Fourteenth Day of Lent: The Journey with Patience

At the beginning of Passus XV, Will awakes from his encounter with Imagination and wanders about thinking on all the things that happened in his dream.  As he is musing upon these things (as tends to happen with Will) he falls asleep.  In his new dream he meets with Conscience and Theology, who tell him to get up and join them for a dinner with Reason.  Will joins them and sees a professor of theology is the distinguished guest.  He is not, however, the only guest:

            “There also came Patience as a poor thing and asked food for charity’s sake,

            And likewise also Piers the Plowman, as though he were a pilgrim,

            Begged and cried for the heavenly love of Christ above

            A square meal for a poor man, or money, if they had any.”

As the guests are seated and the meal begins, Will and Patience get put by themselves at a side table, and watch as the professor and other guests are given sumptuous courses while they are presented with meager fare.  Patience is more than happy with their food, but Will is not only envious, but angry, because he had just heard this professor preach from 2 Corinthians (11:24-29) on how we should all be ready to suffer for the gospel as St. Paul did.  Will asks the professor what he thinks about Dowel and the professor responds that Dowel is to love your neighbor as yourself.  At this point Patience cannot restrain Will any longer and he calls attention to the professor’s hypocrisy in not sharing his food with them.  As Conscience tries to smooth things over, Piers gives his opinion on the matter:  what matters most is that you love your enemies to the uttermost.  After speaking Piers departs, taking Reason with him.  Finally Patience speaks and recommends, well, patience.  The professor laughs at his impracticable solution and leaves the dinner with Theology in tow.

Conscience, however, is convinced by Patience and joins him and Will as they go on their way.  The trio soon comes upon an apprentice of Piers named Activa Vita (“the active life,” which in the middle ages meant those who conducted their lives in the world, as opposed to monks who lived “the contemplative life”).  He works hard, like Piers, to provide for the material needs of the community, but he does recognize that sometimes too much material comfort can be bad for the soul.  Responding to this, Patience tells him he has food which saves from hunger without inclining us to pride.

            “Then Active said, “Have you got such food always with you?”

            “Why yes,” said Patience, and out of his pack he took

            A piece of the Lord’s Prayer and offered it to us all.

            And I listened and looked what provision it was:

            It was “Thy will be done” that would provide for us all.”

Patience reminds them that “man does not live by bread alone,” and that God provided food for the people of Israel in the desert and for the prophet Elijah during a great drought.  Activa Vita objects that surely there is nothing wrong with rightfully acquiring material possessions and using them well, even if spiritual things are better.  Yes, Patience replies, but that is a much more difficult and treacherous path than the way of patient poverty.  Remember, he says, the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke 16:19-31) and how that turned out.

The dinner which Reason gives in this passus is for me one of the most memorable scenes of Piers Plowman.  It is memorable, first of all, because it is so true to life:  all affluent Christians have at some point or other played the part of that hypocritical professor, talking a good game of “love thy neighbor” but oblivious to our actual neighbors in need.  And likewise, whenever we see such blatant hypocrisy we want to be like Will and have the courage to call it out (or perhaps when someone does call it out, we want to be like Conscience and smooth things over).

But it is also memorable because it is challenging.  In the midst of all this injustice and hypocrisy, Patience not only endures his hardship, but endures it gladly and encourages others to imitate him and share his way of life.  And then in the midst of all this Piers the Plowman stands up and goes even farther:  we must love our enemies, not just endure them.

What is your response when you recognize injustice?  What is your response when you suffer injustice?  If you’re anything like me, your first response would be the same as Will’s in this passus:  anger and indignation.  But Piers and Patience both recognize that this cannot be our only response, because they see that God’s response to the injustice of the world was not anger, but love, not indignation, but patience.  When the world made itself his enemy, God never failed to offer the world his love, and he endured patiently in this love even the cross on which the world put him to death.

But it will be some time before Will catches on to what Piers and Patience are getting at and so his journey (and ours) continues on.

“Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”  No, “if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.”  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”  (Romans 12:19-21, quoting Deuteronomy 32:35 and Proverbs 25:21-22)

Thirteenth Day of Lent: Imagination

The stranger who met Will at the end of Passus XIII now introduces himself at the beginning of Passus XIV:

            “I am Imagination,” he said, “Idle was I never,

            Though I sat by myself, such is my grace.

            I have followed you, in faith, more than forty winters,

            And taught you often what Dowel meant.”

(“Imagination” in the middle ages meant something slightly different than it does today.  At its most basic it meant the ability of our minds to generate pictures or images of things we had seen, to “image-ine” them.  Here it represents more broadly Will’s reflection on what he has seen and heard.)

What Imagination says to Will is a wide-ranging reflection on the themes of salvation, learning, and poverty which figured in his dream of Passus X-XIII.  First, Imagination states that Dowel is to be honest, not to be wasteful, to be humble, and to believe the teachings of the church; Dobet is to be loving and generous to all.  As with many other characters we have encountered, Imagination states that having many possessions makes all these things harder.  He is adamant, however, that this does not mean we should be like Recklessness and abandon study and theology.  Imagination sees great value in books and learning, so long as grace and the Holy Spirit are present and active as well.  Pagan learning and the learning we get from just reasoning on our own, without the help of God’s grace, are not worth much in comparison with the teaching of the Bible and the church.

To further illustrate how poverty, learning, and God’s grace are all part of the good life, Imagination reminds Will of the Christmas story:

            “To shepherds and philosophers alike the angel appeared,

            And bid them go to Bethlehem, God’s birth to worship,

            And sang a song of solace, Gloria in excelsis Deo.

            Rich men were slumbering then, and in their rest,

            When a portent of bliss was shone to the shepherds.

            But the Magi understood the star and came with their presents

            And did homage honorably to him that was the Almighty.”

This, Imagination says, shows that Recklessness was wrong in saying simply that learning is bad and poverty is good.  In fact, he goes on to say, it should be clear to anyone that those who understand more about God will rise sooner from sin than those who are ignorant, just as if two men are cast into a river, the one who knows how to swim will be less likely to drown.

Imagination closes by addressing the questions of salvation and God’s mysterious purposes that came up several times in the encounter with Recklessness.  Here he advocates humility:  we simply cannot know, for example, why the one thief who was crucified with Jesus repented and the other did not, or whether Aristotle is in heaven or hell.  But here Will objects:

            “But all these scholars,” I said then, “who are believers in Christ

            Say in their sermons that neither pagans nor Jews

            Can be saved, as their books tell, without baptism.”

Imagination replies that for pagans who, like the emperor Trajan from Passus XII, were righteous and followed the good as far as they understood it, there is a “baptism of fire” just as efficacious as the baptism of Christians and God will reward them for their righteousness just as he does Christians.  With that Imagination departs.

In this passus we see again that the questions of the 1300s are not that different from the questions we have today.  “Who goes to heaven?  Can those who aren’t Christians be saved?  Do you have to be educated and have all the answers to be saved?  Or is it that ignorance is bliss and only the simple have any hope?”  We have all heard these questions before, and probably we’ve all asked them too at some time or another.  And Imagination does his best to give reasonable and thoughtful answers and not to rush to conclusions like Recklessness.

There are some times, however, where what we need are not the right answers, but the right questions.  Remember back to when Will encountered Scripture in Passus XI:  she refused to answer his questions because she saw he did not know himself well enough to know yet what he should ask.  And so Imagination, this ability to think things through and reflect on our experience, can only take us so far, because it can only answer the questions we already have:  it cannot give us the questions we don’t know to ask.  To receive those questions we need the humility that Study, Scripture, Reason, and, finally, echoing and reflecting them all, Imagination recommend to Will.

Think about the questions you are always bringing to God, those questions you just can’t seem to get answers for, and ask yourself, as you make this journey of Piers Plowman with Will, whether the problem may not so much be in the answers as the questions.  To see that you will need the humility of this Lenten season, the humility that knows that we are but dust and ashes.

“A scoffer seeks wisdom in vain,
but knowledge is easy for one who understands.
Leave the presence of a fool,
for there you do not find words of knowledge.
It is the wisdom of the clever to understand where they go,
but the folly of fools misleads.
Fools mock at the offering for sin,
but the upright enjoy God’s favor.”  (Proverbs 14:6-9)

Twelfth Day of Lent: The Mirror of Middle Earth

At the beginning of Passus XIII, we find Recklessness continuing his praises of poverty from the previous passus:  though Job and Abraham were wealthy men, that wealth caused them much pain when it was threatened or lost.  Wealth and poverty are like two men setting out on the same journey, one a merchant with all his goods, the other a messenger:  the merchant must move slowly because of all his goods and must pay tolls along the way, but the messenger moves freely and quickly because he carries nothing.  So, according to Recklessness, it is easier for the poor to come into heaven because they are excused from keeping holy days and fast days, paying tithes, helping the needy, and all the other things “normal” people have to do to earn their way to heaven.  Finally, Recklessness rails against clergy who are unwilling to embrace poverty, but rather derive an income from their (often incompetent) leading of worship.

Recklessness continues speaking until Nature comes to help Theology and turns the eyes of Will and Recklessness both to the “Mirror of Middle Earth.” (Although for most of us Middle Earth calls to mind the world of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, in the English of the middle ages, “middle earth” was simply used to mean “this world,” the world between heaven and hell, like the field between Death and Truth at the beginning of the poem.  Tolkien, who was a scholar of the middle ages, borrowed the phrase for his own imagined world.)

            “And I bowed my body and looked all about

            And saw the sun and the sea and the sand beyond

            And where the birds and beasts go with their mates,

            Wild serpents in the woods and wondrous birds

            With flecked feathers and a multitude of colors.

            Man and his mate I could see both,

            Poverty and plenty, both peace and war,

            Bliss and misery, I saw them both at once,

            And how men took meed but mercy they refused.”

As Will continues to look on the mirror he sees the marvelous harmony of nature, how animals mate in the proper season, how birds build nests beyond human skill to duplicate, and many other marvels.  Most of all he is struck at how human beings alone seem not to be ruled by Reason as the other beasts are.  When Will asks Reason to explain this, however, he rebukes him.  We are not to concern ourselves with why God allows what he allows, but only to imitate his patient sufferance in all things.

With that Will awakes, though he wishes he could have slept longer:

            “And I soon said to myself, “I had grace asleep

            To know what Dowel is, but waking never!”

            And then a man was there, though I did not know him.

            “What is Dowel?” he said.  “Indeed sir,” I said,

            “To see much and endure all patiently, truly that is Dowel.”

The stranger replies that if Will had been more patient in the first place, he would have been able to learn from Theology and Reason.  A fool like Will has to be shown his folly and be ashamed of it before he can begin to learn.

How easy it is to become so consumed with our own problems and questions that we forget to look around us at the bigger picture of God’s creation!  In this passus we see that Will’s search for Dowel has become so inwardly focused and dominated by Recklessness’s narrow and certain vision that he needs to sit down and look into the Mirror of Middle Earth, the mirror of creation, and behold the mystery and wonder of God’s work to get himself back on track.  However, even then he doesn’t quite get it.  Instead of being humbled by the vastness and variety of creation, so many beautiful things that the human mind cannot comprehend, he interrogates Reason as to why things are set up the way they are, and so he must be taught humility and patience more directly, in the form of a verbal chastisement.

Is there any more constant temptation in our world today than abandoning wonder in favor of questions and analysis?  As I write this, waves of snow fly by outside my window.  What do we think of when we see snow, this delicate and damp, yet forceful and solid thing, this thing which falls from a grey sky yet clothes the earth with its splendor?  We think of how bad the roads will be and fret about closings and cancellations.  We turn on the television to try and calculate when it will be best to go out and shovel the driveway.  And as a society we develop better wheels and better plows, we augment our salt with chemicals to clear the sidewalks and drives more efficiently.   We are always trying to find better ways to predict the storms, not rejoicing in the miracle of their unpredictable spontaneity.  We would all do well to listen more often to Reason when he says “It is not yours to understand and to master, but to abide and endure and to wonder.”

“Praise the Lord, O Jerusalem!
Praise your God, O Zion!
For he strengthens the bars of your gates;
he blesses your children within you.
He grants peace within your borders;
he fills you with the finest of wheat.
He sends out his command to the earth;
his word runs swiftly.
He gives snow like wool;
he scatters frost like ashes.
He hurls down hail like crumbs—
who can stand before his cold?
He sends out his word, and melts them;
he makes his wind blow, and the waters flow.”  (Psalm 147:12-18)

Eleventh Day of Lent: Salvation and Poverty

So Will follows the way of Fortune and Recklessness, but at the beginning of Passus XII things aren’t turning out so well as he expected.  In his dream he has grown old and Fortune and her train have abandoned him.  Will is especially indignant that the priests who saw to his spiritual needs while he flourished pay no attention to him anymore, but he is unsure whether to criticize them would be a transgression of Jesus’ commandment “judge not lest ye be judged.”  Honesty appears and replies that it is our duty to rebuke open and blatant sin.  Scripture agrees, but then, in a very dreamlike non sequitur, stands up to preach.

            “But the subject she spoke on, if unlearned folk knew it,

            I truly believe they would love much the less

            The faith of our Lord that’s taught by men of learning.

            To her text and illustrations I paid close attention:

            She uttered in her sermon startling words.”

Scripture’s sermon is on the parable of the marriage feast (Matthew 22:1-14) but she distorts the text and makes it an illustration of predestination where the “few who are chosen” (Matthew 22:14) are brought secretly into the banquet while the rest of those who were summoned wander about outside.  This sermon puts Will in great anxiety about his salvation, but he stands firm on the promise of his baptism and the faith the mercy will always accept the penitent.  However, in another very dreamlike turn, Will’s confidence is challenged by the sudden appearance of the Roman emperor Trajan, who relates how he was brought from hell into heaven through the prayers of Pope Gregory the Great because he was such a just man (this was a common medieval legend; it is also found, for example, in Dante).

Into all this surreal and dizzying back-and-forth, Recklessness once again enters and takes up the rest of the passus with his speaking.  He declares that Trajan is right and that what truly matters is love, honesty, and fidelity, especially in our dealings towards the poor.  For Christ himself, says Recklessness, always wore poor garments and came from a poor family.

            “And all who are wise, for all I can discern,

            Prized poverty—if patience follow it—the best

            And better and more blessed than wealth, many times over.

            Though it be a sour thing to suffer, yet there comes a sweetness after.”

Recklessness continues on with his praises of poverty, turning especially to biblical episodes like the parable of the rich young ruler (Matthew 19:16-30) and the promises that sorrow will be turned into joy.  Furthermore, he says, nature itself shows us that plants which spring up quickly (like the rich who flourish in this mortal life) rarely endure for long and that weeds grow most easily in rich and fertile soil.  Recklessness closes by observing that wealth not only leads those who possess it into sin, but also prompts those around them to envy, theft, and even murder.

            “So greed of possessions was a burden to them all:

            Behold, how money buys fair houses!  But it’s fear

            That the wealth within, the root of robbery, will purchase.”

Passus XII shows us something of the spiritual chaos that ensues when, like Will, we abandon the search for Dowel and the challenges of Scripture and Study in favor of an alliance with Fortune.  In the dream-within-a-dream that represents this spiritual state, Scripture herself appears in distorted form and Will is wracked with constant anxiety and almost panic about who he can trust, what he can say, whether he will be saved.

In the end, however, it ends up being Recklessness himself who starts Will back somewhat towards the right path, drawing him back from an abyss of existential despair through a bold praise of poverty.  Although he was the one who got Will in trouble with Fortune and her ladies in the first place and convinced him to abandon Theology and Study, in this passus Recklessness proves he is not an entirely negative force.  After all, one must have no small degree of holy recklessness to take seriously Jesus’s declarations that we must give up all our possessions to follow him perfectly.  One must have no small degree of holy recklessness to truly live by what we find in the Sermon on the Mount:  “take no thought for the morrow.”  Certainly Recklessness can be over-enthusiastic and is prone to just plow over nuances that really should be treated with prayerful meditation.  But nonetheless he can also draw us into that life of action that both Study and Scripture had both insisted is necessary if the truths we learn are to have any real meaning.

“Therefore take no thought, saying “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “Wherewithal shall we be clothed?”  (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.  But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”  (Matthew 6:31-33)

Second Sunday of Lent: Study and Recklessness

No sooner has Perception finished speaking than his wife, Dame Study, chastises him for giving advice to Will:

            “How very wise you are,” she said, “Showing such wisdom

            To any fool or flatterer or crazy folk.”

            Then she said, “Christ said not to cast your pearls

            Among the swine who have their hawthorns at will,

            They’ll only slobber on them—slop they prefer

            To all the precious jewels in any princely treasury.”

Knowledge is no use if your life is not virtuous as well, says Study, and she rails against those who pursue knowledge to find fame or fortune or power and have no time for the hungry outside their doors.  After Will asks her pardon and tells her he is searching for Dowel, Study directs him to her cousin Theology (Middle English “Clergie”) and his wife Scripture.  Theology tells Will that Dowel is to believe all the church teaches about the Incarnation of Christ and the Trinity, but Scripture, much as Study had, indicates to Theology that his teaching of Will will do no good, and she quotes a Latin proverb to illustrate why:  multi multa sciunt et seipsos nesciunt, many people know many things and yet do not know themselves.

Will is pained with her words, and soon falls asleep, entering into a dream within his dream.  There Fortune meets him with three young ladies, Desire-of-the-Flesh, Greed-of-the-Eyes, and Pride-of-Perfect-Living (cf. 1 John 2:16) who say they will help him make the most of life.  Old Age stands up and tells Will not to trust them, but his voice is quickly drowned out by a stronger one, that of Recklessness:

            “Sir Despair was kin to him, as some men had told me,

            For Recklessness in his foolishness spoke thus:

            “Whether to hell or heaven, I shall not go alone!”

Recklessness declares that there’s no reason to worry about salvation, because it’s all just a matter of God’s predestination and we have no say in it:  Aristotle was a wise man and they put him in hell, while King David was a murderer and they put him in heaven!  And furthermore, he says, there’s no reason to worry about theology and learning either:

            “I, Recklessness, have read records and books,

            And never, in faith, did I find, to tell the truth,

            Anywhere “theology” was commended from the mouth of Christ.”

Most theologians will tell you that simple faith is better anyway, says Recklessness.  Hearing these words, Will continues on in the company of Fortune’s ladies, abandoning the search for Dowel and valuing Theology’s advice at nothing.

At the beginning of this passus, as in the passus before, Will was confident that solving the mystery of Dowel would be just a matter of finding the right people to learn from.  And, in a sense, he was not wrong.  What he did not anticipate, however, was that when he found those right people—Study, Theology, Scripture—they would tell him that mental knowledge is not the only thing you have to learn to understand Dowel.  Study warns him of the dangers of seeking knowledge without love of neighbor, and Scripture wants to dismiss him because he does not know himself.  And both seem to have been quite right about Will’s not being ready, because, instead of taking up the challenge they offer him, he retreats into a deeper dream and the company of Recklessness and Fortune.

Recklessness may be a voice from the 1300s, but his arguments certainly have an all-too-familiar sound to them.  “Why does it matter how I act?  It’s all up to God anyway.”  “Jesus seems like a simple guy to me.  We don’t need all this complicated church and theology business.”  But those men who told Will that Recklessness was kin to Despair were certainly right.  Because what we’re really doing when we say things like that is giving up, giving up on the life God has called us to lead, giving up on the knowledge God wants to give us.  And like Recklessness, we have a knack for making it all very reasonable and convincing.  We take the truth that it is God who saves us and use it to support the lie that we don’t have to be transformed.  We take the truth that Christianity isn’t all about knowledge and use it to justify the sin of willful ignorance.  We all do this and things like it.  What can we say?  Recklessness is a charismatic guy and Study and Scripture seemed just so stern and judgmental.  Who wants to hang out with them?

“Who is wise and understanding among you?  Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom.  But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth.  Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish.”  (James 3:13-15)

Tenth Day of Lent: Thought and Perception

As Passus X begins, Will is once again wandering as he was at the very beginning of the poem, but now, instead of searching for wonders to see, he is searching after Dowel (“Do Well”), asking anyone he can find if they know who or what Dowel is.  In the course of this wandering,  Will comes upon two Franciscan friars, whom he asks about Dowel.  They respond that Dowel resides with them, but Will doesn’t believe them, reminding them that everyone sins, and whoever sins does not do well; they reply that members of the true Church (them) may commit minor sins, but do not thereby fall from grace, by virtue of being part of the Church.  Will says he cannot understand their argument and takes his leave of the friars, leans back on a tree by the road to rest, and once more begins to dream:

            “A tall man, who seemed to me very much like myself,

            Came and called me by my very own name.

            “Who are you,” I said, “that you know my name?”

            “You know who, Will,” he said, “And no man better.”

            “I do?” said I. “Who are you?”  “Thought,” he said then,

            “I have followed you these seven years—have you not seen me before?”

Will asks Thought if he can tell him about Dowel.  Thought tells him that Dowel is someone who is honest in speech and in deeds, Dobet (“Do Better”) is someone who, beyond that, has given up their wealth to pursue the life of a monk, and Dobest is characterized as a bishop or king ruling in righteousness.  After Will expresses that he is not fully satisfied with this answer, Thought takes him to his friend Perception (“Wit” in Middle English).

Perception has a different answer for Will, which he gives in a lengthy discourse that occupies the remainder of the passus.  The core point of Perception’s speech is that Dowel consists in living according to the law of nature as God intended:  he describes Dowel as protecting the human soul in the castle of the body from the assaults of the devil.  This emphasis on living in accord with the law of nature leads to a long digression on sexual morality, especially the problem of illegitimate children and people marrying for money instead of for love (Perception’s speech is proof that few ages have been without those who fretted over the state of marriage).  Finally, he summarizes his position:

            “And this is Dowel, my friend, to do as the law teaches,

            To love others and yourself and none to harm.

            But to love and give as well, believe me, that is Dobet.

            But to give to and care for young and old alike,

            To heal and aid, that is Dobest of all.”

Will’s discussions with Thought and Perception illustrate the conclusions he has come to by thinking over the issue of Dowel on his own.  The answer Thought gives is very rudimentary and basically boils down to ranking those who work honestly (Dowel), those who pray honestly (Dobet), and those who rule honestly (Dobest).  Perception gives a little better and much longer answer, that God (whom he calls simply Nature) has created us to live in a certain way, being moderate and loving one another, and that that is Dowel.

You might say “What’s wrong with these answers?”  They certainly reflect how most people are inclined to think about these issues.  If you were to take a poll of random people off the street, asking them about Dowel, they would probably give similar answers to those of Thought and Perception:  do your work honestly, love and be generous and help people, don’t cheat on your spouse.  Of course, if what Thought and Perception say were actually the best answer, Piers Plowman wouldn’t go on for another twelve passus.  And if the answers you got by polling random people on the street were right, why would it have been necessary for God to teach us his ways?  If those people on the street, if just our Thought and Perception are right, then it seems we can figure out Dowel on our own, without any help from God.

If we don’t lie to ourselves, most of us tend to act as though we think what Thought and Perception say is pretty much the answer to the question of Dowel.  We say to ourselves “I’m honest, I don’t hurt people, I give to charity, I work at the soup kitchen—I’m a good person.”  We want to keep it simple and self-evident—and easy.  We want being a good person to be something that’s reasonably within reach of everyone, that everyone could accomplish if they just set their mind to it, nothing outlandish.  Most of all, we want it to be something we humans can figure out and accomplish on our own (although we would appreciate it if God gave us a prize for good behavior afterwards).

“I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot.  I wish you were either cold or hot.  So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.  For you say, ‘I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.’  You do not realize that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.”  (Revelation 3:15-17)

Ninth Day of Lent: The Pardon from Truth

At the beginning of Passus IX, Truth hears of the good work Piers has done and sends him a pardon for his “pilgrimage at the plow.”  All levels of society are included in the pardon, however:  knights receive pardon for defending the community, bishops receive pardon for leading exemplary lives and fearlessly preaching the truth, and all who work honestly with their hands receive the same pardon as Piers.  There are some special cases, however.  Merchants and businessmen do not receive the full pardon the others do, but can receive a partial pardon if they turn all their profits to philanthropy and the good of the community instead of enriching themselves.  Likewise lawyers receive pardon only if they practice their trade not to enrich themselves, but in the service of the innocent and the poor,

            “For it is simony to sell what has been sent through grace,

            And that’s intelligence and wind and water and fire’s the fourth;

            These four should be free to all folk who need them.”

Lastly, as we have seen at other points in the poem, there is the question of those who beg.  The basic decree of the pardon is that those who beg out of need (like the blind, the old, the sick who cannot work) have pardon, but those who beg for other reasons (for example, because they have found they can make an easy life by it) do not.  However, the situation is more complex than that.  First, there are those of our neighbors who are deeply in need of help and yet are abashed to beg and instead “turn the fair outward” so people do not see they are in need—these are very worthy of alms and receive pardon.  Then there are others who beg because they are mentally disturbed, but they deserve alms and kindnesses all the more because they are specially beloved of God.  Finally, hermits who practice holiness of life and participate in the worship of the community are included in the pardon for those who beg.

After all this description of the terms of the pardon, a priest asks Piers if he can see it, since he reads Latin:

            “And Piers at his prayer unfolded the pardon,

            And I behind them both beheld the whole bull:

            It lay there, two lines, and not a letter more,

            And was written exactly thus, with Truth as witness:

            Et qui bona egerunt ibunt in vitam eternam,

            Qui vero mala in ignem eternum.

            “Peter!” Said the priest then, “I can find no pardon here

            But only Do Well and have well and God shall have your soul

            But do evil and have evil and hope for nothing else

            But whoso evilly lives shall evilly end.”

(The Latin of the pardon is a quote from the Athanasian Creed:  “And those who have done good will go into eternal life, but those who have done evil, into eternal fire.”)  Having found the pardon itself much simpler than the long explanation that had been given, Piers and the priest get to arguing over it and with that Will awakes.  After his waking he continues to muse on the meaning of his dream and of the pardon, concluding that to do well is better than any pardon.  Our dreamer will spend the rest of the poem searching for who or what this Do Well is.

Throughout the early part of Piers Plowman, various characters, including Will the dreamer, have placed their hope in a reform of society, whether it was bringing Lady Meed and her ilk to justice, a large-scale spiritual revival, or the communal cooperation in the plowing of the half-acre.  In Passus IX it seems at first that all these efforts are about to reach their culmination and be rewarded by Truth himself.  It begins to seem like a proper ordering of society could in fact lead the people to eternal life.

But it turns out the actual words of the pardon are very simple, and, furthermore, as the priest points out, it is difficult to see how they constitute a pardon—the word “forgive” doesn’t even appear!  Nonetheless they are from Truth and they are true:  we shall be judged by our deeds.  The way we act matters, eternally.  This is a truth we should have before us at all times, and especially in this season of Lent when we are to consider ourselves and confess our sin and our evil.  Nonetheless, Piers and the priest are confused for good reason: what kind of a pardon is this, that simply states what shall be?  Does this mean there is not pardon and forgiveness after all, just a cold accounting at the end of things?  We shall be judged by our deeds:  this is true and it is well worth meditating on.  But, as we continue in our journey through the world of Piers Plowman, we shall see how it is hardly the fullness of truth.

“But by your hard and impenitent hearts you are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath, when God’s righteous judgment will be revealed.  For he will repay according to each one’s deeds:  to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness, there will be wrath and fury.”  (Romans 2:5-8)

Eighth Day of Lent: The Plowing of the Half-Acre

Enthusiasm for the pilgrimage to Truth having ebbed by the end of Passus VII, Piers takes a new tack at the beginning of Passus VIII:

            “Then said Piers the Plowman, “By Saint Peter of Rome!

            I have a half-acre by the highway to plow;

            Once I have plowed this half-acre and sown it afterward,

            I will go with you all and teach you the way.”

The women ask Piers what they should do while he is plowing and he tells them to make sacks to hold the grain and vestments for the clergy.  The knights he orders to protect the community from wild beasts and to treat those under them with justice.  Then Piers himself begins to take up the plow, and declares this work, to provide food to all who live faithfully, will be like his own pilgrimage to gain pardon.  He makes up his will (as was traditionally done before setting out on a pilgrimage) and then sets himself to the work.  A great many of the pilgrims eagerly help him in his plowing, but soon it becomes clear not all are contributing:

            “And then some sat there and sang at their ale

            And helped plow this half-acre with ‘hey trollilolly!””

Enraged with these idlers and wasters, as he calls them, Piers calls in Sir Hunger to get them in line, which he quickly does through his own harsh but convincing methods.  With the whole community buzzing along with coordinated industry, Piers asks Sir Hunger’s advice on how to maintain the community, especially how to deal with those beg.

            “Truth taught me once to love them each one,

            And to help them in everything as often as they needed.

            Now I would know, before you leave, what is best,

            How I might convince them to love and to labor

            For their sustenance—teach me this, Sir Hunger.”

Hunger replies that any who are capable of working but refuse to should be given diminished rations till they come around but that, on the other hand, no one should overeat either (“Let not Sir Surfeit sit at your table”) so that they always have something to give to those who ask of them.  Having rendered his services, Hunger demands to be fed, and all the people bring their food to him: he is not truly sated till the harvest comes in, at which point, with Hunger’s presence no longer felt, the idlers and wasters return to their old ways, as Piers feared they would.

The story of the plowing of the half-acre is an allegory of the communal life of Christians on earth, where everyone has their part to play in sustaining the community.  This simple work of providing for the community is described as Piers’ pilgrimage.  All the complex machinations of Meed and her lawyers have disappeared from the scene, and it seems that a truly Christian community is about to come into being, founded on the bearing of each other’s burdens and mutual love and care.  The repentance that began with Reason’s preaching is beginning to bear great fruit in Piers’ “pilgrimage at the plow”.

Soon enough, however, it becomes clear that not everyone will work, and furthermore, that it is difficult to tell who is not working because they can’t work, and who is not working because they don’t want to work.  Though Sir Hunger proves something of a solution to this, Piers’ impressive organizing of the community is clearly not a final answer to the problems around him.  And we should note that this is not because Piers fails to “eliminate poverty,” which is how we might think.  Piers has something more radical in mind: he wants to get people to love as well as to labor, but simply better organizing how they labor is not accomplishing this.

Piers sees that a society in which no one goes hungry but everyone is independent and no one can care for one another is just as much in need of repentance and reform as one in which people go hungry.  As Christians we can often lose sight of this truth in our mission work.  Too often our goal is to grant people self-sustaining independence rather than trying to strengthen the bonds of interdependence and common life so that we can all more truly bear one another’s burdens as Christ enjoins us to.  As Christians, our work is not so much to end difficulties as to share them, not to make people independent of our help, but to make all of us dependent on one another.  All this goes against much of how the world around us thinks and probably much of how we instinctively think.  But that is not a problem.  That is simply why repentance and renewal must come first.

“With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.  There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold.  They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each of them as any had need.”  (Acts 4:33-35)

Seventh Day of Lent: The Pilgrimage to Truth

Yesterday you may have been puzzled to find only six of the Seven Deadly Sins coming to make their confession to the priest Repentance.  The reason is that Sloth, very appropriately, is running a little late and doesn’t come to make his confession until the beginning of the next passus.  When he does, he has some trouble staying awake, but eventually Repentance is able to get him to make his confession:

            “If I should die today I am quite fearful:

            I don’t even know the whole Lord’s Prayer when the priest sings it.

            I know songs of Robin Hood and Randolf Earl of Chester

            But of our Lord and of our Lady not the least that ever was written.”

Once all the people have made their confession, Repentance offers a grand prayer of intercession on their behalf, Hope sounds his trumpet with “Blessed are those whose iniquities are forgiven, whose sins are covered” (Psalm 32:1), and the people decide together to make a pilgrimage to Truth.  The problem, however, is that none of them knows the way.  As they set out, they run into a pilgrim who has been all over the Holy Land and to holy sites throughout the Middle East and Europe, but he’s no help—he’s never even heard of Truth!

            It is at this point that the title character of our poem, Piers the Plowman, finally makes his appearance:

            “By Peter!” said a plowman, and poked out his head,

            “I know Truth as closely as a scholar does his books!”

 Piers, it turns out, works land that belongs to Truth and he graciously offers to tell the pilgrims the way.  They must go through Meekness and Conscience (here a place and not, as elsewhere, a person) and pass through various geographical features named for the Ten Commandments (“the ford Your-Fathers-Honor,” “Bear-No-False-Witness hill,” and others).  Then they will come at last to Truth’s castle, where Grace and his servant Make-Amends keep the gate.

            “And if Grace grant you entrance to come in this way,

            You shall see Truth sit in your very heart,

            And comfort your soul and save you from pain,

            And order Love to erect a church

            In your whole heart to harbor there all that are true

            And find all manner of folk food for their souls.”

As soon as Piers finishes describing Truth’s castle, the pilgrims, who had been so eager just a little while before, are suddenly grasping at excuses not to make the journey to Truth.  “I have no kin there,” say some of them.  “I’ve just bought some land,” says one, “I’ve just gotten married,” says another.  In the end Contemplation is the only one among them who volunteers to follow the Plowman.

In one way, the story of the pilgrims’ meeting with Piers is true to our experience of any great undertaking: it is always difficult to maintain our original enthusiasm.  The story is even truer, however, of the spiritual life.  The pilgrims have just had a powerful spiritual experience, they’ve made confession of their sins and set out enthusiastically on their pilgrimage.  But now Piers the Plowman (who knows Truth as well as scholars know their books) tells them that a whole journey awaits them of learning virtues like Meekness and practicing God’s commandments, of acquainting themselves with Grace and Mercy.  And then, Truth wants to build a church in your heart to shelter and give spiritual food to all sorts of people?  It’s easy to see why some people would want out—“I thought you told me if I prayed this prayer I would go to heaven!”

But the Christian life is in fact a life, not a moment, a life, not just a decree or a decision.  It has twists and turns as we learn to keep God’s commandments and it really changes us as God comes to dwell within us and the Holy Spirit works to transform our inmost selves into his temple.  For some, that is too much, and the demands of this world—family, home, business—have to come first.  It is an understandable choice, to love a few like family instead of striving to love all people like yourself, to dwell comfortably in the home you know rather than allowing God to renovate you heart and make it his.  It’s understandable that, like Sloth, you might know and love the stories of Star Wars or Harry Potter better than the stories of the Bible.  But just because something is understandable does not make it any less a failing, any less of a mistake.  For Christ wants all of our lives, not because he is greedy, but because he wants no part of who we are to be bereft of his love and his beauty.

“Jesus said, Someone gave a great dinner and invited many.  At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, ‘Come; for everything is ready now.’  But they all alike began to make excuses.  The first said to him, ‘I have bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it; please accept my regrets.’  Another said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please accept my regrets.’  Another said, ‘I have just been married, and therefore I cannot come.’  So the slave returned to his master.  Then the owner of the house became angry and said to the slave, ‘Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.’  And the slave said, ‘Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.’  Then the master said, ‘Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled.  For I tell you, none of those who were invited will taste my dinner.”  (Luke 14:16-24) 

Sixth Day of Lent: The Confession of the Seven Deadly Sins

As soon as Reason finishes his sermon, Repentance leaps up and exhorts all the people to come and make their confession.  The effect of Reason’s sermon and Repentance’s exhorting is immediate:  Will himself begins to weep for his sins, and others in the crowd begin to come forward to make their confession.

First to come forward is Pride, who promises first of all that she will dress henceforward in more humble and penitent clothing.  She then confesses all the various ways she has tried to get people to think she is better and smarter and holier than she actually is. She confesses that she makes sure everyone knows how much she gives to charity (and when and where) and always claims to have seen with her own eyes whatever anyone happens to be talking about.  After her the next sin is Envy:

“Envy with a heavy heart pleaded for absolution

And cried mea culpa, cursing all his enemies.”

Envy confesses to fostering such a hatred of others in himself that he has become sick and to lying and spreading rumors.  The next is Wrath, who confesses to all the times he has incited people to violence, especially in church contexts, from two women getting in a fight over their place in the communion line to quarrels among nuns over who will be the next abbess.  After Wrath, Lechery comes forward and confesses to the unfeeling and uninhibited seductions of his youth, and to liking nothing better than a dirty story when he grew too old for that.

After Lechery, Greed comes forward and his confession is the longest of any of the sins.  He acknowledges all manner of dishonest business practices, from diluting the ale he sold to usury and predatory lending to outright theft, all without much sense of contrition.  Repentance is stern with him and tells him he cannot be absolved until he makes restitution to all those he cheated.

            “Repent at once,” Repentance said right to the usurer,

            “And have God’s mercy on your mind and in your business too,

            For you’ve not earned enough honestly to buy yourself a doughnut with!”

Last comes Gluttony, but on his way to confession he stops by the local tavern for a drink.  Soon enough he is riotously drunk, gambling, swearing, and fighting and has to spend a couple days afterward sleeping it off.  After that, though, he comes to his senses again, makes it to church, and confesses his bad habits.

Langland’s portrait of these sins is memorable and colorful, but the purpose of painting them all with bold and outrageous features is not to make us think that sin is mainly a prop for comedy, nor is it to allow us to say “Well, I’m not that bad, I’m not really a sinner like these guys.”  Rather, because the caricatures are so memorable, they stick with us and stand out to us so that we can use them to examine ourselves.  Laughing first also allows us to turn then to our own sin with greater seriousness.  Once we’ve laughed at Pride’s over-the-top image obsession, it is harder to deny the pride in ourselves, and although we may have never missed church because we “accidentally” got roaring drunk on the way over, like Gluttony, seeing that sin in an exaggerated form makes clearer how our little gluttonies (which we generally like to excuse) are actually sinful.

Take some time to consider the mischief these very traditional, old-fashioned sins work in your life.  When, like Pride, do you lie so that others will have a good impression of you?  When, like Greed, do you cut corners or bend the truth for a little profit (or to save a little money)?  When, like Lechery, (even leaving aside his more blatant pastimes) do you look forward, say, to the scene with skin in tonight’s episode of your favorite show?  We all live subject to these sins and they are real sins, not just the neuroses of stodgy puritans.  Let us feel the goad of Repentance’s exhorting and make confession to God, not excuses, for these sins.

“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”  (1 John 1:8-10)