Reflections for Lent Elaine Kennedy is part of the T.H.O.M.A.S. Team What of this joy, quoted not only by Nehemiah, but many times over and over again by many other prophets, psalmists and the Gospel writers? What happened to it? I’m sure it was there in the early days of Christianity when the teachings of the Lord still rang in people’s ears. How soon was it, though, before men realized that one can exert far more control over people by keeping them in fear rather than in joy? Control is power. Yet power is elitist and destructive as can be seen in every walk of life; here I am talking about depriving people of spiritual joy; marginalisation at its worst. The joy of the Lord buried beneath the mighty weight of human ego; people no longer dancing for joy to the Lord’s tune, dancing to their own tune. These were thoughts going through my head as my husband and I ambled around cathedrals and museums of catholic artefact in Portugal recently. Such thoughts have been with me for years, but until now I had never felt the evidence to validate them quite as forcefully. An overwhelming sense of despondency washed over me in one particularly vast cathedral where the air hung heavily with the faded ghosts of a vainglorious past. No hint of the joy of the risen Lord. The building was an icon to the fear of hell and damnation. Every picture, every altar was dedicated to the torments of the soul. The very size of the place designed to make one feel insignificant and God quite out of reach. I thought of the Lord, sitting in a fishing boat in the warm sun, sharing life and talking with enthusiasm about love, forgiveness and the joy of being God’s creatures and I really wondered what he would have made of this dark, oppressive place with its grotesque paintings, its gruesome relics preserved in glass altars; statues which could win an oscar for outstanding ghoulishness. I thought of the many similar places all over the world and the millions of people down the ages whose entire idea of God was formed by these kinds of images created to subjugate and terrify in order that the higher orders could maintain power and control over them. History of course backs up this argument quite forcefully. Imagine the effect of this cathedral on small children. The joy of the Lord would never truly penetrate to their inner core and this state of affairs would be inherited and passed on. I saw massive altars covered in gold, as if wealth and the ornate equated with the value of prayer. When I saw some sixteenth century Bishop’s gloves and slippers entirely woven of gold thread I thought of the Lord standing either barefoot or in sandals, simply attired and teaching in the open air about loving one another and about the value of simple prayer. I thought of him passing his authority on to Peter, an ordinary uncomplicated human and I felt, as I often do, a huge sorrow for the true beauty of the Lord lost to human ego and buried under stifling inherited baggage accumulated down the centuries by people, who confused authority with power and who coloured the way people thought and still do. The Lord’s authority was passed to Peter as an invisible gift to be used for the spreading of the Word; it was never meant to become visible by means of massive outpourings of wealth, pedestals and power games. It was supposed to be about passing on His message; His gentleness to our violence, our uniqueness yet equalness; sharing and maintaining each other’s value; and of course, the glory of God through simple acts of prayer. In the Tablet of 21.02.04, Bishop Conry speaks of authority as being external and internal; the external being the ribbons and hats and pedestals. He says, "If I have to fall back on my external authority because my personal authority has failed, then I have no authority at all". How often we witness in our own lives as well as in the past, how use of external authority created conflict and disharmony and marginalisation. I feel that there are very encouraging signs in younger generations who no longer tolerate the sham of external authority, yet their spirituality is there; we are at a point where we are not really sure how to channel this spirituality, but the spirit will guide us as ever. I do pray very fervently that future generations will look at our times and see, not faded ghosts of a vainglorious past, but the ghosts of people whose faith was joyous and was lived in a pure and truly Christian way. I suppose that if we could truly do that, five hundred years from now, there would be no massive cathedrals covered in gold and ghoul representing our era. Hopefully our legacy would be a caring and sharing society which was not at all grieved but living in the strength of the joy of the Lord. “And flowers and trees and beasts and man receive Comfort in morning, joy in the noon day. And we are put on earth a little space, That we may learn to bear the beams of love.” William Blake |
