Master, bless.

My most precious ones,

I am utterly exhausted. I shall be mellowing out for a few days.

I shall tell you that by God's grace my presentation was very well received (as far as I know). My voice shook during a couple of passages, but I remained almost dry-eyed and delivered my message steadfastly.

Here is the essay, most beloved. A recording of the presentation will soon be available on the Prophecy website.





Thank you for honoring me with your presence. In the course of this presentation, I shall speak, imperfectly so, about communion with God and what such a union involves while drawing parallels between J.K. Rowling’s fictional world and divine reality, thereby illustrating the role that sacrifice plays in human development. As usual, I have set my sights upon a modest goal; please forgive the many fallacies, discrepancies and cryptic statements that are bound to arise from my spiritual meanderings.

I would like to begin by suggesting that the Harry Potter story focuses not upon death, but rather, upon life. At its fundamental level, the story counters Voldemort’s belief that “there is nothing worse than death.” Its message is closely related to Christ’s words, namely, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (John 12:24-25). By “hate” must be understood the willingness to surrender one’s life for the sake of love.

The Harry Potter books are thus profoundly eucharistic in nature. According to Orthodox doctrine, Christ’s offering tranformed death “into an act of life” (Father Hopko). It could be said that Voldemort represents the reality of this world: he clings to a false, “half” life and is ruled by the fear of death. However, attempting to replace true Life with anything else leads to spiritual death, as Voldemort has shown. He perfectly illlustrates the following verse from the Psalms: “The desire of the wicked shall perish.”

It has been said that the unicorn is an archetypal symbol of Christ. He Who Must Not Be Named desires to acquire eternal life, but on his own terms, which are completely opposed to the laws of love. Though he drank the unicorn’s blood, he did so in a way that brought condemnation upon his head. Firenze describes him as “cursed.” In 1 Corinthians 11:27, we read: “Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.” Dumbledore told Harry that for Voldemort, “being dependent, even on the Elixir (of Life)” was “intolerable.” This is hardly surprising, because Voldemort cannot bear the power of love; he would rather be the object of his own worship, an activity that automatically precludes love, which is inseparable from renunciation. Voldemort cannot relinquish; he can only covet and grasp.

Christ said, “Whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit his very self?” (Luke 9:24-25).

During the divine liturgy, the priest offers “antitypes... signs of Christ’s body and blood in the form of bread and wine.” The sacrament, or “Mystery” as we Orthodox term it, is both physical and spiritual, lifting us up to the Kingdom of God. Father Schmemann writes, “the new food of the new life which we receive from God in His Kingdom is Christ Himself. He is our bread -because from the very beginning all our hunger was a hunger for Him and all our bread was but a symbol of Him, a symbol that had to become reality.”

Love and free will are the basis of authentic sacrifice. Contrast Dumbledore’s offering of blood, which was his own and not Harry’s, to Voldemort’s, who forcibly took it from the young Griffyndor via a terrified servant. The Dark Lord’s “resurrection” could easily be described as a second death: Harry saw a creature that was “skeletally thin,” “Whiter than a skull, with wide, livid scarlet eyes, and a nose that was as flat as a snake’s, with slits for nostrils.” Further on we read that Voldemort “took not the slightest notice of Wormtail, who lay twitching and bleeding on the ground.”

Christ taught that “whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave -just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life...”

I have from the beginning perceived the Potions Master as an imitator of Christ the High Priest. I shall say that I never felt my contention was in any way inappropriate or absurd. Professor Snape often behaved in a questionable manner; in this he did not differ from the rest of mankind. Regardless of our imperfections, we are all called to be transfigured by love and new life.

To quote C.S. Lewis, “It would be quite wrong to think that the way to become charitable is to sit trying to manufacture affectionate feelings. Some people are ‘cold’ by temperament; that may be a misfortune for them, but it is no more a sin than having a bad digestion is a sin; and it does not cut them out from the chance, or excuse them from the duty, of learning charity. The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste your time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbour; act as if you did... The great thing to remember is that, though our feelings come and go, (God’s) love for us does not. It is not wearied by our sins, or our indifference; and, therefore, it is quite relentless in its determination that we shall be cured of those sins, at whatever cost to us, at whatever cost to Him.”

I shall now elaborate upon the exchange that took place between Narcissa and Snape at Spinner’s End. She asks him to perform the Unbreakable Vow. It is interesting to note the spiritual roots of the word “vow.” The Sanskrit etymological equivalent, vaghat, is translated as “one who offers a sacrifice.” Compare the Greek word eukhe, “vow” with eukhomai, which means both “vow” and “I pray.” The American Heritage Dictionary defines “vow” as “an earnest promise to perform a specified act or behave in a certain manner, especially a solemn promise to live and act in accordance with the rules of a religious order.” The word “solemn” in turn is defined as “performed with full ceremony,” “deeply earnest, serious, and sober” and “invoking the force of religion; sacred.”

After Narcissa took a sip of the wine that Snape had given her, she pleaded with him to look after Draco; he replied, “I can try.” We read that she kneeled before him and kissed his hand, much as one would kiss a priest’s hand following benediction. He then “lowered himself so that he was kneeling opposite (her).”

Narcissa’s first request is that Snape “watch over” Draco: in other words, she asks him to “keep vigil,” or to “be awake.” Snape is thus portrayed as a guardian, a keeper, one who assumes responsibility for another. Her second request is that he protect her son from harm. The word “protect” comes from the Latin protegere,, meaning literally “to cover in front.” She asks Snape to be a shield, a sometimes “heart-shaped” instrument designed to take blows. Her final request is that Snape take Draco’s place. We read that his “hand twitched within hers, but he did not draw away.” Before she asked Snape to make the Unbreakable Vow, she had wept at his feet, unable to “give up her son.” Snape poured her a glass of wine and moments later he would accept to renounce his will so that Draco might be saved. He did so with a blank expression that concealed his distress. Thanks to Hagrid, we know Snape’s distress was indeed great; he argued with Dumbledore, saying that “he did not want to do it.”

I shall now share one of Christ’s parables with you.

“A man had two sons, and he came to the first and said, ‘Son, go, work today in my vineyard.’ He answered and said, ‘I will not,’ but afterwards regretted it and went. Then he came to the second and said likewise. And he answered and said, ‘I go, sir,’ but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?”

We read in the book of Joel, “Rend your hearts, and not your garments.” What happens inwardly is often much more significant than outward display. During the liturgy, after the priest has said, “it is (Christ) who offers and it is He who is offered,” the bread and wine are placed upon the altar: “they are covered (with special veils), hidden as our ‘life is hid with Christ in God’ (Col 3:3)” (Father Schmemann). One of the pre-requisites of sacrifice is the willingness to remain silent for love’s sake. Hidden. Veiled. I shall interject that the word “spy,” meaning “one who seeks or observes something secretely,” is derived from the Old High German word “spehon,” translated as “to look out for,” i.e. “to take watchful care of” and “to be concerned about.”

Snape fulfills another priestly function in The Half-Blood Prince. After Harry used the Sectumsempra curse against Draco, we once again read that Snape “knelt.” Then he “(muttered) an incantation that sounded almost like a song.” In his epistle, James writes, “Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord” (5:13). Once the boy’s wounds have knitted, Snape mentions dittany as preventing scars. Note that unlike Voldemort, whose hatred scarred Harry, Snape wished to see scars healed. Furthermore, white dittany, or dictamnus albus, “secretes an oil that has anti-inflammatory properties” (Wikipedia) and is also known as “the burning bush.” In the book of Exodus, we read, “The angel of the Lord appeared to (Moses) in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed” (3: 3).

Archbishop Seraphim writes, “It’s funny that people are afraid of love, but that is the case.”

St. John the apostle taught, “God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him.” This love is formidable, awe-inspiring, all-consuming. A terrible, faithful, disinterested love. It is not sentimental, inconstant, capricious, self-interested human love. When Harry told Snape, “Kill me like you killed Dumbledore,” we read that the Potions Master screamed and his pain was compared to that of “the yelping, howling dog stuck in the burning house behind them.” He screamed, “Don’t call me coward!” The priestly sacrifice that he had accepted to perform had demanded the greatest sort of courage... The purest sort of love, perfect obedience and steadfast hope. As is written in 1 Peter 1: 6-7, “...now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honor and glory...”

Snape is not good, in the same sense that no one is good. Yet everyone is capable of imitating Christ. Everyone can be like Christ. Everyone can be worthy in Christ. Everyone is called to be part of the royal priesthood. We simply must make the right choice. God said, “I have set before you today life and good, death and evil... therefore choose life, that you may live.” This entails walking in God’s ways as best one can.

Mother Gavrilia said, “Without Faith no one can be free.” To love is to let go of control. To love requires faith and trust, even when, especially when we do not know how things will turn out; when we have no idea what is going on; when things seem to be desperate and hopeless. Thus “there is no fear in love” (I John 4:18). This is the meaning of sacrifice, and it is why it delivers us. As Father Schmemann eloquently put it, “the principle of the Eucharist is that love alone creates and transforms.” Communion with God is learning to be free. It is learning to die, that we may live. This does not occur without discomfort and loss.

At the conclusion of Goblet of Fire, Dumbledore told Snape, “Severus, you know what I must ask you to do. If you are ready... If you are prepared...” Pale-faced, Snape replied, “I am.”

In the end, he gives all that he has. He is utterly bereft. To me, his sacrifice, his humble, concealed, quiet death is his victory, his golden crown. It is a veiled, holy victory, of the sort the world knows little. He is the most magnificent literary image of kenosis, of self-emptying love, that I have ever seen. He emptied himself until there was nothing left, and I am in awe of this character. To me, the Potions Master will always be a symbol of devotion, of what true love really is... All I can do is venerate such selflessness, even if it is fictional. He is a good teacher.

I am thinking of a children’s tale, Charlotte’s Web. Charlotte is a spider who became friends with a pig named Wilbur. In the beginning, Charlotte seems a little frightening to Wilbur. However, we read that “In good time he was to discover that he was mistaken about Charlotte. Underneath her rather bold and cruel exterior, she had a kind heart, and she was to prove loyal and true to the very end.” Wilbur thought that Charlotte was “fierce, brutal, scheming, bloodthirsty.” Charlotte, for her part, thought “There are a lot of things Wilbur doesn’t know about life.” Such as his becoming Christmas dinner a few months later. When Wilbur does find out about the fate that awaits him, he begins to cry and wail and Charlotte tells him that he won’t die.

“You shall not die,” said Charlotte, briskly.
“What, really?” cried Wilbur. “Who’s going to save me?”
“I am,” said Charlotte.
“How?” asked Wilbur.
“That remains to be seen. But I am going to save you, and I want you to quiet down immediately. You’re carrying on in a childish way. Stop your crying! I can’t stand hysterics.”

Eventually, Charlotte came up with a plan to save Wilbur. She would do it by fooling his human masters. One morning, Lurvy, the farmer’s hired hand, came to feed Wilbur and “saw something that made him set his pail down.” A spider’s web had been woven above Wilbur’s yard. That “morning each thin strand was decorated with dozens of tiny beads of water. The web glistened in the light and made a pattern of loveliness and mystery, like a delicate veil.” But what caught Lurvy’s attention was an even more extraordinary sight: “in the center of the web, neatly woven in block letters, was a message. It said: SOME PIG!”

When the farmer is informed of “the miracle,” he and his wife argue over whom must have created the web; he thought it was Wilbur, while she felt more certain that it had to be a spider. Upon seeing Charlotte, they conclude that she is only “a common grey spider” and attribute the prodigy to Wilbur. Their pig becomes a local sensation.

Charlotte continued to spin more webs to impress the farmer and his wife. Finally, it was time for the County Fair, and the Zuckermans had high hopes that Wilbur would win a prize. At first, Charlotte declined to go, because she was getting ready to lay her eggs, but then she said,

“I shall go, too. I have decided to go with Wilbur. He may need me.”

Once they have arrived at the Fair, Wilbur asks her if she will spin another web. She replies that she will try, but that she is becoming old and tired.

“I’m awfully sorry to hear that you’re feeling poorly, Charlotte,” Wilbur said. “Perhaps if you spin a web and catch a couple of flies, you’ll feel better.”

“Perhaps,” she said, wearily. “But I feel like the end of a long day.”

She does manage to weave one last web for Wilbur. At its center is the word “HUMBLE.”

After she describes to Wilbur the beautiful egg sac that she has made, he tells her that she will soon see her children be born. She replies quietly, “Maybe. However I have a feeling I’m not going to see the results of last night’s efforts. I don’t feel good at all. I think I’m languishing, to tell you the truth.”

The next day, everyone at the Fair marvelled at the web and Wilbur. “Everybody who visited the pigpen had a good word to say about Wilbur. Everyone admired the web. And of course nobody noticed Charlotte.” When Wilbur receives a special award, “Up overhead, in the shadows of the ceiling, Charlotte crouched unseen, her front legs encircling her egg sac. Her heart was not beating as strongly as usual and she felt weary and old, but she was sure at last that she had saved Wilbur’s life, and she felt peaceful and contented.”

The time came to leave the Fair, but Charlotte could not follow Wilbur, because she was too weak.

“Why did you do all this for me?” he asked. “I’ve never done anything for you.”

“A spider’s life can’t help being something of a mess,” she replied, “with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone’s life can stand a little of that.”

“Next day, as the Ferris wheel was being taken apart... Charlotte died. Nobody, of the hundreds of people that had visited the Fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important part of all.”

St. Paul wrote to the Philippians, “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking on the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death -even death on a cross! Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place.”

Christ said, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11:25).



Everyone I met was kind to me. I rested frequently whilst I was in Toronto; indeed I abstained from the majority of the activities that took place during the convention. I napped friday and saturday afternoons. Mostly I enjoyed meals with loved ones, friends old and new from near and afar; the chatter was pleasant, gentle, light-hearted, the company a blessing. I was encouraged and upheld by many of whom I am unworthy. Friday night I did not go anywhere and was content to lie in bed watching television... After having endured severe anxiety due to fatigue, being away from home and the looming prospect of my presentation for two days, I needed to relax quietly and secluded myself. I attended my dearest karen_jk's lecture, which was very interesting and delightful, and Travis Prinzi's ("Voldemort: Shadow, Sociopath, Sinner"); that was all. I did boogie quite a bit at the ball (enough to last me for the next decade or more) but still retired to my hotel room around eleven o'clock.

An amusing note: on the way over to Toronto, two elderly ladies who were sitting across the aisle from the seats karen_jk and I had selected asked me what congregation I was from -one of them had belonged to a convent a number of years ago. I keep saying that the coat and buttons are of a priestly sort!

I am so happy and relieved to be home with my better half and Potion (both of whom had missed me a great deal -the feeling was more than mutual. After I spoke to my better half on friday afternoon, I cried). I shall not travel again. Convention Alley 2008 will be my last Harry Potter conference.

Once I have spent a little while resting in my garden, I shall work on my correspondence and re-edit Just a thistle for publication on my lulu.com page; then I shall edit the two following volumes. I shall be writing most of the time from now on. I shall dedicate myself to my faith, my blogs, my vocation, to the occupations and tasks that characterize my tranquil existence.

God bless you for your affection, my dearest ones.

Your devoted
Logospilgrim, the quiet professor