Oh dear. Everything has changed since the last time I wrote anything here. Squarespace keeps changing things and I have had enough trouble keeping up with the original. In any case, here we go!
What I recently became interested in was the idea and image of following and its two primary meanings. First there is the literal idea of physically following someone: “Follow me but stay close.” Dante follows Virgil through Hell, for example. Our new little dog Spooky follows Mary everywhere in the house and out. The second meaning is that used on kindle: whenever I click on an author, the site gives me the opportunity of “following” that author so that each time he or she writes a new book, I will be notified. Following then becomes a metaphor for paying attention to what someone is writing or doing. What occurred to me very recently as I was listening to Bishop Barron define the Ascension in the “Word on Fire” Rosary was the consequence for us of the meaning of the Ascension. In effect the Ascension meant that we were to follow Jesus to Heaven in our thoughts, our behavior, our prayers—in other words in our lives and how we now live them. In an email I sent to three good friends I attempted to define this following of the resurrected Christ, which I will now try to find and somewhat copy here—God willing.
Got the first one:
Bishop Barron explained the Ascension by saying that, as best as I remember, Christ went more deeply into” our world; into a “dimension that transcends” our world but is in some way linked to it. In so far as I can remember that is what Bishop Barrón said in attempting to define what the second mystery of the “Glorious Mysteries” in the Rosery meant, I.e. the Ascension of Christ at the end of the 40 days, refuting the “up, up and away” interpretation. This explanation or language I found compelling. It occurred to me when he said that that I suddenly understood something about the meaning there that I hadn’t understood before. The insight continued in his explanation of the fourth mystery, the “Assumption” of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and It involves both more insights and connections.
The first insight or connection is from Dante’s Purgatorio, when Beatrice harshly accuses Dante, in a sense, of serious betrayal. She says that when she died he should have followed her to Heaven in his life, thinking and orientation instead of betraying his vision of the goodness he saw in her when she was alive and walking on the streets of Florence by pursuing other women. That’s what the Ascension is revealing: we are meant to follow Jesus to Heaven in our lives, in our minds. And our behavior. I found the image and idea exciting as it suddenly gives a clear purpose to how I ought to be living and especially behaving. There is a concreteness and specificity to my understanding that wasn’t there before.
When Bishop Barron dealt with the Assumption, the fourth Glorious mystery, I saw or understood Mary to be the person who had literally and spiritually done that in the way Barrón described that mystery. Body and spirit she followed her son to Heaven. The second literary connection that occurred to me occurs at the end of the BBC King Lear which I watched yesterday. The image of Christ in the play is truly Cordelia who embodies the kind of sacrificial love for her father that Christ reveals for his. When Lear first sees her after he awakens from his madness, he says first, “You do me wrong to take me out of the grave” and “you are a soul in bliss and I am bound upon a wheel of fire.” At the end of the play, beautifully acted In the BBC production by Michael Hordern, Lear holds a feather to Cordelia’s lips and dies with great joy in thinking that in spite of everything she truly lives. And of course what lives in the play is her spirit, the realization of the presence of the love she has revealed throughout the play. [No character in the play dare say that her love is Christlike since there is a law in England at the time against using the name of God or Christ on the stage! Edgar is another image of the same love and the BBC production has him in his feigned madness wearing a crown of thorns—nudge, nudge! Most earlier critics acknowledge that this is the most Christian of the plays, though it is full of references to the pagan gods.] As Marjorie Garber in “Shakespeare After All” rightly points out, Lear and Cordelia image a reversed pieta, father holding his dead Idaughter on his lap.
The third artistic connection I saw was from the movie Risen. At the end of the movie when the risen Christ must leave those who love him dearly, for he has commissioned them to go out and spread the message, Jesus continually moves farther from them until he vanishes into this vision of beautiful, intense light. And one way of interpreting that as the movie more or less reveals is that we are to follow him, the same image as visible or understandable in the other two works, as the Roman Tribune does exactly that in walking out of the desert to the little Inn, then telling the story, and paying with his Tribune’s ring. Wow. In the movie the end is also in the beginning!
Follow up [pun intended].
When once the metaphor of following Christ to Heaven, or Beatrice to Christ as Dante should have done immediately long ago, I began to see how omnipresent the image of following really is. For example in the liturgy for today (4/15/24] the Psalm quoted is from 119; the response is: “Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord.” Of course the word “follow” jumped out at me, so I went to 119 in the Grail book of psalms and reread Psalm 119with that image in mind. All sorts of interesting things occurred throughout the Psalm:
“105 Your word is a lamp for my feet,
and a light for my path.”
“101 I keep my feet from every evil path,
to obey your word.
102 I have not turned away from your decrees,
which you yourself have taught me.”
“59 I have pondered my ways,
and turned my steps to your decrees.
60 I made haste;
I did not delay to obey your commands.”
“35 Guide me in the path of your commands,
for in them is my delight.”
“1 Blessed are those whose way is blameless,
who walk in the law of the LORD!
2 Blessed are those who keep his decrees!
With all their hearts they seek him.”
It seemed to me, though I read through the Psalm quickly, that the entire Psalm is a text for truly following the Lord/Christ [OT/NT]. It looks as though verse 176 ought to be at the beginning though having it at the end should remind us of the image of Christ as our shepherd, a confession as we leave the Psalm that we have strayed, and a plea that if we do stray Christ might come for us, and the last thing it does is remind us of the importance of memory in our pilgrimage—Christ after all is risen, no matter how bleak it gets at times. Remember that! It’s a rich verse here, but then so are they all.
“176 I have strayed like a sheep;
seek your servant, for I do not forget your commands.”
I can very easily see 119 as a handbook for the way to follow Christ.
The second thing below is the last part of Saint Augustine’s meditation for today. Again with the image of following him in my mind I saw that what Augustine said is right at the heart of that. Our hearts are restless until…how do we follow? “Love, and you do it.”
Blessed are they who follow the law of the Lord.
when you hear “Believe in Christ,” don’t imagine it’s enough for you to believe Christ, that is, to believe that the things Christ says are true; don’t imagine it’s enough for you to believe that Christ is himself the one whom God foretold through the prophets; but believe in Christ, that is, love Christ. It is when you have fulfilled this that nothing more will be required of you, because love is the fullness of the law (Rom 13:10). When you’ve believed in Christ like that, so that you have that kind of ardent love for Christ, see if you won’t be able to make these words your own: Who shall separate us from the love of God? (Rom 8:35). So don’t waste time wondering how to do what Christ commands; you cannot not do it if you love Christ. Love, and you do it.
Saint Augustine
Image: the Annunciation.8
