Christmas Eve - Dec 24, 2011

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY --- Br. Andrew Colquhoun, OHC
Christmas, Year B - Saturday, December 24, 2011

Isaiah 9:2-7
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-14(15-20)

The creche 2011 in the Visitors Gallery in our Saint Augustine Church

Picture credit: George

I love this night.  I love the mystery and wonder.

This is not a night for scholarly insights about the theology of the Incarnation.  It’s not a night for arguing about doctrine.  It’s not a night for cynicism or carping about the possibility or impossibility of miraculous birth.

It’s a night of wonder and of things beyond understanding.

It’s a night that calls us to put our doubts and resentments aside for a while and let the wonder and the message of peace take over.   This is the holiest and most mysterious of nights.  This night we forget everything but the miracle of the Baby and the wonder of the Holy Family and the Shepherds.  It’s a night to listen for angels and to put aside for a little while all the things that bring us down.

The minister of the Canongate Kirk in Edinburgh read a poem to us every year on Christmas.  I read it every Christmas.  Perhaps you know it?  John Betjeman wrote it… 

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
'The church looks nice' on Christmas Day.

….

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children's hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say 'Come!'
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window's hue,
A Baby in an ox's stall?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me?

And is it true?  For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

(you can find the whole poem here).

This has been a hard year for so many people – too many wars, too much economic hardship, so many disasters – earthquakes, floods – people still out of work – our government striking poses and not seeming to do much else.

We need a break.  This is a good night to focus on the miracle and the hope that Christ brings – Peace on earth – goodwill for God is pleased with us.  It’s good to fall into the softness of the Mother’s breast and be nourished; to be like children for a moment – children full of trust and love and spontaneous laughter.

But let me tell you one little story to put in your minds and hearts… a young mother who is a friend of mine wrote to say her little boy was Jesus in the manger scene at their lessons and carols.  She said “He was adorable but he wouldn’t stay in the manger!”

Brothers and sisters, neither will this One!

Happy Christmas!

Advent 3 B - Dec 11, 2011

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY --- Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC
Advent 3, Year B - Sunday, December 11, 2011

Isaiah 61:1-4, 8-11
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
John 1:6-8, 19-28


Poets, writers, artists, and preachers get ideas and inspiration from unusual or surprising sources.  For me, the idea or inspiration for this sermon came as I was at the photocopy machine in our mail room on Friday.  I had been thinking about today's readings for some time, wondering what my take on them might be... or perhaps better, what their take on me should be.  And I looked up and saw posted on the bulletin board an Advent calendar published by Morehouse and edited and designed by two friend of our community, Jay Sidebotham and Susan Elliot.

Like most things on bulletin boards, I had pretty much ignored it, despite its poster size.  But as I was waiting for my copying to finish I thought: why not see what the message is for today?  And here's what it said:

Get ready for this coming Sunday.  Read the gospel ahead of time.  It's John 1:6-8, 19-28.  Imagine that you were asked the question that John the Baptist was asked.  How would you answer?  What would you have to say?  WHO ARE YOU?

Not a bad way to enter in to today's Gospel passage: Who are you?  Who indeed are you?

St John baptizes the people
painted 1633-35 - Nicholas Poussin - Getty Center, Los Angeles

If we were asked that question, there are any number of normal and expected ways that we might go about answering it.  We might focus on genealogy or even genetics, on nationality, ethnicity or social class, on sex or sexual orientation, on education, health, physical attractiveness, marital status, certainly job or profession, perhaps income and wealth or lack of it, and even religion.  These are all part of the picture, of course, all components of our identity.

But I wonder: Do they get to the heart of things?  Does any of these, or any combination of these factors, capture with any degree of accuracy the mystery of you or me or adequately express who we are?  I think not.  Too many things are left out, and they are precisely the things that matter most about you and me, that define us most deeply and most richly.

It is helpful to examine how John the Baptist went about answering the question.  He begins by stating clearly who he is not: “I am not the Messiah.”  This he knows for a fact.  And then the questions start: Are you Elijah?  No.  The prophet?  No.  It all sounds a bit like a skit from Monty Python.  But in fact this is the way people, you and me, go about finding out who we are.  It happens by considering and eliminating or saying “No” to various possibilities throughout our lives... and this often at the questioning or challenge of others, friends and foes alike.

Finally, John comes to a place where he sees more clearly and is able to talk about his identity: “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness.”  We might say that in this sentence, in this statement, John has discovered and given voice to his identity, to his vocation, to his deeper and truer self.  John finally had an answer, or at least the first stage of an answer, to that perennial and troubling question: Who are you?  Who am I?  It is an answer that will deepen over time and be refined in the fire of life.  But John seems to have found his true self.

Something very similar happens in the life of our Lord.  In his case it is not others who ask, it is Jesus himself.  “Who do people say that I am?” he asks his friends.  “Elijah,” they answer, “... or one of the prophets.”  “And you, who do you say that I am?”  And here Peter makes his confession: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  And here Jesus comes to know fully, perhaps for the first time and with startling clarity, who he is and what he is called to.  It was the community of others who knew him well that made it possible for Jesus to understand more fully who he was and what he was called to.  And perhaps for the first time he is able to accept that more fundamental and primary statement of his identity that came to him from the Father at his baptism: “You are my beloved Son, my beloved child.”

What is true of John the Baptizer and of Jesus is true also of us. What is most central to us and to our identity is approached by and appropriated through listening... to ourselves first but also to others: their questions, their counsel, their reactions.  But most of all this happens by listening to God.

And what does God say both in Scripture and in tradition about you and me, about who we are?

• In Genesis 1:26, God says: ” Let us make humankind in our own image, according to out likeness.”
• In Psalm 8:4-5, God says: “...what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?  Yet you have made them a little lower than God, and crowned them with glory and honor.”
• Indeed in Psalm 82:6 the Holy One says: “You are gods, and all of you children of the Most High...”  What an amazing claim, and yet this is the truth about you and me.  This is the deepest truth and the most profound answer to that question posed in today's Gospel: Who are you?

Our late Br. Douglas Brown loved to tell a story about the late Byzantine world.  In that society, images of imperial authority were treated with great respect, and when the emperor himself could not be present at an imperial function, his image was escorted in with great pomp and ceremony, with heralds shouting out to the crowd: “Make way for the image of the emperor. Make way for the image of the emperor.”  Once a rabbi watching this ceremony from the sidelines, observing the elaborate ceremony, commented: “Before every human being goes an army of angels shouting: “Make way for the image of the image of God.  Make way for the image of the image of God.”  The story is apocryphal of course, but not the quote.  It is from the Talmud, that great compendium of Jewish wisdom.

Rabbi Joshua ben Levi said: "A procession of angels pass before each person, and the heralds go before them, saying, 'Make way for the image of God!' (Deut. Rabbah, 4:4)

This is true of you and me, of course.  But it is true also of the person ahead of us at the checkout line and of the homeless person at the street corner; it is true of the corporate executive and the abused child; of the mentally handicapped man and the nurse and the solid citizen and the single parent and the addict and... well, true of just about everybody, saint and sinner, near at hand and far away, long ago and now and as far as we can see into the future.  Images of God — that's who we are.

On this foundation, on this truth, all the rest is built.  And in this, we can all rejoice.  And from this fact much is demanded and expected of us: lives lived in deep mutual respect, where violence has no place, where hatred is given no foothold, where justice is pursued and mercy and love.  Because that's how one treats the image of God.  We can do no other, we God-worshipers, we the community of the redeemed, we Christians.

 St John the Baptist
Valentin de Boulogne (lived 1591–1632) - private collection

Then they said to him, “Who are you?  Let us have an answer for those who sent us.”  (John 1:22)

Proper 28 A - Nov 13, 2011

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY --- Br. Roy Parker, OHC
Proper 28, Year A - Sunday, November 13, 2011

Zephaniah 1:7, 12-18
1 Thessalonians 5:1-11
Matthew 25:14-30

Right away I ought to say that the talents of which the Gospel speaks are not the abilities with which we usually connect the word, but rather a standard weight of money of a large value; minor point of clarification.

In the Sundays leading up to Advent we’re treated to a series of Gospel parables concerned with the judgement of ethical behavior by one who gives the means to live wisely, absents himself and eventually returns to see how we’ve done, presumably to prime us for the season of Advent.

Today’s parable is a stern warning against choosing death when life is offered, in this case choosing to do nothing with a talent of money when given you on the basis of your known ability to use it productively. The servant cites the merciless character of the master as the cause of inaction, but the master describes the servant’s forfeiture of native ability as an act of cowardice, a vile and worthless choice.

The story is intended as a stern warning, and if warning and incentive is the principal object lesson for a first century audience, a peremptory condemnation into outer darkness will presumably cut it.

Yet we ought to remind ourselves that the Synoptic Gospels from which it comes must also be measured against the Fourth Gospel, that of the glorified Christ, the Christ who insisted he came not to condemn the world but to save it, and the Christ who defends the adulteress against the vengeance of a misogynist society.

So, let’s rely on the greatness of God to develop a larger ending to the story and let’s cast it in a more inclusive mode.

The parable is a cautionary tale about one in such terror of the master’s mercilessness as to become oblivious to the qualification which gave her the talent. She was deemed worthy of the talent , deemed capable of putting it to productive use; she was capable, she definitely was capable. In the story she could have added in language we’re more accustomed to, “I was so terrified on account of my abusive family history that I forgot who I was and what I could do, so I went and hid your talent in the ground out of sheer desperation. Mister, the most unbearable misfortune is when you lose yourself in that way, when you realize it and even reproach yourself, but you just can’t help it.”

And then there’s what could be called ‘The Workshop Syndrome,’ assuming the master distributed the talents at the same time, the one-talented servant - let us call her Sally - would have regarded her colleagues’ larger number as indication of their superior abilities which fed back to further undermine her self confidence, disempower her.

Sally, for goodness’ sakes, needs a life coach who actually would not address the psychological trauma but rather appeal to a more compelling vision than fear, something she cares about enough to take just one step for its sake, the courage for which comes from another place, enabling a trembling mortal to move forward and bringing along its own progress, step by step, as day follows night.

Those with whom I’ve been privileged to share the experience of bottoming out and resurrection speak of a courage which seems rooted in a god, a god beyond god, who appears when god has disappeared in the anxiety of doubt. For a Christian believer the abiding vision when all else has vanished is typically the image or imagination of Christ crucified, as if produced by an unsuspected capacity in themselves , and this god beyond god brings a knowledge of their death and resurrection with a chemical edge which can practically be tasted.

Such bottoming out and resurrection is how we can understand the exclamation of the Apostle Paul: “Hope does not disappoint us because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly... God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.  Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. . . much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life.” (Romans 5:5 ff.)

The initial backbone of today’s Gospel seems to have been fear-based, about something the culture imagined as the wrath of God, but we’ve seen that it’s possible for the wrath of God to be obliterated by a larger truth which we experience as unearnable grace, to which the tradition testifies, of which Paul once again exclaims in his letter to us today: “God has destined us not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that . . . we may live with him.” (1 Thess. 5:9-10)

Proper 27 A - Nov 6, 2011

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY --- Br. Andrew Colquhoun, OHC
Proper 27, Year A - Sunday, November 6, 2011

Amos 5:198-24 --- 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 --- Matthew25:1-13

Preaching rotas have a way of tripping me up – so do lectionaries.  I’d like to have a bit more leeway.   You know… Oh, I don’t like this gospel, let me pick another that’s more comfortable.  One that won’t kick up so many questions.  One that won’t go against what my mother taught me about sharing, for example.  As in, “If you don’t give these young women some of your oil, I’ll be very disappointed!”

Picture credit: Frank Starmer

These strange passages of Jesus’ discourses are not the kind of Christianity most of us want.  We had a friend in South Africa who said that what the Church desires is Christianity Lite.  Non-disturbing, comforting, reassuring following the meek One who loved children so much!  Who told us to be like children.  (By the way, anyone who thinks that means being nice and eager to share, doesn’t know children!)

In our efforts to keep things nice, we often just don’t read what is there. We see what we want to see. And what we seem to want is for difficult truths to go away or at least to simplify. So we pick and choose.  This part fits my ideas, I’ll keep that.  Oooh, this is not nice, it must be wrong.

I don’t mean that all portions of Scripture have the same weight for us.  Cultures have evolved, ethics have matured, and so on.  The Levitical laws do not all apply in our faith tradition.  We don’t keep kosher.   We may not stone adulterers.  You might get pork for lunch.

But some aspects of the Bible speak of things that are immutable, unchanging.  The things which deal of justice and God’s righteousness which is love are not always palatable to our ears.

The words of the prophet Amos are among those.  After putting the people squarely among those who perpetrate what they condemn in others with regard to the poor, he tells them this… don’t expect the Day of the Lord to raise you up. None of your efforts at righteousness will count for anything because you trample the poor and take from them levies of grain; you tax them but don’t pay any yourselves. (oops, did I just say something awkward?)  You do all the “God” things and neglect the godly things. You preach morality; you sacrifice, you sing all the right songs, you pronounce yourselves God’s people but until justice flows like rivers and righteous concern for the poor and needy pour out, I do not hear you.

So the prophet calls us to live as God’s people must.  Not with outward show but with inner love.  And that won’t come about automatically.  It takes practice. It comes from an open heart that doesn’t seek its own wellbeing but seeks the righteousness of God – that is, a righteousness that streams from love and spends itself in justice.

So to the ten bridesmaids!  Not a clear story of redemption at all, I don’t think.  Why didn’t the five prudent ones share their oil as out idea of politeness and propriety would demand?  What about if someone asks for your shirt, give him your coat, too? What’s happening here?

I don’t believe this passage is about going to heaven or even being ready for the second kept out?  Is heaven, then, all about good behavior?

And it’s certainly not about good manners or being good boys and girls.  What Jesus is calling for in these last days is for his disciples to be prepared for whatever might come.  Being a bridesmaid isn’t just about a pretty frock and parties. If the lights went out, nothing could happen. This is a story about faithfulness and commitment.  Life in the kingdom, comes with responsibility.  The wise ones knew this. They had prepared themselves with the hope and expectation of what was coming.  They couldn’t give away the oil because it was the oil of long perseverance, the oil of faithfulness. Not something that can be dispensed automatically.

Jesus calls us to life in a kingdom that fully demands response.  Christianity Lite is for comfort, for pleasant Sunday mornings. Or pleasant weekends in the monastery.  Life in the kingdom calls us to be ready for the demands of being truly human as Jesus the Christ was.  Life in the kingdom comes fraught with danger and the weight of being the people who do justice and love mercy.

There’s really no time for Christianity Lite.  Look around us. Look at the desperation in the world; look at the hunger in the eyes of people. Face the unrest and fear humanity faces. Consider economies based on war and greed. Nothing soft will be sufficient to the challenges of love.

Look into the face of Christ and it will become clear as the Day.

All Saints - Nov 1, 2011

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY --- Br. Scott Wesley Borden, OHC
All Saints - Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Revelation 7:9-17 --- 1 John 3:1-3 --- Matthew 5:1-12

All Saints

It is hard approach All Saints Day without having to pass through its much celebrated, and much distorted, prelude – All Hallows Eve, better known as Halloween. Mischief and mayhem, ghosts and goblins, and above all – as much candy as anybody can stomach... These are the stuff of Halloween, at least in secular American culture.

Halloween, with its focus on what you can get, makes a mockery of our religious tradition. But sometimes our religious traditions need to be mocked...

The roots of Halloween, and of All Saints Day for that matter, are a bit obscure, though it appears that Celtic spirituality played an important role in the start of both traditions.

It is hardly surprising that Celtic tradition, with its very high regard for those who have gone before and far less linear approach to time, would peculiarly honor saints. The custom of All Saints seems to have spread eastward from Ireland.

And its not so surprising that in the enterprising and poverty-ridden Celtic lands, somebody figured out how to make money along the way. Perhaps starting in Scotland, poor people went about on the eve of All Saints asking for money. In exchange for some cash, they would pray for the souls of your loved ones in purgatory. An All Hallows Even tradition is born... Halloween also appears to have spread east, and then west, from Ireland and Scotland.

Add some Reformation and some ingenuity by American candy makers to the mix and today we have substituted candy for coins and any idea of prayer, for souls in purgatory or anywhere else, has flown out of the equation altogether.

Yet here we are, faithfully keeping All Saints Day, which has come from humble Irish roots to be a principal feast of the Church.

The focus on souls in purgatory, or on ghosts and goblins, or just on candy, makes an interesting prelude to this feast. At best, it seems to call us to focus on what we can do for these pour souls, whatever poor souls we may have in mind. At worst it seems to focus us on what we can get – who can get the most and the best candy.

But the focus on what we can get, rather than what we can give, may in fact be the right preparation for All Saints Day, as counter intuitive... as unchristian as it may appear.

Bernard of Clairvaux, that is Saint Bernard... notes that our praise, glorification, and celebration can mean little, if anything, to the saints. Earthly honor, he observes, can be of little value next to Heavenly honor. He concludes that the saints have no need of us. According to Bernard: “When we venerate [the saints], it is serving us, not them.”

And that, for Bernard, is exactly why we should venerate saints (including, of course, Bernard himself).

As Bernard sees it, venerating the saints, calling them to mind, inspires us to want to be in their company – to want to be like them. Ultimately we want to join the saints not in their communion with each other, but in their communion with Jesus, with God.

So a bag stuffed with candy may not be exactly the desired outcome, but a person stuffed with spirit may be the spiritually evolved cousin of that trick-or-treat bag...

We are taught that it is more blessed to give than to receive, but when God, or the Saints of God, are offering gifts, it is surely better to be ready to receive. On All Saints, more than any other time, we are called to open our hearts to the gifts that we receive from the saints. And to the extent that we are preoccupied with what pious gifts we can bring and solemn liturgies we can produce, we are just getting in the way.

So who are these saints anyway?

In the early church it was not so complicated to become a saint. All you needed was enough enthusiasm at the time of your death in the great congregation and you were acclaimed a saint. A spontaneous process, of course, doesn't sit well in a hierarchical system, so as the Church became more powerful and more centralized in the middle ages, a more controlled process of ordering saints came into use.

There has been a little bit of a tempest in the teapot of the Episcopal Church recently over the publication of “Holy Women, Holy Men.” It appears that a great effort was made to be more inclusive and more representative in who we honor as a saint in our calendar.

Including JS Bach sits well with me – no greater musician has ever written for the Church, but Henry Purcell seems a bit more iffy. Ralph Adams Cram, architect of our little church, was surely an inspired builder who's buildings still enliven the spirits of others, yet I'm not sure his life is particularly inspiring, or even particularly interesting. There is no question that John Calvin has had a huge impact on countless Christians, but I suspect he would be among the first to ask to have his name removed from a list of saints.

For me, the great service provided by Holy Women & Holy Men is that it calls us to think differently about saints. Our natural tendency is to want to call somebody a saint because they deserve the honor. But as Bernard of Clairvaux notes, our honor is of no value. That is not the point of having someone in the calendar.

Perhaps what we need is a greater embrace of Halloween – the image of standing before the saints with our goodie bag in hand asking for a treat may be the best approach to All Saints Day. Maybe I need to be more like the innocent child searching for treats than a sophisticated adult deciding who is, or is not worthy of sainthood.

Does Bach inspire me in the way that Patrick, or Columba, or Martin Luther King do? I really don't know, but he does inspire others. I do know that, much as I admire the work of Ralph Adams Cram, he surely does not. But the simple wisdom of Halloween is that I don't linger at the places where the treats don't work for me. I just move on.

Wyston Hugh Auden is somebody who may not actually be on anybody's list of saints – though a more inspired and inspiring poet in English language would be hard to find. His poem, “A Hymn to Saint Cecelia,” the patron saint of musicians, describes the relationship with saints as only a truly inspired and gifted poet can.

“Blessed Cecilia, appear in visions to all musicians, appear and inspire. Translated daughter come down and startle composing mortals with immortal fire.”

I pray for Cecilia to appear to me. I pray for John and Charles Wesley to appear to me. For Martin Luther and Martin Luther King. For Benedict, Scholastica, and James Huntington and W.H. Auden. The list goes on and on.

They don't need me – I need them. I need their strength, their vision, and their ability to startle me out of the cocoon of my own ego. God grant us all the wisdom and humility to open our hearts to receive the gifts that the saints around us so freely offer.

Amen.

Proper 26 A - Oct 30, 2011

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY --- Br. James Michael Dowd, OHC
Proper 26, Year A - Sunday, October 30, 2011

Joshua 3:7-17 --- 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13 --- Matthew 23:1-12

On Humility

This morning's Gospel, among other things, is one of the great “monastic” passages in the Bible.  Jesus' call to humility is a theme that all of the most important monastic writers spent a good deal of time with from the earliest days of our tradition.

Chapter Seven of the Rule of Benedict is totally devoted to the idea of humility.  In it, our father Benedict teaches us that there are twelve steps of humility and begins the chapter with this quote from St. Luke, actually found twice in that Gospel, and also found in today's passage from St. Matthew: “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

In both Gospels (Luke and Matthew), Jesus tells different stories to communicate this essential truth.  In all cases, however, he is speaking about various aspects of Jewish culture and society in First century Palestine.  As I was reflecting on this morning's Gospel passage, I found myself pondering how this applied to the Rule of Benedict and to our lives here in the monastery as we live it today.

And it's in the introduction of Chapter Seven, entitled, by the way, “On Humility”, that I found some answers to these questions.  Benedict uses the image of Jacob's Ladder to set up his discussion regarding monastic humility.  He writes about the monk's body and soul as being the sides of the ladder and the divine summons being the various rungs of humility and discipline for the ascent.  The monk descends the ladder by being prideful and ascends the ladder by being humble. The higher you ascend that ladder, the closer to heaven you get.

Picture credit: Albert Houthuesen

Now this was a theme used by many of the Monastic and Church Fathers in the Sixth century and for several centuries before, but I think it might be hard for us to connect with in our own time.  The verse, however, in this section of the Rule that absolutely grabs me, and that has real repercussions in my life is this: “When the heart is humble, God raises it up to heaven.”

Brendan Freeman is the Abbot of New Melleray, a Trappist Abbey in Iowa. Recently he released a book collecting some of his homilies and Chapter Talks and in one section he reflects on this theme of the heart.  Allow me to quote to you a passage:

Formation in the monastic life is formation of the heart.  Once we have found our hearts, we move from the effort of prayer, the work of prayer, from strenuous prayer to self-acting prayer.  The heart has two meanings.  It is the center of our being and the point of meeting between each of us and God.  Two do not exist in this place, but only One.  Our prayer becomes Christ's prayer.

Abbot Brendan's phrase “once we have found our hearts” is so moving to me.  It seems to me that Christian formation – be that monastic or non-monastic – is about finding our hearts.  If we are one with God in that place, in our hearts, then that is where the spiritual journey must, by definition, lead us.  And Benedict teaches us that when the heart is humble, God raises it up to heaven, that is, to Himself.

So, what does it mean to be humble?  To have a humble heart?  Well, in the Carmelite tradition, St. Teresa of Avila teaches us from the 16th century:

I was once pondering why it is that our Beloved is so fond of the virtue of humility.  Without it ever having occurred to me before, this thought suddenly came to me: It's because God is supreme truth.  To be humble is to walk in truth.

Now Benedict and Teresa and virtually every other monastic writer up until the second half of the Twentieth century often wrote about how wretched and awful we all are.  But if being humble is to walk in truth, then we must have a full understanding of who we really are in the context of an eternal life which already began for us at our conception.  And so, yes, we must know, for example, those areas in which we are weak, damaged, sinful, fearful and lacking faith.  But to walk in truth is also to know those areas in which we are good, holy, whole, trusting, loving, and charitable.

If we are truthful with ourselves, we know that many, if not all of those things I just listed are true about ourselves.  God already knows the truth about us.  He knows that truth because he created us in his own image and likeness and longs for us to know him as our Father.  Our journey is to discover that truth so that we can move closer to becoming one with God.  So that two no longer exist in our hearts, but only One.

For us, in the Twenty-First century, “the truth” has become reduced in some circles to simply a psychological understanding of ourselves.  And the psychological understanding of the human mind is a great gift that God has revealed to us over the course of the last hundred years or so.  But it is only part of the the truth - seeking that we are called to do.  In fact, knowing ourselves and reflecting on our own psyches, environment, families, social, political and economic situations can teach us a great deal about ourselves.

But the bottom line is that all of that information is only that: information.  To be a Christian in formation is to be a Christian in prayer.  To be a Christian in prayer means not that we are exalted, but that we have willingly humbled ourselves in truth, so that Christ can unite us with himself as he prays within us.  It is Christ's praying within us that brings us to the heights of exaltation, to heaven, to God our Father.

The Christian never arrives at The Truth. Rather, the Christian journeys within a context of truth, learning more and more about themselves and in the process about God. The Church, representing the entire Christian community makes this same journey of truth on a communal basis. That truth is revealed in prayer. A prayer of  the heart. A prayer of Christ's heart.

The goal of prayer is to help us to arrive at a place of silence. There are certainly many different prayer techniques and different techniques are appropriate for different people. But the goal is all the same: silence.

God leads us, as he led Joshua into the Promised Land. On the banks of the River Jordan, he and all the people ritually prepared themselves so that they could enter the Promised Land thus exalting their people. Our way to the Promised Land is the silent way.  Silence is a way of being that places us in right relationship with God. It is a knowledge that in our silence before God, we are exalted because only then are we able to hear Christ praying within us. Uniting with us in an eternal love that carries us up that ladder to heaven, to God who is our Father.

AMEN.

Votive for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Holy Cross Priory, Toronto, Ontario
Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC Superior
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Votive Mass of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

This morning at Matins we remembered the life and witness of Bp. James Hannington and his companions who were martyred for their Christian faith in 1885 in what is now Uganda.

 James Hannington

As is often the case, the situation there was complex.  Colonial powers (English, French, others) were moving into the country and the young kabaka or king, Mwanga, was alarmed.  He feared that the new religion these Christian missionaries were introducing would bring down the wrath of the ancestors.  He feared a rapidly changing social order.  He feared the elimination of his royal powers and privileges.  And so he responded with violence.  He ordered the bishop and his party killed. The next year he had many of his own pages tortured and burned alive for their faith because they would not or could not conform to ancient tribal customs.  Still others were eliminated.  Mwanga, the king, was between 16 and 18 years old when all of this took place. 

Mwanga was in no sense an innocent.  But neither was he a monster.  He was someone caught up in a political and social upheaval whose response, driven by fear, was both immoral and ineffective, but not, unfortunately, surprising.  He did, by the way, go on to lead several insurrections against the British and late in his life converted to the Anglican faith.

As we do on feasts of martyrs, we began this morning’s service with the invitatory, setting the theme for the feast.  It was: "Christ calls the faithful to embrace his cross. Come let us adore him."
I have said these words regularly for over 25 years.  But this morning I was struck by the ambiguity of the invitation.  Exactly whose cross are we being invited to embrace?  Christ’s... or our own?

The answer, of course, is both... always both.  And in saying this we come up against the mystery of suffering.  For in all genuine suffering — whether we recognize it or not — the thin membrane or veil or curtain between Christ’s life and our own is pierced, pulled aside, or, in the words of scripture, torn from top to bottom.  The one cross — Christ’s — is certainly not the same as the other — yours or mine.  But in the wonderful economy of God, they each illuminate the other, concretize and enflesh and give meaning to the other.

This was true for Bp. Hannington and his companions in 1885 when in the midst of the complex marriage of British colonialism and Christian evangelism he saw the image of the cross of Jesus shining through.

The bishop’s last words:  "Go tell  Mwanga that I have purchased a road into Uganda by my blood" are a ringing testament to the Christian hope, that out of death, and paradoxically through death, comes life, new life, larger life. 

This was true for those Ugandan martyrs the following year.  Though they may not have been able to express it as eloquently as did the bishop, but they knew that they had been called to a greater loyalty, to a greater king, one whose claims trump the demands and desires of a frightened young tribal chieftain, indeed of any human monarch or ruler or power

This was true for Archbishop Janani Luwum who in 1975 went to his death in Uganda as a witness to justice and Christian charity in opposition to the mad dictator, Idi Amin.
And it is true for us here today.

Of course we pray that we may be spared.  And like Jesus, we neither desire nor intend nor orchestrate our own sufferings.  To do so would be madness.  But like Jesus and like the martyrs, we embrace the sufferings that are sent us when they cannot be averted.  We freely say: Yes.  We even, dare we say it, embrace them.

"Christ calls the faithful to embrace his cross."

Our own crosses take many shapes, many forms:  physical or emotional suffering, diminishment, betrayal, limitation, failure, and ultimately death.  But the cross of Jesus has power to illumine and suffuse with meaning and hope these dark corners.

It is important to remind ourselves that we don’t have to like our crosses.  But to embrace, to say yes, is to acknowledge and consent to a wholly other order.  It is to confess to ourselves and sometimes to others and occasionally even to the world that yes, even here, God is not absent.  It is to confess that even here — perhaps especially here — God can be found.  Even here, in sharing with Jesus the often painful predicament that is the human condition, we are not abandoned or left alone. 

Our morning worship climaxes with the recitation of the Benedictus, the Canticle of Zachariah.   Its antiphon for the feast of martyrs includes the following words of encouragement:  “These are the ones who have come safely through the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

The cross of Jesus that we celebrate today is the source and symbol of that wondrous cleansing.  It is, in all its scandal, a promise that suffering and death do not have the final word.  The final word for Jesus, for the martyrs and for us is always: Life.  Life into death.  Life through death.  Life beyond death.

At our midday service today we prayed:  “Happy are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb.”   This Eucharistic meal is not yet that supper in its all its fullness... but it is a foretaste.  Let us feast together now, confident that what we share here will strengthen us and lead to embrace, to consent, to say yes, to the cross and to life.

“Christ calls the faithful to embrace his cross.  Come let us adore him.”

Sermon for Br. Robert Magliula's Life Profession - 01 Jan 2011

Mariya uMama weThemba Monastery, Grahamstown, South Africa
Brother Robert Sevensky, OHC
Feast of the Holy Name - 01 January 2011
Life Profession of Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC

Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC, prostrate at the foot of the altar,
as a symbol of full self-giving to God through the monastic profession.

This past February I had the great privilege of attending the annual Benedictine Abbots' Workshop in Oceanside, California. The principal speaker was Dr. Michael Downey, a Roman Catholic layman and theologian. His theme was the Holy Trinity and its relationship to community, communion, and contemplation

His thesis was somewhat surprising. And that is that, far from being the most abstract and general of Christian beliefs, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is in fact the most practical and important teaching of our faith, important for the theologian, to be sure, but important also for the ordinary believer and, most particularly, for the monastic. And not for the reasons that I or most of us might have expected.

The central mystery of the Christian life and faith is the Trinity because it shapes and models and guides the way we relate to ourselves and to each other and to the whole created order. But the point of entry into the mystery of the Trinity is very concrete, very tangible and very revolutionary. And that point of entry is the self-emptying of God in Jesus Christ, what theologians, using the Greek word from today's reading from the Letter to the Philippians (2:5-11) call kenosis.

If we are to understand and savor the mystery of God and be brought into union with the Triune God, we begin not from some kind of abstract reasoning about the nature of the infinite or the attributes of perfection, but from an event—the event—in human history: the folly of the cross. According to Downey, the divine mystery rests not primarily in God's inscrutability but in the astonishing claim that God should appear in such a fashion—poor, weak, vulnerable—both then and now. It is a mystery we ponder at this Christmas season and one that we will continue to ponder through Holy Week and Easter and throughout eternity. We speak of a God who does not take away human wanting or longing but of one who is present precisely in and through our human desiring. We speak of one who knows us in our suffering and brokenness and who, emptying self of the divine nature, embraces this humanity, so that we might put on and share that divinity. As an antiphon sung over and over this Christmastide puts it with uncharacteristic exuberance: “Oh wondrous exchange! Christ became a human child so that all the children of Eve might become gods.”

Kenosis, the self-emptying of God in Jesus Christ, is in fact the gateway to theosis, that is, the gateway to being ever more shaped and molded into the image and likeness of God.

But if kenosis, God's self-emptying, is the key to understanding the mystery of the Trinity, it is also, according to Downey, the key to understanding the mystery of monastic life. That central dynamic of the monastic adventure which we call conversatio morum, conversion of life, is none other that what the author of the Letter to the Philippians proclaims: “Let the same mind be be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” And to put on the mind of Christ is to be emptied of self.

But what does kenosis look like? It is difficult to describe inasmuch as it is slightly different for each of us. Each one of us must be emptied in a slightly different way, a way uniquely adapted to our own personality and sinfulness and giftedness. The best description I have been able to find of the process comes from the pen of the popular Catholic theologian, Ronald Rolheiser:

“Scripture says that in Christ, God offers a love so pure, so self-effacing, so understanding of our weaknesses, so self-sacrificing and “self-emptying”, that it's offered without any demand, however veiled, that it be recognized.... To “self-empty” in the way Jesus is described as doing means to be present without demanding that your presence be recognized and its importance acknowledged; it means giving without demanding that your generosity be reciprocated; it means being invitational rather than threatening, healthily solicitous rather than nagging or coercive; it means being vulnerable and helpless, unable to protect yourself against the pain of being taken for granted or rejected; it means living in a great patience that doesn't demand intervention, divine or human, when things don't unfold according to your will; it means letting God be God and others be themselves without having to submit to your wishes or your timetable. Not an easy thing at all, that's why we've sung Jesus' praises for two thousand years for doing it, but that's the invitation.”

That's the invitation to which you, Robert James, are responding today and one that we must all respond to in one way or another. Today, Rob, you enter yet more deeply and definitively into the mystery of that kenosis that is yours and Christ's.

Br. Robert James Magliula,
signing, on the altar, the instrument of profession written in his own hand.
In the foreground, is the profession cross he was to receive from the Superior.

Liturgically it seems a most appropriate time time for you to do this. We are gathered here on New Year's Day, the Feast of the Holy Name, halfway between the feasts of the Nativity and the Epiphany. I am reminded of a tradition that we have at West Park of placing the figures of the Magi, the three wise men, hundreds of meters away from the Christmas creche. Slowly over the course of the twelve days between the Nativity and the Epiphany they make their way, and I'm often startled to find one peering out at me from behind a doorway or resting in apparent exhaustion on a guesthouse sofa. And somehow, as if by a miracle, they arrive at the stable just in time for First Vespers of the Epiphany.

And I think then of the T. S. Elliot's early poem, “Journey of the Magi”

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey;
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
….
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Rob, you yourself have had a long journey and, at times, a cold coming of it. From your teen years hoping to be a member of the Xaverian Brothers, a Roman Catholic religious community, to leaving them in order to find your truer, more authentic self, to your training and work as an artist, art therapist, counselor, hospital chaplain, and beloved parish priest for seventeen years; seeking human love, finding it, and then losing the beloved, and still always, always journeying on. And like the Magi in Eliot's poem, you have no doubt heard the voices saying that this was all folly. But like them you've pushed onward. Like them you've had your turning points, your disappointments, your triumphs, your beginnings and your endings and your new births. And like them, you found the place you were seeking. To quote the poet once more: “It was (you may say) satisfactory.”

What strikes me today, Rob, is how you've ended up back with your first love, that deep desire to serve God and be yourself in a religious order, in a monastic community. How vital and necessary it was that you left the Xaverians forty years ago. And how vital and necessary it was to have experienced life in all its sweetness and splendor and pain. And how very vital it is that you have come to this day...the day of your solemn monastic profession.

Six years ago, on January 3, 2006, you submitted your spiritual autobiography as part of your process of applying to enter the Order of the Holy Cross. I know it is a confidential document, put permit me to quote a few sentences from your conclusion.

“After my time in the community [as an Oblate of Holy Cross Monastery], I have no illusions about what I am getting into. Even so, as messed up as our humanity can get, I have glimpsed the kingdom in those moments of care, love, humor, and support that erupt in community, often when least expected. As imperfect as we all are in our loving, we commit ourselves to keep at it, knowing that it is God's love that undergirds all our efforts, whether they succeed or fail. I want to spend the rest of my life being part of this venture.”

Rob, all of us gathered here today as well as those who know you and love you but can't be here today, want you to be part of that venture as well. Your brothers in the Order want it. Your family wants it. Your friends want it. Your former parishioners want it. William wants it. The children here want it. The Church wants it. And above all: God wants it. God wants you. God desires you. You and none other.

Let me quote one final time from the poet T. S. Eliot, since he says it so well:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we have started
And know the place for the first time.
….
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

So Rob...Shall we begin?

He did it!
Br. Rob celebrating his profession with good friend
and presider at the profession mass, The Rev. Janet Vincent,
rector of St Columba's, Washington, D