The Churches
Sackcloth and Ashes
By MONICA FURLONG IBESEECH your Reverence, let us all be mad,' Teresa of Avila wrote once to her confessor, 'for the love of Him Who was called mad for our sakes.' I am not entirely sure what kind of mad- ness she was thinking of (she was herself almost equally endowed with both sanity and sanctity) but there have been some depressing periods when the Church, or anyhow individual Christians, appear to have taken her at her word. Depressing, because the madness has not always expressed itself in gay, exotic or appealing forms, but has more than once stumbled into the pit of aber- ration.
During Lent it is particularly difficult for Christians to avoid noticing this dark, bizarre strain in their ancestry. Those who came into the Church, as 1 did myself, out of the safe, humdrum daylight of agnosticism, possibly never quite come to terms with the concept of asceticism; we can never repress a sickened start when we stumble over some poor macerated saint in the shadows. One may have known before making the journey that religion embraces the worst as well as the best in people without anticipating that the worst would turn out to be quite so horrid. There are ascetics whose lives were such a torment of self- inflicted suffering that I wish no one had ever
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told me about them, just as I wish I had never read the haunting details of how St. Lawrence (say) acquired his martyr's crown. But for those who acknowledge the discipline of the Church part of the challenge of Lent is to accept the strangeness of one's fellow-Christians. as well as trying to see how far, if at all, one should follow in their footsteps.
In so far as the famous ascetics were cranks, one need neither accept them nor consider following in their footsteps (no one can convince me that Simeon Stylites was- not engaged in a branch of show business). But the difficulty lies elsewhere. What is one to make of men of supreme goodness and intelligence Who practised violent extremes of asceticism? What about Origen, one of the noblest of the Fathers, who mutilated himself when the temptations of the flesh became more than he could bear? What about men like Ignatius Loyola or the Dominican, Henry Suso, who tor- tured themselves with hunger, loneliness and a host of carefully manufactured miseries? What about Orders like the Cistercians, the Carthusians and the Carmelites, who to this day inflict the hair- shirt and the 'discipline' upon their long-suffering bodies?
There is, of course, no entirely rational answer, not even in the realm of psychology, for while the unbeliever, or for that matter the believer, may note the role of suppressed sexual urges in such behaviour, it does not adequately explain the force of the frenzy which shakes such people. Outside their situation one can never quite grasp the clue of their conduct, though I suppose most Christians have occasions when, awed beyond measure, they can dimly define the scale and splendour of saintly folly. We were made to love more than others; it is to love more that we are here,' said the Carmelite nun, Mary of Jesus, and it is necessary to understand that the saints, as to a lesser degree all religious people, are people in love. To the eye of the casual observer their be- haviour seems as irrational and exaggerated as that of any lover seems to his friends, but it has a courage and originality which may be the most exciting things in the world.
Asceticism, the core of the forty days of Lent, is a straightforward concept, once one has scraped off the barnacles of masochism the thing hJ acquired. It is accepting the will of God at anY particular moment, whether or not one hapPea' to like it. Over-eager Christians tend to try le anticipate God's will by grabbing more than their fair share of suffering, but in fact it is only ate morbidity of the human imagination which assumes God's will is bound to be something 0' pleasant. God may be going to allow one to sutler, but then He may equally be going to allow one° eat pâté de foie gras to the sound of trumPets' Asceticism is doing either with a suitable Zest' A friend of mine advances the story of St. Francii, kissing the leper as the supreme example ail asceticism, since it illustrates the love of Geu superbly overcoming the shrinking of the Ilesli St. Francis begins his gesture of affection purell• out of obedience to God, and then, as the special Christian conjuring trick begins to work, finel5 himself actually loving what had seemed merell repulsive. For the mysterious thing is that what starts as asceticism, the laborious struggle again one's loveless impulses, frequently ends as a spot taneous outpouring of love. Asceticism Ma/ plunge its roots into the compost-heap of Ina° perversion, but it often produces incomparable roses from this unpromising manure. Modern Christian thinking on the subject ei asceticism tends to be shallow, no doubt becaUse psychology has made us self-conscious about it.
Rather than think out this whole embarrassing subject from scratch, we indulge in a number 01 Lenten practices so trivial as to be laughable' Going without sugar in one's tea, giving UP cigarettes or alcohol, it is difficult to believe the things matter tuppence to one's growth in spiritual understanding. And the sad thing is that becomiag preoccupied with such nonsenses we leave out' selves no energy to examine the concepts and actions, the prejudices and moods, by which We sin regularly against the love of God and the love of man.
Of such scraps of Lenten advice as have drifted my, way this year from sermons, articles and cork versation, 1 liked at least two trends which I have not come across for some time. One priest urges that during Lent his parishioners should make a more ascetic use of time—in their case spend less time watching television and more saying their prayers. ('Do you know,' he said to me incredtk lously, 'it's a genuine sacrifice for some of trY people to miss Gun Lawn Another, rebelling as any sensitive man must from the 'You've never.
had it so good' mentality, asks his people to fast properly at least one day a week in an attempt td identify themselves with the millions in the world who have never had it so bad. There is, I suppose, a certain naivete about such practices, but theY are at least intended to stretch the spirit till it can contain a little more of the love of God.
Perhaps the best idea I have heard, though I can't really see its being carried out, is giving UP the ancient practice of keeping a forty-day Lent (those of us who try to keep it know that it is-at once too long and too loose) and returning to the even more ancient practice of a strict observance of Holy Week as a period of fasting and medita- tion. This sounds like sense. Meanwhile we shall, no doubt, continue with the hardest discipline of all—trying to explain to our agnostic friends, for the umpteenth time, what in the world we thin we are up to.
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