My Christmas Novel. ‘Try to read it every yuletide.
—Starting this one. 

    He was writing what he should have written long ago and had always wished to write but never could. Now it came to him quite easily, he wrote eagerly and said exactly what he wanted to say. Only now and then a boy got in his way, a boy with narrow Kirghiz eyes, in an unbuttoned reindeer coat worn fur-side out, as in the Urals or Siberia.
     He knew for certain that this boy was the spirit of his death or, to put it quite plainly, that he was his death. Yet how could he be his death if he was helping him to write a poem? How could death be useful, how was it possible for death to be a help?
    The subject of his poem was neither the entombment nor the resurrection but the days between; the title was “Turmoil.”
    He had always wanted to describe how for three days the black, raging, worm-filled earth had assailed the deathless incarnation of love, storming it with rocks and rubble—- as waves fly and leap at the seacoast, cover and submerge it— how for three days the black hurricane of earth raged, advancing and retreating.

Two lines kept coming into his head:
“We are glad to be near you,” and “Time to wake up.”
    Near him, touching him, were hell, dissolution, corruption, death, and equally near him were the spring and Mary Magdalene, and life. And it was time to awake. Time to wake up and to get up. Time to arise, time for resurrection. 

677 The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection.⁵⁷⁹The kingdom will be fulfilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God’s victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven.⁵⁸⁰ God’s triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgment after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.⁵⁸¹

Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and I myself have founded great empires; but upon what did these creations of our genius depend? Upon force. Jesus alone founded His empire upon love, and to this very day millions will die for Him… . I think I understand something of human nature; and I tell you, all these were men, and I am a man; none else is like Him: Jesus Christ was more than a man… . I have inspired multitudes with such an enthusiastic devotion that they would have died for me … but to do this is was necessary that I should be visibly present with the electric influence of my looks, my words, of my voice. When I saw men and spoke to them, I lightened up the flame of self-devotion in their hearts… . Christ alone has succeeded in so raising the mind of man toward the unseen, that it becomes insensible to the barriers of time and space. Across a chasm of eighteen hundred years, Jesus Christ makes a demand which is beyond all others difficult to satisfy; He asks for that which a philosopher may often seek in vain at the hands of his friends, or a father of his children, or a bride of her spouse, or a man of his brother. He asks for the human heart; He will have it entirely to Himself. He demands it unconditionally; and forthwith His demand is granted. Wonderful! In defiance of time and space, the soul of man, with all its powers and faculties, becomes an annexation to the empire of Christ. All who sincerely believe in Him, experience that remarkable, supernatural love toward Him. This phenomenon is unaccountable; it is altogether beyond the scope of man’s creative powers. Time, the great destroyer, is powerless to extinguish this sacred flame; time can neither exhaust its strength nor put a limit to its range. This is it, which strikes me most; I have often thought of it. This it is which proves to me quite convincingly the Divinity of Jesus Christ.

-attr. to Napoleon Bonaparte

(Source: godtheoriginalintent.com)

St. Robert Southwell, a poet that preached of a love transcending life, and death as a flicker in the life of love (as illustrated in I Dye Alive, my prior post), was to be put to those words later in life. It seems after writing those poems of conquored death, he was set to live out his pen, as a martyr for his faith.

As well as a poet, Southwell was a Jesuit priest in the time of Queen Elizabeth I’s Catholic persecutions.  He was ordered, as were all English-born clergy ordained by Rome, to flee the country under forfeit of life, but he returned to administer the sacrements and comfort to ’those that desired.’

He was imprisoned, tortured and sentenced to be hanged, drawn, and quartered— All of which he took with a humbled shrug, commending that true life is but above the reach of death. His torturer, Elizabeth’s infamous ‘priest-hunter’ Richard Topcliffe, once threatened at his trial that he would smother him all to dust. Southwell replied puzzlingly, “What? Soul and body, too?”

Image:Saint Robert Southwell, S.J. (1561-1595). Illustration from the frontispiece of Saint Peter’s complaint.

Other than his notions that Love defies Reason, another tenet in the philosophy of Søren Kierkegaard that really strikes me is his admittance that Christianity is, by nature, offensive. The essence of Christianity undermines nearly all established orders, as Christ radically stood against nearly all social norms. A world that relies on its own sophic thought is by all means going to reject Religion.  

The world is going to hate any Christian that does not conform to the ways of the world. ‘The tax-collector loves only those that love him’(Matthew 6:46); that’s the way of the world. Why? Well, that is a rational way of thought. You’re a complete fool if you love someone that you aren’t going to benefit from.

I mean, after all, Christ himself said “The world would love you as one of its own if you belonged to it, but you are no longer part of this world. I chose you to come out of the world, so it hates you.’ (John 15:19). Of course he says that as the conclusionto his highest command, “this is my command: Love each other.” (John 15:17)

And honestly, what has humanity found more offensive, historically, than unconditional Love? I mean, we are of a race that has shot Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and John Lennon. We seem to hate anyone that tells us to love our neighboor.— Jesus was only rejected from the synaguoues the second he said he has come not only to bring salvation to the Jews, but to the Gentiles [the whole world] aswell. That was the line that brought the Jews to first reject him.

Honestly, the only thing Christ ever seemed to preach about was Love, everything came down to Love; He shows that the highest tenet of faith is to Love God with all your heart, ‘“and a second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:39-40) Of course His Sermon on the Mount proclaimed “I say love your enemies! do good to those that hate you” (Luke 6:27), to the ‘sinful woman’ he says “Therefore her many sins are forgiven her for she loved much” (Luke 7:47). And it makes perfect sense that Love means so much to Christ, seeing as “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. “ (1 John 4:16)

Now, by offensive Christianity, I don’t mean judgmental, crusading bigots. That’s not Christianity. That’s a bastardization of religion. (no matter your religious zeal, there is no jusified sense in waging war over the Prince of Peace whom told you to “Love your enemies”) Corinthians 13 stresses that you can have speech of angels, infinite knowledge of scripture, boundless faith, —you can be as religiously extreme as you want,— but if you don’t have Love you’re nothing.