since it was set down by Samuel Crossman (1623–1683) nearly four hundred years ago. It defies a glib rendition: the words grab ungently at the heart.
For anyone who wishes to see the paradox laid bare, who wants to behold a single expression of what the Church is all about, Mass on Palm Sunday is perhaps the occasion when this is keenest. The Church withdraws physically into itself: the furnishings and decorative aids to prayer are removed or veiled; the altar is stripped, the faith is pared right down to its core. The stage is set and the soul is prepared for the contemplation of the historical events upon which all our other teachings and doctrines and music and art are founded: the paradoxes of and cusps between Old and New Testaments, the fulfilments of ancient prophecies and instinctive split-second actions of particular people at particular moments, the folly of man and the humility of Christ and (in the end) the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. This Sunday precipitates the reluctant but faithful commemorations of these events.
As part of the Palm Sunday liturgy, there is the actual dramatisation of Christ’s Passion according to one of the Gospels. The lines given to the congregation to read aloud are those of any plural speaker, which are normally those of the crowds or mobs that accumulated at Gethsemane, the Temple and Golgotha. That these are in fact different crowds assembling at various points over the course of the Passion becomes increasingly less important as we go on, not only because the crowds’ words and moods are not substantially different from each other’s, but because we must be made to acknowledge that, had we been there, we would (‘to a man’) have been the crowd, and indeed that we continue to be the crowd to this day. We have to fill our mouths with bile and sarcasm, clamouring to save a murderer and have the Prince of Life slain. “We want Barabbas!”; “His blood be on us and on our children!”; “If he is the Son of God, let him come down from the cross!” And so on. It is a relief to rinse out our mouths with the Creed.
But without this, and without the coming desolate, dry-throated liturgies of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, there can be no Easter. As the liturgy puts it, we are ‘following in his footsteps, / so that being made by his grace partakers of the Cross, / we may have a share also in his Resurrection and in his life.’
