Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
The Most Rev. Frank T. Griswold
on the occasion of the 100 Anniversary of the dedication of Holy Cross Monastery in West Park
Saturday 22 May 2004
Genesis 28:10-17
1 Peter 2:1-5, 9-10
Matthew 21:12-16
It is a great joy and indeed a privilege to preside and preach on this occasion. A hundred years ago in the intensity of churchmanship battles, it would have been somewhat surprising and in some quarters considered scandalous for the Presiding Bishop to be present at the dedication of a monastery, let alone act as Chief Celebrant of the Liturgy. We have come a long way. Monasticism, a mode of life, a way of responding to the gospel, an articulation of our baptismal conformation to the paschal pattern of Christ's death and resurrection, which was once considered exotic if not foreign to sensible Anglicanism, has become an integral part of the life of our church and an immense blessing to us all.
The fact that a diocese which, in my own remembering, was somewhat suspicious of monastics, in recent years elected a religious to serve as their bishop tells us something of how perceptions are changed. And of course I cannot forget Father Campbell of this order who, in 1925, was elected missionary Bishop of Liberia.
Abbot Matthew Kelty, in a chapter talk delivered to the monks of Gethsemene Abbey in Kentucky observed that the monastic life is a journey into reality: the discovery of one's personal reality in Christ, mediated by a pattern of ordered prayer and the rigors of life in community. "How can you draw close to God, if you are far from your own self?" asks St Augustine of Hippo. The monastic life, therefore, involves a double discovery: God and oneself. But what is true of monastic life is true for us all inasmuch as all Christian living is rooted and grounded in the baptismal mystery of dying and rising, losing and finding.
In preparation for today I found myself reflecting upon the role this monastery and the community it houses has played in my own life. I first came here 43 years ago as a seminarian for a weekend retreat. I came again on retreat before I was ordained to the priesthood. As a parish priest I visited the monastery a number of times with parish groups, and as Bishop of Chicago I returned to give a retreat for members of the clergy. Now, as Presiding Bishop I try to come from time to time in order to catch my breath, so to speak, and remind myself that life in Christ is the name of the game. And here I need to say I am immensely grateful to this community for its always-warm welcome and encouragement. I know that many others, some of whom are here today, share my gratitude.
At the same time I have to say that while this monastery has been a place of joy and refreshment, it has also been a place of painful self discovery and disillusion: that is, having to face and acknowledge illusions about myself and the shape of my own faithfulness and to take to heart St. Benedict's counsel: "Never lose hope in God's mercy." And here we need to acknowledge that there is in us a strong tendency to construct for ourselves an idealized self, the self we would like to be, in order to offset the imperfect "thorn ridden" self we actually are. Visions of an ideal monastic self, realized either by vocation or some form of association with a religious community, can aid and encourage us in such self-generated efforts.
Perfectionism, often driven by shame, is the motivating force behind much religious behavior, including our own. This I think is why St. Benedict, having enumerated the tools for good works - a natural magnet for perfectionists - knowing that we will fail, heads off the descent into self-castigation by concluding his list with, "And finally, never lose hope in God's mercy." Let mercy, not self-judgment have the final word.
This is where dis-illusion comes in and we are made to realize that the living flame of God's love is a consuming fire as we are told in the Letter to the Hebrews. The self constructed self, which is an idol of our own imagination, is the self which, in gospel terms, must be lost in order that the true and authentic self can be found. This is the journey into reality to which Matthew Kelty refers.
A monastery --- this monastery which was dedicated May 19, 1904 --- is, therefore, not so much a refuge as it is a furnace in which the often strange and wild and paradoxical and ironic and fierce and gentle ways of God's love and compassion burn away what is false and unreal, and reveal us to ourselves, in all our complexity, as gift rather that burden. And the blots and imperfections, the thorns that mire us down in self-judgment are caught up into the real self, the true self which God in Christ accepts and deeply and tenaciously and ruthlessly loves.
In the March issue of Mundi Medicina, the monastery newsletter, Adam McCoy engages in an act of remembrance as he reflects upon the monastery and its past: "Every room," he writes, "has many stories. Some are lost, some live in collective memory and some are vivid and living. Some are happy, some sad, some bizarre or hilarious. All recall the distinctly human characters whose lives have been touched by this place." The stories are stories of grace and redemption, dis-illusion and truth. They are stories of Christ's way with us, which exceeds all that we can ask or imagine.
One hundred years ago, in the sermon preached at the dedication of the monastery, Father Osborne, the Superior of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, said, "Here….is our prayer. That the Cross may ever be held up as the life and power of the Christian Church, and by it all men may be drawn to him." Father Osborne's prayer reflects the words of Jesus: "And I when I am lifted up from the earth will draw all people [or 'all things'] to myself." Among the "all things" that Christ draws to himself through the cross, are all the bits and pieces of ourselves, the good bits and the bad bits, the pieces that give us joy and the pieces that cause us pain. All are drawn to the Cross, embraced by the arms of Christ and purified and made whole in the fire of Christ's deathless love.
Simeon the New Theologian (and "new" means 11th century), describes the journey into reality as a process of waking up in Christ. He writes, "We awaken in Christ's body as Christ awakens our bodies, and my poor hand is Christ. He enters my foot, and is infinitely me. I move my hand, and wonderfully my hand becomes Christ, becomes all of Him….I move my foot, and at once He appears like a flash of lightning. Do my words seem blasphemous? ---Then open your heart to him, and let yourself receive the one who is opening to you so deeply. For if we genuinely love Him, we wake up inside Christ's body where all our body, all over, every most hidden part of it, is realized in joy as Him, and He makes us, utterly real. And everything that is hurt, everything that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful, maimed, ugly, irreparably damaged, is in Him transformed and recognized as whole, as lovely. And radiant in His light, we awaken as the Beloved in every last part of our body."
These bold and startling words --- and the full text is bolder still ---capture something of what happens when the full force of the paschal mystery overtakes us and we are drawn by bands of love to Christ on the Cross and through the Cross, sometimes kicking and screaming into the unfamiliar yet liberating realm of resurrection.
In today's Second Reading, Peter urges to let ourselves be built up as living stones into a spiritual house of God's construction. As such, we need to be shaped and dressed and placed in relation to one another in order that the divine imagination can have its way and our unique and proper place in the overall structure can be realized. Our reality - in this case our shape and placement - does not derive from us, but from God - how God sees us - and God's desire for us. Again drawing from St. Augustine, "We are real insofar and we exist in God's order, and God's order exists in us."
This Monastery of the Holy Cross has borne witness to the reality of God's order since its dedication. Many have entered its door and passed beneath the stone bearing the words Crux est mundi medicina - the Cross, medicine for the world. Some have come to try their vocation; others have come as guests. Notions of monastic formation and discipline have changed over the years, as have patterns of worship, yet the fundamental search remains the same: who am I called to be in the love and truth of Christ? Paradoxically, monasticism is a pattern of life running counter to what most people would consider real - complete with costumes from a different age - while at the same time pointing to a deeper level of reality found in the One who is the way the truth and life itself in all its fullness and unrealized potential.
In today's Gospel Jesus drives out of the temple all those who are using the temple for their own ends and have fitted God to their own reality. In declaring the Temple a house of prayer, Jesus makes clear that sacred space exists for one purpose, and one alone: encounter --- encounter with the one who is, who was, and will be for ever, in whom we discover who we are and are called to be.
This monastery has been for many --- monks, former monks, oblates, associates, visitors, guests and friends, a place of encounter and discovery that all that we are is caught up and drawn to the Cross by the force of Christ's fierce and purifying love, and that, in the words of the First Letter of John, "What we will be has yet to be revealed."
This encounter takes many, often very mundane and sometimes humorous, forms. One of the surest ways God gets to us and exposes us to our true selves is through others. The daily interactions, the annoying personal habits, the envies and irritations, instances of anger and forgiveness, patterns of affection and dislike, moments of delight and sheer idiocy, which are realities of community life in its various forms, serve to undermine our constructed selves and expose our poverty which is precisely the point at which grace can begin to have its way with us and lead us to our true self.
Like it or not we are for one another's salvation, as the early monastics well understood and St Benedict after them. Which simply means that we are shaped and formed and built up into Christ through one another. This is a process which requires accepting from and through others a great deal of unwanted truth and dying to self, that is dying to the idealized self in order to give space to the real self as found in Christ.
A monastery is therefore a battleground as well as a furnace: it is, in the words of Jacob, "an awesome place". The constraints of monastic life force a struggle between the constructed self and the authentic self found in Christ. My brothers, it is your willingness to engage this battle and to enter the furnace not just for yourselves but for the sake of the world and its healing that makes this a sacred place and a source of encouragement to us all.
Therefore as your Presiding Bishop and friend of many years, thank you for your faithfulness in the past and present, and may God lead you on into the future and continue to make this monastery a place of encounter and discovery and blessing for all who pass through its door. "Glory to God whose power working in can do infinitely more that we can ask or imagine" Amen.
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