Learning to be free
The Lenten journey
Lent is almost upon us. Serious illness can be a lesson in how we can serve this apprenticeship in the freedom of the children of God
The gospel for the Thursday in the last week in Ordinary Time before
the beginning of Lent (Mark 9:41–50) brims over with violence. First,
there is violence against those who harm these “little ones” – “If any
of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe
in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around
your neck and you were thrown into the sea” – a moral outrage perhaps
we need more of when faced with the scandalous abuse of children.
But
there is also a disturbing violence against one’s own body: “If your
hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter
life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the
unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off;
it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be
thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it
is better for you to enter the Kingdom of God with one eye than to have
two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies, and
the fire is never quenched.”
This looks alarmingly like self-harm. Of course, these are examples of what the scholars call Hebrew hyperbole: the tendency to make over-the-top statements, such as getting camels through the eyes of needles. But however much we tone it down, still there is a troubling violence to these statements.
Such texts have been seen as evidence that Christianity is against bodies, that the body is to be regarded with suspicion, even hatred. It is a source of temptation that lures us away from the spiritual. But this cannot be so. We believe God shared our bodily life. The greatest gift is of Christ’s body.
No, the passion of these statements springs from a profound reverence for the goodness of the body. We have eyes so that we can look at people with reverence and delight. If we look at people with contempt or brutal lust, we do violence to the gift of sight. We have hands so that we can reach to other in gentleness and compassion. If we grab them, possess them or use them, we have done violence to the gift of touch.
So these texts recognise the pain and struggle of becoming free from violence. Free to see each other with reverence and respect. Free to love people and not devour them. Free to walk towards them in friendship.
But becoming free is difficult and painful. I heard a radio programme the other day which talked about St Catherine of Siena, the fourteenth-century Dominican, as if she was deranged because of her extreme asceticism. She starved herself – but this was not self-hatred. Catherine was passionate about becoming free and she understood how costly, how painful, it can be to become really free. The Irish Dominican Paul Murray says that Catherine “was stupefyingly free”. Francis of Assisi married Lady Poverty. Catherine wanted us to be liberated from bondage and give ourselves to one she called “Lady Freedom”.
When I was in hospital recently, I dreaded the daily arrival of the physiotherapist who would make me get out of bed and practise using my crutches. I hated the challenge of going up and down stairs. He was tough and rightly so, because it was the only path to freedom from my bed. So what prisons hold us in bondage? That is the challenge of Lent, which is almost upon us. Lent is our apprenticeship in the freedom of the children of God.
As the Gospel reading concludes: “Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.” Salt brings us the loveliness of the food. Salt with my morning boiled eggs brings out their egginess. Fish tastes more fishy; vegetables more veggie. If you use it well, it does not impose its own taste. It releases the taste of the other.
If we become free, with the grace of God, we shall delight in other people, reverence them and not devour them. We shall be at peace with each other.
Timothy Radcliffe is a former master of the Dominican Order. He is the author of Alive in God: A Christian Imagination; What is the Point of Being a Christian?; and I Call You Friends. He lives in Oxford.
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