Feast of the Dedication - October 4, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

The Rev. Matthew Wright

101st anniversary of the dedication of Saing Augustine's church - October 4, 2022

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

One hundred and one years.  The Chapel of St. Augustine has officially now entered its second hundred years of life.  Which is to say that now for over one hundred years, prayer and worship have been maintained in this place.  

“Lift up your hearts.”  “We lift them up unto the Lord.”  “Let us give thanks unto our Lord God.”  “It is meet and right so to do.”  “It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, that we should at all times, and in all places, give thanks unto thee, O Lord, holy Father, almighty, everlasting God.”

Our bounden duty.  I’ve found myself thinking about duty this morning, as I’ve reflected on the dedication of this place.  Duty is a word we tend to shy away from on contemporary spiritual scene—it’s way too heavy and negative.  In our 1979 prayer book revision, “It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty” of course became “It is right, and a good and joyful thing.”  And my experience of worship is often joyful.  But not always.  And when it isn’t, I still show up, because it’s not always about joy, sometimes it’s simply about offering my bounden duty into the universe.

This chapel was of course dedicated as a monastic chapel from its start.  Which means that it was always intended to carry the Daily Prayers of the Church and to celebrate daily the Holy Eucharist.  And monastics have always understood, perhaps better than others, that while, yes, we may come to our prayers for joy, or peace, or intimacy with our Beloved—we also come out of duty.

A good synonym would be responsibility.  The idea that human beings have a responsibility to offer prayer and praise into the universe, that perhaps somehow our acts of worship are even necessary for the maintenance of the world, is one that the contemporary church has largely lost.  But the best of our theology has always understood that prayer and worship are not just for ourselves—for our own personal growth and development, or for getting that spiritual fix we crave.  They’re also for the sake of the world.

Fae Malania, in her book The Quantity of a Hazelnut, writes, “That is why the Daily Office of the Church matters so much.  This is a prayer we can offer for the merest stranger, for someone we dislike, for a sorrow we haven’t encompassed, a problem we haven’t understood. We can offer it for a world of hungry children our hearts are too small to hold, for the unknown victim of a sin we’ve never even thought of, for peace in a world that fills us with a scared surprise.  We can offer it, over and over again, for people we love, and needs we know.

“Saying the formal psalms and prayers, following in obedience the rich and ordered prayer of the entire Church, adding my small voice to its perfect harmony, I turn the whole river of grace towards those for whom I pray. Not I pray for them. Adam, all Man, prays. The whole Church prays. The whole Christ prays.  Let me remember to find a little time for this, even if it means taking a little trouble.”

This church was built as a place dedicated to that remembrance, to the carving out of that time, the taking of that trouble.  And in doing that work, you hold that possibility alive for all who come here, and for all those who cannot come here.  This is a place where the whole Christ prays, or better, a place where we open to the prayer of the whole Christ for the whole Christ.

  An online dictionary tells me that dedicate means “to devote to sacred use through solemn rites.”  Well what exactly is the sacred use that a church is devoted to?  One of my favorite answers is: inefficiency, sacred inefficiency.  In a world driven by efficiency, productivity, and profit, the Church opens us to a world that refuses to play by those rules.  In her book Things Seen and Unseen, Nora Gallagher writes that the life of the Church “calls into consciousness the existence of a world uninhabited by efficiency, a world filled with the excessiveness of saints, ashes, smoke, and fire; … It tells of journeys and mysteries, things “seen and unseen,” the world of the almost known.  It dreams impossibilities…”

This chapel inhabits that world and invites all who come here to dream impossibilities.  And in the polarized and contracted landscape we currently inhabit, that is crucial work indeed.

In the 1979 liturgy for the dedication of a church, the bishop prays, “Lord Jesus Christ, make this a temple of your presence and a house of prayer. Be always near us when we seek you in this place. Draw us to you, when we come alone and when we come with others, to find comfort and wisdom, to be supported and strengthened, to rejoice and give thanks.  May it be here, Lord Christ, that we are made one with you and with one another, so that our lives are sustained and sanctified for your service.”

May it be here that we are made one with you and with one another.  That is also the work to which this place is dedicated—to be a place where we become more conscious of our oneness with God and one another, a place where the marriage of heaven and earth takes place.  It’s a place where we cultivate both a vertical relationship with God through the awakening of our inner lives, and a horizontal relationship with God, through relationship with, and worship shared with, our neighbor, which of course forms the two beams of the cross, the vertical and horizontal, which mapped over the human body, intersect in the heart.  And so perhaps we can say that a church building is in fact an icon or a sacrament of the heart, that place where we flow into God and God flows into us.

I often have thought of this church in particular as a just such an icon.  Every day as the community gathers for Eucharist, we form a circle around the altar, and the two arms of the circle gradually weave into the center, where they receive the Body and Blood of Christ, and are then sent back out into the world.  It often seems to me in those moments that this church is actually, in a very real and literal sense, the lungs and heartbeat of the Body of Christ, where we join the breath of the Spirit and the rhythm of God’s own pulse.

Cynthia Bourgeault writes, “Mercy is the life blood that flows through the Mystical Body of Christ.”  Well I often imagine that we are all blood cells within the body of Christ, and we come here into this heartbeat, through the Daily Office and the Daily Mass, in order to be oxygenated, infused with fresh mercy, and sent back out into the rest of the Body.

In one of her visions, the 14th century mystic Julian of Norwich saw the blood of Christ flowing copiously throughout all creation.  She writes, “The abundance was like the drops of water that fall off the eaves of a house after a great shower of rain, which fall so thick that no man can number them with earthly wit. [...] This showing was alive and active, and hideous and dreadful, and sweet and lovely.”

And then she says, “And then it came to my mind that God has made plenteous waters on earth for our assistance and for our bodily comfort because of the tender love he has for us, but... there is no liquid that is made that it pleases him so well to give us [as his dearworthy blood], for just as it is most plentiful, so it is most precious…

“And the blood is of our own nature, and all beneficently flows over us by the virtue of his precious love... The precious abundance of his dearworthy blood descended down into hell, and burst their bonds and delivered all that were there... the precious abundance of his dearworthy blood flows over all the earth and is quick to wash all creatures from sin...

“The precious abundance of his dearworthy blood ascended up into heaven to the blessed body of our Lord Jesus Christ, and there it is within him, bleeding and praying for us to the Father... and evermore it flows in all heavens rejoicing in the salvation of all humankind that are there and shall be, completing the count that falls short.”

She sees Christ’s blood circulating throughout all the realms—hell, earth, and heaven.  As if it is coursing through a great inter-realmic circulatory system, flowing through all the worlds with forgiveness and healing and love.  But for blood to flow, it needs a beating heart.  Otherwise, it grows cold and stagnant in our veins.  And that is what this place does.

Which brings us back to duty.  It is our duty as Christians to keep the heart of Christ beating in the world, flowing mercy to all the realms—and we do that by showing up, and lifting up our hearts to God—when it’s joyful, when it’s hurts, and when it’s simply boring.  For it is our bounden duty, and the bounden duty of this place to stay true to work to which it was dedicated: a slow and inefficient work that remains as steady as a heartbeat, as necessary as breathing.

Feast of the Dedication - October 7, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

The Rev. Sean E. Mullen, Rector of St Mark's, Locust Street, Philadelphia

Thursday, October 7, 2021

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

It is well known that the story of the origin of the Order of the Holy Cross begins at an Anglo-catholic parish in Philadelphia.  It just so happens that the parish in question is not my parish.  So, if you will allow me, I’d like to establish my credentials.  The connections between West Park and Locust Street were well established by the time this Chapel was consecrated, since priests from Holy Cross had come to Saint Mark’s in the years before the First World War to tend to our parish during the interim between two rectors.  And it was Catherine Murray Rush Camac, a parishioner of Saint Mark’s, who made the gift to fund the construction of this chapel in memory of her husband William Masters Camac, who’d been a Vestryman.

For the record, William, the scion of a notable Philadelphia family, worked with the firm of the marvelously quirky and idiosyncratic Philadelphia architect Frank Furness.  Catherine was one of the grandchildren of Dr. Benjamin Rush, a most distinguished Philadelphian who had been a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and is often referred to as one of the founders of American psychiatry.  There is a Camac Street in Philadelphia, one short stretch of which is the last street in the city paved with blocks of wood.  The street is better known as the home of the Tavern on Camac, a piano bar that is pretty close to the heartbeat of the city’s affectionately nick-named Gayborhood.  So the Camac name still resonates in the city of brotherly love. 

My predecessor, Fr. Frank Vernon preached the sermon at the consecration of this chapel one hundred years and three days ago.  He was only a year into what would be a twenty-four year tenure at Saint Mark’s that ended with his death in 1944, a few months after he had collapsed of exhaustion.  Fr. Shirley C. Hughson, O.H.C., was the celebrant who sang the Solemn Requiem Mass for Fr. Vernon at Saint Mark’s, for which the Bishop of Pennsylvania was present.  We are told that the bishop offered the prayers.  (I’m curious to read between those lines - but, another time.)

When the Vestry adopted a memorial resolution on Fr. Vernon’s death, it mentioned that “his sermons were always brief but they evidenced an immense amount preparation.”*  Those sound like possibly more lines to read between.  Anyway, such requirements were not part of the job description by the time it made its way to me (neither the brevity nor the evidence of preparation). 

A volume of parish history produced for our centenary in 1947 makes substantial note of Mrs. Camac’s gift to the Order, providing a description of this building, as well as this comment:

“This chapel is in daily use and is the center of the monastic establishment at Holy Cross.  Many has been the soul which has found peace and pardon here and to whom our Lord has spoken words of consolation and encouragement.  Thousands have received at this altar the ‘Bread of Immortality’ which our Blessed Saviour has left as the pledge of His Love to His hungry children.  It can be said that this memorial to an ardent parishioner of St. Mark’s has become nationally known and loved as a shrine of our Church.”**

No need to read between the lines there, I think.  It sounds as though the people of Saint Mark’s were feeling quite proud of our association with the Order of the Holy Cross.  And except for the fact that I seem to remember that pride is a sin, I say, why wouldn’t we still feel proud of our long association with this community, and this place, this shrine of prayer and praise?!?  Many of us, myself included, over these past hundred years, have beaten a path from Locust Street to West Park, much to our benefit.  (And I should note that in my seminary days, I was fortunate to have Douglas Brown as my spiritual director.)

That little volume of history reports that at the service of consecration, Fr. Vernon took as his text, “Love is the fulfilling of the Law.”  For better or worse, I am not required to preach on that text, which, out of context, might be easy enough to do.  But in its proper context in the 13th chapter of St. Paul’s Epitsle to the Romans, is not an easy text to preach on.  It is preceded by Paul’s argument that we should “be subject to the governing authorities.”  And it is followed by his admonition to “cast off the works of darkness,” and to “make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.”  All very well for monks, I guess, but I’m not a monk!

But I have to admire Fr. Vernon’s decision (if it was his) to preach on a text that has nothing to do with foundations, nothing to do with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, etc., nothing to do with temples, but only to do with the ongoing conversion of the church, and of every human heart, to the law of God’s love.  “He who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law…. Love does no wrong to a neighbor, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”

If the Gospel reading assigned to Fr. Vernon was the same one assigned for today, no wonder he left it alone.  Jesus enters the temple.  He disrupts everything with accusations of corruption.  He chastises the men who are supposed to be in charge.  And then he walks out and goes on his way.  Well, that’s one way for the visiting preacher to approach his task.  But is this really a pattern we want to dwell on as we celebrate the anniversary of the dedication of this monastic church?

In the midst of that very upsetting series of events, the chief priests and the scribes came to Jesus with a question, when (as Matthew tells us) they saw what wonderful things he did; and when the children were crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!”   Any one of us who cares about the church (as we all do) knows exactly how the chief priests and the scribes felt in this moment, when a charismatic leader has caught the attention, and maybe even the hearts of the people, and is teaching them and leading them in ways that are not our ways, and with thoughts that are not our thoughts, and that we are certain cannot be good for them!  Because, frankly, what the scribes and the priests heard being shouted in the temple was blasphemy, as far as they were concerned.

So, they went up to Jesus, the chief priests and the scribes did, and they asked him, “Do you hear what they are saying?”  The question is telling, because they assume that if Jesus heard what they heard, he would do something about it.  God, I know how that feels, too.  How many times in my prayers have I wondered if Jesus is really listening - not just to me, but to everything I hear that I am sure cannot possibly be good for the people entrusted to my care, or for me?!?  What a common prayer it could be on my lips: Lord, do you hear what they are saying?  Or maybe a slightly different version of the question: Do you see what they are doing?  And I assume that if Jesus heard what I hear, if he saw what I see, he would do something about it!  Indeed, when I’m honest with myself, it’s almost never hard for me to identify with the chief priests and the scribes in the Gospel.  When I look beyond editorial prejudice against them, it’s almost never difficult for me to align myself with the Pharisees.  I mean, I hate to admit that to you, but over the years I have gotten used to being honest in this chapel.  It’s just that usually I am not speaking out loud.

And in this moment, I feel the echo of Fr. Vernon, as I try to work out how my heart is aligned, what kind of Gospel I have to proclaim…. and I feel that miserable prayer on my lips and in my heart again and again: Lord, do you hear what they are saying; do you see what they are doing. Take blasphemy, and add to it, for starters: gunfire, warfare, racism, untrammeled greed, a relentless and cruel marketplace, exploitation, addiction, the ruin of this planet, rampant secularization, outright rejection of religion, and this virus on top of it all. (Let alone my own issues!). Lord, do you hear what they are saying?  Do you see what they are doing?!?!

Fr. Vernon’s hand is on my shoulder, and he whispers in my ear, “Don’t you remember that love is the fulfilling of the law?”  Or, to paraphrase: Don’t you remember… love?  Don’t you remember… love?

As I feel Fr. Vernon’s hand on my shoulder, and hear his echo whispering in my ear, I find that my task here this morning to proclaim the good news is primarily to repeat and intensify what others from Saint Mark’s have already said.  To wit:

“Many has been the soul which has found peace and pardon here and to whom our Lord has spoken words of consolation and encouragement.  Thousands have received at this altar the ‘Bread of Immortality’ which our Blessed Saviour has left as the pledge of His Love to His hungry children.”  And when I get too caught up in that question - Lord, do you hear what they are saying? - it is easy for me not to notice that God’s children are still hungry.

Saint Mark’s and Holy Cross have something else in common, beyond a cast of characters from bygone years.  Perhaps it is bold of me to say this, but I will say it: our two communities - one monastic, one parochial - have the same heartbeat.  For, the hearts of both our communities beat with the rhythm of the daily Eucharist - and this is not normative in the Anglican tradition, but it is essential, and it is a profound connection.

I know that here you breathe the breath of the Daily Offices, inhaling and exhaling the Psalms, drawing them deep into your lungs, and sending them tunefully out again into the atmosphere.  And at Saint Mark’s, we breathe the Offices with a shallower breath than you do.  But the Mass is our heartbeat, our lifeblood - here in West Park and on Locust Street.  The Mass has been said daily at Saint Mark’s since 1884, which is just a few years later than the time this community’s Eucharistic heart began to beat.

If love is the fulfilling of the law, the Mass is the proper spelling and pronunciation of Christ’s love - and of course, it can be spelled and pronounced in a thousand different ways - for the Mass conveys the fullness of the mystery of God’s self-giving love in the person of Jesus.  And people come here to this community, to this chapel, as they also come to Saint Mark’s, in order to rest their heads on Jesus’ breast and listen to his heart beat.  God’s hungry children come here, as they also come to Saint Mark’s, day by day by day, to be fed with the Bread of Life.

In its memorial resolution, the Vestry of Saint Mark’s commended Fr. Vernon’s sermons not only for their brevity, but also because, “each was a carefully designed utterance - with a beginning, a middle, and an end.”  That’s the result of all that preparation, don’t you know?  And it doesn’t seem like a lot to ask of a preacher - but you never know what you’re going to get, do you?  

But as I said, my task here today seems to me to be one primarily of repetition.  So to make sure that this sermon at least has an end, I will repeat again the marvelous gifts identified by my parish decades ago when we bragged about our indelible connections to this community and its life of prayer:  Peace and pardon.  Words of consolation and encouragement.  And the Bread of Life which our Blessed Saviour gives as the pledge of His Love to His hungry children.

May Christ’s hungry children ever be fed here in this place.  And may Christ’s heart beat here with that unmistakable rhythm, so that those who come to worship and pray here may rest our hearts on Jesus’ breast and hear his heart beat, full of love.

* “Frank Lawrence Vernon: A Memorial Minute adopted by the Vestry of St. Mark’s Church, Philadelphia, July 5, 1944, available on philadelphiastudies.files.wordpress.com

** “St. Mark’s: One Hundred Years On Locust Street,” by Charles Glkyson, privately published, 1948, p. 75

Feast of the Dedication - October 4, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC

99th Anniversary of the Dedication of our Church - Sunday, October 4, 2020

Those of you of a certain age may remember the 1969 movie “‘Alice's Restaurant.” It is loosely based on a song of the same name by Arlo Guthrie, son of Woody Guthrie, which is itself based on a true story though, no doubt, somewhat exaggerated. It was a popular film about war and resistance, about coming of age, about sex and drugs and all those other good things. But all I remember about the movie--and this may say more about me than I care to admit--is a brief scene about fifteen minutes into the film which recreates a service of the removal of a consecration of a church or what we might now call the secularization of a consecrated building. Trinity Church, a small Episcopal parish, was located in the Berkshires and was being taken out of commission, so to speak, to become the home of the eponymous Alice. I was struck by the starkness and power of the service, at once both sadly realistic and yet paradoxically hopeful. The cinematic portrayal was accurate down to the last detail. Even the prayers were true to the approved text:

"We who are gathered here know that this building, which has been consecrated and set apart for the ministry of God's holy Word and Sacraments, will no longer be used in this way but will be used for other purposes.

“To many of you this building has been hollowed by cherished memories, and we know that some will suffer a sense of loss. We pray that they will be comforted by the knowledge that the presence of God is not tied to any place or building.

“The altar has been removed and protected from desecration.”

The Bishop's statement was then read: “...this building, having now been declared deconsecrated and secularized, I declare to be no longer subject to my canonical jurisdiction.” 

Contrast this with the joyous ceremonies of consecration and dedication such as we read in Scripture. There is Solomon's portrayal of the original Temple in Jerusalem, real or imagined, with all its accoutrements.  Or the lavish rededication ceremonies of the Temple after the Babylonian exile with its gold and silver and thousands of animal sacrifices.  Or even what occurred here ninety-nine years ago today when St. Augustine’s Chapel was dedicated and consecrated to almighty God. To be sure, it was a more modest affair than what we read about the time of the Second Temple. Still, it was a major production by any measure. There were special trains from New York City. About 500 people attended the service crowding every available nook and cranny. And in the perfect fall weather that followed, food was served on the lawn, a real multiplication of loaves and fishes.

The service was not without its critics of course. The local Episcopal rector from across the river, Dr. Alexander Cummins, was scandalized that the bishop would participate in such a service in this community of monks thereby lending it legitimacy. He made his sentiments known in the New York City press. I can't resist quoting at some length:

“The long trail of monasticism is full of intrigue and rebellion on the part of these irregulars against the regulars, i.e., monks against bishops, priests,deacons or laymen.  History gives us a picture of the gossiping woman in all ages telling her eager tale against the parish priest or bishop in the willing ears of a listening monk. This has been one of the most offensive combinations of unhappy debate and cruel persecution against men accused of heresy and unorthodoxy.

“With this picture must be placed another of the rich orthodox layman outside, ready to meet all deficits and stand all bills for further propaganda provided that sufficient influence is used to keep him out of purgatory. 

“West Park has its saints, no doubt, but it is also behind much false teaching in the Church.  It cannot help itself in the nature of things….

“Is it wise for the Bishop of a diocese which still remains old-fashioned and Protetsant in its character to make one of his first official visitations to a monastic establishment hitherto felt to be a good place to avoid and historically in line with ways and teachings contrary to all the American fathers stood for?”  (New York Times, November 7, 1921)

Dr. Cummins obviously thought not. Happily, not everyone agreed.

In the wider Catholic tradition, and especially in the monastic tradition, buildings are important. They are not accidental. We often hear it said around the current increasingly frequent closures of churches and other places of worship that the church is the people, not the building. This is true. But people are also embodied, as is our own Christian faith. And so we need spaces, buildings in which to gather, to be the ekklesia, those who are called out. We need places to be instructed, to be fed, to be renewed. We need places to find community.  We need places to mark our beginnings and offer our commitments and covenants and vows, and yes, make our exits. 

Churches are these places for us. And at their best, they are also places of great beauty,  doorways into the sublime, the eternal. I think of another movie, “The Deer Hunter,” a 1978 epic war film which takes place in and around a depressing and depressed steel town in Western Pennsylvania at the height of the Vietnam conflict. The one place there of great beauty, of transcendence, indeed of hope is the local Orthodox Church at the center of the town. In the midst of this grey landscape is the exuberance of a church bathed from top to bottom with light and color and song. It is a place of vastly larger meaning and hope in a world on the brink of meaninglessness and chaos.  My own ancestors who came from Central and Eastern Europe understood this. They were exceedingly poor, but the first thing they did after getting jobs and a home was to build a church. It functioned as a community center and a cultural touchstone. But most of all, I think, it served as a place of beauty and light and hope no matter how grim or difficult life might be.  And that is because the Church building itself, as much as the community gathered in it, is the image of something more. It is the image of something eternal. It prefigures, if you will, the Paradise of God.

So every year we commemorate this reality and hold up this truth with gratefulness, with joy, with nostalgia, with awe as we celebrate this anniversary. “This is none other than the house of God and this is the gate of heaven,” said Jacob upon waking from his dream of a ladder which reached to heaven and upon which the angels of God ascended and descended.  We can say the same of this place. 

Nevertheless we must also remember that nothing is here forever. The words of one of our favorite hymns say it so well: 

Mortal pride and earthly glory,

sword and crown betray our trust;

though with care and toil we build them,

tower and temple fall to dust.

But God's power, hour by hour,

is my temple and my tower.  (Hymnal 1982, # 665  )  

Buildings age and collapse or they are destroyed through natural disaster and through war or human madness. Congregations, like monasteries, change. They grow and build and outgrow and shrink and disappear. Cultures change, demographics change, priorities change, our self-understanding changes. This is the truth as well.

And so a service of secularization or deconsecration is also worth considering today. Does it mean these buildings or attempts were failures? Perhaps not. Could it be that they have fulfilled their purpose all too well, that their time has come and is now gone in a particular place, and that we now hand them over the larger providence of God, just as at the end we will hand over our very souls to that same loving providence? Sooner or later everything will disappear. Everything.

In the Book of Revelation we are given a vision of the new Jerusalem, heavenly and eternal. What is shocking is the claim that there is no Temple there.  It’s no longer needed. The rituals have ended, the cult is done, the sacraments have ceased, the priests are no more and not because they were not effective or necessary.  Rather precisely because they were.  Rituals, figures, types are ended because the reality, the Prototype, the living Truth now pervades everything.  Call it what you will: heaven, paradise, eternity, the Kingdom. It is Christ all in all.

None of us is there yet, of course, none of us. But our eyes look toward that day and our hearts stretch forward toward it. Church buildings, like this Chapel, are signs and signposts of hope for a future that is almost unimaginable and yet utterly necessary and--dare we say?--inevitable.

So we give thanks today for those who built this place, this little forecourt of heaven, this little foretaste of God’s future, already present.  We remember those who have worshipped within these walls during the past 99 years--monks, guests, strangers and pilgrims, the hopeful, the despairing, the lost, the confused, the certain, the seeker and the sought. May they join us this morning as together with the angelic choirs we give thanks to God for this and for all divine signs and instruments of grace.  May we be joined together here and hereafter.  For truly, the Lord is in this place. 

Amen. 

Feast of the Dedication - Friday, October 4, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Randy Greve, OHC
Feast of the Dedication - Friday, October 4, 2019

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.

The problem of a temple
It begins with a few stones to mark a place; the human impulse to honor the spiritual event with some physical object.  Certain moments must be preserved; the voice comes, “it happened here, we must remember.”  Surely the Lord is in this place, Jacob says after wrestling with the angel.  This is the dwelling place of God, this is the gate of heaven.  Put the stones here, give it a name.  Simple monuments evolve into more elaborate holy places; a tent in the wilderness, an ark to hold the tablets of the law - the most sacred objects, then songs in strange lands when there is nothing left but the memory of what was left behind, what is gone.  During the reign of King David and then his son King Solomon, the way of honoring and marking God’s presence takes a great leap.  They symbolize their identity, God’s presence, in stone and wood and silver and gold.  God commands David to build the Lord a house, and Solomon inherits the task of the main construction of what becomes the first temple.  But the Lord is not like other deities whose presence is localized and contained in an object or place.  The earth is the Lord’s.  The heavens declare the glory of God.  As Solomon dedicates the temple to God for worship, he is quite aware of both the potential and the danger of what he is doing.  This will be a place of true devotion and celebration.  This can also become a place of idolatry and hypocrisy.  What does it mean, Solomon wonders aloud, to build a house for a God who is everywhere?

Between Solomon and Jesus
The completion of the temple only makes the issues more urgent.  Solomon’s question is revived and echoed by the prophets who appear century after century to renew the covenant and return the people to their true identity.  After the return from exile the people of God rebuild their homes and God’s house. The prophets are there to say, “remember who you are, what this house is for, what is real and true and important.  Worship the Lord, but also welcome the alien.  Offer sacrifices, but also care for the widows and orphans.  Keep the feasts, but don’t fancy yourselves a class of spiritual elite who are too holy to be tainted by your hungry, dirty neighbor.”  In other words, don’t follow the ritual and go out and practice idolatry or oppression or violence.  Don’t make the temple a place of magical moral immunity rather than a place that births justice and righteousness.  Solomon is right, they will say.  God does not dwell solely in buildings made by human hands.  Let the presence of the building help, the prophets say, by pointing beyond itself, to the God who is everywhere, watching everything, and caring for all.  The purpose of the temple was to embody and celebrate God’s love for all, especially the poor, sick, and other outcasts.  It devolved into Solomon’s worst nightmare.  It became a nationalistic weapon used to divide and exclude.  Ultimately, after generations of apathy and carelessness by many, the gentile court, the place that marked the welcome by God of all the nations, had become a trading post, and an unjust one at that.

A house of prayer?
Jesus comes into this world.  Many of the temple elite in Jesus’ day did not occasionally fall into corruption and injustice and then repent, they institutionalized their evil and justified it with claims to covenant faithfulness.  They established patterns of injustice in the name of God, rationalizing prejudice in the guise of ritual purity, modeling exactly the opposite of the vision of the temple in the name of preserving the holiness of the temple.  Jesus’ cleansing is a dramatic reminder that the human relationship to the sacred place or object or ritual can become corrupt if it is preserved solely for reasons of power, enrichment, or the preservation of boundaries around the holy that mark some as worthy and some as unworthy.  In his rebuke to the money-changers, Jesus says, “my house shall be called a house of prayer; but you are making it a den of robbers”.  The cleansing of the temple is not an act to get the temple back into right sacrificial worship, but the beginning of a complete redefinition of the nature of God’s presence on earth.  The joining of heaven and earth was no longer symbolized in the building, but made fully present in Jesus, a walking temple.

Before we pat ourselves on the back because we are so much better than those nasty money-changers, we would do well to be aware that, while our temptations to injustice may not be that obvious, they are no less present and real.  Our selfishness can creep in in a variety of ways and make our time in this place of worship, in our lives with God, a den of denial and judgment rather than the encounter with our true selves.  We can succumb to the robbery of performance, of legalism, or, more popular, going through the motions day after day with little or no real engagement with the inner journey of growth.  The apathy which may gnaw at our spirits may not be obvious or visible, and we can content ourselves with having followed the form with our bodies, when our spirits may be asleep or far away.  Lifeless routine and vain repetition, wearing the mask of holiness, is a tragic avoiding of the call to be the very temples that we are.  If we believe that by performing the prescribed liturgy in the prescribed way at the prescribed times with an appropriate amount of outward reverence and piety grants us immunity from the call to conversion, then we are in danger of making this beautiful and sacred place into a den of religious performers, not a true house of prayer.

The church goes to a church
“But will God indeed dwell on the earth?”  In the coming of Christ, the answer is a resounding “yes!”  In Christ, the meaning of dwell, of presence, of temple, is changed into something wonderful and powerful.  Because on this side of Christ’s death and resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost, we are the temples of that same Holy Spirit, our very bodies are the houses of prayer, the home of God.  A church, then, is not some foreign or alien kind of place, not an escape from real life, but the sign of our true identity, the place where we can enter into the adventure of being creatures fearfully and wonderfully made to worship God, to be renewed in our witness and service to the world as walking temples.

The liturgy, which is the activity of this house of prayer, is an event in which the encounter between us and God seeks to crack through the hardness of our hearts.  Sacred space can provoke and awaken our souls to attend the their desire and longing for God – to find within the space what is most real, what is always present, but often ignored, avoided, repressed.  In a culture so driven by the distractions of hurried movement and countless ways to do anything other than stop and be, the most radical act of resistance may simply be showing up with my whole self.  The house of prayer calls forth from us our honest, unfiltered, and unmasked self so that we may in that place of vulnerability know the delight of God in our very being.  Prayer, chant, silence, stillness, being present are prophetic acts of resistance to the idolatry of doing, going, talking, achieving, performing, earning, and moving.

The church of Christ will continue to build places of worship, we will always seek to join heaven and earth, to mark and remember, and this is good and proper.  But these objects and places are now not reminding us of how we are separated and alienated from the divine presence that we seek, but they are mirrors of the divine that lives most fully in Christ and, in our union with him as his body, in us.  We most faithfully honor this or any house of prayer by always becoming houses of prayer and by allowing the physical house to inspire us to be living stones, set on the foundation that is stronger and truer than all wood and stone and silver and gold. Amen.

Feast of the Dedication - Oct 4, 2015

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Peter Rostron, OHC
Feast of the Dedication of St Augustine Church – Sunday, October 4, 2015

Genesis 28:10-17
1 Peter 2:1-5, 9-10
Matthew 21:12-16

The flower arrangement for the feast of the Dedication

When I entered the order as a postulant in January of 2012, my first seat in the monastic choir was over there, where Br. Joseph now sits, facing the entrance to the church. I enjoyed watching guests as they entered and picked up a breviary and a schedule, blessed themselves with holy water, reverenced the tabernacle, then minded the little bump in the floor as they rounded the corner into the guest court and took their seats. I would wonder how they had found their way to the monastery and this church, and I would wonder what stories and burdens they were bringing with them and how they might be changed before they would leave. I also enjoyed my view of those graceful arches in the wall, and of a small sliver of the great old white oak tree in the small cloister, which I could see through that window up there at the far east end. And yet another thing that drew my attention was a small splash of brilliant, colored light on the south wall there, created by the sun shining through the Mary Queen of Heaven window, just above the statue of Our Lady in that corner. This glowing little rainbow would slowly slide across the white wall, as the sun moved. I found it to be a very mesmerizing and prayerful point of focus, one of many displays of God’s beauty in this church.

A while later, my seat moved down to the west, closer to the guest court, and from that spot, if the door was open, I could see directly into the small cloister. The brick columns were lined up perfectly, one slightly offset and behind the next, creating a beautiful, geometric pattern. My eye was drawn along this sequence of columns to a vanishing point on the far wall of the cloister, right to the spot where Jesus hangs on a small, wooden cross. Like the rainbow of light, this was a very prayerful image - a form of visio divina, if you will - that contributed much to my worship experience. Also at this seat - and this is a little bit of an aside - sitting on my left was Brother Andrew, from whom I felt a strong, comforting, and reverent presence, and who also occasionally let slip some witty, under-the-breath remark, that I think no one else could hear, and that had me biting my lip sometimes not to start laughing right out loud during the office. I miss him.

Now, I sit on the opposite side of the choir. At first, I was disappointed to be losing those perspectives that had become so familiar to me. I couldn’t watch guests enter anymore, or see the graceful arches, or follow the rainbow of light, or see Jesus in the cloister; instead, I looked at a big, plain, flat, white wall. Yet, once I got over my possessive annoyance at what I had lost, I realized that I had gained a great view of the Oberammergau Crucifix, up there. It is a strong and striking image of Christ, dark and heavy, but with the lightness of pain that has been relieved, a burden that has been lifted, a body that has been left behind. I had gazed at it at various times from different places: from a guest seat on the far wall; from directly beneath it, as John and Mary were at the crucifixion; and even while standing in the entry area over there, where it is framed by an arch, with the icon stand and candle sitting low in the foreground. Now, this great crucifix welcomes and accompanies me through every office.

This church is a powerful place. There is something simple yet compelling about it, I find. No matter where you sit, or what mood you are in, or what of your daily life is distracting you, God is here, calling to you, in light, in an archway, in a crucifix, in rain falling on the roof, in the music of chant and the words of a Psalm, or in the person sitting right next to you. This church draws you into prayer, into relationship with God. Today is the 94th anniversary of the dedication of this church, which we celebrate as a First Class Feast. But we are not celebrating grand architecture or spectacular stained glass or amazing tilework or anything that, physically, is particularly awesome. Rather, I think primarily we are celebrating what happens within this space: the marvelous work that God does in each of us and has done in so many brothers and guests over the past 94 years. 

Certainly, this church is not fancy. In fact, The Rule of James Otis Sargent Huntington, our founder, and his successors suggests that the physical space should not detract from the worship it supports. The rule states, “The adornment of altars and chapels of the Order is to be dignified and rather severe than florid. Chasubles are ordinarily to be of Gothic pattern; there is to be no lace on surplices or albs. No new decorations are to be introduced without the approval of the Superior or of the Father-in-charge.” And one of the architects, the famous Dr. Ralph Adams Cram, wrote in the October, 1921 issue of The Holy Cross Magazine that “the new Chapel...in a sense...has no architecture, that is to say, it does not adhere very closely to any historical style, while the monastic simplicity demanded by its function left...little opportunity for architectural embellishment.”

I am struck by a parallel between the simplicity of our church and the simplicity - extreme simplicity - of the place where Jacob dreamt of the ladder carrying angels between heaven and earth. His experience of God took place outside, with no walls or roof and with a stone for a pillow (a bit perhaps like our choir stalls, many of which, as you might notice, have been outfitted with cushions). Nevertheless, God’s action in that place was so wonderful that it led Jacob to declare, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” Just like this place. It was what happened and not the grandeur of the place that made it holy. Also, like many of us, Jacob encountered God in the course of his ordinary life, in this case while on a journey on which his father, Isaac, sent him to find a new wife from among his own people in the land of his grandfather, Abraham. I don’t imagine Jacob was expecting anything special to happen, and the place where he laid down certainly wasn’t special, but it became so by God’s action. An encounter between Jacob and God gave the place its significance, and it is the same for us here in this church.

You and I, of course, are not Jacob. We are not the patriarchs or matriarchs of a great nation, nor are we prominent figures in the Bible. But we are perhaps Jacob in that, like him, we can be open to God’s presence, listen for God’s Word, discern God’s will for us, embrace our place in the family tree of Abraham, and respond to God’s love for us in reverence and worship. Part of that takes place when we gather in community in a space like this, in a physical building called a church. But an equal or greater part of our worship, our relationship with God, takes place outside these walls. On the road somewhere. Asleep in a dream. Wrestling with an angel. In communion with the beauty of creation. In other words, in our lives as members of the other church, that great set of people who make up the living body of Christ.

So, on this Feast of the Dedication of St. Augustine’s Chapel, let us celebrate that event on October 4, 1921 when this church, this focal point of our monastic life, was dedicated, but, even more, let us re-dedicate ourselves to being faithful members of the body of Christ, the living church, to being alert to God’s presence in the beauty of creation that surrounds us, and to being in relationship with God in any and every unexpected place. I invite you to close your eyes and listen to the words God spoke to Jacob in a dream, but now, somewhat modified, addressed to you: “And the Lord stands beside you and says, ‘I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; eternal life in Christ I will give to you and to to those who come after you; and they shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in those who come after you. Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to me in the end; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.’” Amen.

Dedication - Oct 4, 2014

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Scott Borden, OHC
Feast of the Dedication of our monastery church, October 4, 2014

The chancel in the St Augustine church at Holy Cross Monastery

Today we celebrate the dedication of this church – and I could do no better than to echo Jacob quoted in Genesis... “how awesome is this place. It is none other than the house of God and gate of heaven.”

Of course, back when this church was dedicated that sentence would have read a little differently – how awful is this place... which conjures somewhat different images of the place... and even before it was awesome or awful, the King James translation used the word “dreadful”. How dreadful is this place... At least to my modern ears, that takes all the celebration right back out of the day.

In fact, through the awesome and awful miracle of Google, I can tell you that this place is awesome, fearful, terrifying, sacred, terrible, holy, and so on and so forth. Translators clearly struggle to find just the right word. How awesome is this place.

The problem is not with the translators... the problem is that a single word is not enough. All of these various words are good and bring particular insight in describing this place – it is awesome and dreadful and terrible and holy. For it is the house of God – who is beyond description and comprehension.

For nearly 100 years people, specifically monkish sorts of people, have prayed in this awful place. Just because I think in terms of numbers, I had to do some calculations and I discovered that, over that time, perhaps 120 thousand hours of corporate prayer and worship have been offered. That is something like 15 solid years of prayer... how sacred is this place.

But when it comes to being the house of God, the gate of heaven... well I think we then have to have Jesus in mind – in today's Gospel reading he is quite angry that God's house is turned into a den of thieves. We could comfort ourselves by reminding ourselves that he has in mind the folks nestled around the temple in Jerusalem – so that lets us off the hook... except it doesn't. If we think God is confined to just the inside of this house, we are wrong. God wanders the neighborhood and the entire planet for that matter. Can we be proud of how the world is functioning today? Do we live in a land where peace and justice flow like a mighty river to cover the entire earth? How dreadful is this place.

Some times I wonder at Jesus walking among us and visiting the great and marvelous edifices we have built more or less just for him... the cathedrals and shrines and sprawling mega-churches, and yes, monasteries with their chapels... And I hear Jesus asking “what has this got to do with me?” Worse still, there is the history we must not forget of exclusion – when in this country, for example, some churches were built with special galleries so that black people could be kept away from the white people... in Jesus name. Or when, to get a little closer to home, in this very church a gallery was built at the back so that women could be kept away from men... in Jesus name. How terrible is this place...

When this church was built it had many steps... you could not enter without facing a barrage of challenges... those who had mobility challenges would have struggled mightily, or just stayed away. But now, at fairly great expense, we are barrier free so that all may enter. How accessible is this place... (no, I didn't find that word in any known translation, but I think it belongs).

This monastery church or “minster” if you will – for that is just a corruption of monastery – is certainly worthy of honor and praise. It is a very prayerful place. But it is not the stones and timber and parging and paint that make it holy. It isn't the various crosses and icons. It isn't even the altar standing at the east. This place is holy because this is where we gather to praise God.

Two thousand years ago in Bethlehem a group of shepherds gathered to make a stable holy by greeting Jesus, praising God in heaven, and praying for peace on earth. That is what makes this place awesome and awful, dreadful and sacred, frightening and accessible. Here we do just what those shepherds did – nothing more and nothing less. Here we meet Jesus. Here we pray glory to God in the highest. And having met Jesus – having become one flesh with Jesus in the mystery of the Eucharist – we go forth from this holy place to make peace on earth.

Isaac Watts – one of the great hymnodists of all time – penned a text some centuries ago that I want to leave us with:

How sweet and awful is the place with Christ within the doors,
while everlasting love displays the sweetest of her stores.

While all our hearts and all our songs join to admire the feast,
each of us cries, with thankful tongues, Lord why was I a guest?

Twas that same love that spread the feast that sweetly drew us in.
Else we had still refused to taste and perished in our sin.

Pity the nations, O our God, constrain the earth to come.
Send your victorious Word abroad and bring the strangers home.

Feast of our monastery church's dedication - Oct 4, 2012

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park
Br. Andrew Colquhoun, OHC
Feat of the Dedication of the monastery church
Thursday, October 4, 2012

When Brother Robert and I were still fairly new monks, we sat at dinner one day and a guest asked, “Why are all the monasteries on this one side of the river?”

As one, Robert and I answered.  He said, “Because the real estate is cheaper on this side.”  I answered, “Because this is the sacred bank of the river.”  For a moment, the guest was forgotten while our spirits dueled in the refectory but then we collected ourselves… and changed the subject!
My hunch is that we’re both right!

Whatever the truth may be, building this place was an adventurous undertaking.  A handful of monks built the first monastery for Anglicans since the reformation.  Right here.  The photo in Holy Cross, Br Adam’s book, of the community in 1922 shows 16 monks. Just about the time we built the Middle House and the Church.   And around this same era we embarked on domestic and foreign missions, sending men off as far as Liberia.  I don’t think we’ve ever lost that sense of adventure; the willingness to dare, to make changes, to step out or withdraw as needs have arisen.

And one of the major acts of the Order was to build this Church, dedicated to St Augustine of Hippo.   On St Francis Day it was dedicated and from then on for more than 90 years it has been the soul of this place.  For whatever else we do, we ground it in our prayer.  Throughout the days, men and women have come to this place and in its stillness, listened for the sacred.  Listened in anxiety, in joy, in willingness and unwillingness.  
Our own Fr Hughson wrote in An American Cloister: “The Chapel of a monastery is a power-house where one seeks and finds grace and light for every need.  Not only at stated times when it is of obligation that the brethren be present, but through all the hours of the day the members of the household, guests as well as the Religious, come here to the feet of our Lord to find strength and peace in the divine companionship.”

All that is true – it’s a sacred space but it has taken many a “blow and biting sculpture to polish well these stones.”  Nothing holy seems to come easy.  Think of Abraham and Jacob, Rachel and Leah, Blessed Mary, Mary of Magdala.  Think of Benedict and Francis, of Dorothy Day and Paul Jones.  Think of James Huntington and the early brothers.  All of them followed through struggle and often through heartache for love of God.  Think of Jesus the Christ, the forerunner, the Messiah, broken for love’s sake to bring us to peace.

This is a holy place; God lives here. It leaks from time to time; it makes clunking noises; the paint falls off and the doors squeak but God lives here.  God lives in this exquisite, squeaky, drafty place because we pray here.  God takes all the leaky, misfit stones we call our selves and builds temples where peace can thrive and where the poor and broken can find shelter.  The brethren who built this Church carried the love of their Lord to teenagers in the mountains of Tennessee and the mansions of Connecticut.  They walked into the bush of Liberia and witnessed to love there.  They came back to pray here and went again.  Thousands of people have sat here – they’re still here and they’re still coming.  They come here because this is none other than the house of God.  And it is the house of God because they come here.

We will continue to come here.  It is a holy place.  Angels ascend and descend here. Disciples leave home and venture out. Broken people come for healing.  Those who can’t see come for vision.  We come because this is our power-house as Fr Hughson wrote.  We come to this holy place to be nourished and readied for the battle against suffering.  We come for the weapons of peace which are love.  We come for the treasure contained here.

Cheap real estate; thin place – God is that treasure.