Mega-update
I sent Anselm: The Complete Treatises off to Hackett last Friday, all 250,000 words of it. Tomorrow I'm sending off a complete draft of Anselm: A Very Short Introduction to Oxford University Press. At a mere 36,000 words, it will be a much slenderer volume (that's kind of the point), but I'm really pleased with it.
I am tired, but content.
The VSI will be sent out to readers for the press, so I'll have those comments to take into account, as well as comments from friends who have been kind enough to read the draft. So there will be more work to do, but for now I can put it aside and concentrate on the more immediate task of teaching Plato's Phaedo to my intro class and figuring out Sunday's sermon.
I conclude the VSI with a reflection on a short passage of Anselm's Prayer to the Holy Cross. Here's my final paragraph, followed by the full text of the Prayer. You might wish to keep it on hand for Holy Cross Day, September 14.
(It may also help to know that Anselm didn't mean for his prayers to be prayed straight through. He divided them into paragraphs expressly so that people could dip in and out as they liked and meditate on them slowly: "in this way the abundance of words and frequent repetition of the same theme will not grow annoying, and instead readers can derive from them something of the spirit of devotion for the sake of which they were written.")
*****
“As yet I am halfway between fear and hope in
serving God,” Anselm says in his Prayer to the Holy Cross: perhaps as apt a
distillation of his view of life in the meantime as we can hope to find. All
the urgency of his prayers and meditations and pastoral counsel, the anxiety and
anguish alongside trust and hope, the feeling of walking along a dangerous
precipice, never secure from falling but upheld by grace upon grace: all this
is halfway between fear and hope. It is echoed in Anselm’s impassioned search
for deeper understanding, for something akin to first-hand experience of the
endless treasures of the reason of faith, sometimes maddeningly elusive but,
once discovered, breathtaking in their beauty. Life in the meantime is halfway
between fear and hope: but hope seems to get the final word: “For although as yet I am
halfway between fear and hope in serving God, still, I know with assurance that
through you I will attain such great joys if I glory in you by giving thanks,
in how I love you, and in how I live.”
Prayer
to the Holy Cross
O
holy cross,
which recalls to us that Cross
on which our Lord Jesus Christ, by his death,
brought us back from the
eternal death for which we were most wretchedly destined,
and led us into the eternal
life that we had lost through sin:
In you I worship, venerate, and glorify that Cross
which you represent for us,
and in that Cross I glorify
our Lord, the Merciful One,
and the acts that he
accomplished there by his great mercy.
O Cross worthy of love,
in which is our salvation, our
life, our resurrection!
O precious wood,
through which we have been
saved and set free!
O admirable sign,
by which we are signed for
God!
O glorious Cross,
in which alone we ought to
glory!
It is not because of the mad
blasphemy of those cruel men who made you ready for the Most Gentle One that we
are to meditate upon you,
but because of the One who in
supremely wise obedience willingly took you up.
For they could do nothing to him but what he wisely permitted,
and he bore nothing but what
he mercifully willed.
They chose you in order to carry out their wicked designs;
he chose you to fulfill his
righteous work;
they, that by you they might hand over the righteous one to death;
he, that through you he might rescue
sinners from death;
they, that they might kill life;
he, that he might destroy
death;
they, in order to condemn the Savior;
he, in order to save the
condemned;
they, to bring death to the living;
he, to bring life to the dead.
They acted foolishly and cruelly;
he acted wisely and
mercifully.
Therefore, O wondrous Cross,
we do not value you according
to the cruelty and madness they intended,
but according to the mercy and
wisdom he accomplished.
How, then, shall I praise you?
How shall I exalt you?
With what love shall I pray to
you?
And with what joy shall I glory
in you?
Through you hell is despoiled,
and it is emptied of all those
who have been redeemed through you.
Through you the demons are filled with terror and held in check,
conquered and trampled
underfoot.
Through you the world is renewed;
it is made lovely by the light
of truth and the rule of righteousness.
Through you sinful humanity is justified,
the condemned are saved,
the slaves of sin and hell are
set free,
and the dead are raised to
life.
Through you the blessed heavenly city is restored and made complete.
Through you God, the Son of God, willed for our sakes to become obedient to the
Father, even unto death;
therefore he was highly
exalted,
and received the Name that is
above every name.
Through you he made ready his throne and inaugurated his reign.
O Cross,
chosen and prepared for the
sake of such unutterable goods,
not human minds and tongues
alone, but angelic ones, too,
praise and exalt the great
works that have been done through you.
O Cross,
in which and through which is
my salvation and my life,
in which and through which is
all my good,
far be it from me to glory, except in you!
For what profit is it to me if I am conceived and born,
if I live and enjoy all the
good things of this life,
but afterward descend into
hell?
Truly, if it were to be thus with me,
it would be better had I never
been conceived.
And it would indeed be thus with me,
if I had not been redeemed
through you.
With what great joy, then, shall I glory in you,
without which there would be
no glory for me,
but indeed only the eternal
misery and grief of hell!
With what great delight shall I rejoice in you,
through which, instead of the
enslavement of hell,
I am made an inheritor of the
kingdom of heaven!
With what great joy shall I exult in you,
since without you I should be
terrified to exist even for a moment,
and with you I can rejoice
that I shall live for ever!
For although as yet I am halfway between fear and hope in serving God,
still, I know with assurance
that through you I will attain such great joys
if I glory in you by giving
thanks, in how I love you, and in how I live.
Through you, therefore, and in you be my glory,
through you and in you be my
true hope.
Through you let my sins be wiped away;
through you let my soul die to
its old life
and be made alive to the new
life of righteousness.
As in baptism you cleansed me from the sins in which I was conceived and born,
cleanse me anew, I pray, from
the sins that I have committed since I was reborn,
that through you I might
attain those good things for which human beings were created,
which are offered to us by our
Lord Jesus Christ,
who is blessed for ever. Amen.