Epiphany 3A - January 23, 2011

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Charles Mizelle, n/OHC

RCL - Epiphany 3A - January 23, 2011

Isaiah 9:1-4

1 Corinthians 1:10-18

Matthew 4:12-23

Just An "Ordinary" Sermon

In the name of God who calls us to celebration, who calls us to pursue community in our world, and who calls us to compassion in the midst of all human suffering. Amen!

I’m finding Epiphany to be a rather complicated season. It’s about 3 Kings (who weren’t actual Kings) following a star (that astronomers have never identified and don’t think actually existed) showing up with some not-so-practical-gifts (I can hear Mary now saying I’ve got a newborn here, couldn’t you have brought diapers? what am I to do with frankincense?). But the complication with Epiphany is that it is layered and complex. Epiphany is also the celebration and observance of the Baptism of Christ AND it is when we commemorate Christ first miracle at the start of His earthly ministry: the wedding feast at Cana and the turning of water into wine. Three very significant events in salvation history, spanning 30 years of the life of Christ, three events that really don’t seem to have much of a link.

And today we name this Sunday the “Third Sunday of Epiphany”. But in reality what that really means is that we are in the third Sunday of Ordinary Time. Ordinary Time is that time of year when the Church is neither preparing for or celebrating Christmas or Easter. In Advent we prepare for Christmas and in Christmas we celebrate God-With-Us in the Incarnation. In Lent we prepare ourselves for Holy Week and going through it we emerge in Easter, celebrating the resurrection of Christ life in us. In a way we define Ordinary Time by what it is not: it is not Advent or Christmas or Lent or Easter. It is not therefore, the time when the Church is directly engaged with the preparations and celebrations of the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Now we protestants want to turn Epiphany into a season. We have Christmas-tide and we have Easter-tide. But the idea of Epiphany-tide just never caught on. Some theologians want to elevate Epiphany to a greater feast than Christmas. After all it is when we come to understand the Incarnation as an event of God coming for all humankind, Jew and Gentile alike. But the decorations are gone, the simplicity of our Chapel has returned and we wear green to mark that this really is just ordinary time.

In addition to defining Ordinary Time by what it is not we can just as well define it by what it is: it is the season that makes up over half of our Church year—up to 34 weeks each year. It is the time, just like Peter and Andrew in today’s Gospel reading from Matthew, where we are called to follow Jesus. It is the time we take the birth, death and resurrection of Christ and live fully into its reality in the here and now of our daily lives. It is a time of being formed in Christ. It is a time of formation and conversion. It is a time of living into God’s call on our lives. It is a time when we take our Incarnation and Resurrection celebrations and work to make a difference in the world. It is also a time of repentance.

Repentance—now there’s a word we really don’t like. Actually its a word we can’t stand. What an inconvenient time for Jesus to say to us “repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near”? Doesn’t Jesus know that the idea of repentance makes us uncomfortable and this is no place to begin a new work? Starting here is a sign of sure failure. Wouldn’t it had been a wiser choice for Christ to begin by telling us God is love? And how can we call this ordinary time if we are going to kick it off in such a non-affirming way by saying we need to repent?

It is no liturgical accident that after Christmas and Epiphany and before Lent and Easter that Jesus tells us to repent and follow Him. And for the next four plus weeks we will be hearing Jesus preach from The Mount where He will unpack for us just what the Christian life is and if we choose, how we will be converted by it. It is also no accident that it is in these weeks of Ordinary Time where we loose so many would-be followers of Christ. We’ve all seen it. The pews are packed out for Christmas and Easter services. It is a joyous time of celebration, we even get new outfits to mark the occasions. But after the feast are over and we are back to our green season of Ordinary Time, where are all those people?

When the reality of the Christian life sets in and we start talking about things like repentance, following Christ, changing the way we live, being formed to become more like Christ the crowds thin out. If you pay attention when you read through the Gospel narratives you’ll see the same dynamic at work during Christ earthly ministry. When the wine was flowing and people were getting fed and healed the throngs were magnificent. But when Christ started talking about changing your ways, doing justice, changing your heart, and putting your money where your faith is, those throngs became a small handful of people. Later we’ll even see that Peter, the very one called to follow Christ in today’s Gospel ends up denying Christ 3 times when it meant his own life would be put on the line.

When it comes to all things Christians are known for talking about the concept of sin and repentance is so highly charged it is like stepping into a field of land mines and IED’s. Quite frankly it’s toxic to bring up the idea of repentance in almost any context. In our post-modern, post-critical, even post-christian world we have gone out of our way to extricate repentance from both our religious practice and our moral culture. I have a friend who refuses to sing the great hymn Amazing Grace. She said to me in no uncertain words one day “I’m not a wretch saved by grace! I’m not a wretch at all and I won’t sing those words!”

It is absolutely true that the more than 100 references in scripture about repentance have been used to clobber those we dislike and to brow-beat those we judge. There is an entire genre of preaching that is about delivering the bad news before you give the good news. And in order to gain entrance into their church fold one must sufficiently prove an experiential encounter with Christ that is heavy laden with repentance. It all reminds me of the adage I overheard a Brother saying “We haven’t seen a good smiting in quite some time now”.

Jesus was completely sensitive to this. And when He says “repent” He is neither brow-beating us nor judging us. We are just so hyper-reactive to hearing the word repentance that it stops us from being able to hear the rest of His statement: “for the kingdom of heaven has come near”. Jesus is saying I have something better, I have that which will last, I can give you true peace and joy and fulfillment, real happiness. Jesus is saying you don’t have to die to go to heaven. It is near right now. And you can have it in this life if you want it. But Christ is actually saying something even deeper. He is answering the eternal question of what is real, what is it all about, where can we find truth. And what is His answer. Turn around and enter God’s Kingdom.

The word for repent in Greek is metanoia and it means to think differently, to turn around, to change the direction in which you are going. Fr. Thomas Keating says that what Jesus is really doing is inviting us to change the direction in which we are looking for our happiness. From the moment we are born our psyche is hard wired to seek fulfillment of our needs and desires. Security, affection and control dominate our endless search for fulfillment. The predicament of the human condition is that it doesn’t take very long for us to make a mess of our lives in how we go about seeking security, affection and control. As soon as we think we are secure circumstances change and we become very insecure. The affection and love we long for is never completely satisfied. And for being in control...forget it...no matter how much you think you are in control life’s taskmaster will be there to show you’re not in control and you never were in control.

Those who seek power to gain security, affection and control only find they never have enough power. Those who seek wealth to gain security, affection and control live in fear of never having enough. Those who claw their way to the top of the corporate ladder are never satisfied with the view from the top. Framing the act of repentance as letting go of our endless need for more, doing an about face in what we hold important, changing the direction in how we look for happiness and fulfillment is much more than a new age recast of old fashioned religion.

Repentance is answering Christ’s call to conversion that you don’t need the latest gadget but that the local food pantry needs your time and resources. Repentance is answering Christ’s call to conversion that instead of clawing your way up the corporate ladder you’ll claw your way down to the local prison and befriend someone who has never known what it means to have someone else truly care about them. Repentance is learning you can live on less so you can help relieve the suffering of those who go without.

Last week I heard Christ call to repentance in an unexpected moment. As an introduction for a presenter/speaker at the Trinity Institute Theological Conference a short video was shown. The video profiled a community in Nigeria that quite frankly looked poorer than poor. No paved roads, shabby buildings, classrooms poorly outfitted, poorly lit. Plain tattered clothes and cars so old I would have a hard time trusting them. But as poor as they were in “things” and commodities they were rich in joy, love, happiness. They weren’t just smiling for the camera but their joy they knew deep within simply shone through. When I noted this juxtaposition between the wealth of America and the seeming lack of Nigeria another person correctly noted that they are sad for us. They are sad that we have so much yet lack real happiness and fulfillment. They are sad for us over our complicated, frantic and unsatisfied lives. Little did I know that a simple film, profiling a village in Nigeria would be Christ whisper to me for repentance in simplicity and a return to what is really important.

I grew up in a faith tradition that preached a lot on repentance and always offered an altar call as an opportunity for one to change their ways. My step-father, a very prominent Baptist preacher, loved to goad me about my “strange Episcopal ways”. One day the goading was why we Episcopalians never have an altar call. I must have tired of the teasing because after a moment of silence I just looked at him and said “you know, we Episcopalians have more altar calls than the Baptist”. “No you don’t” he replied. I said “yes we do!”.

Then I explained to him that every time we come together to celebrate the Eucharist we have an altar call. It is a time were we make a decision to follow Christ. We physically walk in an new direction. It is an act of metanoia, of turning around and going in a new direction. The very act of partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ is an act of opening ourselves to the Holy Spirit and entering a process of conversion.

That was the last time he teased me about altar calls. But you know its true that in a few moments when we gather around this altar behind me we will be yielding the Christ’s call to turn and go in a new direction for our happiness and fulfillment. It is even an act of turning over our needs of security, affection and control and letting it go. It is our acknowledgement that this Sunday is no ordinary time at all.

Amen

Epiphany 2 A - 16 Jan 2011

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. James Michael Dowd, OHC
RCL – Epiphany 2 A – Sunday 16 January 2011

Isaiah 49:1-7
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
John 1:29-42

A Prophet in our Midst

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

This Sunday, I am quite mindful of the fact that, as a nation, we are celebrating Martin Luther King Day and have found myself thinking back to 1986, when Martin Luther King's birthday first became a national holiday. At the time, I was working in Virginia, at what shall remain a nameless company, and they refused to make Dr. King's Day a company holiday. Many of the employees were not pleased with this and expressed their anger to management. This was not received well, we were all accused of just wanting another day off, and they told us that if we called in sick that day we had better have a doctor's note or there would be serious consequences to pay. It became clear to me in that moment, that the managers responsible for that decision had not really “internalized” the message of Dr. King!

Several of us were having lunch one day in early January, talking about this, and I'll never forget one of my co-workers approach to this dilemma. Cathy was one of the secretaries in the office and said that she really could not afford to lose her job, so she wasn't going to call in sick, but she would take a vacation day that Monday – which would then be deducted from her two week vacation – because Dr. King deserved at least that much respect from her. She said that she would stay home in the morning, read her Bible and read some of Dr. King's speeches. And then, in the afternoon, she had plans to work with a church group that ministered to poor children. So much for just wanting another day off! But then she added one more point when she said that what we really needed to do was to pray for all those managers who were so misguided. After all, she said, they are also God's children and just needed a little extra help. It seemed to me that she had “internalized” Dr. King's message.

Her response to all of this so impressed me that I have hoped to internalize Dr. King's message as much as she had, and more importantly, to learn to live that message throughout my life. Cathy's statement that Dr. King deserved at least that much respect from her is the piece that made the deepest impression on me. I have thought about that over the years and have wondered why that particular sentence was so memorable to me. Finally, this week as I was preparing the sermon, and, in particular, thinking about our reading from the Prophet Isaiah, I think I have come to understand why that notion was so important to me. And to explore that notion, I would like to talk with you about the reading from the Prophet Isaiah.

To refer to this reading as being from the Prophet Isaiah is a bit misleading. In fact, this reading is taken from the Book of Isaiah, but is from that section of the book that is referred to by Scripture scholars as Second Isaiah. This Isaiah most likely lived about two hundred years after the first Isaiah and is thought to have been modeling himself on the original.

The passage that we heard this morning is a beautiful description of this second Isaiah's call from God, in which he says that “the Lord called me before I was born, while I was in my mothers' womb he named me.” And that the Lord formed him “to be his servant” so that God could give his servant, this Prophet, as “a light to the nations, so that God's salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

And this passage, I think, tells us a great deal about the nature of a prophetic call. A true prophet is one that holds up the light to the nations of “God Among Us” and invites all of God's creation into the gift of God's salvation. A true prophet is one that speaks to his or her own people, in the context of his or her time. But true prophets also speaks to all of humanity across time. And this is one of the reasons why I so love the Book of Isaiah. For the first thirty-nine chapters we have the original Isaiah proclaiming God's Word and calling the nations to the light that will be called Immanuel. Beginning in chapter 40, which, again, takes place approximately two hundred years later, we have a second prophet being called forth by God to once again call the people to return to God's saving ways; and issuing the invitation from God for all of humanity to enter into God's way of salvation. Both Isaiah's dealt with specific issues of their day, while both also speak to all of God's creation throughout the course of Salvation History. This is why the prophets get, deservedly so, our respect. And this is why, I believe, Dr. King also deserves our respect, and why Cathy's comment resonated with me so many years ago. This man was different. He was not just the heroic leader of a political cause, he was one of God's greatest gifts to America, a prophet raised up in our midst, named Martin.

The Prophet Martin certainly spoke to the people of this country in the mid-Twentieth Century, communicating first with African-Americans and then reaching out to European-Americans, refusing to believe that we could not all be one. His insistence on equality for those children of God who had been systematically left out, was not only a call for justice for African-Americans, but was also a call to repentance and salvation for European-Americans. And on that front, though much work is still necessary, much progress has been made. And in doing so, both African-Americans and European-Americans were brought that much closer to a realization of the Kingdom of God. But the Prophet Martin also speaks to our generation and, undoubtedly, generations to come, both here in the United States and across the world about the eternal issues of justice, non-violence and love.

And that brings me to the events that occurred in Tucson eight days ago. In the aftermath of the murderous rampage in that shopping center, all kinds of nonsense was spewed forth by both the right wing and the left wing media and politicians. But, thus far, I have read little commentary on the greater issue that drove that rampage and any number of other rampages that are carried out day by day throughout the United States.

So while early speculation has centered on the mass media and a few politicians, I would rather like to look at our American culture as a whole, because it seems to me that our culture needs some examining. Everywhere we Americans turn we have been taught that violence is the answer to all of our problems. We imagine ourselves as always wearing the white hat of the Western, while whoever is the “other” wears the black hat. Therefore, it is acceptable to eliminate that “other” by any means necessary.

We have so embraced this notion that we have made violence and the weapons of violence into our own American golden calf. In our foreign policy, on-going war has become the norm and simply shifts from country to country at the whim of a few people. In our judicial system, the response to violent crime is to match that violent crime with more violence in the executioners chamber. In our medical clinics, the response to an inconvenient pregnancy is to abort the child. In our homes, the response to difficult economic situations, addictions, and other family problems is an unprecedented level of violence against mostly women and children. Even in our entertainment, when ostensibly we are relaxing, the level of violence on television, in the movies, in video games, and on the Internet, is sickening. With all of this violence, both legal and illegal surrounding him, is it any wonder that a psychologically disturbed loner would open fire on a group of people that included children and old women?

We are not isolated individuals living in a vacuum. If we claim to be Christians, then part of that claim is that we are all of one body – Christ's Body. When one fails, we each receive an F. When one is suffering, we are all in pain. The media cycle seems to have turned again and we are desperate to label the perpetrator in Tucson as a “nut.” Well, if that is true, then we are all “nuts.” While individual responsibility is a real and important thing, the environment in which we live has consequences. The hand that fails to reach out in a gesture of love and acceptance is felt as a slap in the face. That slap is multiplied exponentially in an environment in which violence is not only tolerated, but often lauded as good.

We Americans seem to want it both ways. We want to claim that we are a Christian nation and yet, so often, it seems that Christ is not the one we worship. Rather, violence and the tools of violence are the false gods that are worshiped by many in our country.
For example, within a few days of the violence in Tucson, the Gun Owners of America, a special interest group dedicated to the “protection” of the Second Amendment, put out this statement to ensure that no politician would stand up for any type of sensible gun control:
“These politicians need to remember that these rights [to guns] aren’t given to us by them. They come from God. They are God-given rights. They can’t be infringed or limited in any way.” (The New York Times 1/14/11)
God given rights? The Prophet Martin would often reminded people of what the first Prophet Isaiah had to say about what God's people should do with their weapons and their ways of violence:

They shall beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more. (Is 2:4)

If we truly desire to be a nation of Christians, we might be well advised to take the teachings of the Prophet Isaiah to heart. And we would also be well advised to take the teachings of the Prophet Martin to heart as well, who told us:

I never intend to adjust myself to the tragic effects of the methods of physical violence and to tragic militarism. I call upon you to be maladjusted to such things...as maladjusted as Jesus of Nazareth who dreamed a dream of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. God grant that we will be so maladjusted that we will be able to go out and change our world and our civilization.
(“The Power of Non-violence” delivered at U.C. Berkeley 6/4/57)

There is only one way to change our world, our civilization, and that is to follow Jesus. My guess is, like those first apostles, Jesus is inviting each of you, in your own circumstances, to come and see where he lives. Jesus lives in each and every person – friend or foe, ally or enemy – all those women and men we are to call sister and brother. He lives in each of our hearts and calls us day after day to live in peace with him in the persons of each of our brothers and sisters. He calls us to smash our idols of violence and the tools of violence, and to worship the one true God of Justice, Prince of Peace, Spirit of Love.

And how do we do that? Well, it seems to me that the way Cathy spent that first Martin Luther King Day is a good way to begin: Pray for your perceived enemies, read your bible, study holy texts, work for peace and care for the poor. May God give us the strength to do just that.

AMEN.

Epiphany - 06 Jan 2011

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Andrew Colquhoun, OHC
RCL – Epiphany – Thursday 06 January 2011

Isaiah 60:1-6
Ephesians 3:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12


What a strange feast today… not straightforward… a mixture of events and images almost designed not to fit together. The stable, the Jordan, the wedding… all linked and all revealing God in distinctive ways.

The account from Matthew of the coming of the Wise really doesn’t have to be expounded. The picture is on so many Christmas cards – even the cheap ones! The Magi are probably Zoroastrian astrologers; their gifts symbolize royalty, divinity and death. But Matthew knew how to write a good story. And so, in the middle, the suspense builds – the warning by an angel comes to the Magi and in their obedience, they go home by another way.
All of that is dramatic and tantalizing. Exotic and mysterious. Inspiring poets and musicians, artists and pageant directors all trying to get their imaginations around it.

But add in the Baptism and the wedding at Cana and things get more complex. I love the antiphons on the gospel canticles today – especially our Matins which knits all the pieces together in a wonderful way. Where do we see God’s power in these epiphanies? I think it’s in the paradoxes.

We’ve romanticized the predicament of the Holy Family that often slips by in this story. The Magi come to this uprooted couple who are about to be refugees. Joseph has a nightmare – breaking out in sweat in the realization that he must take Mary and the Child to safety. Throwing things in a sack and plodding off to only God knew where.

No more angels; no more shepherds. No comfort of a warm stable. No more mysterious strangers with strange gifts.
Here Mary and Joseph face terror – alone, unsupported, moving into an unknown world where they don’t speak the language. Where they will be undocumented; no relatives, nothing familiar. Only the strangeness of a foreign land and the suspicions of the locals.

They’ve become people to turn your back on. Welfare folk. You can hear the voices because they are still repeating the same things: Are they even properly married? Why didn’t they stay in their own place? Just coming here to be a drain on our already struggling economy. Do they expect us to get their brat into school? Maybe he can get odd jobs – she could clean houses.
King of the Jews? God enfleshed in a dirt poor mewling kid?

And the Baptism – what do we have here? The crowd of seeking desperate people looking for any comfort… and a solitary working man of no great note from a disreputable village comes forward. The desert dweller John and the Carpenter have a word and the Word is spoken – This is my Son, the Beloved! But what about the scholars, the Torah Jews, the people who have kept the law. The ones you could expect to produce the Awaited One, Messiah. Not chosen!

And finally, the wedding scene. This wedding of poverty with cheap Manischewitz that runs out doesn’t seem like a disaster worthy of a miracle to us but I got some insight into that in South Africa. The fear of the shame of running out puts families in panic. We saw if most at funerals. Two deaths back to back can put a family under never to get out from under again. The shame is profound – it marks the family forever. These people weren’t careless – they wouldn’t have been. They were just were poor. And Jesus shows compassion and in that compassion we see God’s glory.

So where has God appeared? Not with Herod. Not with the religious leaders. Not with the people of plenty. But at the bottom of the heap.
Where do we look for God today? Surely not in the smirking of politicians; not in the boardrooms where greedy hands are gleefully rubbed over tax cuts for the rich; not with the intelligentsia. Maybe in the street outside an unfinished building in Newburgh where not so long ago we shared the Body and Blood? Maybe in the wake of our sisters Heidi and Monica in one of the townships among the very poor? Maybe here where so many broken hearts come for healing? Who knows? But not usually where we’d expect. God is fleshed out in the most unlikely surprising places and in the heart.
So we keep our eyes open and our hearts ready. Perhaps, who knows, we might be epiphanies.

Sermon for Br. Robert Magliula's Life Profession - 01 Jan 2011

Mariya uMama weThemba Monastery, Grahamstown, South Africa
Brother Robert Sevensky, OHC
Feast of the Holy Name - 01 January 2011
Life Profession of Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC

Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC, prostrate at the foot of the altar,
as a symbol of full self-giving to God through the monastic profession.

This past February I had the great privilege of attending the annual Benedictine Abbots' Workshop in Oceanside, California. The principal speaker was Dr. Michael Downey, a Roman Catholic layman and theologian. His theme was the Holy Trinity and its relationship to community, communion, and contemplation

His thesis was somewhat surprising. And that is that, far from being the most abstract and general of Christian beliefs, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is in fact the most practical and important teaching of our faith, important for the theologian, to be sure, but important also for the ordinary believer and, most particularly, for the monastic. And not for the reasons that I or most of us might have expected.

The central mystery of the Christian life and faith is the Trinity because it shapes and models and guides the way we relate to ourselves and to each other and to the whole created order. But the point of entry into the mystery of the Trinity is very concrete, very tangible and very revolutionary. And that point of entry is the self-emptying of God in Jesus Christ, what theologians, using the Greek word from today's reading from the Letter to the Philippians (2:5-11) call kenosis.

If we are to understand and savor the mystery of God and be brought into union with the Triune God, we begin not from some kind of abstract reasoning about the nature of the infinite or the attributes of perfection, but from an event—the event—in human history: the folly of the cross. According to Downey, the divine mystery rests not primarily in God's inscrutability but in the astonishing claim that God should appear in such a fashion—poor, weak, vulnerable—both then and now. It is a mystery we ponder at this Christmas season and one that we will continue to ponder through Holy Week and Easter and throughout eternity. We speak of a God who does not take away human wanting or longing but of one who is present precisely in and through our human desiring. We speak of one who knows us in our suffering and brokenness and who, emptying self of the divine nature, embraces this humanity, so that we might put on and share that divinity. As an antiphon sung over and over this Christmastide puts it with uncharacteristic exuberance: “Oh wondrous exchange! Christ became a human child so that all the children of Eve might become gods.”

Kenosis, the self-emptying of God in Jesus Christ, is in fact the gateway to theosis, that is, the gateway to being ever more shaped and molded into the image and likeness of God.

But if kenosis, God's self-emptying, is the key to understanding the mystery of the Trinity, it is also, according to Downey, the key to understanding the mystery of monastic life. That central dynamic of the monastic adventure which we call conversatio morum, conversion of life, is none other that what the author of the Letter to the Philippians proclaims: “Let the same mind be be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” And to put on the mind of Christ is to be emptied of self.

But what does kenosis look like? It is difficult to describe inasmuch as it is slightly different for each of us. Each one of us must be emptied in a slightly different way, a way uniquely adapted to our own personality and sinfulness and giftedness. The best description I have been able to find of the process comes from the pen of the popular Catholic theologian, Ronald Rolheiser:

“Scripture says that in Christ, God offers a love so pure, so self-effacing, so understanding of our weaknesses, so self-sacrificing and “self-emptying”, that it's offered without any demand, however veiled, that it be recognized.... To “self-empty” in the way Jesus is described as doing means to be present without demanding that your presence be recognized and its importance acknowledged; it means giving without demanding that your generosity be reciprocated; it means being invitational rather than threatening, healthily solicitous rather than nagging or coercive; it means being vulnerable and helpless, unable to protect yourself against the pain of being taken for granted or rejected; it means living in a great patience that doesn't demand intervention, divine or human, when things don't unfold according to your will; it means letting God be God and others be themselves without having to submit to your wishes or your timetable. Not an easy thing at all, that's why we've sung Jesus' praises for two thousand years for doing it, but that's the invitation.”

That's the invitation to which you, Robert James, are responding today and one that we must all respond to in one way or another. Today, Rob, you enter yet more deeply and definitively into the mystery of that kenosis that is yours and Christ's.

Br. Robert James Magliula,
signing, on the altar, the instrument of profession written in his own hand.
In the foreground, is the profession cross he was to receive from the Superior.

Liturgically it seems a most appropriate time time for you to do this. We are gathered here on New Year's Day, the Feast of the Holy Name, halfway between the feasts of the Nativity and the Epiphany. I am reminded of a tradition that we have at West Park of placing the figures of the Magi, the three wise men, hundreds of meters away from the Christmas creche. Slowly over the course of the twelve days between the Nativity and the Epiphany they make their way, and I'm often startled to find one peering out at me from behind a doorway or resting in apparent exhaustion on a guesthouse sofa. And somehow, as if by a miracle, they arrive at the stable just in time for First Vespers of the Epiphany.

And I think then of the T. S. Elliot's early poem, “Journey of the Magi”

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey;
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
….
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Rob, you yourself have had a long journey and, at times, a cold coming of it. From your teen years hoping to be a member of the Xaverian Brothers, a Roman Catholic religious community, to leaving them in order to find your truer, more authentic self, to your training and work as an artist, art therapist, counselor, hospital chaplain, and beloved parish priest for seventeen years; seeking human love, finding it, and then losing the beloved, and still always, always journeying on. And like the Magi in Eliot's poem, you have no doubt heard the voices saying that this was all folly. But like them you've pushed onward. Like them you've had your turning points, your disappointments, your triumphs, your beginnings and your endings and your new births. And like them, you found the place you were seeking. To quote the poet once more: “It was (you may say) satisfactory.”

What strikes me today, Rob, is how you've ended up back with your first love, that deep desire to serve God and be yourself in a religious order, in a monastic community. How vital and necessary it was that you left the Xaverians forty years ago. And how vital and necessary it was to have experienced life in all its sweetness and splendor and pain. And how very vital it is that you have come to this day...the day of your solemn monastic profession.

Six years ago, on January 3, 2006, you submitted your spiritual autobiography as part of your process of applying to enter the Order of the Holy Cross. I know it is a confidential document, put permit me to quote a few sentences from your conclusion.

“After my time in the community [as an Oblate of Holy Cross Monastery], I have no illusions about what I am getting into. Even so, as messed up as our humanity can get, I have glimpsed the kingdom in those moments of care, love, humor, and support that erupt in community, often when least expected. As imperfect as we all are in our loving, we commit ourselves to keep at it, knowing that it is God's love that undergirds all our efforts, whether they succeed or fail. I want to spend the rest of my life being part of this venture.”

Rob, all of us gathered here today as well as those who know you and love you but can't be here today, want you to be part of that venture as well. Your brothers in the Order want it. Your family wants it. Your friends want it. Your former parishioners want it. William wants it. The children here want it. The Church wants it. And above all: God wants it. God wants you. God desires you. You and none other.

Let me quote one final time from the poet T. S. Eliot, since he says it so well:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we have started
And know the place for the first time.
….
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

So Rob...Shall we begin?

He did it!
Br. Rob celebrating his profession with good friend
and presider at the profession mass, The Rev. Janet Vincent,
rector of St Columba's, Washington, D