Our Saviour 'I Am the Truth'

 

The Angel of the Blessed Silence

 

The icon of the Virgin Mary 'The Unexpected Joy'

Транслируемый Христос

Граффити

Несколько лет назад во время поездки, задуманной как паломничество по местам св. Иоанна Креста, я искала то место, где св. Иоанн был заключен в темницу своими же собратьями-монахами. Слово “собратьями” означает, что монахи принадлежали, как и он, к Ордену Кармелитов; вина св. Иоанна состояла в том, что он вместе со св. Терезой Авильской проводил реформу Ордена, пытаясь очистить его от разнообразных “вольных” практик и послаблений, приобретенных за время его распространения по средневековой Европе (корни Ордена Кармелитов на Востоке; первые отшельники селились на горе Кармель, отсюда и имя Ордена). Св. Иоанн провел девять месяцев запертым в пространстве размером чуть больше, чем гробница; каждую пятницу монахи извлекали его оттуда и жестоко избивали. В конце концов, когда он уже был близок к смерти, ему удалось бежать.

Св Иоанн Креста очень важен для меня; он был первым католическим мистиком, которого я открыла для себя и его сочинения научили меня обращаться к Христу как к личному Христу, интимному Христу или к Христу-Личности. Именно поэтому я поставила цель найти и увидеть места в Испании, связаные со св. Иоанном и была очень рада, обнаружив незаметную табличку, обозначавшую ничто, пустое место (в настоящее время часть детской площадки) объявляющую, что именно здесь св. Иоанну удалось сбежать из тюрьмы, пулоголому, т.к. его ряса истлела, но с прекрасной любовной поэзией, которую он написал, сидя в своей гробничной темнице. Помню, что я даже попыталась прочесть на память его поэму на том месте, просто от восторга, что я здесь; в том же состоянии душевного подъема я начала спускаться по лестнице и внезапно заметила сатанинский символ, дьявола, нарисованного черной краской на золотисто-песочной ступени. Естественно, я почувствовала отвращение и гнев; “они загаживают все, что только можно”, подумала я. Мне было ясно, что “они” отлично понимали значение св. Иоанна Креста и его поэзии, которая вся о любви к Христу, Возлюбленному души. Даже если суть этой любви была недоступна их пониманию, “они” совершенно точно понимали, что св. Иоанн свидетельствовал об ощутимой реальности личных отношений с Христом.

Я вспомнила о том эпизоде в Толедо, когда я увидела фотографию (см. ниже) граффити с сатанинским символом, перевернутым вверх ногами Kрестом, на двери католического собора в Мельбурне – того самого собора, в котором кардинал Пелл, согласно обвинению, подверг сексуальному насилию двух мальчиков-хористов. Граффити появилось после того, как Пелл был отпущен на свободу, а обвинения отменены; оно говорит “no justice”, “нет справедливости”.

Я увидела это граффити и совсем не почувствовала себя оскорбленной. Более того, я произнесла “да, так оно и есть” –  а затем внезапно вспомнила свое собственное “граффити”, кукольное представление, который я сделала после того, как я сама прошла через эмоциональное насилие или абьюз в Римско-Католической Церкви.

Streaming Christ

The graffiti

Years ago, during my trip to Spain made as a pilgrimage to St John of the Cross I was looking for the place where St John was imprisoned by his fellow monks. “Fellow” means that the monks belonged to the same Order of Carmel; the guilt of St John was that he, together with St Teresa of Avila, was pushing the reform of the Order, trying to clear it ­from various indulgent practices acquired during its spread in Europe (the Order of Carmel originated in the East; the first hermits lived on Mount Carmel thus the name). St John had spent about nine months being locked in a space just a little bigger than a tomb; every Friday he was pulled out and severely whipped by the monks. Eventually, when he was quite close to perishing, he managed to escape.

St John of the Cross is very important for me; he was the first Roman Catholic mystic I discovered and his writings helped me immensely to relate to the personal Christ, intimate Christ or Jesus Christ the Person. This is why I made a point of tracking the places of St John in Spain and was very glad to find an obscure plate that marked nothing, an empty place (now part of a children’s playground) stating that from there St John of the Cross successfully left his prison, semi-naked because of his habit rotted away but with the sublime love poetry which he composed while sitting in his tomb-like confinement. I remember that I even tried to recite his poem on that spot, out of excitement of being there; I walked down a huge staircase in high spirits when I suddenly saw the Satanic symbol, the Devil painted on a sandy colour step. Obviously, I was disgusted and enraged; “they pollute everything they can” I thought. It was quite clear to me that “they” understood the significance of St John of the Cross and of his poetry that is all about being in love with Christ, the Beloved of the soul. Even if “they” were unable to understand the nature of that love, “they” definitely understood that St John was witnessing the palpable reality of the relationship with Christ.

The episode in Toledo came to my mind when I saw the photo (below) of the graffiti with a Satanic symbol, upside down cross, on the doors of the Melbourne Roman Catholic Cathedral where Cardinal Pell allegedly molested two quire boys. The graffiti appeared after Pell was released and that particular charge dropped; it says “no justice”.

I saw it and was not even slightly offended. Furthermore, I said “yes, it is true” – and then I suddenly recalled my own “graffiti”, the play with figurines that I constructed after I have experienced the emotional abuse in the Roman Catholic Church.

Three cardinal virtues: faith, hope, and love

Трансформация

Трансформация

Его нет. Он настолько поглощен другими, что его просто нет – он распылен. Он отдал другим свою целостность = свою душу. Ему нужны все эти другие, чтобы собрать себя воедино, чтобы он смог вспомнить, кем именно, по его убеждению, он является. Он живет для них и посредством их; когда он активно делает это для кого-то, в душе его нет места для других, включая его самого.

“Он сам” является здесь самым важным. Он отвергает себя для того, чтобы спасти других от зла. Он зaбывает об отдыхе и еде. Ночью, в одиночестве, он молится Богу Отцу, прося Его дать ему сил и стойкости для продолжения своей миссии. На рассвете он возвращается, громко стуча в запертую от него на засов дверь, требуя, чтобы его впустили, движимый страхом прибыть слишком поздно для предотвращения несчастья. Eго прогоняют, но он настаивает, неостановимый в своем желании спасти любой ценой, даже ценой подавления воли другого.

Его любовь абсолютно безусловна, т.е. более совершенна, чем любовь Христа. У него нет цели творить волю Бога Отца, призывая к покаянию как условию для прощения грехов. Его любовь не требует от другого изменений, она требует только быть принятой и использованной ими; грехи прощаются немедленно, даже без просьбы о прощении, сразу же как только другой соглашается впустить его к себе. В отличие от Любви Бога, имеющей Личность Христа “прикрепленной” к этой Любви (если ты  желаешь Любви Бога – капитулируй перед Христом или даже лучше, Христос является воплощением Любви Бога, которая включает в себя многообразные вещи, в том числе суд) его любовь не имеет его самого, его “я”, “прикрепленного” к ней. Он более совершенен, чем Христос; он готов отдать свою любовь без себя.

Он жаждет действовать от имени других. Он делает для них всю их работу по изменению самих себя; все, что от них требуется – еле заметный кивок, призание его усилий. Он доставляет их туда, где, как он считает, они должны находиться, оставляет их там, а затем вступает в их роль в окружении, где может понадобиться его присутствие. Он счастлив играть роль заместителя –  заместителя мужа, заместителя отца и т.д. – все эти вице-роли ощущаются им как гораздо более настоящие, чем его реальные, (собственные роли). Он до такой степени “врос” в вице-роли, что с некоторого времени они приобрели для него гораздо большую реальность, чем его реальные роли, так что он уже не в состоянии различить, что является реальным, и тем более помнить реалии собственной жизни. В любом случае, “моя собственная жизнь” звучит слишком эгоистично и потому она нереальна.

Как Христос, с удовольствием дарующий душе (старающейся избавиться от грехов ради того, чтобы быть с Ним) Свою благодать, которая постепенно делает ее подобной Ему, спаситель тоже получает удовольствие от изменений, которые он вызывает в объекте своей спасательской деятельности. Не как Христос, однако, он умудряется делать это без желания другого измениться или быть с ним из неэгоистичных соображений. Это происходит гораздо менее эгоистично; он принимает другого таким, какой он есть и это навсегда, никаких изменений не требуется. Не как Христос, он в состоянии быть с теми, кто отдал себя злу без того, чтобы бросить им вызов. Даже если вначале он страдает, с прошествием времени ему становится легче. Он видит все меньше зла в другом человеке, называет это “улучшением” и приписывает его себе. Зло находится в процессе уничтожения – без покаяния и без тяжелой работы спасенных –  спаситель делает всю работу за них.

Со временем, однако, не только он живет в спасенных им других, но и эти другие тоже, будучи поглощенными пространством его собственной души (всеобъемлющей и всеприемлющей и вообще без границ), начинают жить в нем – но не как целые личности, а как фрагменты личностей, альтер-личности, здесь и там – куски жестокости, зла, отчаяния, темноты – те самые вещи, от которыx спаситель пытался их спасти. Теперь они живут в нем, сoкрытые внутри его личности. Он берет на себя ад других и дает ему новую жизнь под укрытием, неведомую даже ему самому.

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Гротескное описание выше было моей последней попыткой разгадать загадку “исключительно хорошего альтруистичного человека”, называемого в книгах по клинической психологии “компульсивный (т.е. навязчивый, маниакальный) спасатель или спаситель”. Подобные люди обычно доходят до крайности, помогая другим, часто тратя на это все свое время; как правило, они словно бы не могут сказать “нет”, ответить отказом на явную или неявную просьбу помочь – или же, в некоторых случаях, просьба и вовсе отсутствует, но спаситель не в состоянии преодлеть свою навязчивую идею спасти.

The transformation

The transformation

He does not exist. He is so absorbed by the others that he does not exist, being dispersed. He gave his very wholeness = his soul away. He needs them all to make him whole and to recall who he is who he thinks. He lives for them and through them; when he is actively doing this for someone, he has no room for anyone else, himself included.

“Himself” is the most important here. He denies himself to rescue those who succumbed to the evil. He forgets about food or rest. At night he prays to God the Father asking Him for strength and endurance to carry on his own mission. At dawn he is back, knocking at the bolted from him door, demanding to be let in, moved by the fear to be too late to prevent the disaster. He is told to go away but he insists, unstoppable in his desire to save no matter what the price is, even if it is the price of crushing the other’s will.

His love is totally unconditional i.e. more perfect than Christ’s. He has no agenda of doing the will of God the Father, calling for repentance as the ground for the forgiveness of sins. His love does not demand change, it only demands to be taken and used; the sins are forgiven instantly without even asking as soon as another agrees to take him in. Unlike the Love of God that has the Person of Christ attached to that Love (you want the Love of God then surrender to Christ – or better to say Christ is the embodiment of God’s Love that incudes other things, like judgement) his love does not have himself [his Self] attached to it. He is more perfect than Christ; he is prepared to give his love without himself.

He is eager to act on implicit behalf of the other. He does all the work on their change for them; all they have to do is to slightly nod to his efforts. He delivers them where he thinks they must be, leaves them there and then take their role in the environment that may need their presence. He is happy to play a vice role – a vice husband, a vice father etc – those vice roles feel much truer to him than his real (own) roles. He has grown into vice roles so much that at some point they became more real than the real ones so he can no longer distinguish what is real, leave alone to remember the reality of his own life – and in any way “my own life” sound too selfish and this is why it is unreal.

As Christ, who delights in imparting to a soul (who is striving to get rid of own sins to be able to be with Him) His grace that is changing the soul into His likeness, the saviour also delights in the changes he causes in the object of his rescue activity. Unlike Christ though he manages to do this without another wanting to change or to selflessly be with him. It happens in a much less selfish way; he accepts another as he is and this is forever, no change is needed. Unlike Christ, he can be with those who gave themselves to evil without challenging them. Even if initially it causes suffering it becomes easier with time. He sees less and less evil in another person, calls it “improvement” and credits himself for it. The evil is in a process of being abolished – without repentance and without the hard work of the one saved – the saviour does all their work for them.

With passing time not just he lives through the rescuing of others but also those others, being absorbed into the space of his own soul (all-embracing and all-accommodating and without boundaries anyway) begin living through him and in him – not as whole persons though but as the pieces of persons, alter-persons, here and there – pieces of cruelty, malice, despair, emptiness – those very things the rescuer has tried to save them from. They are now living in him, being hidden within his person. He takes upon himself the hell of others and gives them a new life in disguise, unknown even to himself.

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The grotesque description above was my final attempt to crack the enigma of “an extremely good and selfless person” called in clinical psychology books “a compulsive rescuer” or “a compulsive saviour”. Such people usually go to an unprecedented extreme to help others, often spending all their time doing that; typically, they seem to be unable to say “no” when they perceive an explicit or implicit request to help – or, in some cases, there is no request at all but the saviour cannot resist his compulsion to rescue.

Comfort Crucifix

Our Lady Seeker of the Lost

St Fiacre of Breuil

G-Lab (sci illustration)

Lacunae

This is a brief follow up of my papers which explored the phenomenon of a covert narcissist priest.

There I argued that a narcissist priest (who during the Mass is supposed to be an icon of Jesus Christ), in the reality the antipode of Christ, subverts and eventually erases the presence of Christ in the minds of his congregation and swaps it with his own, overbearing and entirely self-centered, presence [‘The Antipriest’, ‘The heart of the New Testament’].

The only remaining “intact” form of the presence of Christ in the church now is the Real Presence, in the Eucharistic species, the Body and Blood of Christ [‘Vectors of the soul’].

I also argued that the mechanics of abuse in a narcissistic church (the ecclesial gathering which enables narcissistic abuse by the clergy and those close to them) are identical with abuse done by a narcissistic mother, now being “upgraded” from the temporal realm to the realm of the absolute (God’s church) – hence the deadly impact of abuse in the church for those who already were abused in childhood [‘The loop: a formula of the spiritual abuse in the true i.e. with valid sacraments, Church’]. I concluded that it was Jesus Christ in the Holy Communion, His objective Real Presence (something that the believer cannot obtain outside of the Church) that keeps the believer being imprisoned in the narcissistic church. Christ thus seems to play the role of bait or even an enabler of the abuse, and this impossible image, of Life and Love used by Evil and Death,  crushes the believer’s mind.

Some things are better grasped via a picture than via a logical argument. A believer knows perfectly well that Jesus Christ the Redeemer and Liberator cannot be used by evil or collaborate with it and yet he feels it when he is presented with the sight of the abuser distributing that very Christ. What he sees and experiences now in the narcissistic church overwrites what he knows.

I tried, via making visual representations of the situation, to grasp the role of Our Lord in the narcissistic church and to solve the impossible dilemma of a believer “staying with Christ and having no life” or “leaving Christ and having a life”.

* * *     

A typical human society consists of individuals with [relatively] normal psyche – i.e. capable of empathy and genuine engagement with the others (red squares). Any society always has some individuals with pathologies who for some reason are unable to empathize or to relate to others in a genuine way (black squares). Obviously, the more devoid of empathy/pathological individuals that are present, the less healthy is the society.

Pic 1. The earthly ministry of Jesus Christ

The above is what Jesus Christ had to deal with while walking in Galilee and preaching. His words and He Himself could be accepted or rejected by the others but he was never ignored, “not seen” or “walled off by silence” (this is something that happened to Him much later, close to Golgotha). 

Antichrist

Antichrist 
2019, mixed media on board (egg tempera, gold leaf, acrylic mirror),
58,5 x 41 cm

By the Hands of the Parish of Armidale

2019, prayer cards & egg tempera on board, 97 x 74 cm

This work makes use of the prayer cards distributed in the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Armidale, NSW for the purpose of praying for priestly vocations.om Sinai, the earliest (6th c.) and arguably the most famous icon of Jesus Christ.

The damaged prayer cards have been collected from the pews and used as they were found. No additional damage has been done.

“By the hand of…” is a customary expression used by an iconographer when they sign their work (on the reverse side of an icon). It highlights the fact that it is not she who made an icon but the Holy Spirit, she = her hand = was only the tool.

“Let everything that has breath praise the Lord”

Love of Christ

All Carmelite Saints

Lord,

may the patronage

of the Blessed Virgin Mary, our Mother,

and the prayers of all the saints of Carmel

help us to walk steadfastly in their footsteps,

and by our prayers and good works

to further the cause of your Church.

We ask this through Christ our Lord.

The loop [the formula of spiritual abuse in the true, i.e. with valid sacraments, Church]

Several years ago I wrote in my paper ‘The curse of the choice’:

“I am convinced that many disorders have in their very beginning a double bind of the choice between good and evil, life and death presented by the closest attachment figure, mother or her viceroy.

The formula of the “original choice”: a quadruple bind

                        abusive mother

to stay = death                  to leave = death
-----------------------  child  -----------------------
to stay = life                       to leave = life

The upper line: To stay with an abusive mother means to die (it feels like it to a child; it is always the spiritual reality and sometimes the physical reality as well) but to leave her also means death for a child according to her primary instinct. It is the first double bind which forms the basis of the future persistent darkness in the life of an individual, along the line “there is no exit” out of any life situation which involves a relationship with other(s).

The bottom line:  To stay with an abusive mother means to live (the security that a child needs) but to leave her means also to live (this is the voice which grows stronger as a person grows older; a mother will defend herself against it via inducing shame and guilt into her child, crushing her personality and thus keeping her on a “baby level” psychologically). This is the second double bind which is “a fake light of hope” in the life of an individual, the “secure passivity” of never growing aided by the dreams of something better which are never realized.”

Further in that paper and in several others I explored the effect of the parental abuse on the relationships of a grown abused individual with God. I established that in the beginning of her relationship with Jesus Christ such a person inevitably relates to Him as if He was her abusive parent, reincarnating a parent in Christ, so to speak. Paradoxically, the perceived love of God triggers an automatic response, a fear of inescapable doom that is always attached to “the love” she knew before.

If a person perseveres, with time she will gain enough experience of being with Christ to realize that He is Love that cannot contain even the slightest trace of evil or darkness – therefore the quadruple bind in which she has existed for all her life begins dissolving. There is still a choice but now it is a choice between evil and good, between Satan and Christ – not between “good evil” and “evil good”, between “evil God” and “Divine evil”. The accumulating new experiences of Love untainted by the evil will eventually cause the psyche of a believer to make a hundred and eighty degree turn, from the vector of fear i.e. inwards (the habitual mode of relating to others formed by the quadruple bind) to the vector of trust, outwards.

I will note here briefly that it follows from the definition of God as light in Whom there is no darkness that anyone who wishes to be with Him must get rid of the darkness in their own soul. The less darkness there is in the believer the fuller is his union with Christ, the most desirable state for a Christian soul and the sole purpose of her life. Only a desire to be with Christ can enable a soul to endure her “undoing” by Him, from the evil that the abuse had incorporated in her very structure. Words are inadequate to convey what is at stake even if a very legitimate parallel with an attachment to a human person is employed because Jesus Christ, while being a perfect human, is immeasurably more i.e. He is God; His divinity raises this attachment and everything that is involved to the level of the absolute, life or death, all or nothing. It is all about the taste of the meaning of existence of a soul at last – justification, redemption, deification – in one word, it is living through, not just reading, the Gospel story, with Christ, the story being applied to me, the concrete me. It is the experiential knowledge of the truth of Christian revelation, something a believer gets to know in the biblical sense of this word, soul, spirit, and body.  

The objective reality which a believer discovers experientially: Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is Love and He cannot change. The believer then is always perfectly safe with Him; this safety is the foundation of her path to Him, something that initiated her restructuring. Christ is the Head of the Church and the Church is His Body, according to Christian teaching. A believer then, abused or not, has all rights to expect the Church of Christ to be the safest place for her or for him.

Unfortunately, it is not always so. I do not mean what is much talked about nowadays, the child sexual abuse within the Church, although its principles and effect in essence do not differ from what I am about to describe. I am interested here in a more subtle manifestation of the same phenomenon, namely a situation when a victim of narcissistic abuse in childhood later in life finds Christ, learns to trust Him, comes to His Church and then one day out of blue suddenly beholds her abusive mother being reincarnated in the Church, in the sight of a priest holding the Eucharistic Cup. I am very interested to understand what is there that makes an adult, a firm believer who knows the Love of Christ on her own experience, to feel as if she was thrown back into her abusive childhood and even further back, into hell devoid of any hope to escape – all those feelings I repeat reaching a pinnacle while she is watching a narcissist priest bring forward the Cup with Christ, her Beloved.

St John the Baptist