The Fourth Sunday of Advent C - December 22, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York

Br. Robert James Magliula

The Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 22, 2024

• Micah 5:2-5a
• Hebrews 10:5-10
• Luke 1:39-55)

Meister Eckhart, the 14th century German Dominican wrote: 

We are all meant to be mothers of God. What good is it to me if this eternal birth of the divine Son takes place unceasingly but does not take place within myself? And what good is it to me if Mary is full of grace if I am not also full of grace? What good is it to me for the Creator to give birth to his Son if I also do not give birth to him in my time and my culture? This, then, is the fullness of time. When the Son of God is begotten in us. 

This morning, Meister Eckhart challenges us to answer his questions. How will we give birth to the Son of God in our time and in our culture? Perhaps, the first and better question is, Will we? Will we give our consent? Will we say, like Mary, “Let it be? “ 

The Annunciation to the Theotokos, the God-Bearer, is an annunciation to the entire human race that the Son and Word of God has become incarnate. What happened physically in Mary is meant to happen spiritually in us. Eckhart’s questions invite us to see humanity, and not Bethlehem, as the true birthplace of God. How amazing is that?! God has chosen humanity to give birth, to give life, to make real, God in this world. That says a lot about what God thinks of us. So often we diminish ourselves when we say, “I’m only human.” But God looks at us and says, “Humanity, created in my image and likeness! They shall be the ones through whom, by whom, and in whom my Son will be born.” 

I suggest that Mary’s experience has some pointers to open us up this morning to being God-Bearers. Once in a sermon, I heard a caution given, that I have never forgotten. The preacher said that in our rush to make the men and women of the biblical drama special, we miss the power of God’s actions---that God acts through ordinary human beings like you and me. Connecting our small stories with the larger stories of God can only be done through the flesh and blood realities of our lives. We must be prepared to hear its sacredness through its humanness---not despite it.   

Mary was a normal teenager who lived in an obscure village, in a nearly forgotten part of the Roman Empire.  She was engaged to a man, Joseph. Nowhere does it describe her as possessing qualities of leadership or intelligence or faith or beauty that would have set her apart for the unique call that Gabriel offered.  In all respects, Mary was a girl living her life, day by day, as best she could, in a community of ordinary people.   

Consider the moment of the Annunciation when the intrusion of the angel into Mary’s life utterly changed it. When Gabriel made his invitation, Mary doesn’t ask about the future or the consequences on her life. Her only question was a simple and logical one. She knew how babies were made. She wanted to know how her part would work. She assumes that God knows God’s job and will do it. Unlike many of us, she is concerned about what is hers to deal with. She doesn’t get lost in the past or future, which belong to God. Because she did not clutter herself up with second guessing God, she could be open to cooperating with God’s plan. Her yes to God was a blanket acceptance in faith of whatever would come in her life. Our own faith and trust in God need to be more like that since we will never in this life come to understand the reason for all that happens to us. God’s way of dealing with us is through collaboration, not dictatorship. Knowing our hesitations, doubts, and fears, God waits in both the crucial and the trivial moments of our lives for us to say yes.  

Mary most certainly had plans for her life. Marriage was on the horizon for her. We all make plans. Most nights when I go to bed, I already know what I will do the next day. I get up at the same time each morning and follow the same routine. My calendar tells me where I will be, when, and what I will do for at least the next nine months. I’ve planned my life. I suspect that to some degree your life might be like that too.  

During our time of Contemplative days a few weeks ago, which were filled with several unplanned events, I was struck by an insight I remembered a directee sharing with me. She said that on most days, we humans have the tendency to not live by faith, but by our plans. We can get through most days without faith. We plan our life, and we live our plan. Faith doesn’t really enter it until our plans get interrupted and the impossible happens. I suspect that’s often what’s going on when we ask someone to pray for us or another asks us to pray for them. Our plans have been interrupted. What Mary never expected or planned happened. We hear that in her question to the angel, “How can this be?” Haven’t there been times when we’ve also asked: “How can this be?”  

It might be the last thing you ever wanted to happen, or it might be something you had hoped and dreamed for all your life. Regardless, the impossible showed up and interrupted our plans. That interruption asks us to make an offering and that’s very different from a plan. Plans are about the future. An offering is about the present moment. Plans are made with expectations of an outcome. We plan to get what we want. An offering is made without expectations and without the need to control the outcome. Plans set limitations. Offerings hold unknown possibilities.  

When Gabriel, the messenger of the impossible, shows up Mary doesn’t try to understand or rationalize what’s happening. That’s just more planning. Instead, she makes an offering. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Every time we say “Let it be with me according to your word” we relinquish control, we surrender to the Mystery, we entrust ourselves to the Unknowing, and we open the womb of our heart to God’s presence. 

I don’t want us to be naïve about the offering Mary made. I can easily imagine that even as she makes her offering, she’s asking herself, “What will happen to me now? Will Joseph believe any of this? What will the neighbors say?” Her offering is very risky. Remember, in her time and culture, pregnancy for a betrothed woman was considered adultery punishable by death. It put her in a vulnerable place without any guarantee of the outcome.  That’s true for any offering you or I might make. Her “Yes” was just her first step. Mary’s offering is followed by another offering when she goes to her cousin Elizabeth as we heard in our gospel today. Mary sets out in haste to visit her cousin, who is bearing an equally unexpected child. At the sound of Mary’s greeting John, the unborn Forerunner, leaps for joy in Elizabeth’s womb –greeting the unborn Messiah.  

Luke offers no information about the three months Mary’s spends with Elizabeth. His sole focus is on the greetings that take place, between these two women and their unborn sons. Sacred iconography portrays this greeting as one of an embrace. Elizabeth recognizes and embraces the divinity carried inside Mary. Elizabeth greets salvation.  

In many ways our own lives are a series of unplanned circumstances and greetings. Every day we greet one another – family, friends, colleagues, strangers. Every day we greet the circumstances of our lives – joys, sorrows, successes, disappointments, losses, the mundane and the exciting. Every one of those greetings and circumstances are pregnant with new life and the possibilities of making an offering of love, compassion, forgiveness, reconciliation, healing, joy, beauty, wholeness. The greetings and unplanned events of our lives are pregnant with the divine, with salvation. How will we greet the next person we see? How will we receive the most recent unplanned circumstance of our lives? Will we recognize,  greet, and embrace the divine, our salvation? 

 When God accepts our surrender to the divine will, we are apt to feel not honored but abandoned. Mary was able to recognize God’s favor and delight in her, even as God reached down and interrupted her plans. She blesses God for the amazing thing that is happening in and through her. She places her blessedness into the context of God’s will. She is not concerned with the joy or the sorrow that her motherhood will bring. She sees from God’s perspective what looks to the world as revolution. In this disruption to her plans, she sees and sings of God’s faithfulness and mercy. 

In her Song of Praise, another offering is made. When she gives birth to Jesus and treasures and ponders all the shepherds tell her, another offering is made. When she places her newborn son in the hands of the old priest, Simeon, another offering is made. When she stands at the foot of the cross, another offering is made. Mary offered. Offering after offering after offering. What if we lived more like that? 

I’m not suggesting that you should completely give up planning, but what if we held our plans a bit more loosely? What if we met each person and circumstance of our life asking ourselves, “What’s the offering I can make in this place at this time?” Faith is about making an offering and letting go of the outcome. What might that look like in your life today? What’s the offering being asked of you? Whatever that offering is, like Mary, we will bear and give birth to the divine within us.  +Amen.

Advent 4 B - December 24, 2023

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Adam McCoy

The Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year B, December 24, 2023

 

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16

Romans 16:25-27

Luke 1:26-38

Click here for an audio of the sermon

 

For any number of reasons, this sermon will be a bit short, a bit simple and direct, not the least of those reasons being that the poinsettias are already urgently pressing toward the entrance to the church, the trees are up, cooks are already pouring forth epic menus of holiday treats, and the sacristy is doing double duty.  Christmas is just hours away!
    The scriptural images of Advent to this point have been large, grand, public, noisy, impossible to miss: heavens tearing open, mountains quaking, the sun and moon going dark and stars falling from the heavens; valleys lifted up and mountains laid low, crooked paths straight and rough places plain; a strangely clad prophet with a weird diet calling a whole nation to account; ruined cities being rebuilt; and an as-yet unknown savior coming to bring all to fulfillment.  Entire peoples, whole nations will be cast down and lifted up and the physical universe itself will be transformed.
    So one might think the entrance of the one everyone is waiting for will also be large, grand, public, noisy and impossible to miss.  But No.  Not.  God’s chosen scene is the private domestic space of simple people.  In our first lesson, God is happy to move about with the people on their journeys.  It is they, not God, who need a great and grand and public house of worship. 
    A bit earlier in the same part of the Old Testament there is a story eerily similar to the stories of Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist, and of Mary: Hannah, mother of the prophet Samuel.  She is getting on in age but held up to ridicule because she has no child.  Her son will be Samuel, a little boy born out of his mother’s desperation through divine intervention.  This small child will become the agent of the complete political transformation of Israel.  As with Elizabeth - older, barren, yet called to bear a nation-changing prophet.  From such small beginnings: Who would have thought?  And so Mary:  a small town teenage girl, pregnant but not by her fiancé, this most extraordinary man, traveling in her ninth month to a town with no relatives or friends to take them in, will also, in these desperate circumstances, through divine agency, bear a child who will transform, not this time the nation, but the world itself.  Difficult circumstances.   Little children.  On the road.  No house or home.  Faith and hope and little else.  Hard times are the most ordinary things in the world.  And there, there is where God is.
    Such a contrast between the great and grand and the small and private!  The transforming, saving Word of God, so eagerly waited and watched for, comes into the world of people of no particular distinction coping as best they can.
    Tradition recommends that we apply the experience of the mothers of Samuel, of John and Jesus to our own lives.  Practically all of us are like Hannah, Elizabeth and Mary.  We seem to be of no particular importance.  We may have been, probably will be, perhaps even now are, in desperation of one sort or another.  Trouble is part of life.  But we too are counseled to invite the promise of God, the Word of God, into our own lives.  To let it plant itself in our troubled hearts and begin to grow.  It may take half a lifetime to come to maturity and require all our skill to set it on its path, as good parents must do.  But that promise, that Word, is always hoping for an invitation to enter, always hoping to find in us a home to grow great in.  It does not need a public, grand and holy house, but will build for us the house we need.  The sign of God’s Word’s presence is the faith, hope and love which quite ordinary, obscure people have for the future.  Let us be like Hannah, like Elizabeth, like Mary.  Let us trust the promise of God and set out on the paths God sets before us, confident that God is with us.  Let us say yes when God’s invitation appears.   

Advent 4 A - December 18, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Leo Sevensky, OHC

Advent 4 A - December 18, 2022

Isaiah 7:10-16

Romans 1:1-7

Matthew 1:18-25

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

Br. Robert Leo Sevensky's
paternal great grandparents -
parents of grandfather Barney

IIf you didn't know better, you might think that today's gospel reading is the beginning of Matthew's good news. But it isn't. Seventeen verses precede it, verses we almost never hear read in church and certainly never on a Sunday, though we did in fact hear a brief section read at yesterday’s Eucharist. And that, to me, is regrettable if understandable. Because those seventeen verses are, as the first verse says: “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of

David, the son of Abraham.” 

This is followed by fifteen verses filled with names that are almost unpronounceable. The passage begins by reminding us that: “Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zereh by Tamar…” and on and on, forty-two generations from Abraham down to Joseph the husband of Mary. But these verses are not unimportant for they set the story of Jesus in context and help us to understand who he is and how he came to be who he is for us. These verses, this genealogy, places Jesus directly in the Davidic royal lineage, the lineage from which the Messiah was to come. And as we know, for Matthew it is the messiahship of Jesus which is central to understanding his person and his power.

There has been a lot of interest lately in genealogy. The TV show Roots on PBS remains very popular as celebrities are introduced to distant and previously unknown ancestors. Ancestry.com has allowed many of us to become amateur genealogists. And DNA testing has allowed people to trace the long history of their ancestry as revealed in their cellular structure. It's all pretty fascinating.

During the recent COVID pandemic some of these ancestry tools were made available free of charge through the local public library system. I took a stab at trying to clarify something of my own family history. I was not very successful, however, and my family lineage remains rather short, essentially going back to grandparents and no farther. But just last week my cousin Paul sent me photos of my great grandparents, the parents of my father's father who himself died in 1925. I had never seen pictures of them before and never knew that any existed.

There was certainly nothing remarkable about the photos or the people pictured it in them. They both looked dour, a bit stern, and somewhat down at the heels as I would expect of immigrant laborers from Eastern Europe in the 1880s. But it was fascinating to me none the less. I studied the photos searching for family esemblances and traits. Can I learn anything about myself by looking at this photo of two strangers about whom I know virtually nothing but who paradoxically are part of my history and who to some degree, however small, shape who I am today? I think that's why most people are interested at some level in their genealogy. It's not because it will reveal some exotic past, even though we might hope otherwise, but that it helps us in some small way to understand who we are today.

I think the same dynamic is operative in those first seventeen verses of Matthew's gospel which offer us a genealogy of sorts of Jesus of Nazareth, the Anointed One, the Messiah. And there are several interesting characteristics of this genealogy.

First, it is not exactly historically accurate. It is rather a fanciful or idealized genealogy, nicely divided into three groups of fourteen generations, each group populating a certain era in the history of Israel. And it reminds us, if we need such reminding, that Jesus is the fruit of a long historical process at the heart of the Jewish story. It may not historically accurate. But that may not be its point at all nor its importance for us this morning.

As I mentioned before, this genealogy establishes the royal messianic line right down to Joseph: “…the husband of Mary of whom Jesus was born who was called the Messiah.” This is not so much an historical claim as it is a theological one.

And like most genealogies, the one that Matthew offers us contains some surprises and perhaps even some cautions. Jewish genealogies were generally patrilineal, as this one is, tracing ancestry through the male parent. But there are five women mentioned in this list, and as a footnote in my Bible says of these five women: “…each acted independently, in some cases scandalously, at critical junctures in Israel’s history to ensure the continuation of the Davidic line.” And they are quite a controversial group indeed. There is Tamar, a gentile, who use subterfuge to conceive and bear. There is Rehab, a gentile and a prostitute, who hid Joshua’s spies and insured victory over Jericho. There is Ruth, a gentile and grandmother of King David who refused to go back to her gentile world and chose rather to be incorporated into the Hebrew people. There is Bathsheba, wife of Uriah, a gentile who, depending on how you read the story, is either an adulteress or a woman sexually exploited by a powerful ruler. And lastly there is Mary, definitely not a gentile, but unmarried and pregnant and not by her betrothed. In truth Joseph's genealogy--and by extension Jesus’-- is as messy or messier than yours or mine. Yet look what God did with it and through it.

Finally, and it's easy to miss this in our English translations, the word genealogy in Greek is the word genesis which is, of course, the title of the first book of the Hebrew Bible, a word filled with layers of meaning and associations. Matthew begins his gospel with this proclamation: “An account of the genesis of Jesus.” And that’s a clue, and more than clue, that we are being offered something radically new: a new story, a new beginning, a new creation coming out of a rather messy, if royal, history.

Which brings us at long last to today's gospel reading with its focus on Joseph. We could mention Joseph being a dreamer like his namesake, the son of Jacob who was sold into slavery in Egypt but whom God used for the survival of the Davidic line. We could highlight Joseph’s righteousness and compassion in not subjecting his betrothed to public shame and disgrace. But what's most important about this passage from Matthew’s viewpoint is Joseph's obedience, his obedience to the Angel who said to him: “… you are to name the child Jesus.” This is not a casual command, for in act of publicly naming the child, Joseph legally accepts him as his own. In doing this, in claiming the child as his own, he also and very importantly places the child in the Davidic line. Jesus is capable then, and only then, of assuming the role of Messiah, the Anointed, the Christ.

Yes, Joseph was a dreamer. And yes, Joseph was a just man and compassionate. But above all, Joseph was obedient, listening, as Saint Benedict would say five centuries later, with the ear of his heart, acting on what he heard, and opening for all the way of salvation.

I think once again of the picture that I received last week of my great grandparents and how interesting that is to me. But I think also of another picture, an icon or image, that is yet more interesting and much more important.

Next Saturday evening, Christmas Eve at first vespers, we will sing Prudentius’ achingly beautiful fourth-century hymn Of the Father's Love Begotten. The second verse never fails to touch me:

O that birth forever blessed, when the Virgin full of grace,

by the Holy Ghost conceiving, bore the Savior of our race;

and the Babe, the world's Redeemer, first revealed his sacred face,

evermore and evermore!

It is in that face and that babe that we discover our true ancestry, and it is there that we find our deepest identity as children of God and discover there our true end, our life's purpose and our goal.

Brothers and sisters, let us keep an eye out for that face this Christmas season. In it, we will see our own true face. And through, it we will come home to our own heart, close to the heart of God.

O yes!

Advent 4 C - December 19, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC

Advent 4 C - Sunday, December 19, 2021

Micah 5:2-5a

Hebrews 10:5-10

Luke 1:39-45, (46-55)

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

In the name of God the Mother, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

Our lesson today recounts the Visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth. It makes both of them prophetesses of the great things God will bring about. Those great things will come in the life, death and resurrection of a little boy who is growing in the womb of Mary.

Mary’s prophecy comes in the shape of the Magnificat. This new testament canticle features prominently in every office of Vespers we sing here a the monastery. This song of Mary is a constant reminder of the work of God in the world, and therefore our mission in the world.

The Magnificat is of course a song of praise to the glory of God. But it is also a revolutionary song and a socioeconomic manifesto. By its sheer repetition in our monastic life, we can come to neglect those aspects of the Magnificat. A conscious re-appraisal of this gem is in order.

*****

But first, let’s look at the circumstances of the Magnificat. The Song of Mary is uttered by an out-of-wedlock pregnant teenager. For this prophecy of what God is about, God chose a poor servant girl from a provincial backwater of the empire, with dark skin and dark brown eyes and dark hair to be the mother of Jesus.

And she sings her song of praise in answer to an older cousin’s greeting. A cousin who was hitherto considered barren and whose husband priest is dumbstruck into a temporary silence of the patriarchy. 

Mary and Elizabeth are two marginal people in their society. And yet it is they who are announcing the world-changing coming of God’s justice, to be born in a brown-skinned little baby. 

In God’s choice of her prophetesses, God has already marked a preferential option for the poor; poor in power, poor in resources, poor in status.

*****

Mary starts by glorifying God. She expresses her awe for God’s being and her joy at God’s doings. Her whole being is engaged in this rejoicing. "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior!" We can’t help but be uplifted by her devotion and join her in singing that God is awesome!

Next, Mary expresses her amazement at God choosing a lowly servant for God’s mission. God didn’t choose a queen; God didn’t choose a millionaire; God didn’t chose a celebrated bride with status. She chose a poor servant girl from the backwaters.

Mary acknowledges her exaltation.  God has chosen her to be the mother the Savior. All generations will count her blessed.

Then Mary spends most of her song describing the way God is in general. This general character of God accounts for why God has treated her the way she has in her lowliness and thus leads her to rejoice and magnify the Mighty One.

And this character portrait of God paints a great reversal of fortune.

*****

Mary sings what God is really like. God is not the least impressed by any of our pride, power, or opulence. She has mercy on those who are in awe of God. God favors those who humble themselves. She cares for those who turn from the ego-boosting accumulation of wealth to the lowliness of self-denial for the sake of others.

Listen to the five important verbs in this part of the Magnificat. Mary tells us that God regards or respects the poor, exalts the poor, feeds the poor, helps the poor, remembers the poor. 

Those verbs are in the past tense in the Magnificat but they need to be in the future tense in our lives. God has done a lot of this already. But as the hands and feet of God in the world, we need to continue the mission. We need to undertake being lovers of the poor for God’s sake.

*****

The Song of Mary is a revolutionary bombshell because it turns the values of this world upside down. The poor are important, not so much the rich and mighty. Mary is announcing what her Son will be about.

Do you remember what Jesus said in his first sermon in the gospel of Luke? A first sermon reveals what is important to a person. In his first sermon in Luke, Jesus chose to read from Isaiah and said, 

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free, 

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’

And Jesus added:

‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’

You see, prisons have always been filled with poor people, and that is true today. Do a sociological study of our prisons and you will find our prisons filled with poor people. In his first sermon, Jesus is passionately concerned about poor people, and poor people are often found in prison or fighting wars for the rich.

Do you remember the beatitudes in Luke? Do you remember the first beatitude in Luke, his first blessing?  Jesus said,

‘Blessed are you who are poor,

   for yours is the kingdom of God.’

The poor get the kingdom of God. They understand their utter need of God. And they receive the kingdom.

We know that rich people don’t need God very much, because most rich people are usually busy living life to what they deem to be their fullest and they don’t have time for God.

*****

But Luke’s motif of God’s reversal of fortunes is not intended to raise violent resistance or to drive the wealthy and powerful to despair.

Hopefully, the well-off feel exhorted to deal with their wealth in a way that brings them into a positive relation with the poor in order to partake in the same promised salvation.

God’s revolution is not a violent one but it announces an entirely different way of being stewards of the Earth. What would the laws governing our economy look like if they were written with the Magnificat in mind?

How can we support those kinds of socioeconomic transformation in our lives? Do we vote for people who stand for that kind of society? Do we spend our resources (time, money and prayer) in a way that supports the poor?

Listen to the Magnificat. Listen to the woman who educated our Savior.

The Magnificat announces a revolutionary Jesus. Come Lord Jesus, come!

Fourth Sunday of Advent B - December 20, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC

Advent 4 B  - Sunday, December 20, 2020

2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16

Romans 16:25-27

Luke 1:26-38

Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

The contemporary writer Denise Levertov (1923-1997) begins her marvelous poem Annunciation as follows:

“We know the scene: variously furnished, almost always a lectern, a book;

always the tall lily. Arrived on solemn grandeur of great wings, the angelic

ambassador, standing or hovering, whom she acknowledges, a guest. But we

are told of meek obedience. No one mentions courage. The engendering

Spirit did not enter her without consent. God waited.”

How right Levertov is when she says we know the scene. We have seen the frescoes, the great paintings, the icons, and all the other visual representations of the events recounted in today's very familiar gospel passage from Saint Luke. Indeed, it has become so familiar that it risks becoming a cliche, and we fail to see the depth of meanings which are present, layer upon layer, in the visit of the Angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary.

Levertov is, of course, heir to a great tradition of reflection on the Annunciation. I hear echoes in her poem—which is well worth reading and meditating on—of a homily of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux in praise of the Virgin Mother which we read here at Holy Cross on the feast of the Annunciation in March, exactly nine months before Christmas. That, too, is a masterpiece of Christian art and spirituality which revolves around the question of waiting. Who is waiting? Saint Bernard says:

“The Angel is waiting for your answer: it is time for him to return to the One who sent him. And we too are waiting, O Lady, for this word of mercy, we who are overwhelmed by misery under sentence of condemnation.”

Bernard continues that it is not only the Angel who waits on Mary, nor us alone, but a whole world, a whole cosmos which awaits her response. He develops the dialogue in exquisite detail. 

“Adam asks this of you, O loving Virgin,” he says, along with all his poor children. “Abraham begs this of you; David begs this of you; all the holy patriarchs, your very own ancestors, beg this of you, as do those who dwell in the valley of the shadow of death. The whole world is waiting, kneeling at your feet.”

Now Bernard of Clairvaux is no shrinking violet by any means. So he dares to go so far as to pressure Mary saying:

“Give your answer quickly, my Virgin. My Lady, speak the word which earth and hell and heaven itself are waiting for… Why delay? Why be afraid? Believe, speak, receive!”

The oration reaches its climax:

“Behold, the long desired of the nations is standing at the door and knocking. Oh, what if he should pass by because of your delay and again in sorrow you should have to begin to seek for him whom your soul loves?  Rise up, then, run and open! Arise by faith, run by the devotion of your heart, open by consent. And Mary said, ‘Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done unto me according to your word’.”

Whew! That's pretty intense and, some might say, rather purple prose for a 12th century Cistercian abbot. But the truth is that it is only the poet, the fiery preacher, the artist, the singer, or the mystic who can begin to open to self and to others the drama and the meaning of this event. We must thank God for them. 

As most of you know, we have been reading in our refectory a book by former Presiding Bishop Frank T. Griswold titled Tracking Down the Holy Ghost: Reflections on Love and Longing (2017). It's a delightful combination of spirituality, memoir and theology, peppered with incidents and observations from Bishop Griswold’s life and ministry. In his chapter on our human inclination for and need of community, Bishop Griswold reflects on how ordinary events or situations in our lives can be the place or moment where our world is enlarged as we become, or recognize that we already are, part of something that transcends us, something that is much bigger than our individual selves. Sometimes, he says, community catches us quite by surprise. Let me quote:

“I remember once having dinner with friends in a crowded restaurant when suddenly a young man at a nearby table leapt to his feet and cried out: “She said yes!” All  conversation stopped, all heads turned, and then everyone in the restaurant burst into cheers and applause. His new fiancée blushed and beamed. In that instant, we all became one in our shared joy for the young couple. Very moved by the moment, I sent them a bottle of champagne!”

Such serendipitous events have the capacity to move us deeply and with a variety of reactions. Joy, yes. And perhaps also nostalgia, or longing, or even a certain sadness for what has been or may be. It is why we find ourselves moved to tears at life events such as baptisms, weddings, religious professions, and any other rites of passage, even secular ones such as the swearing in of new citizens or the inauguration of a new President. They fill us with joy and a certain hope, chastened by our life experience, individual and corporate.

But I wonder if we could use Bishop Griswold’s experience at that restaurant as one way of imagining anew the Annunciation. And perhaps also appreciate better Bernard of Clairvaux’s wonderful rhetoric. What if the Annunciation is not a very private event in a sequestered chamber with the Virgin, the Angel, and the lily? Rather, what if it is enacted in the restaurants of our lives, and it is Gabriel the

suitor who jumps up and shouts, “She said yes!” And what if we, along with the whole universe, were to break out in cheers and applause? And what if, like the good bishop, we are moved to offer the champagne of our prayers and our joy and our tears. It's all quite a bit more dynamic than, say, Fra Angelico or Botticelli or Tanner or countless other artists.

Levertov continues her poem by asking:

“Aren't there annunciations of one sort or another in most lives? Some unwillingly undertake great destinies, enact them in sullen pride, uncomprehending. More often those moments when roads of light and storm open from darkness in a man or woman, are turned away from in dread, in a wave of weakness, in despair and with relief. Ordinary lives continue. God does not smite them. But the gates close, the pathway vanishes.”

Well, of course there are annunciations of one sort or another in our lives, probably all lives. And not, I think, once or twice, but over and over again. Like Mary, we need to be attentive and aware. Like her, we need to ask the wise questions. And like her, we need to be prepared to say Yes at the right moment, in the right circumstances. Most of us, if we have survived long enough, recognize that there have been times when we said No and have come to regret it. Or perhaps even more tragic, we said Yes prematurely or without asking the right questions or without real freedom, interior or exterior. But we also trust that God is endlessly creative and may have yet other and even more enticing invitations for us. Yes, as Levertov says, the pathway vanishes, at least for a space, for a time. Perhaps for a very long time. But by God’s mercy, new pathways may appear.

During this late Advent and into the coming Christmastide and at the end of this very, very difficult year, our task is to prepare ourselves to recognize and welcome the Angel when he arrives; to realize when we are being courted and proposed to in  the restaurants of our lives; and, cooperating with God's grace, to have both the wisdom and the courage to say Yes.

And who knows? Maybe we, too, will be sent a bottle of rare and expensive champagne from a nearby bishop. Stranger things have happened. And I’m told that they happen every day.

Amen.

The Fourth Sunday of Advent - December 22, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC
The Fourth Sunday of Advent, Year A - Sunday, December 22, 2019

Isaiah 7:10-16
Romans 1:1-7
Matthew 1:18-25
Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

A few weeks ago, a friend posted a photo of a nativity scene picturing Mary sound asleep in the background and a young Joseph holding and delighting in the infant who was delighting in Joseph as well. Our Gospel today is about the annunciation to Joseph, not Mary. The image I described, and our Gospel challenge much of the legend that has grown up around Joseph. Christian tradition has never quite known what to make of him. He’s an extra in the drama which stars Mary and her child. He disappears from the gospels before Jesus is baptized and is never heard from again.

In Matthew’s Gospel, Joseph is the main character. Gabriel speaks to him, not Mary, as he lies sleeping. “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.” The salutation is important. If the Messiah is to be born the son of David, then this is the man he must be born to. The prophet said so, and Matthew goes to great lengths in his long genealogy of Jesus at the beginning of his Gospel, and later, quoting prophets throughout his Gospel, to persuade us that what the prophets foretold had come to pass. According to Matthew, the whole experiment hangs on what happens with Joseph, not Mary. If Joseph believes the angel, everything is on. The story can continue. Mary will have a home and her child will be born the son of David. But if Joseph does not believe, then everything grinds to a halt. Then Mary is an outcast for disgracing her family and herself. She will be disowned and left to survive however she is able, with her illegitimate child.

Matthew tells us that Joseph was a righteous man, and I would add, a loving, compassionate, and hopeful one as well. He was not naïve but courageous in his choices. He believed that Mary had been unfaithful. Betrothal was equivalent to marriage; infidelity counted as adultery. We have so sanitized this feast, that we forget just what a scandal the Incarnation really was. Today’s text reminds us that the preparations for that first Christmas were anything but conventional and far from proper. To Joseph, the pregnancy was a violation of social convention and ethics, as well as an emotional and physical betrayal.

Confronted with Mary’s presumed adultery, he decides on the most humane of his legal options, divorce, and to do it quietly so as not to endanger her. Despite whatever emotions were raging, he wasn’t willing to shame her or trash her reputation to clear his own. What emotional turmoil it must have been for him. It’s just such times that conjure basic questions. Outside our familiar framework, meaning is challenged, decisions questioned, doubts unearthed. It’s alarming and exhausting. It drains joy out of the present moment. At those times we reach back into all those behaviors or things that we have used to give at least the illusion of stability and safety. In reality, the most it gives is a brief respite from consciousness.

Joseph would have been very familiar with our first reading from Isaiah, where the prophet comes to reassure King Ahaz that all is not lost. God gives a sign: a young woman pregnant with a child of promise, a child born of a woman, with all the bloody and fleshly reality of full humanity. The child’s name, Immanuel, (“God is with us”) reinforces the divine promise of faithfulness and deliverance.

Perhaps it is the memory of this sign spoken by Isaiah that arouses hope in Joseph. Even when our private little worlds go to dust, hope digs in the ruins of our heart for memory of God’s promise to bring good out of bad, joy out of sadness, life out of death. Hope is not optimism in the face of dire circumstances, nor is it founded on denial. My experience is that hope is made of memories which remind me that there is nothing in life I have not faced that I did not, through grace, though unrecognized at the time, survive. Hope is the recalling of the good in the past on which we base our expectation of good in the future, however bad the present. Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something will make sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Joseph was on the verge of divorcing, when an angel of the Lord started whispering hope in his ear. Joseph’s sense of right and wrong got lost in the divine shuffle. His righteousness gave way to God’s; his faithfulness a response to God’s. Even if he never fully grasped or understood what the angel told him, it ignited hope in him.

Faithfulness rarely feels good because it calls on us to set aside our emotions and preferences. It’s work, and it’s a prerequisite to trust and intimacy. Did Joseph like the situation that was thrust upon him? Was trust in Mary immediately restored? You can be sure that what transpired between these two human beings did not resolve overnight. It was a mess that only got messier before it got better. I have no doubt that it did get better. The proof is seen in Jesus himself who learned the love, compassion, and courage that was modeled by this man.

Joseph surveyed this mess he had absolutely nothing to do with and decided to believe that God was present in it. With every reason to disown it all, to walk away from it, Joseph claimed the scandal and gave it his name. He became the child’s father the moment he said so. The issue was not a biological but a legal one. He owned and legitimized the mess and it became the place where the Messiah was born. Joseph’s belief was as critical as Mary’s womb. It took the two of them to give birth to this child: Mary to give him life, and Joseph to give him a name.

Joseph, no less than Mary, is the one in the story who is most like us, presented day by day with circumstances beyond our control, with lives we may never have chosen for ourselves, tempted to divorce ourselves from it all, when an angel whispers hope in our ears: “Do not be afraid, God is here. It may not be the life you had planned, but God may be born here too, if you will own it.”

God’s birth requires human partners willing to love, to hope, willing to claim the mess, to adopt it and give it our names. And not just each one of us alone, but the whole Church, surveying a world that seems to have run amok and proclaiming over and over again to anyone who will hear that God is still with us, that God is still being born in the mess and through it, within and among those who will still hope and believe what angels tell them in their dreams. +Amen.

Advent 4 C - Sunday, December 23, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC
Advent 4 C - Sunday, December 16, 2018

Micah 5:2-5a
Hebrews 10:5-10
Luke 1:39-45, (46-55)

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.

Our lesson today recounts the Visitation of Mary to her cousin Elizabeth. It makes both of them prophetesses of the great things God will bring about. Those great things will come in the life, death and resurrection of a little boy who is growing in the womb of Mary.

Mary’s prophecy comes in the shape of the Magnificat. This new testament canticle features prominently in every office of Vespers we sing here a the monastery. This song of Mary is a constant reminder of the work of God in the world, and therefore our mission in the world.

The Magnificat is of course a song of praise to the glory of God. But it is also a revolutionary song and a socioeconomic manifesto. By its sheer repetition in our monastic life, we can come to neglect those aspects of the Magnificat. A conscious re-appraisal of this gem is in order.

*****

But first, let’s look at the circumstances of the Magnificat. The Song of Mary is uttered by an out-of-wedlock pregnant teenager. For this prophecy of what God is about, God chose a poor servant girl from a provincial backwater of the empire, with dark skin and dark brown eyes and dark hair to be the mother of Jesus.

And she sings her song of praise in answer to an older cousin’s greeting. A cousin who was hitherto considered barren and whose husband priest is dumbstruck into a temporary silence of the patriarchy. 

Mary and Elizabeth are two marginal people in their society. And yet it is they who are announcing the world-changing coming of God’s justice, to be born in a brown-skinned little baby. 

In God’s choice of her prophetesses, God has already marked a preferential option for the poor; poor in power, poor in resources, poor in status.
*****

Mary starts by glorifying God. She expresses her awe for God’s being and her joy at God’s doings. Her whole being is engaged in this rejoicing. "My soul magnifies the Lord, an my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior!" We can’t help but be uplifted by her devotion and join her in singing that God is awesome!

Next, Mary expresses her amazement at God choosing a lowly servant for God’s mission. God didn’t choose a queen; God didn’t choose a millionaire; God didn’t chose a celebrated bride with status. She chose a poor servant girl from the backwaters.

Mary acknowledges her exaltation.  God has chosen her to be the mother the Savior. All generations will count her blessed.

Then Mary spends most of her song describing the way God is in general. This general character of God accounts for why she has treated her the way she has in her lowliness and thus leads her to rejoice and magnify the Mighty One.

And this character portrait of God paints a great reversal of fortune.

*****

Mary sings what God is really like. God is not the least impressed by any of our pride, power, or opulence. She has mercy on those who are in awe of God. God favors those who humble themselves. She cares for those who turn from the ego boosting accumulation of wealth to the lowliness of self-denial for the sake of others.


Listen to the five important verbs in this part of the Magnificat. Mary tells us that God regards or respects the poor, exalts the poor, feeds the poor, helps the poor, remembers the poor. 

Those verbs are in the past tense in the Magnificat but they need to be in the future tense in our lives. God has done a lot of this already. But as the hands and feet of God in the world, we need to continue the mission. We need to undertake being lovers of the poor for God’s sake.


*****

The Song of Mary is a revolutionary bombshell because it turns the values of this world upside down. The poor are important, not so much the rich and mighty. Mary is announcing what her Son will be about.

Do you remember what Jesus said in his first sermon in the gospel of Luke? A first sermon reveals what is important to a person. In his first sermon in Luke, Jesus chose to read from Isaiah and said, 
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free, 
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’
And Jesus added:
‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’

You see, prisons have always been filled with poor people, and that is true today. Do a sociological study of our prisons and you will find our prisons filled with poor people. In his first sermon, Jesus is passionately concerned about poor people, and poor people are often found in prison or fighting wars for the rich.

Do you remember the beatitudes in Luke? Do you remember the first beatitude in Luke, his first blessing?  Jesus said,
‘Blessed are you who are poor,
   for yours is the kingdom of God.’
The poor get the kingdom of God. They understand their utter need of God. And they receive the kingdom.

We know that rich people don’t need God very much, because rich people are usually busy living life to the fullest and don’t have time for God.

*****

But Luke’s motif of God’s reversal of fortunes is not intended to raise violent resistance or to drive the wealthy and powerful to despair.

Hopefully, the well-off feel exhorted to deal with their wealth in a way that brings them into a positive relation with the poor in order to partake in the same promised salvation.

God’s revolution is not a violent one but it announces an entirely different way of being stewards of the Earth. What would the laws governing our economy look like if they were written with the Magnificat in mind?
How can we support those kinds of socioeconomic transformation in our lives? Do we vote for people who stand for that kind of society? Do we spend our resources (time, money and prayer) in a way that supports the poor?

The Magnificat announces a revolutionary Jesus. Come Lord Jesus, come!

Amen.

Fourth Sunday of Advent- Year B: December 24, 2017

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Roy Parker, OHC

Fourth Sunday of Advent- Sunday, December 24,2017

NEW! Listen to Br. Roy preaching

Br. Roy Parker, OHC

"Even at Christmas, when haloes are pretested by focus groups for inclusion in mass market campaigns, they are hard to see. Annie Dillard was scrutinizing the forest floor at Pilgrim’s Creek when she looked up and saw a tree haloed in light. She had caught the tree at prayer, in a moment so receptive and full, the boundaries of bark burst and its inner fire became available for awe. But seeing haloes is more than a lucky sighting. It entails the advent skill of sustaining attention, the simple act, as Dillard found out, of looking up. The optometrist swings his goggle machine before our eyes. ‘Read line four.’ Then he flips lenses through the machine until the blurred letters of line four snap into focus. But if we break our captivity to the imprisoning print of line four and look up to line one, the letter E will carry us away with its clarity and bless the smallest of markings with surrounding light. That is how haloes are seen, by looking up into largeness, by tucking smallness into the folds of infinity. I do not know this by contemplating shimmering trees. Rather there was woman, amid the crowd of Christmas, busy at Christmas table, and I looked up to catch a rim of radiance etching her face, to notice curves of light sliding along her shape. She out-glowed the candles. All the noise of the room left my ears and silence sharpened my sight. When this happens, and I recognize the visits, I do not get overly excited. I merely allow love to be renewed, for that is the mission of haloes, the reason they are given to us. Nor do I try to freeze the frame. Haloes suffer time, even as they show us what is beyond time. But when haloes fade, they do not abruptly vanish, abandoning us to the sorrow of lesser light. They recede, as Gabriel departed Mary, leaving us pregnant.”----- Seeing Haloes: by John Shea

And according to what’s given to us this morning, Christmas is also about God’s preferred mode of moving among us, about the sort of real estate God particularly fancies. In fairness, it must be admitted that the Bible presents two stories about this real estate as if God were of two minds about it. ‘The House of Cedar School,’ as it might be called, receives its first fulfillment in the epic construction of Solomon’s Temple, an edifice congruent with the regal splendor of everything else about Solomon. Its successor, a pale imitation of the first, seems an essential symbol of the return of the exiles from Babylonian captivity. From Solomon on, the so-called ‘Tent School’ of Temple construction seems unworthy of consideration, but it persists in the tradition.

It begins with King David proposing to his court prophet that it’s ridiculous for the king to be living in a house of cedar while the ark of God stays in a tent, but although the prophet immediately encourages the king’s intentions for courtesy’s sake, on second thought he emphasizes God’s preference of a tent despite David’s desire to provide a more permanent structure. What’s going on here is the prophetic reminder of the tabernacle dwelling of the holy presence, which became institutionalized in Israel’s life as the yearly Feast of Tabernacles so that, by camping out for a week, the people would not forget where they came from, a memory whose importance your therapist will emphasize.

God’s assurance to David is twofold: in the words of the prophet, “the Lord declares to you that the Lord will make you a house” and “(one of your descendants) shall build a house for my name”; nowhere is the building material specified, and, in fact, the language here is all about the establishment of dynasty. Otherwise, the only building hint given is that a tent is God’s preferred venue, but will it be duplex, split level, or ranch; you also have Victorian, Georgian,  Federal, and Desert Revival. Then there are the commissions Joseph executed with the help of Jesus, with a large menu of possibilities. Imagine the conversations: “Son, I realize we were occupiers, but don’t you think that Philistine split-level is just the coolest?” It’s an important question for the annual Feast of Tabernacles as important as Passover for the Jewish sense of identity. Oddly enough, the preferred design is Tel Aviv Ikea, using rather inexpensive materials, which is why they came to Joseph’s shop in the first place: four two by fours, about eight feet long, (for the upright corners), four two by twos, same length, (for the roof), for the roof covering, several slats capable of supporting light tree branches. For the sides, they discovered that old bedsheets work well, and for the front, a bedsheet attached to a wire track. Leafy tree branches are placed on the roof slats, with enough gaps to observe the night stars and Ikea recommends a seven-foot cube for the construction, allowing plenty of room for guests.

All this would help Jesus remember the saying that “While God waits for the temple to be built of love, people bring stones” and reinforce the later realization of John the Evangelist that Christmas is about how God moves among us in a tent. And not only how, but why this should be preferable to the host of tourist attractions erected to supposedly house the divine presence. Why, indeed, should the Feast of Tabernacles, a kind of camp-town meeting, be so important to Israel and why should John the Evangelist make such a point that the Word became flesh and tented among us? What is this thing with tents? Something to do with the mystery of wilderness? Wilderness, and its effect upon us — which eases the hatreds, the violence, all those hard forbidden thoughts that plague us, ease them as wild things always ease heartache. Wilderness in which the undomesticated God reunites with us, and if you recall your childhood camping adventures, you might recall your tent as a mysterious vehicle for this. The undomesticated God prefers a tent of bedsheets to a house of cedar, and when the Word became flesh, Jesus preferred the tent of suffering humanity in which to move about, the Body of Christ as described by John Shea in his Prayer to the God Who Fell from Heaven.

“If you had stayed tight-fisted in the sky and watched us thrash with all the patience of a pipe smoker, I would have prayed like a golden bullet aimed at your heart. But the story says you cried, and so heavy was the tear you fell with it to earth where like a baritone in a bar it is never time to go home. So you move among us, twisting every straight line into Picasso, stealing kisses from pinched lips, holding our hand in the dark. So now when I pray I sit and turn my mind like a television knob till you are there with your large, open hands, spreading my life before me like a Sunday tablecloth and pulling up a chair yourself. For by now the secret is out. You are home.”