The Church has always been important in the life of our village and our present vicar works hard to keep it so. Lent this year was approached with due preparation and the contributons of visiting preachers; it was upon us, though, before the month of February was over, and the progression through the first three Sundays of this solemn and thought-provoking season of the Church reached the fourth which, this year, was designated Mothering Sunday.
Amidst the welcome fun of the Family service our vicar imparted a few gems of ecclesiastical history, including that it was tradtional on this day for Mother and Daughter churches to get together, and for daughters working in service to return, with presents, to the family hearth; it was a good opportunity for mothers with children to be greeted with gratitude, and those without to be remembered also.
The same Sunday, I noted, was March 25th, known as Lady Day, and traditionally an occasion for the Church to remember Mary, at least as the Mother of Jesus, and in the most high places as the Virgin, Mother of God. I was quietly surprised that this rather special juxtaposition of Mothers received no recognition in the little homily amid the rejoicing families, and since our vicar is customarily an opportunist in the matter of sermons and given to including the most recent observations from The Times , I took it that the Virgin Mary was not as relevent at that time as I had fondly imagined. Indeed, I went on to reflect, giving prominence to a figure so central to God's miraculous appearance in an earthly family was inappropriate on a day devoted to the the more obvious biological aspects of our family life. Perhaps I could see in all this our modern church moving away from its insistence upon the miraculous, and with this I could sympathise.
I first had misgivings over the nature of the Church's authority in the matter of miracles when I read The Brothers Karamazov. It was at a time when the traditions upheld by the Roman Catholic Church seemed very attractive to me. Dostoevsky's writing reached a sensitive soul and enquiring mind very powerfully in those student days, and I took particular note of Ivan's story of the appearance of Christ before the Inquisitor who presents the infallible authority of the Church as the right answer to man's need for salvation, rebuking the silent Christ for not using His miraculous powers when tempted by the Devil in the wilderness. I took this as a commendation of Orthodoxy, and indeed Anglicanism, with their uncertainties, and resisted the temptation to change Church membership.
Thereafter, in a life spent amidst patients striving with serious disease, and not infrequently facing death, I grew more and more sceptical about miracles - but respected the miraculous; the natural laws determining the relationship between disease, life and death proved more and more wondrous to honest observation and acceptance, but there was no place for pursuading myself or others that a miracle would change their course. The Christian Church had fragmented itself over the centuries as individuals broke away from its authority to follow their conscience, only to make conscious choice an authority in itself, and dissension as destructive as disbelief. Perhaps, at last, the Church had begun to reject the compulsion of miracles.
No such folly. As Easter approached I read in the admirable magazine which presents our church in the midst of a host of village activities that miracles were certainly not out, and the ressurrection was boldly proclaimed. On Easter Day this was re-iterated in a warmly personal assertion by our vicar that he had many years ago decided to accept the resurrection as a miracle performed by God because the spontaneous recovery of Christ with sufficient strength to move the stone himself, or the removal of both the stone and the body by some accomplices did not fit his understanding of the biblical account. I aked myself: could the emergence of the profound ethic of 'love thy neighbour as thyself' from that person in Jerusalem, bereft of the power of proclaimed miracles, prove ultimately to fulfil also the first and great commandment?
Re- reading The Grand Inquisitor I was as impressed in my state of reflective retirement as I had ben in my student days, but differently so; the profound exposition by the old man of the role of the Church, based upon 'miracle, mystery, and authority' in the history of humanity over the centuries can be read as that of all authoritarian movements designed to answer man's innate dependence upon the 'bread of salvation' in material and mental form.
The appearance of the silent Christ amidst the Inquisition affords an opportunity for Him to change His responses made in the wilderness to the temptation to pursuade by the use of power (the Inquisitor also has been in the wilderness, and fed on losusts - as have many others in their search for salvation) but, faced with this grand old man who has himself tasted the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, only to reject it finally for the good of the mass of suffering humanity, and who is prepared to burn Him alongside other heretics, He kisses him 'on the lips' - and walks away - free.
The tale is proposed as a poem to be written by the intellectual Ivan, but is actually told to the affectionate Alyosha, as Dostoevsky presents the great themes of life through the Brothers Karamazov in a book which lasts; my re-reading should soon take me to the doings of the desperate Dmitri.
Life in our village gives much food for thought.
© Badgerwood 2001. First published in 'About Ferriby' July 2001