I have been leading a group in the practice of Christian meditation for years. Like its sister practice of centering prayer, Christian meditation asks us to let go of images and thoughts about God and instead to give God our full attention in silence. People ask sometimes how one can justify this use or non-use of one’s time. With so many needs in the world, ought we not to be busy trying to meet them? A bumper sticker version of the question says humorously “Christ is coming again. Look busy!”

Our faith tradition proposes something quite different. The purpose of activity is rest. It’s hard to think of anything more counter-cultural, even in the Church, than this. Activity in any form that is not harmful is seen as self-justifying and true. Has there been any time when there was so much sheer activity as there is today, yet with so little real co-ordination and unity of purpose?

Mere activity – activity for the sake of activity – is simply diabolical – noise for the sake of noise, bustle for the sake of bustle. The Vulgate translation of Psalm 91:6 describes the devil as negotium perambulans in tenebris, “the business that prowls around in the shadows,” sheer mischief looking for a loophole by which it can make an entry. Dorothy L. Sayers wrote that “damnation is without direction or purpose. Why not? It has nothing to do, and all eternity to do it in.” George Macdonald, by contrast, described heaven as “the regions where there is only life and therefore all that is not music is silence.”

It’s a sad feature of our culture that so many of us have little opportunity for genuine interior repose and quiet, and we are reluctant to use it when it comes our way. Perhaps there is a fear that if we are deprived of the distractions, the noise, both literal and metaphorical, which is the condition of regular life, we might have to start paying attention to the disquieting suspicion that the very activity that so dominates life is largely pointless and self-frustrating. Noise can, in fact, make itself louder and louder in order to disguise its own futility.

The book of Genesis provides the pattern of rest. We are told that God blessed and hallowed the seventh day, because God rested from all the work of creation. There is a real sense, of course, in which God’s activity never ceases at all, since God’s creative act perpetually upholds and energizes the universe. Neither is the inner being of God dead or static. It is that unfathomable energy of life and love which is the Holy Trinity. But all this involves no change in God, no alteration or vacillation of actions. God is the unchanging ground of the changing universe. In God, rest and activity are reconciled.

Nevertheless, the truth that the anthropomorphic language of Genesis expresses is that God does not, so to speak, turn away in relief from the created world. God contemplates it and rejoices in it. God is not like the wage-slave who tries to forget work during the weekend break. God is more like the hobbyist who makes things and then takes pleasure in using them, or like the painter who can enjoy looking at a picture she has made.

In the Genesis story, the story of the first creation, it was on the sixth day of the week that God made man in the divine image and gave him dominion over the lower creatures. In the Gospel story, the story of the new creation, humankind was remade by God on the sixth day of the week, the first Good Friday, when Christ, the perfect man, died on the cross. And Christ rested in the tomb on Holy Saturday – the Great Sabbath – in the enjoyment of the work of the new creation. He saw what he had made and behold, it was very good. The consummation of the new creation comes when Christ lies at rest in the tomb, happy in the fulfilment of his work and awaiting his resurrection.

In Christ we have entered into the rest of God (see Hebrews 4:1-11), a rest that is not stagnation, inertia, or boredom, but perfect and unruffled life. Our full possession of this rest awaits us after death, but its foretaste is given to us here. We have already been made “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Our life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3).

So, what about meditation and other contemplative practices? In contemplative prayer, we are not strictly speaking passive but receptive. We are receptive of God’s own self-contemplation, caught up into God’s own life and energized by God. Thus, contemplation is the source and foundation of all truly Christian activity. Many great contemplative saints, outside their times of prayer, have been veritable volcanoes of activity. But that activity has been unified, coherent, vital, and totally concentrated on one object, the fulfilment of God’s will.

Contemplation is, therefore, the source and the end of Christian action. It is the end because our final destiny is to contemplate God in heaven. It is the source, because Christian action is simply the overflow of contemplation.

In Christ we have entered into the rest of God (see Hebrews 4:1-11), a rest that is not stagnation, inertia, or boredom, but perfect and unruffled life. Our full possession of this rest awaits us after death, but its foretaste is given to us here. We have already been made “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). Our life is hidden with Christ in God (Colossians 3:3).

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There is, of course, much more that can be said about the Creed. Even as it points to the mystery of God, so too it speaks about the Church. The Creed proclaims that the Church is “catholic.” That is, the Church is for all people. The Church itself is the symbol of what is going on in the creation as a whole. Both the Church and the whole of creation are directed to their fulfilment in the Kingdom of God. What we try to live in the Church is a sign of the destiny of the whole creation. Far from reducing everything and everyone to a bland, grey sameness, such wholeness affirms the genuine gifts and features of humanity. St. Paul proclaims that “in Christ” there is “neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female” (Gal. 3:28. He also tells us that “there are varieties of gifts…varieties of service…varieties of working” (1 Cor. 12:4-6). Once again, we encounter paradox: unity is held together with diversity. Both together constitute catholicity.

Catholicity also means authenticity. Authenticity of belief and practice follow because they depend on the consensus of the Church. We learn authentic faith by considering and following what Christians do and think. It is not always easy to discern just what authentic faith might entail in new circumstances. For this reason, we determine weighty matters by summoning a council and ascertaining the consensus of the Church. Anglicans are among those Christians who understand the universally recognized councils of the Church, such as those of Nicaea and Chalcedon, to have special authority as giving expression to the authentic faith under the guidance of the Spirit. As an expression of that faith, the Nicene Creed has become one of the structures of the Church in which its catholicity is embodied.

The Creeds, then, are catholic in both senses of the word. They set forth the authentic faith, but not as sets of propositions to be received intellectually. Faith is, instead, an entire attitude and direction of one’s whole life. When we join with other Christians in proclaiming the Creeds during worship, we are joining in a common attitude and orientation toward Christ

It is possible to become fixated on the letter of correct doctrine and lose sight of the universal character of the Church. When churches exclude from their membership or worship people of the wrong race, class, sexual orientation or whatever, they are refusing to be part of the ever-widening communion which cannot stop short of all creation. What

Christ has done is universal in scope. Indeed, to limit that scope to human beings alone is to fail to see that “the life of the world to come” includes all things (Col. 1:20). The royal and priestly task of the Church is to live that catholicity, treating all people and all things with the honour and love for they are creatures with an eternal destiny.

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The words “Anglican” and “Anglicanism” derive from the Latin ecclesia anglicana, meaning simply “the English church.” The form of Christianity which took root in that place has since become a global reality with more than 40 member churches whose adherents speak diverse languages. At least four million of them speak French. The context of the diocese of Ottawa, in this region and this country, calls us to hear God speaking through and to our francophone neighbours, and thus we are introducing this new French feature in Perspective.

Jésus enseigne : « Cherchez d’abord le royaume de Dieu et la justice de Dieu» (Matthieu 6:6).  C’est-à-dire vivre dans ce monde en sachant qu’il est l’œuvre de Dieu, avec un destin de gloire. Mais le chant de la création n’est pas harmonieux : il y a des voix défectueuses, muettes ou discordantes. Plus nous le reconnaissons, plus nous voulons aider à racheter la création et à restaurer la perfection du chant. Et nous ne pouvons racheter et restaurer que dans la mesure où, ayant été rachetés et aimés nous-mêmes, nous avons appris à aimer.

Dieu veut que nous soyons heureux, que nous ayons la vie en abondance. Mais Jésus enseigne que pour être heureux, il faut être pauvre en esprit, doux et avoir le cœur pur (Matthieu 5).  Le bonheur n’est pas quelque chose que l’on recherche, et encore moins quelque chose que l’on peut fabriquer. C’est quelque chose que nous ne pouvons que recevoir et devenir. Une telle façon de vivre ne consiste pas tant à avoir quelque chose de nouveau qu’à être quelque chose de nouveau. En tant que

« nouvelle création en Christ », nous apprenons à considérer les choses non seulement comme des choses que nous avons, mais aussi comme des choses que nous sommes si nous voulons vivre en les aimant. Nous apprenons à considérer les autres personnes comme ne faisant qu’un avec nous – destinées à un poids de gloire qu’il est de notre devoir et de notre joie d’aimer et de servir.

Lorsque nous verrons le monde comme Jésus le voit, nos cœurs seront en paix parce qu’ils seront remplis de l’amour universel auquel ils aspirent. Dès ici et maintenant, nous commençons à être heureux du bonheur de ceux et celles qui ont le royaume des cieux, jusqu’à ce que nous arrivions à la joie finale du jour éternel.

English translation

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