Sunday, September 21, 2025

The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 20, September 21, 2025

Holy Cross MonasteryWest Park, NY

Br. Ephrem Arcement, OHC

The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, September 21, 2025

Click here for an audio of the sermon

    My joy is gone, grief is upon me, my heart is sick.”  This lamentation of the prophet Jeremiah which opens our Old Testament lesson might as well be, in our moment in time, the common lament of our nation, indeed, the world over.  A despair has spread throughout the land, and we, with Jeremiah, cry out, “the summer is ended, and we are not saved.”  Our poor people hurt, they mourn and are dismayed…and we feel their pain, if only a small part.  “Is there no balm in Gilead?”  No physician to heal us?

          Yes, there is!  And today’s readings point us in the direction out of this mire in which we now find ourselves.

          “First of all, then,” writes Paul to Timothy, a disciple trying to pastor a congregation threatened with division because of the spreading of a false teaching, “I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings,” all would be kings, “and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.”  There is no way out of the mess we now or ever will find ourselves in without prayer.  But, you may say, it’s time for action, not prayer.  And St. Paul would say, and I with him, your action will ultimately fail without supporting it in prayer.  And notice the types of prayer Paul lists here: first, supplications…we need to really pray…to cry out…to even beg…not just to knock on the door but to bang the door down till we get what we want; next, prayers…this refers to the opening of your heart and expressing to God your deepest longings and desires; third, intercessions…praying for others, not just yourself…not just your own family, your own clan, church, or political party, but also for the other; and lastly, thanksgivings…appreciating all the gifts from God even when you’re in the mire…and, maybe, that come to us because of it.  And Paul instructs Timothy to direct these prayers to those in authority, presumably that they may have the wisdom and godliness to act and lead according to God’s will and protect the community from the false teachings that are threatening to divide the community and lead people away from the truth.  In light of this instruction, if we really want to realize the kingdom of God and create peaceful societies, the people we need to be praying for the most are those with the authority to affect the most change.  This means praying for our president, our congress, our local government officials, our bishops, rectors, and religious superiors…naming them before God and engaging ardently in these four prayer forms on their behalf.  This means praying for Donald Trump, praying for Vladimir Putin, praying for Benjamin Netanyahu, and praying for whoever it might be that you despise the most…who you believe is afflicting the most harm on the human family or on any part of God’s good creation.  There is a place for prophetic protest, indeed.  But beware of the prophet who doesn’t pray!

          Jesus’ parable of the dishonest steward gives us a second pointer out of the mire.  There’s no need to get bogged down in the details of the story which can be admittedly confusing.  But the moral of the story is clear: Jesus praises the person who is shrewd, who is a good steward in the little things, who is responsible and faithful even when no one is looking, and who, most of all, guards against the lure of wealth but lives for “true riches” with undivided devotion.  Now, if there is a message that cuts through lies, this last one is it!  Exorcise the demon of greed and much of the sickness in the soul of our societies would be healed instantly. 

          But Jesus’ teaching here is about much more than greed.  It’s about something more positive.  Jesus, somewhat shockingly, praises the ingenuity of the steward who got himself into trouble through his wasteful handling of his master’s property.  How much more should the children of light, Jesus says, act shrewdly, or be astute in their judgment of what matters most!  This is a teaching against the complacency and lack of creative will of those who would follow Jesus in the path of discipleship.  If we are serious about ushering in the kingdom of God and building peaceful societies, it will require much more than wishful thinking or hoping the other team fails.  It’s not something we can just “manifest.”  We are called to act intelligently, quickly, skillfully, and creatively.  It requires the total investment of our energies.

          Jesus’ plan for the way out of the mire is also about building character: “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much.”  This is about integrity . . . that quality of life that is free of guile and deceit.  At a time when we have our fair share of leaders with such little regard for integrity, to say the least, it is all the more urgent that we take great care to build up a new generation of honest, faithful, humble citizens who see the corruption of character as the corruption of the soul of our society. 

          And Jesus’ most severe warning is reserved against those who have made their money their god: “You cannot serve God and wealth.”  Not only does greed destroy societies, but it does so because, like corrupt character, it destroys the individual soul.  By making things our security, we create sick souls and societies built on sand.  Give it enough time, and it will crumble.  And in order to keep the illusion alive, we get sucked into the vortex of amassing and hoarding stuff, buttressing up our fragile ego on a lie…and promoting lies to protect our fragile ego.  To such…especially to such leaders, Jesus draws a clear line:  Choose this day whom you will serve… “You cannot serve God and wealth.”

          And the final lesson our readings teach us about finding our way out of the mire is the most important of all.  “There is one God,” Paul writes to Timothy, quoting the Shema, adding, “there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, ‘who gave himself a ransom for all’….”  More than anything said before, this teaching cuts through the lies of the false teachings spreading like a disease threatening Timothy’s community.

          “There is one God….”  The import of such a statement is the same import we find in Jesus’ saying in Luke: You cannot serve God and wealth…or God and anything else.  The foundational truth of Judeo-Christian faith is the supremacy of God over all creation, especially over human life who has the freedom not to serve the one God.  As long as we walk on this earth with duplicitous allegiances, trying to serve more than one master, we will remain fragmented, divided, and stuck in the mire.  But when we harness all the energies of our will upon the transcendent source above our miry existence, the pathway out of it opens up before us. 

          And “…there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, ‘who gave himself a ransom for all….”  Jesus is held up here by Paul as both instrument and exemplar of our salvation.  As instrument, he is the hand of God reaching into the murk to drag us out of it.  And in so doing, reveals that the heart of God is not one of condemnation but of mercy and compassion, not hesitating to get dirty for the sake of the one in need.  But as exemplar, Jesus shows us what our lives must become if we are to cut through the lies that threaten to keep us stuck in the mire.  Jesus is the example of one who allowed himself to be possessed rather than to possess.  He knew where his true, personal wealth and security were found.  He took total responsibility in all the aspects of his life and was faithful to his call to the end, no matter what it cost him.  He saw clearly who his God was and who he was in his God.  And when the tempter came to test him with lies, his intimate knowledge of God gave him the grace to swat them down one by one.  His oneness with the one God, a life possessed rather than possessing, is what constituted his freedom to love with such abandon and gave to the world a new way of being in the world.  This is our way out of the mire…and this is the bar we should set for ourselves and to which we should call our leaders to account. 

          So, while there is certainly a place for the lamenting Jeremiah in our lives, let us also make sure that we give a place to the praying Paul and, most especially, to the loving and sacrificing Christ.  Let us pray, and let us look to Jesus, our mediator, who, for our sake, never tired of giving of himself, and, in so doing, pierced through the darkness of the lies and illusions that greedy living foments and revealed the truth upon which we can stand firm to find our way out of the mire: living lives of mercy and stubborn compassion.  It is the same truth now as it has been for the past two-thousand years…admired more than lived.  It’s now time to live it…to live it with great integrity and fidelity…rising above the miry filth of greed and selfish ambition…and through the sacrificial giving of ourselves through the one who gave of himself…with dirty hands, to become a ransom for a world in need.

Sunday, September 14, 2025

The Exaltation of the Holy Cross, September 14, 2025

 Holy Cross MonasteryWest Park, NY

Br. Francis Beckham, OHC

The Exaltation of the Holy Cross, September 14, 2025


Ave crux, spes unica! Hail to the cross, our only hope! Amen. 


Amidst some of the bleakest and most uncertain days of 2020, gold-and-black signs bearing the words, “Tough Times Didn’t Break Us, They Made Us” began appearing in and around the city of Pittsburgh, where I was then living. To an outsider, this message may have seemed like a nice little bit of encouragement for an unprecedented and trying time. But for Pittsburghers, those eight words, fittingly framed by the city’s iconic colors, were an immediate reminder and rallying cry of who they were: A people shaped over years of enduring times such as these, and how, like the steel forged by generations of their forebears, each pass through the blast furnace had only made them stronger. In fact, nearly everything Pittsburghers have come to be known and celebrated for has roots in the countless challenges they’ve met and overcome; as a result, Pittsburghers understand as well as anyone that the road to the best of times invariably runs through the worst of them. And, with the pandemic showing no sign of letting up any time soon, it was important for Pittsburghers to reflect on that truth and to hang on to the sure hope it offered them. 


I say sure hope because, unlike vain hope, sure hope has much more going for it than mere wishful thinking. Hope that is sure, or certain, is built on a sound and reliable foundation. Simply put, we can be assured that there’s good reason to believe in it, even if at that precise moment it’s unclear how that hope can possibly pan out.


Hope’s capacity for being born out of the worst of circumstances never ceases to amaze me. One might wonder, for example, how something like the cross – devised as an instrument and symbol of imperial power and intimidation – can possibly be embraced, even celebrated, as a sign of sure hope in God’s loving-kindness. After all, its original purpose was quite the opposite: to inflict one of the most agonizing deaths imaginable on its victims, while simultaneously encouraging anyone else who might be thinking about challenging the state to think again. It was certainly never intended to inspire hope. And yet, we find ourselves here today, in a monastic order named for the cross, in the presence of two very large depictions of the cross, while exalting it in one of the principal celebrations of the church’s calendar. Like the outsider reading those Pittsburgh signs without fully grasping their true significance, we could be forgiven for finding all this cross-honoring a bit odd, especially since its most famous victim just so happens to be the founder of our religion. 


Luckily, it’s Jesus himself who provides the key to understanding the deeper meaning of the cross for us today. In our gospel reading, Jesus has already entered Jerusalem for the last time and is fully aware of the plotting that’s going on against him. Knowing of the Pharisees’ plan to turn him over to the Romans as a revolutionary, crucifixion is almost certainly the death that’s in store for Jesus. And so, he makes a point of proclaiming that God has already defeated the plotters’ plan. “Now is the judgement of this world,” Jesus tells them. “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth (that is, up onto the cross), will draw all people to myself.” Even as they scheme to silence Jesus by killing him on a cross, they’re unwittingly playing into God’s purposes rather than their own. Despite the crowd not quite understanding Jesus, he urges them to pick up and carry his light into the world once he’s taken from them. “While you have the light, believe in the light,” he says, “so that you may become children of light.” Jesus is no lamb being led gently to the slaughter; he’s defiant in the face of injustice, and wants people to realize that they have not only the power, but the duty, to carry on his prophetic mission after he leaves them. 


In saying this, Jesus helps us understand that, regardless of how bleak things may seem in any given moment (and, facing impending crucifixion is definitely pretty bleak), God’s capacity to lead us through our present suffering and into new life is never bound by any human power. For Pilate, the cross seemed the obvious instrument for crushing Jesus and his message. But for Jesus, accepting with sure and certain hope that God would use even his forthcoming crucifixion to lead him – and all of us – more fully into God, the cross became a far more powerful means of subverting Pilate’s plans. In so doing, Jesus transforms the cross from a public spectacle of shame and death into a beacon of hope and new life. In other words, Jesus our High Priest has ripped the cross away from Pilate and offered it directly to God.  


Of course, as we know, humans do have a stubborn tendency to appropriate and misuse the good things of God, which means that even the cross we celebrate here today as a sign of hopefulness has at times been used for purposes more aligned with the cruel cowardice of Pilate than with the merciful message of Jesus. Sadly, and because of this, the cross has come to symbolize for far too many not the Reign of God, but rather cruelty, intolerance, judgementalism, exclusion, violence, and even death. I hope all of us, as a people who have hope in Jesus’ promise to draw everyone to God, will accept his invitation to become children of light and courageously live the cross’ true, transformed meaning in the world with compassion, respect, understanding, and, above all, love. 


Jesus and the disciples lived in a strange and seemingly apocalyptic time, as do we. Initially, the cross must have felt like utter defeat for those closest to Jesus, but it was an absolutely necessary step along the way to the bigger future God had planned for them. Even as the world itself seemed to be falling apart and there appeared to be no certain hope on the horizon, God’s people were being led toward something far better than the past they were already mourning. And God was doing this by overturning and glorifying one of the worst things imaginable in first-century Jerusalem: the cross.


Even as we try – and, at times, struggle – to look ahead with hope at the future God has already prepared for all of us, it’s important that we not lose sight of God’s presence right now, in the struggles themselves. After all, it’s the small moments of grace building one upon another during these stretches of suffering that ultimately move us into the better times for which we long. Although it can be difficult for us to stop and notice them in the here and now, if we dare to, we will surely recognize the presence of God. And, looking back later, we may even be astonished to see all the ways God was here, acting, the whole time. As Saint Augustine, patron of this very monastic church, reminds us in a sermon on Jesus’ Passion: 


“What God promises us for the future is great, but what God has already done for us in Christ is greater still. Who can doubt that he will give us his life, since he has already given us his death? … So my brothers and sisters, let us acknowledge without fear, indeed, let us announce publicly that Christ was crucified for us. Let us proclaim it not trembling, but rejoicing; not shamefacedly, but boasting. As the apostle Paul said, ‘Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.’”


Yes, God is here with each of us even now in both our personal and collective struggles, just as God was fully present to Jesus even as he was raised onto the cross. We must never doubt that Jesus is already using our own crosses to lead us more fully into the knowledge and loving presence of God. With sure hope in God, tough times – even these tough times – can never break us.  


May peace and all that is good remain with us, and all those we love, and may we keep the cross of Christ ever before us, showing forth the light and hope of God into our world. Amen. 


The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, September 7, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC

The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 27, 2025
In the name of the Lover, the Beloved and the Love ever flowing. Amen.

 

Jesus and his disciples are travelling followed by a great crowd. What are the motivations of the people in the crowd? Are they convinced by Jesus’s preaching and want to be his disciples? Are they fascinated by Jesus’s signs and they want to see (or eat) more? Are they there because everyone else is?

 

Jesus turns around on the crowd and addresses them about the cost of discipleship. Is Jesus trying to thin the crowd behind him? He is definitely trying to make his audience consider what they need to commit to to be his disciples. As German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in the time of ascending fascism, cheap grace will not take you far on the road to discipleship.

 

Jesus uses images of how we belong to our closest relatives to convey his view of the cost of discipleship. And he turns those relationships upside down. Our biological family or family of origin is not his focus for building up the Kingdom of God.

 

 It is useful to consider that throughout the gospel Jesus’s family values are at odds with traditional family values. Clearly, Jesus sees the community of the believers as the primary locus of belonging for his disciples.

 

Jesus uses harsh language in conveying that message. He uses the verb hate; misein in the original Greek text of the gospel. It is useful to note that misein does not denote the emotional baggage that hate carries in our own English language. Misein connotes the attitudes and modes of action involved. Misein could be ignoring, neglecting or overlooking the object of the hate. This still pretty nasty stuff no matter who it is directed to.

 

So could it be that Jesus is using a time-honored rhetorical device in Hebrew scripture here? It is called hyperbole. Hyperbole is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech. As a figure of speech, it is usually not meant to be taken literally.

 

One indication that hyperbole is involved is that drawing on the same Jesus tradition as Luke, the evangelist Matthew seems to have interpreted the starker language of “hate” to refer to primary allegiance.  

 

In Matthew (10:37) we read: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” For Matthew, this saying indicates that our primary allegiance must be to Jesus rather than to family. Hate is not required in Matthew’s view of Jesus’s teaching.

 

Also, if you take Jesus’s teaching throughout the gospels, his literally advising for literal hate as a course of action does not seem to make sense. This is the same Jesus who asked us to love our neighbor as ourselves, even to love our enemies.

 

Still, Jesus’s language is powerfully emphasizing that discipleship involves a high cost (up to and including our own survival). If discipleship is on our mind, we can’t be tepid or tentative about it. We need to be all in or not bother with the adventure at all.

 

We need to be willing to take up our cross and carry it. Is this cross language another example of hyperbolic language or should we really consider losing our lives for following Jesus?

 

If you consider what happened to the apostles after Jesus’s death, the odds are that our lives are on the line; all but one apostle died as a martyr. But it could also be that we need to lose the life we wanted or the life we were used to in order to follow Jesus. Maybe the life we need to loose is the life of our false self. Maybe on the way of no-self, losing our physical life might be involved in that transformation.

 

Next, Jesus gives us a couple of parables to illustrate what’s involved in counting the cost of discipleship. One involves counting the cost of building a tower. He’s probably referring to watchtowers that were common in vineyards to prevent marauding and pilfering of the vineyard’s produce. The other involves kings about to go to war with their armies. The morale regarding discipleship seems clear: don’t consider it if you cannot afford the full cost of it.


And finally, Jesus adds one more thing, or a heap of things, to give up: our possessions, all of them. And this might not be hyperbolic, this time. This last exhortation illustrates again what Jesus is pointing at in my opinion. He wants us to let go of our many attachments in order to be fully free to follow him.

 

There are many attachments this refers to: attachment to our family, our in-group, our nation; attachments to our way of life and all its paraphernalia; attachments to what we believe gives us safety and security, including attachment to whatever money, power and influence we have.

 

All considered, Jesus is putting up the bar to becoming his disciple very high. Can we imagine ourselves letting go of our several attachments in order to let us be what Jesus is desiring us to be.

 

Beloved Lord, thank you for making us count the cost of loving you as a disciple. Give us courage to detach from what derails us from following you first and foremost.

 

Amen.

Sunday, July 27, 2025

The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 27, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY


Br. Bruno Santana, OHC

The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 27, 2025



Brothers and Sisters .The Lord prayer, also know as ”Our Father”, can be found in Mathew and Luke.  We just heard in Luke the shorter version. This prayer is recited probably a million times a day, all over the world, at every Mass. Here in our monastery, we pray in Matins and Vespers, So 3 times a day. 
What this prayer, great prayer is about? 
Let’s walk slowly through Luke’s version now and see what we’re asking for, when we pray “ Our Father.”
First at all, the Lord’s prayer comes from Jesus 'own life of prayer. Jesus’s been praying and the disciples notice that. And they asked Jesus: Lord, teach us how to pray, help us to pray as you do.”
This prayer it reflects Jesus’ own prayer, his own life of prayer.
So, Jesus said: “When you pray, “say: Father.
Father.
We could call God as Lord, Master, all powerful, etc...But Jesus invited us to call God, Father. ABBA  (in Aramaic ), like Daddy in US.  He reveals to us a unique relationship with God. He is inviting us to share to have this intimacy with God as he had.
And then we ask: “hallowed be your Name.” 
God’s name is always holy. but Jesus invites us to consider God, a value so supreme then the other values. We value all kinds of things. Family, Friends, Job, money, our country. We desire all kinds of worldly things – pleasure, power, honor.  But the only way to hallowed God’s name is to place Him in the highest of all values in our lives.
In Mathew  22:37 says: Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. If we get this right, we will get everything else right. (in our life)
Then we ask: “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as in heaven.”
The kingdom stood at the very center of Jesus Life and teaching. It is the Reign of God for which Israel had longer for a thousand years. 
The great Church Father, Origen, said: Jesus is “autobasileia.” means that He is the kingdom in person. His teaching and indeed his whole manner of life gives us a very good idea that the kingdom is : Love , mercy, justice, forgiveness, peace, inclusion, compassion etc… We pray for this kingdom ( that is already in heaven) to become normative, reality here and now in our lives. 
And now comes a mysterious petition:  Give us today (each day) our daily bread. 
The Greek phrase that stands behind this is: “tov arton tov epiousion” . Arton refers to bread. And  epiousion, in the literal sense of the word mean “super substantial: gives us “super substantial” bread.
St. Jerome in the old Vulgate, translates this as “Panem supersubstantialem,”. (supersubstantial bread). 
This is the  heart of the Lord’s Prayer. We are asking for the “Panem supersubstantialem,” for the super substantial bread. In other words, The Eucharist , The Holy Communion , not ordinary bread. Not simply symbolic representation of Christ, no. Christ is truly present in the Holy communion, in the Eucharist, that we will receive later. It is a mystery, a spiritual reality that transcends a physical explanation and  we want to be drawn into him because this is the bread of eternal life.
 Then, “Forgive us our sins.” 
The forgiveness of sins is at the heart of what Jesus is about. The first and most important thing was to forgive our sins. To the woman caught in adultery, Jesus said “Go and sin no more. For the man at the Pool of Bethesda  he said “Pick up your mat and walk. We heard in Mark 2:5 , “Son , your sins are forgiven”  or “ in John 8;11 Neither do I condemn you.”  
The British writer, scholar, Anglican theologian : C. S. Lewis emphasized that Jesus ,  who is indeed offended in every sin, can say to us, “My son, my daughter, your sins are forgiven.” 
So, Ask God, to forgive all you sins, he is the only one that can do that,  but it has some implications because we pray, forgive our sins and next : as we forgive those who sin against us. 
I invite you to think and remember now,  someone who sinned against you . Someone that offended you, hurt you in some way. 
Jesus invites us to become Christ for others and forgiven. I recognize that this is one of the most challenging elements in the whole spiritual life but if we truly assimilated Christ’s forgiveness, this become part of our life . 
I invite you to make a little exercise, call to mind your sins and think, how generous God has been to you. 
So, now, we are praying for the grace to forgive that person as we have been forgiven.
We continue with the prayer:  “Save us from the time of trial.” 
In the first century. Some of the apocalyptic language in the New Testament reflects the idea that before the Messiah comes to set things right, there will be a terrible time of trial. 
Jesus comes into our messy, dysfunctional world  and the World is going to rise up in resistance. 
As Christ comes into our life, we start resisting. 
As Christians, we all have Challenging moments. We are like the Israelites in the desert when they said take me back to the flesh pots of Egypt. I don’t like this new spiritual liberty.” 
That’s the point here. Every time we pray the Our Father, don’t be shocked, don’t be surprised when a resistance to Christ rises up in you. That is the old sinful self (human Nature).
And so, the last thing we ask for is: (This is from Matthew version) deliver us from evil.” In other words, Lord, protect me from my resistant self.” 
If you read many of the spiritual masters as they talk about the Lord’s Prayer, it will help you to open up windows , doors to spiritual life. 
soon , we will pray here “ our father”. But next time you pray it, whether in the liturgy or just privately, I invite you to do it very slowly. As you do, meditate on each of these phrases. You will find the whole spiritual life is displayed before you. Amen. 

Sunday, July 20, 2025

The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, July 20, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Scott Wesley Borden

The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, July 20, 2025


This morning, we meet Martha and Mary – two sisters who turn up in various Gospel stories along with their brother Lazarus. Or do they... Luke tells us about Mary and Martha. Luke doesn’t seem to know Br Lazarus... And Luke doesn’t mention the name of the town... Some scholars think it could be Bethany, home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus from John’s Gospel, but others are certain that it cannot possibly be Bethany. So, we cannot be sure if these are the same Martha and Mary we meet in John’s Gospel. When we read scripture, other parts of scripture tend to whisper in our ears. We know this family. We know about Mary not only sitting attentively today, but anointing Jesus’ feet with Nard. We know about Jesus’ great love of their brother Lazarus and about Lazarus being raised from the dead. We may know these things, but Luke doesn’t and neither would the followers who first heard Luke’s telling of the Gospel. John’s Gospel, where we learn about Lazarus and nard and such, was still years in the future. To really meet Mary and Martha as they exist in this Gospel, in Luke’s world, we have to forget some of that stuff. When we’ve gotten John to be somewhat quiet, we might notice first that this Gospel story is not really about Mary and Martha, it's about Jesus. Jesus knocks at the door. The sisters let him in and prepare to feed this unannounced drop-in crowd. Well – Martha prepares to feed the crowd. Mary prepares to enjoy the benefits of Martha’s labor with her new best friends... We get an interesting glimpse into sisterly relationships. We can guess that Martha is the older sister because it seems to be her house. At the death of the parents, the oldest child would inherit both the estate and any younger siblings... So, Martha has had to run the household and put up with Mary for who knows how long. Mary flaking out from the work of hospitality seems to bug Martha. Hospitality was an important social obligation at that time. If folks showed up at your door, you were expected to feed them and house them... So, Martha is busy serving drinks and putting out plates of hors devours and such. Mary, on the other hand, seems like she would be happy opening a bag of chips and letting folks fend for themselves. Martha is not having it. But she doesn’t speak with her sister... she chooses instead to complain to Jesus. Of course, she has known her sister all her life and perhaps she knows it will do no good to correct her. All we know is that she is happy telling this stranger who has come to her door that her sister is useless. “Do you not care that she has left me to do all the work? Tell her to help me.” Of course, Martha’s complaints have additional benefits. She gets to vent. She also gets to make sure that the honored guest knows all the work is hers. Do you like the food, Jesus? I prepared that. Another drink, Jesus? I stomped the grapes myself. Mary didn’t help one little bit. I can’t say that Martha is making a good first impression on me. Martha knows that Jesus is important since she refers to him as “Lord.” Does she know more about Jesus? Does she know that he is the Son of God? Does she care? Luke is silent about Martha’s story – because this story is about Jesus, not Martha, not Mary. This story follows directly after the story of the Good Samaritan, which follows the story of the sending out of the Seventy and their happy return. There is a sort of travel theme to this tenth chapter of Luke. When the seventy (or seventy-two) disciples are sent, they are told to each go to the appointed village and lodge with some random family. Eat and drink what is offered. This is, in fact, just what Jesus is doing at the home of Martha and Mary. Jesus tells the disciples, when they are sent, not to worry. Eat what is offered. Drink what is offered. Don’t wander from house to house looking for a better buffet. And if you are not welcome, just move on. So, when Martha goes into high hospitality gear, Jesus has a reaction. She is surely worried that her hospitality will not be up to snuff. She no doubt takes pride in her house and in her food and drinks offerings. That slacker Mary is no help whatsoever. Jesus has told folks to just accept what is offered. But Martha is so busy putting on a show for Jesus that she is missing Jesus. Of course, I suspect that Jesus and the disciples are quite enjoying Martha’s handiwork. I don’t suppose that they are refusing the food and drink. But still, Martha can chill. She does not have to prove her worth to Jesus through her catering. This is a vital lesson for us – we do not have to prove our worth, we do not have to purchase Jesus’ love. Jesus already loves us... God already loves us. Just as God already loves Martha. Martha needs to learn this. This story reminds us that we are called to do what we can do – not less, and not more. It would be easy, hearing the story of the Good Samaritan earlier in this chapter of Luke, to think we must always measure up to that heroic level of sacrificing hospitality. That is what Martha seems to be aiming for. And Jesus tells her it's really not what he wants. Jesus tells us, in Matthew’s Gospel, that the yoke is easy, and the burden is light. In some sense, Martha and Mary are illustrating that for us. We would feel like we were better Christians if the yoke were heavier. For all of Martha’s complaining, I think she enjoys the yoke being a bit heavy. It makes her feel validated. But Jesus has different values. Jesus’ yoke is easy because Jesus wants it that way. Mary has chosen the lighter yoke. Mary has chosen the better part. Mary has chosen to be present to Jesus. It sounds like the choice we would all make, but the truth is we’re all drawn to sit in that pew with Martha. The reality is that Mary and Martha need each other. They complete each other. We need to be hospitable to our brothers and sisters and strangers and orphans and prisoners, and so on. If we’re not, then we have not listened to Jesus... not heard the Gospel. But attention to those in need does not replace worship of God. Nor does worship of God replace care for our brothers and sisters, God’s Children... for all of God’s creatures. I have often heard this Gospel passage presented as a sort of binary choice. We must choose to be like Martha or to be like Mary – choose wisely. But in a Mary-only world folks would go hungry while in a Martha-only world, Jesus and the Gospel would be shoved aside. Our choice is not Martha or Mary – our choice is both... Mary and Martha... in balance with each other. The great commandment for us is to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves. And for each of us, this is a different exercise. Jesus sees us as individuals. Jesus calls to us where we are. In our modern world we often equate being busy with being good... valuable... important. The “Protestant Work Ethic” is part of our heritage. Or we quote the old truism that “idle hands are the devil’s workshop” - a notion that comes to us from Chaucer, not Jesus. Our modern world values activity over prayer. Yet you can’t look at the mess the world is in without recognizing that we need prayer, and we need it desperately. But we are badly out of balance on the Martha-Mary spectrum. Getting into balance does not involve going to the opposite end, just making little moves until balance is found. Our present secular world tells us that the Martha end of the spectrum is where we ought to be. But that is not a message from Jesus. Jesus loves us and wants nothing more that we should love him, love our fellow humans, and love God’s creation. Is there love in Martha’s heart? We don’t really know. If we listen to what she says about her sister, we can hear frustration and anger – lots of it. But love? I think the story is silent about that. Yet without love, as Paul would say, she is just a noisy cymbal. The work of discipleship is love. Anything done in love is discipleship. Anything done without love cannot be discipleship. It would be great if love were as simple as it tends to be in pop music... Easy to fall in love, to stay in love, to love forever... But popular music does not tell us the truth about love. The Letter to the Corinthians tells a more substantial story of love: Love is patient; love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast; it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. This story of Mary and Martha seems to me to embody the great command. Mary shows us the love of God and Martha shows us the love of neighbor. Our task is to unite them.

Friday, July 11, 2025

The Feast of Saint Benedict, July 11, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Josep Martinez-Cubero
The Feast of Saint Benedict, July 11, 2025

Proverbs 2:1-10      
Acts 2:42-47      
Luke 14:27-33



Today we celebrate the feast of Saint Benedict, the father of Western monasticism, who is most known for his rule, “The Rule of Saint Benedict”. Most of what we know about him comes from the second book of the Dialogues of Pope Gregory the Great. The literary genre of The Dialogues was widespread in the middle ages and called “Exemplum” (example or model). These were short stories often using reworked biblical passages and other stories to convey certain truths about the protagonist’s virtues as a way of teaching and motivating. Reading The Life and Miracles of Saint Benedict with our postmodern minds renders it absolutely useless. But a careful reading that digs deeply and creates a metaphorical interpretation can give meaning to our spiritual journey by showing us Benedict the human. Benedict was not born our holy father Benedict. He was a human being who was vulnerable, broken, and weak. He went through periods of temptation, challenges, growth, development, and also setbacks. His was a journey that serves as a model of these periods in our own lives.

Benedict was born around 480 AD to a noble family in Nursia, Italy. He seems to have been deeply religious from an early age. Having completed his primary studies, he was sent to Rome to study, presumably by a demanding father with very strong expectations that he would acquire a good education. His mother, good noble mother that she was, sent him with his childhood nurse as his servant. In Rome, however, Benedict found all manner of moral corruption and excess living and was turned off by it. Was this unique to Rome at a specific time in history? Certainly not. We all live in a world that’s godless and full of moral corruption. Just turn on the news and hear about the last presidential executive order, or the last bill passed by congress to give the very rich more money while so many can’t make ends meet and others suffer hunger, in such a wealthy country. Absolute moral degradation.

And as is often the case, it is this disheartening experience that occasions Benedict’s monastic vocation and the process of detachment necessary to gain self-knowledge and seek God alone. To do so honestly means he has to let go of family expectations and the financial security that comes with it. He renounces his father’s inheritance and begins a vulnerable stage in his life, mostly. He still has his nurse, who goes with him when he decides to leave Rome and travel to Affile, at the foot of a mountain. After some time and a series of events it is clear the nurse represents a maternal attachment of which Benedict decides he needs to let go. But instead of courageously facing his nurse and telling her he needs to be without her, he secretly escapes to Subiaco, about 10 miles away, and leaves her there alone. Not very nice, Benny! So, we are beginning to see a bit of a pattern here. First fleeing from the city and his family, and now secretly fleeing from his childhood nurse. But in God’s economy everything is put to good use. If we are sincere about our desire to live in God’s Reign, God will transform our shortcomings and weakness of character. Benedict will eventually come to champion the practice of stability as a spiritual discipline that fosters inner strength, resilience, not running away, but staying put and facing the challenges and joys of life by relying on God's grace and presence, even in the midst of difficulties.

In Subiaco, he lives in a cave as a hermit for three years, very much in the manner of a tradition he would have been very familiar with- that of the desert elders of Egypt, Palestine and Syria. Romanus, a monk from a nearby monastery, meets him on the way, hears about his desire, clothes him in the habit and serves as his formator, sometimes even breaking the rules of his own monastery, as we formators are known to do at times, in order to provide his novice what he needs. From his monastery, which was at a higher altitude than Benedict’s cave, he would tie some bread for food, and a little bell to the end of a long rope and lower it over the cliff. The little bell would let Benedict know when the bread was there without interrupting his solitude.

The story tells us that one day, as the bread was being lowered, the “ancient enemy of humankind,” threw a stone at the bell and broke it. Who is this “ancient enemy of humankind”? The most obvious answer would be the devil! But Benedict went to a cave to acquire self-knowledge and to do that he has to confront his own demons. The demons most commonly encountered at the beginning of monastic life tend to be those of rigidity, extremism, and control, and they can lead us to anger, self-absorption and the illusion that we need no help from anyone, because, well, leave me alone. I know what I know, and I know what I think is right. Benedict is his own enemy of humankind.

But face his demons Benedict did. He struggled with loneliness, and temptation, and after giving in to the persuasion of an entire community of monks who begged him to be their abbot after their abbot had died, his very severe leadership almost got him killed. They tried to poison him. Not to excuse the behavior of those crazy monks- very bad! Bad monks! But this and other stories show us a fallible human being who through perseverance came to be known as truly holy.

Benedict founded twelve monasteries in Subiaco before moving southward to Monte Cassino, where he built a bigger monastery and wrote his Rule. After his years of solitude, he had renewed his contacts with the Roman clergy and scholars and had access to all the main Christian monastic texts written before him. Benedict’s Rule is heavily influenced by the writings of John Cassian, another monk before his time, who is noted for his role in bringing the ideas and practices of Christian monasticism from the East to the early medieval West. The Rule also shows to have been mostly the editing and reworking of an earlier and very severe monastic rule called “The Rule of the Master”. 

What Benedict adds, omits, rearranges, and revises from The Rule of the Master shows a remarkable mastery of right measure, and discretion. The Rule says we should eat, but not too much. We can drink but not too much. We have to sleep, but not too much. You must work, but not too much. Benedict even regulates the times for prayer, so there has to be an end, and then you work or study. More than a systematic collection of regulations, the Rule of Saint Benedict is more about how to live in community in the love of Christ so that all are treated equally as beloved children of God. It is a reflection steeped in Scripture that guides us through a human journey into the heart of God. It calls for a community where all have the same access to books for their learning; a community where all are offered the same adequate amount of food and drink; a community where all have a voice, even the newest members. It sadly sounds like an ideal that could make many political and religious leaders of our day very uncomfortable. 

The longest chapter of Benedict’s Rule is on the subject of humility- quite a countercultural concept in today’s world where self-promotion and competition are so praised, a sense of entitlement seems to reign supreme. But true humility is not weakness, but a sign of strength, self-awareness, and openness to growth. It requires radical self-honesty, and a total acceptance of who we are with all our unchangeable past, our strengths, weaknesses, successes, and failures. It requires that we surrender and learn to love those parts about ourselves that we think of as unlovable so that our capacity to love can widen. The humble is able to respect the dignity of every human being because the humble knows we are all in need of mercy daily. The humble knows that calling out evil is an act of love, but we must do so without engaging in verbal or social violence. It is only through humility that we can ground ourselves in our true identity as people who are called to overcome evil with good.

The Benedictine call then is to inner transformation and deeper relationship with God. It’s a call to move beyond the superficial to becoming more and more sober so we can see what really is, and approach life with balance, mindfulness, and awareness of our actions and their impact on others. We do this in community, working, praying, obeying, rejoicing, and every day trying again to mirror Jesus’ own life and teachings. And we do it with the confidence that God, who shatters our expectations, and surpasses our understanding, only desires for us to evolve into the fullness of the image in which we are made. Our Holy Father Benedict, pray for us. ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre y del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+

Sunday, July 6, 2025

The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, July 6, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Leo Sevensky, OHC

The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, July 6, 2025

I find myself drawn to the story of Naaman, the commander of the army of the King of Aram, that we heard in this morning’s Old Testament lesson from the Second Book of Kings. It's not often that we read from this book, partly because it's largely a history of battles. But it does contain the wonderful cycle of stories about Elisha, the heir to the prophet Elijah. And those stories, like those surrounding Elijah, have become models or prototypes for the lives of other holy people, particularly the saints and most especially for the life of Saint Benedict which we read in the Dialogues of Gregory the Great. It's hard to take them seriously at times, at least not as history as we understand it, but they are stories that tell us about the power of God to transform lives even through the actions of some wild and difficult people, of whom Elisha is one. I must remind myself that, whatever Elisha’s prophetic powers and ministry, he's not someone to be messed with. Let’s not forget the story of Elisha (2 Kings 2:23-24) who was being mocked by a group of boys because he was bald. Elisha simply calls two she-bears to attack and maul the boys…forty-two in all. That'll teach them to mock a prophet! Yes, Elisha is not someone to be treated lightly. And maybe neither is God. 

The story of Naaman as we have it is quite touching. Naaman is a great man, a great military leader and a Gentile. And apparently an idolater, as were all the Arameans. And we hear that he has developed leprosy. This is not what we today understand as leprosy, but rather a skin condition which renders him unclean and perhaps considered cursed. As the story develops, Naaman hears of a prophet in Samaria who could cure him of his skin disease. After a little palaver about political misunderstandings between Naaman and the king of Israel, Naaman goes to meet Elisha. Alas, he doesn't even get that far. Elisha sends a messenger to him and tells him to go wash in the river Jordan seven times and his flesh will be restored and he would be clean. Then things get interesting. Naaman is a very great man. A particularly important man. He is used to being, and expects to be, treated with attention and great care. And he's not at all happy about being dismissed by the prophet for refusing to see him in person. As he says: “I thought that for me he would surely come out and stand and call upon the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot and cure the leprosy!” Why wash in the Jordan river when Naaman had perfectly good rivers in Damascus? So, as the scripture tells us, “He turned and went away in a rage.” But his servants approached him—I would imagine very gingerly—and  suggested that had the prophet asked him to do something quite difficult, would he not have done it? Why not do something as simple as wash in the Jordan and be clean? To his great credit, Naaman overcame his anger and his hurt pride and washed in the Jordan and was cleansed. The scripture tells us: “His flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.


The story doesn’t end there and is well worth reading in its entirety. But what we read today tells us, or at least tells me, something important about faith and about life. And that is that our faith, our religion, our spirituality is perhaps something quite simpler than we usually imagine.

Not everybody is religiously obsessive or overly scrupulous. But I certainly was when I was young and probably am still to an uncomfortable extent. And my hunch is that I'm not alone in this. As a young boy, for example, I used to worry as I prayed to the Father or to the Son,  that the Holy Ghost might be a little unhappy with me because I wasn't giving Him/Her/It enough attention. I often worried about getting it right, doing it right, believing aright and sometimes even acting aright. I was on the lookout for new devotions, new paths of prayer, novel approaches to what we now term spirituality. Let me be clear: none of these concerns is bad in and of itself, though they did drive me to get a graduate degree in the philosophy of religion so that I could figure out what was indeed right and correct and therefore do it, be it, or have it as if it were some kind of possession. And I don't regret that, at least not totally. But like Naaman, I often thought that there had to be more to it, that there had to be the calling on the name of the Lord and the waving of the hands before the desired effect. But over the years I’ve come to think that maybe it's much simpler than all that. At least at its core.

It appears that all traditions at some point try to summarize the deep truth out of which they've grown. Christianity certainly has, and it should not be lost on us. If fifty years ago you had come to an Episcopal service of Holy Communion you would have heard, Sunday after Sunday, the summary of the law:

Hear what our Lord Jesus saith: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets. Matthew 22:37-40

There you have it. Is it enough? Yes and no. This is only the starting point, and it takes a lifetime or perhaps an eternity to unpack it, embrace it and in a sense become it, live it, be it. But if this is all you knew, it would be enough.

The Christian tradition is filled with such gems of spiritual wisdom:  “God is love.” “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”  “Believe on the Lord Jesus and you shall be saved.” Or as we heard today in Paul’s Letter to the Galatians: “Bear one another's burdens, and in this way, you will fulfill the law of Christ.”  These are all touchstones of our Christian path. 

And not it’s just the Christian tradition that has such summaries. The Jewish tradition, for example, is rich with stories and tales and homely advice. One of the earliest stories paralleling Jesus’ two great commandments is that of Rabbi Hillel the Elder who lived roughly around the time of Jesus:  The story goes:

A non-Jew once came before Rabbi Shammai with a curious demand. He wanted Shammai to teach him the entire Torah while the non-Jew stood on one foot. Knowing the impossibility of such a thing, Shammai rejected him. The questioner then took his request to Rabbi Hillel the Elder. Hillel gently told him, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. That is the entire Torah, and the rest is its commentary. Now go and study.”

We see clearly that this summary of the law, if you will, is not an end but a beginning to be unpacked and understood and lived. “Now go and study,” concludes Rabbi Hillel. The work is just beginning, but my, what a great starting point.

In our day we might call these sayings or summaries ‘memes’ or memory devices which set us on the right road. That certainly is one of the functions of the creed that we will recite together after I finish. This year we are celebrating the seventeen hundredth anniversary of the Nicene Creed, at least in its first iteration. People often roll their eyes when we come to the creed and say they don't believe it, or they don't get it or that they can't truthfully say it. I've been there at times, but I now find the creed a precious gift to us not as a final and complete statement but, like the summary of the law given us by Jesus or the ethical teachings of Hillel, a starting point for a process that goes deeper and the deeper into the realm of the Spirit and into that process of transformation or metamorphosis that we call redemption and sanctification and wholeness.

A few weeks ago, I posted on my Facebook page an excerpt from an essay by our friend Father Martin Smith. In an article he wrote some years ago for the Washington DC diocesan newspaper, he articulates four ways of understanding or approaching what a creed might mean for us today. He likens the creed first to an entrance ticket. Originally created to summarize for converts what kind of drama baptism was going to let them into, reciting the creed admitted them to the drama. But it wasn’t the drama itself, it was just the entrance ticket. The real drama is here and now.

Second, it has been, as it were, a coin or currency of the Christian family for seventeen centuries. If for no other reason, we should honor this coin or currency passed down to us, one which has held together a disparate family across time and space and cultures and of which we too are part. 

Thirdly, Martin tells us that the creed is like the table of contents in a book of poetry. It is a list of first lines, but no one line is a whole poem in itself. For that we must dig deeper and do some hard work. And that again is the work of a lifetime, as both Rabbi Jesus and Rabbi Hillel tell us. 

Finally, Martin reminds us that the creed is a song. It is a song of God's love and of God's compassion and actions and of God's intention to bind us together as one in the face of much evil and ill will in us and around us. It is a song of resistance. And it is above all a love song. How we need such a song of loving resistance today. I used to attend a church in Boston where we always sang the creed on Sundays to a wonderful plainsong melody. We can't do that right now. But we can monotone it as is often done with the Apostle’s Creed. And since it's summer and since it's the Creed’s seventeen hundredth birthday, why don't we? So please turn in your Holy Eucharist booklets to page 2 for the text and stand. Let us to confess our hope, our faith, our love story, and our resistance in the words of the ancient creed as we sing it…and feel free to add whatever harmonies you like: 

We believe in one God…