Christmas in a War Zone: For Thou wert called By Love unwalled,

Over the weeks of Advent I've been slowly making my way through Music of Eternity, a series of meditations on the writing of Evelyn Underhill, compiled by Robyn Wrigley-Carr.

 

It was Underhill who first introduced me to some of the more obscure Christian mystical writers, including Jacopone da Todi, a medieval Italian Franciscan monk. 

 

In of of her essays Underhill quotes a passage from Jacopone's Lauds, a long reflection on the Incarnation of our Lord. The same passage I later found in a huge anthology of Christian poetry, and it is now one of my regular readings on Christmas day. 

 

Thyself from love Thy heart didst not defend;

From heaven to earth it brought Thee from Thy throne.

Beloved, to what sheer depths didst Thou descend

To dwell with man, unhonoured and unknown,

In life and death to enrich us without end?

 

Homeless and poor, with nothing of Thine own

Thou here didst come alone,

For Thou wert called

By Love unwalled,

That all Thy heart did move.

And as about the world Thy feet did go

'Twas Love that led Thee always, everywhere.

Thy only joy, for us Thy Love to show,

And for Thyself no whit at all to care.

(Jacopone da Todi, 1250-1306)

 

Context matters, and these words were written out of a mixture of anger, disillusionment and a deep devotion to the love of God as revealed and practically demonstrated by Jesus. The city states, which were powerful military entities in their own right, were constantly at war. The church was conflicted by power games, and deeply corrupt at its core as a succession of Popes behaved more like secular despots than ecclesial guides. Jacopone wrote his Lauds and other poems as both critique and satire of the ecclesial status quo, and the incongruous nonsense of Christian city states willing each other's destruction. Two centuries before Luther he was one of those writing, arguing, preaching and working for reform.

 

This extract from his much longer meditation on the Incarnation is itself both deeply devotional and politically critical. The critique is by way of contrast. Love is the driving force of the incarnation; not self-defence but care for others the otive at the heart of Christian redemption. Fame and honour was what drove military commanders and ecclesial rulers, Popes and Cardinals alike; but the Son of God came 'unhonoured and unknown.' The Christ came not with armies but alone, not wealthy but poor, and not to knock down walls but as 'love unwalled.' Motivation is about what moves us to act - Jacopone is relentless in his insistence that un-defensive Love, enacted and embodied led Jesus 'always everywhere.' And those who take his name are called to the same self-giving Love as the motive of all Christian living.

 

To read those words again is to begin to sense the revolutionary vibrations of incarnational theology. Mary's Magnificat had exulted in the powerful brought low and the lowly lifted up, the poor and hungry fed and the rich and replete sent empty away. Jesus is the epitome of such redemptive reversals. Pope's and City Rulers in Jacopone's day, and US Presidents and UK Prime Ministers in our own day, are targets of such moral and theological critique. The Incarnation of the Son of God is not an occasion for power games, honour competitions, or celebrity jealousies, but for those much more fundamental responses of the human heart to the deep movement of God into the world and human life - humble worship, adoring wonder, moral transformation, reconciling passion, in short love unwalled.

 

From my first reading of Jacopone's verses, those two words have appeared as Christmas illuminations at the centre of the text. The entire poem in two words - and I know of no other juxtaposition of precisely these two words. They are the sum and substance of both Christian redemption and Christian existence, tied as they are to the act and being of God in Christ.

 

And the last two lines speculate on the perfect humanity of Jesus as mirror of Divine love. Out of a life of singing and praying, came words that seven centuries later still play the familiar chords of Christian praise and Christmas wonder.

 

Thy only joy, for us Thy Love to show,

And for Thyself no whit at all to care.