Christian Art | George Herbert | The Temple | The Church | The Temper (2)
George Herbert | The Temple | The Church | The Temper (2)
It cannot be. Where is that mightie joy,
Which just now took up all my heart?
Lord, if thou must needs use thy dart,
Save that, and me; or sin for both destroy.
The grosser world stands to thy word and art;
But thy diviner world of grace
Thou suddenly dost raise and race,
And ev’ry day a new Creatour art.
O fix thy chair of grace, that all my powers
May also fix their reverence:
For when thou dost depart from hence,
They grow unruly, and sit in thy bowers.
Scatter, or binde them all to bend to thee:
Though elements change, and heaven move,
Let not thy higher Court remove,
But keep a standing Majestie in me
George Herbert | The Temple | The Church | The Temper (2)
The poem explores themes of divine presence, spiritual longing, and human instability. The poem opens with a stark reflection on the transient nature of spiritual joy and the sudden void that follows when such joy is absent. Herbert questions the disappearance of an overwhelming sense of divine joy that had recently consumed his heart, seeking an explanation or resolution from God. This inquiry sets the stage for a meditation on the balance between divine grace and human imperfection.
Herbert acknowledges the constancy of the material world, which aligns with God’s creative word and art. In contrast, the ‘diviner world of grace’ is described as subject to sudden change, as God continually renews and reconstructs it, portraying God as an active, daily Creator. This duality highlights tension between the enduring, visible world and a more fluid, spiritual realm, suggesting that while physical existence remains steady, spiritual experiences fluctuate.
The poem shifts to a plea for stability, Herbert asking God to ‘fix [His] chair of grace’, a metaphor for establishing a constant divine presence. The poet desires his faculties—emotions, thoughts, and actions—to be anchored in reverence for God. An absence of divine stability leads to disorder, where these faculties become unruly, indulging in their own pursuits without divine guidance. The metaphor of these powers ‘sitting in [God’s] bowers’ suggests complacency or distraction, emphasizing need for divine authority to keep Herbert’s inner world ordered and devoted.
The final stanza calls for a divine intervention to unify Herbert’s scattered energies and align them with God’s will. The use of the words ‘scatter’ and ‘bind’ reflects the push and pull between chaos and discipline. The poet notes that while natural elements and even the heavens may change or move, they implore God’s ‘higher Court’—a symbol of divine judgment and grace—not to shift or withdraw. The desire is for God’s majesty to remain constant within, ensuring a stable source of spiritual grounding.
The poem’s structure underscores a progression of themes from a question of lost spiritual joy to a petition for divine steadiness. Juxtaposition of divine permanence and human variability is reinforced throughout, suggesting that only God’s enduring presence can mitigate the unpredictability of human experience. Imagery of God as Creator and sustainer reflects the theological idea of continual divine involvement in both the physical and spiritual realms.
The poem is a meditation on the speaker’s dependence on divine grace for spiritual stability and fulfilment. It underscores the human experience of fluctuating spiritual states and longing for constant divine presence that binds and unifies the self. Herbert’s appeal for God to maintain an unchanging presence within him points to an understanding of faith as needing continual divine reinforcement to counteract human frailty and inconsistency.
On Tuesday, His Grace turns to the theme of Jesus’ hidden years. His Grace asks the students to consider questions concerning what really happened: ‘Who, for instance, was Joseph? Was he indeed a carpenter, or has Joseph’s true role in the society in which he lived been misconstrued and forgotten to us? Though it be a beautiful, simplifying image to grasp, which offers to us much that is of value in Catholic faith… ‘A wise elder, which carpenter could mean, or a great engineer, an architekton, which in the Greek does not mean carpenter. But carpenter in the Hebrew could mean a wise man…’ His Grace turns the pages of his Bible back and forth, as if to itemize the paucity of information. Then he says: ‘What I think I can say to you with confidence is that it is of profound significance that we simply don’t know what Jesus was doing for most of his earthly life. There are some very different possibilities. One idea cherished by the Church is that Jesus worked with his father Joseph as a carpenter. Another possibility is that Jesus lived and prayed and studied closely with John the Baptist. They were cousins, and very close, almost the same, in age. Luke’s Gospel tells us clearly that Jesus and John knew each other from within the womb before they were born. So there may have been something quite important happening there. You see, we don’t know – it is an impossible mystery to us – just how much Jesus had to learn. This is because, if Jesus knew everything, humanly speaking, even as a tiny baby, then how can we say he is fully human? We simply can’t probe too far into this mystery, but we can draw extraordinary truth and healing from this thought, which becomes of immense relevance in our own lives. Jesus came to know and to understand himself not merely as a son of God, but as God the Son, and so as self-identical with his Father. It is not an adoptive relationship. Jesus is God. Now so much is hidden here. But this is a great gift. If you think about it, how do we come to know that we are loved by God, that we have our relationship with God? What are we born with in here’ – his chest – ‘and what do we have to learn? This is to say, what is gifted to us by other Christians at our baptism? ‘Jesus must have studied, and experienced profound revelation about who and what he truly was, and, so it seems to be, these studies cannot have been confined to the Semitic world. But this is the important point: there is a hiddenness about all of this. No matter which schools and which sects our Lord might have encountered all these years, this to us is as a desert space. What this means is that we can enter into the hidden life of Jesus, and there we can discover our own being with God, our own sonship. Our own particular being loved by God can come to us, if we can enter within this great unknown – into this desert space, where we are loved by Jesus. I firmly believe that there may be a great Lenten mystery in this period of our Lord’s life.’ A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 1 A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 2 A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 3 A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 4 | King James Audio Bible | KJV A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 5 A Bishop’s Lenten Homily | Holy Week | Extracted From The Gospel According To Tomàs | Faith And Hope And Love And Sexuality | Part 6
Elizabeth is introduced in Luke 1:5 as a woman ‘of the daughters of Aaron,’ indicating her priestly lineage, which complements her husband Zachariah’s role as a priest ‘of the course of Abia’ (Luke 1:5). Both Elizabeth and Zachariah are described as ‘righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless’ (Luke 1:6). This emphasizes their piety and faithfulness to God’s law. Despite their righteousness, the couple is childless because Elizabeth is barren, and both are advanced in age (Luke 1:7) [ … ]
Mark has shown Jesus earlier (Mark 7: 32-33) using the sign of the laying on of hands as part of the miracle of healing. Normally when Jesus heals, the healing is instant. With the blind man at Bethsaida this is not the case. The healing is more gradual, passing through stages before being complete [ … ]
