It may seem strange at the end of a long, hot, febrile summer to call to mind a piece of music from a chillier season half a year away. Written in the Middle Ages and traditionally sung in spring, the Hymn of Kassia is heard in public once in the church calendar, during the Holy Week leading up to Easter. But there are other times when I call this work forth in memory to help me rest in the presence of God.
Icon of Kassia Collage ~ Icon image, Wikimedia Commons; æssmith photo
For more than half my life I thought the idea of sin was religious nonsense at odds with healthy self-esteem. Yet real self-esteem is impossible without knowing ourselves well enough to recognize, accept and deal with our sins:
- the beliefs that exclude those different from us,
- the actions that wound those around us,
- the desires that erode our souls and minds and bodies.
In the waning years of our century’s second decade, it is not God’s presence but his absence that seems most apparent. Where is truth when leaders lie and revel in it? Where is beauty in the shattered victims of killers with easy access to guns? Where is justice in a system that starves the poor to bloat the rich? Where is the good in any of it?
If there is one thing the quest has taught me, it is that it is never God who is absent from me or the world, but always and only the world and I who are absent from God
- in fear and anxiety,
- in needless busy-ness,
- in self-absorption,
- in heedless blindness to the needs of others,
- in the toils and snares of sin.
In one translation of the hymn she composed in the ninth century Kassia writes, “The woman who had fallen into many sins recognizes Thy Godhead, O Lord.” Sin is not a popular concept these days, but I know an awareness of it in myself is essential to moving forward in the quest. Refusing to acknowledge my own wrongdoing and wrong thinking is a recipe for death in this life, cutting off the spiritual oxygen I need to live and grow into life eternal.
Meditation and the hue and cry of a busy life are at opposite ends of a spectrum. Somewhere in the middle is a space to be still and thoughtful, aware and quiet, but responsive to God. The voices singing Kassia’s hymn in my favourite recording of it are the aural complement to what I feel when I am in that space. In a divine paradox, each pulse beat both admits to sin and receives into my heart God’s love and forgiveness. Within and without there is rest and harmony and healing.
Addendum:
In the liner notes to Let Us Keep the Feast, one of my favourite albums, Gary Thorne writes: “In a quiet, mystical manner Hymn of Kassia recollects for the listener his or her past journey to slavery and darkness, followed by a deliverance of divine love that is both universal and intensely personal.” This is one of the reasons it lends itself to the peace of knowing God’s presence, through faith and also through the intellect.
Such a state of mindfulness is different in both kind and degree from the sudden awareness of God’s presence which marks a mystical state. That awareness comes only through grace, not because it is deserved in any way, but because it is freely given by divine will.