The Feast of Saint Benedict, July 11, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Josep Martinez-Cubero

The Feast of Saint Benedict, July 11, 2025

Proverbs 2:1-10      

Acts 2:42-47      

Luke 14:27-33

Click here for an audio of the sermon

Today we celebrate the feast of Saint Benedict, the father of Western monasticism, who is most known for his rule, “The Rule of Saint Benedict”. Most of what we know about him comes from the second book of the Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great. The literary genre of The Dialogues was widespread in the middle ages and called “Exemplum” (example or model). These were short stories often using reworked biblical passages and other stories to convey certain truths about the protagonist’s virtues as a way of teaching and motivating. Reading The Life and Miracles of Saint Benedict with our postmodern minds renders it absolutely useless. But a careful reading that digs deeply and creates a metaphorical interpretation can give meaning to our spiritual journey by showing us Benedict the human. Benedict was not born our holy father Benedict. He was a human being who was vulnerable, broken, and weak. He went through periods of temptation, challenges, growth, development, and also setbacks. His was a journey that serves as a model of these periods in our own lives.

Benedict was born around 480 AD to a noble family in Nursia, Italy. He seems to have been deeply religious from an early age. Having completed his primary studies, he was sent to Rome to study, presumably by a demanding father with very strong expectations that he would acquire a good education. His mother, good noble mother that she was, sent him with his childhood nurse as his servant. In Rome, however, Benedict found all manner of moral corruption and excess living and was turned off by it. Was this unique to Rome at a specific time in history? Certainly not. We all live in a world that’s godless and full of moral corruption. Just turn on the news and hear about the last presidential executive order, or the last bill passed by congress to give the very rich more money while so many can’t make ends meet and others suffer hunger, in such a wealthy country. Absolute moral degradation.

And as is often the case, it is this disheartening experience that occasions Benedict’s monastic vocation and the process of detachment necessary to gain self-knowledge and seek God alone. To do so honestly means he has to let go of family expectations and the financial security that comes with it. He renounces his father’s inheritance and begins a vulnerable stage in his life, mostly. He still has his nurse, who goes with him when he decides to leave Rome and travel to Affile, at the foot of a mountain. After some time and a series of events it is clear the nurse represents a maternal attachment of which Benedict decides he needs to let go. But instead of courageously facing his nurse and telling her he needs to be without her, he secretly escapes to Subiaco, about 10 miles away, and leaves her there alone. Not very nice, Benny! So, we are beginning to see a bit of a pattern here. First fleeing from the city and his family, and now secretly fleeing from his childhood nurse. But in God’s economy everything is put to good use. If we are sincere about our desire to live in God’s Reign, God will transform our shortcomings and weakness of character. Benedict will eventually come to champion the practice of stability as a spiritual discipline that fosters inner strength, resilience, not running away, but staying put and facing the challenges and joys of life by relying on God's grace and presence, even in the midst of difficulties.

In Subiaco, he lives in a cave as a hermit for three years, very much in the manner of a tradition he would have been very familiar with- that of the desert elders of Egypt, Palestine and Syria. Romanus, a monk from a nearby monastery, meets him on the way, hears about his desire, clothes him in the habit and serves as his formator, sometimes even breaking the rules of his own monastery, as we formators are known to do at times, in order to provide his novice what he needs. From his monastery, which was at a higher altitude than Benedict’s cave, he would tie some bread for food, and a little bell to the end of a long rope and lower it over the cliff. The little bell would let Benedict know when the bread was there without interrupting his solitude.

The story tells us that one day, as the bread was being lowered, the “ancient enemy of humankind,” threw a stone at the bell and broke it. Who is this “ancient enemy of humankind”? The most obvious answer would be the devil! But Benedict went to a cave to acquire self-knowledge and to do that he has to confront his own demons. The demons most commonly encountered at the beginning of monastic life tend to be those of rigidity, extremism, and control, and they can lead us to anger, self-absorption and the illusion that we need no help from anyone, because, well, leave me alone. I know what I know, and I know what I think is right. Benedict is his own enemy of humankind.

But face his demons Benedict did. He struggled with loneliness, and temptation, and after giving in to the persuasion of an entire community of monks who begged him to be their abbot after their abbot had died, his very severe leadership almost got him killed. They tried to poison him. Not to excuse the behavior of those crazy monks- very bad! Bad monks! But this and other stories show us a fallible human being who through perseverance came to be known as truly holy.

Benedict founded twelve monasteries in Subiaco before moving southward to Monte Cassino, where he built a bigger monastery and wrote his Rule. After his years of solitude, he had renewed his contacts with the Roman clergy and scholars and had access to all the main Christian monastic texts written before him. Benedict’s Rule is heavily influenced by the writings of John Cassian, another monk before his time, who is noted for his role in bringing the ideas and practices of Christian monasticism from the East to the early medieval West. The Rule also shows to have been mostly the editing and reworking of an earlier and very severe monastic rule called “The Rule of the Master”. 

What Benedict adds, omits, rearranges, and revises from The Rule of the Master shows a remarkable mastery of right measure, and discretion. The Rule says we should eat, but not too much. We can drink but not too much. We have to sleep, but not too much. You must work, but not too much. Benedict even regulates the times for prayer, so there has to be an end, and then you work or study. More than a systematic collection of regulations, the Rule of Saint Benedict is more about how to live in community in the love of Christ so that all are treated equally as beloved children of God. It is a reflection steeped in Scripture that guides us through a human journey into the heart of God. It calls for a community where all have the same access to books for their learning; a community where all are offered the same adequate amount of food and drink; a community where all have a voice, even the newest members. It sadly sounds like an ideal that could make many political and religious leaders of our day very uncomfortable. 

The longest chapter of Benedict’s Rule is on the subject of humility- quite a countercultural concept in today’s world where self-promotion and competition are so praised, a sense of entitlement seems to reign supreme. But true humility is not weakness, but a sign of strength, self-awareness, and openness to growth. It requires radical self-honesty, and a total acceptance of who we are with all our unchangeable past, our strengths, weaknesses, successes, and failures. It requires that we surrender and learn to love those parts about ourselves that we think of as unlovable so that our capacity to love can widen. The humble is able to respect the dignity of every human being because the humble knows we are all in need of mercy daily. The humble knows that calling out evil is an act of love, but we must do so without engaging in verbal or social violence. It is only through humility that we can ground ourselves in our true identity as people who are called to overcome evil with good.

The Benedictine call then is to inner transformation and deeper relationship with God. It’s a call to move beyond the superficial to becoming more and more sober so we can see what really is, and approach life with balance, mindfulness, and awareness of our actions and their impact on others. We do this in community, working, praying, obeying, rejoicing, and every day trying again to mirror Jesus’ own life and teachings. And we do it with the confidence that God, who shatters our expectations, and surpasses our understanding, only desires for us to evolve into the fullness of the image in which we are made. Our Holy Father Benedict, pray for us. ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre y del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+

The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, July 6, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Leo Sevensky, OHC

The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, July 6, 2025

• 2 Kings 5:1-14
• Galatians 6:(1-6)7-16
• Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

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I find myself drawn to the story of Naaman, the commander of the army of the King of Aram, that we heard in this morning’s Old Testament lesson from the Second Book of Kings. It's not often that we read from this book, partly because it's largely a history of battles. But it does contain the wonderful cycle of stories about Elisha, the heir to the prophet Elijah. And those stories, like those surrounding Elijah, have become models or prototypes for the lives of other holy people, particularly the saints and most especially for the life of Saint Benedict which we read in the Dialogues of Gregory the Great. It's hard to take them seriously at times, at least not as history as we understand it, but they are stories that tell us about the power of God to transform lives even through the actions of some wild and difficult people, of whom Elisha is one. I must remind myself that, whatever Elisha’s prophetic powers and ministry, he's not someone to be messed with. Let’s not forget the story of Elisha (2 Kings 2:23-24) who was being mocked by a group of boys because he was bald. Elisha simply calls two she-bears to attack and maul the boys…forty-two in all. That'll teach them to mock a prophet! Yes, Elisha is not someone to be treated lightly. And maybe neither is God. 

The story of Naaman as we have it is quite touching. Naaman is a great man, a great military leader and a Gentile. And apparently an idolater, as were all the Arameans. And we hear that he has developed leprosy. This is not what we today understand as leprosy, but rather a skin condition which renders him unclean and perhaps considered cursed. As the story develops, Naaman hears of a prophet in Samaria who could cure him of his skin disease. After a little palaver about political misunderstandings between Naaman and the king of Israel, Naaman goes to meet Elisha. Alas, he doesn't even get that far. Elisha sends a messenger to him and tells him to go wash in the river Jordan seven times and his flesh will be restored and he would be clean. Then things get interesting. Naaman is a very great man. A particularly important man. He is used to being, and expects to be, treated with attention and great care. And he's not at all happy about being dismissed by the prophet for refusing to see him in person. As he says: “I thought that for me he would surely come out and stand and call upon the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot and cure the leprosy!” Why wash in the Jordan river when Naaman had perfectly good rivers in Damascus? So, as the scripture tells us, “He turned and went away in a rage.” But his servants approached him—I would imagine very gingerly—and  suggested that had the prophet asked him to do something quite difficult, would he not have done it? Why not do something as simple as wash in the Jordan and be clean? To his great credit, Naaman overcame his anger and his hurt pride and washed in the Jordan and was cleansed. The scripture tells us: “His flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.

The story doesn’t end there and is well worth reading in its entirety. But what we read today tells us, or at least tells me, something important about faith and about life. And that is that our faith, our religion, our spirituality is perhaps something quite simpler than we usually imagine.

Not everybody is religiously obsessive or overly scrupulous. But I certainly was when I was young and probably am still to an uncomfortable extent. And my hunch is that I'm not alone in this. As a young boy, for example, I used to worry as I prayed to the Father or to the Son,  that the Holy Ghost might be a little unhappy with me because I wasn't giving Him/Her/It enough attention. I often worried about getting it right, doing it right, believing aright and sometimes even acting aright. I was on the lookout for new devotions, new paths of prayer, novel approaches to what we now term spirituality. Let me be clear: none of these concerns is bad in and of itself, though they did drive me to get a graduate degree in the philosophy of religion so that I could figure out what was indeed right and correct and therefore do it, be it, or have it as if it were some kind of possession. And I don't regret that, at least not totally. But like Naaman, I often thought that there had to be more to it, that there had to be the calling on the name of the Lord and the waving of the hands before the desired effect. But over the years I’ve come to think that maybe it's much simpler than all that. At least at its core.

It appears that all traditions at some point try to summarize the deep truth out of which they've grown. Christianity certainly has, and it should not be lost on us. If fifty years ago you had come to an Episcopal service of Holy Communion you would have heard, Sunday after Sunday, the summary of the law:

Hear what our Lord Jesus saith: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 22:37-40

There you have it. Is it enough? Yes and no. This is only the starting point, and it takes a lifetime or perhaps an eternity to unpack it, embrace it and in a sense become it, live it, be it. But if this is all you knew, it would be enough.

The Christian tradition is filled with such gems of spiritual wisdom:  “God is love.” “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”  “Believe on the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved.” Or as we heard today in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians: “Bear one another's burdens, and in this way, you will fulfill the law of Christ.”  These are all touchstones of our Christian path. 

And not it’s just the Christian tradition that has such summaries. The Jewish tradition, for example, is rich with stories and tales and homely advice. One of the earliest stories paralleling Jesus’ two great commandments is that of Rabbi Hillel the Elder who lived roughly around the time of Jesus:  The story goes:

A non-Jew once came before Rabbi Shammai with a curious demand. He wanted Shammai to teach him the entire Torah while the non-Jew stood on one foot. Knowing the impossibility of such a thing, Shammai rejected him. The questioner then took his request to Rabbi Hillel the Elder. Hillel gently told him, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the entire Torah, and the rest is its commentary. Now go and study.”

We see clearly that this summary of the law, if you will, is not an end but a beginning to be unpacked and understood and lived. “Now go and study,” concludes Rabbi Hillel. The work is just beginning, but my, what a great starting point.

In our day we might call these sayings or summaries ‘memes’ or memory devices which set us on the right road. That certainly is one of the functions of the creed that we will recite together after I finish. This year we are celebrating the seventeen hundredth anniversary of the Nicene Creed, at least in its first iteration. People often roll their eyes when we come to the creed and say they don't believe it, or they don't get it or that they can't truthfully say it. I've been there at times, but I now find the creed a precious gift to us not as a final and complete statement but, like the summary of the law given us by Jesus or the ethical teachings of Hillel, a starting point for a process that goes deeper and the deeper into the realm of the Spirit and into that process of transformation or metamorphosis that we call redemption and sanctification and wholeness.

A few weeks ago, I posted on my Facebook page an excerpt from an essay by our friend Father Martin Smith. In an article he wrote some years ago for the Washington DC diocesan newspaper, he articulates four ways of understanding or approaching what a creed might mean for us today. He likens the creed first to an entrance ticket. Originally created to summarize for converts what kind of drama baptism was going to let them into, reciting the creed admitted them to the drama. But it wasn’t the drama itself, it was just the entrance ticket. The real drama is here and now.

Second, it has been, as it were, a coin or currency of the Christian family for seventeen centuries. If for no other reason, we should honor this coin or currency passed down to us, one which has held together a disparate family across time and space and cultures and of which we too are part. 

Thirdly, Martin tells us that the creed is like the table of contents in a book of poetry. It is a list of first lines, but no one line is a whole poem in itself. For that we must dig deeper and do some hard work. And that again is the work of a lifetime, as both Rabbi Jesus and Rabbi Hillel tell us. 

Finally, Martin reminds us that the creed is a song. It is a song of God's love and of God's compassion and actions and of God's intention to bind us together as one in the face of much evil and ill will in us and around us. It is a song of resistance. And it is above all a love song. How we need such a song of loving resistance today. I used to attend a church in Boston where we always sang the creed on Sundays to a wonderful plainsong melody. We can't do that right now. But we can monotone it as is often done with the Apostle’s Creed. And since it's summer and since it's the Creed’s seventeen hundredth birthday, why don't we? So please turn in your Holy Eucharist booklets to page 2 for the text and stand. Let us to confess our hope, our faith, our love story, and our resistance in the words of the ancient creed as we sing it…and feel free to add whatever harmonies you like: 

We believe in one God…

The Apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul, June 29, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York

Br. Robert James Magliula

The Apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul, June 29, 2025

• Ezekiel 34:11-16
• 2 Timothy 4:1-8
• John 21:15-19

Today is the commemoration of the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul. They both died in Rome during the persecution under Nero in 64 A.D. According to tradition, Paul was granted the right of a Roman citizen to be beheaded by a sword, but Peter suffered crucifixion, with head downward.  

These two are an unlikely duo. Their paths and opinions more than once divided the Church. In the early days of birthing the Christian community, nobody really knew what to do next. Various things had been set in motion in a rather haphazard way. Mark had not yet written his book. Communities were springing up, and as with all communities, the first resentments and disagreements were surfacing. Danger also begins to appear with the persecution of the new Christian movement, especially from a brilliant lawyer from Tarsus with religious and political clout. The rumor surfaces that this Saul the enemy has changed sides and his name to Paul. He appears in Jerusalem asking to meet with Peter and James, the brother of Jesus. Luke in Acts tells us the local community didn’t believe that he was now a disciple. The second century writer, Onesiphoros, describes Paul as unimpressive. “A man rather small in size, bald-headed, bow legged, with meeting eyebrows, and a large, hooked nose.” Appearances aside, he was a brilliant scholar, sophisticated, politically astute, at home in any society, with the full advantages of full Roman citizenship.  

Peter, unlike Paul, at this stage of his life knew little or nothing about the vast reaches of the Empire. He had no idea what it was like to live in the immense melting-pot of religions and lifestyles. Yet the instinctive conservatism of Peter met the far-seeing vision and boundless energy of Paul to propel the Gospel from one end of the Empire to the other. Immensely different and possessing very different visions of the future they battled their way to what today’s collect calls “a unity in the Spirit.” 

That first encounter in Jerusalem and the relationship between Peter and Paul fascinates us because of their differing gifts, personalities, and roles that provide a pattern of contrasts that were to be important in the formation of the future Church. One of the things they held in common was the difficulty of their ministry. I don’t mean the darkness of their times, their struggles, or the persecution, but the greater difficulty of competing lights. This is what Paul tried to convey to Timothy in our Epistle and Jesus to Peter in today’s Gospel.  

For the youthful Timothy, animated by the zeal of a new convert, ministry and mission were still relatively uncomplicated. It would be some time before he would see, like Paul, that the most demanding discipleship is not a battle with darkness. The far greater threat to the Gospel, and to our faith, is not evil cloaked in darkness, but evil decked in light. Paul’s ministry was conducted in a world of dazzling brilliance. The Roman Empire was at its apex; the religions of Athens and Rome, Israel and Egypt had been around long enough to build firm foundations and impressive cults. Learning was alive, world trade and communication brought people into vibrant contact. Set against the powerful forces of empire, commerce, and culture, Christianity was insignificant. How could a gospel of self-denial and service to others survive in a world of creature comforts and power and not be eclipsed by this competition? This is no less true for us today. 

In part that seems to be Jesus’ message to Peter as well. This is Peter who fled from Jerusalem only weeks earlier from the horror of Jesus’ execution. In this exchange Jesus rescues Peter from his shame for his denial and weakness and makes the past irrelevant. The fact that Peter now knows what it is to come apart makes him a more compassionate leader. He realizes that above all else the Kingdom which Jesus preached was about people: caring for them, building them up, healing them, loving them. That would be Peter’s great gift in the years ahead. This conversation takes place after they have satisfied their appetites with breakfast. Might Jesus be reminding Peter and us that ministry is always more difficult when we are satisfied and can be charmed out of our convictions? 

Life is never quite as simple as we’d like, but it is possible to say that Peter’s gift was of the heart while Paul’s was of the mind. The readings for this feast do not so much emphasize the greatness of these two as their humanity and vulnerability. In the Epistle we catch a glimpse of Paul who is old and tired, worn out by the impossible pace and demands he had set for himself: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.” He may be tired and old, but the self-confidence is still there, and humility was never his strong point. The voice we hear to Timothy is that of the teacher, thinker, the formulator of the faith. 

Martyrdom is less about how we die and more about how and for whom we live. The Christian faith calls us to a life of endurance and perseverance. The lives and deaths of Peter and Paul offer us examples and guidance for our lives today in a world not unlike that of their own day, that desperately needs witnesses to the love of God. Though Peter and Paul disagreed about the Christian mission their common commitment to Christ and the proclamation of the Gospel proved stronger than their differences. The icon for this feast portrays them embracing each other, offering us a much needed image and example of unity in diversity in our polarized world.  

Paul‘s words for us today are timeless: “I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus who is to judge the living and the dead…:  preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season, convince, rebuke, and exhort, be unfailing in patience and in teaching.”  He continues describing not only his day, but ours, where we see the Gospel domesticated and accommodated to support peoples own agenda.  “For the time is coming”, he says, “when people will not endure sound teaching but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.” He reminds us that we must be willing to examine our own lives and choices and not allow ourselves to become so self-confident that we believe that we are incapable of having itching ears as well. He concludes: “As for you, always be steady, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry.  For I am already on the point of being sacrificed; the time of my departure has come… Henceforth there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day, and not only to me but also to all who have loved His appearing.” 

So let us give thanks today for these two ancestors in the faith, whose work, writings, and witness give us insight and strength for our work and witness.  But perhaps, most of all, for showing us our capacity as human beings to change, to grow and to work together to build God’s Kingdom. +Amen.