This year, the gathering gloom has been not only seasonal. That’s bad enough here in Wales, where the more the shadows lengthen, the more conscious you are of the damp and cold weeks that lie ahead. The enveloping darkness here is moodier this year. Unlike the winter sun, whose light grows gradually more anaemic, this other gloom crashes into us like relentless waves carried by the ether: Russian advances in Ukraine, mass killings in Israel, the destruction of Gaza, far right political gains across Europe, British dismay at the American election.
“The world is growing darker,” is a sentiment I hear constantly these days, often from the elderly who once knew a world built out of optimism and hope. I cheerily say to my bible study group, “So many of our achievements have been built on the conviction that tomorrow will be better than today. But Hobbes was right: life is generally nasty, brutish, and short. Look what it has cost this world to fabricate a society that has allowed us to pretend otherwise.” Unsurprisingly, my ill-chosen words provide little encouragement.
I first detected the depth of this gloom during the recent British election, which seemed hardly to generate a pulse even though it ended an era of one party’s dominance. In the past, such a sea-change would have cleansed our political imagination, filling us with a sense of promise and renewal. But not this time. “More of the same,” mutter the cynics whom Britain produces like weeds. “The problems are too great for any government to overcome,” say those less jaded but more forlorn. The once strutting West now feels old, tired, and ill-at-ease with itself.
There is little I can say to any of this because their political or cultural disillusionment is based on a prior confidence that I lack. I’ve never had much faith in the longevity of our achievements and have always believed in human evil and corruption. Accounting for both has allowed me to be incurably hopeful, not because I think the world can be better (I don’t), but because I believe in the Gospel. We Christians are still learning that the abundant life Christ offers us doesn’t translate into worldly prosperity and security. Our Saviour never promised that we could overcome this world armed with that Gospel. He assured us only that he would keep us from being overcome by the darkness. Until we wrap our minds around the conviction that the Light of Christ is undiminished by the world’s darkness, we won’t even begin to lift up the cross that is ours to bear. The irony that has eluded Western Christianity for too long is that the more we seek to overcome the darkness through our own efforts, the blinder we become to that light. It’s only when we boldly face into the dark that we start to see the light of the Gospel shining brightly. Without the cross, there is no life.
As the world reels from the election of man seemingly devoid of the Christian virtues of “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” or even of the old pagan virtues of honour and temperance, I make my way across country to the Community of the Resurrection in Mirfield. Mirfield is an Anglican monastery, whose monks have had a profound influence (especially in southern Africa) over the last century or more. My first contact with its brothers was in my childhood when two of them visited my family in Florida. Ever since, the Community of the Resurrection has been picked out prominently on my mental map of Anglicanism.
I’ve been invited to speak to a small group of mostly young, Catholic-minded Anglican clergy, who gather twice a year at Mirfield for study, prayer, and mutual edification. Just to be in their presence is to experience promise. What veteran cleric doesn’t feel his or her younger self stir at the vitality of priests near the start of their ministry?
I arrive just in time for the noonday prayers and Eucharist that are led by Mirfield’s community of monks. The chants are beyond my musical ability. But after almost four hours of driving, I’m happy to let their voices carry me like the tide into the liturgy. The plain but touching holiness of the building is restorative, setting me up well to meet the clergy who have come more to enjoy each other’s company, I suspect, than to hear me talk.
Over lunch, I immediately experience the energy I’d been expecting. It is a theologically literate group of clerics, and so their conversation is nourishing. They are also obviously attentive pastors to their flocks, speaking with love about their parishes and the lives they encounter and serve within them. I enjoy listening to them.
But soon I detect a sour note. The Archbishop of Canterbury has just resigned in the wake of the Makin Report’s horrific account of abuse. Now, these young clergy must consider how to address the situation in their churches and from their pulpits, if at all. Two speak of congregations under their care that have experienced sexual abuse in the recent past. Many worry that the Report will be used less by the whole Church to heal than by warring factions to wound.
I came expecting this discordant note. But what surprises me is the next one, at first barely audible but which grows more insistent over the next twenty-four hours. As we talk about the importance of pastoral visiting, some of these fine young clergy begin to open up about the situations in which they have been placed. They’ve been charged with serving multiple congregations where effective patterns of ministry have collapsed. Ignored by their distant bishops, lost in a diocesan machinery that doesn’t value their Catholic approach to ministry, and carrying the weight of their own expectations, they have been burdened with impossible tasks.
I know this story well. In its desperation to keep churches open and to remain relevant to a population that largely doesn’t care, the Church places many clergy in intolerable positions. I know of many stipendiary clergy who struggle not to drown beneath relentless funerals, mountains of paperwork, desperate fundraising, and time-consuming roles that should be performed by laypeople. Meanwhile, many non-stipendiary clergy find themselves having to work full-time to meet all the demands placed on them. There are too many fine clergy trying to breathe life into enormous conglomerations of parishes in which no congregation amounts to more than a dozen elderly people. Young clergy are particularly vulnerable: their zeal and energy encourage people to mistake them for miracle-workers, and soon they find themselves in churches where that zeal and energy can only lead to frustration and burnout.
Again, my words are ill-chosen. I arrive at Mirfield ready to challenge them about pastoral visiting. “The cure of souls is at the heart of our ministry,” I explain. “Besides worship and preaching, it’s the only other duty we’re charged with.” But over-burdened as they are, some can only hear me judge them as failures, insisting that they must somehow find the strength and time to do still more. I try to win back sympathy by saying that what the Church is doing to clergy is unethical and an “institutional sin.” But what can any of them do about a Church that’s unfeeling enough to have put them into that position in the first place? The gloom gathers.
Yet there is too much light for it to overcome us. Youthful energy and camaraderie underpinned by a shared and abiding faith are still there. The grace that abounds from simply being at Mirfield and participating in the rounds of prayer applies its balm. None of them is ready to throw in the towel; all demonstrate a faith in God and in their vocation that inspires me. And at least some of my words trigger honest reactions, which lead to open and heartfelt conversations. So I return home in a hopeful mood, thankful for the Sabbath I’ve enjoyed with them.
On my way to Mirfield, I received a phone call from a lovely young couple in my congregation about the birth of their baby girl. Since they had lost their first child late in pregnancy, our congregation had been praying hard for them both. I was, therefore, ecstatic to learn that both mother and daughter were healthy and happy. My first prayer upon entering the church at Mirfield was in thanksgiving both for a safe delivery and for the journey of faith that God had set them on in the wake of tragedy. Once again, I was reminded of how sweet Easter is on the other side of Calvary. The light shines brightly indeed through the darkness.
A few days after my return, my wife and I drove down the Usk Valley, glorious in the autumn sun, to visit them in their home and to deliver gifts and a card from the congregation. This priestly visit after the birth of a baby was new to them both, but what an age-old practice it is. I found myself reflecting on the long line of my predecessors at St Mary’s Brecon, stretching back to Norman times, who had conscientiously done the same with the new mothers under their pastoral care.
Almost the moment I returned home, however, I received a phone call about a much-loved retired priest who was dying. So instead of going for a walk in the hills with a local author, I changed back into clericals and made a very different journey across the mountains to the hospital to give last rites. I’d gone there only the day before to anoint this good and gentle priest. Though he had been on an oxygen mask, we chatted for twenty minutes before I prayed over him and rubbed blessed oil onto his forehead. Even in his weakness, all he wanted to hear about was St Mary’s and how I was doing.
A couple of hours after a colleague and I gave him last rites, he died. “Well done, thou good and faithful servant” was my first thought on receiving the news. His stories about his long ministry in England and Wales have inspired me even more than his mischievous humour entertained me. He hearkened back to a time when priests had the space to be priests and, therefore, good priests to be very good priests, indeed. I was blessed by his friendship.
Afterwards, as I prepared dinner with my three dogs watching my every move, I reflected on a day that began with a new life and concluded with the end of an old one. But I quickly corrected myself. In the Early Church, the death of a Christian was treated as a birthday and the baptism of a convert like a funeral. “And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time,” wrote the poet T.S. Eliot. That is one of the great mysteries of our faith—that we are born into death and by dying rise to undying life. The light will not leave us to the darkness, however much it envelops us.
And so, feeling blessed by the rich experiences of my ministry, I stand at the start of a new year in the dying days of the old one. With Advent, the beginning comes once more at the end. Having explored the darkness “in the time of this mortal life,” I arrive in the company of the faithful at the door of a new year where I began. I am presented once more with the “armour of light” as I try to “cast away the works of darkness.” I sense the kindly light of Christmas approaching by which I’ll retrace the footsteps of my Saviour from the manger to the Easter garden. Whatever the year may bring, I will follow where that light leads me as I do every year. It’s a journey I’ve made enough times in my life, and especially in my priestly ministry, to recognise it for what it truly is: home.
Lead, Kindly Light, amidst th'encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on! The night is dark, and I am far from home, Lead Thou me on! Keep Thou my feet; I do not ask to see The distant scene; one step enough for me.
Image Via: Wikimedia Commons
