These are such strange times to be living through. Here in Burswell House, we are in quarantine, lazaretto, as I wrote last time. Unless you are St Cuthbert who knew a lot about self-isolation, it takes some getting used to. We know it is for the safety of all of us, others, ourselves. But on Sunday especially, it is hard to realise that the eucharist will not be the focal point of our day, hard not to look forward to seeing our friends and neighbours in church, one of the village's key gathering-places, hard not to have face-to-face contact and share our stories of the past week.
So like many of you I'm sure, we listened especially carefully to today's act of worship on BBC Radio 4. It came from Lambeth Palace and was led by the Archbishop of Canterbury. It could not have been done better. There was great sensitivity in the choice of readings, music and prayers to reflect the seriousness of these times. Familiar words seemed to take on fresh and urgent meanings. In the opening hymn, for instance, ‘Lord of all hopefulness, Lord of all joy’. I’ve sung it hundreds of times, yet never felt more powerfully the sense of the day’s curve and of our life’s curve traced out in the last line of each stanza, from ‘the break of the day’ through ‘the noon of the day’ to ‘the eve of the day’ and ‘the end of the day’. It was inspired, too, to choose as the gospel reading the word from the cross in St John where Jesus entrusts his mother and the beloved disciple to each other’s care: Mothering Sunday perfectly linked to human suffering in the passion of Jesus.*
Tonight at 7pm, in common with people across the country, we shall light a candle in the study window. Indeed, we’ve decided to light it each evening at that time for a few minutes for as long as this Coronavirus is with us. In the Middle Ages they spoke of plague stalking the streets. Well, maybe the virus will see these candles burning in our windows and think better of crossing our thresholds. I’m speaking in primitive metaphor, of course. But there’s something undeniably powerful in kindling lights in a solidarity of prayer and hope. Our solidarity with others, God’s solidarity with us. I dare say we shall be the stronger in mind and spirit for taking part in this simple yet profound act, better equipped to face whatever ordeals the coming weeks and months may bring.
When we are forced to be socially distanced or ‘self-isolated’, it matters that we do not think of ourselves as alone, cut off from the mainstream of our society, the human family, those who love us. There’s a required solitude just now, of course whether we experience it as individual people, couples or families. But as Cuthbert and the desert fathers teach us, solitude is not isolation. The hermit life was and is a profoundly connected way of being human in which relationships and community matter all the more, not less. Our lighted candles, vulnerable and precarious though their flames will be, nevertheless represent the conviction that we are together in anxiety and suffering, together in our wish to hold victims in our hearts and care for them, together in our hope, our expectation indeed, that under God we shall be kept safe through this time of trial.
That’s an allusion to the final petition of the Lord’s Prayer, of course, ‘Save us in the time of trial and rescue us from the evil one’ as I think it should be translated.** Peirasmos, which we usually render as ‘temptation’, has much more the sense of a great ordeal such as would destroy the faith and hope of anyone. It’s what Jesus experiences in the desert as we recall in this season of Lent, this quarantine of savage times and places that he must undergo in his wilderness of self-isolation. In the anxieties that this pandemic is generating, I think we are probably experiencing a collective peirasmos such as we haven’t known for decades, maybe never in our lifetimes. It’s as cruel as that.
I doubt those who first prayed the words of the Our Father thought they were thereby protected from physical danger or harm. What’s the Lord’s Prayer fundamentally about? Surely it’s the coming of God’s kingdom, his just and gentle rule that brings everything into its right relationship with the Creator, that reconciles all that is broken and destructive and hurtful, that is the source of grace and truth, joy, peace and good in human life. It’s our inward transformation I shall be thinking of when we light our candle tonight. And of the words Jesus says to Peter before the ordeal of his passion, ‘I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail’*** - personally and collectively. We need to pray for one another and for our world that in the face of this threat, our faith may not fail and our hope be kept alive - even if it’s as fragile as a tiny candle flame burning in a great darkness.
This ordeal is hard for all of us and may be devastating for some. Who knows if we shall catch the virus ourselves despite taking every precaution, perhaps be severely affected by it, maybe even die or be bereaved because of it? It’s foolish not to ask ourselves those questions and make preparations in case our fears are realised. Our forebears took mortality for granted: read the seventeenth century Bishop Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Living and Holy Dying as one of the most famous and spiritually wise examples of how to face death with equanimity. We find it harder than his generation to imagine that we won’t live for ever. But when we love life and are filled with gratitude at the beauty of things and the wonder of our own existence, it’s not surprising that the thought of not seeing another springtime seems unbearable at times.
So our candle can be the prayer that during these turbulent times, we don’t lose heart but that our faith holds, sustained by the belief that God is not far from any of us and that he is especially close to those who are suffering or lonely or afraid. We need to pray, ‘save us in the time of trial and deliver us from the evil one’. And perhaps see in the candles in our windows a promise of the Paschal Candle that will be lit in our churches on Easter Day in celebration of Christ risen from the dead. In our darkened streets, tonight’s candles will speak not only of our solidarity in suffering, but of a hope that transcends fear and pain and loss and even death itself. ‘We are more than conquerors through him who loved us’ says St Paul.****
I think of those words, and my spirits lighten. I am not as fearful as I was. I feel strangely calmed, and stronger once again.
*John 19.25-27 **Matthew 6.13 ***Luke 22.32 ****Romans 8.37
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