Holy Cross Monastery Sermons : February 2024

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

The Initial Profession of the Monastic Vow of Br. Bruno Marc Santana OHC

Br. Josep Martinez-Cubero

The Initial Profession of the Monastic Vow, February 28, 2024

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INITIAL PROFESSION OF THE BENEDICTINE MONASTIC VOW
Holy Cross Monastery

Exodus 3:1-10 Colossians 3:12-17 Matthew 4:18-24

Before initial profession Brothers are given the opportunity to request the Gospel they would like read at the profession. I have to admit that when I received Marc’s request and read it, I thought: “Oh, great, the fish for people thing!” I don’t particularly care for fishing so, it is difficult for me to connect to Jesus’s invitation to “fish for people.” I even find the very idea off-putting. It doesn’t help that this story about Jesus calling his disciples is often interpreted as fishing for lost souls, doomed to hellfire. “Hooking” them, and getting them to church to confess Jesus as their personal Lord and Savior, so they can be saved from damnation. Nevertheless, there is much in this Gospel story that relates to the call to the monastic vocation, and relates directly to you, Marc, and what you are about to do.

In a few moments, you will profess and sign the threefold Benedictine vow of obedience, stability, and conversion of your ways to the monastic way of life. It is one vow that has three parts that are interwoven in such a way that each is absolutely necessary for the other two. One cannot really live Benedictine monastic life with authenticity if we are avoiding any part of the vow. You will promise to live the vow for a period of three years. The vow has to do with three core Benedictine values. The first one is about listening intently and learning to hear how God speaks to us even through the voice of your fallible brothers. The second one is about not running away when the going gets tough. And the third has to do with being open to change and transformation.

Obedience is easy to talk about and definitely, the most difficult part of the vow to live. Everyone in formation has heard me, many times, refer to the excellent explanation about monastic obedience found in the Contemporary Reading of the Rule of the Order of the Holy Cross written by our Brother Robert Leo Sevensky. It is the most complete, realistic, honest, and grounded description of monastic obedience I know. It reads:

“While none of us is called to become an automaton, mindlessly conforming ourselves to the practices of the community or the commands of those in authority, we must be careful not to avoid the hard work of transformation that comes from holy obedience. We are to strive to hear God’s voice calling to us through such practices and commands and to give them always the benefit of the doubt, the best possible interpretation, and our willing conformity, especially when it is not absolutely clear that another course of action would be preferable. This does not, of course, rule out consultation, communal consideration, or expert advice. In the end, however, our cooperation and support, even under protest, is part of the gift of ourselves. We will find it helpful in this regard to cultivate a sense of the limitations of our knowledge of even outward matters, and to treasure up instances in which our assured judgement has proved wrong.”

So monastic obedience is not about blind compliance and conformity so much as it is about deeply listening and cooperating with those in authority so they can fulfill their leadership role with dignity and integrity. We must bring our intellect to our obedience because a community of followers who want a list of dos and don’ts to follow mindlessly is not a healthy community. Consultation, communal consideration, and expert advice can be part of the experience because we must approach obedience as psychologically healthy adults who are fully engaged in the life and know how to use their brains. Notice how in the Gospel story Jesus engages his first disciples’ intellect. What metaphor would make more sense to four fishermen than the metaphor of fishing for people? They would have known from years of experience the patience, resilience, intuition, and artistry that fishing requires. They would have known about the tools of the trade, and about the life-and-death importance of timing, humility, and discretion. So, Jesus does not call his disciples to leave their experience and intelligence behind, but to bring the very best of their core selves forward. The call is for them to become more fully and freely who God made them to be.

Bringing the very best of our core selves forward is what guaranties that we will be able to engage in healthy monastic stability. Monastic stability means accepting this particular community and Order as our way to God. For Saint Benedict, community is not just the place where we seek God, but the very means by which we find God. Living in community is not simply about cohabitating, or being fused in unhealthy ways, but about being self-differentiated as we strive to stay connected. The entire community is involved in our monastic stability. This involvement is most crucial when we face the inevitable difficult times of our vocation because it is the support of the community that carries us through. It is a common mistake to think that having a crisis means that we may not have a monastic vocation after all. Vowing Benedictine monastic stability means that facing crisis is part of the monastic way of life. As our Brother Randy has said: “Crisis is often a prelude to some kind of deeper growth.”

And finally, conversion to the monastic way of life calls for continuous transformation into Christ. As monks we are always in a state of becoming and in the process of conversion at deeper and deeper levels. In the Gospel story, Jesus does not invite Simon, Andrew, James, and John to abandon who they are, but to become their most authentic selves. He invites them to live into the fullness of the image of God with which they were born. Monks are not called to become self-annihilating abstracts. God prizes our intellects, our memories, our backgrounds, our educations, and our skills. Everything we offer up to God is multiplied, shaped, and brought to fruition. So for me, the operative statement in this Gospel story is “I will make you”.

Jesus cultivates, deepens, and perfects who God created us to be. Conversion of our ways to the monastic way of life is directly connected to Jesus’s promise to “make us,” and it is about nurturing who we truly are, not about severing us from all we love. It is about gentleness and respect, not about violence and coercion. It is a promise that when we dare to let go, the things we relinquish are transformed and enlivened in ways we could not have imagined on our own. The older I get, the more I have conversations with discerners, and the more I work with people in formation, the more I am convinced that God is gentler with us than we are with ourselves. Spiritual transformation is not just about renunciation. Resurrection, and abundant life are also part of it.

So, dear Marc, you could not have known, two and a half years ago, when you participated in the online “Come and See” we hosted during the pandemic, that you would be here today about to make your initial profession. It has been a blessing for me to accompany you during the past two and half years, first as an inquirer and aspirant, and then as a postulant and novice. You have brought a joyful and energetic presence to our community, and a sense of appreciation of and gratitude for aspects of the life that the rest of us often take for granted. You will continue to have some joyful days, as well as some painful days. There will be some boring days and plenty of ordinary days. You will definitely have some challenges ahead. Remember you are not on this journey alone. We are all in this together. Constantly opening ourselves to others is a vulnerable choice because it means that we will inevitably get hurt by them at times, but the opposite is also true. In community we can experience love at a deep, soulful and trusting level.

The Benedictine Vow you are about to profess is your promise to live the Religious life in a certain way. But perhaps it would benefit you and all of us to think about it rather as consenting to a promise from God to us. The desire for Religious life is about grace. God calls us and God gives us the ability to follow, and we follow because we cannot take our eyes off the one who calls us. God interests us more than anything else in our lives. And that is, I believe, is Gospel indeed- good news! I wish you every blessing in your vocation. ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+

Sunday, February 25, 2024

Lent 2 B - February 25, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Francis Beckham

The Second Sunday in Lent B, February 25, 2024

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

If I were to ask by a show of hands how many of us want to be like Jesus, I’m sure I’d see as many arms raised as there are people in this chapel. Similarly, if I were to ask, “Who’s ready to proclaim the Good News? Feed the poor? Comfort the afflicted? Visit prisoners and captives?” there isn’t a doubt in my mind I’d be knocked to the floor by shouts of, “Ooh! Ooh! Me! I do!”

I’m sure we’d all say yes, and I’m sure we’d all really mean it. I can’t help, though, wondering if we’d respond quite so enthusiastically to Jesus’ invitation to proclaim the Reign of God if we really understood what we were signing up for. Certainly, we, like Peter, think that we do understand: Go, sell all we have and give it to the poor. Try not to place stumbling blocks before the Children of God. Turn the other cheek. Show mercy. And so forth.

Indeed, these are all things that we must do if we want to follow Jesus. But as the disciples – and, particularly, Peter – learn in today’s Gospel reading, there’s important work to be done even before we can begin performing the spiritual and corporal acts of mercy. And there’s a pretty high cost to discipleship, too. In fact, being a disciple requires a lot more than even dispossessing ourselves of all our earthly goods; it involves dispossession of our everything. Even for Jesus, spreading the Good News will eventually mean having to lay down his own life. In Mark’s gospel, this is the first time Jesus shares this piece of information with the disciples. And Peter, at least, is not thrilled about hearing it.

Nevertheless, danger and sacrifice are fundamental realities of the ministry of Jesus. As we know, he will suffer and die for it. So, before they can go any further, Jesus has to make sure Peter and the others understand that staying the course means they must be willing to make those very same sacrifices. Jesus must be completely clear on this point.

That’s because Jesus knows that, despite possessing intelligence and generally good intentions, we humans just don’t always get it. We’re understandably conditioned to react to danger like Peter does: sensibly. After all, Jesus – who had already been making trouble for the religious establishment – is announcing in front of members of the Sanhedrin, the council which exercised religious authority over the Jews, that he needs to be killed. To Peter, and probably to any of us, that would sound like inviting trouble – asking for it, basically. Frankly, it would have seemed less reasonable if Peter, as Jesus’ friend, hadn’t pulled him aside and told him to knock it off.

But instead of coming to his senses and saying to Peter, “Oh man, you’re right. I guess I got a little carried away back there. Hey, thanks for looking out for me, buddy,” Jesus turns around, looks at everyone else, and basically tells him to can it, while seemingly calling him Satan. Not exactly a tender moment between friends.

Why does Jesus react so strongly to Peter’s genuine expression of concern? When I react that way during those kinds of conversations, it’s because my ego doesn’t like having its fragility exposed and challenged. But with Jesus, it’s different. He knows that Peter and the others must adopt a new mindset, or else risk failure. In our reading from the Lectionary, Jesus tells them, “You are setting your minds not on divine things but on human things.” The New American Bible translation, however, treats it slightly differently. There, Jesus says, “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

I prefer that translation. To me, Jesus is telling his friends there’s another way to approach, value, and experience life, relationships, and God, and he’s inviting them to enter into that Way. This Way – which is the very Way of Jesus himself – involves fearlessly proclaiming the Love of God to all who hunger for it, by healing the wounds of injustice, banishing the burdens of shame and guilt, offering acceptance to those who have been excluded, and doing it all unconditionally, without regard to what human systems and institutions think, say, or do about it.

But to accomplish these things in the midst of an Imperial culture that values power over people – to fully realize God’s dream, as Presiding Bishop Curry so beautifully describes the mission and hope of Jesus – the disciples would first need to embrace a conversion of mind and attitude, accepting that the values and priorities of their inculturation must be un-learned and given up, even though it surely won’t be easy. “Whoever wishes to come after me,” Jesus cautions, “must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.”

What was true for Peter and the other disciples is no less true for us here, today. In our annual Lenten observance, we are invited to enter into the same conversion of heart and mind, casting aside those things that do not help us in living out and proclaiming the Love of God to those who most need it – including to ourselves.
Exactly how each of us chooses to embrace this opportunity depends largely on the current realities of our lives; Lenten practices don’t look the same for everyone, and we shouldn’t feel inadequate if our penance seems less heroic than someone else’s.

Mostly, though, it really is a matter of examining and adjusting our mindset. Here at the monastery, we are reminded and encouraged in this in several ways.

For example, toward the end of Vespers of most Thursdays during the year, the Magnificat, or Song or Canticle of Mary from Luke’s gospel, is opened and closed with the antiphon “O LORD, you have lifted up the lowly, and filled the hungry with good things,” a line adapted from within the Magnificat itself, giving praise for God’s care of the poor, oppressed, overlooked, and marginalized.

But during Lent, Thursday’s Magnificat antiphon strikes a markedly different tone: “Use the present opportunity to the full,” it warns us, “for these are evil days; try to understand what the will of the LORD is.”

And throughout the year, we hear in our House Chapter readings of the Rule of Saint Benedict, “Run while you have the light of life, that the darkness of death may not overtake you.”

These are urgent exhortations, designed to spur us into action, because there is such great need to proclaim the Reign of God in our world. But we can only do so by first making space for God’s dream in our own lives. And that’s the assurance Jesus is offering to Peter, the others, and to us: By changing from thinking as humans do, to thinking instead as God does, we will be able to face any peril, any challenge, even when – not if – the culture around us pushes back.

The ministry of Jesus remains as dangerous a business as ever. But we must never forget that, while it’s true “Whoever wishes to save their life will lose it,” Jesus nevertheless promises “Whoever loses their life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.”

So, here's to life in abundance, lived and freely shared with all, in the fullness of joy in Jesus, during this holy season of Lent, and always. Amen.

Sunday, February 18, 2024

Lent 1 B - February 18, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Ephrem Arcement

The First Sunday in Lent B, February 18, 2024

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“O Lord, make this Lenten season different from the other ones.
Let us find you again. Amen.” -Henri Nouwen

The story of the God of Israel and the story of the God of Jesus Christ are one and the same: they tell a love story. They both depict a God stubborn for love and jealous for exclusivity. This God doesn’t want just part of us. This God wants all of us. And not just all of me…but all of us all together. And not just all of us humans…but all of creation…alive, vibrant, and full of God’s glory.

So, if this basic premise about Christianity is true, Lent is all about love…learning how to let God love us more and learning to fall in love with God all over again. It’s not really about what we deprive ourselves of. We challenge ourselves and discipline ourselves for something greater…to awaken us to love.

The annual liturgical season of Lent comes, then, bearing a particular grace. It’s the grace of renewal that comes as we focus ourselves on the one thing necessary. By harnessing all our energies and stripping ourselves of all our excess, we get to the root of why we are who we are and open ourselves to experiencing a spiritual power that comes from such focus. We experience it as a grace that unifies our minds with our hearts and our hearts and minds with God’s and such integration causes our hearts and minds to expand and experience the love of God in ways we could never conjure up on our own.

Another truth, however, about our Judeo-Christian tradition, besides this central truth of love…is that we humans aren’t very good at it! Our hearts grow cold and our minds forget. Perhaps the sign of a mature person of faith is one whose faith burns longer, whose mind remembers more and whose heart is steadfast no matter what.

And this brings us to one of the central ideas of today’s lessons: baptism. Baptism, I’d like to suggest, is the central reality of getting us out of ourselves (our lukewarmness and infidelity) and into God (full of love and steadfast devotion).

I once had a professor who said that Christian spirituality is all about living out one’s baptism. This has stuck with me through the years, and I believe it to be true. But what is baptism?

Scripture uses the term baptism to refer to several different acts: it could be the baptism by fire or by water. It could be the baptism of John the Baptist or of one of the Apostles. It could be Jesus’ baptism which we hear about today or the baptism of the Holy Spirit we hear so much about in the Acts of the Apostles. Taken all together, we can say that baptism is a general way of conveying the radical shifting of our identities from the old to the new. The old was what was lukewarm and unfaithful. The new is what is ardent and steadfast. Fire burns and water fills. Fire makes one radiant and water makes one pure and both of these’s source is the Spirit…the super-abundant, self-effusive God of love.

But, if all this is true, why was Jesus baptized? Did he need to be cleansed and purified? No! And this reveals what I believe is central about baptism…it is not primarily about cleansing and purifying…these are preliminary for us who need it. Baptism is primarily about immersing and consuming…or, you could say, about making life full of God. This is what the story of Jesus’ baptism by John seeks to convey…Now is the time of fulfillment…or, to put it another way, now is the time of fullness! The good news that Jesus enters Galilee preaching is just this message about the fullness of life that is now possible. If we are baptized into Christ and don’t experience this fullness at least sometimes in our daily lives, we have tragically misunderstood what our baptism means and something has gone awfully wrong! And it will probably have something to do with not really leaving the old behind and dying in our baptism.

This message of fullness is foreshadowed in the Noahic covenant, the only covenant in the Bible that God makes, not just with human beings, but with all of creation. God’s reach is that far. It knows no limits and God’s promise to fill all creation, which is ultimately fulfilled in the Cosmic Christ of the New Testament, is grounded here in the early pages of Genesis, and the rainbow serves as a sacramental sign of God’s expansive inclusivity.

God’s expansive love is also corroborated in the passage from 1 Peter which mentions Christ, after his death, going to preach the gospel to the spirits in prison, who, in the days of Noah, did not obey. Eight people and a boat full of animals were not enough for God!

To live full of God, then…consciously aware we are right now immersed in divine life and being consumed in the flames of God’s love…this, I submit, should be our Lenten project.

How to live conscious of this fullness is set out for us in the initial sequence of events about Jesus recorded here in Mark’s Gospel. Upon his baptism, the Spirit descends upon him and the voice of the Father from heaven speaks, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” I call this Jesus’ confirmation. Full of God, confirmed as the Beloved, the Spirit drives Jesus into the desert to be tried. And it is through his trials in the desert that he experiences the continual grace of God’s empowering presence, symbolized in the angels who wait upon him. The fullness of God is now amplified through his forty days in the desert, and he is ready to bring this radiating light…the glory of God that fills him…to a people lost in darkness. This is the context in which he announces the Gospel for the first time, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”

Jesus, here, is not just preaching a theoretical idea about a place far away that we will be able to experience and enjoy after we die. That is not the gospel. He is demonstrating and then instructing us how to experience the fullness of God’s presence here and now. That is the gospel!

In order to know the fullness of God and to remain in that fullness…and even grow in it…in our baptism, we must really die to all that is not life-giving…we must empty ourselves. Then, like Jesus, we must receive the Spirit’s confirmation…the knowledge that we, too, are God’s beloved, and allow that love to fill us. To know that you are infinitely loved and precious in God’s sight bestows the power which frees you to be conditioned by nothing other than this love and to live fearlessly and boldly in the face of adversity. Then, we too, must be tested in the desert. The desert is the symbol of divestment…the continual dying and the stripping away of the illusions which so tenaciously cling to us and give false security and prevent us from a more profound experience of God’s grace. By the act of intentional vulnerability that going into the desert represents, we unlock our own life’s hidden potential…and the knowledge of our blessedness is ratified all the more.

But, perhaps, the greatest blessing of the desert is the way its aridity challenges our limited conceptions of God and grounds our faith in something more than a passing feeling or in a faith based on something more than what we can get from God. God isn’t so much what we feel in the realm of our shifting emotions or only present when we get what we want. In the desert, we discover that God is what we know in the core of our being and is often better encountered when we don’t get what we want! And this deepening of faith allows us to root our lives in a dimension within ourselves where our consciousness of God is undetermined by circumstance. We hit the ground of our being where God is, where we are…come what may!

No one speaks more profoundly of the spiritual fecundity of the desert than the sixteenth century Carmelite mystic, St. John of the Cross. In his words, “Love consists not in feeling great things but in having great detachment and in suffering for the Beloved. The soul that is attached to anything, however much good there may be in it, will not arrive at the liberty of Divine union. For whether it be a strong wire rope or a slender and delicate thread that holds the bird, it matters not, if it really holds it fast; for until the cord be broken, the bird cannot fly.” This may sound severe but certainly no more severe than the cross which Christ bore which gave birth to a resurrected existence…a cross we, his disciples, are all also commanded to bear if, we too, want to live the fullness of resurrected life that Christ offers us. Fullness is impossible without emptiness.

Convinced of this, let us together boldly enter into the desert of this Lenten season being convinced of the good news: that in our baptism God has made all things new and calls us “the beloved” bestowing on us a life abounding in love…and that the trials of life are producing in us a far greater weight of glory than for which we could ever hope. Now is the time of fullness. Become empty that you may become full.

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Ash Wednesday - February 14, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert James Magliula

Ash Wednesday, February 14, 2024

For the past month, the last line of Mary Oliver’s poem, “The Summer Day” has taken up residence in my mind. She wrote: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Exploring this question is a good practice for today and for the whole of Lent. Lent can get overly focused on our past, the life we have already lived. But what if Lent is really about the life yet to be lived? What if we gave as much attention to where we are going as we do to where we have been?

What does it mean to live our one wild and precious life? What are the things that domesticate and devalue our life? How do we recognize and recover what is of ultimate value and importance? Maybe our greatest sins are the ones in which we tame and impoverish our lives and the lives of others.

When I describe life as wild, I’m talking about being open to what we can neither control nor predict, being able to receive whatever comes to us. I’m talking about not letting the past define or domesticate us, not letting the present moment cage us but rather exposing ourselves to the risk of an unknown future, the possibility of something new. We often let fear, self-doubt, guilt, regrets, disappointments, or wounds confine and tame our life. Every time we try to control life, guarantee outcomes, or live within the boundaries of what is safe and predictable, we limit our life. We live less than who we are and want to be. Consider what you need to do or give up, to reclaim your wild life? What cages imprison you?

What makes our life precious is not what we have, or how much we have. It’s not dependent on how others see us. The preciousness of life is found in its fragility and mortality. Life is short and uncertain, and we only have one. There are no guarantees. The future is unforeseeable. Rather than this negating the value and beauty of life; it intensifies it. Everything and everyone matters. Nothing and no one are to be taken for granted. Not a minute is to be wasted. This intensification of life gets revealed in the things we are most passionate about; in the people we love, in the things that give us meaning, offer us hope, and give us courage. The preciousness of life underlies the truth that we are of infinite value. Maybe this Lent we wrestle with how to divest ourselves of everything that diminishes our value and keeps us from remembering and reclaiming our treasures.

“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Those words are not a threat of death or a judgment that we are bad or worthless. To hear those words and remember our mortality is the first step in healing the ways our lives become distorted. Whether it’s fear, arrogance, pride, delusion, denial, or pain, we forget that we are dust. Having forgotten our own mortality, we have no need for the immortality of God, offered us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. When we forget our mortality, our human nature, we begin practicing our piety, before others; hoping to be seen and praised. We trade the secret rewards of the Father for the public opinions of others. The question behind today’s ashes is not whether we will die, but how we want to live from this day forward.

We live in the tension between the uncertainty of life and the certainty of death. The reminders of our mortality and the fragility of life all are around us. We work hard at denying, ignoring, and forgetting those twin realities. We’re reminded of it by aging and illness. Accidents, mass shootings, wars, hurricanes, and floods remind us of how easily and quickly life can change. Our own cemetery and columbarium stand as monuments to our mortality.

Our lives and treasures exist in the midst of the uncertainty of life and the certainty of death. As much as we might want to escape those two realities, we cannot. We mark ourselves with the ashes of mortality not to make us cynical and hopeless, but to return us to our self and proclaim that everything matters, freeing us to live a different way, so that we can remember and reclaim our treasures, the things in our lives that are of ultimate importance and value.

It’s easy to forget our treasures, to take them for granted, or just set them aside, making us forgetful of what really matters. As we reclaim them we’re more whole, not just for ourselves but so we can offer our treasure back to God and others. They are the treasures that “neither moth nor rust consumes” and “thieves do not break in and steal.” For where our treasure is, there will our heart be also. (Matt. 6:21). +Amen.