Lent 5 A - March 26, 2023

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Aidan Owen OHC

The Fifth Sunday in Lent, Year A - Sunday, March 26, 2023

 

Ezekiel 37:1-14

Romans 8:6-11

John 11:1-45

Click here for an audio of the sermon

In the name of the One God, who saves us and sets us free. Amen.

The summer between my second and third years of seminary, I spent two quiet weeks at the Monastery. I had just finished a ten-week CPE program at a New York hospice, and I was burned out. The guesthouse was closed at the time for the community’s summer vacation. Without air conditioning, the guestrooms were oppressively hot and humid, but I stayed on the ground floor in a room that had once been a chapel, ministered to by the cooling breeze off the river.

I spent nearly the whole of my first week in a rocking chair on the large cement porch overlooking the river, reading. I also slept a lot, seduced by the late afternoon heat. My days were largely solitary, except for the three Offices and two meals with the brothers. And an old and familiar loneliness crept up.

The second week I hardly read at all. Mostly I sat staring at the glint of the river slowly dragging itself first north and then south and then north again. I stared, not to memorize the landscape’s contours, but to situate my roaming mind and spirit against a gentle backdrop. The sway of the meadow’s golden swells lulled me into a reverie that was restful. I had become so used to all the glass and concrete of New York, that, all this space, and me the only person in it, seemed the essence of eternity.

During those hours sitting and staring into the wide-open space, I realized that my spirit and my body needed meadows and rivers and mountains and trees. I needed air and starlight. The dawning understanding that now was the time to enter the monastery came first into my body and did so as I found myself renewed and welcomed by the landscape.

Then, too, there were conversations with the community over meals and individually. Br. Andrew told me, in his lilting Scottish brogue, “You’re a monk. I don’t say that to everyone, and I’m never wrong.” He also told me he loved me, and I believed him. I could hardly sit alone with him without the unnamed longing for home and father and love welling in my eyes. Often as we talked I’d let the tears roll down the soft hills of my cheeks. Andrew wasn’t the least bit startled. He was so completely himself that, like the meadow and the river, he had space for me.

I had a similar sense of spaciousness when I ate with the community. They engaged me gently, leaving me a distance that could have seemed reticent in another context. I intuited that distance, though, to be a respectful acknowledgment of the fullness and the mystery of my humanity. It was as if the routine of hours marked by a bell, lived over a lifetime, opened you to an understanding of the true impenetrability even of your own heart and also to an unhurried spaciousness for disclosure and connection, an acknowledgement that not everything has to be told or asked all at once, that true knowledge of another, of God, of ourselves unfolds over years and decades.

One way to tell the story of how I became a monk is to say that the Monastery is the only place that had enough space for me. I didn’t want a good enough life. I wanted eternity. That summer, as I stared at the waving grass or talked quietly with the brothers, I wondered is this how Lazarus felt as his friends and neighbors slowly unwound the clothes that bound him, as he stepped from the cold damp of his tomb into the light and the air?

We don’t know, of course. The text builds and builds to its crescendo: “Lazarus, come out!” Then the gentle ebb: “Unbind him, and let him go.” And then the silence echoing out from the storm. We hear Jesus’ grief, Mary’s grief, Martha’s grief. We hear the wonder of the crowd, the beating of our own hearts in anticipation of the great arising out of the tomb. And then, silence and stillness.

When your bones have come back together, bone to its bone. When the breath of God once more buoys your chest. When the shroud is unwound and you are suddenly, miraculously set free from your grave clothes, what happens next?

Wonder, certainly. Awe, absolutely. Gratitude, of course. But also disorientation, disbelief, maybe even dismay and outrage. For those who have endured trauma or suffering, on whatever scale, it’s sometimes much harder to live than it would have been to sink into the rest of death. In fact, one of the documented features of trauma is a kind of survivor’s guilt. Those who have seen the grave from the inside and made it out again know that by any reasonable measure they should not be here.

It’s easy to say that we should feel gratitude and wonder at the ways God continually brings life out of death. And, yes, absolutely—our God is the wonder-worker, the one coming into the world every minute to save us and set us free. And also, when we’ve been shut up—sometimes for our entire lives—in the darkness of the tomb, the sun will burn our skin and eyes.

What I don’t usually tell folks, when they ask why I became a monk, is that, over the years the spaciousness of the meadow and the table have sometimes felt like a crucible. We are never fully ready for the life that really is life to come to us and make us whole and free. Because life burns away death, like the sun melts the frost. And to the extent that we are not fully alive, the breath of God filling our bodies once more, must crack the joints and free the blood.

Sometimes, we can only learn the silence, stillness, and emptiness we need for resurrection when wrapped in the darkness of the grave. Sometimes, when we’re groping in our shrouds and squinting in the dark wondering where or how God may be at work in our lives or in the world, it may be that, like Jesus waiting two more days for his beloved friend to fall asleep in the Lord, God is allowing us the spacious calm to prepare for the new life that awaits us. We aren’t ready until we’re ready. And often our hearts have to break to have enough room in them for the love and the life God intends for us.

Yet, even as we sometimes grope in the damp darkness of the grave, Jesus waits with tear-stained cheeks, like a mother in labor with her child. So let us not lose heart, even as we may groan and yearn and call out for God’s new life to be born in and through us. God is ever-faithful, and what may seem to us slowness or stopping may actually be God’s grace giving our eyes enough time to adjust to the light. Because God is good, and that is everything.

Feast of the Annunciation - March 25, 2023

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Leo Sevensky, OHC

The Feast of The Annunciation, March 25, 2023

 

Isaiah 7:10-14

Hebrews 10:4-10

Luke 1:26-38

Click here for an audio of the sermon

 

I have never been to the Holy Land and quite honestly, I don't have a burning desire to go there. And please don't get me wrong. I have been deeply touched by the stories of those who have visited there and who have had their faith deepened and their lives changed. And if someone offered me an all-expense paid Holy Land trip, I would probably take them up on it. After all, I did go to Egypt in 1994 and was able to see the Holy Land in the distance from across the Red Sea, though like Moses of old, I did not get to enter it.

If I were to visit, there are a few locations that would have pride of place on my spiritual bucket list. The first, of course, would be the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem which is the traditional site of Golgotha (Mount Calvary) and the tomb of the Resurrection. I can imagine spending hours and hours there. I might also want to spend time on the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem contemplating both our Lord’s triumphal entry into the city on that first Palm Sunday as well as his betrayal and arrest only a few days later.  And of course, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

But there is one other site on my imaginary itinerary, and that is the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth which commemorates the Annunciation and indeed claims to be the very place where the Angel Gabriel visited the Virgin Mary with the news, however shocking, that she would be the mother of the Savior. (This being the Holy Land, of course, there is another church nearby, an Orthodox Church, which claims to be the real site.)

From what I've read, the Church of the Annunciation is the largest church in the Middle East.  It was constructed in the 1950s and 1960s in an architectural style described as “Italian brutalist,” perhaps not unlike the church at St. John's Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota, with its exposed concrete beams and unfinished surfaces. But that's not what I would be looking for. Because below this contemporary edifice is another older church dating from the 4th century. And even below that is a grotto dating perhaps from the 3rd century where the words of the Angel Gabriel’s greeting, “Hail Mary,” had been scratched into the wall.  And on the front of the altar at the center of that grotto are inscribed familiar words from the Prologue to St. John's Gospel, words that we pray here several times daily: The Word was made flesh…though there it is written in Latin: Verbum caro factum est.  If you look closely, however, you will see that a small word has been inserted into the phrase. It reads: Verbum caro hic factum est. “The Word was made flesh here.” And who knows? Maybe this is the spot where it all began. Where the Logos, the primal Word from the Father uttered from before time and eternity, was made flesh, here and not elsewhere.  Here: at a particular point in time, in a particular place, in a particular cultural setting and at the meeting point of diverse cultures, religions and civilizations, a place marked by a complicated history and a troubled political situation, one that was altogether messy.

Claims such as this that locate a transcendent mystery in more or less definite space and time and in concrete historical details permeate the Christian story. They constitute what scholars or theologians refer to as the ‘scandal of particularity’: Here, not there.  There is of course a universalizing tendency in our Christian tradition, offering a message of hope to people everywhere and of every age. That is its glory and its power. But at its root, at its conception (quite literally) it begins and unfolds in particular historical and tangible circumstances: then and there. This Jesus event, though marked by universal themes and a transfiguring message and a saving promise, is not just an abstract idea or a pious dream, but an actual historical happening, something that occurred in the give and take of everyday life. And in this case, it is in the everyday life of a young Middle Eastern woman named Miryam [Mary], engaged but as yet unmarried, and faced with an invitation to accept perhaps the most unplanned pregnancy in human history.

Here and now, at a particular time and place. Thus it was with Mary. And so it is with us as well. Our sitting down and our rising up, our faith, our salvation, our growth in grace, our struggles, our failures, our triumphs, our transformations, our divinization…none of this happens in the abstract but only in the concrete specificity of our own lives and times. As Tip O’Neill, the Speaker of the House of Representatives in the 1980’s, was fond of saying: “All politics is local.”  And so, I think, is grace.  

Invitations are extended to each of us by an angel—which is to say, by God—in a thousand different ways and at a thousand different moments.  The shape and content may vary wildly...perhaps there are as many invitations or annunciations as there are people who ever lived and then some. But at heart, it’s always the same invitation.  It is the invitation to surrender, or to put it another way, to abandon or release ourselves to God's will, to God's dream, and freely to cooperate in it and to work with it so that something new, something transformative, something holy--however modest and apparently insignificant--can take birth in us and in our world.  I wonder how many opportunities have been offered over the centuries, how many embraced, and how many have gone overlooked, unnoticed or refused?

The late 20th century poet Denise Levertov in her poem titled Annunciation considers this mystery.  I have quoted her here before. The poem begins with these words:

“We know the scene: variously furnished, almost always a lectern, a book; always the tall lily. Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings, the angelic ambassador, standing or hovering, whom she acknowledges, a guest. But we are told of meek obedience. No one mentions courage. The engendering Spirit did not enter her without consent. God waited.”

And God still waits.  

Levertov continues by asking:

“Aren't there annunciations of one sort or another in most lives? Some unwillingly undertake great destinies, enact them in sullen pride uncomprehending. More often those moments when roads of light and storm opened from darkness in a man or a woman, are turned away from in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair and with relief. Ordinary lives continue. God does not smite them. But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.”

To become aware of and responsive to these annunciations, these invitations that come to us daily, is a Christian spiritual duty and a deeply human task. And like Mary, we can and often must ask the messenger some tough questions and seek solid confirmation and only then respond…and not always with a YES but sometimes with a well-grounded “Not Yet” or “Let me think about it” or “No, thank you.”  Only let us, as the poet urges us, not answer out of dread or weakness or despair, but out of an abounding trust in the love and mercy and providence of God.  

Mary’s honest, questioning dialog with the angel led to the Incarnation of Christ the Eternal Word. Our honest, questioning dialog with our own angelic annunciations can also lead, not to a new Incarnation of Christ in the literal sense but to its continuation or prolongation through history in us who constitute the Church, the very Body of Christ given, like our Lord’s body, for the very life of the world.  That is our calling, a calling rooted in the specificity and particularity of you and me in all our humanity with its strengths and weaknesses, its flaws and annoying and wonderful idiosyncrasies, and in the particular details of our biography. That is the way our God worked with Mary. I expect that’s how our God works with us.

“Verbum caro HIC factum est!  The Word was made flesh HERE” says the altar engraving in the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth.  And the Word continues to be made flesh in you and me, hic et nunc, here and now: in West Park, New York.  March 25, 2023.  Imagine that. Imagine.

Amen.

Feast of Saint Joseph - March 21, 2023

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Ephrem Arcement OHC

The Feast of Saint Joseph (transferred), March 21, 2023

 

2 Samuel 7:4,8-16

Romans 4:13-18

Luke 2:41-52

Click here for an audio of the sermon

 

Hail, Joseph, full of grace, the Lord is with you.  Blessed are you among men.  Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.  Amen.

    To be honest, if I was putting together readings for the Feast of St. Joseph, I would have chosen neither the Old Testament nor the gospel passages the lectionary gives us.  In its place, I would have selected a passage from Genesis which highlights St. Joseph’s namesake, Joseph, the favorite son of Jacob through whom God would, through a series of extraordinary events, save his people.  And for the gospel I would have chosen a passage from the Gospel of Matthew, not Luke, where Joseph plays as important a role as Mary.  The through line in each of these texts would be that both hold up men divinely chosen through whom God works God’s plan of salvation; both involve righteous men with extraordinary patience and self-possession; and both were dreamers.   

    The story of the Joseph of Genesis is arguably the greatest narrative section of the entire Hebrew Bible.  Thrown into a pit and sold into slavery by his jealous brothers only to later find himself imprisoned—all to no fault of his own—Joseph’s misfortunes have a stunning turn around when, through his special, divinely inspired gifts, he finds himself as Potiphar’s chief steward giving advice to Pharaoh.  This story of the reversal of fortune serves to highlight that no matter how desperate we as God’s people may become—no matter how dark our prison cell—if the Lord is with us—we can expect the extraordinary.  There’s no limit to God’s saving power.  God’s plan cannot be thwarted no matter how hopeless our circumstances may seem.  It’s like Abraham hoping against hope and having a baby when he was 99 and Sarah his wife 100!

    The Joseph of Genesis was also a man of great integrity and self-possession.  When Potiphar’s wife tries to seduce him, he resists and flees the temptation only to be falsely accused by her which is what lands him in prison.  But the Lord was with righteous Joseph and brought him out of his prison and exalts him to become the prince of Egypt!

    The Joseph of Genesis was also a dreamer.  As a young boy he has intimations in dreams about being a famous ruler, and later in prison his gift of interpreting dreams is what leads him, and, in turn, his people, to freedom.  All because the Lord was with him.

    The characterization that Matthew gives to St. Joseph in his Gospel never has the Joseph of Genesis far from mind.  Beginning with the genealogy of Jesus, Matthew intends to highlight the promise of Abraham and David alike as being fulfilled through the line of Joseph.  God was present all along, from generation to generation, however hidden, only to be revealed at this precise moment in human history.  Joseph and his wife Mary stand, then, at the greatest turning point in human history and are the chosen vessels through which God’s greatest, most extraordinary work will occur.

    This all happens, at least in part, because Joseph was a righteous man.  He could have acted completely within the legal parameters of Israelite law by exposing his pregnant betrothed.  Rather, “not willing to expose her to shame, [he] decided to divorce her quietly.”  And after being informed in a dream of the truth, he humbly follows God’s instructions.  What quiet fortitude…what self-possession on display here in St. Joseph!  Rather than shaming another, he chooses to be shamed.  Rather than acting by the strictures of the law, he chooses to act in the fullness of grace.  Rather than protect himself, he protects his betrothed and her unborn child.      

    How does all this come about?  How does he find such a fund of grace?  Matthew is clear…because he was a righteous man, God would encounter him in his dreams and give him the grace to continue doing the righteous thing.  On four separate occasions, Joseph has divinely inspired dreams where he is directed by “the angel of the Lord” to protect his family from destruction and to assure that the Savior of the world would grow and become who he was destined to be.   

    Much more than a simple carpenter, then, St. Joseph plays a vital role in salvation history as the chosen man—the chosen righteous man—a model Jewish man—whose ears and heart are wide open and attentive to the voice of God.  His vocation as husband and father are quietly but forthrightly lived with unwavering integrity.  St. Joseph is much more than St. Joseph the Worker whose humble occupation was building things and teaching Jesus how to build things.  The true work of St. Joseph was ultimately to do the work of God which was the work of fidelity, obedience, and becoming the vessel through which God’s saving power flows.   

    Like father, like son!  More than just learning the techniques of carpentry, Jesus, no doubt, learned fidelity, obedience and how to become God’s instrument of salvation through his parents, not just through the One he would later come to call “Abba, Father.”  In fact, can it be that Jesus, at least in part, came to know God as “Abba, Father” so easily and quickly precisely because of the model given to him by St. Joseph?  I think so.

    My brothers, have we considered St. Joseph as a model for our monastic vocation?  We, too, are summoned to quiet fidelity, to listening carefully to God’s voice calling out to us, to courageously obeying that voice, and to becoming vessels of the extraordinary.  We, too, are called to create a family where, through our mutual love for one another, we find God manifest in our midst.  We, too, are called to be protectors of God’s pregnant presence allowing God to come to birth in all the open hearts that come here seeking to be reborn.  And we, too, are called to be dreamers—to dream of a world, and through God’s grace, to make alive and tangible a world straight from the heart of God—a world where each of us is the first to show respect to the other—where each of us supports the other with patience and listens to the other with tender concern—where no one pursues what he judges best for himself, but instead, what he judges better for someone else—where pure love is shown from brother to brother and where nothing is preferred whatever to Christ.  Through such quiet, yet zealous, fidelity and obedience to the rule of grace, might we not expect to become, all of us together, like St. Joseph, vessels of God’s extraordinary, saving presence?  Indeed, we may!
    
St. Joseph, pray for us!

Life Profession of Br. Luc Thuku OHC by the Rev. Janet Vincent

All the great experiences of life –freedom, encounter, love, death –are worked out in  the silent turbulence of an impoverished Spirit . . . A gentleness comes over us when we confront such decisive moments. We are quietly but deeply moved by a mature encounter; we become suddenly humble when we are overtaken by love. 

Johannes Baptist Metz, Poverty of Spirit, p. 49

When Luc sent me the readings for this service I was taken by their disquieting nature. At least in parts:

If you wish to be perfect, go sell your possessions’, give the money to the poor and come follow me. (Matthew)

I want to know Christ in the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings . . .(Philippians)

For gold is tested in the fire, and those found acceptable, in the furnace of humiliation. (Sirach)

So, I wrote to Luc in South Africa and asked him why he had chosen them.

He wrote back:

The first reading from Sirach helps me face the reality that monastic life or the service of God is not a bed of roses. It requires perseverance. It assures me I will be tested but upheld by God. If I fall, it suggests I fall in the Lord's hands because his mercy is similar to his majesty. 

The second reading and the Gospel remind me that discipline and sacrifice are required in the life I have chosen, but there is a prize or a reward in this present life and in the next. 

Please let me know if I need to say more …

That was helpful and it led me to the initial quote from a small 52 page book by Johannes Metz called Poverty of Spirit.

I first read that little gem of a book during my college years and it had a profound impact on me and my life choices. Please let me read one more passage – this one a bit longer.

We cannot rest content in ourselves. In the elements and experience of our life, to which we give meaning, we do not find satisfying light and protective security. We only find these things in the intangible mystery that overshadow our heart from the first day of our life, awakening questions and wonderment and luring us beyond ourselves. We surrender ourselves to this mystery, as a person in love surrenders to the mystery of the beloved and there finds rest. (p.27)

Reminds me of Augustine’s famous line: Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.

Poverty of spirit isn’t mentioned in the three fold Benedictine vow but I think it might suggest the heart of it.

Let’s take a look at today's gospel passage and then compare it to another. It’s a familiar story as all three synoptic gospels tell it.

The rich man – he may have been young, wants to qualify early for the life to come.

Jesus rattles off some of the commandments, the young man has obeyed them all but there is just a bit more to do: sell all you have, give the proceeds to the poor and come follow me.

The man walks away sad. He wasn’t ready to surrender himself as a person in love surrenders to the mystery of the beloved and there finds rest. We never hear about him again.

As I read it I knew something was missing. As an aside you might like to know that Brother Luc’s nickname for me is “old woman.” Okay, I’ll own it. Sometimes my memory isn’t as sharp as it once was.

But I knew that something was missing from this story.

I went to Luke . . . no, something was missing in that version as well.

I went to Mark and I found what I was looking for.

The rich young ruler boasts that he has kept all the commandments since he was little.

And here it comes. The line that’s been missing:

Jesus looking on him, loved him.

Matthew and Luke omit this crucial line. Their accounts were written after Mark’s. Had the fledgling church already begun to close the circle to the ones they thought were beyond salvation? I 

don’t know.

All the great experiences of life –freedom, encounter, love, death –are worked out in  the silent turbulence of an impoverished Spirit . . . A gentleness comes over us when we confront such decisive moments. We are quietly but deeply moved by a mature encounter; we become suddenly humble when we are overtaken by love. 

He had not yet acknowledged his poverty of spirit. He wasn’t sufficiently open to go beyond the rules of religion – that sometimes shield the heart from conversion – at least not in that moment.

Another gospel story but this time it’s told through art. It’s another mystery of encounter.

Sometimes we have to see (visualize) what we are hearing or reading. I do.

The renaissance painter, Raphael drew a series of cartoons depicting gospel stories. The cartoons were used to make tapestries that were to adorn the Sistine chapel.

The one I’m thinking of is: The miraculous catch of fish found early in Luke’s gospel.

Jesus has been preaching by the sea of Galilee and when the crowds get too large he asks a fisherman, Simon who had been out all night and caught nothing and who just wanted to clean his nets and go home, if he could use his boat to go out a ways from the shore in order to address the crowds. Peter isn’t alone. He’s 

with the sons of Zebedee: James and John.

Both boats go out and Jesus commands them to cast their nets – again. Peter mutters something about there being no fish to catch but hey, whatever.

Great catch of fish. Even with the taxes that will have to be paid they have caught enough fish to feed their families and maybe set something aside for another day. It’s a good thing that has happened. They have every right to rejoice in their good luck and the miraculous gifts they’ve been given. Peter’s response is to turn from the fish to Jesus – he does a 180 (conversion) and kneeling pleads that he is a sinful man and that Jesus should depart.

Depiction:

The renaissance painter, Raphael created a series of cartoons that were to be turned into tapestries and to be hung in the Sistine Chapel. One of those cartoons depicted the miraculous catch of fish. Here is some of what he depicts:

Fish overflowing the boat . . . flopping everywhere . . .boats in danger of capsizing . . .signal for help to get this great catch ashore . . . James and John are staring down at the water and they see two things: the fish and their own images.

Peter (and Andrew) have turned away from the fish and their own reflections.

Peter kneels in front of Jesus and urges Jesus to go away from him because he is a sinful man. Maybe he was (as we all are) but maybe here he is confusing sin for something else.

In turning away from the gift (fish) and turning to the giver (Jesus) 

Peter is overcome by his own inner poverty. That gnawing poverty when we acknowledge that we really don’t have control in life. We don’t know the number of hairs on our head or what the future will bring.

Peter looks at Jesus and sees his new image – his true self. It’s the beginning of seeing that his life in IN CHRIST – that great mystery we hear so much about in the Christian scriptures.

All the great experiences of life –freedom, encounter, love, death –are worked out in  the silent turbulence of an impoverished Spirit . . .*** We are quietly but deeply moved by a mature encounter; we become

suddenly humble when we are overtaken by love.

We are here today because at some point along the way Luc was quietly or perhaps not so quietly moved by a deep and mature encounter.

Your community has helped you to weigh the maturity of your experience with your desire to open your heart, more and more, to the giver. 

This monastic life; this fellowship of prayer and hospitality is only possible when you are overtaken by love.

The gifts of life have pointed you to the giver (despair of life as well?). 

I think that qualifies as conversion to the monastic way of life.

I know that you understand how slippery the way can be. In todays gospel you decided to add some verses. 

Peter, after his call to leave everything and follow Jesus has demonstrated that even the great experience can fade some.

He and the other eleven are watching the encounter with the rich young man and then listening to Jesus say how hard it will be for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of heaven.

Wait one minute! What will we get? 

Jesus: You’ll get me.

Jesus rattles off a nice list of Job like rewards – when the reign of God is fulfilled. 

He gives Peter a break here. Usually he slips in the word persecutions with everything else.

Luc, what do you get now?

Look around: Each of your brothers is Christ in your midst. And you are Christ for them.

Alan Jones preached at my ordination to the priesthood 39 years ago. I don’t remember most of what he said but I do remember the two last bits.

Quoting some long dead French cardinal he said: The church is ordaining you because it can’t trust you to be a lay person.

I’m still not sure what that meant. And then he said:

 . . . We are here tonight because we are acknowledging that you are already a priest. (I am aware that I’m still living into that 

statement and reality.)

Luc, you have been becoming what you vow today. You’ve come from Kenya to West Park, of all places in the world, and now back and forth from South Africa.

More conversion lies ahead as you surrender yourself as a person in love surrenders to the mystery of the beloved and there finds love –

The love that points all of our eyes to the beloved.

Lent 4 A - March 19, 2023

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

The Rev. Samuel Kennedy

The Third Sunday in Lent, Year A - Sunday, March 19, 2023

 

1 Samuel 16:1-13

Ephesians 5:8-14

John 9:1-41

Click here for an audio of the sermon

In the name of God.  Lover, Beloved, and Love Overflowing. As you listened to the proclamation of this week’s Gospel lesson, one of its unique characteristics may have stood out to you – it is quite long!  While a brisk narrative pace is perhaps more a characteristic of the Synoptics than John’s Gospel, we are used to things proceeding at quite a clip – especially in the healing narratives.  The plot we are familiar with proceeds, more or less, as follows:  We will find Jesus on his way to or from somewhere with his disciples when they encounter someone with an illness or a disability.  Jesus will heal the individual, there will be a bit of theological discourse or conflict related to the healing, and then the plot will move on, following Jesus to the next scene in the story.

While our lesson this morning initially appears to take this shape and pace we are accustomed to, we will discover rather quickly both the pace and shape of the narrative changing under our feet.  Our author decides to linger for a bit in this story.  In fact, for quite some time, Jesus drops out of the scene entirely, as John tightens his focus on the man who had this encounter with Jesus, is radically changed by this encounter, and then begins to work out the meaning of this encounter with his community.  

As I worked with this text, I found it was inviting me to change the pace I brought to it.  I wanted the text to move more quickly than it was, I wanted the message to be clearer than I was experiencing it to be.  Instead, I was invited to sit with the story, to watch this encounter with Jesus play out in this man’s life and his community.  I was going to have to slow down.

  

This story begins familiarly enough, Jesus is making his way somewhere with with his disciples, and they see a man, identified to us as one who had been blind from birth.  The disciples, bless them, seem prepped for the standard narrative pace here as well – they jump right to theological deliberation.

“Rabbi,” they ask, “who sinned – this man or his parents that he was born with blindness?”  Blindness, as their question reveals, was a complicated thing in first century Jewish thought.  While the law of Moses required the protection and care of people with blindness, there were limits to their inclusion in Society – particularly in cultic life.  In the popular consciousness of the time, bad things, like blindness, happened to people for a reason – usually sin – either their own or their family’s.  The end result of this, of course, is a degree of objectification of the person with blindness. The man in our story quickly became a canvas for theological/metaphysical discourse and moralistic musing.

And while we might be quick to dismiss the disciples’ question as one that represents an antiquated and ableist perspective, I think we’ll still find similar impulses within us today.  Some part of us seems to long to keep the people in our lives, the world around us, and perhaps most importantly, the world within us in categories that are clear to us, and help make sense of it all.  Such organization of the world is certainly necessary, both internally and externally, and seeking to understand why things are the way they are is an incredibly important human task.  However, from the very beginning our text seems to warn us against getting too settled with those explanations.  It would seem that thinking we understand how it all works can lead us to miss out on the inbreaking of the Divine in our midst.

Jesus’ reply to the disciples can seem a bit problematic as well, if we approach it as a categorical response to the questions of theodicy.  His disciples ask him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  Jesus replies to them, “neither this man nor his parents sinned; this happened that the works of God might be displayed in him.”  If we try to apply Jesus’ reply too broadly, as an answer to the overarching question of “why do bad things happen?” we’ll find it to be overwhelmingly underwhelming.  I was helped by a commentator here, who pointed out that the grammar would allow for a translation that more clearly reveals the imperative form used here, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, now may the work of God be revealed in him!”

Jesus then stoops down, spits, and kneads together dirt and saliva to make clay, much as John kneads together language that recalls the Creation stories in the Hebrew Scriptures.  Jesus places this clay on the man’s eyes and sends him to go wash his eyes in the pool of Siloam.  The man obeys and we are told that “he came home seeing.”  This is often where the story would end, but in today’s reading, the story is just getting started.  

What are the echoes of this healing in the man’s life?  Is he welcomed into society, his good fortune celebrated by his neighbors and family? After all, the alleged root cause of his exclusion had been removed. Well, no.  His life and everything around him gets thrown into disarray. “His neighbors and those who had formerly seen him begging asked, isn’t this the same man who used to sit and beg?  Some claimed he was, others said, ‘no, he only looks like him.”

Healing can destabilize us, and the emotional and relational systems we inhabit.  We seem to innately resist the idea that an encounter with the Divine might be real enough to change us or those we live or work with.  

The man’s reply in the midst of this confusion is both simple and profound.  He states, “I am the man.”  Here, he is borrowing the formulation used over and over again by Jesus in this Gospel as he identifies with the Divine name, I am who I am.  John appears to be linking the healed man’s growth in agency with his status as an image bearer of the Divine. 

The man’s friends and neighbors, with their own world in disarray, ask for the religious leaders to weigh in on the matter.  We see the same dynamics play out within that community as well.  The leaders interrogate the healed man multiple times, call his family in for questioning, and do their best to force him to fit into their understanding of how the world works.  Throughout it all, the man bears simple, clear, (and at times quite witty) witness to his encounter with Jesus.  The religious leaders, much like his neighbors and family ultimately refuse to make their hearts and minds vulnerable to the shock that this healing offers to their hearts and system, and cast the man out.

Isn’t this so often what we do?  And before we think about this in the framework of the systems in which we live and work – lets reflect first on our impulses toward ourselves.  So often, after our hearts have been touched by an encounter with God, and we begin to shift our way of being with our selves and others, perhaps living with a bit more agency, perhaps taking steps into the freedom of newfound sobriety or just a bit more ease with who we are....when we do this, our internal systems begin to rage and deny this work of God.  Sometimes the systems around us do too.  

The ending of this story is not what we might expect or hope for.  By virtue of this healing, the very thing that was supposedly keeping this man from full inclusion in the life of his community has been removed.  We might hope that those around him would finally adjust and celebrate that.  And perhaps some of them eventually did, but at first, he was even further rejected – utterly cast out of the community.  This can sometimes be the cost of healing; the cost of true encounter with the Divine.  But what we are told is that when Jesus hears that the man had been cast out of his community – the very thing we expected his healing would help resolve – he seeks him out and invites the man into deeper, more abiding relationship with him.

The cost of discipleship, healing, growth in your God given agency can be great, but I hope that our Gospel lesson today can encourage us all that healing is worth the risk.  

May we be given eyes to see the places in our own hearts that God is healing, re-creating, and restoring.  And may God give us the humility we need to watch, ponder, and listen to those around us as they share their own stories of healing.  May we celebrate and uplift that work in their lives even when we don’t fully understand it ourselves.

At the end of our passage, Jesus says, “for judgment I have come into this world, so that the blind will see and those who see will become blind.”  May we confess our blindness in the hope that we will not miss out on the inbreaking of the Divine in our midst.

Br. Josep's Sermon for the Initial Profession of Br. Daniel Francis Beckham, OHC; March 14, 2023

 Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Josep Martinez-Cubero, OHC

The Third Sunday in Lent - Sunday, March 12, 2023

 

Click here for an audio of the sermon

 

I must begin by admitting that I feel a little bit like a proud parent who is about to hand off his child in marriage. Daniel, it has been a great joy and a privilege to accompany you on your discernment for the past three years, first as an inquirer and aspirant, and then as a postulant and novice. I have witnessed your significant development in religious life, which has been at times smooth, and at other times turbulent. You have heard me say that, although the particular situations may be specific to your life, the experiences are not unique. All of us, your brothers, have gone through smooth and lovely times, and through turbulent and challenging times in our vocation.

The period of formation is a time of much learning, but in order for that learning to be possible we have to unlearn things too. We first unlearn our romantic and sometimes distorted notions of monasticism as being a life of deprivation, restriction, or negation, and begin to recognize the life as one of learning to love God, ourselves, one another, and all of God’s creation with our whole being. It is only that love that leads us to be faithful to our profession because it motivates conscientiousness, commitment, responsibility, and diligence, even in the face of great sacrifice. A great mystic of the Order of the Holy Cross, Fr. Alan Whittimore, wrote:

“I have known very many monks and nuns 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.” To be able to hear this whispering in our hearts we must let go of our illusions, and that is a lifetime process. We are never finished.

In a few moments, you will profess and sign the threefold Benedictine vow of obedience, stability, and conversion of your ways to the monastic way of life. You will promise to live the vow for a period of three years. The postulancy and novitiate periods have given you the instructions and map, and have led you to the threshold. At this profession you are crossing that threshold and joining the rest of your professed brothers on a pilgrimage. Today is not about “making it”, or “arriving”, but about beginning a journey of self-knowledge that will draw you deeper into the mystery that is God. (Warning: often on a journey we encounter detours and turns that don’t appear on the map and were not included on the instructions!) The vow names the core Benedictine values of listening intently, not running away when the going gets tough, and being open to change and transformation.

Obedience is easy to talk about, and very difficult to live, especially when we hear the word no. One of the most excellent explanations about monastic obedience is found in the contemporary reading written by our brother Robert Leo Sevensky of the Rule of the Order of the Holy Cross. It reads:

“While none of us is called to become an automaton, mindlessly conforming ourselves to the practices of the community or the commands of those in authority, we must be careful not to avoid the hard work of transformation that comes from holy obedience. We are to strive to hear God’s voice calling to us through such practices and commands and to give them always the benefit of the doubt, the best possible interpretation, and our willing conformity, especially when it is not absolutely clear that another course of action would be preferable. This does not, of course, rule out consultation, communal consideration, or expert advice. In the end, however, our cooperation and support, even under protest, is part of the gift of ourselves. We will find it helpful in this regard to cultivate a sense of the limitations of our knowledge of even outward matters, and to treasure up instances in which our assured judgement has proved wrong.”

So monastic obedience is not about compliance and conformity so much as it is about deeply listening and cooperating with those in authority so they can fulfill their leadership role with dignity and integrity. This kind of deep listening and cooperation is only possible when we do it from a place of love, and when we acknowledge that we don’t have all the answers. It is love that opens us to hearing the voice of God in others.

Monastic stability means accepting this particular community and Order as our way to God. For Saint Benedict, community is not just the place where we seek God, but the very means by which we find God. Living in community is not simply about cohabiting or being fused in unhealthy ways, but about being self-differentiated as we strive to stay connected.

Chapter 2 of the Life of Saint Benedict by Saint Gregory the Great tells of a time when a young Benedict was consumed with thoughts about a woman he had once seen. Almost overcome in the struggle, he was at the point of abandoning his vocation, but with God’s grace he came to himself. Benedict noticed a thicket of thorns, and flung himself naked into it, rolling and tossing until his whole body was in pain and covered in blood. He was able to conquer pleasure through suffering. Before long the pain that was burning his whole body had put out the fires of evil in his heart.

It is easy to dismiss that bizarre little tale as terribly outdated because of its misguided and unhealthy view of women and of sexuality in general. But a careful look at what it is telling us about what is happening with Benedict can shed an important insight about the role of stability for Benedict. The tale speaks of loneliness and temptation. Loneliness can be a nagging experience in monastic life. It is very easy to avoid its pain by engaging in all sorts of fantasies and escapisms. Benedict throwing himself on a thicket of thorns signifies confronting our pain courageously. It is about sitting with what is uncomfortable, facing the dark moments of our lives no matter how scary or painful they seem, even when it all feels like we are throwing ourselves on a thicket of thorns, or being nailed to the cross.

Vowing stability does not allow us to evade facing the difficult times of our vocation by running away. Instead, we rely on the support of the community to carry us through. As our brother Randy has said: “Crisis is often a prelude to some kind of deeper growth.”

Conversion to the monastic way of life calls for continuous transformation into Christ. As monks we are always in a state of becoming and running into our need for conversion at deeper and deeper levels. But we are not on this pilgrimage alone. We are all in this together. Vulnerability is the key to ongoing conversion and growth. And constantly opening ourselves to others is a vulnerable choice because it means that we will inevitably get hurt by them at times, but the opposite is also true. In community we can experience love at a deep, soulful and trusting level.

So, dear Daniel, you will continue to have some glorious days, as well as some painful days. There will still be some boring days and plenty of average days. But I have been so delighted by your gentle and quiet presence, by your capacity for love that you demonstrate by all the qualities I described earlier- by your conscientiousness, commitment, sense of responsibility, and diligence in doing things for the community when no one is watching. I admire your reluctance to be the center of attention or be in the spotlight. And I have witnessed how wonderfully you thrive in this life, and have noticed your constant effort to surrender. You are on the right path because each component of the vow is an evolving surrender of your whole person to God. As we have often heard our Superior Robert James say, “Surrendering to the fact that we don’t really know anything helps us see that all is mystery and grace. Only such not knowing is spacious enough to hold the God we seek.” I wish you every blessing in your vocation. ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+

Lent 3 A - March 12, 2023

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC

The Third Sunday in Lent - Sunday, March 12, 2023

 

Exodus 17:1-7 

Romans 5:1-11 

John 4:5-42

Click here for an audio of the sermon

 

 

Lord help us!

May we follow your example of reconciliation.
May we reach out to the Samaritan woman in our life.
May we do God’s will as our daily worship.
May we all contribute to the harvesting of your fields.  Amen.

In last week’s gospel, Nicodemus, an established religious insider, came to find Jesus by night and struggled with the teachings he was offered.

This week, in the middle of a hot day, Jesus reaches out to a riff-raff outsider.  He offers her revelation and the wellspring of eternal life, no less; if only she will ask him for it.

These two passages, Nicodemus and the Samaritan woman, are linked in meaning by the good news that “...God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”  Both Nicodemus and the Woman at the well, came to believe in Jesus, even if by different journeys.

This week’s gospel reassures us that no one will be denied who will believe in Jesus.  Jesus “gets us.”  He fully understands all that is good and all that is sinful in us.  In full knowledge, he reaches out and ardently desires us to be saved with him, in him and through him.

But let me set the scene of today’s passage.  As Jesus ran into increasing resistance from religious authorities in Judea, he decided to eschew confrontation and to continue his ministry in Galilee.

Now, the shortest route between Judea and Galilee goes through Samaria.  Most Jews would have preferred the longer route which would have avoided Samaria and its despised inhabitants altogether.

You see, Jews and Samaritans had a centuries-old, intense dislike for each other.  In a nutshell, Jews reproached Samaritans for having lost their Jewish integrity; their religious and ethnic purity.  But Jesus deliberately chooses to travel through Samaria.

Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well shows us God's desire to free us, each one of us, into a life of integrity; a life in truth and spirit.  There is so much in this encounter that speaks to me.  This morning, I’d like to focus on reconciliation and worship.  

Reconciliation and worship are two great ways to accept Jesus’ invitation to salvation.  Let me tell you a bit more about what I see in today’s gospel about these two aspects of the spiritual journey.

First, it is reconciliation that Jesus brings to the woman at the well.  The Samaritan woman is invited to face herself as she is, there and then.  She is invited to be fully known as she truly is, without social pretenses.  

And she is invited to ask for the gift of grace; the well of living water springing up to eternal life.   She is invited to step into her own salvation.  All that is needed is accepting to be fully known as she is, and to believe.

And it isn't just anyone that Jesus invites in this way; the gender, the social status and the ethnic origin of who he invites shows that God has little interest for our human boundaries of separation.

The apostles, when they return from their errands into the city, are flabbergasted that Jesus would be speaking with a woman, a Samaritan woman. And that is even before they know she is a compromised Samaritan woman!

But, Jesus shows that God's message is for all; for Jews and non-Jews alike; for people in good standing and for outsiders.  God doesn't need to choose the most prestigious and privileged amongst us for salvation to be wrought. In God’s heart, there are no outsiders.

The Samaritan woman goes on to become an evangelist in bringing her own people to God.

The disciples too are invited to step out of their own cultural boundaries here.  Jesus shows them an enlarged mission; their harvest will extend beyond the Jewish people, starting with those Samaritans they grew up to despise.

Through the events of his meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus also teaches us about true worship.  True worship is not linked to a place, be it the temple in Jerusalem or anywhere else.  True worship is the lives we live with God, in truth and spirit.  True worship is our lives lived in integrity with God.

You see, worship is that, which we do, that embodies our values.  By showing up in church this morning, for example, you are demonstrating that you give value to the word and the will of God.  Our presence here for the liturgy is a common understanding we have of the word "worship."

But everything we are, and everything we do, can embody what we give value to.  When you insist in your relationships on being truthful, respectful and loving, you are worshiping God in God's creatures.  When you are reusing, recycling and generally reducing your use of physical resources, you are worshiping God in God's creation, for instance.

All of Life can be worship.  Living our lives in truth and spirit is worshiping God in all we are, and all we do.  We worship God when we live life as if everything we do matters.

And Jesus, the Christ, the anointed one, tells us where to look to find the sustenance for our life with God.

Reconciliation and worship start where we meet the Living God; in our innermost heart, in the quiet of willingly being present to all that is. Even in drawing a glass of water for someone.

And there, we are to ask, to receive, and to accept the gifts of God: the well of living water that will spring to eternal life and the food of doing God's will.

But asking, receiving, and accepting are each important steps of this movement of the heart.  Grace is never forced on us. Remember: we are invited.  We have to make ourselves available to grace (possibly with some help). We have to respond to God’s invitation.

The Samaritan woman does not seem to have walked to the well feeling ready and able to accept grace, that day.  And yet, in her, little by little, Jesus created the room for her to receive grace.  Trust that Jesus is making that room for grace in you.

Jesus starts all of these important teachings, by reaching out to a single person; one person whom, by all conventions, he's supposed to not even speak to.  Could this person be me, or could it be you?  

I believe salvation starts with our own self.  I need to accept knowing myself as fully and lovingly as God knows me.  I need to build relationships where we aim to know each other as truthfully as God knows us.  

Salvation starts with any one person you interact with in truth and spirit; it starts with yourself, with God, with any of God’s children.

So hear what the Samaritan woman's story has to tell us.  

Through Jesus, God wants us, each of us, all of us, to be reconciled to him, to ourselves and to each other.

We are invited not to harden our hearts with earthly preoccupations, but to let the living water spring to eternal life in us.

We are invited to be fed in worship; to be fed in doing God’s will through all of what our life is made of.

Come to the well and let Jesus refresh you.  For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life..

Amen.

Lent 2 A - March 5, 2023

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC

The Second Sunday in Lent - Sunday, March 5, 2023

 

Genesis 12:1-4a 

Romans 4:1-5, 13-17 

John 3:1-17

Click here for an audio of the sermon

 

 

 

    Our Gospel this morning is rich and provocative, inviting us to open our imagination and reconsider our relationship with God. Both the Genesis reading, and the Epistle hold up Abraham as a prototype of trust in God. To Paul he is an archetype of trusting faithfulness, stepping into the unknown, to a place he has never seen, leaving his country, kin, and father’s house. The notion of embracing newness and relinquishing what has been connects this text to the story of Nicodemus. Being born from above and believing in Jesus are clearly not so much about what one does with one’s mind as about what one does with one’s heart and life. In John’s Gospel, believing and doing are inseparable. Nicodemus reminds us that even the best educated and most accomplished among us are still searching. Having an incarnate God necessitates an incarnational faith. Believing is just as complicated as being human, subject to all the ambiguity, contradiction, uncertainty, fear, and indecisiveness that humans experience.
   

    Light and darkness are interwoven throughout John’s Gospel. He uses night to describe a condition rather than a time. Nicodemus emerges out of the night’s darkness hovering in the shadows. Some claim that he was embarrassed or scared, but I suspect that coming to Jesus by night is not a statement about time, motive, or faith. It’s a description of Nicodemus and his life, a description that probably fits all of us at one time or another. Our usual daytime activities have no power or meaning in the night. The night is a time of vulnerability, questions, and wrestling. Most of the time we want to deny, ignore, or turn away from our fears and contradictions that surface at night. They’re difficult to face. They remind us of what really matters. They let us know when we’ve gotten off track. They’re often painful. They hold things before us we don’t want to see. They ask changes of us we don’t want to make. They reveal our wounds, desires, and limitations. They remind us that sometimes we settle for safe, easy, and superficial solutions.
I suspect that this was true of Nicodemus. Clearly Jesus had touched something in him for Nicodemus to arrange this meeting. Coming by night is the recognition that how he is in the day is different from how he is at night. By day he knows who he is. He has an identity and a particular place in society. He’s a Pharisee with a role and a reputation as a leader. He has security and power. He is successful, self-confident, rational, spiritually open, and curious. In the darkness of his night, his identity, accomplishments, reputation, no longer provide stability or answers. The longing within him is more exposed. Certainty gives way to questions. Jesus sees it and suggests that Nicodemus’ faith and the life he has made for himself, are incomplete. He asks him to let God work in his life. The invitation is provocative because rebirth is God’s gift and work to give and accomplish. It is God, not the self-sufficient Nicodemus, who labors to bring new life.
     

    Having a sense of identity and security, meaning and direction is what our world values and rewards. We spend our time building reputations, seeking recognition and approval. We establish our place in life. We gain wealth. We seek predictability and control, preferring what’s safe and familiar. This is the rich life Nicodemus created for himself. It’s the life we create for ourselves. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it. Some of those things are necessary. The problem is that this life keeps us stuck in the cycle of always having to create and re-create it to try to satisfy the deep longing that only God can fill. On our own we never quite get there. It seems that what we most want is always just beyond our grasp. The thought of losing all we have worked for, of following Abraham’s example of walking away from the known into the dark unknown, is paralyzing. We keep doing the same things and expect different results. No matter how hard we try, how much we gather, or how much we know, something will always be missing. It will always be less than the life God intends for us. Jesus tells Nicodemus and us that no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born from above. No matter how full and successful our life is, it will always be incomplete, fragile, and fleeting. The irony is that the very life we create for ourselves often generates the circumstances that take us into the darkness.

    Living in the dark is difficult, uncomfortable, even painful, but necessary. That’s why we are marked with ashes and reminded of our mortality. It’s why this season of Lent focuses on the very opposite of daytime living: letting go instead of possessing, hunger instead of fullness, self-denial instead of self-satisfaction, change instead of status quo, self-examination instead of blissful ignorance, and darkness rather than light.

    Like Nicodemus, as difficult and painful as the darkness of our night may be, it is also the womb in which we are born from above. The discomforts of the darkness can be the contractions by which we are pushed into new life and born again. This birth changes everything about our life. This second birth gives meaning, completes, and fulfills our first birth. This is the Spirit’s work not ours. We cannot birth ourselves. We can only feel and surrender to the rhythm of the contractions. The contractions of the darkness are God reshaping, forming, and molding us in the likeness of Christ. That’s what this holy season of Lent is about. Lent is our reminder that the night, no matter how dark, is always filled with the promise of new, full, and abundant life, God’s own life – what Jesus calls eternal life.  +Amen.