The Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 25, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Josep Martinez-Cubero

The Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 25, 2025

• Acts 16:9-15
• Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
• John 14:23-29

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” What exactly is this peace that Jesus gives?  We get a clue in Saint Paul’s letter to the Philippians, where he describes the peace of God as the peace that surpasses all understanding. 

For the last three weeks the lectionary has taken us back to some of Jesus’s teachings prior to his crucifixion and resurrection. The focus has been on how the disciples would live and witness to Jesus after Jesus was no longer with them in the flesh. The Lectionary is preparing us for the Feast of the Ascension, which is later this week, as well as the Day of Pentecost with the receiving of the Holy Spirit. Today’s Gospel passage comes from the Farewell Discourse of Jesus at the Last Supper, right before his betrayal, crucifixion and death. 

The words of the discourse are intended as encouragement, concluding with a solemn farewell bestowing peace on Jesus’ disciples. The Greek word for peace translates the Hebrew “shalom”.  “Shalom” is more than absence of conflict. It includes total well-being for people and for society. Shalom is characterized by wholeness, healing, abundance, concord, reconciliation, social harmony, and spiritual and physical health.  

In popular first century understanding, the messiah was to be a more or less political figure with great military ability. The messiah would be like King David, who ousted Israel's enemies and ushered in a Golden Age. Author and Professor of Religious Studies Wes Howard-Brook wrote:

“If the messiah was supposed to be a military ‘peacemaker’ like David and Solomon, then Jesus certainly failed in the mission. But Jesus' peace does not end war directly; rather, it allows one to live through it without succumbing to the temptation to live according to its own logic and necessities.”

The peace of Jesus, peace without violence, is peace "not as the world gives." It is a state of the soul which cannot be compared with anything else and it is to be understood as something that goes beyond feeling. Jesus tells his disciples to not let their hearts be troubled. When we think of the heart, we tend to think of emotions and feelings. But the heart hasn’t always been thought of as the source of feelings and emotions. 

In the 4th century BC, the Greek philosopher Aristotle identified the heart as the seat of intelligence. He had observed that the heart is the first organ formed in the embryo of chicken eggs, so he concluded that the heart must be vital for life itself and our ability to think. All the other organs simply existed to serve the heart. In Jesus’ day, the brain was viewed as the location of the soul. The heart was where thinking happened. It wasn’t until late in the 17th century that the seat of intelligence moved to our brains. Jesus says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled; don’t be fearful.” In other words, “Don’t let your mind be troubled, there is nothing to fear.” 

We are living in a time in history when humanity as a whole seems to be chronically anxious and reactive. It seems as if the whole world around us wants us to be afraid and to react with anxiety, and it often seems as if this logic of the world is winning. Fear makes us forget who we are and whose we are. When I am afraid, I tend to forget who I am. The person that I truly am, is not angry, or greedy, or violent. But given enough anxiety or fear, I will react angrily. If I am pushed beyond my comfort zone, I will become anxious. If I fear deprivation or destitution, I will become greedy. Threaten me or someone I love with violence, and I may become a monster. Fear makes us forget to think, and to breathe, and it reveals a weakened faith. 

In his book, Mystical Christianity- A Psychological Commentary on the Gospel of John, the late Jungian analyst and Episcopal priest John Sanford wrote: “As long as our consciousness is limited to the information brought us by our physical senses and by our limited ego-consciousness, we tend to live in anxiety for we feel alone and unaided and therefore not able to cope with life’s threats and problems. Jesus’ prescription for this anxiety is faith in him, which also means faith in the reality of another world ordinarily unseen by us.” 

Jesus taught a new way of being in the world. He understood himself to be intimately related to the very Source of his being, the one he called Abba, a Creator intimately connected with creation. “I and the Father are one”, he said. God dwells in our midst. If we breathe deeply and feel the rhythm of the One who breathes in us, we can begin to remember who we are. The peace we so long for in this world will only be realized when we find peace in ourselves. If our inner peace depends on what others are doing, or how safe we feel, or what’s happening in our country, or what’s happening in the world, we will never find peace. The reality is that this wonderful world has always been, throughout its history, crazy and violent. 

Being truly grounded in who we are helps us overcome our fears, and it also helps us to better respond to the fears of others. Fear is the true enemy of peace. Jesus knew this and repeatedly told his followers to not be afraid. Fear separates us from ourselves, from one another and from God. 

So, when anxiety and fear threaten to make you forget who you are, breathe because we live each day precisely to the extent that divine breath is in us (Genesis 6:3). Breathe in and feel the presence of the One “in whom we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Breathe in the peace that surpasses all understanding; the peace that keeps us calm and assertive so we can stand firm in the face of all the craziness we are seeing around us without being sucked into its trauma.

Breathe in the peace that moves us to be the people God made us to be- a people of love, even in the midst of evil, love: incarnate and tangible. Love is never the only answer, but it is always the best and the one most likely to withstand the test of time. It is the solution we remember when the question has been laid down and all quarrels have been put aside. Love is the beginning and should always be the final word. So breathe in the peace that Jesus gives, the shalom of God, alive with the Spirit, abundant, healthy and whole, and may we always strife to be who God made us to be, people of love. ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+  

Easter 6 B - May 5, 2024

 Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Aidan Owen

The Sixth Sunday in Easter B, May 5, 2024

• Acts 10:44-48
• 1 John 5:1-6
• John 15:9-17

 Click here for an audio of the sermon

Most people think of celibacy only in the negative. You’re giving up sexual contact with others. You’re giving up marriage and family. Or even worse—you’re suppressing this natural and beautiful part of your humanity. At the most superficial level, this understanding is accurate. You are giving up something—many somethings, in fact—when you live into a call to consecrated celibate chastity. But for those whom God truly calls to that life, celibacy is a doorway joy and depth and ever-expanding love.  

The celibate life, lived with integrity, is not so different from a sacramental marriage. By limiting our expression of our sexuality, we allow God to expand our capacity to love and be loved. If it’s the life you’re called to—and that’s the key right there—you can fall in love with God in every person, every glint of sunlight off the water, every beat of the crow’s wing. 

One of the greatest gifts of celibacy for me has been the discovery of the joys of true and deep friendship. When we speak of love and relationship, we are almost always talking about sexual or romantic connection. But deep, true, and abiding love flowers in many other fields, if we let it. 

In this morning’s gospel reading—which my friend Suzanne calls lovey dovey Sunday—Jesus invites his disciples and us into a different kind of relationship with God than we are accustomed to. “You are my friends,” he tells them. Then he emphasizes that this move to friendship is a marked change in his relationship with them. “I do not call you servants any longer; […] but I have called you friends.” 

This shift should shock us. At the very least, it should cause us to stop and wonder and question. 

Throughout the synoptic gospels and in the earlier parts of John, Jesus offers many different images for the relationship with God. God is a forgiving father running into a field to meet us or a mother hen protecting her flock. Jesus is the bridegroom, the lover who pursues us, woos us, weds us. God is the master or lord challenging us to obedience, patience, and service. Jesus is the teacher opening the way to wisdom and self-abandonment. But here Jesus calls us his friends. 

Until this moment, each relational image that Jesus uses is hierarchical. If God is our mother, we are children. If Jesus is our teacher, we are students. If God is our master, we are servants. Our tradition has used these same power-differentiated images of God almost exclusively. There is certainly a value and truth in these images. After all, we are not God. We are limited human creatures. 

And yet this morning Jesus says to his disciples and to us, “I do not call you servants any longer, but I have called you my friends.” True friendship is not power-differentiated. True friendship is mutual, egalitarian, horizontal. Not only does Jesus tell us that this kind of mutual, equal relationship is available to us, but he tells that friendship—not parental love, not romantic love, not the loving bond of teacher and student—friendship is the truest and deepest love. “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” It is through friendship that we most fully know and love Jesus and that we fulfill his commandment to love one another. 

The Rule of the Society of St. John the Evangelist has a beautiful chapter on the graces of friendship: 

“For us no honor exists that could be greater than Jesus calling us his friends. The more we enter into the fullness of our friendship with him, the more he will move us to be friends for one another, and to cherish friendship itself as a means of grace. The forging of bonds between us that would make us ready to lay down our lives for one another is a powerful witness to the reality of our risen life in Christ. In an alienating world, where so many are frustrated and wounded in their quest for intimacy, we can bear life-giving testimony to the graces of friendship as men who know by experience its demands, its limitations and its rewards.” 

Our world certainly is alienating. So many are frustrated and wounded in their quest for intimacy. So many are abused by parents and lovers and masters and teachers. Jesus offers those of us who have been so wounded a different way to know him and love him and one another: the way of friendship. 

I believe one of the reasons we often have such an anemic understanding of friendship is that true friendship—with God and one another—requires total vulnerability. To share one’s soul with another can be frightening. It can and does open us to betrayal. Jesus knew this, of course. Still, he chose to call his disciples friends the same night that they would leave him, deny him, and hand him over. Still, he returned to them, laid himself bare for them again, and showed them the way of forgiveness and healing. 

To lay down one’s life for one’s friends does only mean to accept physical death on their behalf. Mostly it means to be willing to lay oneself bare, to stand wide open to the possibility of betrayal and abandonment and to choose to love anyway. Cynthia Bourgeault writes that “self-emptying is at the same time self-disclosure.” To offer the gift of one’s true self and to accept another’s gift of self is what it means to abide in and with God and one another. 

This is the way Jesus calls us to love him. This is the way Jesus calls us to love each other. Without power over, without manipulation, without hiding or shame. Freely. Vulnerably. Nakedly ourselves. 

And because you know I have to say it: What a friend we have in Jesus! Amen. 

Easter 6 A - May 14, 2023

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Leo Sevensky, OHC

The Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year A - Sunday, May 14, 2023

 

Acts 17:22-31

1 Peter 3:13-22

John 14:15-21

Click here for an audio of the sermon

First things first: Happy Mother's Day.  Whether you are a biological mother or an adoptive or foster mother or someone who has nurtured and helped another person grow, we salute you and celebrate you today.  And I say this no matter how blessed, complicated, or disappointing your relationship with your own mother or mother figure has been or is.  Because it is very likely all three.  Nevertheless, Happy Mother’s Day.

 

The last time I preached on Mother's Day, the long first reading from the Book of the Acts of the Apostles was about the Ethiopian eunuch. I later remarked to my sister about how improbable it was to have a reading about a eunuch on Mother's Day. She thought for a moment and said, “Well he had a mother too.” So do we all.

 I’m relieved to say that the readings appointed for this Sunday are quite a bit more appropriate and indeed beautiful. But I'm not going to talk about the readings, at least not directly.  Rather, I want to focus our attention on the collect, or prayer, with which we began our liturgy:

O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding: pour into our hearts such love towards you that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

 Whenever I offer this prayer, I think of a brief Friday morning reflection which the late Bishop Daniel Corrigan gave to the congregation at our monastery in Santa Barbara many years ago. He talked about the power of a few little words. If you were around in the Episcopal Church before about 1976 or so you would have heard this prayer from the 1928 version of The Book of Common Prayer where it was appointed for the 6th Sunday after Trinity. It was essentially the same prayer as we heard this morning except it said: “Pour into our hearts such love toward thee, that we, loving thee above all things, may obtain thy promises…” and so on. And this was good as far as it went. It was a reminder that we are called to love God above all things, to choose God above all things, as the royal road to fullness of life. But during the revision of the liturgies in the 1970s, three little words were added, or more accurately restored, to this prayer making it at once both richer and more relevant. And those words were: “in all things.” So that the prayer asks not simply that we love God above all things, which I hope we do, but that we love God in all things.

Think about this for a minute.  Truthfully, I find it challenging to understand or grasp what loving God above all things means concretely. I suppose there are dramatic points in life where this is clearly presented, and an opportunity is offered for us to act on this aspiration or this demand. I think, for example, of the experience of martyrs or of people who are called to choose God's way of justice and love in the face of social or political opposition, ostracism or worse. For most of us, thank God, that's not a regular occurrence. But daily, perhaps hourly, we are each asked or invited or counseled to love God in all things…in ourselves, in others, in our societal relationships, and in the whole created order: in nature, in birds and animals, in sunrises and clouds, in rains and maybe even in earthquakes and floods and volcanos.  And that is because our Christian faith teaches that all these are the creation of a good God and are themselves intrinsically good, marked by and stamped with God’s creative power and divine purpose. And this includes you and me, each one of us. No one of us exists outside of the web of this created order with all its facets of interdependence, fragility, and sacredness. Rather it and we coexist as one.  It can’t be otherwise.

It's always good to be reminded of this fundamental truth, but especially on this Sixth Sunday of Easter which, besides being Mother's Day, is also traditionally known as Rogation Sunday. Beginning in the fifth century, this Sunday and the three days that follow it preceding the great feast of the Ascension (which we will observe on Thursday) have been devoted to the blessing of crops and fields and of nature generally. In medieval Europe, and still in living memory, there were on these days processions through the fields and farms asking God to bless and provide food for the earth, for us and for all creatures. These processions also served a social purpose. In England they were known as “beating the bounds.” The procession would go to the farthest corners of the territorial parish so that people who did not have easy access to maps would know where property and authority started and ended. Today really is the Church’s Earth Day when we are invited once again to recognize, acknowledge, and celebrate the whole created order in which we are but a part, albeit a central and increasingly destructive part. For the threat of ecological disaster is very real, and in the face of our reluctance to confront this threat, we are brought up short by this Rogationtide.

Over the last quarter century there has been much written about the relationship of religion and ecology, and specifically Christianity and ecology. They are worth studying. But you would do well, if you have the time and energy, to read Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical letter Praise Be to You (Laudato Si’) subtitled “On Care for Our Common Home.”  It is a brave, compelling summons to reflection and action on the part not only of Christians but of all the peoples of the earth in the face of ecological degradation and climate change…though I must admit that it's a bit of a slow read at times. I was particularly drawn to Chapter Two of this encyclical letter on the Gospel of Creation which sets out a theological framework for climate care. The Catholic Climate Covenant summarizes this chapter with the following bullet points:

·     God created everything with intrinsic goodness.

·        Humans are uniquely created and called to exercise responsible stewardship over creation on behalf of the loving Creator.

·        All creation is a mystery the diversity and unity of which both reflect and mediate the Creator.

·        The right to private property is not “absolute or inviolable” but “subordinat[ed]…to the universal destination of goods."

·        “[The] destiny of all creation is bound up with the mystery of Christ.”

Pope Francis stresses that God's command for humans to have dominion over creation expressed in Genesis 1:28 is not exploitative license but rather, as he puts it, a vocation to cultivate and care for God's good gift of creation.

There is much else in this letter that bears mention. He critiques ‘anthropocentrism’ and the prevailing technocratic paradigm which encourages an unreflective acceptance of every technological advance based more on profit than on its effects on human flourishing.  He reminds us that while creation manifests God and may be a privileged space for encountering God, it is not itself God and it is a mistake to divinize or worship the earth and its creatures. And true to his Jesuit tradition, Francis affirms a preferential option for the poor who are most harmed by ecological degradation. He urges both public policy change as well as an individual change of heart, expressed in our willing adoption of a lifestyle driven not by “extreme consumerism” but by a vision of a simpler lifestyle where less is more. And all of this is in service of what the Pope calls ‘integral ecology,’ seeing the whole interconnected picture through, as it were, the eyes of the One who is creator and sustainer of it all.

This Rogation Sunday, this Earth Day, is an opportunity for us to take stock. Look around and give thanks for God’s creation. And as we do that, may we in our own way commit or re-commit ourselves to the cultivation of our common human vocation of caring for the earth and each other that is at the very heart of our Christian faith.  It is the very best gift that we, nurturers nurtured by our Mother Earth, can give to the generations to come.  Maybe it’s the best Mother’s Day gift ever.

Easter 6 C - May 22, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Luc Thuku, OHC

Easter 6 C - May 22, 2022

Acts 16:9-15

Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5

John 14:23-29

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

We have gathered again on this morning of the Sixth Sunday of Easter to celebrate the Resurrection and be fed in Word and Sacrament. From the Gospel passage we heard this morning, we are placed in the Holy Week events and this may seem strange during the Eastertide season. However in the gospel acording to John, these are the chapters where we hear from Jesus himself what living into the resurrection reality truly means. We will come back to this in a moment. First let us explore the main theme from today’s readings which seems to be mission which stems from discipleship or discipleship that leads to mission. In today's passage from the Acts of the Apostles, Paul receives a vision from God. A few verses before this passage begins, Paul and his companions Silas and Timothy seemed at a loss for where to go preach next. They had moved around in the region encountering barriers that strangely seemed to have been set up by God. The Spirit had prevented them or rather had forbidden them from going into Asia or into Bythinia and they were restricted to Troas by God’s refusal to let them go North, South or West. Though the verses that preceed our passage today are ommited as part of it in the lectionary, they are important in that they teach us, the church, that God is in charge of the mission. They also clearly show that the church at times searches for God’s calling in mistaken directions and futile attempts and that the will of God communicated by the Spirit often happens through frustrating and difficult discernment. As already stated, today's passage begins with Paul receiving a vision and the vision is not as clear as we would imagine and therefore needed to be interpreted by the community of faith and owned up by the same community before it could be acted upon. In verse 10, we hear the community taking ownership of the vision… “we concluded what it meant and what to do about it”. We learn a crucial lesson here this morning that although God communicates with individuals, the mission He gives is not necessarily for that particular individual but for the entire Community and not just as a theme for discussions and meetings, but for immediate action. The mission that we recieve is not personal, it is not even for the Church but it is God’s. However, the Church is called to discern God’s mission at every turn and that is our call this morning… Where is the Spirit calling us, is the Spirit calling us to those whom we might think are outside the circle of our responsibility? What visions call us as a Religious Community or as an Order beyond the boundaries we have set for ourselves, into ministry where and that we had not considered before? Are we so comfortable in West Park, Toronto and a certain part of the Republic of South Africa that our eyes have been closed to visions of, and our ears have become deaf to, God inviting us to new frontiers? After the community discerns where God is calling them, Paul and his mission team head directly to Philippi which was a Roman colony, a miniature Rome, a place that was supposed to show what the empire is all about and can offer. Paul heads there and plants a church so that it acts as a community that says No to the ways of imperial power and offer a different way of life, a different story, a different promise. This is still the mission entrusted to the Church today; to be, and to offer, in the face of different and of familiar systems of power and oppression, a different way of life and of being. Unfortunately the Church of today has become so comfortable in her dealings with the systems of power in place and has become compromised and contaminated to the extent of providing theology to back up some of the most oppressive and violent regimes, ideologies and policies that have characterized life in our world today and in the past! If you want to see the extent to which our society has become rotten, look no further than most of the churches! Paul’s vision had involved a Macedonian man but the first to welcome the good-news in Philippi was a woman (and non Jew) named Lydia. This woman was from Thyatira where Paul had just come from and the lesson here is that we should not have any simple expectations about God’s mission. What we need is an open mind and an open attitude to acept what God continues to reveal. This is because God reveals self afresh daily but if we become stuck or fixated on the original vision or mission or even in our successes or failures, we most likely will miss the point and end up sabotaging what we claim to be working to build. Lydia’s faith became active immediately and she and her entire household got baptized. She therefore becomes the first person in Europe to become Christian! She then opens her home to the disciples and by so doing, social and cultural barriers begin to crumble as this Roman outpost begins to be changed by God’s grace. Lydia prevailed upon Paul and his companions to stay with her just as the Emmaus disciples prevailed on Jesus to stay with them for the night. When lives are transformed and opened up by faithful discipleship, the fellowship of the risen Lord continues to extend in the world. This brings us back to today’s Gospel passage. We hear Jesus talking to his disciples about his imminent departure in what is popularly known as the farewell discourse. He speaks to them about the mission he is entrusting to them, that of love! He makes it clear that his followers will love him by serving others. Most of us most of the time think we can make a distinction between loving Jesus and keeping his word and erroneously imagine that we can do one and omit the other. Jesus however does not recognize or envision that distinction. In verse 23, he states a fact as a condition .. “those who love me will keep my word”(John 14:23)… Love for Jesus is love in action! Now, for us to live that kind of love we need the constant presence of God in our midst. Jesus speaks of that presence in a special way when he talks about himself and the father in relation to those who love him… “we will come and make our home with them”. This statement is in no way a reward for good behavior. It is a statement of where God likes to spend time. The book of Revelations 21 tells us that the home of God is among mortals God will dwell with us as our God. We will be God’s people and God himself will be with us! Jesus also reminds the disciples that the Holy Spirit will teach them everything and remind them all He has said to them.(John 14:25) He also assures them of His peace a peace that is different from the peace the world gives. Those of us who have the mission to love Jesus will therefore be known in our work and in our being by these characteristics, that is, The father and Son will make a home with us, in the work of the Spirit to call to mind everything that Jesus taught us, and in the ongoing experience of peace, a peace that comes from Him and not from the world! Whenever peace is mentioned, it does not necessarily imply that there will not be hardships. As Jesus is making this promise of peace, he himself is on his way to the Cross. He also knew what troubles his disciples would suffer. His promise of peace is therefore remarkable. It is one thing to offer reassuarance when things are well; it is another to do so when suffering looms. Yet, Jesus admonishes his disciples not to let their hearts be troubled or be afraid. It is one of the paradoxes of Christianity that the greatest peace can exist amisdt the greatest suffering. Matyrs testify to this. Trials and temptations, hardships and opposition, disappointments and discouragement are all part of the package that is discipleship. True discipleship however is evident in the ability to say with Paul… “If God is for us, who can be against us”, (Romans 8:31). The peace that Paul experiences and spoke about in his hardships filled life is the peace in the midst of suffering. He spoke many times of this peace and it is the same peace we are offered today. It comes from having one’s heart set on what trully matters; God and His love in our hearts. Let us therefore pray that God’s indwelling presence comes to us afresh so that we can be able to be love in action as we strive to make Him known and loved through word and action. Jesus offers us peace and love by offering himself. Let us therefore receive him into our hearts and lives. Only then can we find true peace! AMEN

Easter 6 B - May 9, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Luc Thuku, OHC

Easter 6 B  - Sunday, May 9, 2021

Acts 10:44-48

1 John 5:1-6

John 15:9-17

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

We gather once again to celebrate the resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ and to hear him teach us through his word. All three readings today are focusing us on the theme of genuine and sincere love, and its importance in living the life of a follower of Jesus Christ. From the readings we hear that love is not optional but the core, and also the sustaining force for all who call ourselves Christians because as Jesus states clearly, God is Love and we can only be identified as his disciples by our love!

In the first reading that we heard from Acts 10:44-48, we see the continuation of the story of Peter’s vision and obedience to go to the Gentiles which marks a shift, and a significant one at that, in Peter’s ministry, awareness and understanding of what the Christian message is all about. Peter had witnessed the Spirit’s work among the Gentiles in Judea, Galille and Samaria which was passive witnessing but in this passage, he is becoming a witness in the active sense, that is, he is bearing witness to the word and directly through him, the Spirit makes himself/herself manifest as he speaks!

Peter has finally been able to shake the ethnic prejudices that had held him captive, by cooperting with the Holy Spirit who was steadily chiseling away the hardness of his heart towards those “others” that he had been taught to avoid. As soon as Peter removes the barrier that prejudice is and opens himself to love, then the Spirit falls on his hearers as he speaks and this indicates that the Holy Spirit is the true preacher. The Holy Spirit makes the Word of God present through, or perhaps even inspite of, our words! We also see that God is no respector of rubrics, sequence, procedures and practices. Remember until this instance, the outpouring of the Spirit usually followed baptism but this occassion was unlike any other because it marked the breakthrough of the Church towards the Gentiles, who until now were only welcome to the church if they first accepted the Jewish faith. God grants the gift to the gentiles without them having to first convert to the Jewish faith as a confirmation of His love for them just as they are. God clearly manifests that His love is universal and does not depend on any merits on the part of the recipients!

Like Peter, we have been called to a ministry of proclamation and of witness through proximity. It is easier to claim to love from a distance but the real deal happens when we come into contact with those we are supposed to love. This is  when our love is tried, stretched and proven. 

In the process of our ministry, both our hearers and ourselves receive blessings because God is always at work through the Spirit to tear down ethnic and racial barriers so that God’s very word can be heard. The Word has the power to renegotiate our preconceptions of others and our judgements of them, including the limits we put on ourselves and them about what they can or cannot do. The word has the power to transform and lead us into the proximity of the others whom God loves!

In the second reading today from 1 John 5:1-6, We heard John once again reiterate what he has constantly repeated in his letters; that belief in Jesus and love for one’s brothers and sisters, the believers, cannot be separated! Love is the true mark of being born from God. John here tells us that a true mark of being born from God is believing in Jesus Christ. Anyone who believes in Jesus will love the father who sent him and anyone who loves God, the father of Jesus, will love all God’s other children. 

When God created the world, He wanted to communicate and share His love. He later sent His son as the ultimate act of love to the world but it is particularly within the community of the Church, informed by faith and empowered by the Spirit where love can be learned and lived. The love for God therefore does not consist of ecstatic experinces or private feelings only, but of concrete, public and visible obedience. This involves confessing faith in God’s son and by unconditionally loving God’s other children who are everybody living now, and not yet born, as well as loving and caring for our common resources and heritage, the environment. This, however, is not easy and hence the most likely reason that Jesus presented it as a commandment but by Jesus making it a commandment, he did not make it a burden because as we heard in verse 4 of this passage, those who have been born of God through faith have conquered the world; meaning that they will always be victorious despite the hardships and barriers they encounter as long as the will to love is there! Victory is found through faith in what Jesus is and has done and nothing else is needed.

This Easter Season we are being reminded that in the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus, God’s love for all has been revealed and God’s love has overcome all possible opposition. Victory over the world is a reality made concrete in the community of the church as God overcomes the divisions, animosities, and death that the world promotes, maintains and exploits. Those who believe have overcome the world  because their life, love and identity are not determined by the deceptions of the world but by the object of their faith, who is Jesus as the son who was crucified, died and raised to life!

In our Gospel passage from John 15:9-17, We heard the words of Jesus at the last supper handed on to us by the beloved disciple. The language is simple and the style repetitive and it sounds like the theme is moving in circles or better, in spirals. This passage gives the meaning and purpose of human life and a deep Chistian Spirituality or Christian Mysticism for those who prefer that kind of language. One can never come to an end of reading this words of Jesus, meditating on them, wondering at them and even rejoicing in them, for they hold our life and our glory and because they have the secret by which our worth, our value is revealed.

We hear in the passage Jesus exhorting us to abide in His love!… “Remain in my Love” comes the invitation of Jesus! His love is permanent. It is not just a kind of hit and run deal but we should or must remain! Unless we remain, abide, stay a while longer, we will not be able to calm or be still enough to listen and hear as our holy father St. Benedict urges us, with the ear of the heart, to the master’s instructions.

The instruction from the Master this morning is that “as the father has loved me so have I loved you!” How did Jesus experience the love of the father? What did he get as a result of his unfaltering obedience? Well, being in the Easter Season and knowing that what was witnessed by all was death, and not the resurrection which was witnessed or experienced by a chosen few, some may be tempted to think  Jesus got nothing! We however know that God the father gave His son Jesus an infinite sense of belonging and of being rooted in His love, a firm foundation, the convinction of His presence, His counsel and His faithfulness in times of extreme trials and tempations. He also gave him peace that exceeded by far the restlessness, hopelessness and emptiness of this world, a sense of safety and security. I don’t know about you my brother and my sister, but I personally could do with a good dose of all that positivity in this world we are living in today!

This is the assurance that Jesus is giving us this morning. That if we abide in his love and as we experience his love, we are beneficiaries of a love that exceeds anything we can think of or imagine, a love that exceeds human understanding, a love that cannot be earned and a love that knows no boundaries of time or space, ethnicity or color, social or economic status.

From our readings today, we hear that God loves us all, each one of us. In a perfect world, we would all love God and love our neighbor as ourselves, and this would instantly ensure that all wars and hate would stop. This is not a perfect world however, but if I, you, and you, and you too, decide this very moment to radically respond to God’s love for us individually, as a community, as a church and as the human race; the only true race that exists…all other classifications being futile attempts to create superficial division, then we can start to make it a perfect world.

This however requires that we put aside our spiteful, angry, selfish, proud, lustful, grasping, vain and foolhardy thoughts and tendencies. We must cultivate humility and purity of heart, which our holy father St.Benedict wisely exhorts in the rule that guides us here at Holy Cross Monastery. 

I receive a quote every day from the Website of an organization, called A Network for Grateful Living, founded by Br. David Steindl-Rast OSB, a monk of Mt. Savior, and the word for April 25th this year, was a quote from Lucille Clifton and she had this to say… “In the bigger scheme of things, the universe is not asking us to do something; the universe is asking us to be something. And that is a whole different thing.”  In the same vein, as Christians we are not called to love but we are called to be love. This is because the love of Christ demands everything and must cost us everything. Sometimes we are delighted with it and embrace it but then somehow lose sight of it and refuse to go further towards it. 

Let us pray to God as we look forward to Pentecost to give us the Spirit of enlightenment so as to know that as our love is called upon, and exercised, and stretched, so is it purified, and deepened, and widened, and strengthened until finally it flows easily, spontaneously and naturally, with all the joys of the Holy Spirit. To reach this stage is the highest conceivable good for us, and no human aspiration can go beyond that. To live according to this is to be perfectly happy! To live without it is to live without the beatitude, for which we were created and for which as Christians and monastics we have been called and set apart for!

Amen

The Sixth Sunday of Easter - May 17, 2020

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. John Forbis, OHC
The Sixth Sunday of Easter - May 17, 2020

Acts 17:22-31
1 Peter 3:13-22
John 14:15-21

Click here for an audio version of this sermon.

Oh no, he said it!  He really said it!  How many times in my growing up and even into adulthood have I heard these words: “If you love me, you would do what I want?!?!”  For me, punishment is almost easier to swallow than such a manipulation.  But is Jesus really saying the same thing, with the same coercion?  Well … yes and no.

First of all, to get technical, there is a subtle change in verb tenses here.  Jesus says, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.”  And later in this passage he comes full circle to say, “Those who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me.”  Yes, he expects his disciples to back up their declaration of love with action, but he uses the future tense, not the conditional.  He makes this statement almost as a foregone conclusion; a fact, or a promise.

What if Jesus’ promise of having and keeping his commandments is less about “toeing the line” as a burden and more about devoting one’s attention and energy toward them?  Jesus’ commandments are so much more than commands.

Toeing the line is a product of a very different mindset.  In a world of “if you love me, you would do what I want,” where someone has to be guilty, everyone is the accused and accuser.  Satan is judge, and we’re all condemned.

Jesus doesn’t want victims or accusers, but followers, followers who freely and actively participate in and commit to Jesus’ commandments, to enter into God’s heart.  There’s no expectation that we have to toe the line as if to earn God’s love or prove our love for God.  Perhaps that’s the kind of “unknown god” to which the Athenians built a shrine and whom we worship so easily, groping for perfection, our idol of gold, silver or stone.  God’s love is unconditional.  We put conditions on love.

God does not need to live in our shrines made by human hands.   All God needs is to give – “to all mortals life and breath and all things” and most of all His living Grace.  If we have to have proof of this, we only need to look to Jesus, his life and ministry and his Commandments, which are all summarized in one commandment:  To love one another as Christ loves us.  He’s asking us to commit to a new Creation in which love is the driving agent, not power or domination.  This Creation is abundant life, immersed in loving God because God first loved us.  The God in whom we live, move and have our being is the source of our love.  This love is God’s gift to us.

Leave it to me to fixate on the opening sentence and hear it as Jesus is sending me on a guilt trip.  Maybe I hear it that way because it distracts me from the responsibility and challenge of love.  I’m engaged where I fail, not who I can and am called to be.  It’s easier to feel I am either a convicted criminal or an accuser.       

As we learned last week, the disciples are listening to this man whom God has appointed and not really understanding a word he’s saying.  Thomas needs to know the way to where Jesus is going.  Jesus points to himself.  Philip needs to see the Father.  Again, Jesus responds, “Have I been with you all this time, Philip and you still don’t know the Father?”

When Jesus is arrested later that night, one disciple betrays him, another denies him three times and the rest scatter.  So Jesus’ promise hardly seems possible, that they will keep his commandments.

But, Jesus talks about another Advocate, which suggests that he is the first Advocate.  This man who will judge the world in righteousness is also a Defense Attorney.  He judges by defending others, but not himself.  His silence at his trial frustrates and baffles Pilate to the point where all he can do to make peace is to turn him over to the crowds who crucify this innocent victim.  This Judge, Defense Attorney becomes the accused so that the world order of accuser and accused is rendered indefensible.  His death on the Cross is the defense for us when we’re put on trial and against us when we put others on trial.  This is Christ’s courtroom.  He can do anything he wants here.  He is judge and the defense.  In this courtroom, mercy prevails. 

Then, he offers more promises.  He will ask the Father, and the Father will give you another Advocate.  A defense lawyer even when we’ve fallen short of Jesus’ commandments to love one another as he has loved us.  We’re neither accuser nor accused.  We are just an unknown God’s offspring, a God who loves us, whom we search for and perhaps grope for him and find him.

How do we find him?  The Second Advocate, the Spirit of Truth, that the world doesn’t know or see and can’t receive.  We know him.  “He abides with you and he will be in you.”  We have the Spirit with us right now before as well as after Pentecost.  This Spirit shows God “who is not far from each one of us”, even now in our isolation, fear and confusion.

With the Spirit of Truth with us and in us, we are not left orphaned.  We see Jesus.  Jesus is alive.  He still even now enters through our locked doors, our lockdown.  We are in union with God.  “I am in my Father, and you in me and I in you.”  All the promises are assured because of this fusion.  Jesus is raised from the dead.  Truth does not end with death.

Another promise is that we will know this.  Thus, we can be assured of the first promise:  If you love me, you will keep my commandments … Those who love me will keep my commandments, and those who love me will be loved by my Father, I will love them and reveal myself to them.”  Being alive in Christ, how could we not keep Jesus’ commandments?  We know from where they come.  We know to where they go.  Besides, the Spirit of Truth, the Defense Attorney, can teach us how to be Defense Attorneys to each other when we fall short of loving as Jesus loves.    

Sixth Sunday of Easter - Sunday, May 26, 2019

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Richard Paul Vaggione, OHC
Sixth Sunday of Easter - Sunday, May 26, 2019

Acts 16:9-15
Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
John 14:23-29

Click here for an audio version of the sermon.

Sixth Sunday of Easter- Year B: May 6, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. John Forbis, OHC

Sixth Sunday of Easter-Year B- Sunday, May 6, 2018

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Br. John  Forbis, OHC 

Love may possibly be one of the most used words in the English language and maybe in other languages as well. I’m guilty of overusing it as many others, especially, in my outbursts of great enthusiasms. 

They are often only outbursts … about inanimate objects and events. When it comes to people, I’ve experienced and have expressed the extraordinary guileless passion for and from another. That reciprocation has been particularly poignant for me in my life here in this community. 

My brothers have influenced and prepared me a great deal to preach on this Gospel today. However, at other times, I have occasionally used the word begrudgingly or to manipulate and hurt others.

Love can so easily be bought for a price. And that cost can be very expensive, costing us our mental and physical health, our integrity and even our souls. For example, Americans throughout the last two and a half centuries have professed their love of country. But what that can look like is injustice and inequality supported and even enhanced by a system of selfish greed, racism, hatred and violence. It can insist on the right to brandish weapons of mass destruction turning our schools, our churches, our streets and diplomacy into war zones. This kind of love for country develops at the expense of its own people, even life itself in all its forms, embattled by vicious attacks from eroding environmental regulation and legislation. This devotion is confused with an idolatry of power and dominance. Life’s price then is cut drastically.

We each might claim that we love our neighbor. But that’s just it. Love can so often be a claim, an utterance only or a claim on another or the world we think we own. In contrast, Jesus uses the word sparingly because to him, love is costly as well and inestimable. The love he proposes makes no claims. He gives up all pretensions to lording over us all, as Paul so eloquently articulates, “Christ Jesus, who though, he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God to be exploited but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness.”  And in human likeness, he lived as those who were marginalized by societal love, died by the violence of that deception and rose by the devotion he had to his equal, overflowing to us through the Holy Spirit and to which he commands to us to show each other within this extraordinary mystery.

It gives away as he gave away his own self. Jesus raises us up from being servants, even slaves to the intimacy of being his friends. Jesus lays down his life for his friends. Augustine depicts this humility and elevation beautifully, “You have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

Jesus has taught us everything he learned from God. We know already deep within us all we need to know whether we choose to or not. And it really does come down to choice. Jesus made his choice. His choice becomes explicit by his life journey to Golgotha on the Cross. He travelled this road with a singular will more fierce than any will or desire that greed, violence and hatred can possibly tame.
Jesus’ other choice is God, and in many ways, Jesus’ heart is restless until he rests in God. That longing for God is no secret to his disciples. His intimate relationship with his Father can’t but pour out in water and blood upon us. This laying down of his life for us is a consequence of God loving us. It is the ultimate consequence of the Incarnation or is it? Well … yes and no.

Jesus says on the Cross, “It is finished.”  Yet, it has only just begun. Jesus rises in a passion that defies any other claims of and on love that excludes, disempowers and inflicts great suffering. As we gape dumbfounded, at this unimaginable vision, we are not only invited but commanded to love and be loved in the truth and freedom of being Jesus’ friend and God’s beloved. He must know that we are capable of such a commitment to him and each other, otherwise he wouldn’t call us to this revolution. For this Jesus chose us.
 

Easter 6 C - May 1, 2016

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Roy Parker, OHC
Easter 6 C - Sunday, May 1, 2016


Our Br. Roy read this poem as his meditation on today's gospel (John 14:23-29).
 

The Trinity as per A.Rublev

A Prayer To The God Who Fell From Heaven

By John Shea

If you had stayed

tightfisted in the sky

and watched us thrash

with all the patience of a pipe smoker,

I would pray 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.

Easter 6 B - May 10, 2015

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC
Easter 6 B – Sunday, May , 2015

Acts 10:44-48
1 John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17

Abide in my love.

Today’s gospel is about love and relationship. Jesus is in the middle of what is called his farewell discourse in the gospel according to John. The farewell discourse takes four chapters of the gospel of John. Our eucharistic lectionary explores it for three weeks prior to the feast of Pentecost. We started last Sunday with the metaphor of the true vine.

The farewell discourse encapsulates Jesus’ teaching and instructions to the disciples prior to his passion. And the central message of the farewell discourse comes in our passage of today. The central message that Jesus imparts on the disciples and on us is to love one another as Jesus loves, as God loves.

*****

But first, Jesus invites us to abide in him as he himself abides in God the source of all existence. To abide is to live somewhere, to remain, to persevere, to have stability. The disciples are invited to become permanent residents in living out God’s love, in living out God’s commandment. 

This is a continuation of last week’s metaphor of Jesus being the true vine and us being its fruitful produce if we let God prepare us for it.

Jesus invites us to share and taste his joy; the joy he finds in being in relationship with God. Jesus wants our joy to be complete as a result of right relationship with God, as a result of loving God and obeying God’s commandments. This is not a soppy and sugar-coated kind of joy. Jesus models this joy for the apostles on an evening when he fully expects to be betrayed into his passion. And yet, the joy of loving relationship endures, even beyond death.

*****

But what does it mean in our day to day lives to love God actually rather than in devout pronouncements. In order to be in right relationship with God, we need to be in right relationship with one another. And that means loving our neighbor without condition and without limit. 
This love is not slavish servility nor bossy care-taking. In our text today, the Greek work is agape which is a love which desires and prefers what is good for the other, for the community of those who share meals together.

Jesus even points out that the ultimate agape love of our neighbor could involve giving our lives for our neighbor. 

Now most of us aren’t in a situation where our neighbors need our life to be offered up to love them. Instead, most of us are confronted with the day to day nitty-gritty of doing what we can to make our neighbor and the planet’s life a little better. 

Often this doesn’t require heroics but a consistent attitude of seeking the greater good for all involved, not just for number one. But persistence and stability in this endeavor of bettering life for individual others and for all creation is a noble form of giving our life for our neighbor.

In loving others that way, we put God first in our lives in everyday words and actions. And when we do this, we are in right relationship with God, we love God as Jesus asks us to.

*****

But do not be mistaken. Jesus chose you to do this loving on earth, in your life, now. You may have responded to his invitation, but God chose you and loved you first when you were still being formed into this existence. Your loving is God’s loving. It is your abiding in God’s love that enables you to respond in love to God and thus to your neighbor. 

You have the choice to respond to Love or not, but Love brought its embrace to you. It is not what you achieved, achieve or will achieve that made you deserving of love. Your mere existence as a child of God ensures you are bathed in the love of God.

And in telling us how to love God in our neighbors, Jesus establishes the new covenant; a covenant of friends not that of a master and his slaves. Our NRSV translations uses servants but the Greek word doulos means slave. 

In our old covenant, we were expected to obey the 613 commandments of the Law in awe of God. In our new covenant, we are given a summary of Love’s law that we are expected to embrace for love of God. We are to love as friends, because we empathize with God our friend, our beloved parent, and we want to requite God’s love.

In Jesus, we are shown what it means to live into God’s love. And as friends, Jesus expects us to enthusiastically join in his love of God. Jesus’ love has established a new relationship with God. If we abide in Jesus’ commandment and love God as we love one another, we abide in God’s love.

*****

In his farewell discourse, Jesus is showing us that God is relationship and love. The christian doctrine of the Triune God presents us with three persons who love one another into singleness. And through the humanity of Jesus we got to have that love modeled in our human experience of existence. Because we abide in Jesus’ love, we abide in the love of the triune God.

*****

This week, this community got to hear another farewell discourse. It was the discourse of love as out-poured on our departed brother Andrew and on this community he chose to love. Family, friends, brothers loved Andrew in his departure from this life and hundreds conveyed their love to us through e-mail, texts  and social networks comments. 

It was a striking demonstration of how God’s love had been at work in Andrew’s life and our own. Let us remember to continue to love one another into God’s love within these walls and far, far beyond them.

Thank you, Andrew, for another great lesson in love.
May you rest in peace and may light perpetual shine upon you and that Celtic harp you’re strumming for heaven’s denizens.

Amen.

Easter 6 A - May 25, 2014

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY 

Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC

Year A - Easter 6 - May 25, 2014

Acts 17:22-31 
1 Peter 3:13-22 
John 14:15-21 

We are coming toward the end of Eastertide, and I for one am ready for it to be over, ready to move on....though of course in one sense we never move beyond Easter.  Every Sunday, every day, every breath is a little Easter, a festival of resurrection and of  New Life. 

But in the cycle of our public worship, we are drawing closer to the end of our yearly fifty-day observance of this great and central feast which points to (though it can never adequately express, much less exhaust) the great mystery of Christ alive...alive in his own being, alive in creation, alive in his Body the church, alive in us. 

This Thursday we will celebrate the glorious Ascension of Christ when the mysterious tangible bodily presence of Jesus withdraws from his disciples in order that he, the Christ, might fill all things, all time, all space, all hearts.  That he might be all in all.  If you’re free on Wednesday evening or Thursday, come join us.

But before we get there, we have yet one more blip on our church calendar: Rogationtide.  Since the early Middle Ages, the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday preceding the feast of the Ascension have been devoted to prayer and fasting and supplication—that's what rogation means.  And in particular, it has grown over the centuries into a period of prayer for the earth, days when the faithful pray to God to bless and prosper the new planting, the new crops, begging for seasonable weather, and via litanies and processions rather than surveyor's tools, marking out the boundaries of field and parish and town.  Indeed to this day there are places in Britain and beyond where the ceremony of  “beating the bounds” is held to mark the limits of the parish or municipality.  If you don’t believe me, check it out on YouTube!

Rogation Days Procession

And by extension, this Sunday, the Sixth Sunday of Easter, has come to be known as Rogation Sunday.  It is, if you will, the Church’s original Earth Day, its agricultural feast par excellence, far older than our Thanksgiving harvest festival.  We may not hear much of that emphasis in today's Eucharistic readings, but those of you who were were at matins this morning heard about jubilees and proper land use and fair labor relations. And we have been hearing off and on all month about the dependence we all have on the earth and on each other for food and water and life itself. 

I hear it most clearly in the Collect or prayer for today.  Let me read it again:

O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding: Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. 

I am quite fond of this prayer and find it a powerful reminder of who we are and what we are called to be.  In particular, I am caught up by the phrase: “...we, loving you in all things and above all things.”

There is some interesting history here. The prayer itself is ancient, dating back at least to the eighth century.  And the phrase “loving you in all things and above all things” appears in its original Latin form.  But at the time of the Reformation, the first Book of Common Prayer retained only the phrase “in all things.”  Then in the 1662 revision the phrase “above all things” was substituted.  And so it remained for over 300 years until the 1979 American Book of Common Prayer reverted to the older medieval form:  loving you in all things and above all things.  And rightly so.  For we need both, we are called to do both.  Our Christian living and our stewardship of our selves and of our world in weakened, indeed betrayed, unless we honor both.  

We are called to love God IN all things. God is never absent from God's cosmos.  Indeed, through the Spirit at creation God's being charges and infuses all the cosmic order.  And as we will say on Thursday, Christ has gone up on high to fill all things.  God dwells in the atom as well as in the supernova; in the water and the plant; in the stink bug and the bacterium, the stone and the sun and moon and sea.  God is in the groundhog and monkey and yes, in you and me.  Maybe especially in you and me—maybe not so special.  But definitely there.  So our first call and invitation and charge is to love God in all things.  

The Latin word that our prayer translates as “love” is, by the way, not the familiar first conjugation verb: amo. amas, amat...that is, the love of the emotions. It is rather the word diligere, whose root means to choose...to choose by an act of will to reverence and hold in respect and awe, to esteem.  And that is a stance we can and must take toward all creation, whatever we may or may not feel.  That is the root ecological imperative of Christianity.

But there is more.  For while we are called to love God in all things, we are also called to love God  ABOVE all things...again: to respect, reverence, esteem and hold in awe. God is present in creation, most certainly.  But God is not creation nor is creation God.  God infuses the cosmos, but the cosmos is not God.  God is the source and goal of the evolutionary process. But God is not simply to be identified with that process. God is rather its directing and delightful energy and animating principal and—dare we say it—its Lord and Master.  We Christians are not, after all, animists or pantheists...at least not officially.

So we bow in worship this morning, joining with angels and archangels, and with the whole company of heaven—and with stars, planets, molecules, atoms, primordial slime, oceans, rivers, grasses, trees, lizards, rats, spiders, snakes, lions, cats, dogs, cows, each other...worshiping the One in whom we live and move and have our being. We bow in worship before the Creator and endlessly creating One whom we name Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who transcends every reality and whose glory we can only grope after, to use St. Paul’s wonderful image from the Book of Acts. 

Today is Rogation Sunday.  And we pray today for all creation, including ourselves. We pray to become (as the Jesuits like to say) contemplatives in action, loving God in all things, choosing God in all things, reverencing God in all things.  We pray for the will and wisdom to care rightly for all things.  But we also pray to love, that is to choose to reverence and to hold in awe and deepest respect above all else the God who is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and end, the source and goal of our own human longing as well as the inarticulate but no less real longing and yearning of the whole universe.  We worship the God who, in Jesus the Christ, draws our hearts and minds and bodies on high and along with us, draws this whole amazing created order.  And together we look forward to that point in and beyond time when Christ will at last be all in all.

Let us pray:

We give you thanks, most gracious God, for the beauty ofearth and sky and sea; for the richness of mountains, plains,and rivers; for the songs of birds and the loveliness of flowers.We praise you for these good gifts, and pray that we maysafeguard them for our posterity. Grant that we may continueto grow in our grateful enjoyment of your abundant creation,to the honor and glory of your Name, now and for ever. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer, p. 840)