Filioque

A lone surfer stalks the waves....

Joyful, spontaneous, autonomous, free,- that is how we would all specially like our children to be at Christmas, and indeed it is how our Father in Heaven would like all of us to be all the time. However, some will probably think it a tad self indulgent to think that way, 'when there is so  much suffering in the world'. As for myself, I am more than likely to be asked why I think fit to put every spare bit of cash and effort that I can muster into my old wooden sailing boat, let alone that I presume to believe that God and Our Lady actually help me in this 'wasteful' effort!

    What an absurd idea, that Almighty God hasn't enough trouble on his hands without going out of his way to care about an old boat and her eccentric skipper, a somewhat spoiled old boy who has had a good life and should be very content to live out his days looking after his long-suffering wife, en paz y en la Gracia de Diós! Wouldn't it be more Christian to give any spare cash he may have to feed the hungry and oppressed?

    In the coming June it will be nine years since I committed this project to Nossa Senhora da Nazaré, having asked Our Lady if I should go into the harbour there and put the old boat on the concrete, and received a clear answer. There are not a few people about who would have said it would have been much more sensible to let her to the bottom of the Nazaré Trench, the deep water that nearly comes into the bay there, especially as she was well insured. Well, the hull is good for many years again now. It has been difficult and frustrating, but also enjoyable and I have learned a lot. It may be strange, but one is never too old to learn, unless one is brain dead, - and after all, when one learns something, the other people in one's life learn as well!

    Had I been asked at the beginning, in all honesty, whether I had the resources to carry out such a project, the answer would have had to be no. It has been one little bit of fortune after another that has enabled us to come so far, in spite of many head winds, covid, my own bit of cancer, etc. The unexpected generosity of a friend enabled my recent trip to Nazaré, which wrapped up this year so that we only face the relatively straight-forward matter like getting the engine in and the rig up in the Spring. It has been disappointing not to be able to get the electric drive together, but we shall be keeping it in mind....

    Now at Christmas-time in West Clare, I have the luxury of taking it easy, and besides enjoying family and friends, I take the chance of looking up old friends in the form of books that I once gobbled up. Among them, Teilhard de Chardin, whose optimism has worn somewhat ragged at this stage. Still, amidst the torrent of somewhat high-flown language, one comes across beautiful expressions such as,- 'In the vast unknown of nature he (the seer) will strive to hear the heart-beats of the higher reality that calls him by name.' I suppose this knocks on the box of any sailor who goes to sea in a small sailing boat, though they might not put it in such grandiose language, and might want to refer to the special relationship that sailing puts one in both with all the vital practical bits and pieces of life, and with other people, where that higher reality is also to be found.

    With my thought taking a theological turn, the recent visit of Pope Leo to the site of the Council of Nicaea, which took place there 1700 years ago and where the Nicene creed was formulated, had me pondering yet again the mysterious controversy about a single word in it,-‘filioque’ - 'and from the son' as the wonderfully concise Latin has it, - the issue being whether or not the Holy Spirit should be said to ‘proceed from the Father and the Son’. How come so many illustrious men have put so much passion into debating the matter, and indeed been prepared to divide Christ’s Church over it? What on Earth is really at stake? Most of the argument seems to be derived from Scripture or what this or that Church Father had to say about it. I leave such matters to the professionals, and merely ask, could there possibly be any relevance to, or even resonance with, my own experience, and with the quest of contemporary folk to relate to 'the higher reality'?

Sixty years ago, Progress probably had a lot more credit than it has today; Teilhard was certainly a devotee of it, even as he toiled as a stretcher-bearer in the Great War. I suppose he would conclude that even that catastrophe helped to push Progress on its way, giving a great boost to the wonders of science and technology. Machines were on course to take the drudgery out of life; women, oppressed peoples everywhere were to be liberated. Eventually, even the atomic bomb would force mankind to move beyond recourse to war. Great institutions like the U.N. and the E.U. would prevail, and enable us to move to a wonderful new age of peace and harmony.

‘See the wonders of technology and evolution! Progress and Democracy will prevail! Onwards and Upwards we go!’ However, 'I'm not so sure about that!’ growled some pesky intellectuals or reactionaries; 'the Christian Church is dying and we are being enslaved!’ ‘No, the gates of Hell cannot prevail, Christ’s work cannot fail’. ‘Keep faith and say your prayers, Jesus will look after you and everything will work out for the best!’ said my mother. ‘Huh, he didn’t look after the Irish or the Poles very well!’ said my father. ‘The Lord is never outdone in generosity!’ said Fr Leander, an old Irish monk.

In any Catholic church, such paradoxes are reflected in the two icons which stand out,- the Crucifix and the Madonna,- the disturbing image of the crucified Saviour, and the comforting, tender and hopeful image of Our Lady with the infant Jesus at her breast.  ‘No one comes to the Father except through me,’ he was to say. Why does the Eastern Church, and likely enough especially the Russian Orthodox, have trouble with filioque? It may be said that they have a penchant for vertical power unmodified in the horizontal dimension. Further on in the same direction, Muslims utterly reject the notion of God becoming man, insisting that the transcendent Allah cannot by any means be represented on Earth. I think it small wonder that, as a direct result, they have a proclivity to sado-masochism. They also seem deficient in the kind of laughter and fun which to my mind underlay much of the strength of European culture.

    Perhaps it is simply because the land and the climate are more kindly, the soil more fruitful and life generally somewhat easier in Western Europe, that here we find it easier to believe in a benign God who took our flesh and nature in order to be one of us, and to show how humanity could be free and joyful. These days we can even envisage that our DNA is written in the language of His Word, thus giving startling new resonance to the first words of St John's gospel,- In the beginning

Elevation of the Gospel

was the Word: the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things came to be, not one thing had its being but through him. All that came to be had life in him, and that life was the light of men.

It is such words of power which enable us to believe that the Holy Spirit, emanating from the relationship between the Father in transcendent majesty and the incarnate Son, is indeed present and active in all creation. Yes, the Holy Spirit has to proceed from both the Father and the Son if we are to learn to believe that in spite of our rebellion, we have only to repent for All things to be well! We do have to acknowledge that rebellion, for it is the only way of accounting for all the things that go wrong, but though it is a very painful process, God found a way to turn the situation on its head. 

Our Lady was the only person to keep faith at the darkest hour that Jesus would indeed rise again, and she points the way to new life with her child. Those who believe in his resurrection are empowered to become children of God, and to believe that in spite of all the appearances to the contrary, love and life will prevail. Human development is not after all a farce, even democracy can happen, people can be free, because the Holy Spirit is present through the incarnate Saviour. God doesn’t have to ‘break in’,- He can just as well ‘break out’! He ‘breaks out’ in the vast processes of nature, evolution, the sea and the stars,- but He also delights to break out in humdrum, personal little ways that you and I can see and experience, provided we turn to Him. So we can pray with Isaiah (45.8):- Send victory like a dew, you heavens, and let the clouds rain it down. Let the earth open for salvation to spring up. Let deliverance, too, bud forth which I, the Lord, shall create.'

It all goes to show how important that filioque is! If we would only reboot, plugging firmly into that power emanating from the polarity between the 'Father' and the 'Son', we 'in the West'could revive our roots, renew our vigour and solidarity, stiffen our backs and face down all of the many and diverse bullies and tyrants who beset humanity,- and indeed we could hope to enjoy a Merry Christmas!

... with the Porto de abrigo so close by!