The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 23A, October 11, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York

Br. Francis Beckham, OHC

The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 23A, October 11, 2026

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Almighty and eternal God, so draw our hearts to you, so guide our minds, so fill our imaginations, so control our wills, that we may be wholly yours, utterly dedicated to you; and then use us, we pray, as you will, and always to your glory and the welfare of your people; through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. 

Though it shames me a bit to say, on the surface I sort of sympathize with the first set of guests in today’s Gospel for not wanting to go to a wedding. I’ve never been a big fan of them myself. I don’t begrudge those who enjoy them, and even less those who have them. I just prefer quieter, more low-key events, where there’s less pressure to have fun, dance in uncomfortable shoes, buy gifts, and make witty toasts. Unlike at funerals, which I find generally do a pretty solid job with the food, wedding fare always hits me as pretty underwhelming – usually only a choice between dry chicken and flavorless fish, and always with a side of overcooked asparagus. And while I have been genuinely impressed by the construction of certain wedding cakes, I’ve never found any of them to be particularly tasty. 

There have been the odd exceptions, of course. In Pittsburgh, for example, and really throughout western Pennsylvania, both the entrée and cake play a distant second fiddle to the virtually ubiquitous Cookie Table. There, wedding banquets are remembered – indeed they are judged – for the variety and deliciousness of their cookies. 

First, there must be many kinds of cookies – Italian wedding, lady locks, buckeyes, lemon, pizzelles, chocolate chip, those peanut butter ones with the Hershey’s Kisses squished into the tops, snickerdoodles, thumbprints, glazed sugar, to name just a few. And, equally important, they must be good. Like, really good. Guests make multiple trips to the cookie table, piling their plates with its bounty before returning to their seats to compare favorites. Grandmas and great aunts – often the bakers of many of the cookies – continually scan the church or fire hall, critically evaluating people’s cookie choices and keeping score of whose cookies are ‘winning.’  

Second, there should be an abundance of leftovers, which are taken home in great bundles by the guests. Parents of the happy couple bring at least a small assortment into work on Monday morning, ostensibly as a little treat for their coworkers, but, in reality, just as much a flex on how awesome a wedding banquet they hosted for their kids. Criticizing a cookie table – or, worse, refusing to partake – is a public and unforgiveable affront to a family’s honor, and everybody knows it. Doing so might not get the offenders destroyed or their city burned down but, then again …

Of course, the Parable of the Wedding Banquet really isn’t about unenthusiastic weddinggoers and offended hosts. It’s actually about the very human tendency of placing our own interests and desires above others’, even going so far as rejecting Jesus’ invitation to take our places in the kingdom of God, the great Wedding Feast of the Lamb, and the tragic consequences that always result – namely, broken relationships with God and one another. 

Jesus makes no mention of a cookie table in the Parable. But it’s clear the host – in this case, a king – has laid on the first-century equivalent of a pretty good one. When he sends his slaves around to call those invited to the banquet, he tells them to make sure they mention the oxen and fat calves he’s slaughtered in preparation for them, so they understand how big a deal this is. But as we’ve heard, the guests don’t come. They don’t care about the big dinner and all the work the king has put into to making it special. They don’t seem to give any thought to the fact that a place has been set for them, and that their presence is expected and important to the king and his son. It seems ridiculous to them that they should step away from whatever it is they’re doing to enter into the joy of their own king; they have farms and businesses to run, after all. What actually does seem to matter is simply whatever will benefit them in the here and now. It’s typical human selfishness, and, unfortunately, it’s something we all do. 

I genuinely wonder what is it that lures us humans into this way of thinking and acting, to decide we are better off trying to make and serve our own banquets rather than God’s; that we, who are ourselves created, can somehow know better than the One who creates us. It’s nothing new, though. As we heard in the reading from Exodus, more than a thousand years before Jesus told the Parable of the Wedding Banquet in Jerusalem, the Israelites, impatient for Moses to return to them from speaking with God on Mount Sinai, decided it would be better for them to become gods themselves in order to make other gods, which in turn they would then worship, an exercise in absurdity even Albert Camus would appreciate. The result? Nearly destruction, if Moses hadn’t interceded for them. And, of course, two thousand years on this side of the parable, the compulsion to deify ourselves is alive and well as ever – along with the inevitable brokenness and suffering that always results from it. People really don’t change. But fortunately for us, neither does God. 

It's no surprise, then, that in the sixth century, when Saint Benedict wrote his rule for monks, it was the same familiar story. The western Roman Empire had effectively destroyed itself through centuries of pride and excess, and now the whole place was being sacked by pretty much everyone. Benedict was determined not to let his monks fall into the same disordered chaos he observed around him. They must be in communion rather than competition, seeking to serve God through one another in the monastery. Right up front, at the top of the Rule’s Prologue, he tells those listening that if they’re serious about doing God’s will, they’d better be ready to put aside their own: “The labor of obedience will bring you back to him from whom you had drifted through the sloth of disobedience,” he counsels. “This message of mine is for you, then, if you are ready to give up your own will, once and for all, and armed with the strong and noble weapons of obedience to do battle for the true King, Christ the Lord.” 

So, relying solely on our selfish wills leads to destruction, while offering ourselves in joyful obedience to God leads to life. The choice seems like a no-brainer. But how, actually, do we reorient ourselves wholly to living in the love of God rather than earthly gain? As the desert mothers and fathers knew all too well, abandoning the will and freeing oneself from human passions is not easy. After all, we are, it would seem, programmed to chase what we like. And the world certainly rewards us for pursuing things such as wealth, power, status, influence, respectability, and whatever else it deems ‘success.’ But for Saint Benedict, the key to true happiness is obedience to God through humility, the self-emptying of the pride we feel toward our own abilities and accomplishments. This is so we can make room for Christ to dwell more and more within us, allowing us to become the hands, feet, mouths, and ears of Jesus here on earth. 

Of course, we all know that, realistically, to be able to survive in the world it’s necessary to ‘play the game’ to some extent. But using our experienced judgement and wizened reasoning to solve problems isn’t pridefulness. Nor is applying our God-given skills to grow professionally and provide responsibly for our families greediness. And enjoying the pursuit of hobbies, art, and even cookie-craft certainly isn’t a rejection of God’s will. It’s no sin to thrive and enjoy life, and that’s not what got the original wedding guests into trouble. For them, the issue was using their will to choose selfishness over self-emptying and reject God’s better Way. That’s why I’d like to suggest that none of this is really about eliminating our own will – in fact, in pursuing such a goal, I think we may well run the risk of becoming increasingly captive to it. Rather, I have a hunch it's more about choosing to use our freedom to allow God to align our imperfect human will and desires more and more to the Divine Will from which they flow.  

Again, Saint Benedict offers a way for us to see if we’re actually doing this. He counsels the monks to test the spirits of newcomers to find out if they’re from God. We, too must check in with our own spirits every day to make sure our motives and actions are from God. “Who am I serving?” we might ask. “Is my happiness and ability to live comfortably more important to me than someone else’s?” “Do I reject the invitations of others to be in communion with them because I don’t consider them worthy of being in communion with me?” And, perhaps even more challenging, “When I do good things, is it purely out of love for God and others, or am I kind of hoping I might get noticed and rewarded for it?” For my own part, I do find that my motives for performing good works are often at least a little mixed. Does that invalidate them? Probably not, but it is a reminder that aligning my will to God’s is a life’s work.

If it all seems a bit daunting, we can return to the wedding banquet and notice who actually does end up joining in the feast. They aren’t the ones who were originally considered ‘worthy’; those people made the choice to use their privilege to self-exclude from the banquet in favor of serving themselves, with the usual disastrous consequences. Instead, those gathered in were everyone else, both the ‘good and the bad,’ echoing what Jesus had declared to the self-righteous chief priests and elders in the temple just a few verses before today’s Gospel reading. “Truly I tell you,” he warns, “the tax-collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you.” They were indeed. And you know something? They still are; I’ve personally seen it happen time and time again, when those labeled as utterly unworthy have shown forth the Gospel to others in ways I’ve rarely, if ever, seen the self-proclaimed “worthies” do.

The banquet is ready, and Christ the Bridegroom has indeed prepared a place for each of us. May we find ourselves and everyone we love there, and may God’s peace be with us today and always. Amen. 

The Dedication of the Monastery Church, October 4, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York

Br. Josep Martinez-Cubero

The Feast of the Dedication of the Monastic Church of Saint Augustine, October 4, 2026

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I have always loved churches. And, growing up in Puerto Rico, I was a very devout boy who went to church every day… by myself… because I wanted to. My home environment was chaotic and violent, to put it mildly, so music, school, and church became outlets of safety, peace, and order for me, where the world seemed to make sense.
Two churches were especially important to me growing up. The first was the church of Nuestra Señora de la Monserrate, the church connected with my Catholic school. I went to Mass there every morning before the school bell rang. Somehow, though, all that going to church didn’t keep me from lying and being conniving. 
I almost failed sixth grade because I would tell my teachers at the beginning of each class period that Sister Vivina, the principal, wanted me to go down to the church to practice the organ for the first communion liturgies. And I added to my little lie that she wanted Sandra, a beautiful girl with an even more beautiful soprano voice, with whom I was very much in love, to join me because she was singing in the liturgies. We were both quiet kids who never caused any trouble, so they believed us. I only attended Sister Davida’s classes, Religion and Science, because I liked her. 
Sandra and I would spend hours in that church. I would play the organ and she would sing. And we would also climb up onto the roof of the church, which seemed immense at that age. We would sit there together, sing duets, and daydream. I did manage to pass sixth grade by a few points, but Sandra did not. She had to repeat the grade, and I felt guilty about that for many years. Fortunately, she eventually became a professional singer and had a wonderful performing career, so I finally forgave myself.
The second church was Santa Bernardita, in the neighborhood where I lived. It was my Sunday church. As a teenager I played guitar, sang in the youth choir, and was deeply involved in the youth group. 
Looking back now, I realize that I was experiencing something about church long before I could have put it into words. Church is more than a building, and yet, somehow, a building matters. So, what makes a church a sacred place? 
Saint Antony of the Desert taught his disciples that the presence of God is continuous and active on our behalf wherever we are, even when we turn away from God. Saint Augustine came to understand that the God he had been searching for outside himself was already within him. Saint John of the Cross, in his Spiritual Canticle, wrote of the Beloved as dwelling within the soul, as a secret inner dwelling place. And Brother Lawrence, the seventeenth century Carmelite who wrote The Practice of the Presence of God, found Christ as readily in ordinary work as in formal prayer. He taught that we can make an altar of our hearts.
In the reading from the First Book of Kings, Solomon understands what every person of faith eventually has to learn. God cannot be contained or confined to a building. And yet Solomon builds the Temple and prays that God will hear the prayers offered there. 
God cannot be contained in a place, and God can become present to us in a place. The Christian tradition has always held together these two truths. God is everywhere. And we need somewhere to go to find God. 
Human beings have always created sacred spaces, sometimes with magnificent architecture, and sometimes by simply recognizing that a particular mountain, river, or desert place is holy. These places help us step out of ordinary time and remember eternity. 
We need matter, the physical, in order to awaken awe, wonder, and reverence. In the Incarnation, God entered time and space. Jesus did not come to us as an idea. He had a body and wept actual tears and died an actual death. And because we believe that Christ remains present among us, we continue to seek that presence here through sacramental ritual- the Eucharist, the Divine Office, clothing of novices, professions, funerals- in all those liturgical moments by which we mark time as holy. Sacred spaces are never the end, but they are very important means to an end. They help awaken us to the Presence that always is.
Twelfth century Cistercian abbot, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, was not particularly impressed with the lavish ornamentation that had begun to characterize some churches of his day. Yet at an anniversary of the dedication of the monastery church at Clairvaux, he preached about the holiness of the building, but he did so by turning the whole question upside down. “What sanctity”, he asked, “can these stones have? They have sanctity because of your bodies. Your bodies are holy because of your souls. And this house is holy because of your bodies.” 
For Saint Bernard, the anointing and blessing of the church building mirror the anointing and blessing of the human person. The church is holy because the people who gather here are being healed and made holy. 
In the Gospel reading from Saint Matthew, Jesus enters the Temple and sees that something has gone wrong. The house of prayer has become something else, so he overturns the tables. And then, he heals those who are excluded, the blind and the lame, and welcomes the praise of children. He turns the Temple into what it was meant to be: a place where the broken come to encounter God and be healed.
Back in 2019, I had the unforgettable experience to make a pilgrimage to Jujuy, Argentina, to visit La Misión Guadalupe and the extraordinary work our missionary friends Heidi and Monica were doing among the poor of that province. My pilgrimage began with a five-day retreat at the hermitage of Padre Fernando Ortiz, high on a mountain in Valle Grande. I was taught how to operate the various rustic appliances, including a wood-burning stove for cooking and a wood-burning water heater, and then I was left alone with God on that very holy mountain.
One of my daily activities was to hike to the top of the mountain, where there was an outdoor sanctuary. (And that’s the picture on the back of your hymn sheets.) There are hundreds of Indigenous communities scattered through the mountains of Jujuy, and Fernando told me that many of those communities have outdoor sanctuaries at the tops of their mountains. They are people of the land and worship outdoors where earth and sky themselves become part of their worship. 
Another important experience during that pilgrimage, back in the town, was the celebration of the feast of San Expedito. It was an outdoor Mass, and hundreds and hundreds of people from very different socioeconomic circumstances came together. There was music, great processions, joy and devotion. Monica and Heidi told me that all the Masses of major feasts were held outdoors. 
Why? Well, Fernando told me there are people who feel uncomfortable walking into a church. People who have been judged within the walls of the church and made to feel that they don’t belong. People who still hunger for God, but who carry wounds from the Church, and so they are more likely to attend a worship service that happens outdoors. 
Fernando said: “Here everyone who comes forward for Communion receives Communion. There are no questions asked. What am I going to do, ask them if they went to confession? Ask them if they are Catholic? No. All who are hungry for Christ are fed. Everyone is welcome, all the children of God.” Isn’t that beautiful? The way it should be! In the words of Pope Francis: “¡Todos, todos, todos!” All are welcome!
“You yourselves are living stones,” says Saint Peter. The Church is not ultimately this building, but what God is building in us. “This is the house of God.” Yes. But God is not confined to it. God is in the Eucharist, and in the person who walks out those doors carrying Christ into a world that may never enter them. God is here, and in Jujuy, in the mountains, in the streets, in the hospitals, in the prisons. God is in the person who has been made to feel that they do not belong, and in the person who has never been inside a church.
So today, on this anniversary, may we celebrate this holy church that has been a vessel of remembrance and prayer for 105 years. May we celebrate the generations who built it and the generations who have maintained it and have prayed here. May we celebrate those who have found healing, and a vocation here. May we celebrate those who came here not knowing what they were looking for and discovered, perhaps slowly, that God had been looking for them. May we look toward the future because as long as there are living stones, God is still building. 
But let us not question how to preserve this beautiful place so much as what kind of people will this holy place continue to make us? More loving, more truthful, more patient, more merciful? ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+  

The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 21 A, September 27, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York

Br. Scott Wesley Borden

The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, September 27, 2026

Ezekiel 18:1-4,25-32

Philippians 2:1-13

Matthew 21:23-32

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This morning's reading from Mathew begins with Jesus' teaching in the Temple. The chief priests and elders come to challenge him. By what authority are you teaching? They demand. Who gave you this authority? The chief priests and elders assume, reasonably enough, that they are the authorities...

Jesus’ answer is audacious, to say the least... Jesus says: I will ask you a question first, and if you answer then I’ll answer your questions... Jesus is putting himself on equal footing with the chief priests and elders... They asked Jesus about authority, and he is telling them his authority is equal to theirs... I can’t imagine that the chief priests and elders are greatly impressed... but it's too late because Jesus asks a question about the authority of John the Baptist. This is a question that the chief priests and elders, the authorities, dare not answer.

These questions seem to make perfect sense today – but they may not mean exactly what we think they mean. Our modern understanding of authority unusually has to do with the right to apply power and control. But that is not the only form of the word. Authority also has to do with expertise and mastery of knowledge. This is the form of authority we seem to be dealing with – not power, but knowledge.

In any case, it seems that Jesus is done with the challenge to his authority and moves on with a parable...

“What do you think:” Jesus asks, “a father had two sons...” I think that makes me nervous... I have one brother. My father had two sons... So right away this parable feels a little too close to home for comfort. But part of the power of Jesus’ parables is that we can locate ourselves in them.

A father had two sons – one who pleasantly agreed to do what he was asked, the other who disagreeably refused. But Jesus adds a wrinkle.

The nice son turns out not to be so very nice. He can pleasantly agree to anything – because he doesn’t do it. There is no cost to him in being nice and saying yes.

And the nasty son turns out to be not so bad – he gets done what needs to be done. But he seems to pay twice – there is the cost of refusal and the cost of doing what was asked.

Two things jump out at me - First: if I were the father in this story, I’m not sure I’d be the world’s most proud parent. Second: both sons don’t tell the truth - and I wonder: are they lying to their father or to themselves about what they will or won’t do?

We don’t know much about these two sons. It's risky to try to determine their motives for their behavior. But I do know a thing or two about my own behavior...

It is not too uncommon – if I can bare my soul – that somebody asks me to do something and I cheerfully agree. And yet somehow the task goes undone. It's not that I really don’t want to do what I’ve been asked, or that I’m being passive-aggressive, or giving an easy answer just to end a discussion – though those are all sometimes true. I agree, with all good intentions, to do something... and still I just don’t get it done.

It is also true in my life that sometimes somebody asks me to do something that I know needs to be done but really don’t want to do – clean up my room... file the stuff piled on my desk... and I just flat out refuse. My inner two-year-old rears his ugly head and says – no, I don’t want to... but then my more adult self takes over. Most of the time it's easier just to do whatever needs to be done, rather than invest the energy in bickering about not doing it.

I’m willing to bet I’m not the only one here who sometimes doesn’t do what he says he will – and sometimes does what he says he won’t... I think that is pretty much part of the human condition.

It's tempting to say that growth means we grow in the direction of putting the first son’s words with the second son’s actions. And in fact, I think, as we become more whole, it is true that our words and actions are more likely to go together.

But the beginning of becoming whole is the realization that each of us is both sons. In this parable, Jesus is talking about us... about you... about me... We are at the same time obedient and rebellious. Sometimes our words and actions don’t match.

And it's one of those ironies of human nature that the harder I work to deny that I am like either son, the more I am likely to be like both sons.

When I pretend that I’m so good that I can’t be bad – that is when I’m most capable of really wicked behavior. I lose touch with my failings and with my shadow, and they start to have lives of their own.

What do you think? A father has two sons... a good-natured slacker and a surly guy Friday. To the degree I can acknowledge that I am both sons, I can do a better job of matching my actions to my words. And it is, after all, through my actions that I live in my baptismal covenant – a covenant made with words and actions.

For these two sons, becoming whole doesn’t mean curing them of their failings. It means becoming aware of them. For the first son, maybe it means learning that he makes commitments to easily, or perhaps just learning that it is OK sometimes to say no if that is what he really wants to say. For the second son maybe, it means learning to keep his mouth shut a few moments longer, realizing that the first reaction isn’t perhaps his best reaction.

Becoming whole means knowing who you are – the good and the bad, the strength and the weakness. God knows us as we are – our greatest virtues and our worst vices. God loves us whole. It's not that God loves us in spite of our faults. God loves us. Period.

I said a while ago that if I were the father of these two sons, I would not be the world’s most proud parent. That’s because I’m human. One of my weaknesses is that my love is conditional. I love the things that are easiest to love. I rationalize it by saying I love the things that deserve my love.

But God’s love is not conditional. Thank God!

So, am I saying that it doesn’t matter what we do since God loves us? Of course it matters. Growing in wholeness does not mean growing lazy, or wicked, or whatever. It means growing in the knowledge of who you are and in the knowledge of the love of God. This doesn’t make you free to do anything that comes to mind. It makes you free walk in the ways of justice and peace; in the ways God calls us to walk.

Acknowledging that I lust for money, or for control, or whatever, takes away the power of that lust. Saying that I don’t lust for money, or power... is simply not telling the truth... like the son who said “I go.”

It is, after all, the refusing son who does his father’s will. Ultimately, his actions tell the story of who he is.

And so, it is with us – our actions tell the story of who we are.

We are God’s children – loved by God. Those of us who follow Jesus are called on to share that love – to build God’s beloved Kingdom. A kingdom where the meek inherit the world, where the poor are blessed, where we hunger and thirst for righteousness.

We are known as Christians by our love.