Homily for Br. Bernard's Life Profession - 04 Nov 2009

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Sr. Hildegard Magdalen Pleva, OSsR
Profession of the Life Vow by Brother Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC
Wednesday 04 November 2009

Romans 8: 18-27

Luke 11:9-13

Br. Bernard and Sr. Hildegard
Originally uploaded by Randy OHC

The early twentieth century British writer W. Somerset Maugham was a keen observer of human behavior. He was particularly astute concerning motivations of the mystical kind.

I have an idea, [he said,] that some men are born out of their due place…they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not…this sense sends men far and wide in search of something permanent…sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs. (1)

The great St. Paul and my friend Bernard seem to me to have had that nostalgia, that longing, for a place they knew not. Each began life with a sure desire for God. Each followed life’s circuitous and astonishing path – an exploration of longing and discovery – to an end surprising and yet familiar.

Paul did not know that his dual identity as an educated Greek-speaking Jew and citizen of Rome uniquely suited him to God’s purpose in the plan of salvation. Bernard did not know that the longing in his heart would best be satisfied not in the canyons of Wall Street but in the monastic cloister.

Our reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans spoke of “eager longing”, that desire of the heart to see the face of God. It is possible for the world to provide a trysting place for that desire. But the trick is to find the place, to find what Marist Brother Don Bisson describes as the best container for next stage of the journey to God, fertile ground for the process to which we are drawn, to find the home we long for but do not know.

Bernard has found that “place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.” To live out of that longing, to live out of the desire for God, demands the virtue of hope. All creation groans in its steadfast clinging to the hope of salvation in our brother, Jesus Christ.

In a few minutes, after Bernard consecrates himself to the vows of stability, conversion to the ways of monastic life, and obedience to that life, we will hear an ancient and plaintive plea. It is a prayer rooted in Paul’s expression of longing and hope. “I have done what you asked, according to your promise, do not disappoint me in my hope.” How do we sustain such hope, hope in what cannot be seen?

In James Otis Sargent Huntington’s first rule for the Order of the Holy Cross, all the details of the rule are arranged according to three over-arching principles of monastic life: prayer, mortification and good works. Prayer, the first principle, makes all that follows possible. Prayer sustains our hope. Paul sees it this way too but he knows his failures in courage and assumes that we will have ours. So he consoles himself and us. “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.”

The occasion of Bernard’s Life Profession, his solemn promise to follow the monk’s path of interior silence and solitude lived in community; his promise to make himself available for conversion of heart and generosity in service; that promise is made public today. In its wisdom, the Church makes it public so that the promise is known to us. In this way his promise becomes a mirror for our promises, every promise represented here; fidelity in marriage and relationship, dedication to nurturing children, the promises of the sacrament of ordination, perseverance in religious vows, faithfulness in honoring the true self, the mundane obligations of earning a living, or the duties of citizenship and service.

Neither our friend’s pledge here at this altar nor the ones we have made are easy to keep. “But the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.”

And Jesus, our Savior, whose promise is the source of Bernard’s hope today – our Jesus assures – “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” Oh, blessed assurance.

And before all things, the monk is a person of prayer – a praying presence before the throne of God. One who, in the words of Thomas Merton, is “like the trees which exist silently in the dark and by their vital presence purify the air.” (2)

Many today question the need for any life long promises. They find the promise of religious vows particularly confounding. They do not appreciate the transformation and the joyful liberation made possible by the promise and its fulfillment. Such freedom is what St. Paul described as “the liberty of the children of God.”

In that spirit of freedom, grounded in the love of Jesus - grounded in the Paschal Mystery of his life, death and resurrection - in that freedom, our friend, our brother Bernard, makes his pledge today.

Inspired by that love and with confidence in God’s Word, let us revisit our own promises. With Bernard, let us enter into our deepest longing. Let us recommit to the journey on our way to a home we have not seen, trusting that the Holy Spirit will be our guide.

Today we can pray with the poet T.S. Eliot:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Through the unknown remembered gate

When the last of earth left to discover

Is that which was the beginning; ……..

Quick now, here, now, always –

A condition of complete simplicity

(Costing not less than everything)

And all shall be well and

All manner of thing shall be well

When the tongues of flame are in-folded

Into the crowned knot of fire.

And fire and the rose are one. (3)

Br. Bernard puts on the cross of life profession
Originally uploaded by Randy OHC

Footnotes

(1) W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Six Pence

(2) Merton, Thomas, Basic Principles of Monastic Spirituality

(3) Eliot, T.S., “Little Gidding” in Four Quartets

RCL - All Saints - 01 Nov 2009

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Adam McCoy, OHC
RCL - All Saints - Sunday 01 November 2009

Isaiah 25:6-9
Revelation 21:1-6a
John 11:32-44


We are here this morning to praise the saints, and so, as I speak this morning, I want each of you to think of a saint you have personally known – a holy person who touched your life, who helped you in your journey of faith, or who challenged you, or who opened up something new to you. Someone whose life brought you closer to God. In doing so, I want us to recognize something wonderful – that there are so many saints, so many, many saints. Who can count them?

But we can try. Yesterday I googled the question, How many saints are there? At the top of the pile of possible responses something called wikiAnswers gave two possibilities: for Protestants, everyone who receives Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour becomes a saint. This concept has the advantage of being based in scripture, where by one count there are between 40 and 50 uses of the word “saint” for “member of the church”. “To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,” says St. Paul at the beginning of the Letter to the Romans. Such a large number! Who can count them?

For Roman Catholics, there are apparently some 10,000 saints recognized by name, which is a suspiciously round number, encouraging me to think that our wikiAnswerers haven’t counted one by one, but have a process analogous to the crowd counting in our nation’s capitol when there is a march or demonstration, in which the number reported seems to depend on your point of view. But let’s take the 10,000 as a starter. That’s just the named saints. Think of all the saints whose names we don’t know, beginning with the baby boys of Bethlehem, slaughtered by Herod because they were in the same age cohort as Jesus. It’s often that way with martyrs – they’re in the way of power, and so they’re mowed down like the grass of the field – not only do we not know their names, we don’t even know how many there were. Such a large number! Who can count them?

In our worship here at the Monastery there are so many saints we have to lump them into categories: apostles and evangelists, patristic martyrs, martyrs, doctors of the church, missionaries, monastics, teachers, pastors, confessors. The Blessed Virgin Mary gets her own category. And that doesn’t include Israel’s holy patriarchs, prophets, priests and kings, its matrons and mothers and women of war, our ancestors in the faith. Not every saint fits easily into these categories, but quite a lot do. The point is, there are so many that we can’t deal with each one individually, but we have to perform a sort of spiritual taxonomy to accommodate them, like lepidopterists with butterflies. Such a large number! Who can count them?

The saints can also provide a lens through which to view the history of the Church. St. Paul and the other writers of Epistles expected that people called into the Fellowship of Jesus Christ would be saints. This is an attractive notion, but over time it proved to have its problems as an adequate description of Church membership. In the succeeding age the dominant type of saint is the confessing martyr, the believer who suffers for his faith, of whom Stephen in Acts is the proto-martyr. As Christianity assumed power, saintly action moved from the martyrdom of blood to the martyrdom of askesis, to the desert fathers and mothers, to Anthony and Pachomius in Egypt; to the study, to brilliant theologians like Basil and Gregory Nazianzen and Augustine; to church leaders like Pope Leo the Great and preachers like John Chrysostom; and even to politicians, like Constantine himself. As the Roman empire disintegrated, at least in the West, and society became less sophisticated, a new kind of saint arose, the fearless missionary wielding God’s power, like Martin of Tours, and in the East the ascetic channeling divine power for the people, like Simeon Stylites. As the Middle Ages progressed, so did the need for saintly power, to the point that no church was complete without a saint present in bodily form, offering access to the throne of grace to every ordinary needy person who came and prayed and wanted to change. Monks and mystics, scholars and the very simple, royals and peasants, famous church leaders and the nameless faithful, they are all there. Such a large number! Who can count them?

And with the Reformation and the beginning of the modern world, a new kind of saint: the person made holy by opposition to the Church itself, the follower of truth for the sake of the Gospel as that saint understood it, the Protestants first, and then the Catholics, speaking truth to power: William Tyndale the translator of the Bible and Thomas More, the upholder of papal power, both of them speaking the truth to Henry VIII. We can still hear the screams from England’s martyr fires and from the autos da fe of the Inquisition, we can still see the blood running in the streets of Paris in the St. Bartholomew Day Massacre, we can still smell the reek of gunpowder, destruction, famine and death from the Thirty Years War which destroyed as much as 30% of the populations of Central Europe in the name of the Faith. So many lost for faith. Such a large number! Who can count them?

And in our own day: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Janani Luwum, Martin Luther King, to name only the most famous. Such a large number! Who can count them?

There is so much holiness. The famous, public holiness of the martyrs, the holiness of blood, but also the quieter holiness of dedication to the welfare of others, the holiness of those who choose their work to benefit the rest of us. And the quietest of all, those who choose the path of love rather than the path of self, for whom philia replaces eros, and for whom then agape replaces philia, working selflessly with little reward or regard, grandmothers, teachers, friends of the destitute and the lost and the lonely and the innocent and the ignorant and the irresponsible, who stand like beacons of light in a world that seems to be not very friendly to its children. Think of the saints I asked you to find in your own life. Our own encounters with holiness show us another way, a better way, a possibility that the world is different than we thought, that the world is in fact God’s world, shot through with rays of love and hope and joy. Such a large number! Who can count them?

I have spent so much time enumerating saints – and I’ve left quite a lot of them out – because I want us to consider that as Christians we are called to a different reality. The “world” is always presenting itself to us as a problem. It wants us to believe that life is a problem to be solved. Most of us here today are from New York. Is anything ever good enough for New Yorkers? Of course not. Life is problems. If they can be solved, there will be more problems to be solved, and then more problems, and then more problems. The multi-headed hydra should be our mascot: solve one problem and nine others spring up in its place. Problems without end. Or so we are told.

But the way of faith – the way of the saints – presents a different reality: a world infused with God’s inbreaking love and undefeatable goodness, a goodness which never stops calling out for witnesses, which never stops recruiting collaborators. Who could have imagined how much holiness the revelation of God to his people would let loose in the world? Who could imagine the millions of lives that are entry portals for the love of God into the world? Who would have thought the transcendent holiness of God could be found in the murky depths of the last days of Nazi Germany, or in a car on a dusty rural road in Uganda, or in an inexpensive motel in Memphis? And yet the bright light of God shone there. And where else might it shine? For in truth, God’s goodness in the world is not limited by the capacity of the Christian community to express it.

I want to suggest that a large part of our work as Christians is to learn to see the signs of sanctity. We need to develop an eye for saints, as the botanist develops an eye for plants. I remember driving upcountry in Liberia from Monrovia to Bolahun years ago with Brother Laurence. The vegetation on either side of the road was just green to me. It didn’t seem much like the African jungle of my imagination, and I was disappointed. I was looking for Tarzan, I suppose. Or an elephant, at least. But then Laurence started to show me, like the science teacher he was, which trees were the rubber trees, and what that meant in the economy of Liberia, and my eyes were opened.

We have to be trained to see. And once we are, our consciousness is changed. Too often we accept the “world’s” terms and see mainly problems, which are so great that we are overwhelmed. But truly those problems are only part of the reality of God’s world. What if we change our focus and train ourselves also to see holiness, also to see joy, also to see generosity? Who in the circle of our friends is being kind, right now? Who is bearing a burden they don’t have to bear? Who is giving so that another may have? That is holiness. Train ourselves to see. Who in our community is working harder? Who is giving sacrificially? Who is quietly going about their daily work with integrity and skill when they could more easily slack off? We can all see the great heroes of holiness. We need to learn to see the holiness around us now. The Holy Spirit is at work. Let us train our eyes to see.

And when we do, the world is different. Instead of the grey place of problems, it is the field of God’s love, filled in unexpected ways with the love and power and joy and light and life of God. The world is alive with holiness. It breathes holiness. Its life is God’s holiness in the lives of His people. Is there any more unexpected place to find God than on a cross? Then why should we be surprised to find God around the corner, down the street, in this very room? Look around you. The Holy Spirit is here, at work, now, this instant.

I cannot put it better than that great prophetic sonnet of Gerard Manley Hopkins (God's Grandeur - poem from 1918):

THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

RCL - Proper 25 B - 25 Oct 2009

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Scott Wesley Borden, OHC
RCL - Proper 25 B - Sunday 25 October 2009

Job 42:1-6, 10-17
Hebrews 7:23-28
Mark 10:46-52


On the face of it, this is a very happy Gospel story. Bartimaeus is blind. Jesus heals him. All live happily ever after. But my grandmother taught me carefully that there were no silver linings without dark clouds as well. So lets spend a little time looking for some of those clouds... what could be more fun...

In miracle stories, the miracle tends to push the rest of the story out of the picture. There is a lot more in the story than just Bartimaeus having his sight restored.

Look for instance at the crowd. If we focus only on Bartimaeus, then the crowd is just set dressing, but that is not the case.

This is a large, enthusiastic, faithful crowd. They have gathered to cheer Jesus - to worship... It’s a crowd that could easily be compared to any Sunday morning congregation. Good people gathered to praise Jesus. We should aspire to be like them.

But look at the function of this congregation. Jesus is in the middle and over on the edge somewhere is blind Bartimaeus needing help. And when Bartimaeus cries out for help what does the admirable congregation do?

They shush him... try to keep him from making a scene... They do what they can to keep him from getting the help he needs. They literally try to stand in the way of God’s healing power.

I said we could aspire to be like this crowd - this congregation. And now I have to face the fact that, at least some of the time, I don’t have to aspire... I am already part of this congregation.

For the sake of maintaining a joyful atmosphere we sometimes stand in the way of God’s healing power. For the sake of maintaining a familiar status quo we sometimes stand in the way of God’s justice. For the sake of good liturgy we sometimes defer the building of God’s kingdom.

Well, there is a dark cloud... this story is asking me to notice something about myself that I don’t want to notice... Something that, once I’ve noticed it, requires me to do some work. I have to take care not to get so caught up in following Jesus that I forget to follow Jesus. A dark cloud...

But that’s just the first cloud...

There is something about the way this miracle takes place that leaves me with questions. I know, and we all know, people with faith as strong as Bartimaeus, who have serious needs and who ask for God’s healing - and don’t appear to receive it.

I talked with a 10 year old boy who was afraid to pray. When his grandmother was terminally ill he had prayed earnestly that God would heal her. But she died. Children have a way of putting themselves at the center of things... he had concluded that God had allowed his grandmother to die as way of punishing him. He had taken this one step further. He feared that anything he prayed for, God would do the opposite. Experience had taught him this. So he was afraid to pray.

The combination of innocence and lack of perspective make for a heart rending story. But its not unique. This story of Bartimeaus, who’s prayer is answered so quickly and so exactly, would not have helped my 10-year-old friend. It is, for me, a cloud.

Its interesting that the compilers of the Lectionary have chosen to offer part of the story of Job with this Gospel passage. We know the story of Job. He was a good and decent man who suffered terribly in the cause of what seems to be nothing more than a bit of sport between God and the devil.

After the suffering God makes things up for Job - that’s what we heard about this morning. But in the midst of suffering Job surely must have felt that God refused to hear his prayers.

His helpful friends added insult to injury by telling Job that he, no doubt, was the cause of his own suffering. Surely he must have done something bad. Yet Job remained steadfast in his faith, not because his prayers were answered, but because his faith was unshakable. That, of course, is the wager God made with the devil - so at least God wins...

When Job’s fortunes begin to turn, his friends all come back. Now they eat with him and now they show him sympathy... where was that sympathy when he was suffering? When he needed it? They were busy heaping on judgment. It’s a cloud implicit in the story of Bartimaeus. The crowd is really not interested in the needs of the needy... we tend to view the needy and the injured with suspicion and judgment. Scattered clouds seem to be in the forecast...

There is an odd twist in the story of Bartimaeus. When Jesus restores his sight he says “Go; your faith has made you well.” But Bartimaeus does not go. He stays. He follows Jesus. This is exactly not what he was commanded to do.

Bartimaeus’ gratification is instant, And so is his disobedience.

Bartimaeus’ miracle doesn’t really have the simple, happy ending we may think it has because his life doesn’t end when his sight is restored.

His identity, his livelihood was as a blind beggar. It was, at the time, not the worst way to make a living. Post-miracle Bartimaeus, son of Timaeus, the blind beggar was going to need a new identity and, more to the point, a new job. His sight has been restored and his world has been turned upside down and his status quo has been shattered. That is the miracle. And that would be another dark cloud. My grandmother would be proud.

The miracle of healing for Bartimaeus is all too easy to spot. In my own experience I find that miracles are much more subtle. And I find that the miracle I want, the miracle I’m looking for, the obvious miracle, actually blinds me to the miracle that is taking place.

I had a friend some years ago who was seriously ill - both physically and emotionally. I had known him for many years and watched his downward spiral. In the end there was nothing I could do but sit with him a few evenings a week and listen to him rant.

I prayed earnestly for a miracle... that God would give me something to say or show me something to do to make things better. Nothing...

And then one day my friend pointed out to me the miracle I was not seeing. In the middle of a long list of unhappy things he paused and looked at me. And then he said: “I’m glad you still come to visit. I know I’m really difficult to be around and nobody else comes any more. But you still come and it really helps.”

The miracle I wanted - to be able to fix things - to be a hero - was blinding me to the miracle that was being given - I could accompany a friend on his journey, albeit a painful one. He told me how it mattered to him, but I find that even now he still journeys with me and brings richness, compassion, patience, to my life. Its not the miracle I prayed for. Its not the kind of answer Bartimaeus got. But it is a blessing.

Bartimaeus’ miracle is not going to be without pain. He hasn’t followed Jesus command to go, He is following Jesus. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem... Ultimately on his way to crucifixion. Bartimaeus’, eyes now open, will soon see the Son of David who has shown him such mercy nailed, with no mercy at all, to a cross. Dark clouds indeed.

The miracle I need, that we all need, is to have our eyes opened to God’s presence in our lives and in our world. But to have our eyes opened will mean that we see not only joy, but sorrow. Not only resurrection, but crucifixion. Not only beauty, but ugliness. Silver linings with their dark clouds still attached.

Jesus doesn’t offer us easy life. Jesus offers abundant life, total life. We pray that, as God opened the eyes of Bartimaeus, God will open our eyes to the life that is all around us.--

RCL - Proper 21B - 27 Sep 2009

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. James Michael Dowd, OHC

RCL - Proper 21B - September 27, 2009

Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29

James 5:13-20

Mark 9:38-50

Br. Randy by our massive Oak in the Lesser Cloister

Photo Originally Uploaded by Rachael Elizabeth Photography

Total Abandon

I was very much taken with our second reading from the Epistle of James this week as I began to prepare this sermon. The reading, taken from the end of the Letter begins with a series of questions: “Are any of you suffering?” “Are any cheerful?” “Are any among you sick?” In all those cases, and in many more, we are told by James, that we are to pray. As I experienced all of those questions in real time this week – I was sick and suffered (ok – suffering might be a little strong, but it was unpleasant); and I experienced real cheerfulness due to some very good news I received regarding a ministry I am involved with. And so, I thought to myself: “well, what would James say?” He'd tell me to pray. And this seems like a good thing for a monk to do, indeed for any Christian to do.

But my own personal experience, and the experiences of many people I talk to, indicates that even when a person feels truly called to pray, they often experience hesitation, or even downright resistance to actually praying. And, admittedly, I am reading into James here, but his urging people to pray sounds a bit frantic to me. Like he has had the same experience I have had. An experience that has taught me that whatever the situation, prayer is always a good thing – but sometimes, it's just so hard to bring ourselves to do. When we are sick or in sin, that is, when we are at our weakest either physically or spiritually – we should pray. But not only then. In fact, when we are at our strongest – cheerful is the word James uses – we should pray then too. Whatever the situation, God is the Lord of all and welcomes, indeed, invites prayer at every turn. And yet, all to often we resist.

One of the great blessings in my life is my family. I thank God everyday for them. In recent years, many of these blessings have been manifested in my nieces and nephews. Among my three siblings, I have eight nieces and nephews who range between the ages of four and sixteen. Now back when each of them were between the ages of about four years old and six years old, and two of them still are, they had a way of greeting me when I would visit that was unforgettable and something I will treasure for the rest of my life. It has been so meaningful to me that, often over the years, when things have been difficult – I have thought of these moments.

I'd be visiting from what must have seemed very far away and as I approached the walkway to the house or came in the front door, the kids would charge me with full abandon and dive into my arms, yelling something like “Uncle Jimmy is here!” If you ever want an experience of total, unrestrained and unquestioning love, I highly recommend this. And if you want a double dose of it – just ask a sibling to have twins, as my younger brother has.

I would be greeted with such warmth, hugs, kisses, tussling of my hair, and squeals of delight. The “Uncle Jimmy is here!” sounded as if the greatest event in human history had just occurred with Uncle Jimmy's arrival. It is unmitigated joy.

But this only happens when youngsters are between the ages of four and six, give or take. Younger than four, the children did not know me well enough and would be more cautious. Older than six, a kind of worldly maturity begins to set in, slowly, but surely. And with maturity comes reserve. And with reserve comes self-defense. And with self-defense comes a seeming need to mask our vulnerability.

Now, I have a great relationship with each of my nieces and nephews, whatever their age, and wherever they are at. These relationships have deepened over the years and are incredibly meaningful to me. Each of them are unique blessings that God has granted to me, a rather undeserving soul. But I have wondered about the loss of this type of innocence for a long time. And as I have reflected on it, I began to turn inward and to think about my own experience. What was it like for me to be standing there as one of these great kids was charging me, screaming at the top of their lungs, and diving into my arms?

Well, usually, I protected myself, physically and emotionally, asking myself in an instant, questions like “can I still lift them?” “what about my back?” “what if I drop them?” “why can't I scream with so much joy?” “why can't I tell them that I love them as much as they love me?” And on and on. I would scoop them up and hug them and kiss them – but with a tinge of that reserve, while slowly placing a mask over my vulnerability.

But somehow, the kisses and the hugs and the joy of these great children would relax me and would show me a better way. A way to be open to a love that is pure, innocent, and true; before layer after layer of protective coating begins to be applied.

That's what adulthood does to us. As we begin to age and move into the world we get hurt, we experience pain in ourselves and witness it in others, and little by little, we begin to ask ourselves questions like “can I still lift them?” or “why can't I scream with such joy?” And those very real, very difficult questions, begin to shape how we approach our relationships. And that includes how we approach our relationship with God. An approach that has a layer, perhaps several layers, of protective coating on it.

We are careful. We don't want to be hurt. We don't ask God for too much because perhaps he'll disappoint us in his seeming lack of response. We don't tell God we love him too often, because that just makes us more vulnerable. We don't sing praises to God because we just cannot scream for joy any longer. We don't confess our sins because God must be so disgusted with us. We don't even tell God when we are happy, because we probably don't deserve to be anyway. I think we tell ourselves these kind of lies all the time, because we think they keep us safe.

And that brings me back to what I think might have been James' motivation in ending his Epistle with his pleading instruction to pray. When I think of Elaina, Katie, Patrick, Emily, Matthew, Alex, Connor or Sydney charging me and diving into my arms, I think of God. I actually think that God wants to approach us like a four year old – jumping for joy, diving into our arms, hugging and kissing us with total, unrestrained and unquestioning love. With the announcement that “Uncle Jimmy is here!” and it really is the greatest moment in human history. Just because God is here, present to us.

This is, after all, what the Incarnation is: God throwing open his arms with total abandon and embracing each of us as his own. This is, after all, what the Passion is: God throwing open his arms with total abandon to lay down his life for his friends. This is, after all, what the Resurrection is: God throwing up his arms in total abandon with victory over sin and death for us. This is, after all, what the Coming of the Holy Spirit is: God throwing open our arms with total abandon so that God can pray within us.

In last week's Gospel passage from St. Mark, Jesus tells us "Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me." God is a four year old. God wants us to act like four year olds: Totally open to love, joy, welcome, and with a world view that says each and every encounter with God is the greatest moment in human history. That's what James is telling us today. Pray with unrestrained abandon, like a four year old – everyday and in every circumstance. Let God throw himself at you and open your arms so wide that it hurts to receive him. Take off the mask and let yourself be vulnerable. Strip yourself of the layer upon layer of self-defense you have put on over the years. Give back to God what he first gives to you – total love in complete abandon. The only way to do that is to pray – every day in every way. AMEN.

RCL - Holy Cross Day - 14 Sep 2009

St. Andrews, Newark, NJ

Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC

RCL - Holy Cross Day, September 14, 2009

Isaiah 45:21-25

Philippians 2:5-11

John 12:31-36a

The Crucifix in the Monastic Gardens at Holy Cross Monastery

Originally Uploaded by Cloister-Walk

I’ve never been to Jerusalem or to the Holy Land. And I’m not at all sure I want to go. Which is surprising. I’ve been to lots of places and generally enjoy travel. I’ve lived in Europe. I’ve been to Egypt and New Zealand and, yes, even to Canada. And my current position as Superior of the Order of the Holy Cross requires that I travel every year to South Africa. And since the advice of one of our venerable senior brothers was “Never fly direct,” it’s certainly conceivable that I could take the long way around and visit the Holy Land. But I don’t have much desire to do that.

Strange. I have a dear friend who regularly leads pilgrimages there. I have met countless people who have journeyed there, studied there, lived there. They all tell me how profoundly and irreversibly it changed the way they read the Bible and the way they hear the stories of Jesus that we have heard from our youth. To walk where Jesus walked, to bathe in the same rivers, to see the same hillsides, to know that you do in fact go up to Jerusalem and down to Dead Sea and north to the Galilee. It all gets fleshed out for them; it all becomes real in a way it wasn’t before. It’s like the difference between reading a map and actually being in a place. Both may be accurate perceptions, but they are totally different experiences, the first only a sketch or shadow of the second, helpful in navigating the terrain a little more confidently, perhaps, but pale in comparison.

I’ve also met people who’ve come back from trips to the Holy Land totally disillusioned: disillusioned by the development of the cities and the countryside, by the crowds of people, by the tourist and pilgrimage trade, by the crass commercialization of religious faith, by the dirtiness, the chaos and the political and cultural violence. They went seeking happy peasants, and what they found were people not much different than themselves struggling to make a living in one of the most emotionally and politically charged pieces of real estate in the world, a small piece of the earth claimed as sacred, as holy, as home by three world religions and by many different tribes and nations. It apparently didn’t look or feel at all like those colorful drawings we saw in Sunday school as children, and these folks came back profoundly disappointed. Whatever it is they wanted, the Holy Land could not give them.

Perhaps nowhere is this more true than Jerusalem itself, always it seems a spiritual and political hothouse—a small place, crowded, fought over, jealously guarded and deeply revered, deeply longed for and loved by generations, sung about in songs and painted by artists, written about by travelers and dreamed about for ages: “Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blessed.” “Jerusalem my happy home, when shall I come to thee?”

I fear it may be all too much to bear, too much to take in. So I stay in New York, or South Africa, or New Zealand, thank you very much.

But people do still go to the Holy Land and especially to Jerusalem and they have been going there for millennia. They go on pilgrimage. They go to be close to lands and skies and places that they have heard about all their lives and dreamed about and prayed about. They go to walk where Moses or David walked and where Mary and Jesus and the apostles and the first Christians lived. They want to be where it all happened, where Jesus taught and healed and preached and died. They want to see it with their own eyes, touch it with their own hands, hear and smell and taste and walk that place. It’s not unusual or surprising. Look at how many make their way each day to that great hole in the earth in Lower Manhattan that was the World Trade Center. They want to see it with their own eyes, to be there. And who knows why? Who can explain it?

Our feast today, the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross (or Holy Cross Day), is a feast rooted in this desire of human beings to see it with their own eyes, as much as they can, as much as is humanly possible. Its origins lie in the restoration of the Christian holy sites begun in earnest in the fourth century under the Emperor Constantine and his mother Helena. They decided that it was time to locate and honor those places that were so much part of the story of Jesus, and by extension, our story as well. And no place was more central than that place where our Lord was crucified for us and where he rose from the dead—what came to be known today as the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The great triumph of that effort was the popular belief that on that sacred site, the very wood on which our Lord had suffered had been recovered through a miraculous turn of events. And that wood was presented as a sign and a deep and living connection to our Lord’s saving act. That precious relic was offered for the veneration of all who came, and over the centuries they came by the hundreds of thousands to see that wood, to visit that hill of Golgotha and the nearby tomb where Jesus rested in death and rose again to life that first Easter, the whole site now covered by one enormous structure connecting these various sites and fought over by Roman Catholics, Greek Orthodox, Armenians, Copts and other Christians for centuries. Indeed the competition is so fierce and the territorial rights so volatile that Moslem and Jewish authorities have to guard the peace to keep the Christians from fighting with each other, as regularly happens.

It is, to this very day, a chaotic scene. And people often wonder if Jesus would recognize it? And more to the point, what would he think of it? My opinion is that he’s seen it all, accepts it all, and that nothing would surprise him.

We may, of course, dismiss it. Our faith in Christ has never been dependent upon a visit to certain sacred places but rather on faith in the Lord Jesus himself. And all the layers of tradition, superstition, sectarian rivalry, and religious tourism make such places easy targets for our skepticism.

But the truth is that there is still power in such places. It is, I think, the power to see things differently, to catch an alternative view of life, to be jolted or shocked out of our usual ways of experiencing our world. It’s one of the reasons that people still go on pilgrimages. But the funny thing is, you can never predict when these moments or experiences will happen or even if they will happen at all. All you can do is be open to them, when God in his mercy uses an event, a place, a person to draw the curtain aside to let us catch a glimpse of something more, a glimpse than can be either consoling or troubling, or both.

I was reminded of this as I was reading Forward Day by Day this past week. There is a printed version, as you know, frequently available at the back of Episcopal churches, but it is also available on line on the Internet, and if you have access to a computer, you can read it and also post a personal response to the daily reflection to share with others. Last Tuesday, the reflection focused on the line from St. Marks’ Gospel about the women who went to the tomb early that first Easter: “Terror and amazement had seized them.” It was a simple and beautiful reflection about the author going with his grandson on his first roller coaster ride seeing in his grandson’s face that peculiar combination of “terror and amazement” that St. Mark described.

But what really caught my attention and stopped me in my tracks was a response of someone named Rick Meyer, from I know not where. Let me read you what he wrote:

In 1993 I visited Jerusalem and took the tour of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher; it was nice but I would have liked to stay. I noticed that many people were just sitting along the side of the room up by the cross. So in ‘97 when I returned I set aside a whole day to sit and watch. There is a front stairs that everyone comes up and a back stairs were people leave. I sat on a small bench next to the back stairs. The place was jammed. After a few hours a woman came up the back stairs. She was dressed in modest clothing [eastern European] with a shawl over her head. She got on her knees and [crying] started crawling through the crowd towards the cross and the rock. People started to see her and it got eerily quiet up there as literally thousands of people moved out of her way. She moved forward, never looking up, making the sign of the cross and crying as she approached the cross. She reached in and touched the rock and reacted as though she had received an electric shock, then crying and sobbing [and never looking up] she crawled backwards to the stairs and left. It shook me up. I walked downstairs and stood in the line to go into the tomb. The floor around the tomb area is cracked concrete in bad repair. It was noisy, as thousands of people, speaking many languages, waited their turn to go in. Off to the left I saw the woman again; on her knees same as before. As people noticed her, again, it became so quiet as thousands of people moved out of her way to let her pass. She crawled as before over the broken rocks to the tomb; the priests at the tomb moved out of her way, people already in the tomb, seeing her, moved aside. As before she never looked up, making the sign of the cross, crying and sobbing. Then she backed out again, head down, crawling over the broken concrete, and was gone. We all stood in silence for a long time. I was asking myself why I wasn’t crying and crawling on my knees towards my savior. I think others were doing the same. It haunts me still.

And reading it, it haunts me too. The Holy Cross: our salvation, our hope, our redemption, our resurrection. We’ve so domesticated it, so neutralized it, become so familiar with it, that we put it on our walls and on our steeples and wear it around our necks and make feature length motion pictures abut it and paint it and sing it. But sometimes, we are simply called to or forced to worship it, that is, to come there before God’s power emptied of all glory and glorious beyond our own emptiness and like those women in the Gospel and that woman on her knees, be seized by “terror and amazement”… reduced to tears of grief for our own broken hearts and our own broken world and to tears of gratitude for the tender mercy of God who in ways that surpass our understanding, enters into all and redeems it all and transforms it all.

“I was asking myself why wasn’t I crying and crawling on my knees towards my savior…It haunts me still.”

No wonder I’m reluctant to go to Jerusalem. Who knows what I’ll find there? Who knows what or who will find me there?

But, the truth is that God is persistent and endlessly creative… and if we don’t go to Jerusalem, Jerusalem will come to us. Here we are this morning, the church of Jesus Christ, gathered in this place, in prayer around this book and this table where the mystery of Jesus’ Cross and Resurrection is being played out yet one more time for us and in us. Who knows what will happen?

Don’t be afraid, angels often say. But don’t be surprised either if some day it will be as if you too received an electric shock…and in the power of that shock, go on to live a changed life, a fuller and richer and more loving life, indeed a new life in Christ.

May today be that day—for you and for me. May every day be that day!

That is the promise and the power of the Holy Cross.

RCL - Proper 18 B - 07 Sep 2009

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Adam McCoy, OHC

RCL - Proper 18B, Sunday 07 September, 2009

Isaiah 35:4-7a

James 2:1-10, (11-13), 14-17

Mark 7:24-37

The St. Francis Garden at Holy Cross Monastery

Originally Uploaded by Cloister-Walk

Today’s two Gospel stories are connected by one of the most famous geographical puzzles in scripture. If Jesus is going from Tyre, on the Mediterranean, northwest of Galilee, by way of the Sea of Galilee to the Decapolis, why does he go to Sidon first? The northwestern edge Sea of Galilee is a good 35 miles southeast of Tyre, and the Decapolis is the region stretching away from the eastern side and far beyond, a straight 10 mile shot across the water, or farther around. But Sidon is 25 miles or more north of Tyre, and by going there, you miss the best east-west pass through the hills to the valley going south. If getting from Tyre to the Decapolis in good time is the goal, a 50 mile detour makes no sense. It’s like you want to get to New Haven from West Park, so you start by going 25 miles north, toward Albany. Now that’s a challenge!

Today’s Gospel also contains one of the most disturbing of all Jesus’ sayings. You may remember how abrupt he was to the Samaritan woman at the well, in John 4, when with no polite preliminaries he said, “Give me a drink”. A privileged patriarchal male need not say please, I guess. But this is worse: A Greek-speaking Syrophoenician woman comes to him in desperation because her little daughter has a demon, and she has heard Jesus can heal. What does Jesus say to her? As with the Samaritan woman, not a single polite word falls from his lips. I don’t know where he learned his pastoral theology, but he would not get an A for this: "Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." Offensive to her, and to us. When is the last time someone you respected and believed in told you that you are the lowest form of life, and in such a way as to make it clear that you need to bow down to his sort of people because you are, well, you are your sort of people, and we just can’t have anything to do with you, and in all likelihood, neither can God. And who is saying this? The Son of God no less. This is problematic, to say the least.

There are other issues in these stories as well, but these two will do for today.

One of the problems with Sunday morning scripture is that we just hear bits. We don’t listen to the larger sweep of the text. It is useful to put these two stories into context. They come directly after Jesus has fed the five thousand who were so excited that they came out to hear him in the wilderness unprepared. Famously, the disciples do not understand what is going on. Then he walks on the water, past their boat, at night. The disciples do not understand what is going on. When he gets to shore, the people find him again and get him to perform a mass healing. Then the religious authorities arrive from Jerusalem to scope out what is happening. They accuse him of breaking the laws that delineate clean from unclean. Jesus lets loose with a half-chapter diatribe against Jewish religious people who think that observing rules of ritual purity can substitute for the real cleanness of observing God’s holy law in its much larger sense.

And that is what brings Jesus, and us, to Tyre, and the annoying Greek-speaking woman, and the confusing roundabout journey, and finally to the healing of a deaf man in the Decapolis.

Mark seems to be saying that Jesus is fed up with Jewish disciples who see and see and do not understand, and with Jewish officials who are looking for nits to pick in order to derail his ministry. His success is with the crowds of ordinary people. It is the non-powerful, the badly connected, those without resource, who seem to understand. And in the Jewish world of Jesus and his ministry, there is no one religiously less powerful, no one worse connected with God, no one with less of a foothold, than a Greek speaking pagan woman, and her not even a real Greek, but a Syro-phoenician to boot! Jesus seems to have decided to give the Jewish thing a rest for a bit. If the garbled geography means anything, it means that he was taking the really long way around, spending a lot of time in Gentile territory, avoiding Jewish areas. He is represented as not wanting to be recognized, but as Mark says, “Yet he could not escape notice.” I imagine he knew this.

We know a little about the people for whom Mark wrote. We don’t know where, but we do know when, not more than a few years after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in AD 70. We know they were Greek speaking. They were almost certainly not Jewish by origin. They would have listened to the failures of Jewish disciples and officials as people who had perhaps been on the receiving end of the Jewish ritual purity stick in the early Church themselves. And perhaps they were also on the receiving end of the neo-Pharasaical leadership in the Church which St. Paul tells us so much about. At any rate, they likely would have sympathized with the Syrophoenician woman and with the deaf man in the Decapolis. They might even have taken Jesus’ insulting remark to that woman personally.

But they would also have noticed something wonderful in what follows. Far from bristling with pride and defiant self-assertion, as I imagine most of us in our culture would have been if this had happened to us, the woman accepts his description of her as a dog. She humbles herself, but without losing her native wit and energy. And then she turns it back on Jesus: "Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Is this a sharp retort or an acceptance of who she is in the scheme of things – a non-Israelite, not of the chosen, but still a creature with a claim on her creator? In either case, Zing.

As Jesus does with the Samaritan woman, so he does with the Syrophoenician woman: he takes her seriously. Our translation says simply, “For saying that...” But the Greek is more interesting. Dia touton ton logon: “on account of this word”. Logos is also the ordinary term for “word”, so we shouldn’t make too much of this. But, still, there it is, this very charged word logos, with all it may have implied in early Christian tradition, right here, in Jesus’ response to her. Jesus at last has found a person who immediately accepts the truth and power of kenosis, of self-emptying, of accepting the cross that God gives. At last someone who might understand what he is up to. At last someone for whom the word of God speaks and evokes a response of creaturely humility, with the intelligence to carry her case forward and the faith not to let it go when things get rough. Jesus did not find this with his disciples, and he sure didn’t find it in the religious leadership. He had to go to Tyre. Maybe that’s why he took the long way back. Maybe he was hoping to find some more.

And he did. East of the Sea of Galilee a man is brought to Jesus by his friends to be healed. Think of the man at the pool of Bethesda who could find no one among the devout Jews there to help carry him into the water, but here the Gentiles in their caring act for their friend are putting them to shame. Jesus performs an exorcism, which Mark describes in clinical detail. He is healed. He is asked not to talk about it, but of course he does. Suddenly he can talk and then not tell people about it? Get real! And what is the upshot? It is the Gentiles of the Decapolis who first publicly proclaim Jesus in messianic terms: "He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak." Lots here for Mark’s Gentile readers to identify with, to ponder.

And what about us? Even if we are dwellers in the richest and most prosperous culture the world has ever dreamed of, we are not, most of us anyway, the Chosen People. We live in the Tyres and Sidons, the gentile Decapolis of the modern world. I wonder if we would have the courage and faith of that woman, that wonderful woman, who understood her situation with God. She had no claim, no rights, no standing in the Covenant. But she had faith that in her humility, using what God had given her, a logos-inspired intelligence, she, in taking the lowest place, would find salvation. This great woman, the first in the Gospels to understand Christ in the path of humility, to bow to him, to ask him, who himself took the form of a slave, and who will die disgraced on a cross before very long, she is the first to ask to share his table, even a crumb. She is the hero, the spiritual mother, of every one of us when we come in our own unworthiness to God’s table.

In our culture, even more in our Church, humility like hers is not widely admired. There is more talk of rights and self-respect and assertion and pride than of acknowledging our lowliness. But perhaps humility should be more widely admired, more widely imitated. It is, after all, simply an acknowledgment of the truth. We are not worthy.

Many of us say, as we come to God’s table in the Eucharist, I am not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy table. Say but the word and I shall be healed.

May it be so. It is the path to salvation.

RCL - Proper 17 B - 30 Aug 2009

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Scott Borden, OHC

RCL - Proper 17B - 30 August 2009

Song of Solomon 2:8-13

James 1:17-27

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

The Crucifix Cross in the Monastic Enclosure at Holy Cross Monastery

Originally Uploaded by Cloister Walk

Today’s Gospel reading from Mark asks us to take a close look at the way we

live our faith. If Jesus were talking about people who were unfaithful, it

would be easier to hear and ignore this passage. But this is a dispute among

faithful people. The Pharisees were not unfaithful - they were extremely

devout, extremely faithful, just like the disciples. The problems lies in

the way they express their faith.

This passage combined with the letter of James forms a powerful and urgent

message for those of us today who are faithful and devout.

In Mark, Jesus calls us to listen. Jesus is emphatic: “Listen to me, all of

you, and understand...” That should get our attention...

James gives us some very clear instruction on what it means to listen. “Be

quick to listen, slow to speak... be doers of the word... be not hearers who

forget, but doers who act.”

Here is a different translation of James - from Good as New: “Do you think

you’re religious? If you don’t know when to shut up, you’re fooling

yourself. Your religion’s a fake. True religion, what the Loving God

recognizes as genuine, involves caring for all who are suffering hardship,

and not falling for popular prejudices.”

In the living church today there are many who are quick to speak; quick to

judge; quick to condemn; quick to exclude. I can spot those people from

miles, even oceans, away.

It’s a bit trickier when I’m the one too quick to speak, to judge, to

condemn, to exclude. Once we’ve got our mouths running, listening becomes

much more difficult - even for me...

Hearing God’s word is a call to action. We are not passive listeners. James

is quite direct. Hearing God’s word and not acting is like admiring

ourselves in the mirror...

The direction of our action must be love. James tells us that our anger does

not produce God’s righteousness. In my experience, our anger, my anger,

produces self-righteousness. How easy it is for me to spot

self-righteousness in others... how much harder to spot my own

self-righteousness. And yet its there - and it is not Godly. My anger does

not produce righteousness. This is a humbling reality.

Its not that we don’t get angry. Certainly there are many things in this

world that should make us angry. Certainly Jesus got angry. Anger can

motivate us to action, but it can not direct our action. Love must direct

our action.

James tells us to care for the orphans and widows in their distress.

We don’t live with so many widows and orphans these days - and being an

orphan or widow doesn’t mean now what it meant to James. James lived In a

world where family was everything. In that world being an orphan meant being

nothing. Being a widow meant not only being nothing because your family ties

had ended, but worse: being damaged goods, less than nothing...

In today’s world, James might call us, for example, to care for the homeless

mentally ill, or the illegal immigrants - they might have a similar status

to the orphans and widows of James’ day.

With this letter of James ringing in our ears what happens when we go back

to Mark?

It’s a fairly standard set up in Mark - Pharisees are yammering away: “Your

disciples do not love God because they do not keep God’s law... they do not

(insert offense here)...” This time the offense is “they do not wash their

hands before the eat.” (I had a 4th grade teacher who would have quite liked

these particular Pharisees...)

So Jesus tells us how we defile ourselves - not with what we eat, not by

failing to follow rituals, but with what we think... with what is in our

heart.

This is a familiar, well-trodden path. So why do I think the message is so

urgent today?

We wrestle with Pharisees all the time. They are the people who know how

everything ought to be done and are happy to tell us... Some of us easily

spot them among our conservative brothers and sisters. We hear them yelling

that the revisionists are not washing their metaphorical hands - you can

pick from any number of controversies.

Its harder for me to spot the Pharisees among the liberals - that’s my

prejudice - but they are there.

And when I examine my heart, what do you know? There is my own personal

Pharisee. And my personal Pharisee really does know exactly how everything

ought to be done to please God. That is why this message is urgent.

Informing the Pharisee is a code of some sort: A code that defines what God

does and doesn’t like - a holiness code. The duty of the Pharisee is to

clarify the code, to fanatically follow the code, and at every opportunity

to impose the code on others. This is what my personal Pharisee does... each

of us has a Pharisee within urging us on this path.

And we all know how much use Jesus has for Pharisees...

A holiness code is useful in two different ways. First and most important it

lets me know I’m in; I’m up to code; I’m right with God. And second, it lets

me know who else is in and, more excitingly, who else is out. This is very

powerful information.

But again, we all know how much use Jesus has for Pharisees... for holiness

codes...

Yet here in our own Anglican communion, in our own Episcopal Church, we have

people deciding who is in communion and who is not; who follows the code and

who does not; who is clean and who is unclean.

And we all know how much use Jesus has for this.

Jesus gives us no permission to judge who is worthy; No permission to

exclude; No permission to set up barriers; No permission to love the sinner,

but hate the sin... Jesus gives us no permission to develop a holiness code.

Its safe to say that Jesus has no more use for Christian Pharisees than any

other Pharisees. Jesus has no use for my own personal Pharisee.

The more we listen to our Pharisees the less we can hear Jesus... the less

we can be hearers and doers of the word.

And here is what that leads to: We can have an overtly theological debate

about the sanctity of marriage and family while at the same time allowing

children in our own country to go without basic vaccines, without proper

nutrition... These children are our family. We can accept that many of our

senior brothers and sisters have to choose between food and life-sustaining

medication. These seniors are our family.

We honor God with our lips, but not in our hearts.

To hear God’s word is to act on it - we can’t be hearers without being

doers. Who are our widows and orphans? God help us to stop looking at

ourselves in the mirror and to be doers of the word. Let us pray that God

will help us abandon human tradition and hold to God.