The purpose of walls
The boundaries of love and the conditions of freedom
I was puzzling over the oddness of our Mass oration for this morning, which appeals to the “Protection of the Doctor of the Gentiles…” so I did some research (in the invaluable Lost In Translation by Michael Foley) and learned that Holy Mass for Sexagesima Sunday has been strongly influenced by the ancient Roman custom of stational churches. These are churches in Rome to which the Holy Father would process on specific days of the year to offer the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. These are actually quite frequent - over the course of the year there were 89 stations in all - and the church for Sexegesima was St. Paul-Outside-the-Walls. St. Paul’s was founded by the Roman Emperor Constantine I directly over the burial place of St. Paul. Springing up from a cemetery, it’s outside the walls of the city, which historically left it open to attack from enemies. It was undefended.
The Doctor of the Gentiles is St. Paul. Think of the word doctor not in medical terms but, rather, as a theological term indicating that his teaching is particularly trustworthy for its insight into the Gospel. The oration is even more subtle, though, in referring to the stational church, because it goes on to acknowledge that St. Paul offers us “protection” and asks that through his teaching we may be “defended” against adverse things.
In other words, the teaching of St. Paul, the inspired words of his epistles in the Scriptures, is a sort of spiritual wall.
Now, if you’ll indulge me (for just a moment), the poetic image of the wall is worth contemplating. It’s something of a paradox because walls both keep out and keep in. The walls of Rome kept out the barbarians, but the walls of, say, a garden are meant to create a formal space to keep the plants in. A wall can block progress or defend. It is an obstacle or a sign of safety. It’s a boundary, but the paradox is that boundaries create the conditions for freedom.
We can illustrate with the example of schoolchildren playing during recess. If the play area is not fenced, the children tend to stay close to each other and near the building because that’s how they feel safe, but if the area is walled the children will spread out and use the whole space. When they feel secure they have more freedom.
Adults experience the same sensation when we return inside the walls of our home, as it were. Inside, there’s a palpable sense of comfort and safety. The safety of home is what sets us free to dream and hope and build a happy life. Outside the walls is danger from enemies, inside is the warm fire and slippers and your favorite book.
Our Lady is given the title of Enclosed Garden for a reason. She is the tabernacle, or wall-builder, who protects her Son and all her children. She creates the conditions of a new and better Paradise, a walled Garden in the center of which springs up the Tree of Life at the center of everything that makes all of God’s creation sacred. Our Lady is, of course, the Church, revealing that the metaphorical walls, the boundaries placed upon us by love and the bonds of the New Covenant, are our path to freedom.
When it comes to the double-meaning of the wall, I think of Julius Caesar on his famous campaign to conquer the Gauls. In 52BC, his legions surrounded the city of Alesia and built a wall around it to besiege the city. Word reached Caesar that a relieving force was marching to attack so his men built a second wall facing outwards. The legions were between the two walls, essentially trapping themselves with the only way out being complete victory. Caesar risked everything and, when the Romans won the battle, it marked the end of resistance to the Romans in France. He essentially put his legions into a living grave and dared them to save their lives. Without the wall, the challenge would not have come to the point of existential crisis. They legions could have simply melted away to fight another day.
To switch scenes, when John Keats learned he had tuberculosis he wrote an ode in which he laments, “Of the wide world I stand alone, and think/ Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.” In other words, the loneliness and wideness of everything frightened him. He didn’t have the Christian hope that all our lives we are being gathered into the arms of Christ, into the walls of the New Jerusalem. His life was spilling out into a formless void.
Robert Frost grasps what Keats could not when he describes how, in New England every spring, he and his neighbor would walk the stone wall on their property line and stack the stones back on top of each other. In the winter, the frost heave would push the stones of the wall apart, leading Frost to note that some sinister force in this world doesn’t like walls. “Something there is,” he writes, “that spills the upper boulders in the sun…” There’s a false sense of freedom, individual and unmarked by the bonds of relationship and communal love, that is actually quite insidious So, stone by stone, he and his neighbor repair it and his quiet neighbor twice quotes the famous proverb that, “Good fences make good neighbors.” Drawing boundaries in the right way and for the right reasons is good and healthy.
But we cannot forget that we are not yet in the New Jerusalem, so walls for us are still somewhat equivocal. Frost says that his neighbor, “moves in darkness as it seems to me,/ Not of woods only and the shade of trees.” Walls are used for defense, and we sometimes defend ourselves against the wrong enemies. We wall ourselves off from God, from vulnerability, from the challenge of the Christian journey. We defend ourselves against love of neighbor and against the challenge of penance. This is why the Mass oration, hewing closely to the teaching of St. Paul on grace, notes that we put not our trust in anything that we do. The walls that represent freedom are entirely of God’s making. Not ours.
The introit provides helpful contrast. Our bodies are pressed to the earth, the psalmist says, before begging Our Lord to arise and help us. In other words, we are trying so hard to die to our sins, trying so hard to stand up but we need help, we need grace. We must not build our own individual kingdoms. Rather, the imitation of Christ demands that we bury ourselves in humility, die to our attachments, and do penance. Then, and only then, do we pray and hope that Christ will lift us up in his love and grace. He is the builder of this Kingdom, and he alone is the cornerstone.
But he does set each of us in our place. He walks the boundary and sets us like stones into our spot. He drops the plumb line and makes straight the construction. St. Paul, an apostle, is a foundational stone. His teaching is particularly graced.
So, what is the teaching in our lesson from the letter to the Corinthians that the Church calls to our attention specifically on this day? To suffer, to become weak, to be delivered unto salvation through a city wall, leading up to that magisterial, unforgettable statement, “My grace is sufficient for you.”
My grace is sufficient for you.
That is why Ss. Peter and Paul were willing to be enclosed by the city walls of Rome and suffer the indignities of persecution. They had already been lifted up. The persecution was, for them, penance. It was the building of a better sort of wall, they became stones in the wall of the New Jerusalem. They were defended by their penance. They were enclosed in the garden. Through grace, they were made free.
May the sacrifice which we offer You, O Lord, ever give us new life and protection.
You have given me so much to ponder in preparation for Lent. Thank you.