Advent 1 C - November 28, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Luc Thuku, OHC

Advent 1 C - Sunday, November 28, 2021

Jeremiah 33:14-16

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

Luke 21:25-36

As we well know, the term Advent comes from the latin adventus which means “to come” or “coming” or “arrival”. It doesn’t signify an event that has taken place or that will only take place in the future but an ongoing event as well, a process if you like, a coming that is ongoing.

Right from about the 4th Century AD, Christians have had this special time of preparation towards Christmas. Just like in Lent, traditionally the season of Advent was observed as a time of fasting and prayer, a time of spiritual renewal or cleansing of hearts to be able to receive the Lord.

As we begin to prepare for the liturgical and social celebration of Christmas, already commercially begun in stores, the liturgical celebrations of the coming weeks invite us to prepare for the end of time and second coming of Jesus, a theme that has been very clear in our readings during the office of Martins for several weeks before the end of the liturgical year B, just concluded.

In the Gospel passage we just heard this morning from Luke, we hear the statement “They will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory”(Luke 21:27) We know the term Son of Man refers to Jesus Christ but what does the coming of Jesus Christ really mean? 

The coming of Jesus can be understood in three ways. The first coming is plain enough and took place at a certain moment in history when the second person of the Trinity took human flesh and was born on earth, now going to almost two thousand and twenty years, as Jesus of Nazareth. This we call the mystery of the incarnation.

The second understanding of the coming of Christ is of something we await in hope. This is when Christ will return in glory at the end of time, a future event. Though a core belief of Christianity, it is a difficult subject to comprehend partly because of the trauma emanating from some misguided preaching of the event which makes it sound like an event I would rather not experience. It is stuff that has been a source of nightmares for me personally and of untold mental anguish to alot of people. On the other hand, the negligence of some preachers especially in many of our main stream and liturgical churches in the West, that do not want to hear of Judgement and eternal damnation of sinners, leave people not adequately prepared for the event through repentance. However, our liturgy especially the creed and the prayers of the Eucharist remind us constantly that it is an event that we should await with joy and hope!

There is also a third understanding of the coming of Jesus. This coming of Jesus is not a past event that is kept alive in our memories nor is it a mere expectation or imagination of a future event. By the power of the Spirit of the risen Lord, the coming of Jesus is continually being enacted even as we speak. Jesus comes in our midst as the word is proclaimed, as the sacraments are celebrated. He comes when Christian community and fellowship is practised, when the sick are being healed and prayed for, when the poor are fed and cared for, when peace is promoted and strived for, when the hopeless are encouraged, and so on, in short, when the good news that Christ lived and proclaimed in his first coming is lived by us his followers in our daily lives!

The solemn feast of the Nativity that Advent helps prepare for, and that we look forward to, should focus us to all the above three comings of Christ. It recalls the historical birth of Jesus the Nazarene even though the exact date of birth is unkown and there is plenty of controversy sorrounding the adoption of the date of the Roman feast of the birth of the Sun God to celebrate the birth of the Light of the World. I will not act as an apologist for the date of the feast nor as an opposer of having it celebrated on a so called pagan festival, although I have plenty of arguments for both sides of the debate. I will simply state the fact that a man, Jesus of Nazareth was born and his birth is rightly or wrongfully celebrated on an adopted date. However, the world was never the same again after his birth!

In the first reading we heard today, the first coming of Jesus is foretold by the Prophecy of Jeremiah. Jeremiah builds a certain expectation among the people about the coming of the Messiah who will be the son of David. “Look, the days are coming, Yahweh declares, when I shall fulfil the promise of happiness I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah” (Jeremiah 33: 14). Jeremiah was writing to a city that was in imminent danger of attack but even though the worst has not yet happened, he speaks of restoration not simply of daily life, which is very important, but also of restoration of the Davidic line which is one of the major signs of God’s favor for Israel. To a people devasted by loss, Jeremiah’s prophecy offers hope.

Like in the days of Jeremiah, our world today needs a promise of and fulfillment of happiness! We have suffered a devastating pandemic for the last two years and there is no much of an end in sight. We have lost relatives and friends, children have been orphaned, old people left with no one to care for them and all of us are feeling the weight of isolation. Even when there is a glimmer of normalcy, our conscience keeps telling us to be careful and in being careful we are robbed of joy.  We have suffered racism, sexism, violence of all sorts, bad governance. We have been used for profit by companies as our governments turn a blind eye to the exploiters…we need hapiness. Our world has been brought to its knees through corruption, People have lost jobs and livelihoods. Even animals and all of creation is yearning for relief, for joy, for happiness and therefore the promise of the coming of the Messiah, Jesus, is good news indeed!

Our Lord and Savior Jesus loves us so much to let something as sigificant as a remembrance of his birth pass without us being reminded of the second coming   also translated into Latin by Jerome as adventus from what the Greeks call the Parousia. As verse 28 of our Gospel passage this morning reminds us, “we will see the son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory”(Luke 21:28) This is the advent of faith, this is the advent of hope.

The second reading from the First letter of Paul to the Thessalonians chapter 3 verse 9-13 tells us that we must prepare ourselves for this second coming of Jesus, not so much by doing anything other than by just being open to the grace of God.  The last verse 13 says… “and may he so confirm your hearts in holiness that you may be blameless in the sight of our God and father when our Lord Jesus comes with all the holy ones”. 

When first Thessalonians was being written around AD 50, a good number of the Apostles and immediate followers of Jesus were still alive and they strongly belived Christ will return in their own life time and hence the  strong sense of the immediacy of the parousia. The first letter should therefore be read with reference to the second letter which urges the believers to “go on working quietly and earning the food they eat and never to become tired of doing what is right”(2 Thessalonians 3:12) for Christ will come at his own time and as for the coming, He will surely come (2 Thessalonians2:1-8). The immediacy of the first letter is however not diminished but put into perspective!

As we continue to wait in hope for this second coming, we continue to be supported by the word and sacraments and by our living of the gospel message and calling, which invites us to be ‘other Christs’. Jesus comes to us in a real, experiencial and tangible manner and if we open ourselves to his grace, he will support us in holiness as we await the second coming. This will reduce our anxieties and fears that are mainly associated with this coming because he constantly keeps reminding us that holiness, a word that scares many is simply LOVE. 

Spiritual Masters keep reminding us that the only moment we are assured of is the present because yesterday is gone and tomorrow…who knows? I humbly suggest then, that we make a deliberate choice of this continous, real and tangible coming of Jesus in his Word and Sacraments because it is the most important aspect to celebrate. Yes, Jesus comes to us when we are fully alive, when we are caring in love for our brothers and sisters in this global village that we live in, where my good act impacts everyone on earth and where one irresponsible act in one corner of the world affects the entire world as covid-19 and the effects of global warming are loudly shouting in our ears!

May this Season of Advent offer us yet another chance, another opportunity to appreciate the Jesus who comes. Let us contemplate this as we prepare ourselves to recognise Jesus when he comes!

Amen

Feast of James Huntington - November 25, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Aidan Owen, OHC

Feast of  James Huntington - Thursday, November 25, 2021

In the name of the One God, who is Lover, Beloved, and Love Overflowing. Amen.

Sixty-seven years ago today my mother’s parents married, having known one another for only six weeks. By the time my grandfather died in 2008, they had been married for fifty-four years. What may have begun in foolishness and fancy blossomed, through their commitment to one another and their life together, into a shelter from the proverbial storm, both for themselves and for countless others.

The image that returns to me whenever I think about my grandparents’ long marriage is their dining table. It was the life of their house and of our family. Every celebration, large and small, revolved around that table. Every Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter found the table stretched with three leaves and an overflow card table in the living room. Everyone was welcome, and it often seemed as if everyone came and brought a guest, too—all the strays, as we came to call them, who had nowhere else to go.

In particular, I remember my aunt’s friend Sherry, so constant at our family celebrations that she was essentially an Owen. She wore these outlandish outfits that you only saw in places like Dallas—hot pink suits with wide brimmed hats. Her smile matched those hats, bright and gleaming. And she had this full-bodied laugh that warmed the air around her. Sherry had suffered a great deal of heartache and illness, and that laugh, those bright suits, and her cheerfulness belied a her physical and emotional pain. Perhaps more than any other single image, it is the icon of Sherry laughing through her pain, her open mouth half-smile half-grimace, that signifies the inheritance of that table of the marriage that sheltered it. 

The table was just a few slats of wood held together with screws and varnish, but all of life was welcome there. Every little bit of who you were got something to eat. My grandparents’ marriage was an “I do” spoken once in foolishness and unknowing and hope, but it echoed again and again around their dining table.

Today we celebrate a similar commitment our Founder, James Otis Sargent Huntington, made 137 years ago. Today we remember the promise he made in foolishness and unknowing and hope—most of all in hope. We remember in wonder and gratitude his faithful response to God’s call to leave the familiarity of his rather comfortable surroundings, to set off, like Abraham, with only a promise. Today we also celebrate the shelter and the hospitality of his promise and his faithfulness, which continues to be our inheritance here over a century later.

Now, normally, we would celebrate a saint’s feast on the anniversary of their death. But the Founder’s anniversary of death was already taken by Saints Peter and Paul. It’s kind of hard to move those two. So, instead we observe his feast on the anniversary of his monastic profession. Sometimes, as it does this year, that celebration also coincides with Thanksgiving. That bit of temporal peculiarity strikes me as imminently appropriate. For of all the Founder’s many virtues, it is his persistence in the monastic life for which we celebrate him.

Father Huntington was not a great founder in the typical sense. The creation of our Order was not his work alone. Nor was he the first, or even the most enthusiastic to join himself to it. He was simply and profoundly the first to stay. Nor was Father Huntington a great mystic, a great theologian, or a great reformer. He was certainly all of those things, in part. But his genius and his holiness lie in the line of St. Joseph: quiet, persistent faithfulness to the commitment and witness to which God called him.

He was one of those rare people who, once he put his hand to the plow, did not turn back. I have to imagine he had his doubts. He was human, after all. He certainly knew turmoil. He lived through the Civil War, the First World War, and the beginning of the Great Depression—more than enough to shake anyone. And that’s not to mention conflicts internal to the Order in its early years, a well-documented hypochondria, suspected bouts of depression, and whatever other spiritual conflicts he almost faced. Still, he stayed.

It seems 9 out of every 10 people who learn I’m a monk ask why I joined the Order. I often tell them some version of what I remember feeling at the time. But I can’t help but feel they’re asking the wrong question. In just seven years as a monk, I’ve seen six people join and ten people leave. For those who aren’t good at math, that’s a net loss, not a net gain. As Br. Rafael once said to me, “they come and they go, but mostly they go.” The interesting question, I think, isn’t why do we come, it's why do we stay?

You’ve probably heard me tell this story before. When I was a novice, one of my fellow novices asked the then Superior why he stayed. He thought about the question for day. Then he came back to us and said, “I stay because I said I would.” All of us who stay, whether in monastic life or in marriage or in another kind of binding commitment, have some version of this answer. I’m sure my grandparents did, and I’m sure our Founder did, too. There are days, or weeks, or even years when we stay because we said we would, and because, by God’s grace, that commitment still binds and nourishes us. Sometimes that is what faithfulness and trust and, yes, even holiness, look like: waiting patiently in the darkness for the stars in God’s sky to appear once more.

Then, too, there is love. Our love for God, yes, but mostly God’s love for us. I recently asked our Br. Laurence, life-professed for fifty-five years now, whether he had considered leaving the Order. He said that he had, but that, whatever might have drawn him away, “I guess I loved God more.” What are great mystical visions or theological treatises in comparison with so simple and profound a love?

Picking up on this theme, some years before Br. Laurence, Fr. Whittemore wrote in an unpublished memoir that contrary to what many people think, “The religious life is a love affair.” He continues, “I have the feeling that most people think that monks or nuns were ‘disappointed in love.’ Perhaps some of them were. God has many means of drawing souls to Himself. All I can say is that, though I have known a great number of monks and nuns very intimately, I never have happened to strike one who came to the cloister because he or she had been disappointed in love. On the other hand, I have known very many—please God, it is true of all of them—who were successful in love beyond all dreams or imagining. For they have heard in their hearts the whispering of the perfect lover. And it has been their deepest passion and their joy to surrender themselves to Him unto death, even the death of the Cross.”

On Tuesday, November 25, 1884, Father James Otis Sargent Huntington bound himself to God with the three-fold vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience. He did it entirely by himself, setting off into the unknown land of religious profession. He could not know that anyone else would ever join him in that life. But filled with love, and probably not a little foolishness, like Abraham he trusted to God’s promise. And like Abraham, God has made his offspring more numerous than the stars in the sky, for here we all are today—sheltered still in the arms of his commitment and his promise.

It is because of that promise and the love that bound Father Huntington to it, that the icon of our Order, too, could be a table, laden with the body and blood of Christ, extending out through the generations, welcoming all of us strays with nowhere else to go. A table where we can wear a smile or a grimace, where every part of us can be fed and loved and known. A table of wood and nails and varnish, yes, but one where God’s love can take flesh and grow within and around us, where that love can save us and free us. And all because one man was foolish enough to say yes.

Christ the King B - November 21, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Leo Sevensky, OHC

Christ the King B - Sunday, November 21, 2021

Daniel 7:9-10, 13-14

Revelation 1:4b-8

John 18:33-37

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

Some years ago, I heard the story of a preacher in Boston who prayed the Lord's Prayer thusly: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done in Boston as it is in heaven.”  We can laugh at this as a classic expression of Boston snobbery, where the Lowells talk only to Cabots and the Cabots talk only to God.  But why not pray this way? Why not pray that God’s Kingdom come and God’s will be done in West Park, or Brooklyn, or Kansas City or London or Beijing or Cape Town? Why not pray for the coming of the Kingdom here in this particular place, now at this time?

Another Bostonian, former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, is famous for having said: “All politics is local.”  And perhaps the coming of God’s Kingdom, like all politics, is also always local, situated in time and place, in the lives and experiences of concrete persons and communities.  At the very least, the Kingdom starts this way, and it is never less than local no matter how cosmic or universal or timeless it may become.

Thy Kingdom come, says our prayer, but it also emerges, beckons, invites, and develops here and now, emerging and developing and beckoning until the second coming of Christ, until the Parousia, until the end of time, until Christ becomes All in all, until the universal restoration of all things, until everything has been gathered up into the very heart of God.

The Kingdom is, of course, God’s. It is God's work, God's will, and God's crown. But you and I are co-operators with God in this great endeavor, co-workers or co-conspirators with the Holy One in this noble process. Yes, perhaps it can come without us, but I think God wants it otherwise. 

How does this happen? How do we assist God in the advancement of God's reign and the establishment of God’s Kingdom? It is quite simply by our own acts, small or great…repeated acts of love and kindness and joyful hope, sometimes very small indeed, but never, I repeat never, ineffective in this cosmic process of the establishment of God's dream for the earth and for us.

As I've reflected on this, I've returned again and again to a homely image from my high school years. I was a good student, but never great in the sciences, never a star in biology or chemistry or physics. But I remember well a classic demonstration that has probably been repeated in chemistry labs throughout the decades, if not centuries. It has to do with supersaturated solutions.  A supersaturated solution—and here I quote from the internet:

… is a solution that contains more than the maximum amount of solute [or component] that is capable of being dissolved at a given temperature. The recrystallization of the excess dissolved solute in a supersaturated solution can be initiated by the addition of a tiny crystal of solute, called a seed crystal…. Recrystallization from a supersaturated solution is typically very fast.

Superstrated solutions look like other liquids, if sometimes cloudy, and not particularly special. But they are filled with potentiality. And as the teacher or student adds one or two more grains of the chemical, suddenly a tipping point is reached, and the entire solution crystallizes, and what was once clear or cloudy liquid now is, in the twinkling of an eye, a solid. It is now changed, and it refracts light in the most marvelous ways and looks quite transformed. 

I wonder if the world we live in is not also, in some sense, a spiritually supersaturated solution, already filled to the brim and seeded by God, waiting perhaps for that one small action, that one loving deed or change of heart, that one seed of ours which contributes in an invisible but powerful way to a tipping point which has the potential of transmuting the whole thing into something quite new and remarkable.  I wonder if, when Jesus says: “The Kingdom of God is among [or within] you” (Luke 17:21) we are meant to understand this as an invitation to add the seeds of our lives, our own particular and often hidden acts of love or kindness or intentionality, large or small, which can become a tipping point for the larger entry of God's reign.  No, this or that one act might not be the seed which brings about the cosmic transformation of everything into a new creation, but it might well play an immensely critical role in laying the conditions for the possibility of the breaking in of God’s Kingdom in ways that we cannot even begin to imagine, nor would have been possible had we not acted.  If this be true—and I think it is—what an amazing and awesome potentiality it is and what holy power we share.  

In the First Letter of Peter, we read: “You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (I Peter 2:9) What if we took that seriously? What if in fact we are a royal priesthood, a kingly people? And what if our royal priesthood, connected as it with Christ’s eternal priesthood, is precisely to sow seeds into the supersaturated reality of our present day, filled as it already is with invisible seeds of divine grace? And what if in doing this, we participate in the advancement of the Kingdom in all its glorious diversity and rich variety? 

We catch glimpses of or experience these seeds being sown around us all the time all the time. Last week I was at the Walgreens in Kingston, accompanying a brother from our assisted living wing as he received his COVID booster shot and flu vaccine.  He had some difficulty and needed assistance, and a young woman employee, whom I assumed to be an assistant manager, came to our help. As we were going along, she turned to me and said, “I don't know if anyone's told you this before, but you're doing a great job.” I was stunned.  It was as if I was being blessed and acknowledged without either looking for it or expecting it. I don't know what possessed me, but I just said to her: “God bless you.” And she said with a big smile: “And God bless you.” I later thought: what was that all about? No, the heavens didn't open, trumpets didn't sound, the Second Coming had not quite occurred.  But in those few remarks, unsolicited and surprising as they were, the Kingdom was advanced, and I—little ‘ole me—caught a glimpse of it on Broadway in Kingston, New York.  I realize now that I was approached that day by royal priest, a kingly woman, one of God’s own people. 

I don't know much about royalty. The model of sovereignty that I am most familiar with is, of course, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom—long may she reign—but that doesn't really say much about the royalty of Christ nor about our own royal priesthood. In today’s gospel passage from St. John's gospel, Jesus stands before a powerful ruler of this world, Pontius Pilate, and simply states: “My Kingdom is not from this world.” No, it's not, but it is in this world if not from it or of it, and we catch glimpses of it all the time if our eyes are open and our ears attentive and our hearts unguarded. This world is a supersaturated solution waiting for you and me to drop seeds of loving kindness and mercy and justice and reconciliation until that moment when the created order is crystallized and transformed into a new community or order of love and truth and wholeness: “Thy kingdom come.”

Dear royal people, dear kingly brothers and sisters, dear priests of Christ, all of us: we must do our part. Let us share boldly and unashamedly in the ministry and work of Christ our King.  Let us scatter seeds of love and hope, however we may, wherever we are, whenever we can.  God is waiting for you and me to do the next right thing.  And so is this supersaturated world. 

Amen.

Proper 28 B - November 14, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Randy Greve, OHC

Proper 28 B - Sunday, November 14, 2021

Daniel 12:1-3

Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25

Mark 13:1-8

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

One of my favorite New Yorker cartoons depicts Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden.  Adam turns to Eve and says, “We are living in a time of great transition.” After the last 18 months, we may relate to their experience.  What time are we living in?  A time when over 750,000 of our fellow citizens have died from COVID-19.  Climate change, gun violence, systemic racism, the tone of political discourse and the shared trust in representative democracy beset us.  

If that were not enough, most churches are facing the challenges of aging and decline. We are beginning to realize that it is too late for “going back to normal”. The way is blocked behind us, it is closed off.  We can only move forward focused on the work of being faithful, loving communities in our stressed, divided, and violent world.  From whence cometh our help?   Do ancient biblical texts, so far removed from our culture and ways of being, have any relevance to our times? If so, what wisdom do they provide, what hope might we find in the promises of God?

Among the great gifts of sharing in the 3-year lectionary cycle of readings for the readings on the Lord’s Day is hearing afresh and being invited into Jesus’ life and teaching.  We conclude our year of St. Mark today. Next Sunday is the Feast of Christ the King with a Gospel from St. John and then readings from St. Luke during Advent to begin Year C.  So it is good to remember what St. Mark, as he has told the story of salvation, has so urgently pressed into our awareness over these many weeks.  It is a Gospel for our time, for this time, that we do well to heed.  He is honest, sometimes graphically honest, about the trials of discipleship.  

The way of Jesus is a stormy sea that involves risk and loss, fear and faith, and the laying down of false power for the way of the cross.  Yet Jesus is always present - teaching, modeling, showing the way.  St. Mark’s community is the most persecuted of the four Evangelists. They are in crisis and tumult. Writing shortly after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70 AD, the first hearers of Mark’s gospel are being treated as trouble-making heretics, estranged from family members, and seeing some of their brothers and sisters martyred.  The urgent questions which inform the telling: Why does salvation involve such pain?  What does this suffering mean? Why bother staying faithful if it costs us so much?  

Is the way of Jesus really true, really worth it?  So we come to this reading from chapter 13 with all of that in the background and with Jesus nigh upon his Passion.  His final message is that when death and destruction and collapse seem to spread unchecked around you and you are tempted to give up and lose hope, do not be surprised, but be steadfast and clear-eyed about what time it is. The reading for today regrounds us in how to be in a time like ours. It has to do with the nature of the power of evil and the power of the cross.

What might this exchange between the disciples and Jesus sound like to us in our own ways of speaking?

“one of his disciples said to him, ‘Look, Teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!”

The disciples say, “Teacher, look how lucky Yahweh is to have us!  We have the house for the Messiah, the law, the feasts, and sacrifices, and offerings - now all we need is Messiah himself!  The stage is set, the people are ready, our liberation and freedom is surely coming soon!  When the Messiah comes in power and great glory, the Romans will be struck down and we will finally be the people God has promised we will be. We will be free, mighty, and strong. Then Israel will be made great again!”

Then Jesus asked him, “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

Jesus says, “People raised these stones here and assembled these great walls. People can, and will, take down these same stones. Yes, you claim the law and sacrifices and offerings - and think that in these is your salvation, that God will protect you in your corruption and arrogance and neglect of the poor.  This is not the worship God intended. This is performance. If you believe you can defeat the Romans, that God will fight on your side, then your arrogance is worse than I thought.  All of it will be destroyed. All of it.  The Messiah is here and you are doubting my way of self-giving love. The prophets of violence will have their moment, and they will be defeated. They are always defeated.”

In the baptismal liturgy of the Book of Common Prayer, the candidates are asked, “Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?”  To renounce is to forsake, repudiate, disown.  The gospel requires the abandonment of the claims of the principalities and powers that violence and domination are the ways of God, is how the kingdom comes.  When we are renouncing evil powers, we are tapping into the greatest power in the universe, which is nonviolent resistance.  We do not ignore evil powers, dismiss them, seek to overcome them on our own - none of that is being awake.   The whole of the gospel of Mark can be read as a response to the zealot movement.  Jesus repeats for emphasis his refutation of this way of power and domination; if any of you want to be great, be servant of all; if you want to be first, be last of all; take up your cross, lay down your life, whoever gains life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for his sake will find it.

The earliest Christian creed was “Jesus is Lord”, which means Caesar, who called himself lord, is not.  Jesus is facing the great fears of all the times.  And the answer to fear is not domination of the other, but a journey into our own souls to the source of hope who is greater than fear and uncertainty: watch, keep alert, keep awake. Do good, love one another, and entrust the end of the age to God’s way and time.  Do not believe false claims and plans of peace and safety.  When all the fears of the day fall upon you, and the prophets of doom harass you with small facts which are either lies or false hopes, do not let them move you. Live as you have been shown. Amen.

The Funeral of Richard P. Vaggione, OHC - November 9, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Randy Greve, OHC

Br. Richard Vaggione's Funeral - Tuesday, November 9, 2021

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

Br. Richard P. Vaggione, OHC

Our brother Richard Paul Vaggione, having entered the land of light and joy, is now, with the saints, our witness in the great cloud.  He is in the nearer presence of the One who made him and loves him fully, whose compassion is endless, and whose eyes pierce into and illuminate every secret place, every sorrow and joy, every act done and left undone.  Death reveals the fullness of the union that is already ours by grace. And though his response to that union was imperfect as is ours, ever in need of the light of Christ’s presence, that union prevails, it triumphs, it overcomes the isolation within and around us and plunges us into the abyss of love.

For we who continue our course on earth and await eagerly the hour when we will graduate and pass through the gate of eternal life, our work in this liturgical work of the people is to be done, as the Prayer Book says, with “quiet confidence” until “we are united with those who have gone before…”. In that spirit of quiet confidence we give thanks for Richard’s life. We give thanks for his priestly and monastic vocations, his pastoral and academic gifts and contributions, his mind that sought understanding and offered original scholarly contributions to the life of the early church. We offer to God’s mercy our brother Richard as a sinner of your own redeeming.  

May we inter him into his resting place in the sure and certain knowledge that as his sins are put away and remembered no more, so may we, with Christ, rejoice with him in his redeemed and forgiven life. We lament the ways in which Richard was abused and harmed, an innocent victim of acts that traumatized his body and impaired his capacity for the fullness of relational presence.  We share with Christ the pain and grief of the evil done to our brother. We trust in God’s righteous vindication to bring about the only perfect and ultimate judgment.  When we are reunited, we will know a glorified Richard whose arms and legs and whole self will be made new.  As we continue our earthly pilgrimage, taking St. Benedict’s imperative to heart, “remember every day that you are going to die”, we encounter afresh the beautiful vision of St. Paul in Romans 8. Of first interest are the verses, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God…” Authentic human life is wonderfully realistic and hopeful.  The sufferings of this present time are real; the sufferings of the world, sufferings in our relationships, sufferings of our bodies. To be human is to face inevitable and unavoidable suffering.  But just as real is the glory about to be revealed, an apocalypse of eternal light and joy in resurrection.  Suffering is short and small compared with eternal rest.  St. Paul goes on to note that it isthis very creationthat is the stuff of the glory to come.  At the grave we remember that our bodies, like Richard’s body, are bound for death. But that very death is only a prelude to what is to come, a gate, not an end.  Our vocation at the grave, whose gate opens to us in our memory, is to wait with eager longing for the revealing.  When we were young, that longing was perhaps far from our minds. When we are strong and healthy and energetic, our bodies are a quite comfortable place to be.

As we age, the awareness of suffering and mortality increases, our bodies teach us how to long eagerly. As this flesh begins its long journey to the dust, bones and muscles and organs complete their earthly mission and anticipate resurrection, a new home comes into view. One of the great evils of trauma, among many, is the damage to the capacity and safety of being in our bodies.  If the body is violated, if our very physical matter is a cause of shame and abuse, how can it learn to long for its full life? Recent research in the science of mind-body connection explains how our nervous systems and thoughts and emotions and physical health all relate to each other. Consciousness is not limited to our brains.  Our stomachs have consciousness, our livers think, our hearts are aware of what is happening around us.  All of it, all of us, is alive at more than just a physiological level.  And this is, of course, what Saint Paul is getting at. It has been in the text all along.  He is assigning consciousness to matter that does not “think” in the way we imagine, yet has a knowing, a participation, in the world of creation. This longing is not about escaping creation, but about being more present in it, perceiving its full beauty which includes the physical and which is beyond a this-worldly perspective. What we see with our eyes - growth, decay, death - the cycles of nature, which, even in all their beauty, are just stuff, is not all that is there.  Glory lives in potential, it sits secretly and invisibly at the center of every living thing.  

The way home is to perceive this secret presence, even as creatures who are mortal and suffer and die. This hope - as invisible and unbelievable as it sounds - is home.  Love and compassion are the antidote to trauma. Entering our vocation to wait with eager longing heals our whole selves, restores what was harmed.  The divine image, present at creation, which plants within us a desire for connection, for discovery, for love, for home, casts us out into a world where sin and evil seem to thwart and mock that desire. So we are caught between the inescapable quest for a true home and the temptations of false ones.  The danger of separation looms large. So the second note in Romans 8: “Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ?”  

The source of our eager longing is Christ himself, who fills all things with himself. We find quiet confidence in the midst of affliction when we remember that the One who descends into every human hell we create or imagine, every human hell done to us or by us, is the very One who sits at the right hand of the Father in glory, thus filling even the place of pain and suffering with himself.  Separation can seem so very real at times, but it is an illusion.  It appears when we forget our vocation of eager longing, taking our eyes off the glory to be revealed. WIthout that grounding in our true identity our bodies will become coffins used to move our heads from place to place. Or we will succumb to the body’s every impulse and craving, becoming subservient to it rather than its steward.  The memory of our own death is all about the present moment, all about living here in these bodies with other bodies as we watch for glimpses of the glory appearing.  “All of us go down to the dust; yet even at the grave we make our song: Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.”  May our watch at the gate of death awaken us to the truth of our identity and quicken us to finish our course so that we may pass that gate to receive its light and joy. What will separate us from the love of Christ? Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.

Amen

Proper 27 B - November 7, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Josép Martinez-Cubero, OHC

Proper 27 B - Sunday, November 7, 2021

1 Kings 17:8-16

Hebrews 9:24-28

Mark 12:38-44

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

Today’s Gospel lesson, traditionally titled "The Widow's Mite" or “The Widow’s Offering” is a go-to narrative for Stewardship Season at many churches. Most of us at one point or another have heard a well-meaning pastor preach a sermon on this Gospel lesson that concludes with something like: "If the poor widow can give her sacrificial bit, how much more should we give out of our abundance to further the Lord’s cause? And I have to say that I find that interpretation somewhat troubling. On the one hand, I see some truth in it. On the other hand, it seems an exploitation of such an important story for the sake of an annual budget.

Before the scene with the widow, the Gospel writer gives us an account of Jesus giving his disciples a scathing critique of the religious leaders of his time for their greed, pompous behavior, and blatant exploitation of the poor. Jesus tells his followers to "beware of the scribes". "They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers." What does this really mean? 

The Temple in Jerusalem was not only a religious institution. It was an economic institution as well with hundreds of employees. It performed many financial functions, including operating as a central bank and treasury. The priests and scribes received a cut from every Temple sacrifice and a portion of a tax collected on every first-born child. Other offerings (some of them better understood as taxes) brought in even more wealth for them, so much so that these priests got into the business of lending money. That meant they were also able to foreclose on property if the debt was not paid. And when someone died, the scribes would immediately come in to help "manage" the deceased person's property because, of course, they couldn’t let the widow do that. Widows in first century Palestine lived on the margins of society, with absolutely no social status, and vulnerable in every way that mattered. And, yes, they charged a fee for their services. And as if that weren’t enough, this kind of exploitation always ended in sanctimonious long prayers. 

In the days leading up to the scene in today’s Gospel story, Jesus has called out time and time again the hypocrisy of the religious elite and the economic and political absurdity and exploitation he witnesses around him at every turn. In a very carefully orchestrated act, he processes into Jerusalem on a donkey to mock Roman pomp and circumstance. He drives out of the Temple those who were selling and those who were buying and turns the tables of the money changers. He refuses to answer the chief priests, scribes, and elders when they question him about where he gets his authority. He tells a provocative and scathing parable against chief priests, scribes and elders about a vineyard and a murdered son. He exposes the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and Herodians on taxes by confounding them. And on a ridiculous question by the Sadducees about whose wife a widow is at the resurrection, who has been given in marriage seven times, Jesus responds that they know neither the scriptures nor the power of God. 

Given all of this, and that Jesus has just blasted the scribes for their fake and pretentious piety and the corrupt religious institution they govern, I find it hard to believe that the only point to this story is that Jesus wants us to applaud a destitute woman for giving her last two coins to the very institution he considers corrupt. But perhaps what Jesus does want is to take the focus of his disciples (and ours) away from the rich, and to really see this widow.

Jesus, whose eyes are always on the small and the insignificant, wants his disciples and us to really see this woman whose widowhood rendered her worthless and expendable, and yet, had the courage to make her “insignificant” gift with such dignity alongside the rich with their fistfuls of coins. Jesus wants his disciples and us to really see this astonishingly generous woman who trusted that her tiny gift had value in God’s eyes. Jesus wants his disciples and us to really see the true and consecrated vocation of this widow whose hands moved at that impulse of God’s love, and who really trusted the words of the psalmist:

Happy are they who have the God of Jacob for their help! *

whose hope is in the Lord their God;

Who made heaven and earth, the seas, and all that is in them; *

who keeps his promise for ever;

Who gives justice to those who are oppressed, *

and food to those who hunger.

Jesus wants his disciples and us to recognize the true and prophetic power of this woman, who with two coins that together had the value of less than a penny, demonstrated her subversive resistance to dehumanization and a holy denunciation of injustice and corruption. 

Perhaps the lesson from today’s Gospel story is for us to call out (as Jesus did) any form of religious practice or belief that manipulates the vulnerable into self-harm and self-destruction. Any practice of faith that encourages our apathy in the face of economic, racial, gender, and political injustice. But perhaps most importantly, what we can learn from the widow is that riches come, not from acquiring, but from a letting go that takes us to the border between life and death where there are no guarantees, only hope; no security, only love, and a total surrender to God, who alone suffices.

I will end with a few lines from one of my favorite poems by Santa Teresa de Ávila:

Nada te turbe,

Nada te espante,

Todo se pasa,

Dios no se muda,

La paciencia

Todo lo alcanza;

Quien a Dios tiene

Nada le falta:

Sólo Dios basta.

(Let nothing disturb you, Let nothing frighten you, All things are passing away: God never changes.

Patience obtains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing; God alone suffices.)

¡Que así sea, en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! 

Amen+