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| Victory for humanity in history will come from outside history Photo by Burkay Canatar |
The sweep of history tells us that there is no victory to be had, that humanity is never going to live in triumphant enchantment, that all the striving and strife is going to end in defeat. This view is supported by the Christian perspective, that “the world in its present form is passing away” (1 Corinthians 7:31). It also underlies the stance taken in his works by JRR Tolkien, an authority on world literatures, and the writer of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.
“I am a Christian”, Tolkien wrote, “and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat’ — though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory.”
However, any victory for humanity in history will come from outside history, writes Conor Sweeney, an author and academic, in a Christmas-time essay offering solace to all those "tested by a pandemic and escalating social and political upheavals and polarisations that show little sign of abating". He concedes that even in the Church there is little relief.
The good news is this: "I still believe that it remains true that there is an anchor, one existential touchpoint that still has the capacity to ground and transform us when all else seems vanity, corruption, and quicksand."
Sweeney spells it out:
[...] it’s not an idea but only a relation to a person and an event that can save us. Amidst all the noise and confusion, the only real anchor that remains within our possession that cannot be taken from us, either by ruler or cleric, the only one strong enough to see us through any crisis, is Christ.
He is talking about the Christ of Christmas, God made man:
By “Christ”, I don’t mean the God who is “out there” to whom we might pray or bargain with from time to time for deliverance or for justification for our endeavours. I don’t mean a man who is the best moral example and inspiration there ever was. I don’t mean the Christ of the “system” or the “cause” — an extrinsic Christ who is merely a capstone or afterthought to an anthropology that wants to make “nature” or “substance” determinative; the bourgeois Christ who supports the Empire, who golfs with the Pharaoh, and who underwrites our belief that conquest, security, and wealth are next to godliness; the “woke” Christ, the “ally” who affirms my expressivist search for authenticity and emancipation (and forces everyone else to affirm it).
Rather, I mean Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Crucified, who is only truly encountered and recognised in immersion in the font and the breaking of the bread. I mean that Christ who by baptism and the Eucharist becomes the personal and existential measure of my entire existence, destroying death and casting down the idols that I surround myself with. I mean the Christ who now “lives in me” (Galatians 2:20) so that my existence and my relationships are no longer natural, neutral, secular, or autonomous.
I mean the Christ “who loved me and gave himself for me”, the one who calls me to join him not just in his Resurrection but on the Cross; to join my flesh to his and so to enter into the cosmic battle between good and evil and to have that battleground become the new theatre of my existence. I mean all of this according to a realism in which all of this is really — that is to say, sacramentally — true; true, even when both world and Church go down the toilet.
The "theatre of my existence" recalls the option each of has in life to live either according to the demands of a mundane self-directed "ego-drama" or to those within a heightened and meaningful "theo-drama". For more on this aspect of the challenge that Christmas offers us, go to this video.
The breathtaking wonder that Christmas engenders is highlighted in Sweeney's soaring words:
To be sure, the Christ of baptism is also the Cosmic Christ, the source, archetype, and fulfilment of created being and the pinnacle of human wisdom. He is also the Christ of the Beatitudes, who sides with victims, calls out oppression and oppressors, preaches justice and love of the poor, who is thoroughly consistent with the ethical radicalism begun in the Old Covenant.
But all of this flows from and is contingent on who he is as the Son of God who comes do the will of his Father — the Father who wills that “all men be saved” (1 Timothy 2:4) that they be forgiven, sanctified, redeemed so that they may abide in his love. He is the Son whose primary mission is to pour God’s love into our hearts by the Spirit (Romans 5:5). Why? So that we might abide with him eternally in his communion with the Father and the Spirit. This mission of love, accomplished in his Passion and death, is communicated to us by water and Spirit (John 3:5), filling us with a divine love that allows us a share in Christ’s relation to the Father as Son.
The point here is that by baptism we are existentially and sacramentally “attached” to divinity. Animated by a Christological and eschatological current pulsing in our hearts and through our bodies, we set out on a life of conversion, holiness, and mission. But without connection to this current drawing us to its source, any good we may seek to do, even in the name of Christ, will become vanity and idolatry: “If a man does not abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withers; and the branches are gathered, thrown into the fire and burned” (John 15:6).
And so the Christ of baptism tells us: “abide in my love” (John 15:9); “love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). This Christ prays to the Father that “the love with which thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:26). Accordingly, he exhorts us to “worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24), and says “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15), and “the truth will set you free” (John 8:31). He instructs us to “Go and sin no more” (John 8:11). He says that “unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53).
In short, without an ongoing personal and existential abiding in and attachment to Christ, how easily the best can become the worst. How easily the Christ of baptism can become the Christ of institution, empire, or zeitgeist.
To be attentive to the Christ of baptism, however, is to realise that everything that we “do” is just more flailing, more noise, more ideology, or more virtue signalling if it’s not informed, shaped, and purified by the theological perception of and participation in the victory that has already begun in our flesh.
But by this I don’t mean to present baptism as some magical solution to our crisis. In fact, it turns out to be quite the opposite: why, after all, does St. Paul tell us to “put on the whole armour of God” — the “breastplate of righteousness”, the “equipment of the gospel of peace”, the “helmet of salvation”, and the “sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Ephesians 6:13-17)? For baptism compels a reckoning with the deepest and darkest depths and costliness of the long defeat, insofar as through it we join Christ in his epic confrontation with the principalities and powers. If baptism is sharing in Christ’s relation to the Father, it’s also sharing in his battle with the Evil One.
Here we have it in Sweeney's words - where the "good news" of Christmas arises:
Without a doubt, of course, in the most absolute terms, the gift of the Son is good news. The incarnation, death, and resurrection by which we are elected, adopted, and redeemed, and bought with the price of the death of God’s own Son, has unveiled and shattered evil’s monopoly on life. It directly attacked the social mechanisms and givens of the ancient world with a message of love offered to each and every person. It created what we now take to be the person, the self, or the individual, an infinitely dignified microcosm of the humanum [totality of humanity] destined for eternal life.
But we are talking about Christmas 2021. Sweeney examines how evil fights back:
In plotting its revenge, evil, it would appear, is resourceful, for how better to masquerade as truth than to adopt and pervert the vital truths and instincts of Christianity? “The most powerful anti-Christian movement”, states Girard, “is the one that takes over and ‘radicalizes’ the concern for victims in order to paganize it. The powers and principalities want to be ‘revolutionary’ now, and they reproach Christianity for not defending victims with enough ardor.”
The new evil is not the bad guy dressed in black with a scar over one eye, but expressive individualism and emotivism in extremis, the progeny of freedom and desire unbound, bathed in the radiant light of the moral imperative of kindness, driven by a strange and perverse mix of capitalist and Marxist modes.
These are the “apocalyptic” conditions within which we must contest. For the Christian, time itself is ultimately apocalyptic, which is why we are forever pilgrims in this world. After all, says Girard ominously, “Christianity is the only religion that has foreseen its own failure.” Baptism places us directly into the centre of this paradoxical struggle. Rather than being surprised and overly distressed by crisis, perhaps we should count ourselves all the more blessed by the samples and glimpses of joy and peace that we do receive.
Children, our own or others', are one of the blessings from God that stand centre stage at this holy time. An example is the way that the joy that Christmas encapsulates seems to fill the heart of Ruth Jackson, who last Christmas was agonising over the loss of her first child by miscarriage, but this Christmas is delighting in a baby daughter:
The Bible begins with a poetic picture of creation. The garden of Eden is painted as an idyllic place where God draws close to his people. The subsequent narrative arc hints at the destruction of this creation and the damaged relationship between humanity and God. When we arrive at the final book of the Bible, we see hints of Eden’s restoration (Revelation 22).
Revelation 21:4 epitomises this future hope: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.” The God who weeps is portrayed here as so tender that his own hand will wipe the tears from our eyes.
We named our baby girl Eden to serve as a reminder that loss doesn’t have the final word. The name Eden assures us that no matter how broken life seems, there is always hope and ultimate restoration.
When Eden grows and inevitably falls over, I don’t imagine I’ll explain to her why she’s fallen — I’ll likely just pick her up and hold her. Likewise, I’m not sure the Christmas narrative necessarily provides a perfect answer to why we’re suffering, but it does reveal a God who picks us up and holds us close. Who weeps with us, who died for us, and promises that this pain is not forever.
Read all of Jackson's Christmas musing, "Joy to the world?", here.
Read the full Sweeney article here.
Read, too, this Australian piece on Christmas 2021.
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