Delivered up
An address given during Evening Prayer in the crypt of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere during a diocesan pilgrimage to Rome; 19 November 2019
Order and readings in the Pilgrim’s Guide
Words of Jürgen Moltmann: “The Father delivers up his Son on the cross in order to be the Father of all those who are delivered up.”
We can know very little for certain about the life and death of Cecilia. Was this the site of her husband’s house? Was an attempt made to suffocate her here, in the sudatorium, the domestic baths that may have been part of this complex of rooms? Did an executioner’s axe fall three times on her neck before the fatal blow was struck? Did she live in the first century after Christ, such that her death could have been honoured by Pope Urban I in the 200s, or was she a victim of Diocletian’s persecutions at the turn of the fourth century? Does her body, preserved and immaculate, lie in the marble sarcophagus behind me?
We can know very little for certain about the life and death of Cecilia. But was can probably know that, at the heart of things, there was a young woman who heard the Gospel; a young woman who came to know the small community of Christians in the Rome of her day and to belong in their midst; a young woman who came to believe something about God in Christ that is similar to what we believe today; a young woman who, in believing, was alienated from her family and from the powers of the state; a brave young woman who will have refused the opportunities given to her to step aside, to concede, to be less her true self; a young woman who, because of that fidelity, was put to death.
We can know very little for certain about the life and death of Cecilia, but we can know that, at the heart of things, there was a young woman upon whom the cruelty of this world descended, and it destroyed her.
And much as we can make majestic the stuff of martyrdom, and erect decorated shrines and build magnificent basilicas, and sing of the “the white-robed army” of praising martyrs, at the heart of every martyrdom is something wrenching and wretched – not a failure, for there is nobility in fidelity in the face of fear – but here, at the heart of every martyrdom, in its crypt, so to speak, there we always find descent, and destruction, and a dreadful delivering up.
“The Father delivers up his Son on the cross in order to be the Father of all those who are delivered up.”
To the history of persecution, martyrdom and power, there are four ages, and the story of two of those ages are all around us here in Rome.
The first age of persecution, martyrdom and power was the persecution of the earliest Christians by the Jewish religious authorities of their day – the persecution that led to the crucifixion, the persecution that Saul spearheaded before the Damascus Road, the persecution that drove the volley of stones that destroyed Stephen, the first martyr; the persecution of which Pilate washed his hands. That age was almost over by the time the first Christians were establishing themselves here in Rome.
It was succeeded by the second age: the persecution of Christians by the authority of the “secular” state – by governments and emperors, mobs and authorities who were nervous of, and could not comprehend, this new thing growing in their midst. With the exception of those churches dedicated to Mary the Mother of God and St Gregory, we will not visit a church during our time here – we will scarcely pass a church on our journeying here – that is not dedicated to a saint who was martyred during this second age. It isn’t an age whose days have entirely passed – governments and emperors, mobs and authorities, somewhere in the world will always be nervous, and fail to comprehend, and consequently try to destroy those who choose to belong to the land of the Gospel as well as to the kingdoms of this world.
The third age in history of persecution, martyrdom and power was born when Christianity itself became powerful, and when the governments and the emperors and the mobs and the authorities worked hand in glove with the Church to impose orthodoxy, to keep things pure, to define this place as the land of the Gospel of the mind, and not that place. As we visit the glories of this city, we remember that the dark side of every golden ceiling and frescoed dome, the shadow of every marble façade and jewelled tabernacle, is the temptation to become nervous that authority might be lost, the temptation to stop trying to comprehend the Other, the temptation to let power loose to descend and destroy the misunderstood. And wherever the Church is an agent of repression in our world today, that third age, too, lives on.
The fourth age in history of persecution, martyrdom and power had an awful birth in the mud of the Somme, in the cruelty of the concentration camp, as Archbishop Ernest reminded us this morning, in the awesome menace of the nuclear submarine. The midwives of the fourth age were the saints and theologians of the twentieth century who looked at the world and saw something wrenching and wretched, a world martyring itself – saints and theologians who saw that the only place from which theology could be offered to that self-martyring world was from the Cross – saints and theologians who laid aside the power of the Church for the sake of a message from the Crucified Christ of hope and faith and pity and love alone.
“The Father delivers up his Son on the cross in order to be the Father of all those who are delivered up.”
The three classical qualities of God are omnibenevolence, omniscience and omnipotence – God is all good, all knowing, and all powerful. And every time I come to Rome, I feel I know a bit more of what that means. This place is a museum, an amphitheatre, a cinema for an omnibenevolent, omniscient, omnipotent God – the whole space of St Peter’s Basilica, the whole architecture of this city, but also its whole history and projected understanding seem to speak of the magnificent all-ness of God – all good, all knowing, and all powerful.
But we do well to listen to the voices that speak from the crypts and tombs of this city of another side of our God:
A God who, though omnipotent, all powerful, was constrained, held in place, by nails through flesh to the wood of a Cross.
A God who, though omniscient, all knowing, allows us to become, each, our true selves in Christ through a full humanity that makes us capable of depravity as well as glory, that makes us as able to suffer as to rejoice.
A God who, though all loving, loves not in an abstract, universal or immaculate way, but with the immediacy and honesty and decency of a parent who knows what it is to yearn and hope, to let go, to trust and to grieve.
“The Father delivers up his Son on the cross in order to be the Father of all those who are delivered up.”
We can know very little for certain about the life and death of Cecilia. But we can know that the Father who delivered up his Son on the cross was her Father also, and is ours.
