Dante, Esolen, Pieper and Ordination

In the ordination rite of the Lutheran Church of Australia, the central vow that deals with day to day ministry is: ‘Do you promise to be diligent in the study of the Scriptures and in the use of the Sacraments; to pray for God’s people; to nourish them with the gospel; and to lead them by your own example in faithful service and holy living?’

I experience this as a wonderfully liberating vow, because it acknowledges that the leisure to celebrate the liturgy is at the heart of the pastoral ministry.  I also experience it as a liberating vow because it draws me into a way of life as a pastor that is fundamentally receptive: receptive of the Scriptures, of the Sacraments, of the gift of prayer, of the gospel, and of the sanctifying Spirit.

If I could live my pastoral ministry in accordance with this vow, I would consider to have followed my vocation well.

I’ve been thinking about this vow again in reading Dante. In the Purgatorio, in Canto Eighteen, are the slothful. It’s not that in life the slothful were idle. They may have worked themselves ragged. But they did not work according to their vocation. They did not receive their identity and their vocation as a gift, but attempted to establish their identity, and to call themselves into being, by what they did. They had little joy, little leisure in life. Their temptation was to work hard in a state of despair, and to miss out on the celebration that God gives through his Word.

Esolen in his comment on this Canto says, ‘Sloth is not the opposite of industry, as late-stage capitalism would have it. Indeed, sloth and industry may get along quite well together, as a glance at an assembly line or a harried bureaucrat’s desk may reveal. As Dante presents it, sloth is a lukewarmness of love, and its spiritual haze is opposed not so much to labor as to play and the joy of play.’

We play when, like little children, we are secure in our identity; and I can’t help but feel that both in marriage and in the liturgy there is at heart a dress up game of identity and vocation that is playful. The unselfconscious joy of play that I see in my children is a sign to me of what life in my grown up vocations ought to be.

I think that Josef Pieper, in his Leisure the Basis of Culture is on to the same sort of thing when he says, ‘The inmost significance of the exaggerated value which is set upon hard work appears to be this: man seems to mistrust everything that is effortless; he can only enjoy, with a good conscience, what he has acquired with toil and trouble; he refuses to have anything as a gift.’

If I were in the pew, I would love to be served by a pastor who considered it effortless joy to be diligent in the study of the Scriptures and in the use of the Sacraments; in prayer for God’s people; in nourishing them with the gospel; and in leading them by their own example in faithful service and holy living.

I would love to be served by a pastor who unselfconsciously took his pastoral identity as God given, and who rejoiced to receive the gifts of service for service; who played the solemn dress up game of the ministry with joy.

Well, I’m not there yet. I don’t suppose I ever will be. But the fact that my vow rightly calls forth this response is itself cause of joy for me.

Dante and Forgetting

Recently I finished listening to a series of lectures on Dante’s Commedia. The 12 disc series was published by The Teaching Company, and the lectures were delivered by two academics from the State University of New York, William R Cook and Ronald B Herzman.

It’s fair to say that I’ve been a Dante fan for some time. Back when I was living in Melbourne I would meet with Rob Rio and Tom Pietsch (and, once or twice, Tamson Pietsch), to read aloud from the Sayers translation. I’ve recently been reading through the Esolen translation, and have also been dipping into the Kirkpatrick translation. I have Charles William’s The Figure of Beatrice ready to go. So, you get the idea that I dig Dante.

Anyhow, the lecture series was above expectation. It’s aimed at monolingual American undergraduates, and so is limited in scope and depth, but I found it to be very stimulating and illuminating. Just the thing to listen to driving to services or between visits.

Now: One of the points the lecturers made at the end of the series was that, having reached the end of the poem we were ready to start again, ready to go back, knowing how the whole poem hangs together, and to notice the details in context. Nothing particularly startling there, perhaps. But it got me thinking.

I have generally considered my capacity to forget (and I really am gifted in this area) a curse. But upon reflection I have to admit that there is something to be said for forgetting. By forgetting I develop an appetite for re-reading. And in re-reading there is a joy that is unique: finding the new in the familiar. And being drawn more deeply down into what seemed already fathomed.

And this, I consider, having listed to the lecture series, is a very Dantean intimation of heaven. God, who is unchanging, is ever new on every new reading, so to speak. Contemplation, eternal contemplation of the divine face, is a re-reading of beauty. An in every re-reading there is the being drawn into the eternal heights of the love that moves the sun and the other stars.

For the time being, not contemplation of God’s face, but of Dante’s text. In translation. In a glass, darkly. But what an appetizer.