Today is not the feast of Saint Cornelius

Today is the feast of Saint Cornelius, or at least it would be were it not for Candlemas, which is ranked higher and falls on the same date. Poor Cornelius. He takes this in his stride, I'm sure, but it is a pity, as I am rather fond of him.

It's two years ago that I first went to church after deciding that Christianity was starting to make an alarming amount of sense, attending Candlemas at St. Luke's church with my friend Dave (now my godfather). Candlemas was not something I had given much thought to previously, and I was not aware of its particular significance. It just happened to be the first time I stepped inside a church with the intention of Christian worship.

A few months later I was reading through Acts 10 and the story of Cornelius struck a chord. Here we have a man whose defining characteristic, in terms of his depiction in the narrative, is his origin in the classical Roman world. He was a centurion, a member of the Roman establishment and someone whose background was, at some point before he arrives in the narrative, pagan. His posting to Caesarea with the Italian cohort had brought him into contact with Judaism, and his earnest enquiries after truth had lead him to a sober and God-fearing life, possibly as a "gate proselyte" who observed some of the customs of Judaism without having become an actual member of the Jewish people.

Cornelius was visited by an angel who told him of Peter, then in nearby Joppa, and lead the two to meet, whereupon Cornelius and his household were filled with the Holy Spirit and were baptised. These events astonished Peter's companions and kicked off the vigorous debate in early Christianity regarding the position of gentiles.

I hesitate to compare myself with St. Cornelius; God-fearing is certainly not a word I would apply to myself. The best I could say, perhaps, is that even if my journey towards truth has been circuitous, the Holy Spirit has spoken quietly at important junctures, and I have benefited insofar as I have had humility enough to listen.

Remembering things which have informed my religious development, there have been things I encountered whilst a Pagan which had in them, imperfectly reflected, an intimation of the perfect love of God. I am thinking particularly of the writings of Empedocles, who suggests a universe where love is a fundamental cosmic force. Trying, and failing, to quite fit this truth into a Pagan paradigm was one of strands which ran through the period immediately prior to the beginning of my encounter with Christ.

After that first reading of Acts 10, I looked Cornelius up online and noted his feast was February 2nd, the same day I had attended the Sunday service at St. Luke's. This is the Presentation, of course, but I think it all comes together quite nicely in today's gospel reading. The Canticle of Simeon, after all, is Simeon's response to the meeting the infant Jesus after his many years of faithful waiting, and it too speaks of the universal relevance of God's incarnation:

"My eyes have seen the salvation which you have prepared in the sight of every people, a light to reveal you to the nations and the glory of your people, Israel."

The Hospital Mystery Cult

Going into hospital for surgery strikes me as an almost religious experience. It might well be expected, of course, that a serious event like heart surgery would focus the mind on mortality and suffering, which naturally bring up all sorts of other thoughts. If one is religiously so inclined one will also seek out the anointing of the sick, bringing a genuinely sacramental aspect to the event. Whilst these things are certainly the case they are not quite what I have in mind here.

Admission to hospital for a planned procedure has many of the hallmarks of some kind of religious initiation. One enters as a normal person in ordinary clothing, in my case in superficially reasonable health and, over the course of a few hours, undergo a series of ritual acts in preparation for an act of great significance, stripping away one's ordinary self and being immersed into a new and alien experience.

Upon admission, and daily for a few days prior to admission, there is a ritual cleansing. In my case it was a five day course of pink clorhexidine shower gel intended to prevent me bringing in infections with me, particularly MRSA.

There are other bizarre rituals. First of these, in my experience, was the shaving. Having various parts of one's body shaved by another person in preparation for surgery is sufficiently out of everyday experience to lend an added air of otherness to the whole process.

There is a night in which you attempt to sleep in this unusual, institutional place, and then you are awoken with the dawn or before, usually far earlier than usual (if you have sleeping patterns like my own). Here you leave your ordinary self well and truly behind, discarding ordinary dress and putting on a strange robe, which will not be comfortable or practical from the point of view of the wearer.

Various sleeping draughts are administered. The first will ease you into an unusually calm state of consciousnesss so that the next couple of hours, awaiting the summons to the surgeon's sanctum, are not too anxious.

The second is a draught of temporary death, during which you experience nothing and yet under the influence of which changes of the most tangible sort will be wrought upon you.

You emerge to life once again in the artificial brightness and noise of intensive care, reduced to a state of utter dependence. At first you are even reliant upon others for your own breathing. Life is stripped down to its essentials.

There will be at least a week of recovery in hospital. Life in hospital is regimented, austere and with plenty of time to think - it is almost monastic. The drugs, the experience and the after effects of the heart/lung machine effect the mind - the next few days will see introspection and mood swings between euphoria and a deep sense of connectedness on one hand and discomfort and discouragement on the other.

The whole weird experience, even though I've been through it before, reminds me a little of some kind of religious initiation, especially some of the weirder religious experiences of the ancient world.