Hiraeth
A brief reflection for Pentecost
THE sign of the cross is made by all in remembrance, anamnesis, recollection, of their baptism.
But what kind of memory is it? I write from the point of view of one whose baptism was the normative kind, or at least historically normative even if, these days. one is often made to feel inferior for having been baptised as a baby and grown up in the Church with no ‘testimony.’
But I remember my baptism as I remember Christ in his present real presence as I am taking and eating, taking and drinking, as the veil, thin already, folds back, bringing me into unity with the Blessed Trinity, all God’s saints, and the whole company of heaven singing a song not only ancient but eternal and divinely given – – –
Holy! Holy! Holy is the LORD God Almighty! Heaven and Earth are full of the majesty of His glory.
To repeat, here, to come again, is remembering. In this way repetition is the instructor, the kindly sage, which brings us into the blessedness of recollection. Inasmuch as modern philosophy had to take up repetition as its master theme, its great fugue, we preach something newer and older which sets in frame both the recollection and repetition of philosophy, to whatever era it may be modern. We preach remembrance, found in the sacramental logic of the Deeper Magic from before the dawn of time, we preach the crucifixion of Him who is the Lamb who was slain from before the foundation of the kosmos, who was and is and is to come. We preach the remembrance of the Mystery of Faith: Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.
The mystery presents neither three times, nor one, but one that is three and three that are one in the transcendental unity of apperception which takes hold of the one unifying object who, as subject, orders all things by His will and has made peace between them by the blood of His cross. He satisfied the law with all its demands, before which I stood condemned, and nailed it to that tree.
This I take and eat, this I take and drink, this I see through longings and sighing too deep for words, in remembrance of the one my soul loves.
The sweet longing yearns to grasp hold of the eternal, yet cannot do so except through the forms of things. To grasp hold of the eternal entails renouncing it, because it turns away from all who try to grasp it. To grasp the eternal through renunciation of it is to take hold of the object, given and broken in space and time, for you. Comprehended under limits, and for the stillness of a single moment of indefinitely defined duration, in the object is the eternal, appearing thus in its antithesis, through renunciation of it, being grasped in the object.
When the eternal makes this appearance in the moment, through the object, it is the in-spiration of remembering. To remembering we must repeatedly return again and again, until we learn the steps of the great dance and in death are freed to dance, animated by the Beatific Vision of the Lord and Bridegroom in Heaven.