The Third Sunday after the Epiphany, January 25, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Ephrem Arcement, OHC

The Third Sunday after the Epiphany, January 25, 2026

• Isaiah 9:1-4
• 1 Corinthians 1:10-18
• Matthew 4:12-23

Click here for an audio of the sermon

Some of the most fascinating people we encounter in the Bible are the prophets of the Old Testament.  To be a prophet was not an envious thing, and few in ancient Israel would likely have told their parents that they wanted to be prophets when they grew up.  Because to be a prophet meant that you would place your life in the balance…that you would be despised by many and appreciated by few.  And your life may very well become the target of those who felt threatened by you…and those people were often the ones with the power to, at a whim, remove your head.  

Prophets were the conscience of Israel.  They held up the people of God to the standard of the law and the covenants.  They were the voice calling for fidelity and uncompromising commitment.  They pointed out sin and wickedness with clarity and precision and exposed the secrets of the heart before the discerning gaze of a righteous God.  

But there was another function of the prophet that those prone to apocalyptic visions of doom and gloom often overlook…the prophet was also a visionary who saw things that most others failed to see.  This vision into the future was marked by a vision of what could be in spite of what actually is.  This wasn’t a denial of reality but the conviction that reality is not a fixed, determined constant but open and malleable, able to be moved in directions that sometimes are surprisingly new.  In other words, prophets were those who stood up in the midst of an anxious, fearful people trapped by the threatening visions of the immediate reality before them and dared to see a way-out giving hope and courage to move a people forward into freedom.

The context of the first four verses of Isaiah chapter 9, our Old Testament reading today, is a bleak historical situation in which Israel (the small northern kingdom) is facing a brutal attack from the superpower Assyria.  Prophecies of judgment for sin are present.  But even though Israel has gotten herself into this mess in which she now finds herself, her God will not ultimately forsake her but, through Isaiah, promises a messiah, a coming Child, a Wonderful Counselor, a Prince of Peace, who will bring light and lasting peace to a land devastated by darkness and war.  The yoke of burden she now bears will be broken and she will know the salvation of God as on the day of Midian.  But what was the day of Midian?  The day of Midian refers to the decisive victory of Israel, led by Gideon in Judges 6 and 7, over the oppressive Midianite army, symbolizing God’s powerful deliverance from bondage.  Isaiah highlights God’s faithfulness to Israel in the past in order to offer faith and hope to her now in her current crisis: though all you see now is darkness and deep gloom, a liberating light is about to dawn once again!

What is at stake here not the power of Israel or even her faithfulness, or not, toward her God.  What is at stake is the power of God and God’s faithfulness to Israel.  A prevailing question tucked in the back of Israel’s mind has always been: have we sinned so greatly that our God will finally give up on us and leave us to become prey to our oppressors?  This was a nagging question with which she had to contend throughout her history.  This is, unfortunately, true also of many in the Christian church whose beliefs about God are determined more about what they do than upon who God is.  But have we really heard the gospel?  Have we really understood it?  

St. Paul says he has come not to baptize but to preach the gospel…and not with eloquent words so as to empty the cross of its power…for the message about the cross is the power of God to save.  What does this mean?  It means that when we look upon the crucified messiah, we see the revelation of God in its purest form.  The cross is the revelation of the unfathomable and unhinged love of God gratuitously given in total freedom without coercion or constraint.  It is love unconditional, unrestricted, and unlimited.  It is the peak of the glory of God, where the light of God’s love shines brightest.  It is a disarming folly, a most unexpected and unimagined declaration of the wisdom of God that communicates something absolute and all-determining.  It declares that you are infinitely loved no matter what you have done, no matter where you have been or where you come from, no matter what you look like or how you speak, no matter what you have or don’t have, no matter what you can do or can’t do.  You are the beloved of God and God sees you and knows you and God’s desire for you in not ever condemnation but only salvation.  And in this declaration of love comes the confirming, vivifying Spirit that was always within, but it now felt and known.  So that now, even though darkness may seem to prevail, a light has shown, and we know that this light will ultimately cast out this darkness.  All this flowing out from the wounded side of our crucified God.

And then another question arises: how do we live into this light?  How do we allow the light of God’s love shine out through our lives?  This happens for us just as it happened for Jesus…and just as it happened to those he first called to follow him.  

Notice that, in today’s Gospel, just after Jesus first hears of John’s arrest, he withdraws to Galilee.  Jesus had just gone down from Galilee to Judea to be baptized by John and is subsequently driven by the Spirit into the wilderness down there in southern Palestine to be tested by the devil.  It is immediately after this that Jesus hears about John being arrested.  The Gospel seeks to communicate that the age of John is coming to an end…that the path has been paved and that it is now time for Jesus to become the fulfillment of what John, with his baptism of repentance, began.  So, he withdraws to his hometown of Nazareth in Galilee to begin to tell his own story.  But notice, he leaves Nazareth and goes to the land of Zebulun and Naphtali, which would have been just north of Nazareth.  The point being, as we will also see in those he will soon call, the withdrawing from what is familiar, the detaching from what is custom, in order to hear and discover a deeper truth about oneself and to give oneself the time and space to reconstruct a life on this new foundation.  It plays itself out in Jesus’ call to Simon and Andrew and to James and John…leaving their parents and their livelihood in order to hear and discover something new…in this case, something profoundly new.

This call of Jesus to follow him…to be driven into the wilderness, away from family and the familiar customs which can so often hijack our minds and keep them bound in subservience to those customs, is quintessentially a monastic call.  We hear the Lord call us to come apart with him, leaving everything behind.  And in that place of the stripping of the old self we begin to hear and discover a new self, a deeper and more secure self that begins to reveal itself not by our ascetical efforts or our “perfect” monastic observance, but only by our unencumbered, contemplative listening…and hearing…the divine voice saying, “You are my beloved, with you I am well pleased.”  It is in that voice and that voice alone that the light of God’s glory erupts in and through our lives.  It is in that voice alone that the power to cut through the lies and illusions of our old self lies.  And it is only after every other voice has been silenced that we can hear it and know it and then begin to live it.  Everything else about the monastic life to this is secondary.  Without this…the personal knowledge of God’s love for us…a root of bitterness will likely soon spring up.  

It might be important, here, to point out how John and Jesus were both similar and different.  They both entered upon the public stage preaching…and they preached on a similar theme: repentance.  But where John stopped, Jesus continued.  While John focused on repentance, Jesus focused on what this repentance could lead to: the presence of the kingdom of heaven in the here and now.  This was unique from the message of John…and, for that matter, from what anyone else had ever dared to preach.  Jesus’ message was as clear as it was shocking: the hoped for time of God’s salvation has come…it is here…it is now.  And the question which confronted the first disciples who heard this shocking message also confronts us: will we leave the old behind…without looking back…and focus all our heart and mind on the one leading us into the great unknown?  Will we trust this voice, this experience, this deep longing of our hearts?  Brothers (and sisters), let us indeed trust it because that is the only place where the great transformation of our lives…and of all of life…can take place…where the epiphany of our true selves hidden in Christ can shine out and offer the world a way through the darkness. 

The Third Sunday after the Epiphany C, January 26, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Francis Beckham

The Third Sunday after the Epiphany, January 26, 2025

• Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10
• 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a
• Luke 4:14-21

 Click here for an audio of the sermon

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be pleasing to you, O God, my sustainer and my comforter. Amen.

Today the Church is observing our third annual Religious Life Sunday, when those of us who are members of religious orders and other covenanted Christian communities speak up about the vowed and consecrated life among Episcopalians and Anglicans, sharing our stories and, just maybe, inspiring anyone who feels they may have a religious vocation to explore their potential calling in more depth. In fact, our own Brother Ephrem is at the Church of Saint Thomas in New York City this morning giving a Sunday Theology Talk on “The Order of the Holy Cross and the Reason for Monks.” It is no doubt riveting. In shining a spotlight on the religious life, we also hope to shed the unfortunate label of “best-kept secret in the Episcopal Church.” After all, the religious life is good for the Church, and good things are meant to be shared! (No one lights a lamp and places it under a bushel basket, et cetera.)

While the existence of sisters, friars, nuns, and monks still comes as news to many in the Anglican Communion, we actually aren’t new at all. Heeding Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel reading, Anglican religious communities have been laboring in earnest since the early nineteenth century to “bring good news to the poor … proclaim release to the captives and recovery [to the afflicted] … [and help] the oppressed go free.” All the way back in 1848, the Community of Saint Mary the Virgin was founded in England and, among its countless ministries, ran schools and mission homes for the young, the poor, and the elderly. When the Order of the Holy Cross was established on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1884 – with a significant amount of support and influence from the then-already decades-old Community of Saint John Baptist – direct services to immigrants and the poor were among our top priorities. There are many other orders, as well as numerous communities of dispersed people living lives committed to prayer, service, and Gospel-witness within the Church.

As religious, we work to make our presence seen and felt within the Episcopal Church, as well as in the larger society. The vows we take – usually Poverty, Chastity, and Obedience, though in our Benedictine case they are Obedience, Stability, and Conversion of Life – are not meant to separate us from the wider Body of Christ, but rather to bind us more closely through our common baptismal covenant – that is, they help us to live more deeply, authentically, and prophetically into the Way of Jesus, just as many of our siblings in faith do through marriage, ordained ministry, or fidelity to their families, friends, and communities. And, though recognized by, and affiliated with, the Church through our bishop visitors, we live out our vowed lives independently of ecclesial institutional structures. We are governed by our own rules of life, constitutions, and customals rather than diocesan authorities or church committees.

That last bit is important. Long experience has shown that when a person is seeking to grow more deeply into who they were created to be, the quest – regardless of how or where it begins – must ultimately become a search for truth. Truth, like spring water, wells up from a source, and it is only at that source that we can hope to find it. In time, and often through much trial and suffering, we come to learn that the Source of all Truth is God Alone. While the Truth of God surely flows forth in an infinite number of streams, the Ultimate Source is always and forever God, who can only be encountered in the deepest parts of ourselves, the Still Small Voice. Institutions like the Church can certainly help point us there, but only the heart’s desire, yearning to be reunited with its Creator, can finally lead us into the Living Waters of Truth. It's for this reason mystics and seekers have always fled the establishments of their times and places to find God within themselves, including Saint Benedict and Saint Francis, as well as our monastic forebears in the deserts of Egypt and Syria like Saints Anthony and Pachomius. And it’s a good thing they did, because each of these holy women and men helped the institutional Church reclaim parts of the Truth in their own prophetic and divinely inspired ways. Following their examples – and those of countless others – religious communities continue operating from the periphery to be better positioned to spot – and help address – those places in the Church and in society that might be in need of a little (or even a lot) of nudging back toward the right track.

This, of course, is not always easy, because as we all know, if there’s one thing an errant institution dislikes, it’s being told the truth about itself. As a former coworker in a corporate communications setting once told me, “You don’t talk to the Big Brick Building, the Big Brick Building talks to you.” We see something like this play out in our Gospel reading from Luke. The passage we just heard happens to be the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee. The verses immediately preceding it describe Jesus’ temptation, or testing, in the desert. (Or, if I may take a monastic liberty, his novitiate.) Now filled with the Holy Spirit and fortified by his time of formation, Jesus is ready to commence his ministry of proclaiming the Reign of God. He makes his way to Nazareth, stands up in front of his own hometown congregation and reads aloud God’s preferential option for the poor and oppressed in the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah, before boldly proclaiming, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” In the passage that follows today’s reading, the crowd initially speaks well of him and are “amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth,” but things deteriorate quickly as they realize Jesus isn’t just speaking prophetically; he’s speaking prophetically to them, and within seven short verses, they’re “filled with rage,” rising up, driving him out of town, and attempting to hurl him headlong off a cliff.

Speaking the Truth, it would seem, can be a risky business.

The simple act of calling his own people back to their professed faith, to urge them not to neglect their obligation to the neediest and most vulnerable in their midst, was enough to almost get Jesus killed right then and there. We could almost chalk this scene up to hyperbole for the sake of making a point, if it weren’t for the fact that, even today, we are still witnessing the powerful becoming “filled with rage” at those pleading for mercy toward the poor, the oppressed, and – we may add – to the scared. Tragically, it’s really no stretch at all to imagine such a bishop – I mean, prophet – being run out of town or worse by those whose egos have been rendered too fragile by a lifelong rejection of grace, and whose humanity is seemingly too clouded by idolatrous lust for power, money, and flattery to recognize the gift being offered them by those courageous – and caring – enough to speak the Truth of the Love of God to them. For such poor souls, we must never cease praying, and we must never lose hope in the possibility of the Holy Spirit stirring their hearts to conversion and compassion. In God all things are possible. To quote Saint Francis, “I have been all things unholy. If God can work through me, He can work through anyone.”

Those of us in the religious life must always remember that, as members of our own institutions, complete with power structures and internal politics, we are not immune from the danger of losing the Truth of our vocations – that is, Jesus – to ‘establishment creep’. For that, we must rely first and foremost on cultivating and nurturing our personal prayer lives. We also listen to those whom we serve and partner in ministry with to help hold us accountable when we grow a bit too inward-looking or self-serving, as can easily happen. After all, as Saint Paul reminds each of us in our second reading, our life in Christ isn’t about us; we must have a constant desire to honor the one Body into which we have all been baptized by caring for, lifting up, empowering, affirming, and – most of all – loving each and every person.

We must especially favor and protect those members of our Body who are most vulnerable, including immigrants, refugees, and those demonized and targeted simply because of who they identify themselves to be, or because of who they are moved by God to love. “If one member suffers,” Paul tells us, “all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” That means no voice must ever be silenced, especially when those from outside of our usual associations speak a Truth that may not be convenient or comfortable for us to hear. In fact, especially when it’s something we don’t want to hear. To reject the Truth is to reject the One from whom Truth springs – and God always prefers speaking Truth through those who are the least visible and the least valued in eyes of the world. Saint Benedict, aware of the dangers posed to monastics by insular thinking, advises that if a visiting monk “censures or points out anything reasonably and with the humility of charity, let the Abbot consider prudently whether perhaps it was for that very purpose that the Lord sent him” (RB 61).

The Love of God is the only source of Truth. And the Truth of God is Love. To hear and believe God’s Truth is to know God. Jesus shows us that Truth enters our world through those outside of institutional structures of power – through the weak, the vulnerable, the oppressed, the maligned, and the humble. This has always been God’s preferred way of giving us Truth. On this Religious Life Sunday, I pray that all of us – regardless of how God has inspired us to live into our shared baptismal covenant – will have the grace, strength, and courage to discern and witness God’s Truth to the powers of this world. Our baptism in Christ demands that we must always speak with love, sometimes gently and sometimes boldly, but we can never, ever, be silent when the cry for mercy is heard. To be silent is to deprive the world of the Truth of the Love of God in Christ Jesus that it so desperately needs. And we can be saved in no other way.

May peace and all that is good be with us and all those whom we love, and may God’s everlasting Love and mercy be poured upon our Church, our nation, and our world. Amen.

Epiphany 3 B - January 21, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt

The Third Sunday after the Epiphany, January 21, 2024

• Jonah 3:1-5, 10
• 1 Corinthians 7:29-31
• Mark 1:14-20

 

Click here for an audio of the sermon

 

In the name of God, the Lover, the Beloved and the Love
overflowing.

*****

Today, I will focus on verse 15 of this gospel passage:

and [Jesus says], ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’

*****

Before we get to this first reported statement of Jesus in
the gospel according to Mark, a few things have recently
happened.

Before today’s passage, Jesus had been baptized by John.

Jesus had gone into the wilderness for forty days. In telegraphic style Mark lets us know it was, at times, a
rocky retreat.

Then John was arrested. It was best for preachers in the John the Baptist movement to leave Judea for a while. Jesus decides to strike out on his own and returns to his native Galilee to proclaim the good news, the gospel, of God.

*****

In the five verses following verse 15, Jesus will call two pairs of brothers as his first disciples. This shows the Jesus movement cannot rely on Jesus alone. Jesus knows he will need helping friends to pursue his ministry. Maybe he even already knows he’ll need these disciples to continue his reform movement after he is no longer there in person to lead it.

Christianity is a team sport. You need to practice together; practice, practice, practice. And it’s no use playing it solo. Jesus himself makes that immediately clear. He assembles followers and starts teaching them. To this day, He and his disciples are still teaching the good news.

*****

Now back to verse 15.
‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’

The Greek text of verse 15 uses the word Kairos for “time.” The Greek language had two words for time:
“chronos” and “kairos.”

Chronos is more like what we think of time nowadays. It is a chronological sequential time; a quantitative thing we can scientifically measure.

Kairos, on the other hand, is a good and proper time for action. It is a perfect, delicate, crucial moment (or is it an era). It is a time when conditions are right for the accomplishment of a crucial action or decision. It is a qualitative thing we can perceive but not measure.

Some like to call Kairos “God’s time.” It is the right time for the accomplishment of the kingdom of God. As such, it is a time that marries the present instant and the full sweep of eternity; the already and the not yet. God is always present to all of it; the present moment and all of eternity, and beyond.

“Kairos is fulfilled” says Jesus. God’s time is now; in this instant that your heart is beating and your breath sustains you. And God’s time is forever; and you are part of that forever.

*****

The other term I’d like to look at is “the kingdom of God.” I am told that metaphor occurs 66 times in the New Testament; 98 times if you include the Matthean equivalent “the kingdom of heaven.” The expression “the kingdom of Yawheh” only occurs twice in the Hebrew Scriptures.

It clearly was a powerful new metaphor for the early Jesus movement. In the times of Jesus’ it would have contrasted with the Herodian dynasty. They were Roman puppet kings who tried to please both their Roman overlords and the Jewish populace at the same time.

Jesus’ Kingdom of God does not rely on monumental displays of wealth and power like the Herodians and the Romans did. It relies on the beloved community of the people of God turning to God and trusting in God’s ultimate redemption of creation. “Repent, and believe in the good news.” says Jesus.

*****

So the fulfillment of God’s desire for creation is now. God is with us (Emmanuel) here and now. God is calling forth our engagement into the present and eternal breaking in of God’s kingdom. But the moment we can seize to take action is the present moment. Don’t tarry. Don’t delay. We mortals don’t have eternity on this side of death.

We can’t sit back and be spectators. We are part of the team, remember? Practice, practice, practice. And you can’t play it solo. And God is with you every step of the way.

This playing along with God requires that we turn our hearts and minds towards God and that we believe in God’s magnanimous, benevolent and transforming love for all of creation.

Jesus is not calling us to new tasks (although there will be those too), but Jesus is calling us to a new identity. And it is a costly identity. We are to be followers of Jesus. We are to be disciples. As you know, this is not always easy. Suffering will be part of the journey and that does not exclude ineffable joy.

This identity of disciple requires a dogged loyalty. If you falter, you can repent, you can turn back to it. This disciple identity demands a trust that, what will be broken in acquiring it, was not worth keeping whole. Discipleship doesn’t come cheap. But rejecting our true identity as a follower of Jesus is the costliest loss of all.

Pray that you will not mistake the sirens’ song for the voice of your destiny. Listen for God. Feel your yearning for participating in God’s kingdom. And, when he calls you, hear yourself saying like Samuel: “Speak, for your servant is listening.” (1 Samuel 3:10)

May you lean into the embrace of the living, loving God. ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’

Amen.

Epiphany 3 A - January 22, 2023

St Mary the Virgin, New York, NY

Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC

Epiphany 3 A - Sunday, January 22, 2023

Isaiah 9:1-4

1 Corinthians 1:10-18

Matthew 4:12-23

For some years now I have served on the Commission on Ministry of the Diocese of New York. I've also, throughout my 36 years as a member of the Order of the Holy Cross, worked with hundreds of people as vocations director or spiritual director. We get used to hearing about calls: calls to ordained ministry, calls to monastic or religious life, calls to a certain career path or to one or another personal or family relationship. And all of this is usually framed with questions: Is this what God is calling me to do or be, and how do I know? Will this make me happy or fulfilled? Will this bring my life meaning? Am I equipped to do this? And the bonus question: is this what I truly desire?

Most people, especially when considering a professional religious vocation, if you will, develop a ‘call narrative,’ a kind of two-minute elevator speech where they sum up what has happened to them in their life that has led them to this point of considering such a life choice.

While this is a helpful tool in the process of discernment, the process of figuring out where to go in our lives no matter where we are in the life cycle, I've grown a bit suspicious about call narratives. They generally leave out as much, or more, than they express. Yes, there is often a catalyzing experience that we can point to, often in retrospect, which seems to capture a powerful moment or experience in

our life, and which shapes our sense of being chosen for or directed to one way or another path. And sometimes that catalyzing experience is quite dramatic and transformative, so much so that we can date it to an exact place and time. I believe we've all had such experiences to a greater or lesser extent. But for most of us, most of the time, the experience of call and of our response to a call is slow and

complex and uncertain… which is to say risky. And this applies both to calls in the narrow sense, such as that to ordained ministry or the religious life, as well as in the broader sense of life choices in general, all those decisions and options we face about careers, commitments, where we live, how we spend our time and energy and resources, how we engage with our own selves and with others and our

community and indeed with the world. Each of these kinds of choices—which are regular elements in all lives—have an element of a call in them: we are asked to respond to an invitation to a new and to what we hope is a larger life.

Some calls may prove to be temporary, whether we know it or not at the time. Other calls are lifelong. And there are always calls within calls as we grow and mature and commit and recommit to our vocational choices. We often say in the monastery: “The reason I came and the reason I stay are not the same,” though I do hope they are related. The same is true at many levels.

It's impossible to capture this complex process in a two-minute call story, though we often try. Guests frequently ask me about why I entered the monastery, so over the years I've developed my own little call narrative which usually begins with me at about age eleven seeing the Sound of Music and hearing those nuns chanting what I now know to be tone two ending one and sensing at some deep place in my heart that I want to do that, that I almost had to, that I was destined to. Of course so much more was going on than I knew at the time and that I still don’t know even now sixty years later.

Today's gospel passage, the story of the call Peter and Andrew and James and John is perhaps the archetypal Christian call story. But it offers us just the barest outline of what must have been an amazingly nuanced and multilayered event. Jesus is the actor here. The disciples say nothing. Jesus calls them to follow him, and they respond by leaving their nets, leaving their families and livelihoods. But to go where? Nothing is said about the context. What do these fishermen know about this man? Have they heard talk, rumors, gossip about Jesus? Do they even recognize that this is Jesus? What does he want of them? Where does he want them to go? For how long? For what purpose? They don't know. 

And truthfully, most of the time, neither do we when we're confronted by a decision, a choice, an invitation, a call. We can of course weigh all the evidence. We can evaluate skills and interests and compare possible gains against uncertain losses. We might consider our social and educational backgrounds, our needs, and preferences and commitments. We might explore the Myers-Briggs inventory or the Enneagram and take the MMPI (Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory). All of these may be helpful and sometimes even required. But like the disciples in today's gospel, we never know fully. We never have all the information. And the future will always remain, to some degree, uncertain. There is always, always a risk, a stepping out in faith in any real response.

Over the years I have met people who have labored under a theology of call or of vocation which went something like this: from eternity God has ordained a certain path for me, and my job is to figure out what that path is and then to follow it. Further, all my happiness, all my holiness depends on my finding that path, that unique way, that vocational choice without which my soul’s welfare is imperiled and my salvation is jeopardized. This is a very hard and a very dangerous theology, but not an altogether uncommon one. It offers a vision of God which is, to say the least, harsh and perhaps even cruel. Yes, vocational discernment and life choices can be difficult, even agonizing. But there are ways forward, including theological ones.

When I was first working with inquirers considering monastic life, I came across a book by Trappist monk Basil Pennington titled simply “Called.” In it, Pennington stresses the bounty and generosity of God in vocational discernment as well as in much other choosing. He counsels that instead of thinking of vocation as some kind of divine mystery that needs to be cracked, it is more helpful to think of God as inviting us, say, to a smorgasbord. God leads us to the table of our life and says something like: “I know you pretty well. I think you'll like that chopped liver.” If you're smart, if you're wise, you'll try the chopped liver. But it's also OK to say, “Thank you. I think I'll skip the liver, but those deviled eggs look really good. I'll try those.” And God will rejoice. God will work with you in the choice you have made to lead to the best possible outcome. The only way we can totally fail or totally reject God's call, and by extension our vocation, is to refuse to eat at the table at all, to say in one way or another: “I don't like your smorgasbord. I’m out of here.” Beyond that, though, there is a wide freedom and generosity and joy in God's call to us.

Today is Religious Life Sunday. And certainly St. Mary's has had a long history with vowed religious working here alongside you for well over a century. We celebrate that today. Today is also the Sunday within the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity when we once again recommit ourselves to work for the full visible unity of Christ’s Church at a time when it seems either less important or less possible than ever, especially as the institutional church seems to fade into relative obscurity. But these two observances are related in some important ways.

Religious life, particularly monastic life, traces its roots to and makes witness to a history that predates the division between Protestant and Catholic, which even predates the split between Eastern and Western Christianity. In fact, monastic life and its practices has been a point of meeting and dialogue not just between Christians but between many other spiritual paths and practices, especially Buddhist, Hindu and Sufi traditions. This gives me hope and helps me to understand the place of our monastic witness as a bridge toward unity and maybe even sanity. Unity at whatever level will happen in God's time to be sure, and it will happen the more faithfully and transparently we each of us lives out our calling, our vocation, our life choices and commitments. Unity, Christian unity and wider unity, will happen in God's time when we embrace the compassionate heart which is at the center of the religious quest. Unity between peoples and races and classes and tribes and nations will happen when we allow our vocation, whatever it may be, with its tough choices and struggles and sorrows and failures along with its joys shine in the world as we share openly the human struggle. It is there that God is to be found, and not elsewhere. And it is there that God’s church serves and celebrates until the Lord takes her home.

Monasteries and religious houses and large urban churches such as St. Mary’s have always been places where the ‘nones’ (that is those who have no formal religious formation or affiliation) and the ‘dones’ (those who have simply had it with institutional religion) and seekers of all stripes can find a resting place, a temporary refuge, and perhaps even an abiding home. That is our vocation. That is our call.

Welcome to the smorgasbord. And don't be afraid to try the chopped liver.

Amen.

Epiphany 3 A - January 22, 2023

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC

Epiphany 3 A - Sunday, January 22, 2023

Isaiah 9:1-4

1 Corinthians 1:10-18

Matthew 4:12-23

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

 

In the name of God the Lover, the Beloved and the Love ever flowing. Amen.

At the Last Supper, Jesus prayed "that they all may be one."  (cf. John 17:21)

From January 18 to January 25, Christian churches around the world observe the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. That we all may be One.

The Church Unity Octave, a forerunner of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, was developed by Father Paul Wattson, a Franciscan Friar of the Atonement, at Graymoor in Garrison, 35 miles South of here on the other side of the river. 

It was first observed at Graymoor, in 1908. It is now observed worldwide.

Today’s epistle is right on point.

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In this morning’s passage of Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, he enjoins his brothers and sisters in the Jesus movement to unity. Christian unity is important at the local level and at the universal level. But unity is challenged at both levels.

Paul starts at the local level. Which is where our behaviors have the most impact. He warns against cliques and factions. Cliques and factions are contentious self-seeking groups within a larger community. 

In the church at Corinth, Paul is concerned by sub-groups that have formed in identification and allegiance to whomever has baptized them. This seems to be happening regardless of whether those baptizers even know about or approve of those cliques.

And in claiming this allegiance to their respective baptizers, the cliques disagree with and oppose one another. They introduce incoherence and confusion in the larger community. They do not embody love of their neighbor as Jesus asks them to.

As Paul suggests, one may even claim allegiance to Jesus to attempt to justify one’s clique. One can say “I belong to Christ” and be self-seeking and contentious in doing it. That doesn’t cut it with Paul.

Jesus said “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” (John 13:34)

So the alternative to self-seeking, contentious behavior is to love God and neighbor as oneself. It helps to remember that I and the person I may be in contention with are both in God and beloved of God.

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This call to unity also serves at the level of the whole Body of Christ, the whole church, the whole world.

A man drew a diagram of the Christian Church in this way: He drew it as a circle with several radii converging on the center which he called “Christ.” On the different radii, he wrote the names of the different denominations of Christians. Underneath he wrote the words, “The nearer to the center, Christ, the nearer to each other.”

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What can keep us from a unity centered on Jesus, the Christ?

In Christ, divisions between church bodies, races, backgrounds, educational levels, incomes, political affiliation, break down. We should help, not hinder, that breakdown.

In Christ there is no north or south, no east or west. In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female. We are all one as we are one in the Lord. So let us act “as if” until we really believe it.

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One of the root problems of our culture today is that we have politicized everything. I am right. Therefore you are wrong. And my side needs to win at all costs. And I only listen to the ones who think and talk like me, lest I should walk in your shoes for a couple of miles.

We are called to be one with Christ and with each other. To be closer to the LORD means that we will draw nearer to each other; to draw closer to our fellow believers means that we have come nearer to the LORD.

The unity of God’s people is God-pleasing in itself. Remember how Jesus prayed in John’s Gospel that his followers would be one with each other just as he and the Father were one.

Jesus said “that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.” (John 17:21)

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Christian unity is for the sake of the whole world. Human unity - including Christianity but going well beyond that to all Creation - is for the sake of the world. 

How we bring about peace, justice and love for all - the Kingdom of God - hinges on our ability to seek common purpose among Christians, but also among all humans.

Jesus helps us with that. We need to keep praying for God’s peace, justice and love to prevail everywhere, not just among Christians. And we need to act in accordance with our prayers.

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When Paul talks about having one mind, he is speaking of unity not uniformity. This unity enriches diversity - a real rainbow of peoples, ideas, cultures, goals.

But Jesus-centered unity does not reside in our best thought, our best behavior, or our pedigreed background. Our unity is in Jesus Christ. Do we learn from Him; do we follow Him; do we love Him?

As we accept each other, speak well of each other, interpret the actions of each other in the kindest way, as we love each other, we come closer to Christ. 

As we learn and study and worship and pray together, we come closer to the cross of Christ and to each other. 

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Beloved Jesus, the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing. But to us who follow you, it is the power of God. As you were raised up on the cross, you lovingly embraced us all with no exception. Give us to embrace all of your beloved Creation as our Sister, as our Brother, without exceptions.

Amen.

Epiphany 3 C - January 23, 2022

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Leo Sevensky, OHC

Epiphany 3 C - Sunday, January 23, 2022

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10

1 Corinthians 12:12-31a

Luke 4:14-21

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

“Remember, Lord, your one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, redeemed by the blood of your Christ.  Reveal its unity, guard its faith, and preserve it in peace.”  [1]  Amen.

We find ourselves once again in the midst of the annual Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. And the biblical readings we have heard this week have given us much to think about. We have heard Jesus’ prayer offered on the night before he died, as recorded in John's gospel, wherein he pleads with the Father that all may be one, both his followers and disciples and by extension, all the human family, perhaps even all creation. We have heard the reading from the Letter to the Ephesians which tells us that: “…there is one body and one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is above all, and through all, and in all.” And in our second reading this morning we hear St. Paul talking to that contentious and divided Corinthian church: “… in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”

There is an interesting connection between the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and the Order of the Holy Cross. As many of you know, the week of prayer was begun in 1908 by Father Paul Watson, an Episcopal priest from nearby Kingston NY who founded the Franciscan Society of the Atonement and who spent a training year with Holy Cross when we were still located in Westminster, Maryland.  Fr. Paul was a staunch Anglo-papalist and he campaigned vigorously for the incorporation of the Episcopal and Anglican Churches and the entire Christian world into the Roman Catholic Church under the sovereignty of the Bishop of Rome. The early decades of this week-long observance, known then as the Chair of Unity Octave, was totally directed to this end.  And as you might imagine, such an observance was not enthusiastically received in non-Roman Catholic circles. It was only much later, in the 1930s and 1940s and under the influence of a remarkable French Catholic priest, Paul Couturier, that the week of prayer began to take shape as we know it today, that is as an invitation to pray for unity as Christ wishes in the way Christ wishes and at the time Christ wishes.

I remember the excitement of the 1960s when the ecumenical movement, spurred on by the Second Vatican Council, seemed to take off with enthusiasm, optimism, and a big dose of naivete.  I remember going to ecumenical prayer services which were often rather bland events, focused on the least common denominator and carefully avoiding anything that might give offense to those who were different from us, whoever “us” was. But it did offer an opportunity to visit other churches and meet people of varied spiritual backgrounds and practices at a time when that was still somewhat rare. But times have changed. 

I have been working lately in our library here at the monastery with Brother Bernard and Brother John as we weed out our collection to make it more useful and contemporary. This past week I've been weeding into the 260s—that’s Dewey Decimal—where I've come across a century or more of writings and reflections on the nature of the church and the possibility of unity. There are tomes on doctrine and beliefs of course, which remain central. There are books on liturgical worship and sacramental practice. And there are many volumes concerning church order and polity: on the nature of the ministry and the role of the episcopate; books on the historical role of bishops and the idea of Apostolic Succession and whether the episcopacy is necessary for the very existence of the church or perhaps only for its full being (its plene esse as they say in Latin), or maybe just for its wellbeing or finally perhaps just an historic accident.  There are endless volumes on the debate over the validity of Anglican priestly orders shaped largely by Pope Leo XIII’s 1896 declaration that they are “absolutely null and utterly void.” There are books about the nature of authority and governance in the church, including the role of the Bishop of Rome and the so-called Petrine ministry or function. And then there are volumes of schemes of unity or institutional merger, most of which never happened.

And truthfully, I was wearied by it all. What once had been exciting to me and provocative or at least intriguing now seemed dry and empty and fruitless. I know, of course, that's not the whole story. I know there have been real advances in church relationships and mutual understanding and cooperation among Christians. I know that historical investigation and scholarly argument are vital and that issues such as intercommunion and shared ministry and some agreement on basic Christian doctrine is not unimportant. And as dry as they are, I recognize and have even read some of the agreed statements produced by various doctrinal commissions that attempt to advance theological understanding or heal centuries of misunderstanding that have marked the Christian experience. A case in point, for example, is the quite extraordinary Lutheran/Roman Catholic agreed statement on justification or the Roman Catholic/Anglican statement on Mary. 

Still, I was wearied. There's something wrong, something lacking in this approach. Something more or other is needed. What might that be? Two things come to mind. 

The first is a post by the Reverend Bosco Peters, an Anglican priest from New Zealand. He publishes regularly on his website called Liturgy and he can be quite entertaining and informative. A few years ago, he posted an entry titled “Week of Prayer for Christian Diversity. [2]  Noting that Christians cannot even agree on when to pray for unity, since the observance of this event in the Southern Hemisphere usually takes place in the Easter season, he says such a Week of Prayer for Christian Diversity would celebrate difference. It would be a week about being more honest and more realistic, accepting diversity as the only way forward.  And he reminds us that the best bit about a Week of Prayer for Christian Diversity is that you don't have to have all your ideas consistently worked out: “This week is about lovingly accepting disagreement with others. It is also about lovingly accepting disagreement within yourself.” He takes as his patron Saint Thomas Aquinas who stopped writing his monumental work Summa Theologiae almost in mid-sentence, stating famously: “Everything that I have written seems like straw to me compared to those things that I have seen and have been revealed to me."  

What can we learn from each other, especially from those who differ from us in ways small and large? What gift, what tradition, what virtue or value or insight have others preserved for the sake of the world, even if, in our opinion, they get much else wrong?  What has been revealed to them or to us that we need to treasure, just as Thomas Aquinas did his own mystic vision?

Father Peters speaks of orthodoxy and reminds us that it means something closer to “right prayer” rather than right belief.  It is, as he puts it, about shared spiritual disciplines and common prayer and not about: “…making windows into people’s souls and minds to check, by the belief police, whether my list of dozens of literally-taken beliefs match up identically to your list.” It is precisely these shared spiritual disciplines and common prayer that provide an undergirding unity to our diversity.  And: “It is in praying together for the diversity that our unity is already being found.”

I've come to believe that unity, real unity, Christian unity is not primarily about institutional structures, as necessary as they are.  Nor is it about uniformity, nor absorption, nor merging, nor anything else like this.  It is rather about God's work, a work so wonderfully summed up in that phrase from the Eucharist Prayer that I opened with: Reveal its unity. I believe that we are more united than we know. Our risk and our role is to pray and to love. To pray that God reveal the unity of the church and of all creation, a unity that is already there beyond division and distinction. And to love both what is revealed and what remains mysterious. It is to put on the mind of Christ and to hold it in deep humility. And to trust that God will be all in all even as we pray for and live into that promise.

I conclude with another prayer from the Book of Common Prayer that says it better than I can:

O God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Savior, the Prince of Peace: Give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions; take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatever else may hinder us from godly union and concord; that, as there is but one Body

and one Spirit, one hope of our calling, one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of us all, so we may be all of one heart and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and one mouth glorify you; through Jesus Christ our Lord. [3]

Amen.

______

[1] 1979 Book of Common Prayer, Eucharistic Prayer D

[2] https://liturgy.co.nz/week-prayer-christian-diversity (accessed January 22, 2022)

[3] 1979 Book of Common Prayer, p. 818

Epiphany 3 B - January 24. 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Aidan Owen, OHC

Third Sunday after Epiphany  - Sunday, January 24, 2021

Jonah 3:1-5, 10

1 Corinthians 7:29-31

Mark 1:14-20

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

In the name of the One God, who is Lover, Beloved, and Love Overflowing. Amen. 

My earliest memory of God comes from the Good Friday liturgy at St. Thomas the Apostle, where I grew up. I was about eight. The sanctuary was cool and dark, the light filtered gently through the stained-glass windows. I heard a shuffle at the back, as the doors to the sanctuary opened to admit the altar party. Four men processed in, carrying a wooden crucifix. To my child’s eyes, that cross seemed enormous, more than life-sized. 

The cross and the body nailed to it were solid wood, a warm, rich brown. It must have been heavy, perhaps even heavier than a real human body. But the four men carrying it held it gently. There was something tender in their grasp. They walked with the cross to the front of the sanctuary, their eyes cast down. When they reached the step up to the dais where the altar stood, they slowly lowered the cross to the floor, the horizontal bar of the arms laid parallel to the step to support the weight of body and cross. 

I watched, rapt, while the other congregants made their way forward as we did for communion on Sundays. There were no ushers guiding them, but everyone seemed to know what to do. My heart beat more quickly in my chest. I could see that as the other parishioners made their way forward to the cross, they bent down and kissed or touched it. Some pressed their foreheads against Jesus’ forehead; some kissed his feet; some barely grazed the wood of his cross with their fingertips. 

Desire flushed my skin as fear tightened my stomach. I both wanted to touch Jesus’ carved and crucified body and was scared of what might happen when I did. 

My turn came to walk toward the cross. As I moved down the center aisle of the church, the velvet quiet of the room bore down on me, pushing me forward. I reached out and touched Jesus’ feet, surprised by the smoothness of the wood and also its hardness. I knelt down, the stone floor cold beneath my knees. For the briefest moment my lips brushed the hard smooth wood of Jesus’ feet. As I rose to return to my seat, I could still feel the sharp angularity of the nail against my lower lip. 

Kneeling on the pillowed kneeler at my seat, I closed my eyes, breathing hard, blood flushing my warm skin. I was aware, even then, that something fundamental about the world had changed. An intuition of the unity of pain and beauty, death and salvation had wedged its way into my heart like the nail in Jesus’ feet. It was as if some great force of love, something so much bigger than I and, at the same time so much closer than I could imagine, was gazing on me, saw me fully. I wanted to relax into that presence. I also wanted to flee. My body knew so many years before my mind caught up that God had got hold of me and wasn’t going to let me go. 

Over the years that memory faded into the background. Despite how vividly I recall it today, for years the memory of my first recognition that I was God’s and God was mine was like a haze in the background, more forgotten than remembered. Or, to use another metaphor, it was the mortar in the bricks of my life, unseen and unsung, but essential to the structure, holding everything up and giving it shape. 

When we focus on God’s call to us, it’s so easy to get caught up in the flash and bang of revelatory moments when suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, we know who and whose we are. Some stranger walking by the roadside calls out to us, and immediately we know that we must leave everything behind and follow. But these moments don’t arise in a vacuum. As clear as the dawning light may be, it was the night beforehand, peppered with stars of smaller and more elemental revelations that often pave the way for whatever grand epiphanies we may experience.  

And while many of us have those moments of radiant revelation, even they fade in the dailiness and, yes, the tedium of making a life with God. And, thank God that they do. 

Christian Wiman captures this experience when he writes that:

“What you must realize, what you must even come to praise, is the fact that there is no right way that is going to become apparent to you once and for all. The most blinding illumination that strikes and perhaps radically changes your life will become so attenuated and obscured by doubts and dailiness that you may one day come to suspect the truth of that moment at all. The calling that seemed so clear will be lost in echoes of questionings and indecision; the church that seemed to save you will fester with egos, complacencies, banalities; the deepest love of your life will work itself like a thorn in your heart until all you can think of is plucking it out. Wisdom is accepting the truth of this. Courage is persisting with life in spite of it. And faith is finding yourself, in the deepest part of your soul, in the very heart of who you are, moved to praise it.”

Falling in love is a moment of insanity, or so my novice master told us. It’s a necessary step in moving more deeply into relationship with God or with another person or the world, but it doesn’t last. And for that we should be grateful. The blinding revelation is important. It may give us the energy or motivation we need to say yes to life or no to death, or simply to get ourselves out the door and onto the road we know has been calling us. But it is not the end—it is merely the beginning.  

Like the culture that surrounds us, we Christians, too can become obsessed with the feeling of falling in love. While we may dress up this fixation with language of vocation and discernment, we sometimes fall into habits of constant vigilance in the search for what God is calling me to now. That’s not to say that God is not always at work within and around us, always bringing life from death in novel ways. But it is to say that at a certain point we have discerned our vocation. Full stop. And rather than continuing to discern, we need to get on with the often dull and unsexy work of living out that vocation. 

A life with God is, I’m sorry to tell you, rather an ordinary one, taken step by step, day by day, moment by moment. The revelations fade into the background. The burning ardor of those first moments of the relationship cool. And one day we finally have to confront the fact that God is not who we thought God was. And perhaps neither are we. Our choices and our best efforts have not saved us or made us good or holy or free. We are not perfect or perfectly consummated beings yet, and we may never be. 

As Wiman points out, the moment when we realize and then come to accept that there is no right way that will become apparent to us once and for all, there is no calling that will soothe every hurt in our life, there is no spiritual practice or vocation or relationship that will eradicate the humanness of it all—that moment is the real beginning. It’s not exciting enough to make the cover of Discernment Weekly. But it is this very ordinary and very human dailiness with God that makes a life. 

When I look back at the moments of contact with God that have sustained and formed me, they are mostly like that first memory—quiet, hidden, embodied, and sweet. That Good Friday is the first time I remember feeling the curious mixture of fear and desire that I have come to recognize as my body’s sign of proximity to the holy. It is, for me, one of the ways the knowledge of its origin soaks into my consciousness. And when the dailiness of it all does work itself into my heart like a thorn, it is the feel of the wood on my lips, or the warmth of my friend Tom’s eyes, or the lilt of Andrew’s Scottish accent, or Roy’s quiet solidity, or the gentle breeze through the meadow that steady my faltering step and remind me that, yes, I chose my life, even as God chose me, and yes, I choose to keep choosing it. That yes, it’s easy to fall in and out of the insanity of love again and again and hard to stay put in the boredom and the seeming sameness of it all, and that, yes, God is still here and so I choose to still be here, too. 

I trust that, in God’s time and in God’s way, I will become the person God has made me to be. Because, whatever else, God is good, and that is everything.