The Second Sunday of Easter, April 27, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bruno Santana, OHC

The Second Sunday of Easter, April 27, 2025

• Acts 5:27-32
• Revelation 1:4-8
• John 20:19-31

Click here for an audio of the sermon

My Lord and My God !

“My Lord and my God” we are abide in You in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen 

Most of you know by memory, some parables of Jesus, biblical verses, sayings from a prophet or disciple. 

 

If you think of Saint Peter you will immediately remember his great confession: “You are the Christ,  the son of the living God (Mt 16:16). 

Saint Thomas also had a great confession: “My Lord and my God”,  but you'll notice that Thomas's confession has never been spoken with great adulation in the church. In fact, I often think that poor Thomas has been maligned by every Preacher in the pulpit for his one moment of weakness of unbelief or disbelief.

We’ve called him “doubting Thomas” and I relegated him to the back of all the Saints.

The reality is that Thomas is very much like you and me. Someone that always is seeking, questioning and we as Church also seek and question. 

He had a thousand questions. If we Look through the gospels, we will see that all the time he asked Jesus something. Look at the gospel of John 14:5 , Jesus said I'm going to the Father and Thomas asked  "Lord, we do not know where you are going. So how can we know the way?  So , He's always questioning, he's always seeking. 

Let’s be fair to him and he is not the daunting Thomas, he is a great Apostle.

I will give you some examples through the gospels comparing with other biblical characters.

Look at Peter. He denied Jesus three times but we don't call him Peter, the great Denier.

In (John 1:46) Nathanael says, refer to Jesus: “Can anything good come from Nazareth? but we don't call Nathaniel the great scoffer. 

Look at James and John (Matthew 20:20-23 and Mark 10:35-45). They asked Jesus to sit one on the right and the other one on the  left in his glory and we don’t call James and John as the great opportunists in the gospel.

What about the rest of the disciples? They abandoned Jesus at gethsemane and we don't call them the great cowards. 

And poor Thomas unfortunately, we labeled him as doubting Thomas.

Doubt wasn’t unique to Thomas and we will see in today’s gospel that we have 2 parts. 

The first part, when Jesus comes, it is still Easter Sunday and the 10 disciples were there but Thomas wasn't.

The second part, 1 week later, is the second Sunday of Easter. Thomas was there. Is important to see that difference.

Today's gospel starts on verse 19. but before that, verse 18, Mary of Magdala goes to the disciples and says : "I have seen the Lord”. but they didn't believe her and Jesus said that he was going to rise. 

In the first part of the gospel , the doors were locked for fear of the Jews. Jesus appears, says, “Peace be with you.” and show them his hands and his side. Why does he do this? Because Jesus knew they doubted. 

The second part is 1 week later, the second Sunday of Easter. Thomas was there (from verse 25). The disciples said to him “We have seen the Lord. 

So, it is fair, if Mary of Magdala saw the Lord. If the disciples saw the Lord. So Thomas needed to see the Lord too. And if we were there, we would want to see the Lord too and It's absolutely fine.

The verse 27 says:  “Then he (Jesus) said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it on my side. Do not doubt but believe.”

I want to explain this phrase (Do not doubt but believe). If we look the original text in Greek (καὶ μὴ γίνου ἄπιστος ἀλλὰ πιστός) we will find the word  ἄπιστος (apistos) and  πιστός (pistos). Apistos means unbelieving , Pistos means believe. The best translation from the original text (from koine Greek) is “ Do not be unbelieving any more but believe). Doubt in Greek is διστάζω (distázō) that also appears in the Gospel in other biblical passages.

The meaning of the word believe (Pistos) in the gospel of Saint John it means abiding with Jesus, having a relationship with Jesus. We will find through the Gospel of Saint John when Jesus says these words: “you must abide in me.”  

So when Jesus says to Thomas: “Do not be unbelieving any more but believe”  What Jesus was really saying to Thomas is:  believe in the relationship that we have, which has not died and not ended at the cross. Jesus was encouraging Thomas in his moments of weakness. This is love.

So this relationship between Jesus and Thomas now gets repaired. In other words, Jesus reminds him: I love you Thomas, I want to encourage you. Thomas feels the need to respond and opens his heart to Jesus and he says to him in faith (pistos), in belief, in love, in relationship:  “My Lord and my God”. This is a great confession of faith. Thomas now is renewing that relationship with Jesus.

These are such loaded words.  “ My lord and my God”. “MY” (he says) indicates a relationship, abiding. The response of Thomas in other words is: “Jesus, I love you”. 

My brothers and My sisters. There is a Thomas in all of us and I know that you, me, we all have moments of weakness, lack of faith, sins and I understand all of that. 

Today Jesus says to you, to me, to us: don't judge yourself by that one moment of weakness that you have. Judge yourself by my great love for you.  Mary, John, Peter, Joseph, Joshua,  Sean, whatever your name is, Judge yourself by my great love for you. That even in our moments of weakness, I encourage you. I love you.

When we receive the love of Jesus, like Thomas, we also respond: my Lord and my God. It's a confession of a relationship. 

These words give us strength in moments of unbelief and God is always stretching out his hand of love to us.  

To conclude , let's have a minute of silence and think about those moments of your own feelings, your own doubts,  your own sinfulness and in your heart join me prayerfully silently saying “my Lord and my God”.  Amen. 

Easter Day, April 20, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Aidan Owen, OHC

The Sunday of the Resurrection, April 20, 2025

• Luke 24:1-12

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“Why do you look for the living among the dead?” It’s a startling question. After all, they watched while he was tortured. They heard him cry out with his last breath. They placed his limpid body in that gash in the rock. The earth itself twisted in sympathy with his wounds.

They are not yet ready to let go. Who would be? So they come to the tomb at the quietest moment of the day, that soft time when the gauze between this world and the next is thinnest. They know he’s dead, but maybe they can glimpse the shadow of their friend and teacher moving in the distance.

Which one of us would not do the same? Which one of us hasn’t caught ourselves, in an unguarded moment, thinking “I can’t wait to tell her about this!” only to remember that our mother, or friend, or teacher is dead?

Only to have the grief cut, like a hot knife, once more. It takes a long time, sometimes a lifetime, for the soul to accept what the mind knows—that he is gone.

How absurd this needling question! Why do you look for the living among the dead? For anyone who has lost someone dear to them knows that the dead are never really dead at all. Their shades rise like mist over the river of our lives.

Maybe the soul is wiser than the mind. Maybe the stubborn clinging to the life of those we love is the soul’s proclamation of the resurrection. Maybe the soul knows what the messengers proclaim—he is not here! He is risen as he said, and he has gone before you on the way. He is not among the dead, because in Christ there are no dead. In Christ all are alive, all is life.

The empty tomb has become the womb from which new life—the life of the Crucified and Risen One—flows into the world. Tomb and womb are one, and death itself is a birthing and an unbinding.

We live today in a world of staggering loss. Loss upon loss, piled high like so many corpses on a field of battle. We will never recover much of what has gone and is going. When the maples are gone, as they almost certainly will be, we will never have them back again. When the last polar bear dies, that majestic creature will live only in memory. Even if Kilmar Garcia makes it back from El Salvador, there are many thousands who will not.

What does resurrection look like in the face of this flood of loss? How do we proclaim the good news of God in Jesus Christ as the darkness grows deeper and as the light seems further away than ever?

Like us, Jesus’ disciples knew something of the grinding violence of empire. In the face of that juggernaut, God offers the empty tomb as the proclamation of her faithfulness and love. We might see in the spaciousness of the tomb, in its largeness, an example of what it means to live the resurrected life of Christ right here and now. Perhaps we are called, like the tomb, to hollowness.

In the words of Christine Lore Webber’s poem:

Some of you I will hollow out.

I will make you a cave.

I will carve you so deep the stars will shine in your darkness.

You will be a bowl.

You will be the cup in the rock collecting rain.

I will do this because the world needs the hollowness of you.

I will do this for the space that you will be.

I will do this because you must be large.

A passage.

People will find their way through you.

God does not save us from our lives or from the times in which we live. Rather, God gives us the strength to live our lives fully, to drink them to the dregs. God raises us up in the midst of our times to be witnesses to the life that really is life. God does not stop the violence of empire that bears down upon us. Instead, God gives us the assurance of a love that far outstrips all that empire can do, so that we know, deep in the bones, that though the rulers and powers of this world may kill our bodies, they cannot touch our souls.

And some of us God hollows out with new life. Hollows us to be a tomb in which to lay the polar bear and the maple. Hollows us to be a bell tolling in witness to the lives of the innocents of Gaza. Hollows us to be a throat calling out for justice, wailing in lamentation, and singing songs of hope and resistance, a throat proclaiming the great and unending alleluia of God, of life flowing from the heart of death, like the waters of Eden.

Some of us God hollows out to be a passage through which to lead God’s people from the bondage of empire into the promised land of freedom and life. Bow down to the mystery, my brothers and sisters and nonbinary siblings. Bow down in your sorrow. Bow down in your longing for a new world. Bow down in your joy and your fear and your amazement at this new thing God is doing. Bow your head to the ground, stretch out your arms in freedom and surrender. Press your heart to the ground and feel the earth rise up to meet the pounding rhythm in your chest.

In Christ there is no death—there is only the life of God poured, for a moment, into these miraculous bodies of ours and then returning at last to its source. Nothing is ever really lost. All is bound up in the love of the God who loves us into life. When they have vanished from this earth, the maples will pepper the heavens of God’s memory. The polar bear’s cry will thread the song of God’s love. The hearts of this world’s innocent dead will beat forever in the sacred heart of Jesus, joined in the great work of love and redemption that will far outlast our brief lives.

In the midst of death we are in life. Always, always new and deeper life. This is the promise of Jesus’ resurrection. We must mourn our dead and then let them go, knowing that they are now closer to us than our own breath. For the Living One has gone before us to light the way to God’s new creation, to the ever-deeper life breaking out in the midst of death and destruction like the stars in the night sky.

No matter the state of the world or our own lives, Jesus Christ is indeed risen today and every day, bringing to birth God’s great work of love. We are that work. And the work

goes ever on.  

Maundy Thursday, April 17, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Leo Sevensky, OHC

Maundy Thursday, April 17, 2025

• Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14
• 1 Corinthians 11:23-26
• John 13:1-17, 31b-35

Click here for an audio of the sermon

As my brothers can attest, I am something of a liturgy wonk. I find reading about the development of public worship in our Christian tradition to be both fascinating and, for the most part, edifying. And this should come as no surprise. After all, I'm the kid who at the age of 12 or 13 bought four leather-bound volumes of the Roman Breviary at the local Salvation Army thrift store for 25 cents a volume. Even at that age, I could recognize a bargain. The only challenge was that the books were in Latin. So I started to study the language bit by bit. It's a long story, but I was able to swap the four volumes for the one-volume Monastic Diurnal in English. It was a swap, I’m afraid, that I'm not exactly proud of. Of course, reading about liturgies is quite different from taking part in them, though I rarely passed up a chance to attend one. And now with live stream and YouTube, one can explore an exotic array of liturgical expressions. And I confess I've done it and still do.

I was surprised then when I recently discovered a rather arcane ritual that takes place on Maundy Thursday at Durham Cathedral in the north of England. The ritual, known as the Judas cup ceremony and described in the Cathedral service leaflet, has its origins in the 14th century. It was abolished at the time of the Reformation but was reinstated a generation or so ago. The Dean and members of the cathedral chapter gather around a small table. The Dean then takes a sip of wine from the cup, one of those shallow cups without handles, and then addresses the individual members of the chapter saying to them, “One of you will betray me.” Each member replies with “Surely not I” as they too take a sip of wine from the cup mirroring the scene from the Last Supper. The description continues: “Research from theologian Prof. Douglas Davies notes how the cup used in the 14th century featured the face of Judas at the bottom of the bowl, so when monks drank from it, they could see their own faces reflected into that of the traitor.”

This ceremony, this ritual of the Judas cup, speaks directly to the ambiguity and the power of this night, especially when juxtaposed with our drinking from another cup, the cup of salvation, at the bottom of which is the image of our saving Lord. For when we look into both these cups, we see something about ourselves, truths that are perhaps diametrically opposed and from which we shrink back from acknowledging, but which nonetheless capture the tension of our human condition.

First there is the image of Judas the traitor. Judas, a member of Jesus’ inner cohort. Judas, the treasurer and money manager. Judas, who for all we know had his own history of abuse, disappointments, and woes. And at some level, each of us sees ourselves in that Judas cup. If we live long enough--and it doesn't have to be very long-- we come to know ourselves as betrayers: betrayers of others, even (perhaps especially) those close to us. Betrayers of ourselves when we fail to live up to or to  act in harmony with what we know to be our better selves, our treasured values,  our own well-being. And then of course there is the betrayal of God wherein we, at one level or another, reject God's love and the path it opens for us, most often because we're too afraid of its demands, too afraid of what it might call forth in us. Yes, the Judas cup. We know it all too well. 

But there's that other cup. I'll call it the Jesus cup. It is the cup given to us by him on this night in which he was betrayed, a cup to stare into as we drink. And the promise made with that cup lies at its bottom. It is the very image given us at the bottom of the cup. It is the image of Jesus who is himself the perfect image of God and who reminds us that we too share that cup with him, we who are made in the image and likeness of God…just as Judas was. There is a teaching in Buddhism which talks about discovering one's true face. I wonder if this cup isn't our Christian correlate. Staring into the cup of Jesus, which is the cup of suffering as well as of joy, we catch a glimpse of our own true face which we and our human society have been working to distort and mar. The good news is that we and they have not been totally successful. Our face may remain wizened by age and experience, but it is redeemed and preserved by a great love, the same love that led Jesus to the cross. It is that cross that leads Jesus to the grave and to the overcoming of death that we celebrate and participate in over these Three Great Days.

I used to worry about how we should properly celebrate these days. And being a liturgy wonk, I used to have the right answers. At first, of course, it was 16th  century Tridentine Roman ritual. Or maybe it was 4th century Jerusalem. Or perhaps it was in those exotic processions that are held to this day in Mediterranean and Hispanic cultures where hooded marchers carry larger than life-sized statues of our Lord and his Sorrowful Mother. Or was it in my youth when we buried of a statue of the dead Jesus in a symbolic tomb on Good Friday at 3:00? Or crouching under the burial shroud as in the Eastern Byzantine tradition? But whatever the way we observe these days, I think the lesson is the same: This is not something we do. This is something God does. 

Many years ago, I was on a private directed retreat and was assigned to meditate on the gospel passage of the taking down from the cross. I was encouraged to become imaginatively engaged with the passage, and as I did, I found myself increasingly anxious. There was Mary at the foot of the cross with some disciples, struggling to get the body down from the cross. People were running around helter-skelter. And there was Mary holding the body of her son. And as is my wont, I started to say: “What should I do? What should I do? I don't know what I should do.” And Mary looked up at me and said: “Why don't you just stand there and watch? Why don't you just stand there and watch?”  I've taken this advice to heart, though not, I fear, often enough. But I think it's good advice for us all as we enter this time, these days, this journey, this mystical accompaniment. Our first and primary duty is to stand there and watch. To bear witness. To see and hear and touch and taste. We don't have to manufacture a religious experience. If God wants to gift us with that, God will do so. I've learned over the years to trust that liturgy, in all its diversity and power, can carry us to where we need to go.

We're entering a strange time right now, entering what is often called liturgical time, Kairos time, God's time. It is time not measured by the clock but measured via all the actions and emotions of these days. In a sense, we now leave the calendar at  April 17, in the year of our Lord 2025, that is today, and we won't pick it up again until Easter Sunday morning, April 20, 2025, when we celebrate with another series of liturgical observances the festival of our deliverance and freedom as beloved children of God.

Some of you may remember the television series The Twilight Zone. It started airing about 1960 and went for five seasons. It's considered one of the groundbreaking science fiction/alternative fiction dramas of our age. The genius behind it was a man named Rod Serling. At the beginning of each episode Mr. Serling would offer an introduction. It changed over the years, but one of my favorite forms of it is the following: 

There is fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone.

The Twilight Zone is not perhaps a perfect description of these three days, this Sacred Triduum, but it comes close. For in these days, we are cast into light as well as darkness, we are suspended between our fears and our hopes and our deepest knowing, and we are invited and encouraged to dwell there imaginatively, with loving curiosity and open hearts and minds. And by the end of this Triduum, in ways large or subtle, God will bring you and me out of the twilight and into the dawn of another Easter morning. Yes: fire, sunrise, flowers, and feasting. That’s the way it happens. And thank God that it does happen. So let us begin, my friends, let us be on our way. The Lord awaits our arrival.

The Fifth Sunday in Lent C, April 6, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Francis Beckham, OHC

The Fifth Sunday in Lent, April 6, 2025

• Isaiah 43:16-21
• Philippians 3:4b-14
• John 12:1-8

Click here for an audio of the sermon

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you, O God, my Creator and my Sustainer. Amen.

In these waning days of Lent, it’s been good for me to sit with this morning’s readings. For me, each one reflects in a special way an important perspective on the transforming potential of penance that, taken together, paint a remarkably meaningful picture of God’s promise of hope for us – a promise I know we are all yearning for.

Lent, like life, is meant to be a journey out of brokenness and into wholeness, with reflection, prayer, and acts of service as our guides. The fruits of this journey, of course, are greater knowledge of self and of God, and closer communion with creation and one another – including those we know, as well as those we do not.

And, so, with only seven days to go until Holy Week, our readings seem to be urging us to remain focused in this final stretch. For my part, I detect three key reminders. The first is tomaintain a firm and faithful hope in the future God has already prepared for us. “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old,” God declares through the prophet Isaiah. “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?”

The second is to re-frame the view of my past self – especially my ‘worldlier’ achievements and ambitions, as well as my old self-doubts, criticisms, and disappointments – in light of the Cross; that is to say, as being worth ‘letting-go-of’ for the sake of drawing closer to God.

And finally, despite my anxiousness to skip the perils and pain of the Passion, Cross, and Tomb by flying directly to Easter morning, to instead slow down, and heed the example of Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus, by embracing the profound holiness of the present moment.

In the second reading, we hear from Saint Paul, who, writing to the church at Philippi, urges them to join him in imitating Jesus’ complete self-emptying. He begins by reflecting on his own past, telling them how he now views all of it – from his respectable Hebrew lineage to his righteous observance of the Law – as nothing but loss because of Christ. “[T]his one thing I do,” Paul says, “forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.” Despite what many in our culture would have us believe, Paul’s words are a reminder that there’s no future in the past.

With Paul’s plea for us to let go of our fleshy pasts in favor of attaining the heavenly future assured in Isaiah, we’re left with one remaining ‘tense’ to consider; it’s the one that, more often than not, tends to get overlooked. And that’s the present tense. Or, in our case today, the Present-Lent tense.

 

Far from being merely a stopover between the past and future, the present matters very much. The future, although it’s our goal, is nevertheless a mystery. Despite its blessed assurance, what we will be has not yet been revealed. And the past is no less an enigma.

While it’s true that we’ve all spent most of our lives in the past, the vision of our former selves tends to grow ever dimmer and distorted with the passage of time. Lately, I have become increasingly aware that, for all points and purposes, I hardly recognize the person Iused to think of as myself; in many ways, he’s as much a stranger to me today as the person I’ve yet to grow into, although, there remains something familiar about him. So, the present is the only place we can truly live; it’s the bridge between who we’ve been and who we’re bound to become; it’s where we encounter God, process our past experiences, and become ready for what lies ahead. It’s no coincidence that, five times a day here at the monastery, the bell calls us back from our distractions and into the presence of God and each other in this chapel.

Today’s gospel reading shows us the sacredness of ‘Right Now’, the in-between space, and why being present to it is what gives meaning to both the past and the future. I’m incredibly moved by Saint John’s account of Jesus’ time at the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus because, in so many ways, it’s an extraordinarily gentle and humane transition from his ministry of proclamation and healing to his time of suffering and sacrifice. In the preceding passages, John tells us that, ever since he raised Lazarus from the dead, the Pharisees have been openly calling for Jesus’ arrest and death, and he knows it. He’s been lying low with the disciples in Ephraim, a town described as being “in the region of the wilderness,” but with the Passover approaching, Jesus now has to begin his journey back toward Jerusalem. His time is very near – but, for the moment at least – it’s not here yet. Jesus can still be in the present with his friends for a bit longer, and he has no intention of denying them – or himself – that gift.

John tells us, “[T]hey gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him.” This is neither a scene of hiding out in the wilderness, nor one of making a self-sacrificing entrance into Jerusalem. This is an immensely relational scene of friends spending an evening together, living in the moment, giving and receiving hospitality, sharing a meal, and enjoying one another’s company. In my imagination of this story, the mood must have been like that of any farewell dinner; that is to say, a bittersweet time of joy tinged with grief at the impending departure of someone who is dearly loved, who is here with us now, but who we know won’t be for much longer. And, even as we try to focus on being present, we’re far too aware that the hours, minutes, and even seconds are ticking down till we know we won’t have them with us anymore; and while we aren’t ready to let them go, we know we can’t keep them.

I suppose that, among those in the house, there must’ve been varying degrees of comprehension about exactly how final this gathering was. But Mary, at least, grasps the gravity of the situation. Knowing that Jesus is soon to be taken from her, she uses this precious opportunity to express her love for him in the most meaningful way she can. After all, Jesus has done so much for Mary, including giving her own brother, who was dead, back to her. Her act of anointing Jesus’ feet is profoundly intimate. It is both an act of service, and a burial ritual. By taking his foot into her hand Mary is literally holding onto Jesus in this moment while it lasts. By using costly oil, she is expressing how deeply she treasures her friend beyond any amount of money; he is literally priceless to her, worth more than anything the world values or esteems. When we consider how much any of us would give to keep a loved one with us for just a little while longer, it’s no wonder Mary does this. But as the twentieth-century essayist and diarist Anaïs Nin writes, “You can’t save people. You can only love them.” And that’s exactly what Mary does.

Of course, if Mary is among those who recognize the sanctity of this moment, Judas undoubtedly represents what it means not to appreciate the value of the present. Naturally, we resent Judas for dishonoring Mary’s grief-laden act of love. Inextricably and unrepentantly wedded to the world’s flesh, Judas is unable to appreciate – or probably even to recognize – the profound spiritual and physical communion taking place in his presence. Using charity as a pretense, he protests what he perceives to be a waste of a large sum of money that could be going to the poor, if by ‘poor’ we mean ‘Judas’ bank account’. (Incidentally, a pound of nard, or spikenard, costs more than $1,200 today; and its price in first-century Judea would likely have been far greater.)

But even if we’re not as overtly driven by greed as Judas, it’s still important for each of us to be on guard against becoming so wrapped up in our own self-interests, or even just in the practical concerns of life, that we deprive ourselves and those we care about of our full attention, thoughtfulness, and acts of love. Jesus’ response to Judas, of course, puts it best: “Leave her alone,” he says. “She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.”

“You do not always have me.” And, we do not always have Lent. While we are called always to live in the spirit of Lent (Saint Benedict is very clear on this point), this season is only one of several on the Church’s calendar. Along with Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, and Pentecost, Lent is with us only for a little while each year, so that we may feel the urgency of reaping its particular graces. So, before things heat up next week, may we use what remains of this holy time to dwell with Jesus in Bethany, recognizing and cherishing his presence in those we care for and love – embracing their brokenness, appreciating their gifts, and being grateful for having them with us on our journeys into wholeness. And may the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, be with us and remain with us always. Amen.