16 April 2011

‘The springtime of the Fast has dawned, the flower of repentance has begun to Open’


Patrick Comerford

The following paper is published in the current edition of the journal Koinonia, Lent 2011 (Vol 4, Issue 13), pp 10-13 (Kansas City, MO):

‘The springtime of the Fast has dawned, the flower of repentance has begun to Open’

Canon Patrick Comerford is a priest of the Church of Ireland, a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, and Director of Spiritual Formation at the Church of Ireland Theological Institute.

This year (2011), as with last year, the dates for Lent and Easter fall at the same time for both the Western Churches and the Orthodox Church.

This is not a regular occurrence, and the Secretary-General of the Anglican Communion, Canon Kenneth Kearon, suggested last year that “members of the Anglican Communion, especially those with close relationships with the Orthodox families of Churches ... may wish to take the opportunity to mark this in some way, perhaps by sending greetings to their Orthodox neighbours or some meaningful joint gesture.”

For Orthodox Christians, however, Lent begins not on Ash Wednesday but two days earlier, on Clean Monday (Καθαρή Δευτέρα). To mark Clean Monday, the first day of Lent, Greek gather for a traditional κούλουμα (koulouma) celebration, with kites, halvas, &c. Καθαρή Δευτέρα or Clean Monday is also known as Pure Monday, Ash Monday, or Monday of Lent. In Cyprus, it is also known as Green Monday.

The name “Clean Monday” refers to the hope of leaving behind sinful attitudes. The name “Ash Monday” is probably derived from Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent in Western Churches. However, few Eastern Churches – apart from the Maronites, a uniate tradition in communion with Rome – practice the Imposition of Ashes at the start of Lent.

Liturgically, Clean Monday – and Lent itself – begins with a special service called Forgiveness Vespers, which ends with the Ceremony of Mutual Forgiveness, when those present bow down before each other and ask for forgiveness. In this way, they begin Lent with a clean conscience, with forgiveness, and with renewed Christian love.

The entire first week of Great Lent is often referred to as “Clean Week,” when it is customary to go to Confession and to clean the house thoroughly.

The theme of Clean Monday is set by the Old Testament reading appointed for the Sixth Hour on this day (Isaiah 1: 1-20), which says in part:

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your doings
from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
rescue the oppressed,
defend the orphan,
plead for the widow.

Come now, let us argue it out,
says the Lord:
though your sins are like scarlet,
they shall be like snow;
though they are red like crimson,
they shall become like wool
(verses 16-18).

A special kind of azyme bread (λαγάνα, lagana) is baked only on this day. Some Orthodox Christians abstain from eating meat, eggs and dairy products throughout Lent, eating fish only on major feast days.

Clean Monday is a public holiday in Greece and Cyprus, where it is celebrated with customs such as outdoor excursions and kite flying. The happy, spring-time atmosphere of Clean Monday seem at odds with the Lenten spirit of repentance and self-control. But this apparent contradiction is characteristic of the Orthodox approach to fasting, taking to heart the Gospel reading from Saint Matthew (Matthew 6: 14-21) which includes the admonition:

“And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you” (verses 16-18).

In this way, the Orthodox Church celebrates the fact that, as the Vespers for Wednesday say, “the springtime of the Fast has dawned, the flower of repentance has begun to open.”

The Old Testament reading for the Sixth Hour on Clean Monday (Isaiah 1: 1-20) is reflected in one of the morning readings (Isaiah 1: 10-18) at the start of our Ash Wednesday in the Book of Common Prayer (2004) of the Church of Ireland, while the reading from Saint Mathew’s Gospel is (Matthew 6: -16, 16-21) is set for the Eucharist.

Ash Wednesday retreat

Turquoise waters and small boats in front of Skerries Sailing Club on Ash Wednesday morning (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

As a community, the staff and students of the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, are spending Ash Wednesday on retreat in Skerries, a small former fishing village on the Fingal coast of north Co Dublin. Last year we did something similar in the neighbouring village of Donabate.

The retreat programmes have provided many opportunities for silences and for walks on the beautiful beaches of that are, and we finish each Ash Wednesday with a celebration of the Eucharist in the local Anglican parish churches, both associated with Saint Patrick.

Preparing for those retreats, I once again read ‘Ash Wednesday,’ the first long poem written by TS Eliot after his conversion to Anglicanism in 1927. The poem was first published in April 1930 in limited edition of 600 numbered and signed copies. Later that month, an ordinary run of 2,000 copies was published in Britain and another 2,000 copies were published in the US in September.

Immediately, many critics were enthusiastic about ‘Ash Wednesday.’ Edwin Muir, for example, described Ash Wednesday as “one of the most moving poems” Eliot “has written, and perhaps the most perfect.” Other critics, however, were less kind, perhaps because they were discomforted by its groundwork of orthodox Christianity.

This poem, which is sometimes referred to as Eliot’s “conversion poem,” is based on Dante’s Purgatorio. Its style is different from those poems that predate Eliot’s conversion, so that ‘Ash Wednesday’ and the poems that followed had a more casual, melodic, and contemplative method.

‘Ash Wednesday’ deals with the struggles that arise when one who once lacked faith in the past begins to strive and move towards God. The poem is richly but ambiguously allusive and wrestles with the aspiration to move from spiritual barrenness to hope for human salvation.

Spring sunshine for Ash Wednesday at Skerries Harbour (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2011)

Ash Wednesday, T.S. Eliot:

I


Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?

Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is
nothing again

Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice

And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us

Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.

II

Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to sateity
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been
contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying

Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.

Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each other,
Under a tree in the cool of day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.

III

At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitful face of hope and of despair.

At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jaggèd, like an old man’s mouth drivelling, beyond
repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an agèd shark.

At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the fig’s fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind
over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.

Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy

but speak the word only.

IV

Who walked between the violet and the violet
Who walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary’s colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the
springs

Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary’s colour,
Sovegna vos

Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking,
wearing

White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.

The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but
spoke no word

But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken

Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew

And after this our exile

V

If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny
the voice

Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose
thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season,
time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who
wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose

O my people, what have I done unto thee.

Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.

O my people.

VI

Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.

Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit of the
garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.