A thought from Titus Brandsma

Click the title to read of his history

Now and then, usually unexpectedly, I am moved beyond description by words. I had known nothing of Titus Brandsma until someone gave me a prayer card about him. It contained a brief history, and cited a letter Titus had written right before he was transported to (his death at) Dachau. He reassured his sister, "At Dachau I shall meet friends, and our God Almighty is everywhere."

I cannot think of any image of hell that would be worse than Dachau. Yet Titus, facing this horror with serenity, could grasp that human violence does not remove the presence of God. I would not care to pursue this knowledge in the way in which did Titus - but I suppose, deep down, I know as well that Jesus' crucifixion should remind one of that reality.

Gloomy images are hardly a staple of my blog - and I'm not so pious that I shall pretend that thoughts of concentration camps do not make me ill, no matter how much spiritual insight those such as Titus may bring. I am writing of this not only because Titus' words brought me to tears, but because it strikes me how often we can distort our vision. Titus was not suggesting that Dachau was 'God's will,' or that he was taking punishment for the sins of the world, but was recognising that God was still with him - and (not that I could explain this) that the divine image of the Creator remains in all of his people.

As I've mentioned in the past, it is vaguely amusing that hagiography (at least the sort in vogue in my childhood... when saints were depicted as perfect Victorian children for us to emulate... and Jesus was referred to in hymns as such a perfect baby that 'no crying he makes,' and otherwise as perfectly meek and mild... an image to which the gospels woudl largely give the lie) would lead one to think that holiness leaves everyone in awe - rather in the manner of a 1960s scriptural epic. Many of the saints were not the ... meekest and mildest of creatures, and the amount of trouble they had from their close associates often shows that they were hardly recognised as great ones in their own day. It never occurred to anyone (except perhaps myself... I always was a difficult child for unimaginative teachers) to question why the saints supposedly were invariably loved and esteemed, where the Son of God was sent to execution.

Trouble was, the 'scriptural epic' mode was applied to Jesus of Nazareth. Though there was no doctrine to this effect, we rather had the idea that Jesus' death did not come about naturally, and that there was no conflict surrounding him which led to the circumstances. No, he only went to the cross because it was 'God's will.' (Do not get me started on the gruesome notion that God's anger needed to be appeased...)

It was doctrine that Jesus was both true God and true man, but, to quote the splendid Raymond E. Brown, "Many Christians tolerate only as much humanity as they deem consonant with their view of the divinity." Along the way, this truth was enhanced by an odd idea (perhaps born of the idea that Jesus was not a hermit but should have been, or some Jansenistic remnant which blushed at Jesus' having been at enough parties for anyone to be complaining) that Jesus had no genuine human relationships. He was cast in the role of the perfect monk (in some vaguely morbid style - not the concept which great saints would have conceived), where seeing family is a pure duty to edify them, and friends are only targets for sermons.

I see no indication that this is true, of course. Yet we tend to shy from the idea that Judas, far from being some demonic figure, was a trusted and well loved companion. Or that Jesus' 'could you not wait one hour with me?," in which love and anguish are vivid, was merely a line to be recorded for future Perpetual Adoration manuals. Or that "why have you forsaken me?" was not merely a scriptural quotation, which would lead us all to read the pertinent psalm.

I'm almost embarrassed to hit the Post button - there is so little wit or insight in this entry. Yet I believe there is at least a concept here that is worth noting. The holy - even one who was Holiness itself - are not spyhnx like figures who have no natural human feelings, whether of self or for others. They were not smugly saying, "I do not fear - nothing can happen that God does not will or permit." Nor is wickedness part of the divine plan, and the worst victims oblations. Evil we shall never understand - but it is not a force competing with divinity.