The Second Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 5, June 7, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Ephrem Arcement, OHC

The Second Sunday after Pentecost, June 7, 2026

Genesis 12:1-9

Romans 4:13-25

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Click here for an audio of the sermon

The journey of faith always begins with a call.  We see it with Abram in his encounter with a strange voice.  We see it with Moses before a flaming bush.  We see it with the prophets in all sorts of bazaar theophanies.  We see it with Jesus at his baptism.  We see it with Jesus’ disciples when he bids them, “Follow me.”  The call is given in an irrevocable summoning, but the response can go any sort of way.  We are free to say “yes” or to say “no,” to negotiate or maybe even to try to convince God why this is all might be a big mistake.  Yet, the call remains, and we are left with choices that will determine the course of our lives…and the lives of those who come after us…for generations to come. 

What is it about this call that can cause someone to act so utterly irrationally, so utterly contrary to normal expectations…Like Abram and Moses…Jesus and his disciples?  This is, I believe, the mysterious element at the heart of every religion and its most distinctive characteristic.  There would be no Hinduism or Buddhism without this mysterious summoning.  No Judaism, no Islam, and no Christianity.  And neither would there be any monasticism.  Every religious movement is ignited by the spark of this numinous, mysterious, existential demand that confronts us…some of us, with such conviction that we seem to be denied a choice in it at all…we are grasped by a God who simply will not let us go, and we are like Peter before Jesus, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.”

And, so, as God woos us along this wild journey of faith with promises of a better future…for lives of greater peace, greater joy, greater justice for all…we learn much about ourselves…and about those with whom we accompany along the way…and the intended maturation process begins.  All carefully designed by God, our journey of faith is not about getting there as quickly as possible, nor is it about getting there without ever taking a wrong turn…and it is certainly not about getting there first and leaving everyone else in the dust.  Our wilderness wandering is all about learning to discern the true and real value of life from all of the competing values and to learn to find the grace to finally lay all of our idols aside and embrace the one thing necessary alone and, in doing so, discover that the promises of God are actually not in some far distant future like a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow but right here in our midst waiting to be discovered in our moment of spiritual awakening. The divine theophany at our calling, which gave us a foretaste of the promise to come, whose delight is usually obliterated by the squelching heat of the desert sun, is all directed to this…to the trying of our faith to discover a deeper type of faith which no longer finds life’s value in a projected future but in the here and now.  Taste and see!  There is a paradise in the middle of the vast, barren desert, and we discover that we are now standing on holy ground…and with Jacob we exclaim, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”  

“Listen…and you will arrive,” the first and final words of St. Benedict’s Rule for Monks, captures this journey of faith with perfect simplicity and perceptive insight.  Listen…and keep listening.  Listen deeply with the ear of your heart, for you have a father who loves you and has a promise to reveal to you.  Learn to put off the old self with its ears for titillation and gossip and become pure so that you can hear the deep, constant reverberations of divine love.  It’s the hearing, that tasting, and these sacred moments of encounter which bestow the grace to let go of the past which so seeks to cling to you and is where you will find the boldness to venture out into an unencumbered freedom where you will find yourself moving in the kingdom of God and not just toward it.

And this is the moment of insight…that moment when all becomes utterly clear and simple.  When the life that we lived with a plethora of competing allegiances is reduced to one, and we discover that the one thing necessary is not success, not prosperity, not notoriety; not a good name and not an honorable family; not the freedom to do what we want nor the health and means to do it.  It’s not the propagation and of our sacred traditions nor the strict adherence to them.  It is only one thing: faith working itself out through love.  

One thing that I have grown to appreciate more and more as I have reflected on my life as a monk over these past 15 years is that its integrity depends on its being rooted and grounded in precisely this and nothing else: faith working itself out in love.  The monastic vow is exactly that: conversatio: fidelity leading to love.  All of the various aspects of monastic life…and there are many behind which we can hide and evade our true calling…they all are assumed in the all-encompassing vow of conversatio morum: fidelity to the monastic way of life which blossoms in love.  It is not obedience.  It is not stability.  It is not celibate chastity.  It is not poverty or simplicity of life.  It is the commitment of my heart to give itself without compromise to the daily seeking of the face of God, the daily tasting of divine love, and the less romantic but as important daily struggle of humble service which keeps my heart beating with love and compassion and kindness and prevents it from taking refuge in whatever else may serve as a fake imitation of this love, however good in itself.  Obedience is not love.  Love bears fruit in obedience.  Stability is not love.  Love bears fruit in faithful stability.  Chastity and simplicity are not love.  Love bears fruit in chastity and simplicity.  Love, love, and love again.  This is the vow of a Benedictine monk.

Sometime in the middle of the 12th century, an English monk of immense spiritual depth and intellectual insight and the head of a lively community in the town of Rievaulx chronicled in one of the most beloved of monastic treatises of the Middle Ages the following: “The day before yesterday, as I was walking the round of the cloister of the monastery, the brethren were sitting around forming as it were a most loving crown.  In the midst, as it were, of the delights of paradise with the leaves, flowers, and fruits of each single tree, I marveled.  In that multitude of brethren I found no one whom I did not love, and no one by whom, I felt sure, I was not loved.  I was filled with such joy that it surpassed all the delights of this world.  I felt, indeed, my spirit transfused into all and the affection of all to have passed into me, so that I could say with the Prophet: ‘Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.’”

Aelred would then go on to compare this life of communal love with the kiss of Christ through his allegorical interpretation of the first verse of the Song of Songs: “Let him kiss me with the kiss of his mouth.”  The kiss represents the love of Christ outpoured through the Spirit, now binding brother to brother in love.  Spiritual friendship in the community of faith is the way that the Holy Trinity is glorified and made manifest.  And not only that, it is the way that God continues to live in the world of time and to transfigure it.

In the Gospel of Matthew we hear Jesus call Matthew himself to such a journey of faith leading to love…and we get a glimpse into the heart of his gospel message.  Jesus summons and sends to extend his presence of healing and deliverance, to restore justice and peace, and to make God’s dwelling of Trinitarian love among the human race.  

My beloved brothers…

We have encountered the divine in the theophany of our calling.  Each of us has heard the summons, and we have left all to follow Christ along this monastic way of the Lord’s service.  We have committed ourselves by a solemn vow to be faithful along this way: faithful to our God; faithful to our call as monks; faithful to one another.  We have each been given a task (some several tasks) in service to God and the community, and many demands have been placed upon our shoulders.  A sure sign that our fidelity is true is that these demands are not burdensome but delights, instruments through which our Lord lives in and through us his own faithful love and service.  This can only happen if our eyes and our hearts are focused upon the one thing necessary…upon faithful love…not our own but God’s for us.  We are not here just to be obedient, to give up our freedom and personal autonomy and desires.  We simplify our lives that we may focus them upon that one quality of life far exceeding all others…that which gives meaning and vitality to it.  We refuse the kisses of the crowds to receive the kiss of our Christ and to be filled with his Spirit.  And when this happens…and when we offer this kiss of faithfulness and love from brother to brother…a community of faithful love is formed and heart is bound to heart and God is glorified.

The call of God is always also a summons.  What are we as monastics summoned to do?  What is our evangelical imperative?  Do we not have one?  Have we, as sometimes accused, forsaken it looking up to heaven while the multitudes suffer and hunger for our help?  Not at all!  Our evangelical imperative is fulfilled in this:  in our love for one another.  “By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”  Everything that we do and everything that we are flows from this well of grace…and when we’re doing it well, multitudes find healing and peace.  

Brothers, for nearly 150 years the spark of this love that found a place in the heart of our founder has persisted.  There have been seasons when that flame was but a flicker and others when it spread to nations far and wide.  This love that must burn is now seeking to burn anew in this new chapter in the OHC story about to begin.  What a privilege to be a part of this story…this story of faith showing forth itself in love.  Let us each receive this burning flame anew, remember our first love in our own calling, nurture it with ardent devotion, and share it with abandon.  Remember, there is never a reason to not choose to love.  If we choose it over bitterness and over animosity.  If we choose it over self-centeredness and self-assertion.  If we choose it over personal ambition and personal comfort…then the love of God revealed in the Holy Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ will reign supreme and the peace of God will keep our hearts bound one to the other and the joy of the Spirit will be our witness to a worried and wearied world that Christ is indeed risen over our shadowy existence with arms open wide bidding to one and to all through us, “Come, follow me…and you will find rest.” 

The Feast of Corpus Christi, June 4, 2026

The Rev. Matthew Wright

The Feast of Corpus Christi

Holy Cross Monastery, June 4, 2026

When you stare at the sun—which I don’t recommend doing, it’s bad for your eyes—or when you look at any bright light for a period of time, and then look away at something else, you see for a little while what’s called an “afterimage” now overlayed on whatever else you’re now looking at—which is caused by overloaded photoreceptors in your eyes.

I think this is a good metaphor for what happens to our spiritual eye as we gaze at the Eucharist in worship week after week—or, here in the Monastery, day after day—as the host and chalice are raised at the Great Elevation—or, perhaps, when we sit in the presence of the Eucharist within the tabernacle or placed in a monstrance during Benediction or Adoration.

We gaze at the Eucharist so that we may then see its afterimage wherever we look—not simply as an overlay, but as the Real Presence of Our Lord as the true inner reality of each person and each moment.  And while gazing at the sun can damage our sight, gazing at our Lord’s presence in the Eucharist perfects our sight—it shows us things as they really are.  The Holy Eucharist is a sacramental mirror reflecting back to us the true nature of reality, the true nature of ourselves, the true nature of creation.

As most of you will have noticed, in parish worship, the “Eucharistic elements,” the gifts of bread and wine, are typically brought up to the altar from the back of the church, from within the congregation, at the time of the offertory.  And this is because they are the gifts of the people, symbolizing our life and our labor.  Once upon a time, they would have actually been the gifts of the people—bread baked and wine fermented by members of the community.  The grapes would have been tread in the wine press by the feet of someone in those pews, the wheat gathered and milled by one of us, the dough prepared and baked by hands that were present.  And within the bread and wine are of course the grapes and wheat, and in them the sunshine and earth, wind and rain—really, all of creation.  

The Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, of blessed memory, Thich Nhat Hanh once wrote, “When I hold a piece of bread, [and look] deeply into [it], I see the sunshine, the clouds, the great earth. Without the sunshine, no wheat can grow.  Without the clouds, there is no rain for the wheat to grow. Without the great earth, nothing can grow.”  Inside one piece of bread, the whole universe is present.

The Eucharistic elements are the stuff of creation, transformed by human labor and love, and then given to be alchemized further still—to be transformed into a sacramental mirror revealing to us who we really are.  We, the Body of Christ, gaze at and then receive into ourselves, the Body of Christ.  In the words of St. Augustine, in the Eucharist we behold what we are.  In every Eucharist we offer, in miniature, in microcosm, in our gifts of bread and wine, our whole community, and really the whole of creation, to be consecrated as the Body of Christ.

We’re taking the whole universe and placing it on that altar in every Eucharist.  And we’re taking our whole selves and placing them on that altar.  We give it all to God, and at the epiclesis and the elevation the alchemy is completed and revealed—and we are shown what we have, in fact, given; we are shown who we, in fact, are.  And it is a staggering revelation.  Behold what you are.  Christ incarnate, in the stuff of our lives, in the stuff of creation.  We look in the mirror, we see the truth.  And then it is broken and given back to us.  We receive that truth into ourselves—into our cells.  And then we are sent out into the world to see the world as it truly is.

But we don’t simply see an afterimage superimposed on reality.  No, the Eucharist trains the eye of our heart to see things from the inside out, to see the actual Eucharistic nature of creation and of every being.  About ten years ago this was brought home to me in a powerful way.  I was in British Colombia to lead a retreat and on the way to the retreat center my host asked, “Would you like to see the salmon spawning?”  As it turned out, we would be driving by a river where the salmon run was active, and the spawning season was now almost over.

Well, I had pictures of fish jumping upstream before.  And, honestly, I wasn’t that interested in seeing it in person—I was tired from a long plane flight and wanted to be done—but ever accommodating, out of my mouth came, “Sure.  Why not?”  So we parked the car, walked through a trail in the woods, and as we rounded a bend in the trees, the river emerged, and there they were—the few remaining salmon still making the journey—throwing themselves against the current as they worked their way back to the place of their birth—and they looked utterly exhausted, like it was taking every tired fiber of their being to continue onward.  And a few were finally settling into a spot to lay their eggs.  And others were clearly dying.  And as I looked I saw scattered all along the riverbanks—corpses.  Hundreds and hundreds of salmon corpses.

And then I realized that the air, in fact, reeked of dead salmon, and all around us were wings flapping as gulls came down and tore flesh from these dead salmon and plucked out their eyes.  And as I stood there taking in this whole scene, to my utter surprise, and with a fierceness and a tenderness that pierced me to the bone, I heard the voice of Christ speaking through this whole gestalt, “This is my Body, given for you.”  The few remaining, living salmon, throwing themselves against the current, saying to their future young—“This is my body, given for you.”  Those who had finished the journey and were now dying—“This is my body, given for you.”  Those now days dead, as their flesh was torn by the gulls—“This is my body, given for you.”

I realized I was standing smack-dab in the middle of a living icon of the Eucharistic universe; that this is what Christ, exhausted and inexhaustible, is saying through every facet of creation: “This is my body, given for you.”  But mostly we do not have eyes to see.  And so we gaze at the Eucharist, and we receive the Eucharist, day after day, and week after week, to train our spiritual eye, to show us things as they really are.  So that we might meet each being and each moment as an encounter with the Real Presence of Christ.  Too often we have understood the mystery of Christ’s Body as merely ecclesial or institutional.  But the true proportions of the Mystical Body of Christ are the unfathomable dimensions of the universe itself.

“I am the bread of life,” Jesus says in our Gospel reading.  The bread… that is life… is Jesus.  “…unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.”  Do we hide from life, or do we let it in?  Paula D’Arcy says that “God comes to you disguised as your life.”  Your life is the bread that is Jesus.  Do you allow it to be broken open?  Do you receive it and say Amen to it?  To see our life, and the life of the world, as the Eucharist that it is, as bearing the Real and Living Presence of Christ, we have to train our eye.  And that is why we need to gaze into the mirror that is lifted up daily at this altar.

Now I have mentioned gazing upon the Eucharist a few times, and it is, of course, common practice in many communities on the Feast of Corpus Christi to gaze upon a Eucharistic host in a monstrance and even to process with it around a church or through the streets.  Well, those of you who know your 39 Articles will know that in Article 25 we are told that “The Sacraments were not ordained of Christ to be gazed upon, or to be carried about, but that we should duly use them.”

I typically don’t worry much about this.  I tend to say, “Well, you know, the 39 Articles were relegated to the historical documents section of the Prayer Book for a reason.”  But it’s true that the sacrament was not ordained by Christ merely to be gazed upon.  Similarly, my marriage to Yanick was not ordained simply for me to gaze upon her.  And yet, it can be profitable at times to simply gaze upon our Beloved.  To rest in their presence.  To receive their beauty.  To adore them, without agenda.

John MacQuarrie writes of the Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament: “It is in terms of this focusing of our Lord’s presence that the service of Benediction is to be understood — and also justified, if anyone thinks it needs justifying. Psychologically speaking, we need some concrete, visible manifestation toward which to direct our devotion; theologically speaking, this is already provided for us by our Lord’s gracious focusing of his presence in the Blessed Sacrament.

“When this is understood, complaints about ‘idolatry’ or ‘fetichism’ are seen to be beside the point. Let us assure any who may be perturbed over such matters that we are not being so stupid as to worship a wafer, nor do we have such an archaic and myth-laden mentality that we believe the object before us to be charged with magical power.  Rather, it is in and through the Sacrament that we adore Christ, because we, being men and not angels, have need of an earthly manifestation of the divine presence, and because he, in his grace and mercy, has promised to grant us his presence in this particular manifestation.”

Similarly, Fr. Robert Hendrickson writes: “We do not simply gaze—though that is part of the act for we do look intently with admiration, thought, or surprise. Benediction is not the act of gazing alone though—it is the community’s adoration—the body comes together in love to give our attention, if but for a moment, to the One who calls us and who comes to be with us.  For some, that space may feel like a quiet time with Jesus as a friend.  Others may find themselves thrown down in awe at the throne of grace.  Others may be walking alongside Jesus on the road.  Others may simply relish the absolute mystery of it all and watch the beauty of holiness unfold.”

Beloveds, a sun rises daily at this altar.  Gaze into it without fear and have your vision transformed.  Adore the one you see in the uplifted host—and look closely and see in that host the entire universe.  Behold what you are, and know that you yourself are daily placed on this altar, and consecrated as Christ’s Body.  Know that God comes to you disguised as your life—as all of life.  And hear Jesus speaking through all of creation, “This is my Body, given for you.”

Amen.

The First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday, May 31, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Randy Greve

The First Sunday after Pentecost: Trinity Sunday, May 31, 2026

• Genesis 1:1-2:4a
• 2 Corinthians 13:11-13
• Matthew 28:16-20

Click here for an audio of the sermon

The first rule of preaching on Trinity Sunday is no analogies.  The Holy Trinity is not to be compared to a three-leaf clover, water, or, alas, an egg.  This is not a problem-solving occasion.  The Trinity is not a math equation on how God can be three and one at the same time.  The Trinitarian formula of the early church, summarized in the Nicene Creed, emerged after a long struggle that perplexed the first theologians as much as it might perplex us.  It required pushing language to the edge of what language can do - naming the reality, yet not going too far in seeking to explain the how of the reality.  They sought to faithfully apprehend the nature of God as revealed in Jesus Christ - a revelation in the world which changed reality.  Yes, we speak of one Being in three Persons, not separate, subordinate, or hidden, but language, as necessary as it is, can at best create a rhetorical guard against outright heresy, not define the essence of the mystery.
In The Roots of Christian Mysticism, Olivier Clement writes,
“In their expositions of the Trinity, St Basil and St Maximus the Confessor emphasize that the Three is not a number (St Basil spoke in this respect of ‘meta-mathematics’).  The divine Persons are not added to one another, they exist in one another: the Father is in the Son and the Son is in the Father, the Spirit is united to the Father together with the Son and ‘completes the blessed Trinity’ as if he were ensuring the circulation of love within it.”  
The scripture readings for today all speak of the human community participating in the communion of God whose life is relational and sharing.  The divine image mentioned in Genesis chapter one is relationality and identity in and through connection and union with God and one another.
We are not observers of a narrative today.  We are on the inside of the mystery.  This is the one feast (with the possible addition of All Saints Day) of the year not referenced to a historical event.  As a highly sense-oriented person who loves the concrete symbols of liturgy, today is notable for the absence of a visual.  Today there is no manger or mountain or cross or empty tomb.   Some aspects of reality are just simply beyond the categories of the physical world.  The Holy Trinity points us beyond history, beyond time and space to celebrate an eternal and cosmic reality revealed to us as mystery.  
Christian formation too often prioritizes the intellect at the expense of other modes of perception.  Most of us have grown up with the expectation that assenting and conforming to doctrine took priority over the inner experience of the presence of God.   In our enlightened and scientific age when learning is reduced to data and information exists more to be possessed than appreciated, we are in danger of flattening the human experience into heads on sticks, mere data processing centers who evaluate right and wrong, good and bad, in and out, with no larger vision of a story, a mystery beyond what can be grasped, that is not meant to be understood with the brain but delighted in with the spirit.  Jesus is less dogmatic in that way than we tend to be.  He more often walked around and observed and asked questions than insisted on a set theology or yet more rules.  In our tendency to explain and possess, we descend into a mechanization of faith and disenchant the universe.  Trinity Sunday is the call to re-enchant the world with the practices of wonder, adoration, exultation, and sheer delight.  Those are as important to our growth as information and theology.
It is good and right to believe in the Trinity as the truth about God, but that belief must be more than “it is true”  - check the box and move on.  The mystery of the Trinity calls forth questions about how we relate to Christian truths and whether our intellect is the best or only way of relating.  Our imagination is a better tool than our intellect.  
While visual analogies are inadequate, perhaps there is a sensory way to enter into the mystery.  Jeremy Begbie, a priest and musician who has dedicated his vocation to the theology of music, has been a helpful voice in approaching and appreciating the mystery of threeness in oneness.  Our eyes cannot perceive three colors in one as separate.  Mix colors together and they mush into something that loses their individual differences.  But we can hear three in one. Perhaps, says Begbie, part of the spiritual power of music is that more than one sound can be fully distinct in our ears at a time and the very relationships of sounds create something new.  The Trinity, he says, is musical sympathetic resonance, the closest thing our senses can experience to three in one.  Music is a beautiful expression of how theology transcends the limiting categories of control, certainty, and protection and ushers us into the joyful freedom of uniqueness within difference, structure and spontaneity that unfold mystery, wonder, and trust.  Liturgy is musical, whether we are singing or not, because it is participatory - it is the incarnation of being creatures made in the image and likeness of God.  And because the Christian life is liturgy, perhaps we can discover ways to play our way into God’s delight with the instruments of our lives as a reflection of the Trinity.
Blessing and honor, thanksgiving and praise, more than we can utter be to you, O glorious Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, by all angels, all mortals, the whole creation, for ever and ever. Amen.