Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

The friezes in the Benedict Chapel (formerly the Baptistery) are some of my favorite works of sacred art. The carvings depict images that, in the Books of Hours of the late Middle Ages, were associated with the Hours of the Blessed Virgin: the Annunciation, the Visitation, the Adoration of the Shepherds, the Adoration of the Magi, the Presentation, the Flight into Egypt. Not only are the carvings beautiful, but the Latin mottos beneath each carving are full of theological significance and depth. And when I write “theological” here, I mean mystical as well—the separation of theology from mysticism is a very recent and not particularly edifying thing. To do theology is to be a mystic, but to claim to be a mystic without theology is to be in the parlous spiritual state of being a solipsist!

Anyway! The last of the friezes, the Flight into Egypt (about which we read in our Office Gospel today), features Mary and the infant Lord of Love on the back of a donkey, led by angels and followed by Joseph, Guardian of the Incarnate Word, as they flee from Herod’s wrath into the deserts of Egypt. Jesus clings, as if in pleading, to his mother who holds him tightly, protectively. Joseph urges the donkey faster forward and carries what few possessions these refugees have. They’re clearly running for their lives.

The motto beneath the carving reads: SI VENISTI CUR FUGIS SI FUGIS CUR VENISTI. It translates, “If you came, why now do you flee? If now you flee, why then did you come?” It’s a cry of deep, sharp, and painful longing: a longing for the abiding presence of God, for the healing presence of God, for the renewing and loving presence of God, just as things are getting incredibly and horrifically bad. STAY! The words plead. STAY! HELP! DON’T GO! As the Holy Family flees to safety, Herod begins the systematic destruction of the youngest children of Bethlehem. And it looks like God is just walking away.

There’s a lot here, I think, in this story, to set our hearts to aching with longing for the Presence. And more than that, I’m sure we can all identify in one way or another with this plea of STAY! In fact, I’m sure there have been times in your life, dear and beloved Friend, when God has seemed most absent when you were in the greatest depths of need and pain.

The architecture of the Benedict Chapel, though, suggests an answer to our cry and to our ache. Turning from the fleeing family and to the right, we meet the altar, we meet the Crucifix, the twisted and pain-wracked body of God nailed to the tree. And we realize: Jesus was not running away from our horror, from our need. Jesus was walking into the very depths of our suffering. Jesus was not leaving us comfortless, but doing all in his loving power to make sure we could receive and partake of his Body and Blood, vouchsafing his very Real Presence among us. And he bore our desolation on the Cross, the very emblem of desolation, and descended by the ladder of the Cross into the grave to bear our death as well.

Why are you fleeing, Lord? What may look to us at first like flight is Our Lord hastening to the Cross to bear our suffering, hastening to be fully and completely present to us and to our pain, hastening to plead our cause, through his own blood, at the very Heart and Throne of Heaven.

There is no human pain or grief to which Our Lord is not truly and fully present. And the gift of our Lord’s Presence is an invitation to us to be present as well. If we, as the Church, take seriously our identity as the Body of Christ, we must go where the Body goes. We must also be present to the fullness of the human experience, fully present to each other, knowing that the surpassingly blissful fullness of Divinity is available and present to us as well—to encourage, to empower, to to lead and to enliven us—whenever and wherever we share the Presence of Christ with each other and with the world.

Dear Friend, how will you share that Presence today? How will you be present to the Body, and how will the Body be present in you?

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+