Polyphony In the Cave

This morning at Mass the haunting echo of sung Greek filled the cold shell of space lit by a few candles and the damp day's faint light. In reality it was the Kyrie at S.S. Trinita in Rome but in my mind it was an Easter vigil in the magnificent grotto of Plato's cave. When we were in Sicily last week we went into the same cave that Plato and Caravaggio set foot in and it was one of the most poetic spaces I have ever experienced. Caravaggio said that the shape of it resembles a human ear and it was the ear that we first tested within. The acoustics in the cave are spectacular and we wandered through singing softly to ourselves and wishing that we were either completely alone or in unison to test the full strength of its power. The polyphony today in the darkness of the church reminded me of this experience and the words of Aquinas:

Taste, and touch, and vision, to discern Thee fail;

Faith, that comes by hearing, pierces through the veil.

I believe whate'er the Son of God hath told;

What the Truth hath spoken, that for truth I hold.

On this side of the veil we see shadows flicker on the cave wall in the "vale of tears". As hermits living in an apathetic world we seek strength by consuming "bread" in a "cave". Wasn't it in Bethlehem, the House of Bread, that a cave provided more for humanity than anything before? Plato, Caravaggio, the Gospel of John, Aquinas, Dante, and anything or anyone who has ever tried to express Light and Darkness, Truth and Hearing all poke at the indescribable beauty that can be found in this cave. 

Whether it is the cave in Bethlehem or the cave of Christ's tomb the cave seems to have a deep connection to the origins of something closely knit to human life. In G.K. Chesterton's book The Everlasting Man he spends two entire eloquent chapters on this very topic (which you should go read now if you never have). In the deliciously witty

Chestertonian way he speaks of the caveman and civilization and later of "God in the Cave". The caves of prophets, hermits, and saints were not escapes from life but were for escaping towards life. It isn't shutting oneself into the ignorant life of confined shadows but emerging to "see the world hanging upside down" as St. Francis, Chesterton, and Marcus Mumford all can relate.

"The man who went into the cave was not the man who came out again; in that sense he was almost as different as if he were dead, as if he were a ghost or a blessed spirit. And the effects of this on his attitude towards the actual world were really as extravagant as any parallel can make them. He looked at the world as differently from other men as if he had come out of that dark hole walking on his hands."

~ G.K. Chesterton St. Francis

When we enter the cave and listen we cannot come out the same person again if we have really entered to find something and have really listened and understood in the uncomprehending darkness.