Nothing we are but cenders and we grow old, we grow old and we wear the top of our trousers rolled. T.S Elliot poems have come to me as memories of the London Lents when I was younger and poorer and sat on empty and cold digs putting shillings on the gas meter. I froze on the streets of Hull, in the perverse Februarian cold winds of the North Sea but there was tea and toast and a bolided egg. My diet consisted on mrmelade and porridge.
I was waiting for love and peace. But love came not nor peace. I was in rags and the sheer picture of derecliction.
That will build you up boy but I never managed to keep warm and they nicked my bycicle on the garden of 441 Beverley old. I fasted necessarily on my students allotment while I was at the funeral of my landaly mrs. Rose.
I learnt English and I loved England the hard way. What happened to those past Lents? I grow old... I grow old and I wore the top of my trousers rolled, so the big poem goes by the great bard of our 68 generation.
The spondeous verses of the angloamerican poet travel with me and we went together to visit the Waste Land. Elliot not only was a poet but a prophet of the building sites waiting for allotement and I received the ash in Westminster and York and listened to the sermon of the preachers. There was a sort of retraint in the quaresmal sermon of the Anglican priests. I remember the speech of a deacon manifesting that there are two ways of approach to God; one is through prayer, the other one by fasting. Prayer is hope and cleans the soul and mind and fasting purifies the body. Then went to Holy Communion and the celebrant imposed the cender on the top my head (in the occipital bone where was the mark Eastern and Catholic clerks bear the tonsure as signal of consecration to God) respecting the holy orders I once received. I grew old and I wore the top of my troiusers rolled.
Then I knew what religious tolerance is and learned to mistrust Popery and high priests. The Anglican Christ showed me His wounds and his compassions at the other side of the fence of anathemas and rules. The York archibishop offered me a chaplency if I changed allegiance and decided to be ordainewd presbyter. My reply was: your lordships I will convert if you open up the Ladys Chapel of your cathedral wich is closed since the Reformation days and restablish the cult to the Virging. Catholicism was my commitment.
The good archibishop went silent and sad and nothing said to my proposal, so the See of York lost a good parson. But since then I never forgot with gratitude his offer. That church treated me as a mother. Unfortunately that cannot be said of my spiritual bethrem. Rome treats their legitimated sons as a stepmother. Truth and Love-such a thought is always in the back of my mind since that bizarre episode during one of my English Lents- are not indivisible but shared.
In the beginning was my end. Men put the ash on the top of their heads and women in the forhead. At the beginning was my end. England made me and made me holy in a way. One Ash wednesday I sat the whole day in my cold room having cups of tea passing the beads of my rosary and meditating on the sense of life. The liturgical texts of Lent abound in the thought of the last days of men, the universal judgement, what Luther called Jungstes Geright when all the humans reunite in Josaphat Valley at the last call of trumpets by the angels of Apocalipsis in the second coming of Christ and then He will separete sheep from buck the blessed and damned in two separated rows.
That shall be the day of avengance and the strophes of the Dies Irae will reseound over all the corners of Earth. Lord, have mercy:quid sum miser tunc dicturus, quem patronem rogaturus. What shall I say to the Big Judge? Whom would I ask to defend my cause or be my sponsor? In the big day of attonement everything that now is concealed then it will be open and patent:quidquid latet apparebit, nihil inultum fremanebit. That final scene of the end of the story is perfectly represented in the Porticus Gloriae in Santiago. There we see Jesus represented in all his glory sourrounded by an escort of angels and prophets by the apostles and the Virgin Mary. The Christ we see is the Pantocrator, the all powerful, has nothing tgo do with the humble penniless infant born in Bethlem, or the suffering Nazaren of the bitter hours in Getsemani. Now he comes as the ruler of time when there is time no more, the creator of a world destroyed. He looms as the great magistgrate of History, he will ask for his dues and every man shall be called to the bar to give account for what he did or undid.
The earth and heavens no longer exists. Only hell and paradise. He will pass sentence. Venite ad me, benedicti, or discedite maledicti. Because when I was hungry you fed me, when I was thirsty you brought me something to drink, when I was naked you clothed me or in prison and you visited me. Oh Lord, when did we do that, shall ask the chosen ones and also the condemned to the eternal fite. And the great Christ triumphant will say when you did that to your neighbour feeding clothing consoling him when behind bars you did it to me. According to this, the command, the pattern, the rule of law in the universal trial will be reduced to one thing and in the last day we will be examined from love. That is the great consistency of Lent. Ubi charitas et amor deus ibi est. A beautiful utopia, nevertheless.
10/02/2010
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