The cheesy ABBA-shaped musical Mamma Mia has, as you’ll know if you’ve seen it, a rather peculiar ending.
At the climax of the film, as the bride and groom stand side by side, they suddenly decide not to get married after all. Instead, they realise that the truly romantic thing would be to travel the world (together) rather than settle down to marriage – which, it is implied, would be far too dull for them to start right now. The structure of marriage would, perhaps, stifle their love; what real love needs is shapeless, limitless freedom. Solid boundaries and hard edges, duties and necessities, are the opposite of what love is about.
This is an idea everywhere in our culture, but one which Scripture rejoices to save us from. For shapelessness is not a blessing to love, but is something far closer to its opposite. Not for nothing are monsters in stories often shape-shifters; for it is of the nature of evil to present itself as one thing and then swiftly morph into something else entirely. People who change unpredictably are hard to love and even harder to feel loved by.
The sacrament of sacrilege
Many people were understandably horrified when the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics included sacrilegious mockery of our Lord’s Last …