Religious Studies and Woke Indoctrination

One of the many reasons a traditional Anglican university or college is needful is that what passes for “religious studies” at many universities and colleges is – how to put this nicely – to be avoided, more woke indoctrination than weighty study of religion.

Mark Pulliam has written a withering critique of this situation in the academy.  Here is a sample:

In addition to the LGBTQ agenda, religious studies scholars promote a litany of issues that coincide with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party: Marxism/socialism, immigration reform, climate change, criminal justice reform, and identity politics. The ideologues who preach this secular gospel of social justice are supported by a flotilla of sympathetic publications, such as The Immanent Frame, Religion and Politics, the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, Sojourners, and Religion Dispatches.

The connection to religion is often very loose, bordering on non-existent. One woke religious studies scholar describes herself this way: “I am a scholar of religion with particular interests in the history of capitalism and labor; religion in the Americas; feminist, queer, and critical race theory; and theory and method in the study of religion.”

On many university faculties, there is overlap between religious studies and, for example, African American studies. At Princeton, Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., a former president of the AAR, chairs the Department of African American Studies while also serving on the faculty of the Department of Religion. At the University of Texas, religious studies scholar Ashley Coleman Taylor describes her interests as “Black Feminism, Black Genders and Sexualities, Pragmatism, Queer of Color Critique, Africana Religions, Puerto Rican Studies, Atlanta Studies.” She is on the faculty of the Department of Religious Studies but also teaches in the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies. The disciplines are seemingly interchangeable.

Apparently so.

It turns out that the Matthew 25 Gathering in 2019 chose as a main speaker a young academic who is very much within this trend of religious studies as woke indoctrination.  Oh, Dr. David Leong does not foam at the mouth and seems more sane than other woke professors.  Yet by his own admission, Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Between the World and Me is required reading for his Freshman introductory Christian Theology  course.

One or more Freshman students have asked him why they were reading Coates for a Christian Theology course.  A good question indeed.  Leong tries to answer the question in his Gathering lecture.  I do not think he does so well, but see for yourself, beginning at 12 minutes into this video.

The rest of his lecture reveals some more wokeness although, again, I am sure he is not as high on the wokeness meter as many.  At the same time, I find his endorsement of Soong-Chan Rah’s work telling.

Remember the Matthew 25 Initiative and its Gatherings are sponsored by the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), a mostly orthodox Anglican denomination for those not familiar with it.  This trend of Religious Studies as woke indoctrination is not just a Berkeley/Oberlin Leftist fringe development.  It is just about everywhere in academia as well as in the church where traditional orthodox have not successfully rejected it.

Some therefore advise prospective ministers not to take religion courses at the undergraduate level, and I suspect that this is good advice for most students at most universities.  I also think it all the more behooves traditional Anglicans to provide alternatives at the undergraduate level, including creating Anglican colleges.

Brainstorming “The Idea of the Anglican University”: An Anglican College?

Long time readers may remember that my sporadic studies at Oxford combined with wrestling with whether and how to earn additional paper (I eventually settled for a well-earned Certificate of Anglican Studies.) has from time to time caused me to reflect on how best to do higher education.  No, I am not a fan of most higher education today, but you probably already guessed that.

So I read with interest Charles Erlandson’s bold proposal of an Anglican University.  I heartily agree that traditional Anglicans need to step it up in higher education.  Our weakness in that area is a drag on our growth and reduces good options for youth.  Erlandson’s goad is needful. 

At the same time, I do have two immediate concerns: 1. To be value-added, an Anglican university needs to be a traditional Anglican university, not just another woke what’s happening now “Evangelical” program with some watered down liturgy thrown in.  2. A “university” implies diverse and broad areas of study.  That would likely take many years to do well.

Dr. Erlandson already addresses my first concern well by proposing that a university be attached to a cathedral or parish.  If that cathedral or parish is robustly orthodox, it should be able to keep any school attached to it orthodox and traditional Anglican as well.  But the host church must be willing to hold accountable its college/university.  It can be done; the REC does an excellent job with its Cranmer House seminary.  But the host church must have the will so to do, including booting wayward professors when necessary.

At the risk of nitpicking the article as well as the word “university”, I do not think he addresses my second concern quite as well.  But then one can hardly solve all the world’s problems in one go. Further, he has elsewhere acknowledged we need to “begin small.”   I agree.  Accordingly I think an Anglican college affiliated to an existing university is more doable.  An Anglican college can focus on what it can do well: religious studies, history, a religious and communal life, and so on while taking advantage of the resources of a larger university and while being a witness to a university.

Of course, my proposal has its own problems. The foremost is the pitfall of the university pressuring a traditional Anglican college to become less traditional and more in line with mediocre education of the day.  At the start, it is absolutely necessary that an Anglican college affiliated with a university have a great deal of independence, including the ability to separate from the university down the road should that become necessary.  Yes, finding a good university agreeable to such an affiliation and respecting the mission of a traditional Anglican college is easier said than done.

But there is a beloved institution that demonstrates that it can be done – Pusey House Oxford.  Now Pusey House is not a college and does not offer any courses itself, at least not yet.  But it is a base for worship, learning, and communal life that has been attracting more and more students at Oxford as it have become more active under the leadership of Principal Dr. George Westhaver.  Space has even become an issue in accommodating the popularity of some of its offerings, a problem unheard of years ago.  It offers frequent lectures, serves as a venue for the C. S. Lewis Society, has become the home of the Oxford Scriptorium, has frequent and quite lively social gatherings in addition to its faithful round of daily traditional worship.  Really, change the bylaws a bit and add courses, and Pusey House would be an excellent small college.

As for its exact relationship with the University of Oxford, that would take some digging, and Oxford does often have a perverse delight in concealing more than revealing.  But my understanding is that it is independent from the university, not a part of it.   At the same time, there is much cooperation between the university and Pusey House, including PH’s wonderful library being treated as part of the university’s system of libraries. 

I can personally testify the mutual benefits between Pusey House and the University of Oxford are great and that PH attracts a growing variety of students across the University as well many from outside, including your humble blogger. 

I think the Pusey House model is a feasible exemplar for an Anglican college and probably more doable than a full-fledged Anglican university, at least at this time.  Of course, there is nothing wrong with different Anglican educational ventures seeking God’s glory and the edification of students.  That most certainly includes Erlandson’s proposed Anglican university.  He is right in stating that our weakness in higher education needs to be addressed and soon.

Continuing the Forced Lockdowns is Unjustified and Wrong

An excellent accompaniment to yesterday’s list of 30 Reasons for COVID-19 Distrust is the beginning segment of last night’s Tucker Carlson Tonight. 

I know a few may immediately mock.  But Tucker Carlson was very early in seeing how serious COVID-19 could be and yet now sees that the shutdowns are causing more damage than the virus.  Last night, he noted that data now indicates that the mortality rate from COVID is very low, well under 1%.  Which begs the question, why continue with the shutdowns?

By the way, the video Carlson cites at the beginning has been censored by YouTube.  You must not be allowed to see information not approved by your overlords.

A case certainly could have been made for the shutdowns back when it was thought hospitals would be overwhelmed beyond their capacity and when it was thought mortality might be around 4%.  But hospitals now actually have the opposite problem of empty beds, and mortality is under 1% in the U. S. and may even be under .3%. (That’s under 3 deaths per 1000 infections.)

Hence there is no longer sufficient justification for the shutdowns.  Further, I assert continuing them are now wrong, yes, immoral.  You can use “evil” if you like.

The Rev. Fr. John F. Naugle makes this case from a Roman Catholic viewpoint.  I would add that the God-given dignity of man calls for a great degree of freedom, including the freedom to make a living.

The Lord Himself commands that a man’s livelihood is not to be taken away even if he falls into deep debt:

No one shall take a mill or an upper millstone in pledge, for that would be taking a life in pledge. (Deut. 24:6)

It is safe to say that a virus with a 1% or less mortality rate does not overrule this principle.  Nor does public opinion or the dictates of power-mad politicians.  And the current shutdowns are taking away the livelihoods of many.

Which begs another question: why is most of the church not firmly opposing the continued lockdowns?

Cowardice and timidity is neither godly nor a good witness.

30 Reasons for COVID-19 Distrust

It seems the symptoms of COVID-19 are not only coughing, fever, and loss of smell, but also heightened distrust.  That distrust includes conspiracy theories spreading, replicating and mutating faster than the coronavirus.  But one does not have to wear a tin foil hat or believe any of the conspiracy theories to distrust at least some of what is being pushed upon us in the name of combating COVID-19.

To assist those who may wonder why there is so much distrust or even have contempt for it, I present 30 reasons for COVID-19 distrust.  Trust that I could list far more and explain these more, but if I did that, Michigan might open up before I am finished.

1. Moving the goalposts

We were told over and over again that the closings and stay at home orders were necessary to “flatten the curve” so that hospital capacity was not overwhelmed.  Yet when it was obvious hospital capacity was not going to be overwhelmed, governments persisted with their orders. Now some even advocate that we wait for a vaccine before reopening society.  

2. Massaging statistics

I’ve already documented at least one death counted towards COVID-19 when COVID as a marginal factor at best.  That death is far from alone.  It has gotten to be a dark joke how deaths that have little to do with COVID are padding COVID death statistics.

And didn’t Dr. Birx pretty much say that if there are a number of factors in a death of which COVID is one that it will be counted as a COVID death?  I am 98% sure I heard her say that myself.  But now I cannot find that on the internet to save my life.  Which leads to . . .

3. Information and opinions that do not support the shut-everything-down narrative are being suppressed and even censored.

4.  Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that Facebook is taking down posts that promote protests against the shutdowns.

5. Mark Zuckerberg, period.

6. Inconvenient statistics are downplayed.

One justification for the lockdowns was a supposedly high mortality rate for COVID-19.  But as the virus has progressed it is clear its mortality is low, probably under 1%.  Flus can be worse than that.  Yet lockdowns continue.

7. The models from the “experts” were wildly wrong.  Yet they remain the “experts.”
I will cut the “experts” some slack.  This was a new virus and not easy to predict.  But we did shut down much of society because of those models with disastrous consequences.

8. This has become a totalitarian Leftist fantasy.
Greatly harming Western capitalist economies, especially the eeevil oil industry, making us dependant on government, taking away freedoms, especially freedom of religion, and freedom of movement, etc.  Funny how the response to COVID-19 and its results have been a totalitarian Leftist fantasy.

9. Churches are restricted and attacked, even for drive-in services.

The Communist Mayor of New York threatening to close churches permanently is only one instance.

10. Big business benefits while small business is decimated.

Amazon, Costco, Walmart, Target and big box grocery stories are very open and thriving.  But most small businesses are shut down.  Many will not reopen.  And that even though…

11. Many/most small businesses are just as able to maintain social distance as big businesses.

Many/most small businesses usually have light traffic, making it easier to maintain social distance than at, say, a Walmart.  One favorite pub, which I have never seen crowded, was taking temperatures at the door.  If you had a temperature, you didn’t get in.  That pub (now closed for weeks. I pray it reopens.) was surely much safer than a big grocery store.

12. Planned Parenthood remains open.
Killing babies is “essential” don’tcha know.

13. It is questionable how helpful the shutdowns have been in combating COVID-19.

14. The timing seems politically convenient for ChiComs, Democrats, and the Deep State.

With what was a strong economy, President Trump seemed well on the way to reelection.  Now the economy has taken a horrific hit, and the difficulties of emerging from this [manufactured?] crisis make his reelection much more uncertain.  

15.  This has been used as a political weapon against Trump. 

No matter what he does or does not do, he is attacked by Democrats and the “News” Media.  (But I repeat myself.)  He is attacked as too slow to respond by those who were impeaching him and encouraging mass gatherings (such as Pelosi) at the time, yet he was attacked for sharply restricting travel from China back at the end of January.
No, TDS is not logical.

16. Democrat governors and mayors have generally been much harsher in restricting freedoms than Republicans.  Speaking of which…

17. Gretchen Whitmer, period.

18. Bill Gates.

And his praising China only adds to the distrust.  Speaking of ChiCom toadies….

19. WHO has made things worse.

The World Health Organization (WHO) downplayed the danger of COVID-19 early, then exaggerated/overestimated the danger and cheerleaded the shutdowns later.  Both increased the damage to Western economies.

20. WHO is in the back pocket of the ChiComs.

21. The ChiComs, period.

22.  This is being used to push letting in illegals, giving them stimulus benefits and giving them jobs.

Yes, it’s sheer madness, but this crisis is somehow being used to advocate letting illegals and other prospective immigrants right on in and remain and giving them jobs which citizens now greatly need.  Relevant Magazine is among those doing so with the apparent support of ACNA Bishop Clark Lowenfield. (Thankfully, President Trump is instead limiting immigration for a time.)

23.  Democrats are using this to steal the election.

Yes, you should  distrust vote-by-mail among other fraud enabling proposals.

24.  The Deep State has already earned utter distrust.

Do some of the conspiracy theories sound bizarre?  Well, some of them are bizarre. 
But think about it this way.  How bizarre would it be for high-ups in the FBI, DOJ, and CIA to conspire with the Democrat Party and the “News” Media to rig an election, then, when that failed, to overthrow an elected President?  That sounds like a spy novel.
Yet that is exactly what happened.  And that and other enormities make COVID conspiracy theories more believable.  If the Deep State tried to pull that attempted coup against Trump, what else would they try?

25.  Predatory prisoners have been released while surfers, beach runners, and playground moms are arrested.

26.  Why the shutdowns this time?
We’ve had any number of viruses in recent decades that have been as bad or worse – ebola, swine flu, Hong Kong flu, etc.  There were not all these shutdowns then.  It begs questions about other agendas.  Speaking of which…

27. Totalitarians and other power hungry statists have a long history of using crises, real and concocted, to seize more power.

“Never let a crisis go to waste.”

28.  This has brought out totalitarians big and small.

We sure know who the Karens are now, don’t we.

29. Governments are encouraging Karens to spy and report people.  And they gleefully oblige.

If you ever wondered how that became prevalent so easily in Cuba, now you know.

And last, but not least…

30. “The New Normal”

Permanent changes to society, most of which restrict our freedoms, are advocated and passed off as part of “The New Normal” we will have to put up with . . . or else.

Fascistbook

There really isn’t that much difference overall between fascism and communism.  Both are rather nasty totalitarian forms of socialism.  (Remember that the Nazis were the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.)

But there is one notable difference historically.  The instinct of Communists is to steal, that is “nationalize” everything.  Government takes over most or all industry (with predictably horrible results, of course.  Hence some forms of modern Communism are not that communist while still totalitarian.).  Fascists would rather most business and industry stay in place but collaborate and be tools of the government in suppressing basic freedoms and rights.  Some German companies are still trying to live down that history – Hugo Boss making those very fashionable uniforms for the SS, for example.

Which brings me to Fascistbook, I mean Facebook.  As openly admitted by Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook is responding to Democrat requests and taking down posts announcing peaceful protests against the coronavirus shutdowns.  Facebook is collaborating with tyrants by interfering with the Constitutional rights of Americans to peaceably assemble and protest.

You want to know what fascism in the United States looks like?  Tyrannical state governments and Fascistbook are showing us part of how it’s done.

Fake COVID-19 Statistics Illustrated

In Nueces County, Texas, there have (or had – see below) been no deaths from COVID-19. Most of the country also has had few cases and no to few deaths.  The coronavirus is not the return of the Black Death as once advertised.

These are not convenient statistics for those who wish to keep us shut down.  But statistics can be invented, don’tcha know.  Take the supposed first Nueces County COVID death, for example (with all sympathy and prayers for the friends and family of the lady mentioned):

The Corpus Christi-Nueces County Public Health District received confirmation of the first COVID-19 related death in a Nueces County resident. The patient tested positive for COVID-19 in early March, but subsequently tested negative prior to being discharged from the hospital at the end of March. The patient was a female between the ages of 70 and 79. The patient was recently re-admitted for complaints of abdominal pain and other underlining issues. The patient subsequently passed away April 19, 2020.

Although this patient had tested negative prior to being released from the hospital, COVID-19 is a new disease and there is limited information regarding risk factors for severe disease and subsequent complications.

As the press release acknowledges, there were a number of “issues” behind the woman’s death.  And she had tested negative.  So why was she put down as a COVID-19 death?  We are not told.  One would think that is an important detail.

Statistic padding like this breaks down trust.  It feeds distrust towards those who insist on keeping us partly shut down.

And that distrust is well earned.

An Easter Sermon from Pusey House

The following Easter Sunday sermon from the Principal of Pusey House hit my inbox this morning and soon after touched my heart.  It is profound and explains how the resurrection affects us very well. At the same time it reflects the difficulties Oxford and England and the world are going through now.

Imagine Dr. George Westhaver standing alone, alone on Easter Sunday, in the Chapel of the Resurrection in Pusey House addressing his online congregation via Discord . . .

If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 

Christ is risen from the dead, Trampling down death by death, And upon those in the tombs, Bestowing life!

Christ is risen from the dead, Trampling down death by death in us, and in whatever way we find ourselves bound in graveclothes, touched by death or despair or fear, giving life, life eternal and full. 

Brothers and sisters in Christ, it is a great joy to have arrived at this day with you. Christ is Risen, Alleluia. I can hear you all crying out, the Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia. 

We have arrived together at this day. It has been a strange and unsettling pilgrimage. We have been forced into the desert in a new way. We have been compelled to suffer isolation from one another and from communion in the Body of Christ. We’ve been removed from the normal form of communion with one another, and we’ve been removed from communion in the Sacrament of our Lord’s body, this particular form of his sacramental touch and presence has been taken from us. 

We’ve been invited not just to suffer all this, but to find in it the shape of the cross of our Saviour – to lay our lives down, not just to have them taken from us. 

Conscious of those facing danger, sickness, anxiety and death, we’ve also been invited to fellowship with the Man of Sorrows who weeps over Jerusalem, ‘O all ye that pass by, Behold and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow’ (Lamentations 1). Our Lord weeps not only for himself but for all that ravages the life of the earthly city, for all that threatens the people for whom he lays down his life. His sacred tears were shed in love not just for the sins of Jerusalem, but for those facing darkness and the shadow of death, in illness, or in fear, or in anxiety, in these past weeks, and in all time to come. We have kept vigil, first in the Garden of Gethsemane, and then at the cross, and finally, we have kept vigil in the night ‘whereof David said: “Behold the night is as clear as the day: then shall my night be turned into day.”’ 

We have arrived. Christ is Risen from the dead, Alleluia. But where have we arrived? The confusion and turmoil in the Gospel today can be a great encouragement to us. The Saints, Mary Magdalene, Peter and John, come to the tomb, but only John seems to grasp what is happening, and that no doubt imperfectly. The resurrection does not come with easy resolution, but with confusion and perplexity. It’s a wonderful historical picture. It is also a picture of the way in which the Resurrection is not a simple answer which sorts everything out. On the one hand, it is finished, the Lord has raised up the new temple of his Body in which we live and move and have our being. 

On the other hand, what is given in the resurrection comes to us in turmoil and perplexity. We never leave this behind, but rather we discover more of the gift and reality of the Resurrection by entering in, again and again, the confusion of the first disciples of our Lord. We discover more of the gift and reality of the Resurrection for ourselves and for one another by making Mary Magdalene’s words our own – ‘they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him’ (John 20). When we find ourselves seeking the Lord who appears to be taken from us, he finds us precisely there to invite us to know him and to be loved by him in the power and presence of his resurrection. Alleluia. 

In his letter to the Colossians, St Paul also speaks to us, both to tell us what has happened, and to help us to understand why the gift of the Risen life comes with perplexity as well as promise, with anxiety as well as with answers. 

If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. ... For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 

The great work has been accomplished, finished for us, and yet we must seek it. It is given, and we must find it.  For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 

Where do we find the life which is hid with Christ in God? God is Spirit, but since the Incarnation, God also has a human body (I speak as a fool). We find our lives in the risen body of Christ, the same body, wonderfully transformed, by which he lifts us up, draws near, carries, touches us, feeds us. ‘And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain’ (I Cor 15:14)The Resurrection of Christ is his vindication and victory, and the resurrection of Christ is our vindication and victory over all that takes away life. 

  

The Christian hope is not only the promise of eternal life. Tom Wright, sometime bishop of Durham, one of the great scholars of the Scriptures, and now retired to Oxford, emphasises that we don’t look forward to ‘life after death’, but “life after ‘life after death’”. Our Blessed Lord’s words to the thief are the foundation of Christian hope: ‘Today, you will be with me in Paradise’ (Luke 23.43). This is the beginning of the Christian hope, not the end. There, ‘we shall rest and we shall see, we shall see and we shall love, we shall love [and we shall be loved, we shall know and] we shall praise’. But this is still only the beginning of Christian hope, not the end. We don’t look forward to ‘life after death’, however rich and full beyond our imagining, we look forward to “life after ‘life after death’.” In the collect of the burial office in the Book of Common Prayer, the priest prays that our loved-one departed may first ‘rest in’ Christ. But this is only the beginning; ‘our perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul’ comes only at ‘the general Resurrection in the last day’. Our share in the Resurrection is what is hid for is with Christ in God. 

Why does it matter that ‘we believe in the resurrection of the body’, not just for Christ, but for ourselves? If one has experienced great suffering in the body, or if one has struggled with poor health, or simply the trials of growing old, one may be tempted, like the Greeks to whom St Paul spoke in Athens, to see the body as a cage, better left behind. The poet Dante, in his Paradiso, gives one of the best answers to the why it matters. In the Heaven of the Sun, Dante speaks to King Solomon about the resurrection of the body. Solomon, is the traditional author of the Song of Songs, the great love song of the soul longing for God, of the Bride seeking the Bridegroom Jesus Christ, of each one of us seeking that life which is hid with Christ in God.

According to Dante, the souls in paradise are already robed in bliss, but when they rise again with their bodies, they will be more blessed still. But how is this possible? Hearing Dante’s question, the souls around him dance with more fervour and zeal, and Solomon answers on their behalf:

When, blessed and glorified,
the flesh is robed about us once again, 

we shall be lovelier for being whole. 

We shall be lovelier for being whole. The soul is not complete without the body, and the body is dead without the soul. God is pure spirit, but human beings are not whole and complete as purely spiritual beings. After death, the souls of the faithful are at rest. They enjoy the vision of God, even if this vision and this joy is not complete. But being in heaven as spirits is not our final destination. It is only at the resurrection of the body, when the bodies which we once had are changed into a spiritual body, to be like the glorious body of Christ, that we shall be whole, ‘more perfectly ourselves’, and lovelier for being whole. 

Does this mean that the resurrection of the body is only a hope for an impossibly distant future? We hope that we will rise with Christ at the last day, our perfect consummation and bliss, but even now, we are risen with him. What does this mean? Perhaps it will be more clear if we consider what a denial of the Resurrection of the Body would mean about the things which give us joy now. For those who believe in the Resurrection of the body, the happy meal with family and friends, the cup of tea or glass of wine, our attachment to particular places and particular people, little pleasures help us to find the life which is hid with Christ in God. To live as a people who believe in the resurrection of the body ‘is to love Bag End and the beer from a particularly good harvest’; to love a human being is to love the body; ‘To love the body is to love the small, the local, the particular. It is to love those things enjoyed by the body’. C S Lewis describes these day to day pleasures as ‘shafts of the glory’ and ‘channels of adoration’ which reveal our Risen life. To reject the resurrection of the body is to deny something important in these creature comforts. If we are destined to be pure spirit, our delight in a beautiful garden or a beautiful landscape, as well as our delight in the meal with friends and little pleasures are just distractions, whistling against the dark, fleeting things which may make life less painful, but which don’t tell us about the lives which our hid with Christ in God. But to believe in the resurrection of the body means that we expect the things which delight us in the body to help us to find the life which is hid with Christ in God. It is the belief in the Resurrection of the Body which makes it possible for the images of love and springtime in the Song of Songs to speak to us of the love of each of us for the Bridegroom Jesus Christ: ‘Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come ... the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away’ (Song of Solomon 2.11-13). For those who know that they are risen with Christ, this is an invitation to find the life which is hid with Christ in God. For the Greeks to whom St Paul spoke in Athens, for whom the body is a shell to be discarded and left behind, this is just poetic fancy, singing against the dark. 

In the words of Hillaire Belloc, modified slightly by Bp Robert Barron, ‘Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine, / There’s laughter and [music] and good red wine’.

Belloc’s words also help us to make sense of the strange turn in St Paul’s words to the Colossians and to us. ‘Red wine’ is not only a way to find our lives hid with Christ in God, the same red wine can be the path to destruction, family break-down and misery. We could say the same for many of the comforts which delight us – they can lead us to apprehend the spiritual riches which are ours in Christ Jesus, or they can send us on a path to darkness. Our perfect consummation and bliss is in the resurrection of the body, but it is not merely sensual. The Resurrection life does not consist in more food, more drink, more of whatever thrills us: ‘It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body’.  The ‘earthly body’, thanks be to God, is not the same as the ‘heavenly body’.  ‘We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed’; this ‘mortal must put on immortality’ when ‘Death is swallowed up in victory’ (1 Cor 15). So says St Paul, Mortify – put to death on the cross – your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry. We cannot leave behind the disciplines of Lent in Lent. We will keep the feast, we will celebrate, and our celebrations can help us to find the life which is hid with Christ in God. And yet, our lives are hid with Christ; the spiritual disciples reveal what is hidden in what is right in front of us. As the goodness, the wisdom, and the love of our Risen Lord possess us more and more, we will find that life which is hid in him. 

Let us cast our cares and concerns upon him; he is able to bear them. And let us seek, on this great day, and the days to come, the life which is hid for us with Christ in God. The winter is past, the rain is over and gone, our Risen Lord speaks to us: ‘Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away’, and in this coming away, in this dying, the things which delight us now may be channels of adoration and a path of find the life which is hid with Christ in God.