Easter 2 C - Apr 7, 2013

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC
Easter 2 C – Sunday, April 7, 2013


Acts 5:27-32
Revelation 1:4-8
John 20:19-31

Jesus appearing to the disciples on Easter Sunday.
Picture from a theatrical interpretation.

Through the centuries and above Thomas' shoulder, Jesus calls out to you and me: “blessed are you who have NOT seen and yet have come to believe.”

Blessed are we who continue our journey on the Way despite not having met Jesus in person and in the flesh.

Blessed are we who have benefited from those who wrote the gospels for our edification and sustenance.

Blessed are we by all the generations of those who carried the Message to those who had not yet heard it.

Blessed are we who, with the help of the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, have journeyed to belief and continue our pilgrimage of faith.

Blessed are we who with the help of our community of faith continue to believe and journey together towards the glory promised us by the Messiah and the Son of God.

*****

In the Gospel according to John, the Resurrection narrative is a powerful concentration of Easter, Ascension and Pentecost all in one day, the day of the Lord. It all happens in Chapter 20 of which we read the second half today. But I want to take it all in today to grasp what happens in that upper room where the disciples encounter the risen Christ on two Sunday in a row.

In the course of the first Sunday, Easter Sunday, we are exposed to the faith journeys of three disciples: from lack of faith, to conditional faith, to belief.

Mary Magdalene comes to faith but not before having been called by name by Jesus. And we have Resurrection in the person of Jesus being revealed to Mary Magdalene.

Her reflex is to cling to Him but he tells her he must ascend to the Father first. So Jesus' Ascension to heaven on that very day is assumed by the text.

*****

Peter and the Beloved Disciple find the tomb as described by Mary. Peter is puzzled and not swayed.

The Beloved Disciple sees the empty tomb and believes. Period. He is our model for those who don't see Jesus in person and come to believe anyway.

Peter will come to believe later when Jesus appears to the disciples in the upper room. It is a very real Jesus who appears to the disciples; one whose body still carries the marks of his ordeal. And yet it is a Jesus in glory, no longer constrained by material impediments.

This Jesus breathes into the disciples so they may have the Holy Spirit for the time his presence will not be felt as an observable person. And we have Pentecost (without waiting fifty days).

*****

Allegedly, Thomas is not the only one who needed some empirical experience of the risen Christ to come to belief. All the disciples, bar one, came to full belief in the face of an observable encounter with the risen Christ. Lucky them! I can only dream of my first encounter with the person of Jesus some time later than in this circle of existence.

If Thomas comes in for particular disapproval, it is not principally for having needed an empirical encounter with the risen Christ too. He comes in for particular disapproval for the forcefulness with which he demands to believe on his own terms; and for his lack of trust in his community of faith's witness to the risen Christ.

Let those who never have put conditions on their faith or refused to be carried by the corporate faith of their community cast the first stone at Thomas.

*****

In the end, Thomas makes one of the most touching conversions I know and proffers a profession of faith that never fails to move me; “My Lord and my God.”

Whether further empirical inquiry was needed for Thomas to get there is not made clear by the text. The emotional color of his exclamation leads me to think he didn't need to prod Jesus' wounds; seeing him once more in person was more than enough.

At times, we can be graced with faith hitting us with an utter lack of subtlety and I think this is such a moment for Thomas.


*****

And what about us, you may wonder? When do we get to see Jesus in the flesh? Well, not just yet! Or at least, you may meet Jesus a lot before you really hear that you are called by name and recognize him.


*****


But the gospels are written that you may receive the Holy Spirit once more, as you did at your Baptism. The gospels are so written, that if you consent to it, the Holy Spirit may reach deep into your soul and help you to unconditional belief; one that doesn't require empirical evidence.

Don't plan on it, don't discount it, just welcome it when it happens. And when it happens, let your community of faith share in your peace and joy and let them carry you when your faith may flag; as Mary Magdalene, Peter and Thomas will tell you, sometimes it does.

*****

Peace to you! Peace to you! Peace to you!

May you live a joy-filled Eastertide.

Allelujah! Christ is risen.

The Lord is risen indeed. Allelujah!

*****

PS 1: You may also like Br. Julian's sermon on the same scriptures given a few hours earlier at our Monastery in Grahamstown, South Africa.

PS 2: And you may enjoy seeing how one same preacher's emphasis on the same scriptures moves over a period of years.  I preached on this same Gospel passage in 2010.

Easter Sunday C - Mar 31, 2013

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Andrew Colquhoun, OHC
Easter, Sunday, March 31, 2013


Luke 24: 1-12

The Women at the Tomb - William Bouguerau (1825 - 1905)

I once heard someone remark (maybe it was me!) about the Easter Vigil that, just when you think it must be about to end, it doesn’t!

I have had time for the first year in many not to have had much to do for the Triduum.  It has been wonderful to let the liturgy wash over me and pull me in.  As always for me Lent raises up so much to think about and pray about:

• personal things like:  how am I coping with the increasing limitations in my physical life, endings and frailty and how is that God is growing old with me and more content to sit by me as a companion?  
• but also: how do we show our faith in the face of gun violence, the call for compassion in marriage equality?  What do we have to say about Syria and North Korea?  What about Monsanto?  And what about my cowardice or passivity in the face of injustices and suffering?

This Lent  has been a heavy season.  I’m ready to lighten up.  It must be getting near the end.  Time for brunch and dessert (editor's note: Easter brunch is served to our guests after the two and a half hour Easter vigil is completed).

But these three days haven’t been entirely without pressure, however.  This sermon was coming up.  So I’ve been constantly aware of this Gospel reading.  I discovered something.  The last verse, the one about Peter is a late addition.  The earliest versions stop with the statement that the apostles thought that this was just an women’s fantasy and the apostles didn’t believe the women.
  
According to the Scriptures the only people who stayed faithfully at the cross and went to tend the body of Christ were the women and their voices are not heard. They’re still not heard.

It preys on me, that… not just about those women but about all the unheard women, indeed, all the people whose voices are smothered, ignored, discounted and distorted.

Jesus was one of them –- he said over and again -– If you have ears, hear me!  And he still cries that same cry.  Sometimes it’s his own voice; sometimes it’s his sisters’ voices, his children’s, our neighbors around the world; in Mexico, in Canada, Native people everywhere – no voices. The Xhosa people around our monastery in South Africa – defeated because no one is listening. 

It’s the children of Sandy Hook; the people of Staten Island; the drunks and druggies, the whores and the old people.  The lonely and those who die forgotten.  Their voices are so often drowned out by greed and bigotry or by the noise of our blasé contentment.

It has been pointed out that Jesus’ crucifixion was just one among thousands.  Not a unique event at all.  'Just another annoying Jew who wouldn’t shut up.'  Another act of unnecessary suffering among millions.  They are all around us. 

What makes this one distinctive is that this crucifixion is the act where Humanity and Divinity hear together the tearing, the rending of the veil of separation.  And now God’s voice is made clear in the voices of the suffering of the world.

I don’t know where we dug up the idea that Jesus died to appease an angry God; I believe that in Jesus’ death, God dies.  God with us, God poor, God woman, God gay, God forgotten, God of Auschwitz, God of the barrio, God in prison, God raped, God starving. God dying again and again and again.

The Resurrection we rejoice in today only means anything at all when the Mary's are heard.  When the fear of the apostles is banished in the peace the Risen  Christ brings.  When we hear the voices and embrace the truth in broken hearted love, then Resurrection happens again and again and again.

And just when you think God’s patience must be about to end, it doesn’t.

Our call is not to leave Jesus hanging on the cross but to join him as God’s resurrected and resurrecting people in listening and giving voice to the voiceless ones. 

Christ is Risen!  Say Alleluia!

Palm Sunday C - Mar 24, 2013

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Sr. Shane Phelan, CMA*

Palm Sunday C – Sunday, March 24, 2013


Isaiah 50:4-9a
Luke 19:28-40

Shane Phelan, Companion of Mary the Apostle

The story is told that St. Teresa of Avila, on one of her many journeys, was crossing a river when she was thrown by her horse into the river. Landing with a splash, she looked up to heaven and said to God, “If this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few!”

It’s not just Teresa who encounters this problem. Jesus enters Jerusalem with blessing, coming in the name of God. Soon he will be dead at the hands of imperial power, abandoned and betrayed by many of those who today pronounce the blessing. No wonder God has so few friends.

But I don’t think God is the one with the problem. I think we have a problem. We have a scandal in our midst. Our faith is centered on one who is blessed, and the blessed one is crucified. What are we to make of that?

We can call it irony, but it’s not ironic. We can call it tragedy, but it’s much more than that. We can call it paradox, which is a nice version of contradiction. But all of those evaluations of this moment rest on a mistake. There’s no irony here, no tragedy, not even really a paradox. There’s simply blessing.

But what, exactly, does it mean to be blessed? Being blessed, like being God’s friend, is both less and more than it often seems to be.

When we hear the word “blessed” in the Bible, we are actually using one word for two distinct concepts. In the Beatitudes, we hear that the poor, the humble, the sorrowful are blessed. That’s a good word. In Greek it is makarios. It means to be happy, joyous. It’s good to hear Jesus tell us that things will not always be as they are, that we can turn around and rejoice, that we will be blessed.

But that’s not the kind of blessing that Jesus gets. When the crowds cry, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord,” the word Luke uses is eulogemenos, one receiving a blessing. The Greek in turn is translating the Hebrew barakh, which means to kneel, to receive a blessing.

Blessing, in this sense, does not make the blessed one happy. It makes them holy. It marks them off, it consecrates them. Our English word, “bless,” comes from the Old German word for spattering blood on the altar. To be blessed is to be a sacrifice.

Jesus was blessed, not as one who gets to have a quiet life with a wonderful family, but as bread and wine are blessed. Jesus was marked as God’s own, as a sign of God’s power, but not for his own enjoyment.

He really meant it. He did not come to do his own will, but that of God. He was blessed.

This is such a hard truth to grasp. Throughout our history we flee from this. We want to believe that virtue brings worldly success. that if we honor God we’ll get what we want. Like a good business deal.

We want the prosperity gospel, not only for the material goods it promises, but because it makes the world line up in an orderly way. It’s not just greed or self-interest that draws us to think like this. It’s just as much the desire for a world that makes sense. We want virtue to be rewarded and injustice to be punished. We need at least the hope of order and justice in the world.

But that’s not what blessing is about. If we honor God, we will indeed find joy and peace, but not in any simple way. If we honor God, we will more likely find ourselves in Gethsemane with Jesus, praying for the peace of the world.

Being blessed means walking into the chaos of the world. It means being a sign of God in the midst of a world that defies the power and love of God.

Being blessed in this sense is not a privilege of those of us who go into places of pain to serve others. Being blessed in this sense begins with those who are there, in the center of the pain. They are the signs of God, walking in the pitiful procession that leads to the cross. We, who the world considers more blessed than they, are in fact the spectators on the journey into Jerusalem. It is the poor, the homeless, the victims of rape and violence, the addicts, who walk in that procession. Jesus rides in on a donkey, not a Mercedes. Soon Jesus will walk back out, in even humbler fashion. And he will still be blessed.

We’ve each been blessed. We were blessed at our baptism, marked as Christ’s own. We may hope for blessings of peace and happiness, but they were not guaranteed in that blessing. We were dedicated to God’s service, like the vessels we will eat and drink from in a minute. We were given to be poured out, like the wheat and the wine. We were blessed. We are blessed.

Being blessed means walking with Jesus into the places he walked into. This week we will remember him in the temple, in the prison, and in the tomb. But remembering him in those places is not enough.

Today there are others who defy the Temple, the centers of religious power that turn toward serving themselves rather than God. We need to walk with them as they call us back to true worship and service.

There are people, faces of Christ, in prison and serving those in prison. We need to walk with them, and sit with them, in the black holes of despair and anger.

There are people on their way to death, victims of state violence and victims of private exploitation to the point of death. We need to walk with them, to protest their treatment, to lift the cross from their shoulders.

And there are people carrying less obvious, yet excruciating burdens, among us and within us. We need to walk with them too.

We need to do this because we have been blessed.

We need not fear this blessing. This blessing is good news. For God goes before us and with us, leading us into places we might rather avoid. God carries us into the darkest corners of the world, and the darkest corners of our hearts. But God goes with us, and gives us what we need to walk this road. We can even celebrate, as God carries us to joy and wonder beyond our wildest dreams. But we only get there by being blessed.

In the 8th century, Andrew of Crete wrote:

It is ourselves that we must spread under Christ’s feet, not coats or lifeless branches or shoots of trees, matter which wastes away and delights the eye only for a few brief hours. But we have clothed ourselves with Christ’s grace, with the whole Christ - “for as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” - so let us spread ourselves like coats under his feet.

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.

* You can find out more about the Companions of Mary the Apostle (CMA) on their blog "Standing at the Empty Tomb."