Christ the Teacher of our souls – from text to faith :
A journey around Matthew 11, vv 25 – 30 : “my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
I want to take you on a journey. We start out from Southampton ( for some reason ), where we find ourselves taking the ferry across to Cherbourg, and then travelling swiftly by train across the plains of Normandy to Paris. Once we arrive at the Gare Saint Lazare, we take a taxi across to Gare du Lyon, and enquire about the night train to Marseilles. Yes, our place is booked. We settle down about 10pm in our reasonably comfortable bunk in our compartment, a compartment which is shared with an elderly French gentleman who is very polite, retires early, and wishes us goodnight. The train sets off on its long night journey down to Marseilles; we found it quite rainy and chilly in Cherbourg, but as we travel south, waking from time to time we sense a change of air, and wafts of warmth with the scent of trees and flowers gust through the windows. In the middle of the night, we suddenly awake, and to our consternation a kind of round halo of light is floating in the middle of the carriage. It oscillates in the darkness. It feels quite spooky ! Suddenly, the movement of the train enables us to see the moon more clearly, and its full light is beaming down into our carriage, – and the moonlight has come to rest on the bald head of the French gentleman who for some reason is meditating, sitting crosslegged on the floor in the middle of the compartment. We breathe a considerable sigh of relief, and try to get back to sleep !
The rhythm of the train rattling along the tracks helps us to drop off. Suddenly, after what seems like only some minutes, it is broad daylight, the air is full of heat, rather than warmth, and the sound of birds and of the cries of porters and the distant hoots of ships in the port. We have arrived in all the bustle and excitement of Marseilles. We check of our ferry, which sets off to Algeria early next morning.
So we have time to explore Marseilles, discovering that it is quite a place to wear out shoes with its hilly slopes and valleys; finally we make our way to the great church of Notre Dame de la Garde, the Church of the Blessed Virgin overlooking the port and the sea. The church is topped by a gilded bronze statue of the Virgin and Child. It is really two churches, one set up on top of another. In the lower “basement” church, doors open to the East and a statue of the Virgin extends her arms in blessing over the mariners both near and far. I’m not a great lover of such statues, but I become aware of the hope and encouragement the distant sight of the great church, illuminated by night, must have brought to thousands of sailors and fishermen, some in small craft rocked perhaps by an unexpected Mediterranean storm. We retrace our steps and find a small pension for the night, and go out for an evening meal. In the small bistro, a middle aged Frenchman makes urgent conversation with us – “you are traveller, yes ? To where ? Algeria ? Ah, some pains of history there !” He goes on to spell out his vision for world peace and proudly speaks of his membership of the communist party. His ideals are splendid, but I can’t help feeling they are based on something which has been itself overtaken by history.
After a rather short night’s sleep, we make our way down to the port to catch our ferry which sails at 6.00am. Finding the ferry takes a bit of doing because of the sheer size of the port. Just as well we do not have too much luggage ! A large party of nuns is waiting at the quayside, and then slowly gather themselves and file on board ahead of us. Soon we are on our way, and Marseilles becomes a distant panorama. Our ship, L’Esperance, makes good headway with the 17 hour crossing. The captain has introduced me to the Mother Superior of the sisters, Soeur Benedicta, and at noon we are invited to join them for their mid-day office which is held in a lounge area below deck… however with the crowded stuffiness of the confined area and the motion of the boat, there are certain consequences which could have been predicted ! However we all survive, and Christian charity has been multiplied.
Rather tired from the long journey, we arrive in the port of Annaba at 11pm. (Annaba, as well as being a port, is the fourth largest town in Algeria. ) There are some slightly disconcerting noises going off from time to time, which rock the ship slightly – don’t worry, an officer says, it is just the navy practising its depth charges ! There is a real clamour getting off the boat; fortunately the captain takes control and makes sure the Sisters get off with some dignity first, then all hell breaks loose, with shouting in Arabic and French and manhandling of boxes and crates in between which passengers seem to be risking their lives to get ashore. The customs procedures are fairly perfunctory, and quickly we are ushered through to the line of taxis, which are held in some kind of order by a police officer in attendance. We are through customs in time to catch the last of the taxis, but the driver insists on also taking on board a very fat gentleman wearing a fez, who seats himself in the front, and spends the entire journey fingering a very expensive looking set of worry beads. Of course, he will be dropped first at the destination of his choice. He finds out we are from Britain, so he spends the journey criticising the French. He is a man who likes talking, and I am sure if we were French he would spend his time criticising the British or Americans. Finally, we drop him off, and the taxi reverses at speed out of the courtyard of the plush looking apartment block, and then we are off up to the distant hillside, where we are due to be welcomed at Lil Abouna – the Arabic for “the place of our Father.” As we approach, we can hardly miss the splendid basilica built in 1881 by a French architect. From the darkness we can also hear the call of a distant muezzin from a mosque. And we have arrived at the gates of Lil Abouna, which is the ruined remains of the fifth century monastery home of the “Abouna” – one Afghoustinos, better known to us as Augustine, just as this town of Annaba is better known to us as “Hippo”, its ancient name under the Roman Empire. We now discover our room at the neighbouring Pilgrim hotel. It will not be difficult to sleep at the end of this long day’s journey.
We wake early, summoned by the intense bright daylight forcing its way through the shutters. After breakfast, from the balcony of our hotel, we notice halfway down the hill a Christian school, which is no doubt where the Sisters were heading.
Following a visit to the ruins of the monastery, with their fragments of mosaic pavements, and outline of an abbey church, we find our way to the excellent library belonging to the basilica. Guided by the Father Librarian, we survey the many shelves of St. Augustine’s works, mostly editions in the original Latin. I settle down with an index volume at a long table; I just wonder; I just wonder what Augustine had to say about Matthew 11. verses 25 – 30 ? Yes, there is something…. a meditation …. ; strange to think of Augustine sitting at his desk here in this monastery, and writing this down in about 400 AD :
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me …
“Christ
came that
The Bread might hunger
that The Fountain might thirst
that The Way might be tired on his journey,
that The Truth might be accused of false witness,
that The Healer might be
wounded.”
I think to myself, I have come on a long journey to find a riddle at the end of it ! But a little voice deep inside me says “ take these words of paradox, and go for a walk in the courtyard; hear the running of the fountain as it irrigates the gardens, and let your mind relax and be reached by living waters.”
And so I do. And gradually it begins to make some kind of sense. “That the Bread might hunger;” Jesus is the Bread of Life, and yet he hungers in the wilderness, “that the Fountain might thirst” : Jesus said “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink” ( John 7.17f. ) and yet on the Cross he said, “ I thirst.”
“that the Way might be tired on his journey” : Jesus said “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life”; and yet “foxes have holes, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head ( Matthew 8.20 ) and on the road to Calvary he fell down from exhaustion;
“that the Truth might be accused of false witness”, so they accused Jesus when he stood before Pilate – and ‘jesting Pilate said “what is truth ?” and did not stay for an answer.’
“that the Healer might be wounded” : yes, for Jesus who healed so many is our healer, and we know his healing, “for by his stripes we are healed.” as Isaiah prophesied ( Is. 53.5 )
So in these few words Augustine teaches us what it means for God to come among us, to become vulnerable. Our salvation requires God’s complete humiliation at the hands of humankind, offered freely and with love. And we are left in wonder and awe. We stay there for a time, and then reach out to make our response :
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me…
Lord,
make us hunger;
teach us how to thirst for you;
let us know how the easy Way, got tired,
and was accused,
and let us be one with you
Yes, Augustine, your wisdom is for real, your prayer extends its life to us, across these centuries and endures while the empire which you knew has vanished, the city which you knew here has fallen and risen time and again, and the faith which you proclaimed in this place is now here as a guest, and not as a ruler. You grieved over the changes of your time; you pray for us down the centuries, that our faith may not be shaken with the shaking of the world’s foundations. And you pray for the remaking of this world after the likeness that is given from above :
“let the whole world feel and see
that things which were cast down are being raised up,
and things which had grown old are being made new,
and all things are returning to perfection
through him from whom they took their origin;
even Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Notes :
The journey I describe is one which I made in 1973 when I went out to Beirut as a missionary with CMS. The difference : our boat from Marseilles docked at Alexandria and then went up the coast to Beirut. So I have put together some imagination and a little research in order to end up in Hippo ! This “journey” was inspired by the quote from Augustine given on the Center for Sunday Liturgy website, and the prayer of response is also from the same source :
http://liturgy.slu.edu/14OrdA070311/prayerpathmain.html
The final prayer is from the Gelasian Sacramentary ( c. 8th century. )
I decided to write this story of a journey, as I wanted to discover Augustine not as a remote figure in a stained glass window, but belonging to the same tormented world as ourselves. He learnt how to have confidence in Christ at time when all was changing around him, and as it seemed at that time, in a disastrous way, with the fall of the Roman Empire and with the Vandals laying siege to the city of Hippo as he lay dying. You can read more about him on :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo
Illustrations
Notre Dame de la Garde : wonderful photograph : http://www.flickr.com/photos/meteorry/2651850751/
The modern town of Annaba, photographs:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annaba
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/26092/Annaba……
