The Passion of the Word. Chapter 14

The Passion of the Word. Chapter 4, 2023

Bulgakov would say that in the Transfiguration, the Shekhina entered the created world, and in that sense divine beauty was no longer hidden, but visible and knowable, and abiding. “… the dogma about the light of Mount Tabor being a true manifestation of the Deity testifies to the power of the Lord’s Transfiguration which revealed to men ‘the ever-abiding light’ of God… which penetrated into the world and abides in it…” In the Servant Songs the Passion of the Servant veils His divine beauty. In fact, in the entire Incarnation, the kenosis veils the Godhead in Christ. Evidence of this is the place which the Transfiguration occupies on the journey to Jerusalem and Calvary. This was not merely functional by enabling the nascent Ecclesia to remain faithful during their experience of Christ’s rejection by the ruling elite of Judaism, it was also the truth of who He is. “Beauty does not yet reign in this world, though it has been enthroned in it through the divine Incarnation and Pentecost. It follows Christ on the way to the cross; in the world beauty is crucified. It is sacrificial beauty, and the words ‘going forth to suffer’ are said in reference to it. Yet it is beauty. And it is the feast of this sacrificial beauty that we celebrate on the day of our Lord’s Transfiguration.” The Servant Songs belong to Israel’s prophetic heritage. The Song of Songs is not at first sight a prophetic work yet it nevertheless serves a prophetic purpose when it is used by the Church in her liturgies to direct the interior gaze towards the mysteries of Christ’s Incarnation and Resurrection. When we hear these songs liturgically, those of the Servant, and the Song of Solomon, we understand their mutuality and their illumination of each other. The Shir HaShirim takes us beyond the Passion, showing His beauty in the Resurrection and His Father’s desire for Him.

Book Review: The Passion of the Word. Sister Anne Eason O.S.B. by Edwin Stok, 2023

Sister Eason masters the Aramaic and the ancient Hebrew languages. And with her extensive knowledge she leads us step by step through the verses of the Song of Songs and the Songs of the Servant. I loved reading her book. I am just a layman when it comes to matters of the Faith and it didn’t hinder me. Sr Eason never makes it too technical. She instinctively uses a pleasant writing rhythm. She is a kind of poet and you can almost understand how her heart rejoices as she explains verse after verse, and even word after word, using the original Aramaic and ancient Hebrew texts and comparing them with the Koiné Greek language that was used on which to base the modern New Testament.

The Passion of the Word. Volume 3, 2024

Volume 3 of The Passion of the Word is an in-depth exploration of the magnificent Fourth Song of the Servant including interrelating prophecies and other texts, particularly the way in which John uses it in his Gospel. It is John who would, after the Resurrection refer to the Figure of Jesus as He whom we have touched, have seen, and heard... In Isaiah’s vision of the Servant in His Passion, we also seek to see Him, touch Him, hear Him, especially in the quality of His silence. Although I have used the tools of exegesis technically in this volume, I have also given freer rein to monastic theology by juxtaposing technical analysis with the fruits of Lectio Divina and contemplation: for example, the Presence and silence of the Father in the Passion and the relationship between Father and Son at this moment. The final two sections of Chapter 14 focus on the eternal dimension of the Passion and of our quest for the Son. I close this volume with the sense of suspense. This unfinished search, which is an aspect of our love for God, that we thirst and seek for Him always, opens naturally onto volume 4 which I am now beginning to write. This volume will develop all these themes but in relation to the Word as the Image. It will, by its nature, use the medium of monastic theology and artistic intuition, to do this.

The Passion of the Word. Volume 2, 2024

Volume 2 of the Trilogy of the Passion of the Word has important milestones on the journey towards the climax of the Fourth Servant Song. Each chapter significantly develops the presentation of the Person of the Son of God. Chapter 5 speaks of His identity and the wound of love which He carries for us and creates in us. Chapter 6 addresses the mystery of the inner dialogue in God and the Incarnation per se. Chapter 7 discusses the Inner Face and the place of ‘the face’ in our human experience of others and ourselves. Also, it develops the Johannine theme of ‘abiding’. In chapter 8 the crisis of recognition is particularly important. Chapter 9, on the threshold of the great Fourth Song examines the link between the Shema and the Passion. It also explores this in chant, both Gregorian and in the tradition of the Synagogue. To follow the progression of the prophecies as we have them in the texts of scripture, is essential to appreciating the picture which is imparted in the visions, of the mysterious Figure of the Songs and our mutual relationship.

The Passion of the Word. Chapter 12, 2023

“As the wind moves through the harp and the strings speak, So the Spirit of the Lord speaks through my members, and I speak through his love... For there went forth a stream... Then all the thirsty upon the earth drank... Blessed, therefore, are the ministers of that drink, who have been entrusted with this water. They have refreshed the parched lips, and have aroused the paralyzed will …” The wounds which the Fourth Song describes have become the source of blessing and are known to be so by the Early Church. It is the language of mystics, yet it belongs to the Hymn Book of the Early Christian Communities. It gives an insight into the profundity of the love for Christ which animated the soul of the Early Church, the intensity of their relationship with Him. It needed to be so, not least as they were subject to persecution, and therefore it was a voice of mutual love from within their own suffering. It is the language of John the Beloved Disciple and of the mystic, of the soul who is not afraid to unlock the doors of the heart for the Beloved, who hears Him knocking and rises to admit Him. He enters in and sits down to eat and drink. This mystic union with the Christ is the desire of the ages.

The Passion of the Word. Chapter 7, 2023

When we contrast Camus’ image of the ‘telephone box’ quoted by Cardinal Ratzinger, with the Shir HaShirim and its use of the ‘body’ as metaphor, we see the Bride and Bridegroom (Christ and the Ecclesia) seeking each other in their mutual abiding and the body is a poem, a psalm, expressing the longing and the love between them. The abiding is active. The body is in the Song of Songs the expression of the interiority, but also a boundary perhaps, until Christ gives Himself in the Incarnation, and gives His Body, glorified, and therefore beyond boundary. Then in abiding, the self which seeks the Divine Self, participates in the transformed reality. Then the abiding which has its source in the Eucharist is union of Self and self, is also contemplation. Union in contemplation is interior to the abiding and is perhaps the highest expression of it. It is the inner gaze which is possible at any time or in any place while abiding. This brings us to the meaning of abiding from the perspective of the Inner Face of Self and self, in contemplation. I have discussed the ‘face’, its meaning and place, from different perspectives in this exegesis of the Servant Songs: Adam’s face, the Servant’s Face, and even the face of the abyss. There is also, in the context of abiding, the inner face.

The Passion of the Word. Chapter 6, 2023

I believe that the inner dialogue of the Godhead links directly to how one understands the prophecy, and how the Hebrew itself is understood, in this verse. There is also the choice of the redactor and scribe in recording the content of the prophecy: which words did he use and why. Given that it is prophecy we are dealing with, there would be a fair amount of ignorance, of waiting, with regard to comprehension and interpretation. Was the redactor trying to understand the prophecy as he recorded it, and so choosing words for a context? Was it simply recorded verbatim? The answer to these questions could make a huge difference and we will never know the answer. I would not wish to depart from the understanding of the words which Jerome and others have used in their comments on this text. The Church has worked with it as such. But I think there might be a place for at least examining a translation which opened up aspects to this verse which would be consonant with the nature of the Servant and also with the writings of S Paul and S John. Such a translation would put a different understanding of the response of the Servant, with whom the prophet is identified in these lines. It will be like painting, a reflection in different colours of the text, beneath it, or like seeing the possibilities of another rendering submerged beneath it yet visible. It is to listen to the silent melody as described by Zolli above, within the verse.

The Passion of the Word. Chapter 3, 2023

"... It is the silence of the earth wounded by the farmer’s plough. It is a fertile silence; it speaks to the heart as God does, without the sound of voice. It leaves a void in the soul, enlarges the wounds and deepens them and causes them to bleed. We must listen to the silence of God and of His Servant. Does God suffer? This is a terrible question. I do not know if God suffers, but I do know that His Servant suffered, and perhaps in him God suffers. Then I began to wonder, Who is the Servant of God? He says he does not break the bruised reed, he does not extinguish the smoking flax; therefore he feels the tears, even of things – of the crushed reed, of the languishing flame, the flame that sinks and rises again as if by a painful effort. Poor smoking wick, its strength failing and its heart filled with darkness; turning to ashes even as it struggles to give its last light. Poor smoking flax, the life is exhausted in it before it dies; it fights desperately trying to give light to others – to men. How pitiful! And the pity of it the Servant of God feels fully. The flame of the dying flax sinks and rises. It is a struggle between life and death, between being and not being, between light and darkness. But the bruised reed lying on the ground no longer gives any sign of life. The dying flame is spending itself; it dies and the dead are poorer than the dying. Who is poorer than one who is dead? The languishing flame looks somewhat like one dead but fitfully restored by a fresh impulse of life. But the wounded reed is a dead reed, dead forever. The Servant of God feels the anguish of the smoking flax, and the unspeakable tragedy of the yellowed reed lying in the mud, deprived of all life. But he, the Servant of God, passes in silence, with his heart open, and he receives them with love. Both are silent: true sorrow and true love. Who was this Servant of God? … The sins committed by men offend God. It seems to me that God is wounded, God suffers in His justice or in His mercy. He suffers because of the man who sins, He suffers with the man who sins because the man’s condition is more pitiful than the smoking flax and the bruised reed which moved the Servant of God to pity…” Eugenio Zollie, Before the Dawn

The Passion of the Word. Volume 1, 2024

Extract from the Foreword by Joseph Gebhardt-Klein, M.A. Philosophy. The exegesis stays true to the traditional Lectio Divina hermeneutic of “finding Christ” in the text while demonstrating a productive use of the tradition, not as telically determinative, but as a tool or sounding board to help bring forth a diversity of meanings. As one small example the Hebrew/Aramaic verbal root נחם/ܢܚܡ is shown to denote not just “grief,” but “consolation,” “rest,” and even “resurrection” (per the Syriac of John 11:25), completing a full cycle of meaning. The writing style is lyrical and does not shy away from the polyvocal semantics of Semitic languages, teasing out idioms and wordplays wherein Hebrew and Aramaic either operate in tandem or find an indifferentiable unity of expression. Students of world religions and humanities will find the text especially useful as a means for approaching Catholic spirituality and history through a living and faithful example of the monastic life, one which embraces a plurality of disciplines and higher academic studies.

The Passion of the Word. Chapter 10, 2023

John 8: And the scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman taken in adultery and set her in their midst…. This woman is Israel, humanity, is you and me. The religious rulers of Israel are ranged around her and the Servant Bridegroom. She is disgraced. She is at this moment the abyss of the deep, תְה֑וֹם the (ṯə-hō-wm) of Genesis… וָבֹ֔הוּ תֹ֙הוּ֙ the (tohu wavohu), is a concept for unreality, and the Logos, the Word and emanation of God, is reality and truth. The Servant is the Logos, the Word. Just as the abyss is the dwelling place of God, and the context for Divine creativity, it is also the place of action and truth for the Son of God, for the Wisdom of God. It is about to become this place for the adulterous woman. Suffering has a face, love has a face, and the abyss has a face. Upon the face of the abyss was חֹ֖שֶׁךְ (ḥō-šeḵ) darkness.… The face of this abyss at this moment is the face of the woman. Every mystic (human being) who knows the void, (which in Hebrew is תְה֑וֹם the (ṯə-hō-wm) within himself or herself, has an interior ‘face’ or identity. In the negative sense, if that face is blind, sight must be given and insight suffered into being. This is born in and through darkness... and it is to be endured. The woman before Our Lord is suffering the travail of the ‘inner face’, its exposure in public, and gaining insight in her darkness. This is a Genesis moment. But it is a mystic, a Beguine, who captures something of its essence: ‘There I saw a very deep whirlpool, wide and exceedingly dark; in this abyss all beings were included... The darkness illuminated and penetrated everything... It was the entire omnipotence of our Beloved. In it I saw the Lamb...... ’ She is to discover this. The essence of the Beguine’s perception of the abyss as the Divine possession and dwelling is what matters here. Her perception of the Lamb in the abyss illustrates with this image that Christ entered into the darkness of our human nature, its blindness, and ‘became sin though He knew no sin.’ It is from the Incarnation and the Passion, that the abyss is definitively recreated, with the Sacrificial Lamb at its heart. He the Word through whom all things were made, is about to say to the adulteress: ‘Behold I make all things new…’