Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B: January 28, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Aidan Owen, OHC
Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B- Sunday, January 28, 2018

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Br. Aidan Owen, OHC 

Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.

Into what may seem to our modern ears to be a confusing exploration of the intricacies of food and idolatry, the Apostle Paul drops these few lines of profound mystical depth.

Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; but anyone who loves God is known by him.

What are the boundaries between knowledge and love?

In the early Christian sayings Gospel of Thomas, Jesus echoes these words of Paul. He tells his disciples: “When you know yourself, then you will be known, and you will know that you are the children of the Living One. If you do not know yourselves, you live in poverty, and you are poverty.”

When you know yourself, then you will be known, and you will know that you are the children of the Living One. If you do not know yourselves, you live in poverty, and you are poverty.

Knowing and being known; loving and being loved.

There comes a point, it seems, when all of our knowledge fails us, and we are left utterly impoverished. No one can know God, The Cloud of Unknowing tells us. Our knowledge is too small to comprehend the Living One. But we can love God, and in that loving we can come to be known, to be comprehended.

Knowledge and love flowing into one another.

Paradoxically, it is only in allowing ourselves to become poverty that we can truly surrender to God’s all-knowing love and all-loving knowledge.

Thomas Merton speaks of this terrain deep within the human heart: “At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us.” 

Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge; but anyone who loves God is known by him.

When you know yourself, then you will be known, and you will know that you are the children of the Living One. If you do not know yourselves, you live in poverty, and you are poverty.

Beyond all of our knowledge, our self-markers, our identities, beyond the hurts and the joys, the gifts and the growing edges, beyond all of that, there is a place within us where, with the Living One we can say, simply and without ornamentation: I am

Third Sunday after the Epiphany, Year B: January 21, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br.  Bernard Delcourt, OHC
Third Sunday after the Epiphany Year B- Sunday, January 21, 2018

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC

Sisters and Brothers, the time is now. The kingdom of God is breaking into our lives. Now is the time to turn back from wayward pursuits. Now is the time to see all the good that is at hand, if only we turn to God.

Let nothing come before the love of God. Don’t let every relationship fall apart because of God, but don’t let any of them claim the order of your life.

Don’t forget your abiding concerns for the sake of God, but don’t let any of those concerns sing out of tune with your love for God.

Today’s three passages of scripture talking about conversion and alignment with God.

First, our reluctant and crotchety prophet Jonah has finally made it to Nineveh, an Assyrian city. He has walked through a third of the megalopolis of Nineveh. He walks with a proclamation of doom. It’s not his style to use mellifluous rhetoric to appeal to conversion. And yet, already king, people, and animals are turning to the God that Jonah didn’t even say a word about.

The story of this mass conversion tells us more about God than about the inhabitants of Nineveh or about Jonah.

To God, there are no outsiders. And God is responsive to all. The undeservedly self-righteous Jonah disapproves of God’s mercy. Why forgive these loathed Ninevites, thinks Jonah.

The Ninevites are overlords of the Israelites. Their people have subordinated the Israelites into an exile of servitude. No matter; God pays attention to their turning away from their sins. God forgives them and repeals the punishment that Jonah proclaimed with obvious schadenfreude.

God’s forgiveness of the Ninevites is a blow to the Israelites. They, the chosen people, have been found undeserving, and now they live to see how gentiles receive God’s recognition. As Jesus will say, God, is able of … stones to raise up children to Abraham (Luke 3:8).

In our life, today, who are our Ninevites? Is there any group of people we’d rather not find under God’s pinions? Is it possible, that whatever their faults, they have already found God’s forgiveness -- and deserve ours?

Secondly, the apostle Paul suggests in several places of First Corinthians that the imminence of the end of time is his own opinion, not God’s teaching. However, as is often the case, in preaching one meaning, the preacher opens the way for the Spirit to say what she must.

Paul asks us to live as though the end of evil, the appointed time, is imminent. Paul asks us to be undividedly about this in-breaking of God’s time.

He is not requesting to dump all our commitments but he is demanding that we put them in right perspective to the love of God. No concern or relationship of ours, whether good or bad, is to bear over our commitment to God. That injunction is valid for any moment in the course of time as created by God.

Because, at any moment, God is close at hand. At any moment, the fulfillment of God’s purpose is ongoing.

In our life, today, what overbearing concerns abide in us? Are they blinding us to God’s purpose in our life? How do we put God first and foremost while being faithful to other important relationships? This latter question is one that monks in formation often ask themselves.

And finally, Jesus confirms it; the time is fulfilled; the time is now. If He calls you -- and He IS calling you -- leave aside whatever seemed so very important and yet stands in the way, in His Way.

Jesus is not calling us to new tasks (although there will be those too), but Jesus is calling us to a new identity. And it is a costly identity. This identity of disciple requires an unswerving loyalty. This identity demands a trust that, what will be broken in acquiring it, was not worth keeping whole.

When I first heard my call to become a monk -- and I had tried to have tin ears for a while -- my first reaction was: “Wow, that’s great, Lord! How about I make myself available to this nifty vocation in 2 years, 3 at the most?” 

I had recently reinvented myself in a new career that I loved. I had started my own business. I was thriving. And, as any good entrepreneur, I had a business plan.

It needed a couple more years to come to fruition. What’s 2 years, in God’s time? Well, imagine John and James telling Jesus that they’ll follow Him when they have met the fishing quota they have promised their father...

God’s time flows in strange curves; not like our sequential, rectilinear, measured projection of time. God’s desire for you can make two years seem like an eternity to... God. God knows when the time is fulfilled. And when God knows it; the time is now!

Eventually, having cleaned my ears, I heard it: “Get thyself to this monastery, now.”  OK, OK. Off I went; but not before starting to tear apart this very identity I had invested so much into. And my attachment to my glorious business plan was only a symptom of that mistaken identity.

Today, I ask ourselves: What is God’s desire for us? How are we resisting that desire? Can we ask God to tip us over into His desire? Can we pray that? When He calls, can we answer “I’ll be out in a minute!” -- rather than in 2 years, in 5 years, whenever my conditions have been met.

Discipleship doesn’t come cheap. But rejecting our true identity as disciple of Jesus is the costliest loss of all.

May we pray that we will not mistake the sirens’ song for the voice of our destiny. May we listen for God. May we seek a loving balance amongst the concerns and relationships of our life. And, when he calls us, let’s hear ourselves saying like Eli: “Speak, for your servant is listening.” (1 Samuel 3:10)

May we lean into the embrace of the living, loving God.

Amen.

Second Sunday after the Epiphany: January 14, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC

Second Sunday after the Epiphany- Sunday, January 14, 2018



To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Br. Robert James Magliula

To be called by God means that God knows one’s name and being known by one’s name, is a powerful influence on us. To be called by God is an act of intimacy and divine urgency. This truth is woven through our readings this morning.

In the summons to Samuel, God instructs Samuel first to listen. An old man and a young boy collaborate to hear God’s call and vision. The old man knows the ways of the Lord and guides Samuel in the art of listening. 

Although Eli failed to pass on faithfulness to his own sons, he now serves as a spiritual parent to his young charge. It takes the attentiveness of the young Samuel and the wisdom of the old Eli to birth this new thing God is doing. Human speaking and hearing now become one of the main means by which the light of God’s revelation breaks into the world. This listening, hearing, and responding becomes a communal affair.

The communal nature of God’s call is articulated by Paul to the Corinthians. They are not their own but were bought with the cross of Christ. Freedom comes from belonging to Christ. What glorifies God is what is beneficial, not principally to themselves, but to their community. Paul interprets being members of Christ in a radical way by proposing that this intimate union with Christ is analogous to a sexual union. For Paul, the body is not just an ephemeral entity inferior to the soul. Rather, it is the locus of the union with Christ in the life of the Christian. Paul urges them and us to remember that because their bodies are united to Christ, the Holy Spirit dwells in them, making their very bodies sacred temples.

In John’s Gospel Jesus is deciding not just where to go next but who to call and take with him. All the Gospels agree that it is not enough to believe in Jesus. The call to discipleship consists in following him. Jesus had the capacity to see a person in their true light. The encounter with Christ is a potent force that propels Philip and Nathaniel. It is the sheer presence of Christ that draws them. Their call is not so much a call to mission as it is an invitation to an epiphany, or more accurately, a Christophany. Jesus the Son of Man is the ultimate ladder stretching between earth and heaven. He is the point of contact between the finite and the infinite, the conjunction of time and eternity.

Our call to relationship, as that of those encountering God in today’s readings, is a two-way street, involving talking, listening, and responding. How do our preconceptions of God and God’s activity prevent us from an authentic encounter with God? We have heard the phrase “created in the image and likeness of God” so often that we don’t appreciate what it says about us. Our family of origin is divine. We were created by a loving God to be love in the world. Our core is not original sin, but original blessing. Good theology cannot make up for negative anthropology. From God’s side, we are always known and loved subject to subject, just as the persons of the Trinity know and love one another. We are never an object to God. Yet, like Samuel, all too often we are sleeping, not fully sensing the divinity around us or within us. Our hearts, minds, and souls are dulled so that we can spend our lives in the temple, but never hear or recognize God’s call.

Discipleship and Christology fit together closely because discipleship is first of all a willingness to walk with Jesus. Christology unfolds in the course of discipleship. It is not obedience to an abstract set of codes, but consent to a costly, life-giving relationship. In walking with Jesus, we learn who he is. As we learn who he is, we learn what it means to follow him.

All relationships take nourishing—the one with God more than most. So many things draw us away from it. We live on the plane of the tangible and feed it with things and events and people. Those are the things that occupy our minds. The spiritual plane we take for granted, though nothing affects us more than the loss of it. When we’re lonely or depressed or agitated or frightened, the material is of little or no help. What we really need then is the anchoring that only the spiritual can bring. We need the awareness that though life is not in our hands right now, it is surely in the hands of a God who loves us. It is this anchoring in the spiritual that lifts us above the pressures of the present to the renewed consciousness of the eternal stability of the God.

The hallmark of a Benedictine community responding to God’s call lies in its prayer life. It is the essential foundation of our life. Prayer is a cultivated state. It takes time. It takes attention. Most of all it takes consistency.

Consistency is what raises simple regularity to the level of relationship. It is the awareness of God that draws us, whether or not we feel any immediate personal satisfaction.

Every spiritual tradition forms a person in some kind of regular practice designed to focus the mind and heart. Our regular prayer here reminds us that life is punctuated by God, encircled by God. To interrupt the day with prayer draws us beyond the present to the timelessness of eternity. Prayer and regular spiritual practices remind us of what we are doing, why we are doing it, and where our lives are going. It sustains us on the way. It is the effort to put ourselves in the presence of God over and over again in the course of the day that prepares us for the abiding Presence that is our home.

Prayer is not a spiritual vending machine. It is also not meant to be an escape from life. Real prayer plunges us into life. It gives us new eyes. It shapes a new heart within us. It makes demands on us. It’s so easy to escape into the small self and call the escape holiness. Those who truly invest themselves in God invest themselves in others. We are put here to love, not for the sake of the other alone, but for our own sake as well. When our prayer is a journey into the heart of God, then we come to understand ourselves: our fears, our darkness, our struggles, our resistance, our choices. All too often, for social approval, or fear of risk, or self-doubt, we have learned to resist the call of God to our full development. Prayer does not simply reveal us to God and God to us. It reveals us to ourselves at the same time. The round of daily prayer can become the way we are brought to encounter ourselves.

It is our self-knowledge that equips us to love another as a person, rather than an idea.  In loving we turn ourselves over to be shaped and reshaped in life. The people who love us do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. They release the best in us. They carry us through the rough times. They stretch us beyond the confines of our own experiences to wider and truer visions. They show us the face of God.

Our call to relationship in the spiritual life is meant to be an adventure between God and the soul. Without prayer, without attention to the incompleteness in us, a relationship with God is impossible. God cannot enter and we will never be at home in ourselves until we come to who we truly are in God. 

Feast of The Baptism of our Lord : January 7, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Josép R. Martínez-Cubero, OHC
The Feast Baptism of our Lord.- Sunday, January 7, 2018

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Today we celebrate the feast of the Baptism of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and I can hear the challenger thirteen-year-old me asking the question to Padre Heraclio or Sor Davida: “Wait, why did Jesus have to be baptized? Isn’t He the Son of God?” Here at Holy Cross, our Magnificat and Benedictus antiphon for this feast goes like this: “Christ is baptized and the world is made holy; consecrated by water and the Holy Spirit.” 

In his addresses at the church in Jerusalem around the year 350, St. Cyril describes baptism this way: “Baptism, whether ancient or modern, is the hinge upon which Christian identity turns. Jesus sanctified baptism when he himself was baptized… He was baptized in order that he might impart grace and dignity to those who receive the sacrament.”

The baptism of Jesus is one of the few events of his life recorded in all four canonical Gospels. The Gospel according to Matthew tells us that Jesus wants to “fulfill all righteousness” (Matthew 3:15). But perhaps more importantly, is that this account of Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan is the first public revelation and the perfect embodiment of the triune God. The Father’s pleasure in the Son and the descending of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus is a beautiful image of the Trinitarian nature of God, the ultimate reality that is about relationship, indwelling, and interrelatedness. And the Good News of Jesus is that we are invited into that fellowship of eternal loving, and self-outpouring, and to be in holy union with that source of life that is beyond any limit we can imagine, through the life of Jesus Christ.

The practice of baptizing is mentioned directly or indirectly in most of the New Testament books. The experience of baptism was not merely an act of religious initiation, but rather, the explicit way in which a believer became related to Christ, and through Christ to God. So, the Feast of the Baptism of Christ is the feast of our baptism, too.  To be baptized is to be “in Christ,” to be members of his body, the church, and thus to share a common way of life. St. Thomas Aquinas called baptism “the door of the sacraments” because it integrated the diverse human reality into a single body, thus establishing the fundamental ground plan of unity in faith.

Like with all other sacraments, baptism presumes faith. Without faith, it becomes an external ritual without internal meaning. Faith is God’s gift to those who recognize and trust this Incarnation-presence of God and who have been incorporated into this self-disclosure of God in Christ. In his essay The Structure of Christian Community, The Rev. Dr. Louis Weil writes: “Faith is given sacramental articulation through incorporation in baptism, and this unity is in turn signified and deepened through the common Eucharistic meal. Without faith, the sacraments are like a body without breath or blood.”

In baptism, we are charged with following and imitating Jesus in ultimate self-sacrifice for the salvation of the world. We are to participate in the identity of Jesus- prophet, priest, and servant- and in his mission of establishing the Reign of God in this world, and to persevere in resisting the Kingdom of Satan, that is, the evil caused by human choice, both individual and societal, personal and systemic. This is the mission to which we are called at baptism when we reaffirm our renunciation of evil. We renounce Satan and all his works. That is, we disaffiliate from the reality construction of the Evil One, and become members of Christ’s body.

This resistance against evil cannot be done through “flight from the world”, by avoiding, ignoring, or not wanting to have anything to do with the values, and behaviors of the world, and living the Christian life as purely as possible within the ecclesial community or “away from it all”. It cannot be achieved entirely by picking up the pieces of the destructive work of evil, caring for the oppressed, the sick, the orphaned, the imprisoned, the homeless. Yes, caring for these victims of the world is important, and good work. These approaches can be Gospel-motivated, and they are blessed by Jesus. They are well-intentioned, and even often effective. But they address the effects of evil rather than its roots, and express a kind of acceptance that, “that’s the way things are”. So we offer as much help as we can to the victims of evil because, well “that’s what good Christians do”, as we make our way, we think, to heaven. Doing good in the world is not Christian ministry. It is a directive for all human beings and does not have to flow from any particular faith commitment. You do not have to be a Christian to be a good human being.

Jesus did not flee the world. And his miracles of healing, feeding, exercising, and so forth, were not just palliative care for those fortunate enough to come into contact with him. Jesus really intended to establish the Reign of God here on earth. As baptized Christians we are called to continue the mission and ministry of Jesus, to subvert the Kingdom of Satan and to foster the Reign of God. This demands that we place the good of others before our own, even to the point of giving our own life completely, in love, even to the point of death. It requires humility, obedience, surrender, and the cross. As Jesus did, we die but are also raised to new life.

In her book, Buying the Field, Sister Sandra Schneiders writes: “Jesus confronted every kind of death, not just natural mortality but the death caused by human evil. He healed the death of the senses in blindness and deafness; the death of the body in paralysis and atrophy and fever; social death by exclusion and marginalization because of gender or race or social status; economic death by poverty and debt; and especially religious and spiritual death by exclusion from worship because of sin or impurity. Jesus said, ‘God does not will or cause any of this and God can and will handle all of it. You are safe no matter what happens to you because God counts every hair of your head and can supply every need, and remedy every ill.’”

In baptism, we renounce all evil desires that draw us from the love of God. And, so, wherever we may go, and whatever we may do or have done to us, yet God continues to love us, accept us, and hold on to us. We are “marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit”. (Ephesians 1:14). We are beloved children of God. With us, God is well pleased. Let us go forth and proclaim this Good News: “You are a beloved child of God. With you, God is well pleased.” And let’s see what happens. ~ ¡Que así sea! Amen.

__________________

References:

• Esther de Waal, Seeking Life: The Baptismal Invitation of the Rule of St. Benedict (Liturgical Press, 2009)

• Jeffrey Lee, Opening the Prayer Book (Cowley Publications, 1999)

• Charles P. Price and Louis Weil, Liturgy for Living (Morehouse Publishing, Revised Edition, 2000)

• Arthur A. Vogel, editor, Theology in Anglicanism (Morehouse-Barlow, 1984)

• Sandra Schneiders, IHM, Buying the Field: Catholic Religious Life in Mission to the World (Paulist Press, 2013)

Feast of The Epiphany: January 6, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Aidan Owen, OHC
The Epiphany - Saturday, January 6, 2018

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.


  

Br. Aidan Owen, OHC

Not too much light.

The Feast of The Holy Name: January 1, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Randy Greve, OHC
The Feast of The Holy Name - Monday,  January 1, 2018


To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Br. Randy Greve, OHC 

The best way to begin to take in the wonder of Christmas is to appreciate it within the context of the Christian year. The seasons of the Church calendar carry us along in rhythms like the ebb and flow of the Hudson River. 

Sometimes the season, like the river, is placid, sometimes churning with the change of tide or some great wind, moving this way and that. Liturgically, the ebb and flow can be described as something like preparation and action or anticipation and event. I like to describe the calendar as having the energies of receiving and responding.

Roughly speaking, Advent, Christmas, and Lent point the lens toward the life of the soul, the receiving seasons. Epiphany, Easter, and Pentecost turn toward our living out their calls in our world, they elicit a response. Each prepares for the other as we yearly reenact Jesus’ life which is itself a prime example of ebb and flow. He engages in solitude and community, fasting and feasting, work and rest. When Jesus is in the womb, we are quietly preparing for his birth. When Jesus is born and that birth evokes great rejoicing in heaven, we sing and celebrate right along with the angels. The word in the seasons of reception is “be open, listen, allow, and take the gift offered”. Seasons of responding say “get up, leave your mat, and follow, proclaim, give, serve”.


In contrast to a culture that highly values knowing, controlling, doing, achieving in a seemingly non-stop rush of movement, the Church year frames a way of being that is inherently counter-cultural – an integrated and holistic Christian life – that believes in action, for sure, but also takes into account the need to go inward, to still the rush and noise and honor the call of soul free from distraction and noise. While it is easy to get the feeling of accomplishment and usefulness when we are doing tasks and moving forward with work, the inner seasons remind us that it is just as important to allow God to work in us through quiet, stillness, and prayerful reflection.

We are squarely in Christmastide, remembering especially today the holy naming of Jesus. Conditioned as we are to go and do, times of receiving require intentionality. Liturgy, then, teaches us how to be fully human. Liturgy sanctifies things, dispels the illusion of our categories of profanity and secularity and allows the divine light that permeates God’s good creation to shine. Liturgy sanctifies time - days, weeks, and the year – placing us in a story with ebbs and flows. We enact with word, music, symbol and movement what it means to be in this moment. Liturgy creates space to dwell with the big questions of what we desire, who we are, and who we are becoming in the light of receiving and responding.

God loves diversity. God made some of us to be receivers, some responders. It is natural to gravitate toward the seasons that fit us. Maturity is the capacity to undergo the seasons that are most unlike me, treating their message as equally important. At times I need to hear, “You brood of vipers!” At other times, “Comfort, comfort my people.”  Stay in the ebb and flow and you will get both. Which statement is true? The ebb and flow is that I am both loved and accepted by God and called to repent. Most of us tend to be skeptical about one or the other. I am called to take seriously both the self-examination of Advent and the joy of Christmas.

A concentrated image of the ebb and flow is present in the gospel today. The birth narrative of Luke is all about emphasizing the particularity of this baby who is announced and praised, and visited, and today named. We have moved from God is coming to Jesus is here. Luke gives us the story from both the divine and human perspective. The Lord makes known and receives praise. Humans see and hear and recognize and respond. That is the spiritual life at its essential core, but contained in those simple sentences is a lifetime of ups and downs, struggles and joys, blessings and loss.The comment about the Blessed Virgin in the gospel is helpful as we seek to be faithful to our spiritual journeys in the light of the good news. She has been through much already. 

The annunciation when she agreed to the news of the angel to be the mother of Jesus, the scandal of her pregnancy, the meeting with Elizabeth, the long journey to Bethlehem and the birth, and now the visit of the shepherds. What does she believe about what has taken place? How does she take it all in? Luke says she “treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart”. She is continuing to be formed by the story into which she has been called. And this precisely is the gift of Christmas, of incarnation, a season of reception. Inspired by her and with her we can be treasuring and pondering. Those two verbs form an axis of tension, another ebb and flow that together fuel the creative energy of joy.

Treasuring is remembering and guarding the story, the faithful allegiance to the truth of what has happened – a Savior has been born to us, Christ the Lord. Treasuring is the bold prophetic language of the Magnificat. Mary has experienced the undeniable reality of divine power, has heard the angelic voice, and knows that through her child the hope of Israel and the entire world is breaking into history. But her knowing is not an invitation to stop searching. She sees through a glass darkly, as do we all. She appreciates that salvation birthed in her and living for her is also and always mystery. She intuits the space where theology that condescends to human apprehension gives way to pure praise in the realm of the eternal mystery of God. Mystery honors God’s mighty acts by continuing to allow their power and wonder to inform our identities.

That is the practice of pondering. “Pondering” is a vague English translation of what in Greek is literally “together-casting”, reflecting on or drawing associations between words and events and responses. Treasuring needs pondering to keep us humble and open to wonder. Pondering needs treasuring to ground us in history, in incarnation, and in the right use of divine truth. With both ways of seeing we bring our hearts and minds to name this child.

And so Christmas as reception emerges in the heart of Mary. Take her response into your heart. Stop, be still, look, listen, read the story, read it again, let it read you. Step into the ebb and flow of it, let it teach you how to be human, how to be. “But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart”. Amen.