The final act of the drama of life is played out. All that has preceded it seems in retrospect to have been a preparation for the last test. The dim intimation of time beyond recall, followed by the direct act of will to choose the way to the pearl which had the secret of life engrained in it, was in turn succeeded by a deeper knowledge of the darkness within the personality. When the confrontation of the shadow existence was well nigh intolerable, the mysterious God showed himself in the cloud as well as the light. Acceptance of the darkness within revealed how hollow one's intentions were, and how crudely self-centred one was, even in the pursuance of holy objectives. This in turn brought with it the inner injunction to give oneself entirely to the present moment, since in that moment the vision of the pearl was most clearly revealed, and that healing of the inner baseness could take place only by divine grace assisted by an aware, chastened will. The temptations of esoteric exploration were confronted, tasted and by-passed inasmuch as they led up a blind alley; the scepticism of contemporary thought was bowed to but surmounted by a faith more dark than enlightened. This, in turn, led to the still point of the soul from whose vantage one could see the limitation of the unenlightened reason, and find strength in the peace of God. But this rest was not granted one for too long, lest a dreamy complacency diverted one from the greater quest. Thus the aggravations of the daily scene, the common round, assailed one, reminding one of one's involvement with the whole of human society no matter how far one's personal vision had seen beyond its corporate desires and objectives.
Then, just as a fresh relationship with the encompassing world had been attained, one was abruptly jolted out of a new complacency by the assault of the forces of cosmic darkness. The battle was almost lost in its vicious intensity, but then in the total darkness the pearl was seen with a radiance hitherto unknown. The journey is indeed drawing to its end, but now comes the final test.
It comes to all of us who have offered ourselves to the good life - not so much one of piety as of positive relationships with our fellows coruscating in the jet of love, at first to single individuals but progressively to all humanity. God asks us whether we are prepared to give up everything for his sake, and our response reveals our integrity of will and intensity of purpose. When the ultimate demand is made, it is important that we should flinch from it in horror. If it were to be obeyed with too great an alacrity, it would show a shallowness of emotional response rather than a trembling obedience, heavy with foreboding and dark in mental anguish as the way unfolded. We consider Jesus' dictum, reiterated in one way or another by the collective witness of the world's saints, that whoever cares for his own life is lost, but that if he will let himself be lost for the highest good, he will attain a safety that can never be impugned. It is the ego self that has to be surrendered before the true identity of the soul with its spiritual centre can be revealed; the soul's integrity is assured because of that spiritual centre, where God is known. God leads the soul to new heights of endeavour until all its labours are lifted up to the divine essence. Nevertheless, it is very hard to yield the ego identity with the physical body that serves it. This is not so much due to human ignorance as to the working of the divine will. The ego and the physical body are essential components of the personality while we do our work on earth during the brief space of time given us, for even a hundred years of life are as nothing in the eternity of God. This is not to be transcribed even in terms of the unfathomable millions of light-years reckoned by the astronomer. Eternity, on the contrary, lies outside the time scale. It is a completely different experience of reality, but, once glimpsed, throws a radically new light on the creative process and human destiny.
While, however, we are constrained by the experience of time and space, our identity is limited by these parameters. This is no loss, for we are here to learn humility and practicality by the very restrictions they impose upon us. We have to learn to love the world and, even more cogently, to love ourselves with all our human deficiencies. Only that which is loved can provide a proper sacrifice for God. Only the loved thing can be of transforming service to his creation. It, no matter how trivial its value and unpretentious its form in the world's eyes, is made sacred by love. It then becomes a fit offering of our very lives to that which so dwarfs us in its magnitude that we could scarcely envisage ourselves as being registered by it in its magnificence. Love elevates all objects to the divine form; it consecrates them to God's service, thereby making them holy; thus they are sanctified. In the account, in Mark 12.41-4, of the widow's mite, the meaning of sacrifice is perfectly expounded in respect of a trifling sum of money: the widow's minuscule gift comes from her heart and has seriously impoverished her, whereas the substantial contributions of the wealthy have a distant, perfunctory air about them. While in no way to be dismissed, since they have obvious material value, they are not radiated by a love that alone can redeem riches from their seditious role in preventing spiritual growth: the security they promise can so easily dampen the impulse to helping forward the kingdom of God. Indeed, the essential purpose of our life on earth is to love the world, its manifold creatures, and ultimately, and most exacting in intensity, to love ourselves in our entirety. Only then can we give of ourselves in unstinted service as we lose ourselves in love and know a death of the acquisitive part of our personality that unfolds into the resurrection of the true personality, at once of childlike innocence and wise experience. We are to return to the image of God implanted in the soul, but now strengthened and affirmed by the experience of temptation, fall, despair and renewed hope in the face of apparently insurmountable difficulties.
The supreme sacrifice to God is ourself, and it is given freely not to God's need but to the service of our fellow creatures. The sacrificial ritual of the Mosaic covenant, which was continued in the temple up to the time of Christ and its final destruction some seventy years after his birth, fills us today with revulsion, and justly so. But the people were being taught in the early days of their spiritual apprenticeship that all things belong to God and that man is a mere steward during his time on earth. If an animal was sacrificed in love and gratitude, it brought the human closer to the divine presence. But the real sacrifice is a broken spirit and a wounded heart, as the greatest of the Penitential Psalms teaches (51.17). As Amos fulminated against impeccable ritual animal sacrifice in the face of social injustice, so Hosea taught that God required loyalty and a true knowledge of himself, not killed animals (Hosea 6.6). Nevertheless, inner attitudes can remain blissfully oblivious of outer demands until they are incarnated in acts of charity and service. As animal sacrifice recedes into the mist of history, so does personal sacrifice assume an ever more central position. Then do we reveal our true nature; then does the pearl come into unobstructed view.
The final test in the eventful life of that scriptural representative of faith, Abraham, is the divine command to sacrifice his son Isaac, who not only is a greatly beloved child, but is also chosen to carry forward the creative work of the children of God. The story is conspicuous for its starkness of detail and absence of any recorded emotional response on the part of the patriarch (Genesis 22.1-14) to the terrible commission, but the mention of the love he has for his son speaks more eloquently of his inner desolation than any more detailed description. It is interesting that as the book of Genesis proceeds, so do the emotional responses of the participants become more prominent. We think of the terror of Jacob as he, after many years absence, has to confront his wronged brother Esau once more; he is a wanderer, while Esau is now a powerful chieftain, who could destroy him and his retinue with a stroke of the hand. Jacob has to face the full impact of his past life alone, after sending all his dependants across the ford of Jabbok. Wrestling with the accusing angel of God, who is remarkably ambivalent in moral character, so that he resembles the accuser Satan of the Job story quite as much as an obedient servant of God (such as Abraham had met on several occasions during his earthly life), he has to face himself in the glass of God. Compared with this confrontation, the meeting with Esau pales into insignificance. Nevertheless, Jacob passes the test without flinching or cringing behind a servile piety that seeks to deflect the attack. He has, after all, outgrown the deceitfulness of his youth and revealed the strength of a mature man. He prevails and obtains a blessing so that his name - and therefore his nature - registers a change of stature. He is one who has contended with God, which is the probable meaning of Israel. Now he has attained the spiritual authority of a patriarch, but his hip is permanently out of joint. It is his wound, comparable in its own context to the stigmata of the risen Christ revealed to Thomas, to assure him of the Lord's authenticity. Resurrection can only succeed crucifixion, just as mastery comes at the end of a long period of trial. This is indeed the test of a spiritual master; by comparison, esoteric knowledge is superficial and largely irrelevant. He has at last grasped the pearl, knowing that it is real and not simply a spiritual illusion, a will-o'-the-wisp that fades out of sight as it is directly approached.
In the story that concludes the book of Genesis, that of Joseph and his brethren, the emotional aspect is very prominent. Indeed, without this response such towering spiritual themes as obedience, sacrifice and forgiveness would lack authenticity. The human agent would then be reduced to the status of a puppet. There has to be a struggle between the claims of the ego that seeks immediate justice and compensation, and the soul that, being directed by the Spirit of God, lives increasingly in an atmosphere of love. Furthermore, both attitudes have to be acknowledged; the ego cannot be summarily dismissed nor its demands contemptuously swept aside as a juvenile regression, unworthy of the mature personality. But as the spiritual path is trod, so the ego is gradually trained to set its sights beyond immediate, unabashed gratification to a deference for natural justice. This is an important step on the path of its transmutation, but not the end of the journey. The final movement leaves behind all demands for personal satisfaction. Its end is an open, unconditional acceptance of life in a spirit of forgiveness and deep compassion for all that lives. The journey is, in fact, one that leads to the precincts of the precious pearl. It is long-extended and not to be rushed or expedited by any procedure that obscures basic moral issues. In other words, truth is not sacrificed in the interests of love. It is, however, extended in range when it is informed by love. In such a climate of enlightened love and impassioned honesty Jesus' injunctions against judging and condemning other people become intelligible to the point of lucidity.
In this way the saint, who is potentially each of us when we attain full awareness of each moment in time in prayer to God and service to our fellows, is able increasingly to accommodate within himself the sins of those around him. He can, with the patient love of a true parent, accept the shortcomings of his friends, even assimilating them into his own psyche by an act of spiritual substitution: he takes up the other person's darkness which he then places on the altar of his heart (or the altar of a church) as his sacrifice to God, who not only accepts it, but also transfigures it into something of the glorified wounds of Christ.
This is a very different way of dealing with the sinner than the customary practice of endeavouring to put right what is wrong, according to our own judgement. While such an approach may be imperative in the short term, its effects are liable to be of limited duration until a radical change in heart has been brought about. This can be effected by God alone; he works through the love of those who serve him in constant devotion and care for their fellow creatures. The sacred child is not at home in the edifice of pure reason that finds its point of reference in a court of law or a university lecture theatre. As T. S. Eliot writes in East Coker:
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstasy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.
This way of negative unfolding, classically expounded by St John of the Cross, is the final demand made on us as we prepare to claim the precious pearl. It then suddenly eludes our grasp though within bare contact of our hands. The darkness that had previously lifted from our gaze suddenly descends on us with the impenetrability of a dense fog. All visible and tangible landmarks are submerged in the gloom as we call out in vain for someone to rescue us. When Abraham prepared to sacrifice Isaac he was stopped just before the fateful act by God, and a ram caught by its horns in the thicket proved an acceptable substitute, but in the great test, there is no such substitute as we enter the final stretch. We, like Jesus, are the sacrifice, and unless, like him, we are prepared to play the man, all our endeavours will have been in vain. Even he could have failed: if not, his humanity would not have been similar to ours. But, he stayed the course to the end, an end shrouded in lamentable tragedy and failure to those who watched the unfolding of the crucifixion drama from the safety of the ground of the cosmic theatre. We all in every age are these spectators until we hear and obey his eternal call, "Follow me".
Our own century, hemmed in by tyrannies which would have seemed inconceivable to our recent forebears, who looked with great confidence for the unfolding evolution of human society to increasingly liberal thought and enlightened social concern, has yielded its quota of martyrs for the cause of righteousness. The basis of martyrdom, as the Greek origin of the word indicates, is a bearing witness to the truth, at least as one personally sees it, even to the sacrifice of one's own life. Most martyrdom has an unashamedly partisan flavour about it, as when a "freedom fighter" goes to his death in the furtherance of his ideals; there is little love for his adversaries in his action, which in fact is very strongly coloured by anger and hatred. The martyrdoms described in the Second Book of Maccabees, notably 6.18-31, 7.1-42 and 14.37-46, are classics of this type. Without, however, this intensity of commitment, the Jewish religion would have been completely crushed by the hellenizing policy of Antiochus Epiphanes. The same is surely true of much early Christian martyrdom in the time of the Roman persecutions: the flame was kept alive, but there was no concession made to the souls of the heathen. This lack of charity has its backlash in the course of history: battles may be won on the worldly level, but ideologies, after lurking unobtrusively in the background during the period of persecution, tend to reassert themselves, perhaps centuries later, when the climate of opinion is more favourable for their propagation. Thus paganism is once again rife in western society.
A truly spiritual martyrdom, paradoxically it would seem, does not work towards the end of supreme sacrifice. This is the greatest love that is prepared to give up its life for its friend, who ceases to be merely an isolated person but instead embraces the whole body of mankind, though in practice an individual may stand as a representative of the whole human situation. On the contrary, self-sacrifice is thrust upon the aspirant as a by-product of his increasing awareness and spiritual proficiency. This is seen in a deeper, more intense prayer life and an ever more rounded, equable disposition in the face of the surrounding social chaos. Such a person is not a fanatic like the all-too-familiar freedom-fighting terrorist who, as we have already noted, is inflamed with hatred, no matter how justified this may appear to the impartial observer, against his antagonist. To be sure, the aspirant may have started his spiritual search on such a zealous note, but, as he progressed in spiritual discipline he would have discovered that he contained within himself all the unacceptable qualities he so eagerly tended to project on to his enemies. But for God's grace he too might have followed their example. Thus the blinding self-righteousness of the fanatic, the terrorist and the religious bigot is gradually lightened by compassion born of understanding and suffering. His exemplar is Jesus himself, whether or not he knows the name or claims the association. This final act crowns a lifetime's spiritual discipline, without which he would not have had the capacity to do the work in the spirit of love and forgiveness.
But as the journey to the pearl reaches its objective, the person is stripped bare: his final payment is himself, and now he stands revealed to the world. His antecedents, his very origin, may be shrouded in mystery, but at last he has attained the glow of world recognition and is a flame of the light that illuminates the world, the light of Christ himself. After Pilate had cross-questioned Jesus, found him essentially guiltless of the charges laid against him, but was about to hand him over to the religious authorities to wreak their own vengeance upon him, he first had him flogged, crowned with thorns and robed in a purple cloak. After Jesus had been humiliated by the attending soldiers, Pilate again presented him to the people, affirming once more his conviction of his innocence. He said, "Behold the man", as he gave him over to be crucified (John 19.1-5). Each of us has to face this terrible exposure, some in a dramatic situation encompassing earthly life, but all eventually at the moment of death. On the negative side we remember Peter's thrice-repeated denial of his master. We recall David's seduction of Bathsheba and the subsequent murder of her husband Uriah the Hittite which were brought into critical focus by the prophet Nathan, who roundly denounces his shameless lust and cruelty. We shudder at Ahab's cold-blooded destruction of Naboth in order to seize his vineyard, only to be met by Elijah, who pronounces a terrible fate on his posterity. Each is shown himself in the mirror of truth, and the reflection is repulsive to behold.
We hope that the reflection of ourselves that we are in process of fashioning will be less forbidding in our latter days. It may even reveal something of the beauty of a saint, if we have followed the path to the pearl in honest endeavour and humble service, but we cannot know until the final show. What have we to offer at the bar of judgement? What have we made of the life given us by God, so that when we return home at the end of the day, he may say to us, "Well done, my good and trusty servant! You have proved yourself trustworthy in a small way; I will now put you in charge of something big. Come and share your master's delight" (Matthew 25.21)? Let us contemplate the supreme acts of self-sacrifice of some of our chequered century's spiritual giants. There was, for instance, Mother Maria Skobtsova, an emigrée Russian-Orthodox nun who lived in France after the communist take-over. She spent her time caring for the inmates of prisons and mental hospitals, living in great poverty, sharing all the privations of the downtrodden and outcasts and confirming their own precious identity in her witness. But her shining hour followed the German occupation, when she dedicated herself to helping the Jews. In due course she was arrested by the Nazis, and sent to a concentration camp where she died a martyr's death in the gas chambers in April 1945: she changed places with a young Jewish mother.
Another heroic exchange in a concentration camp is exemplified in the death of Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish Catholic priest, now canonized by his Church. In the case of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who belonged to the Protestant wing of the German Church, we have a man who rebelled increasingly against the Nazi ethos to the point of taking part in a plot against the lives of the political leaders of that evil regime. This he did in order to curtail the suffering that the war which they engineered had brought upon the nation no less than its numerous victims and adversaries. The propriety of using assassination as a means of ridding the world of depraved people is always open to question, and in fact the plot was uncovered. All its participants were mercilessly killed, so that a martyr's death saw the fruition of Bonhoeffer's work of reconciliation. I do not believe that he detested the Nazi leaders personally but rather was revolted at the extent of the evil they perpetrated. However, in our imperfect world we cannot forgo the use of force to deal with criminals, whether domestic, national or international.
On other occasions the supreme sacrifice has been less dramatic but equally impressive as a witness to the truth. We think, for instance, of the German Jewess Edith Stein who became a Carmelite nun, Sister Teresa Benedicta of the Cross. Transferred to a Dutch convent early in the Nazi regime, she became a victim of Hitlerite persecution following the German occupation in Holland. When the local Catholic clergy protested against the persecution of the Jews - Holland has always had a splendid reputation for kindness to its Jewish community - Sister Teresa Benedicta was summarily transported to the gas chambers of Auschwitz concentration camp, where her equanimity was an inspiration to many of her fellow victims. Unlike the previous saints that we have mentioned, she did not deliberately give up her life for anyone; rather, her martyrdom was a witness to the fundamental decency of human nature in the face of its dark, bestial propensities. Another German Jew, Leo Baeck, showed another facet of martyrdom. He was a rabbi of the Liberal Jewish Synagogue. Imprisoned in a foul concentration camp, he brought strength and purpose to his fellow victims by initiating a study of the Greek influence on Judaism. Even at the worst times he showed no resentment, and when he was amazingly liberated at the end of the war, he refused to visit vengeance on his squalid gaolers. A few years later, shortly before his death, he visited Germany in a spirit of loving reconciliation. How easy it would have been for him to have shown contempt for his erstwhile persecutors! In a way, this type of witness shows quite as much love as that of the person who sacrifices his life for someone else. Death is kinder than the harrowing torture of the human frame in the prison camps of our "advanced" twentieth century. The forgiveness re-echoes the words of Christ on the cross of human cruelty.
The witness need not necessarily be to an outer atrocity; the terror may lie within. A notable Hindu saint of our century, Sri Ramana Maharshi, continued his great work of prayer, healing and teaching as his mortal body was slowly destroyed by cancer. His radiance flowed out to all living forms, and his influence on the spiritual life of many people has been unequalled in its purity and love. As I have already said, we each have to prepare an account of our lives at some fateful juncture. The great ones have moved beyond self-concern to a free self-giving to the world. The one who claims the pearl of great price, paradoxically, is no longer there to receive it in outward form. He has, in naked purity, merged with it as its radiance enfolds him.