In this volume, I uncover and draw together vibrant contributions to Marian doctrine and devotion by some of those then living in England under the sixth-century Rule of St. Benedict: the Benedictines and their successors, the Cistercians. In a thematic unfolding of Mary’s life and identity, from conception to assumption and intercession, a picture emerges of a Mariology shaped by the constant of monastic liturgy, anchored in the biblical and patristic wisdom cherished and transmitted by the Venerable Bede, and animated by love. Towering figures, such as Anselm of Canterbury and Ælred of Rievaulx, are also placed within a wider landscape alongside lesser known but still significant others, including the Cistercian abbot, John of Forde, royal confessor and pioneer of Marian exegesis of the Song of Songs.

England’s monastic Mariology was colored by Greek as well as Latin influences and touched by key experiences of the contemporary church at large: apocalyptic disappointment, reform, sacramentalism, and intense yearning for salvation. In particular, Mills brings to light the significance of Mary for monks’ understanding of their own profession: their mother and their lady, Mary was also their icon and exemplar of life in St Benedict’s ‘school for the Lord’s service’ (Rule, Prol. 45).

This book provides a brilliant demonstration of scholarship and insight in medieval culture. Matthew Mills succeeds in integrating the research and results of the past half century into the world of Benedictine and Cistercian monasticism in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. He may feel he is a dwarf on the shoulders of giants like Richard Southern and Benedicta Ward, but he has learned from his masters and now equals them in his understanding of how Mary was perceived, understood and interpreted by several generations of monks. His study illuminates what he calls ‘a rich intellectual culture and spirituality’ in the medieval English church.

Brian Patrick McGuire, Roskilde University

Perhaps not.

Recently, I heard from an eminent barrister and judge, author of an acclaimed insider account of our legal system, that the term ‘justice’ is itself a ‘slippery creature’, which derives meaning from whatever is considered ‘fair and reasonable’, not to mention practicable, in any given society, at any given time.1 Far from appealing to an eternal standard, she argued, the idea is always somehow subject to the shifting sands of public opinion.

Thus, for example: whilst once justice meant ‘thou shalt not commit adultery’ as well as ‘thou shalt not kill’, in more recent times (in the West, at least) a distinction has been made between the latter as a matter of law and the former as a matter of (essentially private) moral behaviour.2

In this light, justice under the law is stripped of transcendental or ultimate value, and wrongdoers within our legal system are found not to have transgressed some objective standard but merely to have offended against the settled view of society at a specific point in time. This is a conception of justice as something like a collective preference.

The public elects representatives whose policy platforms reflect our preferences; politicians become policy-makers who set in law some of the parameters of justice; experts in sentencing extrapolate detailed guidelines and tools for making judgments; judges apply the rules, with only the minimum of discretion.

This account posits a causal chain linking public preferences, as determinative of justice, the laws made in our parliament, and the judgments handed down in our courts. It means, by extension, that we get the criminal justice system we ask for - and since the system appears not to be working (more and longer sentences failing to reduce recidivism, for instance) this should be making us feel distinctly uncomfortable.

Reform of the criminal justice system is a matter of vital importance.

It is an appalling irony that structures responsible for overseeing justice themselves entail and perpetuate gross offences against fairness: trials long delayed, inflated and even indeterminate sentences, the separation of imprisoned parents from their children, underinvestment in education and rehabilitation programmes.

Analysis of such injustices, which seem to pervade the system, might conclude that they are the result of poor policy-making or inadequate provision of funds; certainly, when it comes to debates about public expenditure, politicians are rarely to be heard advancing the cause of prison officers, still less, prisoners.

On the basis of the preceding argument, however, the uncomfortable truth would appear to be that society at large, not only our policy-makers, bears some weight of responsibility for present failures.

In fact, our broken criminal justice system is a symptom of something deeper – and treating symptoms, whilst a bit of technocratic tinkering may bring temporary relief, will never address root causes.

Our broken criminal justice system is a symptom of our broken conception of justice.

Alienation from traditions and frameworks of thought, especially those appealing to metaphysical standards, has distorted the vital balance between objective value and subjective experience, allowing the latter to supplant the former as the determinative influence over everything, including public policy.

By contrast:

Justice, as a rejection of anything pernicious or destructive to the common good, exposes narratives of hate, which encourage the alienation of wrongdoers as another (inevitably, lesser) type of being.

Justice, imbued with a sacred commitment to the dignity of all, resists the temptation to vengeance and complacency concerning the other – in this case, the prisoner – whom we cannot see.

Justice, allied to love, tempers the subjective desire for retribution, reaches out to the other and seeks their good: for them, for those they have harmed, and for society.

True justice is strong. It does not tolerate wrongdoing, neither an offender’s nor, importantly, our own. It is more than the expression of a collective preference, since it also holds society to account.

She meant, I think, that good art inspires the imaginative leap of seeing our lives in the context of a wider vision and the consequent cultivation of attention to others, which are necessary for moral growth; Murdoch’s key question was, ‘How can we make ourselves better?’

The focus of Murdoch’s words was representational art but she also, just a few lines earlier in the same work, referred to the ‘spiritual role of music’. At Durham Cathedral—where I have been employed since 2019—we know that a great musical composition, like a beautiful painting, can exercise extraordinary power.

As Head of Development, I am often asked to ‘make the case’ for music as a priority for financial investment. The question usually goes something like this: Choral music may be central to the life of Durham Cathedral but how can it possibly compete with other eminently good causes as a priority for funding?

It is tempting to say, in reply, that music is part of our history (we have been ‘doing’ music for a long time), that we are preserving a great asset for future generations, and that plenty of research attests to the value of music for promoting positive mental and physical health. All of these responses would be valid—there is no need even to mention the alleged ‘Mozart effect’ on babies!—but perhaps a still more compelling reason is at hand.

Music is the Cathedral’s gift to and for the sake of the world, most clearly embodied in our community, visitors and all who ‘tune in’ to livestreamed services. Multiple times most weeks, entirely free of charge, our choir brings to life great works of art from across the centuries of human experience.

At a recent service of Evensong, for instance, Durham marked the 400th anniversary of the death of William Byrd (1540-1623) with a performance of several of his works. Byrd was an extraordinary person, a Catholic who nevertheless flourished in the court of a Protestant monarch, Elizabeth I (r. 1558-1603), at a time of acute suspicion between Christians. The performance of his works today, however, is no mere testimony to the man himself, frozen in historical time.

Choral music has the power to transport the heart of the listener away from the present world of its own self-absorption, creating conditions for empathy and compassion. The disorientation in time and space entailed by hearing Byrd’s early-modern compositions, necessitating a re-tuning of the ear, is a preparation for (and symbol of) a deeper disorientation, that of being transported from selfishness to loving attention to others.

Music can negate the narrow, earth-boundedness of our particular lives and open the soul to the wideness of heaven. Faith communities like Durham Cathedral intuitively grasp the conclusions of modern science, that singing and exposure to music exercise the brain and improve memory, since they entail a journey both into and with the historical past.

The case for music is, I think, primarily moral.

Great music has the potential to ‘make us better’, to return to Murdoch’s phrase, and in so doing contribute to the healthy functioning of society. Can you imagine a great civilisation without music? It is very difficult, if not impossible, to do so.

Music may offer no guaranteed protection against human wickedness, but surely a society without music would be missing a vital part of its social fabric, one of the very civilising influences making it worthy of the name.

Where there is life in its fullness and an abundance of virtue, there is music.

In a world properly orientated towards what really matters, the prophet Isaiah seemed to be saying, ‘the mountains and the hills . . . shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands’ (Is. 55:12).1

At Durham Cathedral, we ponder (for instance) the resting place of one-hundred and seven statues which once adorned our fourteenth-century reredos (i.e. the Neville Screen) between the High Altar and St Cuthbert’s Shrine at the building’s East End. These were allegedly removed by the last monastic community to protect them from the commissioners of Henry VIII (r. 1509-47). Where they were hidden, we may never know.

Then, there are secrets which have been discovered.

Such is the work of Norman Emery, Durham’s longstanding and distinguished archaeologist: to delve beneath the surface of present experience, uncovering traces of the stories of our predecessors, those with whom we stand in continuity, whose work we continue as stewards and custodians.

This post is about a third kind of secret: the secret hidden in plain sight. Durham, like most cathedrals, I suspect, has a number of these.

Visitors and pilgrims come—750,000 a year, according to one set of statistics from before the blight of the Covid-19 pandemic—and they look at the same things. From west to east: the Font, the great carved pillars, the Scott Screen (seprarating the Nave from the Choir), the Neville Screen, the High Altar, the Chapel of Nine Altars, the great rose window.

They gaze in awe at the architecture and, in the Museum, marvel at ancient artefacts. Some of the latter may once have been secrets—the pectoral cross of St Cuthbert, for example, lay dormant in his coffin from the tenth century, until being discovered among his clothes in 1827—whilst others were designed to be on public display.1 Most conceal the identity of the artist or the craftsman who made them, which is a great shame; only the fruit of their labour is there for all to gaze upon, raising minds and hearts to God.

There are, though, some things which visitors simply do not see: things they walk past, but rarely observe. By virtue of being partially concealed, small perhaps, less grand and imposing, less powerful, less well documented, and therefore less well ‘signposted’ than other fixtures, fittings and monuments, such things are simply not noticed. They are not allowed to become part of our experience of the Cathedral; we are not permitted to become their witnesses.

Just such an object may be found in the Gregory Chapel.

It’s quite possible that, even if you have visited Durham Cathedral and are familiar with the Galilee Chapel and the Chapel of Nine Altars, you may not have heard of the Gregory Chapel. It is a small but very special space in the North Transept; a beautiful place for quiet contemplation.

The object I would like to share with you may be found in this chapel. It is a ceramic plaque and its subject is none other than the Cathedral’s great patroness, the blessed Virgin Mary.

This (above) is, of course, a depiction of the annunciation: that moment when the secret and often concealed radiance of heaven broke through into Mary’s life, and Gods messenger revealed itself with the words, ‘Rejoice . . . do not be afraid; you have won God’s favour. Look! You are to conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you must name him Jesus’ (Lk 1:28, 30-31).

These words are so familiar that sometimes we fail to hear them, fail to attend to their majesty. The eternal Word of God spoke, through Gabriel, a prophetic word, to which Mary responded with her own voice, ‘let it happen to me as you have said’ (Lk 1:38).

Such faith.

Such courage.

In preparing this post, I contacted the Cathedral’s extremely knowledgable Exhibitions Officer, Marie-Thérèse Mayne, to ask about this particular annunciation scene. Her response intensified my intuition that it may be described as one of Durham’s secrets hidden in plain sight.

Marie-Thérèse explained that very little is known, except that it dates from the late-nineteenth or early-twentieth century and is in the style of a Renaissance sculptor, Andrea della Robbia (d. 1525); you can see a resemblance, I think, between our ceramic and this example of Robbia’s work in the Louvre.

Marie-Thérèse also drew my attention to a number of the work’s decorative features, based mostly upon longstanding conventions in religious art, such as the physical posture of Gabriel, gesturing to heaven, and his stem of lilies, a flower symbolising Mary’s sinlessness.

If the posture of Gabriel, the stem of lilies, and so on, may be described as the work’s ‘objective’ features, based upon a universal experience of such images, perhaps we may also look at it ‘subjectively’ or ‘contextually’, for its significance as one of Durham Cathedral’s secrets hidden in plain sight.

In my own moment of contemplation, the plaque revealed itself as a window through which something may be glimpsed of the hidden life of the Cathedral and the hidden movements of people’s hearts as they visit.

Look more closely at the heads of Mary and Gabriel; can you see the marks where two haloes used to be? Marie-Thérèse very aptly described these to me as ‘scars’.

In gazing upon and through this artwork, we recall iconoclastic moments in the Cathedral’s long history. We recall the destruction of St Cuthbert’s medieval shrine and the fragments of holy faces disfigured by hammer blows; we recall, also, the efforts of those monks to protect the statues of the Neville Screen, to which I referred earlier. Whatever caused those haloes to be removed, the glorious scars which have been left behind may be a symbol for us of a hidden history.

Now, look down at the base of the plaque.

It is difficult to detect on a flat image, but there is a narrow sill where three coins have been laid directly below the Virgin herself. These are the marks of pilgrimage; tokens left, perhaps, by a wounded heart seeking Mary’s help, or a soul uplifted giving thanks for services rendered. They are an oblation, an offering, of at least one hidden heart whose gesture stands for everyone who has ever been drawn to the Cathedral as a place of prayer.

These two features, the halo scars and the pilgrim’s coins, are a reminder that our cathedral is not an art gallery, but something more like a living thing, an organism. It has a life, a history, a story to tell; it welcomes us and bears the marks of our presence.

A secret pulsates with the meaning it conceals.

The beating heart of our image of the annunciation is not Mary, nor Gabriel, but the pregnancy of the whole event: the expectation implicit in the presentation of all the protagonists, but particularly the dove at the window, symbol of the Holy Spirit.

Patiently, respectfully, the dove waits outside Mary’s room until a word, her word, of acquiescence is given: ‘let it happen’ (Lk 1:38). The annunciation was a moment of cosmic suspension, when Gabriel's message, his question, to the maiden of Nazareth hung in the air. From eternity, Mary had been prepared for this moment by divine grace and yet, in the finite sphere of historical time, she was entirely free to choose.

Consider the magnitude of this claim: for a moment in time and according to his own design, the creator and sustainer of being, indeed Being itself, gently appealed to the good faith of a creature for assent to a divine plan. God did not ‘need’ Mary, in the sense that her cooperation was necessary to accomplish some enrichment or augmentation of divine being; rather, God sought Mary to be a special collaborator and object of his love.

In the twelfth century, the Cistercian abbot and theologian, Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153), took up this very theme in one of the most beautiful of his many homilies.

This is what he wrote:

Give your answer quickly, my Virgin. My lady, say this word which earth and hell and heaven itself are waiting for. The very King and Lord of all, he who has so desired your beauty, is waiting anxiously for your answer and assent, by which he proposes to save the world.2

The multivalent character of the history and witness of Durham Cathedral may well be explored in terms of the secrets it holds—some lost, others found, and many hidden in plain sight. Our contemplation of this particular depiction of the annunciation has laid before us an example of the latter.

We have been able to think about the history of the artefact, its story; to think about its witness to the history of this place, including all those whose feet have, over the centuries, worn down its stones; above all, we have been faced with an enduring symbol of the hope of our community of faith: the creature whose assent and collaboration made possible the redemption of the world.

In our own lives, perhaps we can take inspiration from this exercise, not to mention Mary’s own example, to cultivate an attentive spirit; most of all, to attend to those, the homeless, sick and imprisoned, whom others may not see.

Perhaps it could be our prayer to become ever more open to the Holy Spirit who may, just possibly, be hovering outside our window, awaiting an invitation to enter.3

A majestic setting? Soaring walls of stone beneath an oaken sky; once the largest hall in Europe. Now, faint reverberations of the past, murmured memory of deeds, misdeeds, debates, banquets and even trials, carried upon venerable breath. Can the ghosts of Thomas More or Charles I still be heard, defending their consciences, and their lives? Imagination furnishes this place with the tingling of ancestral voices. So many utterances, but all is cloaked in quietness this night.

There is beauty, also, in the unfolding ceremony. Bright red and gold of uniforms, embossed, emblazoned with symbols of service; a trace of sacrifice in their colour, of blood, and many presents given for the purchase of tomorrows they would not see.

Guards’ slow marching encircles the imperial state crown, glimmering, glistening, shimmering, shivering with grief and glory. Few things made by human hands can claim such undimmable beauty, with four unbleached candles as its sentinels of ever-changing aspect. There is power in these flames, flickering with the fragility of life, wax of time cascading down and away. Perfect symbols of a reign undimmed but spent in the giving out of light.

The ‘people’, assembled masses, have their own ceremony, self-imposed and self-regulating (apart from an occasional, gentle, ushering nudge).

Poignant is the beauty of the great grieving serpent, glistening with tears and curling, caressingly, about the object of its love. The simple beauty of one body, yet also, under the camera’s microscopic gaze, a multivalent form. Every sort and variety of person, every story, every experience, every virtue, and every vice.

Such, in the end, is the beauty of our humanity; it is one and many, common and personal, universal and particular. Common life is a precondition for hope. Mourners’ undulating progress has no uniformity—some bow, others curtsey, whilst still others look uncertainly around—but the whole comforts and compels the parts.

Mesmeric scene: architecture, ritual and priesthood all united now, beneath a veil of black darkness clinging to great windows. Yet, these are merely beauty's outriders—and our original question, ‘what, precisely, do we mean by the beauty of this scene?’ remains unanswered.

The late Queen said, ‘grief is the price we pay for love’, and the heart is the seat of love. Locating beauty here means going to the heart of things: to the Lady, a purple-shrouded catafalque for a throne, clothed in the vesture of her authority.

If Elizabeth had not loved, she would not now be in receipt of love in such abundance. The spell of beauty, of the setting, the ceremony, the self-perpetuating movement of the human gathering, would be broken. Beauty does not consist in exterior things, no matter how clear and perfect their mimetic gaze may be.

Beauty reclines its head upon the good and gentle soul, its place of rest and safety not in diadems and diamonds, but in the deep darkness of the heart.

May God bless the late Queen, not because she was delightful to gaze upon, though she may have been, but because she was good, strong, loving and true, and for the inspiration she provided us all to become more beautiful ourselves.

It takes place just after Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) discovered a magical mirror, the ‘Mirror of Erised’, which reflected not only the one looking into it, but also ‘the deepest and most desperate desires of our hearts’. Harry, an orphan, saw the parents he lost to the dark wizard, Voldemort, and the image called to mind the origin of his journey. In seven installments (eight films), Harry undertook the daunting and ultimately self-sacrificial task of saving the wizarding world from Voldemort and thereby vindicating the claim, fundamental to the series’ moral imaginary, that love is stronger than death. Harry was discovered contemplating the mirror by his headmaster, Albus Dumbledore (Richard Harris), who offered some words of advice: ‘It does not do to dwell on dreams, Harry, and forget to live.’

In the subsequent scene, Harry walks through the Cathedral’s cloister garth, generously dusted with winter snow, accompanied by his pet owl, Hedwig, released into a soaring upward flight. The white bird stands out against the Cathedral’s dark stone and, as she flies, the atmosphere shifts, as though in acceptance and realisation of Dumbledore’s words, from a winter of sombre reflection, a winter of dreams, to a springtime of friendship and promise, a springtime of new life. The scene is a moment of graceful transition in the unfolding narrative, which allows the viewer to take stock and to infer the significance of events from the beauty of their surroundings. The Cathedral’s architecture adds weight, a kind of moral seriousness, to Harry's experience.

Just as the architecture of our buildings helped to shape the image of Harry’s school, Hogwarts, in the minds of filmgoers, so the architecture of the Christian faith, and the Christian moral imagination, shaped the story in which it appears.

The Harry Potter series was not conceived as a Christian allegory; Hogwarts is not Narnia. The imaginary world created by C. S. Lewis, for the children of an earlier generation, was more truly epic. Like J. R. R. Tolkien’s ‘Middle Earth’, Lewis’s landscapes of thought and experience operate on a grander scale, with historical pasts and almost eschatological futures, diverse languages, and warring civilizations. Lewis’ and Tolkien’s stories unfold in alternative, even metaphysical, worlds, which turn readers into adventurers as they join characters on quests from the familiar—the Shire in The Hobbit (1937) and a country house in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950)—into the unknown and even the otherwise inconceivable. The landscape of Harry Potter is much less ‘exotic’; Hogwarts, the central arena of Harry’s magical adventures, evokes the traditional British public school.

Despite many differences, however, the Harry Potter series may also be described as a work of the Christian moral imagination. As a result of its explorations of themes of grief, power, friendship, loyalty, and many others, along with a fundamental assertion of the triumph of goodness and love, J. K. Rowling’s story lives up to the 'truth-seeking, truth-revealing' character of art, once asserted by Iris Murdoch, the Oxford philosopher and best-selling novelist. By its own autonomous narrative and its ‘mimetic’ quality, imitating the world around us, the story of Harry Potter gives form to the ‘mess’ of real life; Murdoch described this mess as our ‘rubble world’.

In The Hobbit, hero Bilbo Baggins is tricked by a wizard, Gandalf, into opening his home and ultimately his heart to a travelling party of dwarves. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, young heroine, Lucy, stumbles through a wardrobe into the waiting arms of a faun, Mr Tumnus. Not dissimilarly, Harry Potter’s adventure begins accidentally, with the revelations that his true identity as a wizard has been kept secret from him, and that he is bound for life to his parents’ murderer. Accidental happenings plunge Bilbo, Lucy and Harry alike into a new dimension of life, from which there is no escape except by means of difficult choices.

Such is the fate of most human beings, at some time in our lives. We rarely choose to face life-altering, even life-threatening, moral dilemmas; we become moral agents simply because of our circumstances. Bilbo, Lucy and Harry are ‘every-people’, accidental moral decision-makers who are fortunate enough to find within themselves unexamined and untapped stores of strength and resourcefulness. Through Harry, as well as a wider cast of morally ambiguous characters, Rowling’s stories hold up a mirror to human life in general, revealing values of right and wrong, and even helping audiences—especially, perhaps, young people—to cultivate empathy, make sense of certain kinds of experience, and perhaps even improve moral judgments.

Since Rowling’s first novel was published in 1997, Harry Potter has transformed the landscape of children’s literature across the world—the books have been translated into 80 languages and sold over 500 million copies—yet this universal significance has had a very particular resonance for Durham Cathedral on account of our involvement in the films. Today, it is not unusual to see a little Harry Potter running around the cloister in search of the Chapter House, used as the classroom of Harry’s formidable Transfiguration teacher, Professor McGonagall (Maggie Smith). Our hope is that the relationship between Harry Potter and the Cathedral may work both ways; namely, that some of those who arrive in search of Harry Potter will discover, in addition, Saints Cuthbert and Bede, and the truth to whom their stories much more emphatically point.1

The practice of ‘telling the beads’ was ancient, becoming popular as a devotion using the Pater Noster (‘Our Father’). Writing in Cistercian Studies Quarterly in 2015, I suggested that one important—though sometimes overlooked—tributary into the great tradition of the rosary may have been the monastic practice of contemplating a series of events from Mary’s life—most commonly, the annunciation, nativity, presentation, and finding of Jesus in the temple—known as her ‘joys’.1

It is quite common, certainly in Catholic spirituality, to refer to Mary’s trials and to give her the title mater dolorosa (‘mother of sorrows’). In the Middles Ages, the grace of her life’s participation in the incarnation and, ultimately, the unfolding mystery of human redemption, also gained Mary a reputation as an icon of joy. She was said to have rejoiced at the good things God accomplished with, in and for her.

My article, with the same title as this post, drew attention to a work attributed to Stephen of Sawley (d. 1252), a Cistercian abbot who encouraged contemplation of Mary’s joys by his monastic brethren. Meditationes de gaudiis beatae et gloriosae virginis Mariae (‘Meditations on the joys of the blessed and glorious Virgin Mary’) may have been composed for novices, since Stephen took considerable interest in their formation.

In both form (i.e. structure) and catechetical purpose—Stephen used heartfelt recollections of Mary’s experiences to convey central truths of the Christian faith—the work bears a remarkable likeness to the Marian rosary. Its existence adds weight to the argument that the rosary has monastic roots, in addition to (and in anticipation of) its more familiar association with the mendicant orders, especially the Order of Preachers (‘Dominicans’).

You who live in the shelter of the Most High, who abide in the shadow of the Almighty, will say to the Lord, ‘My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust.’ (Ps. 91:1-2)

Psalm 91, some verses of which were used by the Devil to tempt Jesus in the wilderness (vv. 11-12; cf. Mt 4:6), is a hymn of provocation and promise.

Taken at face value and understood only in its temporal orientation, it could be read as, at best, platitudinous or, at worst, disingenuous. What is the one who has been, or is being, harmed meant to make of the psalmist’s words: ‘he will deliver you’ (v. 3), ‘he will cover you’ (v. 4)? What is the value of an exhortation, ‘You will not fear the terror of the night’ (v. 5), when that is precisely what the victim of abuse most dreads; the soft tread of an abuser outside the door, coming under cover of darkness?

For the person of faith who is also a victim of abuse, the problem is even more acute, since the psalm could be read as offering an assurance of safety in exchange for faithfulness: ‘Because you have made the Lord your refuge . . . no evil shall befall you’ (v. 9). How is the victim of abuse meant to react to these words? Perhaps they should conclude that their faith is simply too weak to merit the protection of God, and so compound with feelings of guilt an existing sense of abandonment and uncleanness? Alternatively, perhaps they should ‘see the light’, as an anti-religionist might argue, and reject as hollow the promises of a mythical god; ‘he will command his angels’, seriously?

Both of these may be reasonable responses, when the sentiments of the text—the psalmist's wishful thinking?—are confronted with the reality of abuse in someone’s particular life. Both may be reasonable, but neither is good news for the Christian community, which looks to the scriptures for guidance and inspiration in its work of ‘safeguarding’.

Thus, the psalm may be described as a provocation for victims, since it has the potential to elicit justifiably powerful feelings of anger with and towards God for, in the specifically temporal orientation of a victim’s life, apparently failing to live up to his own promises. The God who promises to ‘be with them in their trouble’ (v. 15) apparently disappears when the going gets tough. Other words from the psalms spring to mind as more likely to reflect and satisfy victims’ feelings, such as the opening lines of psalm 13: ‘How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?’ (Ps 13:1).

Victims’ responses may, in turn, be described as a provocation for the church, since they pose a powerful challenge to familiar tropes of the Christian faith, especially the conception of God as a loving protector, and demand deep soul-searching. Questions confront us, some of which will be familiar to students of theodicy, and others of which will be more particular to situations of abuse and safeguarding: where is the God of faithfulness in the experience of abuse; why and how have Christian communities, which are meant to be faithful to God's promises, failed to protect the vulnerable? The psalm is a provocation for self-accusation, and the church ought to feel ashamed.

Yet, this provocation concerns more than just shame, it is also an invitation to turn back to the text itself, to accuse the psalmist, to interrogate, to reflect, and to dig deeper. Assuming the persistence of a basic belief—a basic desire, at least, to believe—in the meaningfulness of biblical teaching and witness, the Christian community, thinking about safeguarding, must look again at the psalm and beyond its temporal orientation.

Read eschatologically, for example—in a way that seeks to reimagine the present in light of a future in which God restores, resolves, and saves—the psalm may be understood as containing a great promise of deliverance: ‘Those who love me, I will deliver . . . I will rescue them . . . With long life I will satisfy them, and show them my salvation’ (vv. 14-16). In turn, read Christologically—as a message of Jesus Christ, spoken not from the time of his earthly life but from eternity—the psalm could be taken to imply a faithful promise, or pledge, of solidarity from one who also suffered: ‘When they call to me, I will answer them; I will be with them in trouble . . . and honour them’ (v. 15).

By these lights—the eschatological and the Christological—psalm 91 assumes a new identity, distinct from but not entirely independent of victims’ grief and the church's guilt. It is a message of hope, of the knowledge that one day ‘all shall be well’ and that, in the meantime, there is deep love and solidarity between victims of abuse and the innocent, spotless victim Christ, wrongfully accused and convicted, insulted, violated, and brutally murdered. This message may not satisfy everyone, but surely it must mean something when one Victim says to another, ‘I am with you always, to the end of the age’ (Mt 28:20)?

Finally, the psalm must be read ecclesiologically; that is, as having something to communicate concerning the identity and mission of the church. Psalm 91 is a special text for the Christian community at Durham Cathedral, since it is one of those recited in the monastic office of Compline, the final act of common worship each day. It is a corporate prayer, which implies a collective responsibility. It is a provocation to act and a powerful reminder that, in the end, we are ‘the shelter of the Most High . . . the shade of the Almighty’ (v. 1) and, as such, that safeguarding is a present responsibility we share.

Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours. Attributed to Teresa of Ávila (1515-82)1

Discussing central concepts, such as ‘punishment’, experts often cite a lack of definitional consensus; in other words, we simply cannot agree what such terms mean.

Is the punishment of incarceration, for instance, merely a dispassionate making visible of society’s displeasure (i.e. a symbol that such and such an act is something of which we, collectively, do not approve) or is it the imposition of pain, especially that of social exclusion, for the purpose of retribution?

In various ways, restorative justice challenges the place of punishment in our criminal justice system, arguing, with some justification, that in so far as it is retributive punishment is immoral and that, in any case, it fails to achieve the most vital outcome of criminal justice processes, which is (or ought to be) rehabilitation. (A restorative justice theorist might call the latter ‘reintegration’.)

Yet, restorative justice also has its own problems with language.

What is meant by ‘restoration’?

Is the theory of restorative justice chiefly concerned with transforming the value system underpinning criminal justice processes, or is it about working within the system to improve such processes and their outcomes?

The concept of ‘forgiveness’, sometimes referred to in restorative justice literature as being of relevance—though that is itself rarely defined—is certainly one of the most contentious.

For some, forgiveness may be described as the vital ingredient enabling stakeholders concerned in an act of harm or wrongdoing to ‘move on’ and rebuild their lives. The words of Desmond Tutu to South Africans recovering from Apartheid, that there can be no future without forgiveness, echo down to us today.

For others, forgiveness is a theological term best avoided. It has religious ‘baggage’, at best alien, impracticable and therefore largely irrelevant to criminal justice processes, but at worst potentially coercive (e.g. if victims were told that forgiveness is a necessary part of a just outcome) and therefore dangerous.

Recently, I co-authored a little book on this subject with two colleagues and fellow theologians: Myra Blyth, previously a senior figure in the World Council of Churches, and Michael Taylor, a former Director of Christian Aid.

The book, Forgiveness and Restorative Justice: Perspectives from Christian Theology (Palgrave, 2021), takes a look at key questions, including whether forgiveness is necessary to achieving a fully restorative resolution to acts of harm—and what happens when forgiveness cannot be achieved.

We also grapple with an array of related concepts—victimhood, sin, love, vulnerability—and suggest that Christianity, with its meaning-giving metanarrative of restorative, may even have epistemic value for evaluating and deepening the theory and practice of restorative justice, in general.

Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153) took a similarly dim view of curiositas (‘curiosity’), which he understood as a precursor to the Fall. Curiosity and desire have, at times, been perceived as part of the architecture of sin rather than holiness, of wantonness rather than self-control.

It is unlikely that anyone reading this post today would find much to complain about in a genuine curiosity, but desire—even the mention of the word—still has the power to inspire a frisson of fear, a feeling that what it being spoken about is quite dangerous.

What, then, was C. S. Lewis up to when he preached that ‘Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak’?

In an article for The Downside Review in 2021, I attempted to offer an answer to this question by a close reading of Lewis’ sermon, ‘The Weight of Glory’, in dialogue with the writings of Anselm of Canterbury (d. 1109).1 What emerged was a picture of desire transfigured, put to a higher use as an animating force in the spiritual life, properly directed towards obtaining the soul's fulfilment in union with its maker.

As Pope Benedict XVI (d. 2022) would much later write about the spiritual validity of eros, sometimes described as a ‘worldly’ form of love: it is not that eros has been rejected by Christianity, but rather reinterpreted in light of the gospel as a servant virtue, enabling rather than hindering the soul's path to God:

An intoxicated eros, then, is not an ascent in ‘ecstasy’ towards the Divine, but a fall, a degradation of man. Evidently, eros needs to be disciplined and purified if it is to provide not just fleeting pleasure, but a certain foretaste of the pinnacle of our existence, of that beatitude for which our whole being yearns.2

According to Anselm, desire exists in a dynamic relationship with love and, in the Christian life, it can be ordered towards the highest possible good of union with God. This is not easy, in fact the journey of desire is also a journey of tears, but it contains and ultimately fulfils God's promise of eternal joy.3

Bede was also a prolific preacher, composing many homilies, uncovering the meaning of passages from scripture, which have resonated with communities of faith and scholarship down the centuries. They are a testament to intense spiritual love, first for God and then for the whole of God’s creation, not to mention a capacity for the poetic expression of Christian truth:

God’s word [is] indeed like spices—the more finely it is crushed by handling and sifting, the greater is the fragrance of its inner power that it gives forth.1

Recent scholarship has begun to piece together a picture of Bede’s spiritual personality, suggesting that behind the intellectual lay a man of passionate faith, self-aware, and capable of emotional outpourings of great range and depth.

The quotation above, comparing God’s word to spices, comes from a homily for Easter, in which a bold and timeless Bede imparted a message with acute contemporary relevance. The text as a whole was a reflection upon the culmination of Matthew’s gospel with one of Jesus’ posthumous appearances to his followers: ‘the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted’ (Mt 28:16-17).

As the Christian community looks forward to the imminent lifting of Covid-19 restrictions, it may be appropriate to ascribe to Easter 2021 Bede’s interpretation of the name ‘Galilee’, described here as the meeting place of Jesus and his disciples: ‘Galilee means “a crossing over accomplished” or “revelation”.’ It was appropriate for Jesus, having recently passed over from death to new life, to encounter his friends at Galilee. It is also the sincere hope of many that this Easter will mark a crossing over from the darkness and misery of disease to the recovery of life together.

Bede’s homily taught that the first Easter revealed the exaltation of humanity after a time of testing, since Christ triumphed over death not only as God, but as God made flesh. In an equivalent way, perhaps this Easter will be marked by a renewal of humanity. Perhaps the stripping back of life has fostered a new awareness of our vulnerability and need for community, as well as a certain capacity for goodness, which may help to guide the future.

Bede’s homily also drew attention to the most ominous phrase in the gospel text: ‘but some doubted’.

The grandeur of his account of the renewal of human life brought about by Jesus was combined with an admission that, whether from fear or another kind of mental disturbance, some of the disciples simply could not accept the reality of his presence. This salutary insight, at the heart of Bede’s vision of the first Easter, will resonate with many people today. Even though restrictions are being lifted, the legacy of a challenging (even, devastating) experience will be long-lasting and many different anxieties will prevent some from grasping opportunities for renewal as quickly as others. We should be ready to support those who may be afraid.

The wisdom of Bede’s vision for Easter, to which we may continue to look for inspiration and encouragement, resided in a combination of a great hope for renewal with a gentle forbearance towards human frailty. Unpacking the meaning of the term ‘Galilee’ for his medieval audience, Bede also seems to speak into and for our own times, formed as they are by both optimism and trauma. Easter 2021 may indeed mark a ‘crossing over’ from darkness to light, a genuine resurrection of the human spirit and of society, but it will also take place gradually, as with all Easters, beginning with the kindling and sharing of the little light of the Paschal Candle.

The latter has been beautifully expressed by the medieval scholar, Sr Benedicta Ward:

This is the time of a new beginning, a new creation . . . There is in this moment of darkness a sense of alienation, of exile, of not being at home . . . From the rock of the tomb a new light is struck from flint and shines into darkness. A candle is lit and from it small candles take their light, so that behind each small candle-flame there is the face of a human person newly made in Christ whose identity in the darkness is that of this new light.2