Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
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Today the Church is observing our third annual Religious Life Sunday, when those of us who are members of religious orders and other covenanted Christian communities speak up about the vowed and consecrated life among Episcopalians and Anglicans, sharing our stories and, just maybe, inspiring anyone who feels they may have a religious vocation to explore their potential calling in more depth. In fact, our own Brother Ephrem is at the Church of Saint Thomas in New York City this morning giving a Sunday Theology Talk on “The Order of the Holy Cross and the Reason for Monks.” It is no doubt riveting. In shining a spotlight on the religious life, we also hope to shed the unfortunate label of “best-kept secret in the Episcopal Church.” After all, the religious life is good for the Church, and good things are meant to be shared! (No one lights a lamp and places it under a bushel basket, et cetera.)
While the existence of sisters, friars, nuns, and monks still comes as news to many in the Anglican Communion, we actually aren’t new at all. Heeding Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel reading, Anglican religious communities have been laboring in earnest since the early nineteenth century to “bring good news to the poor … proclaim release to the captives and recovery [to the afflicted] … [and help] the oppressed go free.” All the way back in 1848, the Community of Saint Mary the Virgin was founded in England and, among its countless ministries, ran schools and mission homes for the young, the poor, and the elderly. When the Order of the Holy Cross was established on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1884 – with a significant amount of support and influence from the then-already decades-old Community of Saint John Baptist – direct services to immigrants and the poor were among our top priorities. There are many other orders, as well as numerous communities of dispersed people living lives committed to prayer, service, and Gospel-witness within the Church.
As religious, we work to make our presence seen and felt within the Episcopal Church, as well as in the larger society. The vows we take – usually Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience, though in our Benedictine case they are Obedience, Stability, and Conversion of Life – are not meant to separate us from the wider Body of Christ, but rather to bind us more closely through our common baptismal covenant – that is, they help us to live more deeply, authentically, and prophetically into the Way of Jesus, just as many of our siblings in faith do through marriage, ordained ministry, or fidelity to their families, friends, and communities. And, though recognized by, and affiliated with, the Church through our bishop visitors, we live out our vowed lives independently of ecclesial institutional structures. We are governed by our own rules of life, constitutions, and customals rather than diocesan authorities or church committees.
That last bit is important. Long experience has shown that when a person is seeking to grow more deeply into who they were created to be, the quest – regardless of how or where it begins – must ultimately become a search for truth. Truth, like spring water, wells up from a source, and it is only at that source that we can hope to find it. In time, and often through much trial and suffering, we come to learn that the Source of all Truth is God Alone. While the Truth of God surely flows forth in an infinite number of streams, the Ultimate Source is always and forever God, who can only be encountered in the deepest parts of ourselves, the Still Small Voice. Institutions like the Church can certainly help point us there, but only the heart’s desire, yearning to be reunited with its Creator, can finally lead us into the Living Waters of Truth. It's for this reason mystics and seekers have always fled the establishments of their times and places to find God within themselves, including Saint Benedict and Saint Francis, as well as our monastic forebears in the deserts of Egypt and Syria like Saints Anthony and Pachomius. And it’s a good thing they did, because each of these holy women and men helped the institutional Church reclaim parts of the Truth in their own prophetic and divinely inspired ways. Following their examples – and those of countless others – religious communities continue operating from the periphery to be better positioned to spot – and help address – those places in the Church and in society that might be in need of a little (or even a lot) of nudging back toward the right track.
This, of course, is not always easy, because as we all know, if there’s one thing an errant institution dislikes, it’s being told the truth about itself. As a former coworker in a corporate communications setting once told me, “You don’t talk to the Big Brick Building, the Big Brick Building talks to you.” We see something like this play out in our Gospel reading from Luke. The passage we just heard happens to be the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee. The verses immediately preceding it describe Jesus’ temptation, or testing, in the desert. (Or, if I may take a monastic liberty, his novitiate.) Now filled with the Holy Spirit and fortified by his time of formation, Jesus is ready to commence his ministry of proclaiming the Reign of God. He makes his way to Nazareth, stands up in front of his own hometown congregation and reads aloud God’s preferential option for the poor and oppressed in the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah, before boldly proclaiming, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” In the passage that follows today’s reading, the crowd initially speaks well of him and are “amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth,” but things deteriorate quickly as they realize Jesus isn’t just speaking prophetically; he’s speaking prophetically to them, and within seven short verses, they’re “filled with rage,” rising up, driving him out of town, and attempting to hurl him headlong off a cliff.
Speaking the Truth, it would seem, can be a risky business.
The simple act of calling his own people back to their professed faith, to urge them not to neglect their obligation to the neediest and most vulnerable in their midst, was enough to almost get Jesus killed right then and there. We could almost chalk this scene up to hyperbole for the sake of making a point, if it weren’t for the fact that, even today, we are still witnessing the powerful becoming “filled with rage” at those pleading for mercy toward the poor, the oppressed, and – we may add – to the scared. Tragically, it’s really no stretch at all to imagine such a bishop – I mean, prophet – being run out of town or worse by those whose egos have been rendered too fragile by a lifelong rejection of grace, and whose humanity is seemingly too clouded by idolatrous lust for power, money, and flattery to recognize the gift being offered them by those courageous – and caring – enough to speak the Truth of the Love of God to them. For such poor souls, we must never cease praying, and we must never lose hope in the possibility of the Holy Spirit stirring their hearts to conversion and compassion. In God all things are possible. To quote Saint Francis, “I have been all things unholy. If God can work through me, He can work through anyone.”
Those of us in the religious life must always remember that, as members of our own institutions, complete with power structures and internal politics, we are not immune from the danger of losing the Truth of our vocations – that is, Jesus – to ‘establishment creep’. For that, we must rely first and foremost on cultivating and nurturing our personal prayer lives. We also listen to those whom we serve and partner in ministry with to help hold us accountable when we grow a bit too inward-looking or self-serving, as can easily happen. After all, as Saint Paul reminds each of us in our second reading, our life in Christ isn’t about us; we must have a constant desire to honor the one Body into which we have all been baptized by caring for, lifting up, empowering, affirming, and – most of all – loving each and every person.
We must especially favor and protect those members of our Body who are most vulnerable, including immigrants, refugees, and those demonized and targeted simply because of who they identify themselves to be, or because of who they are moved by God to love. “If one member suffers,” Paul tells us, “all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” That means no voice must ever be silenced, especially when those from outside of our usual associations speak a Truth that may not be convenient or comfortable for us to hear. In fact, especially when it’s something we don’t want to hear. To reject the Truth is to reject the One from whom Truth springs – and God always prefers speaking Truth through those who are the least visible and the least valued in eyes of the world. Saint Benedict, aware of the dangers posed to monastics by insular thinking, advises that if a visiting monk “censures or points out anything reasonably and with the humility of charity, let the Abbot consider prudently whether perhaps it was for that very purpose that the Lord sent him” (RB 61).
The Love of God is the only source of Truth. And the Truth of God is Love. To hear and believe God’s Truth is to know God. Jesus shows us that Truth enters our world through those outside of institutional structures of power – through the weak, the vulnerable, the oppressed, the maligned, and the humble. This has always been God’s preferred way of giving us Truth. On this Religious Life Sunday, I pray that all of us – regardless of how God has inspired us to live into our shared baptismal covenant – will have the grace, strength, and courage to discern and witness God’s Truth to the powers of this world. Our baptism in Christ demands that we must always speak with love, sometimes gently and sometimes boldly, but we can never, ever, be silent when the cry for mercy is heard. To be silent is to deprive the world of the Truth of the Love of God in Christ Jesus that it so desperately needs. And we can be saved in no other way.
May
peace and all that is good be with us and all those whom we love, and may God’s
everlasting Love and mercy be poured upon our Church, our nation, and our
world. Amen.
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