Fifth Sunday of Lent

The fifth Sunday of Lent finds us on the cusp of what the hymn calls “our Passiontide.”  This is our commemoration of Jesus’ final walk toward the hour of his suffering and death, the hour in which he lays down of his life for the life of the world, the hour of his definitive confrontation with all that is opposed to God and of his final victory.  Palm Sunday, a week from today, will mark our entry into the hour, and we will participate in it through the liturgies of Holy Week and the Triduum.  Before we reach that point, however, we still have preparation to undergo.  In both the Scriptures and the liturgy, the movement toward the hour is a gradual one.  It is mapped out in agonizing detail by our daily readings from the Gospel of John, chapters seven and eight.  This is what I would call the passion before the Passion: before bodily tortures, a war of words; before Jesus lays down his life, he stands up to falsehood; before the Lamb falls silent before the shearers, the Word speaks truth in the face of opposition, confusion and rejection.  When his hour comes, Jesus will freely give himself up, but until that hour comes, he gets up every morning to face the crowds, and slips away every evening as they take up stones to kill him.
 
These are the words that beat upon him (and us) relentlessly from day to day:
“The Jews were trying to kill him.” (Jn 7:1)
“You have a demon!  Who is trying to kill you?” (Jn 7:20)
“Is not this the man whom they are trying to kill?” (Jn 7:25)
“So they tried to arrest him, but no one laid a hand upon him, because his hour had not yet come.” (Jn 7:30)
“Surely the Messiah does not come from Galilee, does he?” (Jn 7:41)
“Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him.” (Jn 7:44)
“Look and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.” (Jn 7:52)
“You are testifying on your own behalf; your testimony is not valid.” (Jn 8:13)
“No one arrested him, because his hour had not yet come.” (Jn 8:20)
“Who are you?” (Jn 8:25)
“Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?” (Jn 8:48)
“Who do you claim to be?” (Jn 8:53)
“So they picked up stones to throw at him;
but Jesus hid and went out of the temple area.” (Jn 8:59)
 
When I was a child, we had a saying:  “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me!”  This was what you were supposed to say to someone who spoke nasty words.  Its meaning was something like: verbal violence is nothing compared to physical violence and I bet you wouldn’t dare to lift your hand against me.  The irony is that this is utterly false.  Words do hurt, sometimes as much as physical violence, and sometimes more.  It is striking to see in accounts of interrogation and martyrdom how, without touching the body, unbearable psychological pressure can be applied to dismantle the person.  I am thinking in particular of St Thomas More, whose time in the Tower of London before his execution was geared toward wearing down his resolve and undermining his conscience.  The film  Sophie Scholl – The Final Days shows the Nazi authorities using almost every conceivable means – constant questioning, reams of facts and figures, emotional manipulation, threats of violence, offers of release, public humiliation – to undermine the integrity of a young woman who stands for truth and solidarity.  Up until the final moment of execution, there is a noticeable and eerie absence of physical violence, just as in John’s Gospel.  The violence is verbal, the tension palpable and the threat continual.  Sophie Scholl’s inner strength and clarity of thought in the face of this is remarkable and Christlike.
 
This war of words, this battle for the truth, which Christ waged before his Passion and his martyrs after him, is ours too.  The monastic fathers speak of a spiritual battle which takes place in the heart concerning the thoughts that arise there continually.  Words that come to us from the outside, from the media and from those around us, and words that come from the inside, from our own inner emotional dynamics – we know that these words do not always speak the truth.  Our thoughts can lie to us about God, about ourselves and about other people; they can undermine our faith, hope and love.  If we are not aware of what thoughts are flowing through our consciousness, we can easily be overwhelmed by them and find ourselves speaking and acting in ways that contradict our commitment to Christ.  Even when we are vigilant about our thoughts, they can still beat upon us relentlessly if we have no way of fighting them.
 
Let us be clear that when we speak of a battle or war in the spiritual life, it is never a battle against “flesh and blood,” that is, against other people.  It is not a culture war or a crusade for the conversion of everyone around me.  It is rather Christ’s battle for dominion over our heart: over our thoughts, our words, our actions and our whole life.  St Benedict says that we are called to fight in the battle line of our brothers or sisters.  We are not hermits engaged in single combat, but cenobites who struggle together toward the kingdom of God.  In our efforts to follow Christ, our successes and our failures in love, we affect one another for better or worse.  Our thoughts manifest themselves in a friendly smile or an ill-tempered frown, a good word or a wounding one, in openness to cooperation or a tendency to resistance and isolation.  The quality of our monastic life expands to the people close to us, our neighbors and friends.  In a more hidden way, it expands to those further away and unknown to us who are also touched, for better or worse, but the kind of lives we lead.  The battle for our thoughts is at the same time a battle for the life of our community, for the life of the Church, for the life of the world.
 
For me, it is Psalm 58 which expresses the pestering quality of afflictive thoughts most poignantly.  The psalmist uses the image of dogs in a twice-repeated refrain:
“Each evening they come back like dogs.
They howl and roam about the city,
they prowl in search of food,
they snarl till they have their fill.” (Ps 58:7, 15-16)
But the psalmist finds strength to resist in the Lord, and expresses this in an answering refrain:
“O my Strength, it is you to whom I turn,
for you, O God, are my stronghold,
the God who shows me love.” (Ps 58:10-11, 18)
 
What does Jesus have to say in this war of words?  He says:
“If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples,
and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (Jn 8:31)
“You are trying to kill me, because there is no place in you for my word.” (Jn 8:37)
“You cannot accept my word.” (Jn 8:43)
“Because I tell the truth, you do not believe me.” (Jn 8:45)
The diagnosis is this: there is no place in you for my word.  If we are to survive our war of words, our battle with the afflictive thoughts of the heart, we need space for the word of Christ, the Word who is Christ.
 
This is exactly what Evagrius of Pontus recommends in his famous work, known in a recent English translation as Talking Back.  Evagrius provides us with a manual for the spiritual struggle in which he lists the kinds of thoughts that can lead us astray: thoughts of gluttony, lust, avarice, sadness, anger, acedia, vainglory and pride.  His descriptions betray intimate knowledge of human nature and the tortuousness of the human mind.  For each thought, Evagrius offers a word from the Scriptures to set in opposition to and replace the word that our mind presents to us.  Some examples:
“Against the thought of sadness that comes to us concerning transitory affairs, sinking the intellect into great affliction and killing it:
For Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret, but worldly grief produces death.” 1 Cor 7:10 (Talking Back, 4.74)
“Against the thoughts that cast us into grief over the brothers’ failings:
Bear one another’s burdens and in this way you fulfil the law of Christ.” Gal 6:2
(Talking Back, 5.47)
“Against the thoughts that show us the monastic life, that there are many afflictions and great labors in its discipline:
The Lord is good to those who wait for him.  The soul that seeks him is good: it will endure and quietly await the salvation of the Lord.” Lam 3:25-6 (Talking Back, 6.40)
What Evagrius is doing here is setting the word of God as a standard by which to measure our inner words, to cut through the tangle of discouragement, confusion, malice and self-justification, to reestablish God’s truth at the center.
 
Christ is seeking a place for his word within us.  The Word wants to make room for himself to speak truth in our hearts.  In the midst of opposing, confusing and rejecting words, he says:
“I AM the light of the world.” (Jn 8:12)
“When you have lifted up the Son of Man,
you will know that I AM.” (Jn 8:28)
“Truly, truly, I say to you,
before Abraham was, I AM.” (Jn 8:58)
 
So as we enter into our Passiontide, walking with Christ toward his hour, and enduring with him that war of words which threatens to eliminate the truth, let us take seriously the call to make room in ourselves for Christ’s word.  Let us make use of the words of Scripture to set right the thoughts of our hearts.  Let us invite Christ to speak in our lives the word that transforms the world: I AM.