'Mankind was my business!'

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

The over-all theme of the Parable of the Great Supper, heard last Sunday at the Liturgy, had to do with how being "busy" can easily lead to excuse-making of a dubious kind because we then justify postponing our relationship with God based upon those very excuses. But as Christ said in the parable, the Master of the Supper was not impressed.

'Mankind was my business!' (still from 'Scrooge', 1951)

This somehow connects in my mind with a certain literary classic. Over the years I have read A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (and seen more than one film version!). For me, one of the most effective passages in the book, is toward the beginning, when the Ghost of Jacob Marley visits Scrooge on Christmas Eve. By this time, the miserly and miserable character of Scrooge has been masterfully etched in by Dickens. And to this day, the name of Scrooge is synonymous with avarice, greed, and a joyless and meaningless accumulation of profit. Earlier, Scrooge had articulated some of the utilitarian philosophy of the 19th c. when he coldly said in reference to the poor and prisoners, "If they would rather die they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

The Ghost of Marley returns to haunt Scrooge, but Marley himself is in great torment and anguish. Imprisoned in chains that he cannot free himself of, Marley is doomed to roam the earth as a restless spirit witnessing human suffering that he cannot alleviate because he ignored that suffering selfishly during his time on earth. Of the chains, Marley says:

"I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it."

With a deep, bitter regret, Marley then confesses:

"My spirit never walked beyond our counting-house - mark me! - in life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of our money-changing hole; and weary journeys lie before me!... Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one's life opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!"

At this point in this somewhat macabre dialogue between the two, Scrooge begins to grope for some signs of hope and relief as he intuitively realizes that Marley is speaking words of warning to him for his cold-hearted scorn for the rest of humanity. When Scrooge protests the working of an unseen providence, by saying "But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," we then hear what may be the most significant - and well-known - passage in this scene:

"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"

It held up its chains at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.

"At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said, "I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!"

Anticipating the regret of a life not well-lived is a frightening thought. Especially if it comes down to having been too busy!

Good literature is capable of leaving strong indelible images that are much more effective than a well-argued treatise. Dickens' characters were always exaggerated or "larger than life," as we may say. But they then "typify" a great deal about life in the process.

Besides the necessary business that makes up our lives, and which must be done carefully and responsibly, just what else are we so "busy" with? Does that business also lead us away from charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence? Are we presently scurrying around, making sure that we will have a "Merry Christmas," while also turning our eyes downward so that we too cannot "see" the blessed Star that guides us to the Incarnate Christ? Are we going to somehow be able to "fit" the Church into our "Business?" Both the parable from Sunday and Dickens' classic A Christmas Carol raise the issue of our stewardship of time and the Christian truth that "mankind is our business."

A 'pouring out of long accumulating, long pent-up pain'

Dear Parish Faithful & Friends in Christ,

For some time now (for it is a long book) Presvytera Deborah and I have been reading together Elizabeth Gaskell's classic biography The Life of Charlotte Bronte.  This book has often been praised as the greatest biography of 19th c. English literature.

Charlotte Bronte, of course, is the author of one of 19th c. English literature's enduring classics and the creator of one of that literature's most memorable character in the novel bearing that character's name, Jane Eyre. All readers of this novel know that "plain Jane" is a high-spirited and perceptive young woman who has a rich and deep interior life that has endeared her to countless readers since the novel's initial publication in 1847. And there have countless stage and films adaptations that continue to be produced to this day. Yet, Charlotte Bronte wrote other fine novels, including The Professor, Villette, and Shirley. 

Charlotte Bronte had a deep Christian faith and sensibility. Her faith was severely tested as she first nursed, and then helplessly watched, three of her siblings die within about a six-month period (September 1848 - May 1849). Two of these siblings were also novelists: Emily wrote the famous Wuthering Heights; and Anne wrote The Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Of the three siblings that Charlotte lost, the oldest one to die was her deeply troubled brother, Branwell, at thirty-one.  Emily was twenty-nine; and Anne was twenty-seven. This was a series of crushing losses for Charlotte to bear. Her deeply personal and poignant letters following these untimely deaths testify to her belief in eternal life with God through Jesus Christ our "Redeemer" as she often referred to Christ.

Her father, Patrick Bronte, was a curate of the local Anglican parish in Haworth, and their home in the parsonage there is now a place of pilgrimage for Bronte devotees.  Charlotte Bronte was fiercely Protestant, and just as fiercely hostile to Roman Catholicism.  Supposedly, she both pitied and feared Roman Catholics. 

When she taught at the Pensionnat Heger, a school for girls in predominantly Catholic Brussels, Belgium, she felt surrounded by "Romanism."  She further thought that her Roman Catholic students were filled with superstition and susceptible to "sensual indulgence."  Yet, before we judge Charlotte Bronte too harshly for such prejudices, such antagonism between Protestants and Roman Catholics in 19th c. England, was probably not that uncommon.  Every time and place seemingly has its own prejudices.  We certainly have ours.

All of this makes one peculiar event in her life all the remarkable and difficult to fully explain.

Wandering through Brussels during a break from teaching, and at a time when she was suffering from a certain malaise that we would term despondency, if not depression, she found herself entering the large Roman Catholic cathedral of SS-Michel-et-Gudule for what seems to have been the evening service, what we would call Vespers.

Following the service she made her way to that part of the cathedral where the ornate confessional boxes were located. And at this point, something compelled her to enter one of the confessionals and confess to a Roman Catholic priest!

As one prominent Bronte scholar - Helen Cooper - has written:  "A daughter of a Church of England clergyman, Bronte must have been desperately depressed to have decided that her only hope of comfort lay in thus violating Protestant - Catholic 'rules'." It took her some effort to convince the priest to even hear her confession as she informed him that she was a Protestant.  Charlotte later wrote of this incident: "I was determined to confess," and after the priest relented to hear her -  presumably because it might lead to her conversion - she emphatically added:  "I actually did confess - a real confession." 

To this day there is no memoir or letter that reveals precisely what she confessed on that day in Brussels. However, in the words of her most autobiographical character - the ultra-Protestant Lucy Snowe from the novel Villette after she confessed under the exact same conditions - we read the following:

"the mere relief of communication in an ear which was human and sentient, yet consecrated - the mere pouring out of some portion of long accumulating, long pent-up pain into a vessel whence it could not be again diffused - had done me good. I was already solaced."

It is true that Charlotte Bronte never went to Confession again in her life, but nevertheless she acknowledges in these words of the fictional Lucy Snowe a truly deep experience.  Was this a once-in-a-lifetime concession to that inner need to "confess your sins to one another" (James 5:16)? A felt need that I am sure we often have.

Thus, I am offering a reflection about this real and literary event from the life and literature of Charlotte Bronte, because we are in that season when our own confession is a key component of our lenten effort as Orthodox Christians.  (I wonder what the ultra-Protestant Charlotte Bronte would have thought of our Byzantine Liturgy).

We, of course, may feel that Confession is an "obligation" that must be fulfilled as a member of the Church.  I even ask you to do so by appointment (!), and we may thus lack the spontaneity and even surprise of turning to Confession compelled by some inner need, as was the author of Jane Eyre and Villette. 

However, we too may be surprised by what we experience as was Charlotte Bronte against all of her expectations.  We (desperately?) need to "unburden our souls" to resort to something of a meaningful cliche.  Each and every confession is potentially a time to "break on through to the other side" - to quote a more recent "artist." Such a breakthrough is the path to inner freedom.

The Sacrament of Confession offers the supreme opportunity to overcome a bad habit, a disposition, a passion; to seek forgiveness of our sins against God and one another; or to remove those obstacles that we perversely create between ourselves and the living God. 

And, as Orthodox Christians, we have the liberty of not having to overcome any prejudices concerning Confession.  We need only overcome any reluctance or resistance; any self-justification or self-defense; or any illusions about ourselves that we refuse to abandon, so that we also may experience "the mere pouring out of some portion of long accumulating, long pent-up pain" to a priest "consecrated" for that very role.

As different as we are to Charlotte Bronte - though the "human condition" remains the same - there is no reason we could not fully agree with her when she said that Confession "had done me good."