Feast of our monastery church's dedication - Oct 4, 2012

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park
Br. Andrew Colquhoun, OHC
Feat of the Dedication of the monastery church
Thursday, October 4, 2012

When Brother Robert and I were still fairly new monks, we sat at dinner one day and a guest asked, “Why are all the monasteries on this one side of the river?”

As one, Robert and I answered.  He said, “Because the real estate is cheaper on this side.”  I answered, “Because this is the sacred bank of the river.”  For a moment, the guest was forgotten while our spirits dueled in the refectory but then we collected ourselves… and changed the subject!
My hunch is that we’re both right!

Whatever the truth may be, building this place was an adventurous undertaking.  A handful of monks built the first monastery for Anglicans since the reformation.  Right here.  The photo in Holy Cross, Br Adam’s book, of the community in 1922 shows 16 monks. Just about the time we built the Middle House and the Church.   And around this same era we embarked on domestic and foreign missions, sending men off as far as Liberia.  I don’t think we’ve ever lost that sense of adventure; the willingness to dare, to make changes, to step out or withdraw as needs have arisen.

And one of the major acts of the Order was to build this Church, dedicated to St Augustine of Hippo.   On St Francis Day it was dedicated and from then on for more than 90 years it has been the soul of this place.  For whatever else we do, we ground it in our prayer.  Throughout the days, men and women have come to this place and in its stillness, listened for the sacred.  Listened in anxiety, in joy, in willingness and unwillingness.  
Our own Fr Hughson wrote in An American Cloister: “The Chapel of a monastery is a power-house where one seeks and finds grace and light for every need.  Not only at stated times when it is of obligation that the brethren be present, but through all the hours of the day the members of the household, guests as well as the Religious, come here to the feet of our Lord to find strength and peace in the divine companionship.”

All that is true – it’s a sacred space but it has taken many a “blow and biting sculpture to polish well these stones.”  Nothing holy seems to come easy.  Think of Abraham and Jacob, Rachel and Leah, Blessed Mary, Mary of Magdala.  Think of Benedict and Francis, of Dorothy Day and Paul Jones.  Think of James Huntington and the early brothers.  All of them followed through struggle and often through heartache for love of God.  Think of Jesus the Christ, the forerunner, the Messiah, broken for love’s sake to bring us to peace.

This is a holy place; God lives here. It leaks from time to time; it makes clunking noises; the paint falls off and the doors squeak but God lives here.  God lives in this exquisite, squeaky, drafty place because we pray here.  God takes all the leaky, misfit stones we call our selves and builds temples where peace can thrive and where the poor and broken can find shelter.  The brethren who built this Church carried the love of their Lord to teenagers in the mountains of Tennessee and the mansions of Connecticut.  They walked into the bush of Liberia and witnessed to love there.  They came back to pray here and went again.  Thousands of people have sat here – they’re still here and they’re still coming.  They come here because this is none other than the house of God.  And it is the house of God because they come here.

We will continue to come here.  It is a holy place.  Angels ascend and descend here. Disciples leave home and venture out. Broken people come for healing.  Those who can’t see come for vision.  We come because this is our power-house as Fr Hughson wrote.  We come to this holy place to be nourished and readied for the battle against suffering.  We come for the weapons of peace which are love.  We come for the treasure contained here.

Cheap real estate; thin place – God is that treasure.