Marriage

Why did I think I wanted to marry Edna?

That may mean two things:

• Why Edna as opposed to someone else?
• Why did I want to get married at all?

As to the first - I do not really have an answer, but the fact was definite.  When I first sat down to write this, I had thought I would say that Edna was there, was attractive, and that was all there was to it.

But there were any number of girls around who met those criteria.  One might thing that Edna was available - only she wasn't.  She had a boyfriend, an engineering student named Bill, as I recall.  I had to win her away from him.

I do not know why, therefore, it was Edna and no one else.  These things are a mystery, and I can well believe that in these matters, as, indeed, in every detail of our lives, a Providence is at work.

I do not know why Edna, but I do know why marriage.

What else was there?

It is strange to me to be asking that (rhetorical) question in 2011 - it is strange that it is not strange.  I fear that to anyone under, say, the age of 40, the question must not seem rhetorical at all.  What else is there?  Well, you could just live together, couldn't you?

I am sure that in 1962 there were plenty of couples "just living together," but it was not a thought that could possibly have come to me.  Anyone with anything like a conventional upbringing, born, as I was - and as Edna was - in 1942, simply would not have thought of any other way for a couple to live together except married.  Indeed, I do not think it would have been easy to find a place to accept such a living arrangement.  That young men and women were together - in every sense of the word - in 1962 is undeniable.  I was not, I am afraid, ignorant of such things.  But living together was not something that could have occurred to me.

It is a question - the question of why I wanted to get married - of some interest.  This is not the place to go into the question, which must be examined later, of my marriage to Edna in relation to my and Susan's entering the Catholic Church.  Nevertheless, as will appear, I did meet at least one obstacle to the idea of marriage, when details of our wedding were discussed.

But anyway, I was determined that I wanted Edna and me to be married - and I exerted considerable pressure on her to agree.

So I set a good start to our wedding plans by nearly - albeit unintentionally and as a result of thoughtlessness - by nearly killing her.

The University year ended at the end of May or beginning of June, 1962.  I went home to my parents' farm in Oroville, and arranged for Edna to come up to spend a week with us, meet the family, and so forth.  She arrived, one normally hot day - perhaps 40 Celsius degrees (104F) - on the Greyhound coach from San Francisco.  I met her, dressed, as was my normal summer clothing, in nothing but cut-off jeans.  I saw her walk along the aisle of the air-conditioned coach and when she came to the door, she seemed to hit a barrier for a moment - then came out.  "Is it always so hot??"  "Oh, is it hot?  I guess so."

Edna had lived her early childhood in Northern Ireland - where, I am assured, the temperature quite often rises above freezing, in summer, that is - and had then lived all her life in San Francisco - where a really hot day might be 30 (86F).  This ought, perhaps, have been a warning.

"Let's go swimming!!"  Good thing to do on a hot day.  Peter and I and Edna went to Bidwell's Bar - which is under Lake Oroville now and there, under the bridge, would have been a fine place to swim.

Fine, but boring.  Peter and I liked to walk up the railway tracks - as I think of it now, I wonder what we would have done had a train come along - scramble down the cliff face to the river (which there is no climbing up), jump in above what we called the Black Rock Rapids, shoot the Rock a few times, and finally swim across to the other side and walk - or swim - back down to the Bridge.

Edna showed some signs of nervousness, I think, but I was not very sensitive to such things in those days - and perhaps enjoyed showing off.

Peter jumped in.  Edna jumped in.  The water was, indeed, a bit cool - but at least a few degrees above freezing.  Edna immediately began to climb out - by walking on top of Peter.

We made it to the other side.  No one died.  We walked back down to the Bridge.  Perhaps you would think I had learned my lesson.  I fear I am a slow learner.

The summer passed.  Plans were made.  On 2 September, 1962 - Edna 20, me 20 days short of my 20th birthday - we were married.

Memory

I have rather stalled in writing.  One reason, of course, is inertia.  Miss one week and it is easier to miss the next ... and the next ... and then a month has gone by.

But there is another reason.  I last wrote a 'Memoir' entry on 7 November, 2010.  I have several times thought that I had better go on with those - but each time have either done nothing or written something else.

What am I afraid of?

'Afraid' does, I think, account for my reluctance.

The accounts I had written up to, and including, the one mentioned above - 46 of them I discover! - have glossed over some pretty rough material.  I have told of things that are decent enough to recount, or at worst the foibles of a young boy, and a very unrefined young boy, at that.  Even during those events, and increasingly as I grew more mature, are quite a few that I am deeply ashamed of.  I saw - and see - no reason to retail them to the world.  They, at least, have no worldly consequences that derive from their history.

At the end of the 7 November 2010 memoir, I said that I met Edna.  This certainly changed my life - and hers - in major ways, and has had very significant worldly consequences.

So ... I fear to go on.  I will do so.  My children - including my and Edna's daughter Katheleen - have asked for this.  I trust they wish it to continue.  But I fear:

• being rejected by them for my undeniable faults and failings
• angering them,  by revealing things they do not wish revealed

Regarding the first, my reason tells me that I should not fear their rejection.  Edna knows those faults and failings, as well as anyone, better, perhaps, than anyone but Susan.  Kathleen knows something of them, and I trust her own good heart.  Susan and our four children - Johnny, Helen, Eddie, and Adele - know me as well, and I must trust that their love for me will overcome their repugnance at my ill behaviour.

Regarding the second - those who appear in these memoirs should be reassured that this will not be a lurid and gross chronicle of sins.  Nonetheless, allusion will be made to things which both I and my loved ones will regret.  I think, even so, that it is worthwhile putting down the events of those years, for they have shaped me, and they have certainly played a part in shaping each of those involved in the events.

All of which sounds fairly dismal, and I think it worth saying that there were things in those times that, given what I was capable of, show that I, at times, rose above my worst faults.  There are things that I do not like recalling; there are things that I am confident point to better things ahead.

As I said, I met Edna.  I do not remember the details of that meeting.  I think that I was already acquainted with Harry Frank, and that he was the link between me and Edna.  Edna is a reader of these notes, and so perhaps she can confirm that this is true.  I think that Harry lived in the "House of Logy" where David, Lanny, Lee (I think), and I lived.

I am ashamed to say that I do not even know - perhaps never knew, which, no doubt, says a lot about me - what Edna was studying at the University - something in me says that she was studying psychology, but it is only a vague memory.  Edna had been born in Northern Ireland - in Cookstown, I think.  That may, indeed, have been one of the attractions she had for me.  I have always had romantic feelings connected with Ireland - never, I trust, to be shattered by any actual experience of the country.  Edna's speech was not Irish.  Her family had come to San Francisco when she was - what? - five? six?  Quite young, anyway.

And I was 19, and was attracted to Edna in the ways that 19-year olds are attracted to young women.  It was a very short time - a matter of a few weeks at most, I think - before I had convinced Edna to marry me.

Cur deus homo?

I went to Confession yesterday.  I go pretty regularly once a week.

You may relax - I am not going to tell you about my sins.  Those of you who know me, know quite enough about them already; the rest really don't want or need to know.

But I did confess sins.  The bare script for Confession - for those of you who are not Catholics and may want to know - is:

• I confess my sins.
• I tell God I am sorry (despite a sometimes-vivid Protestant take on Confession, it is not the priest I am confessing to, it is God).
• Father gives me absolution - prays that "through the ministry of the Church" God may grant me pardon and peace, and that he absolves me from my sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

And then Father gives me my 'penance.'

Yesterday, my penance was (this priest's standard hand-out) was to "pray the Magnificat, or one or two prayers of [my] own."

OK, I wasn't confessing murder or adultery or using masculine pronouns to refer to generic human beings or other serious sins.  No doubt if I had been, my penance might have been heavier.  Nevertheless, what good does my reciting a brief passage of Scripture do?  Is this enough to bring peace between me and God?  Anyway, I thought Jesus had died to pay for all of my sins.  Why do I have to do anything at all?

The title of this post - Cur deus homo? - means "why [did] God [become] man?"  It is the title of a famous essay by St Anselm about the atonement Jesus won for man.  This short post is not the place to discuss the various theories concerning the reasons for Christ's death.  The standard one since at least Calvin - and based, ultimately, on Anselms' book - is that man's sin is like a crime against God (Anselm, speaking in terms of feudalism, thought of it as an offence against God's honour).  That crime requires a penalty to be paid - like paying a fine for your traffic violation.  But in the case of my sin against God - any sin, however small - because God is infinite, the fine is infinite.

I cannot pay an infinite fine.  Furthermore, I cannot pay any fine.  What I 'owe' God is perfect obedience, perfect holiness.  Any good work I do is itself required.  It cannot make up for any failure of mine:

So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do. (Luke 17:10)

But Christ is not only a Man; He is God Himself.  His sacrifice on the Cross is of infinite worth.  He is not paying for His own sins; He has none.  He is offering it for mine - and for yours and for those of every member of the human race (unless you are Calvinist, in which case you think He is offering it only for those whom He has chosen to eternal life - but this does not affect the discussion, really).

So He has paid my debt.  I go free.

I think this is a very good analysis - as far as it goes.  Because if I leave it there, then I begin to wonder what my penance is for.

Indeed, I wonder what my motivation for avoiding sin is.  Oh, to be sure, sin makes me unhappy in many cases.  There is no question that living a virtuous life is likely to make me more comfortable even in this life.  But if I want to sin ... why should I not?

And what is that "Magnificat, or one or two prayers of my own" all about?

I do not think the "penal substitution", which is what the above summary is called, view goes far enough.  I think I find most views of the atonement leave me wanting something.  They all have in common, I think, that Christ is over there and I am here and He does something for me, so that I don't have to do it.

I remember, early in my experience as a Catholic, saying to Susan, with some surprise, that I had come to realise that, when a Protestant, I thought that Jesus suffered and died (and, I might have added, lived a holy and virtuous Life), so that I would not have to.  I had, I said, come to realise that I believed that Jesus had lived a virtuous and holy life, had suffered and died (for it is certain that my sin deserves death - God said that at the beginning to Adam and Eve:

...in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. (Genesis 2:17)

- that Jesus had suffered and died so that I would be able to.

Then, somewhat later, I discovered that I had read exactly this, in my first year or two (1970-1) as a Christian, in C. S. Lewis's "Mere Christianity."  I won't quote the whole passage here, but you should read it.  It concludes:

But supposing God became a man - suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God's nature in one person - then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can do it only if He becomes man. Our attempts at this dying will succeed only if we men share in God's dying, just as our thinking can succeed only because it is a drop out of the ocean of His intelligence: but we cannot share God's dying unless God dies; and he cannot die except by being a man. That is the sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all.

It is that "in us" of Lewis's that makes the difference for me.  I  share in God's dying.  I share in the way I can.  I share by faith in Him.  I share by living my life as well as I can by faith in Him, by the power of the Holy Spirit that He has given me.  I share by living those sufferings that He sends my way - the natural ones of life, and ultimately that natural one called death - by living those sufferings as in Him - by doing what Catholics call "offering them up."  I share even by my "Magnificat or one or two prayers of my own" - them not because they are great things, but because I believe He has appointed His Church with authority to assign me them as a task.

By these sharings, I share, please God, in His Sacrifice.  And - God grant it! - I will share, even now do share, in the Power of His Resurrection.

Resurrection

I have just finished reading the recently-published volume 2 of the Pope's "Jesus of Nazareth" - and, by the way, you should read it, too! - and I was struck by something the Pope pointed out about the Resurrection of the Lord.

The Resurrection of Christ is physical.

Well, duh!  We Christians believe in the Resurrection of the Body, don't we?

Yes, of course we do.  It is, however, essential to bear in mind that the Resurrection is not simply resuscitation.  Lazarus, Jairus's daughter, the young man of Nain, were all resuscitated.  They were brought back to the ordinary life that we all live.  Eventually they died in the ordinary way.

The Resurrection of Christ, it is clear, is of another nature.  The Risen Lord appears in a locked room.  He disappears from the table after breaking bread with the two men in the inn at Emmaus.  He ascends into Heaven - whatever that is supposed to mean! - out of the sight of the Apostles on Ascension Thursday.  It is very easy for us unconsciously to feel - as the Apostles very consciously thought - that this is not really a physical being.  This is some sort of spook appearing as if physical.  This feeling is very stubborn in me.

This feeling is not surprising.  After all, my physical body cannot behave like this.  I have to unlock doors if I want to appear on the other side of them.  I have to get up and walk out of a room if I want to leave the table.  And the only way I am going to ascend into the heavens - much less into Heaven! - is courtesy of Air New Zealand or some similar agent.

Yet the Risen Christ is physical.  He demonstrates this to His disciples, after the pilgrims to Emmaus showed up back in Jerusalem (Luke 24:23-33):

Rising up there and then, they went back to Jerusalem, where they found the eleven apostles and their companions gathered together, now saying, The Lord has indeed risen, and has appeared to Simon. And they told the story of their encounter in the road, and how they recognized him when he broke bread.

While they were speaking of this, he himself stood in the midst of them, and said, Peace be upon you; it is myself, do not be afraid. They cowered down, full of terror, thinking that they were seeing an apparition. What, he said to them, are you dismayed? Whence come these surmises in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet, to be assured that it is myself; touch me, and look; a spirit has not flesh and bones, as you see that I have. And as he spoke thus, he showed them his hands and his feet. Then, while they were still doubtful, and bewildered with joy, he asked them, Have you anything here to eat? So they put before him a piece of roast fish, and a honeycomb; and he took these and ate in their presence and shared his meal with them.

 This, then, this new order of physicality, is what the Sacraments are about.  God can, after all, give the new life as He pleases.  He does not need physical means - means, after all, strictly of the old physical order - with one exception - to bring about whatever change in our own being that is this new life - this eternal life.  There are, indeed, many groups of Christians who believe that the Sacraments have nothing to do with the life of God that, we hope, has begun in us, and will be in us - God grant it! - forever.  Yet most Christians - Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, most Lutherans and Anglicans - are sure that God's normal way of granting new life is through the Sacraments.  In baptism we are really regenerated - born again with a new nature, a nature that is not only able to empower us to resist sin and to work righteousness, but a new nature which, if we do not kill it by decisively turning away from God, will mean that we will live forever in the joy of Communion with Him - able to see Him as He is, and not only through the images of Him that created reality bring us.

There is one Sacrament which, we believe, is more than this.  There is one Sacrament that - physically! - actually brings this new divine life precisely into our physical bodies.  That is the Eucharist.  That is what is meant by the Church's teaching that the Eucharistic elements are, after Consecration, no longer bread and wine, though all their old creation behaviour is that of bread and wine.  They are now the Body and Blood of the Risen Lord.  Received with faith, they are what St Ignatius of Antioch, on his way to martyrdom in AD 108, called the 'medicine of immortality.'

Jesus said to them, Believe me when I tell you this; you can have no life in yourselves, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood. The man who eats my flesh and drinks my blood enjoys eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. My flesh is real food, my blood is real drink. He who eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, lives continually in me, and I in him. (John 6:53-56)

Faith

Recently, on a blog that I read fairly regularly, which is aimed at Catholic-Reformed dialogue (Called to Communion), someone posted:

How much do you think the “health and wealth gospel” can be attributed to penal substitutionary atonement soteriology fermenting in an affluent culture? While I think a lot of the wealth gospel crew are in it for the dough, I think a lot of them feel that prosperity is essential since poverty is a curse in the deuteronomic covenant and Christ became the curse for us. (“He who was rich became poor so that we who were poor might through his poverty become rich”- 2 Cor 8:9). Within a penal substitutionary atonement model, I think they aren’t being completely irrational.
I’d be interested in your professional thoughts.

The "penal substitutionary atonement soteriology" the writer is referring to means, roughly, the idea that:

• we sinned
• we owe the penalty for our sin, namely damnation
• Jesus paid the penalty on the Cross
• now our debt is paid

I do not at all wish to engage here in a Catholic-Protestant debate, but I confess this struck me quite powerfully about what I think is the fundamental difference between a certain outlook on the Atonement that I think of as Protestant, and what I think the Catholic view is.  Allowing that there is rather a continuum here - with the view I am calling Protestant being at one end, and the view I call Catholic at the other, though with individuals all over the map - I would express it in more or less epigrammatic form as:

To the Protestant, Jesus suffered and died so that we wouldn't have to.

To the Catholic, Jesus suffered and died so that we would be able to.

This is not, perhaps, the place to go into deep theology, but I think this explains quite a few criticisms by Protestants of the Catholic viewpoint.  For example:

• Jesus paid it all - why should there be Purgatory?
• Jesus paid it all - how can my good works contribute to my salvation?
• Jesus paid it all - how can I lose my salvation?

And many others.

Indeed, I would go further than the writer above.  If, indeed, Jesus paid it all - and if payment was the whole story - should not the curse of death be lifted?  And what we find in many strains of Protestantism is a strong attraction to Rapture-eschatology, and to an imminent return of Christ - so that, indeed, those of us who are left will not die.

I think the key to atonement is divine sonship - that we, by adoption, are sons of God.  In Christ - and with Christ in us - we do, indeed, participate in His Resurrection.  But our participation in Christ is in the whole Christ, not just the victory:

• We participate in His creative work in our own labour
• We participate in His Cross in our own suffering
• We participate in His obedience to His Father by our own deeds of righteousness
• Even in our sins, we are participating in His bearing of our sins on the Cross
• And in our daily rising to repentance, and ultimately to glory, we participate in His Resurrection

I do not think I am able to make this very clear - the idea is very deep.  It is nothing less than the doctrine that by faith we are enabled to live Christ's life on earth that we may reign with Him in glory.

To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (Colossians 1:27)

Wish you could be there!

Just a little taste of the finale of the Tchaikovsky 5 - this is Bernstein conducting - not sure when it was played:

Time

About 3:30 this afternoon - Saturday 5th March - I am at rehearsal - Tchaikovsky 5th Symphony - we are messing about with the last movement, which requires a fair amount of intensity for the horn players.  My cellphone in my pocket gives a buzz - which only I notice :-) - and at a place where we have 16 bars to count I take it out and there is a message from Susan: "Ring me when you can - important."

So I know that my mother has died.

No, nothing preternatural, no instinctive knowledge, but I feel pretty sure that is what it is about.  I quickly text back "15 or 20 minutes," and continue playing.

In 2005 - don't remember the month, but I have an idea it was latish in the year - September, maybe? - Peter, my brother, tells me - on the 'phone, perhaps - that our mother is in bad shape, probably dying, and that if I want to see her, and if I can find the money for the trip, I should come now.  A bit of a look at the overdraught level and, yes, I think I had better go.  So I do.

She certainly seems in bad shape.  She is not very responsive.  She is on oxygen, needs constant care.  She is, at that time, just 90.  My dad, though a bit wobbly on his legs, due to a hip operation, is in pretty good shape, at 91.  I spend the week and a half there that I had time for, then returned home and to work.

October, 2006 - my brother calls me.  Dad has just died.  As I recall, he was just visiting his doctor, perhaps for a more or less routine checkup - and keeled over, dead.

So Dad, who is in fairly good shape for his age, is dead.  Mom, who is constantly in and out of danger, is still alive.

For the last six years, though, I have expected this moment, so it is not surprising that Sue's text means to me what it does.  And so the case is.  She had, I am told by various e-mails, been unable to eat anything for the last several days, and pretty unresponsive.  I don't know details yet, but Johnny, my son, says that he was told by Peter that my mother went into something like a coma maybe 24 hours before she died.

Cremation will happen shortly, I suppose.

And for the rest of us, time goes on.  I drive home from rehearsal, talking to Johnny on the cellphone.  There is dinner to be got this evening.  There will be rehearsal tomorrow, concerts next week-end.  My mother will no longer be concerned with such things.

So it will be for each of us, one day.  Time comes to an end.  The world will go one.  I do not know whether, dead, we will be aware of any of that.  If we are, it will be through our love for God, I think.

I have prayed for my mother every day since I have been a Christian.  I will go on praying for her.  I pray that that spark of love in her which I, as her son, knew and recognised, covered over though it sometimes was by her self-will and passionate, fiery, nature, will find its fulfilment and rest in the One towards Whom, even if not recognised, it was directed and intended.  Mom, may you find that rest that seemed often to elude you in life.  May the tears you shed for us be rewarded and dried in the peace that you needed, sought, fled from at times, but which - I pray - will be your home.  And may you be united, too, with those whom you loved who have gone before - my father, Jeremiah, your own mother and father, brothers and sister.

I will ask Father Peter to say Mass for you tomorrow, and on Monday, I will ask the priest at the Cathedral the same.

Lux aeterna luceat ea, et requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine