Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Randy Greve
The Feast of the Anniversary of the Dedication of the Monastic Church of Saint Augustine, October 5, 2025
A holy place consecrated for prayer and praise is a place of signification - a place in and of and for the world but set apart from it. This church welcomes and sends, comforts and disorients, offers solace and action. It is a place of liberation and a sign of disruption.
For St. Benedict, the oratory as the place of prayer and only prayer and is the heart of what I call his cosmology. In the Rule, the oratory discloses what the world is, namely the nucleus of a created glory given as a gift to enflesh our quest toward God - a God who is present everywhere and at all times. The oratory is not a different kind of creation, but its purpose and function is as the lens through which the world is interpreted. In his vision of an integrated life in God, St. Benedict sees the oratory as a kind of ancient Roman gymnasium - building muscle and stamina that is used in the “ordinary” moments of temptation and humility outside the oratory. Prayer in the place of prayer is practicing what is real so that monks might live at all times from that reality and none other. Remember Brother Lawrence centuries later who writes in The Practice of the Presence of God that for him there was no difference between the church and the kitchen where he worked.
This church is a place of liberation because what we do in it contains the power to free us from our illusions by our encounter with the reality that is God. We enter through these doors often in a jumble of inner voices and motivations, patterns and programming: earn acceptance, find safety, be better, do more, find peace, be worthy. Illusions take energy to maintain, they are heavy burdens. In the invitation to be present, honest, and vulnerable with God and by practicing that way of being here, our burdens are lifted and we find rest. And by practicing that liberation, we remember that it is available anytime and anywhere. So this sacred place is for us and our growth. We need places built and set aside and preserved for explicitly religious activities in order to reveal to us that our whole lives and all we do is set aside for explicitly religious activity. Of course we are beset by external illusions as well. As life in the 21st century is more and more saturated with information and noise and distraction, we are invited to be unburdened by the cacophony of voices to preserve an inner stillness and quiet. We remember God’s presence and care amidst the swirling chaos. The first call is to enter the rest and open to God’s compassionate mercy.
We are invited into a grander vision of the world, not merely a pause from our old world. Liberation is allergic to nostalgia; it is averse to passivity. Our business is awakening to the present moment, not enshrining the past or numbing the world, however tempting those are. This is a deeper reality, not an alternate one. In the psalms, sometimes the psalmist is caught up in the glory and beauty of God and lets us share in that ecstasy. Sometimes the psalmist asserts faith in God and tells God about the Philistines that are coming down the road. They’re big and there are more of them than there are of us and we need help. Both are prayer because both are awakened to the reality of the present. This is the place to start to name the world that is in all its glory and horror and offer it up to God in gratitude and intercession in sighs and tears. We abide in the truth which is where God lives with us.
This church is a place of disruption. The Gospel account of the Lord’s cleansing or purification of the temple is a cautionary tale that we be vigilant against the creeping corruption of religiosity in form but not meaning - habit without presence, routine without growth, proclamation without encounter. It is good to care about our liturgy and the solemnity and beauty of our worship, but the moral test is in whether we are growing in love toward one another. The purpose of the form is to awaken our hearts to God. The liturgy is a means to express our devotion, not a replacement for it. For Christ, the temple is a womb in which love for God is continually birthed in love for neighbor. The sacrifice of praise and care for the other go hand in hand. Christ disrupts our hearts of stone to give us hearts of flesh. He comes with the unblinking gaze of fiery love into our hearts to seek out our motives and devotion and to expose the inner moneychanger and overturn his table. This church is a dangerous place. Here I discover a God who is unwilling to accommodate my desire to avoid or hide who I am or get by with a mere performance that is not sincere. No program of self-defense is safe here.
Just as we are not made for the sabbath, but the sabbath for us, in a like manner we are not made for the church, but the church is made for us. In the temporal stuff of stone and wood it points to the true and lasting temples of the Holy Spirit which are our own bodies. The building will return to the dust, but we will be raised. So, these walls are the womb of resurrection life. We see the art - icons, crucifix, statues, windows as through a glass darkly. We look at them, but they point to us and beyond us to the mystery of the new heaven and new earth always just about to burst forth. We enter this holy place, but we do not really exit. We will only really exit at death. In the meantime, we continually pass through, continually born out into the wonder of God’s cosmic sanctuary, the altar that is the universe.
Being in this holy place never gets old. It is at times joyful, disturbing, boring - but never old. I am continually thankful and express how beautiful and good it is for me to be in you. And the church replies. Yes, it talks back. It says, “yes, but even more beautiful and even better than you being in me is that I am in you.” Amen.
