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

Click here for an audio of the sermon

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

Click here for an audio of the sermon

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

Click here for an audio of the sermon

 

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.

The Exaltation of the Holy Cross, September 13, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Leo Sevensky, OHC

The Exaltation of the Holy Cross, September 13, 2026

• Isaiah 45:21-25
• Galatians 6:14-18
• John 12:31-36a

Click here for an audio of the sermon

We venerate your cross, O Christ, and praise and glorify your holy resurrection for by virtue of that cross, joy has come into the world.  Amen.

Although some of my brothers find it difficult to believe, when I was an adolescent in the early 1960s, I was a member of the Boy Scouts of America, faithfully attending weekly meetings, working on my merit badges, and going on various outings and camping trips. And though I've forgotten a lot of details, I've never forgotten either the Scout Oath or the Scout Law.  In case you're not familiar with the Scout Law, let me recite it:

“A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.”

I was reminded of this when, back in 2025, our chapter spent some days generating a list of qualities or attributes that we were looking for in a Superior. It had a lot of resonances with the Scout Law. I won't burden you with the whole of it, but here are some of the attributes we named:

Clear, consistent, calm, trustworthy, Gospel-grounded, person of prayer and of service, seeker of the Face of God, able to disagree and remain in relationship, focused, integrated, intentional, inclusive, open to the Spirit  

Some of these qualities or attributes come directly from the Rule of St. Benedict, others from the Rule of the Order of the Holy Cross. Still others reflect current appraisals of what seems necessary for the right functioning and mission of our community in this season of our corporate life.  

Many of these same qualities and competencies appear in lists that parishes and churches produce when they are looking for a new pastor or rector or minister.  And they always make me laugh.  They seem to want Jesus…though even he himself might not tick off all the boxes.  It all seems a bit crazy and unrealistic. But is it?

The Rule of Benedict is not shy about claiming that the abbot is a leader who takes the place of Christ.  Right at the beginning of the Rule, Benedict states boldly: “He [the abbot] is believed to hold the place of Christ in the monastery….” (RB 2:2) And Rule of our Founder is only slightly more circumspect, echoing Benedict when he says that the Superior: “… must be the representative of Jesus Christ, whose likeness in each of its members it is the purpose of the community to create.” (Rule of OHC, Chapter XXXI).  

The Superior of the Order of the Holy Cross needs to be an able administrator. But that’s only a part of the job, perhaps especially at this point in our institutional and wider cultural history.  Yes, we always need good administration.  But we need something more as well…something spiritual, if you will, in addition to what has been traditionally termed ‘temporalities.  

This dialog or conversation surrounding leadership is not new for us in the Order of the Holy Cross.  Back in 2015 we held a series of discussions around what leadership might look like and work well, at least in this monastery.  Br. Scott shared with us a conversation he had with Abbot Notker Wolf, Abbot Primate of the Benedictine Confederation, while in Rome.  I quote:

“One of the things that struck me in talking with Abbot Notker… was his concern that we make too little distinction between administrative leadership and spiritual leadership within Holy Cross. The clarity he sees in the Rule is that the Abbot is a spiritual leader, a chief pastor if you will. The prior is an administrator, more or less a chief operating officer… And the cellarer—a title we don't use but the bursar can reasonably be construed in this position—is primarily concerned with the worldly assets of the monastery, more or less the chief financial officer. Abbot Notker was very energetic around the differentiation between administrative and spiritual leadership. He was pretty adamant that one person could not be in both positions.”

Perhaps Abbott Notker was being a bit rigid here, but the truth is that this Order has come to a place where we not only need but also want and desire a spiritual leader, which is to say, a teacher, a preacher, a pastor, a model/example, a brother…and perhaps most of all, a man of prayer.   

We chose Br. Ephrem to serve as our Superior because we recognize in him one who has already exhibited many of these attributes.  We recognize too that we are a community that needs to be invited, persuaded, nudged—and perhaps on rare occasions even dragged—into newer or deeper expressions of Christian witness rooted in sixteen centuries of monastic living.  

The Order of the Holy Cross has changed in the past almost 150 years, and that change has been life giving for us. I think of the move from New York City to rural Maryland in 1892 and then the move to the banks of the Hudson and the establishment of schools and missions and ministries and works. And I think of the turbulent 1960’s and 1970’s—ferment and change were everywhere, including in the church and monasteries and other examples of vowed or consecrated life.  

We are now, I believe, far enough away from those years to see where we have come from and perhaps where we are going. The pivotal point for us remains the 1984 decision to adopt the Rule of St. Benedict as one of our two foundational documents. But truthfully, we were only partly prepared to begin our growth into a more nuanced communal identity rooted in this ancient spiritual lineage.  

Over forty years have passed since then.  And we—the Order of the Holy Cross—are not who we were back in those days of great experimentation and chaotic change.  Then we were a society of ten or so quasi-independent monasteries and priories.  Today we are two, along with a handful of brothers living independently.  And I believe it is precisely this contraction which allows us to see what it might mean to be vowed Benedictine men living into the 21st century.  A vison is emerging of who we are…smaller to be sure, but also perhaps more flexible and more solidly grounded in an OHC/Benedictine ethos.

In a brilliant article titled “The Abbot as Leader” Benedictine scholar Terence Kardong, OSB, writes about two controlling images that shape the role of an abbot.  The first has to do with The Journey.  Kardong stresses that Benedict in his Rule insists that monastic life is a dynamic process. It may be stable, but it is never static. We are going somewhere and, hopefully we are going there together.  In some sense, the abbot is a Pilgrimage Leader: “The art of Benedictine leadership is to help all to stay with the company and eventually arrive as the destination.” (p. 61)

The second image that shapes the abbot’s work is The Dream, that is the vison of a common or shared goal which is internalized by a community, and which moves us toward our common destination, our telos, our end.  Kardong insists that monks and monasteries must have a dream, a goal, or they are jeopardy.  And the abbot’s task or role is to serve as the steward or custodian of that dream/vision/goal.  He draws it out of us and articulates it and reminds us repeatedly of why we are in this monastery through his teaching, preaching, counseling, and example.   

Ephrem, we believe that you are now the one to lead us along this journey with this vision firmly held before us…the vision of the RB as well as that of our Father Founder who admonishes us to hold the Cross firmly before the eyes of others even as we ourselves embrace it in our monastic profession.  

You may be our last Superior, Ephrem, but you may also be our first Abbot…even if the title never changes.  May you be an able administrator.  But by all means—all means—be as well our spiritual leader, pastor, guide, teacher, friend.  

Reflect regularly on that list of characteristics or attributes generated by us in 2025…our version of the Scout Law…trustworthy, loyal, helpful…  And when the going gets rough…as it inevitably will…and when this list seems too daunting, too impossible, then take time to step back and remember an even simpler motto, that of the Cub Scouts of America, a program designed for children aged 5 - 10. Their motto says simply: “Do your best”.  The Lord asks nothing more of you or indeed of any of us. Do your best.  And trust that the Lord, who has begun a good thing in you and in us will bring it to perfection in God’s time and in God’s way.  

"And now, to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, be ascribed all might, majesty, dominion, and power, both now and forevermore. Amen." 

The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 18 A, September 6, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Randy Greve

The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, September 6, 2026

Exodus 12:1-14

Romans 13:8-14

Matthew 18:15-20

Click here for an audio of the sermon

Our gospel is, on one level, a process for addressing faults and conflicts within the community of believers.  It is so different a way of making amends from much of our public discourse (which does not seem to care much for amends) as to seem laughably unrealistic and naive.  If we take this reading seriously, then we can ask, what does this kind of relating mean?  Where does it come from and what informs such behavior?  What kind of people are we called to be in order to actualize these practices?   So, I endeavor to reflect on just the first act: If another member of the church sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If the member listens to you, you have regained that one.
Life gathered in the name of Christ is life in truth, in reality.  Set in the midst of all manner of lies and illusions, deceit and fantasy, we are to be truth-bearers so that we can be practitioners of reality, so that truth becomes who we are.  Spiritual life is not an escape into some alternate reality; it is the entering into the essence of truth which forms all of life.  We are vowed in such a way that avoidance, excuses, rationalizations, and any other form of discernment that is not true and real find no home in us.  Our baptismal liturgy describes this identity as both renouncing the sources and systems of evil and injustice in us and around us and the affirmation of the truth of Christ’s saving power for us and through us as a body.  We practice our identities in such a way that we face what is real rather than run, name what is happening rather than deny.  
What our Lord proscribes here is the practice of our human experience within conscious community.  This way subverts the impulses of punishment and vengeance and orients power as that commitment to the good which expresses itself as for and alongside others, never over or against others.  It is actively nonviolent.  It describes what is the case about us: sometimes I perceive some aspect of the truth that you do not.  Sometimes you are aware of a reality to which I am blind.  So, we need community as the realm in which we offer the gift of our insight and receive the feedback of others.
As our desire turns into deeper acts of love and trust, we encounter our inner resistances.  We all have baggage around sin, forgiveness, and reconciliation.  We have been hurt and we have caused hurt.  Pointing out someone’s fault may hurt their feelings, or they may attack me, our relationship may be harmed.  I don’t want to be judgmental.  It’s not a big deal.  I may also discover beliefs toward my own sin: it’s easier to hide than confess, if the community knew what I had done, they would reject me.  If I am honest, some may look down on me.  These beliefs inhibit common life.  Facing truth liberates us from the besetting distortions that pollute relationships.  Hiding and avoiding might feel safe, but they are flimsy substitutes for the kinds of flourishing relationships we long for.  We must go through the resistance to experience the renewal on the other side.  Living in a community requires the willingness and capacity to live and speak truth for the sake of the health of the whole body, sometimes evoking out of us an honest vulnerability.  My discomfort bows to the greater needs of community harmony.  
This counsel is the liturgy of mercy made visible and ordinary.  The sinner is invited to act from the belief that their sin is unavoidable and real, but not permanent.  Forgiveness really does wipe the slate clean because the community believes and practices that beginning again.  It is dangerous to lead an unconfronted life.  The naming of our errant ways is a gift of grace which we can receive as such.  The truth-teller is invited to act from the belief that although real harm has been done, it can be healed, trust can be restored, and the sword of vengeance must be laid down.  A healthy community is made up of people willing to face their truth and name the truth of others in service of the good of our souls and the integrity of life together.
We are called to be ourselves without performance or pretense, which includes gifts and wounds.  Assemblies of the guarded and defended, where secrets are well-hidden and bitterness carefully concealed under a mask of mere polite friendliness is not the new creation we are made to be.  
Communities caught in the web of defending and rationalizing, blaming and avoiding will expend all their energy on preserving the illusion of independence because the fear of being truly seen and known is not safe or welcome.  Such places are a kind of self-created hell of refusing to be fully human.
What would it be like to live where every member of a community can be seen and known, and can participate in the salvation drama of falling short and beginning again without partiality and with sincere absolution?  The Lord asks us to do something that may sound strange; normalize the inevitability of sin and the beauty of conscious forgiveness and reconciliation.  Faults and failure are not threats to an integrated community, not signs to withdraw and hide - they are opportunities for vulnerable trust in the reality of being imperfect image-bearers.  Lead us into all truth, Lord Christ, and help us love one another as you love us. Amen.

The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 12, July 26, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Leo Sevensky, OHC

The Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, July 26, 2026

1 Kings 3:5-12

Romans 8:26-39

Matthew 13:31-33,44-52

Click here for an audio of the sermon

Last Sunday, Brother Ephrem spoke to us about the hero’s journey, that archetypal tale which becomes a pattern for human life. He used this to illustrate the story of Jacob as well as that of Odysseus, a story of leaving home, having adventures, facing challenges, and making one’s way back, chastened and—let’s hope--a little more mature and wiser.  And we understand that this is not peculiar to Jacob or Odysseus but touches each of us. This hero myth or story is one of many models or genres that speak more generally to our human condition. There is, for example, the story of the descent into the underworld or the search for a hidden treasure or the story of a flood such as we find in the Gilgamesh Epic or that of Noah and the ark, a story of universal destruction and restoration.   

Today’s Scripture readings present us with yet more stories or symbolic lessons, messages of faith and pathways to wisdom.  There are five—count them—parables of the Kingdom in today’s brief Gospel passage.  And one folk tale…that of Solomon and his dream.  In any event, it strikes me as a folk tale.

Folk tales or, in their more condensed form, proverbs seem designed not to offer us the shape of the whole pattern of our lives but rather focus on one or two practical pieces of advice for successful living.  And every culture has them, shared with children, often quite humorous, and sometimes even bawdy.  We all know them and have been exposed to them in collections such as Grimm’s fairy tales. They are a primary tool of socialization in any society or culture.

One folktale that appears in many shapes is the tale of The Three Wishes.  And like any good folk tale it can be endlessly elaborated on though it is easily summarized. In its classic form—and with a nod to Wikipedia—it tells the story of a poor woodcutter and his wife who are struggling to make ends meet. One day the woodcutter finds the perfect tree to harvest, and just as he begins to do it a fairy or wood nymph appears and begs him not to chop down her home. In returns, she promises to grant him three wishes and he agrees. The woodcutter returns home, and as he talks with his wife about what happened, he realizes he's very hungry and without thinking he wishes for a sausage to eat. And suddenly a hot sausage appears at the table. His wife, furious that he's wasted a wish, speaks to him in anger.  And he responds in kind: “I wish this sausage was stuffed up your nose.” And as if by magic, there it is. The couple now need to decide what to do with their one remaining wish. They could be rich, they could be powerful, they could be fruitful, but alas, the sausage would still be hanging from the wife's nose. So, they decide to use their third and final wish to remove the sausage from her face.

What's the moral of the story? What do we learn from it? Maybe we learn to take our time, to not be hasty, to not act out of unexamined desires or uncontrolled emotions.  Maybe we learn that greed is not the way to go forward in life. Or maybe we learn that who we are or what we have right now is enough.

It seems to me that the story of Solomon that we hear in our first reading has something of the character of a folktale with its own moral. God appears to Solomon in a dream and says, “Ask what I should give you.” And though he is given one, not three, wishes he is faced with the difficult question of what he should ask for, what he desires. Solomon, of course, the paradigm of the wise ruler, does not ask for long life or riches or the life of his enemies but rather for, and I quote, “understanding to discern what is right.”  But my hunch is that the other things surely went through his mind. Why not ask for long life? Why not ask for riches? Why not ask for the life of his enemies? But what Solomon does request is in fact quite bigger.  In effect, he is asking for the skill to live a life which is at once meaningful and productive. And as we hear from the reading, God grants him the other things which he set aside for the sake of this larger purpose, namely that of being a wise ruler for his people. Indeed, God promises that he shall be the wisest of all mortals ever!

If this is a folktale, is there a moral? What lesson can we learn? It’s easy to draw the wrong conclusion from these stories. Perhaps you have heard it said: be careful what you wish for or be careful what you ask for or even--and deeply mistaken--be careful what you pray for.  

On the contrary, I’d like to suggest that it is well worth thinking about what it is we want or desire. It is worth naming. It is even worth praying for. Because in the very process of wanting or desiring and in examining and engaging and not censoring those desires or longings they may be refined and reshaped in ways that serve both our own true good and God's greater glory. Befriending our desires, as one writer puts it, or heeding our deepest longings and giving them space to be transformed and sharpened or perhaps even sublimated or abandoned, is a profound spiritual practice and a necessary one. Saint Augustine of Hippo who lived in the late 4th and early 5th centuries was the great saint of desire and delight and love. He knew firsthand the depths of human desires and admittedly did not always navigate them well. But he came to recognize that the only adequate object or goal of our desires is God. He is famous for teaching: “Our hearts are restless, oh God, until they rest in you.”

This saying sometimes frightens people. Does loving God with all our heart mean we can have no other loves? No. Rather Augustine talks about the right ordering of loves.  As he says: “…everybody loves but the question is, what is the object of their love.”   His advice is to examine our loves—all our loves, all our longings, all our desires—and look for what they are honestly moving deep, deep within us before the face of God.

Augustine continues: “So, am I telling you to give up loving? Not at all! If you love nothing you will become lazy dead lifeless creatures. Love, by all means; but take care what it is you love.”

This is good advice for the 5th century and for any century, especially when we realize that what we are being invited to is not the suppression of our desires but the deepening of our desires, getting more and not less in touch with them, naming them, focusing on them and even fanning them.  And in this Saint Paul tells us, the spirit helps us with sighs and groans too deep for words. It is this wordless prayer, this interior groaning, which is arena of the deepening and cherishing, the purifying and right ordering of our desires. Cherishing our deepest desires, we enter into relationship with them, and they become educated, reformed, expanded, transfigured, more adequate, all embracing and simpler.

I believe this happened with Solomon and maybe with the woodsman and his wife and their sausage.  Because this is the mystery of sanctification. We come to know ourselves.  And we come to know God, to love what God loves. We come to desire what God commands, we come to long for what God envisions and to love what God intends. And in that is our happiness, that is delight, that is freedom and that is becoming who we are.

And the moral, the lesson of this fairy tale? Don't be too worried about what you wish for or what you desire or what you ask for or long for on the inside, or what you pray for. Your very open, honest, prayerful engagement with these desires allows them to be transmuted by God’s love into something beautiful… something beautiful for you and me and something beautiful for God. 

And by the way, what do you want God to give you today?

The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 11, July 19, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York

Br. Ephrem Arcement, OHC

The Eighth Sunday after Pentecost, July 19, 2026

Genesis 28:10-19a
Romans 8:12-25
Matthew 13:24-30,36-43

Click here for an audio of the sermon

In his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the great mythologist Joseph Campbell describes the narrative pattern of the hero myth as follows:

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are encountered there, and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.

Campbell chronicles this narrative process of the hero myth through seventeen chronological stages, each infusing the protagonist with new experiences that gradually transforms his or her character into its destined ideal: a hero who has undergone adventure, transformation, and return to become the boon, or a blessing, to those yet to undergo the journey themselves.  The “thousand faces” of the hero’s journey refers to the multiple iterations that this universal, mythic journey manifests.  Underneath, though, for Campbell, there is only one transformative monomyth of adventure, transformation, and return.

This weekend one of the most paradigmatic of these hero journeys hits the big screen in the highly anticipated adaptation of The Odyssey by the great filmmaker Christopher Nolan.  The Bible, too, is full of these hero journeys beginning with Abram who is transformed into Abraham and his grandson, who we hear about today, Jacob who will be transformed into Israel. 

Up to this point in the story, Jacob, whose name means “supplanter,” has usurped his twin brother, Esau, at every turn.  Even at his mother’s bidding, Jacob will come to assume and own his identity as a trickster all to get what was not rightfully his, his father’s blessing.  Even though a twin, he is not the first-born twin.  He is the second…and his supplanting nature is memorably depicted in the story even in his birth with his tiny hand firmly fixed on his brother Esau’s equally tiny ankle.  Ever-grasping Jacob refuses to stand in the shadow of his brother and rightful inheritor of the blessing of the father and the promise of God.  So, all of his life, he grasps and strives and connives to supplant his brother to be somebody his society and religion said he could not be.  And yet, the irony at the heart of the story is that all along Yahweh, his god, had supplanted custom and already chosen him to be the son of blessing.  But to realize this, Jacob has to go on a hero’s journey of adventure, transformation, and return.

The story today picks up with Jacob on the run, living in fear of his brother’s retribution.  It’s here in the moment of his own, personal existential crisis that he meets his match.  With a stone for his head, he lies down and dreams of a ladder connecting heaven to earth with God’s messengers, angels, ascending and descending on it.  But the message does not come from these messengers but directly from God standing right beside him.  God’s message is a message not of castigation or reproach but one of assurance and promise.  Jacob learns that his god is with him to fulfill the promise of Abraham through him, just as he so desperately desired.  As he rouses himself, his eyes are awakened to new dimensions and exclamation says, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!  How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”  For us, today, the journey ends here…but not for Jacob.  His transformation is only beginning and won’t be complete before having to wrestle with this god and be perpetually wounded in the fight.  Jacob will indeed be the vessel through whom the blessing of God flows, but it’s through a wounded, limping, humbled vessel…one who has gone through the fire and whose ego-ambition has been supplanted by God.  

But this is a lesson for another sermon in the weeks ahead, today the focus is on a very particular stage of this hero’s journey.  The truth discovered at this stage is a truth that appears again and again in the journey of spiritual maturation…it is the moment of awakening.  Ironically this happens while Jacob is asleep.  And maybe there’s a lesson in this irony…it’s only when we let go of control in our wakened life that the divine in our subconscious minds can make itself known.  And what is the revelation that here awakens Jacob?  It is the fact that his God, Yahweh, the God of the promise, is with him in this deserted place with only a stone for a pillow.  It’s the insight that it’s in the ordinary where the extraordinary is discovered and that he is now in God’s house (the literal meaning of Bethel) …that it’s when you’re worn down by running away from the thing you fear most and have to just stop over sheer exhaustion that you encounter the awesomeness of God and the gate of heaven.  

Jacob’s journey of awakening and discovery reminds me of another hero’s journey, the journey of Thomas Merton who chronicles a very similar experience.  After living about sixteen years as a Trappist monk in rural Kentucky, Merton, suffering from chronic back pain, goes to downtown Louisville to see a doctor.  While walking on a busy street corner he is suddenly stunned by what he sees.  He describes it as follows:

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness….  And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun…. Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed…. I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.

“How awesome is this place!  This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”  Sound familiar?  

I have often wondered if anybody else on that busy day on Fourth and Walnut saw what Merton saw.  Probably not!  But why did he see it?  Was it a moment of total sovereign revelation?  I don’t think so.  Merton had spent sixteen years giving himself over to the monastic way of life and learning how to open himself up and listen deeply with the ear of his heart.  His spiritual senses were attuning themselves to the presence of God everywhere.  He was, in other words, ripe for something like this to happen.  And it did!  “The gate of heaven is everywhere” is Merton’s great insight…and he challenges us to awaken our spiritual senses to see it, hear it, taste it, touch it, and smell it in the everyday, ordinary moments of our seemingly mundane lives.  

Pope Francis used to repeatedly say that God is a God of surprises and that we never know when God is going to surprise us.  We, therefore, need to develop what he called “a contemplative gaze” so that we don’t miss those divine surprises.

So, at the heart of our journey in our life with God is found one of life’s greatest lessons.  With Jacob we must close our eyes to the world around us and “fall asleep,” as it were, to the phenomenal world and awaken to the numinous depths within.  It is there that the awesome presence of God awaits us.  We don’t have to wait until Sunday morning or a moment of crisis to encounter this presence.  It abides with us!  And with Merton we give ourselves to lives of prayer and deep listening, ever sensitizing ourselves to the “deep calling unto deep,” so that with Pope Francis we can awaken from our slumber and return to our awakened state each morning ready for the adventure in God that awaits us.  

One further lesson in the Jacob story…this process of awakening to the vision of God in the hero’s journey is not easy and comes at a price.  It’s on a very hard, uncomfortable stone that you will have to sometimes lay your head.  It’s not what we would have chosen, and it is often what we wrestle with God to accept…but it is this very stone which becomes the catalyst of awakening and is transformed into a monument to God.  

The lesson Jesus teaches us today is that in this process of transformation there are weeds encroaching on us our whole lives.  Patient endurance, putting up with the weaknesses of body and behavior, as our Holy Father Benedict memorably put it, is not just a necessary burden, it is the very virtue transforming us into someone who will one day shine like the sun.  For Jesus, and for those in him, the good news is that the adventure we’re on is one much greater than any hero’s journey…and the transformation and boon of blessing far exceeds anything previously imagined.  We’re on a journey not just of adventure, transformation, and return…we’re on a journey of adventure, transformation, and transcendence into a whole new mode of being…what he called eternal life…and that this eternal life isn’t in some far away kingdom reserved for us when we die…but in the simple, but pregnant, moments of our everyday lives.  Let anyone with ears listen!  And let anyone with eyes see…we’re all shining like the sun!