Symphonia - Altar and Throne

 

One of my all time favorite images is this painting of St. John Chrysostom reading the riot act to the empress, she trying to make the best of a situation where the Patriarch of Constantinople was calling her and, let us say, civil government to account. For me, regardless of the element of poetic license which might be noted in the picture, it serves as a valuable corrective to the prevailing "wisdom" concerning how Church in the East and in the West, since Constantine up until our day, differ from each other. It renders inadequate many a definition of so-called symphonia, as a description of the Eastern model for relations between Church and State. It invites us to look again at the Papacy and the monarchical model for the office of Bishop in the West, from the time Rome, encircled by barbarian hordes, was left in the lurch by an impotent or disinterested Byzantium.

The point would seem to be, that neither East nor West has succeeded in doing other than putting up a good front, making the best of an oppressive situation, which more often than not has left us squirming under the thumb of a temporal power. This power, imperial, royal, oligarchic, tyrannic, or somehow democratic, whether confessionally Catholic, of some other religious allegiance, militantly atheistic or a-confessional agnostic or somehow generic in its lack of commitment to Christ as He lives and reigns in His Church, has always sought the upper hand and believed itself to be capable or somehow even having been authorized to interfere in the internal affairs of Christ's Mystical Body.

This brings us to the varied, but evidently global challenge of authority's response to COVID-19, the pandemic, plague in the 21st Century. Somebody recommended to me this article which appeared in German in the NZZ by an Italian author. Giorgio Agamben poses three legitimate and pointed questions concerning how the governmental response has put the existing world order in question, riding roughshod over every dimension of piety in the social sphere: our respect for the dead, our care for the dying, the whole gamut of issues relative to human solidarity. Without much ado Agamben dismisses the medical field as incapable of assuming any tutelage for the human person in any context. He challenges the Catholic Church for its failure to challenge this disassembly of culture. He asks what jurists are all about if they fail to take up the defense of basic human rights. He more or less defies the reader to produce evidence that things will ever be the same now that certain temporal authorities have arrogated to themselves such sweeping discretionary power over the social order.

Myths about Church-State relations aside, we look at St. John Chrysostom's symphonia and the number of eastern hierarchs over the centuries who died in banishment and conclude there has never been a Byzantine age without heavy contrasts, which have cost the Church dearly. Despite the occasional skirmish won, we also realize that monumental wall murals like that of Pope St. Leo the Great confronting the Mongol hordes on horseback in full papal regalia contain no small amount of poetic license as well. Fair enough, Agamben seems to invite in his article the Church from the Pope on down to stand up for the social order and for culture and to suffer even unto martyrdom (no small amount of poetic license in these couple paragraphs of his as well!). 

In these days of the Octave of Easter and our Novena for Divine Mercy Sunday, we are continually confronted with the smallness of the Church at its beginnings. We must marvel at the tiny circle of witnesses to the Resurrection of Christ both favorable or thoroughly compromised (like the guards at the tomb), For a goodly number of them, there was no small ambiguity to the experience of that Easter Sunday earthquake, as that bright Angel opened the tomb casting fear all around. The Angel brought consolation and mission to the women who had come seeking the Body of Jesus with the words, He is not here, He is risen and goes before you. 

Our social order has been overturned by the godless hordes of our day and time. It could be that there is no going back, just as there was no return to Egypt for Israel, passed over through the blood of the paschal lamb and through the waters of the sea. Would you agree with me, that we can leave Giorgio Agamben to weep the passing of the old order and be about the business of seeking the Risen One?

PROPERANTES ADVENTUM DIEI DEI