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There’s a story from the life of Thomas Aquinas that I’m fond of, because it focuses the mind quite sharply on what is most important in this preparatory life of ours. “Thomas,” said the Lord one day to him when he was in prayer, “you have written well of me. What do you wish for a reward?” “Thee alone,” said Thomas. It reminds me also of a scene in Sigrid Undset’s novel, The Wild Orchid. It is Norway, 1905. The nation is about to gain its independence from Sweden, and some of the established church’s ministers are predicting a strong rush not only of patriotism but of piety, and interest in God. Paul Selmer, the college boy who is the hero of the work, doesn’t think that will happen. It’s not just that he’s been raised by his free-thinking mother, a modern woman with strong opinions and solid virtues and no faith at all. It’s that he’s not impressed by the idea that “God” is useful for something else that people want, such as courage in battle or national feeling or whatever. In any case, he’s taken up boarding, by happenstance, with a family of real believers, and he accidentally enters the living room one day when the father is kneeling and praying. “What are you praying for?” he asks. But the father doesn’t seem to understand. It turns out that most of the time when he prays, he simply is talking to God and not making any particular petition. It’s like spending time with someone, he says, not quite able to explain it.
Our Hymn of the Week is more intense than that, and yet I think the spirit is the same. “This one thing I have sought,” says the psalmist, “to look upon the face of the Lord, and to dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.” That isn’t a thing — and if it’s a place, it is so only because the presence of the Lord makes it one. When Dante begins his Paradiso, it isn’t things he puts in our mind, as if Heaven were a nice tourist spot you could describe on a brochure. Heaven, he is going to say, is “to live in loving, necessarily,” because you are living in God, who is Love. He is our reward, no other and no less, and that is why Dante prays to retain some small memory, as he returns to this world, of the glory he has seen. “For as we near the One for whom we long,” says he, “Our intellects so plunge into the deep, / Memory cannot follow where we go.”
If we can’t form an image of God in our minds, we certainly can form an image that stands for his mightiest work of love, and that’s what the great Isaac Watts does for us in what Debra and I consider one of the finest of all English hymns, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross.” If we want to know what love looks like, we should turn to the Cross. If we want to know how the love of God is more glorious than all the untold riches of the world, we should turn to the Cross. There’s a great Old English poem about just those riches — as you will see tomorrow!
It’s election season in the United States, and so there’s a strong temptation to turn away from the Cross and to seek shelter, or glory, or wealth — our Word of the Week — in political triumph. How empty that all is, we may consider if we ask a simple question, such as, “Who was the Speaker of the House in 1924?” — a hundred years before our current time. I don’t know. I think Joe Cannon had retired by then, but I’m not sure. Our readers who live in Canada, Australia, Brazil, the United Kingdom, India, the Philippines, and everywhere else in the world may ask a similar question. When Dante had risen to the sphere of the stars — please, now, he has expressly said that his Paradiso is allegory, though he is careful to get the astronomy just right — he looks down upon this earth, and he calls it a “little threshing floor,” so small a place for all our strife over power and riches.
But when Watts looks at the Cross, all worldly things fade into insignificance. What is richer, he asks, than the love of Christ? If you lose that love, what can possibly make up for the loss? Does the king wear a golden crown? It might as well be paper, by comparison with the crown of thorns on the head of Christ. Or what if some politician, with a funny whiff of charcoal about him, were to station you on the top of the Washington Monument, and show you all the fifty states stretched out before you? Or what if “the whole realm of nature” were yours to enjoy? What about it? Watts doesn’t say that you’d then have to keep your love for Christ first, as if the other things wouldn’t quite weigh down the balance. He doesn’t even say that you should offer them all up for Christ. Those other things wouldn’t be even as heavy as the air. “Love so amazing, so divine,” he says, “demands my soul, my life, my all.”
“Thee alone,” said Thomas. And that means, by the way, that every other good thing we have loved will go into the bargain; good measure, well shaken, pouring over the brim.
When I survey the wondrous Cross Where the young Prince of Glory died, My richest gain I count but loss, And pour contempt on all my pride. Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast Save in the cross of Christ, my God: All the vain things that charm me most, I sacrifice them to his blood. See, from his head, his hands, his feet, Sorrow and love flow mingled down! Did e'er such love and sorrow meet, Or thorns compose so rich a crown? Were the whole realm of nature mine, That were an offering far too small; Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all.
“When I Survey the Wondrous Cross” is sung for us this week by the talented Treorchy Welsh Male Choir.
Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks. Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and on-demand access to our full archive, and may add their comments to our posts and discussions. To support this project, please join us as a free or paid subscriber. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song!
I didn’t get to this post until this morning. As I listened I noticed that the morning hymn in Magnificat was “When I survey the wondrous cross”. Coincidence?
In your very first sentence you write: "...because it focuses the mind quite sharply on what is most important in this preparatory life of ours." Preparatory, the adjective you used to describe our lives, can be quickly read over without realizing how the true meaning of our lives is wrapped-up in that single word. Nothing else matters in comparison to what we are preparing for, i.e., communion with our Creator Divine. Hopefully.