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

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Ephrem Arcement, OHC

The Second Sunday after Pentecost, June 7, 2026

Genesis 12:1-9

Romans 4:13-25

Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Click here for an audio of the sermon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My beloved brothers…

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

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

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

The Feast of Corpus Christi, June 4, 2026

The Rev. Matthew Wright

The Feast of Corpus Christi

Holy Cross Monastery, June 4, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

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

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

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

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

Click here for an audio of the sermon

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

The Day of Pentecost, May 24, 2026

 Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Leo Sevensky, OHC

The Day of Pentecost, May 24, 2026

• Acts 2:1-21
• 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13
• John 20:19-23

Click here for an audio of the sermon

The spirit of the Lord has filled the whole world, alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.

The Book of Common Prayer tells us that there are seven principal feasts observed in our church. Traditionally and by common consensus Easter, the feast of the Resurrection of our Lord, is the principal festival of the church year—the feast of feasts, if you will—but next in dignity is today's feast, that of Pentecost. It is the day that closes out the long Easter cycle that we began more than ninety days ago on Ash Wednesday. And it's a great feast…isn't it? Well, let’s be honest: for most of us, it's not.

A recent article in the [UK] Church Times was titled: “In the Parish: why is Pentecost undervalued?”  The author, Sally Welch, begins by saying that Pentecost as a festival made very little impact on her as a child. Then fast forwarding to young parenthood, she notes: 

…I was startled one Sunday by the appearance of jumpers and scarves of vivid scarlet making a strange contrast to the duns and heathers of the rest of the church going outfits. “It’s Pentecost!” crowed an over-enthusiastic curate. “We celebrate by wearing red!”  This was my first introduction—a congregation-wide wardrobe malfunction—to one of the major feast days of the Christian Church. 

I think we've all had such experiences, some rather more unfortunate than the wardrobe malfunction that Ms. Welch refers to. I've seen red streamers, felt banners with multicolored butterflies or silver doves, sheet cakes celebrating the birthday of the church, very large puppets, birds—preferably white—set free though usually not venturing very far, the gospel proclaimed in assorted languages, and various other liturgical actions, all well-intentioned perhaps but faintly embarrassing, at least to me.  My favorite story is from my parish in Harrisburg PA where one year the children were all given helium-filled red balloons. Inevitably several escaped and got tangled in the overhead fans where they remained dangling throughout the hot summer and into autumn, limp and spent and altogether a rather sad memorial of a distant feast.

Why is it so hard to celebrate Pentecost in a way that engages us at a deep level? Partly of course it has to do with the very subject matter, which in this case is the very figure of the Holy Spirit. What do we make of this Holy Spirit? Who is this Spirit and what is its nature and its job description and how does it fit into the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity? Happily, next Sunday is Trinity Sunday, and I'm confident that our preacher will unfold this mystery for us once and for all. But today we are asked or invited or forced to reflect on this a bit...perhaps in anticipation of next Sunday’s great reveal. 

One of the reasons it is so hard for us to wrap our hearts and minds around this feast is that there is not just one Scriptural story pointing to the outpouring of the Spirit, however we might understand her, but several. We are all familiar of course with the account from the Book of Acts which takes pride of place. And what a story it is. Ten days ago, we celebrated the Ascension where, as Jesus departs from his friends he tells them to wait for the promised gift of the Spirit. And they wait for ten days praying together and likely getting a little antsy. And suddenly the Spirit is poured out upon them--tongues of fire resting on their heads, people speaking in languages that were understood by others without benefit of Google Translate, new energy, new direction, renewed purpose and a novel way of being in the world, a way that would become known as Christian. It's all very exciting, even if it doesn't make you want to wave a red streamer.

But there is another story, one of several, which also speaks of the outpouring of this mysterious Spirit.  We heard this morning the Evangelist John offer us a rather different account. In his version, there's no waiting fifty days.  It's Easter day in the early evening and the disciples are gathered in Jerusalem in fear and confusion, with locked doors and locked hearts when suddenly Jesus is there with them. In a model of succinctness but with marvelous energy, Jesus twice greets his disciples with the word “Peace.”  He shows them his wounded hands and side as if to confirm his identity. And he breathes on them.  (I think most of you are aware that in both Hebrew and Greek, the word for breath is the same as the word for spirit, so there’s a lot at play here.) And then Jesus doesn’t simply invite them, but commands them: “Receive the Holy Spirit.”  And he sends them out to be agents of forgiveness and reconciliation in an unforgiving and alienated and alienating world.

These two stories are quite different, but they are not contradictory. In some ways they complement each other deeply. And which are we celebrating today…God breathing God’s spirit again into the clay that is Adam and you and me?  God overthrowing the linguistic confusion and pride of the Tower of Babel? I hope both, and perhaps many others as well.  We can have it both ways. Yet the question remains: who is this Spirit of which both stories speak?

Consider for a minute the possibility of looking at the wind or at breath. In a sense we can never do that except perhaps with very sophisticated scientific instruments or under certain unusual circumstances. In everyday life we don't look directly at wind or breath. At best what we look at are the effects of the wind and breath. We notice the fluttering of leaves on a tree or waves moving over grasslands or clouds scudding across the skies.  Perhaps we feel a cooling caress on our cheeks or hear a fierce howling.  Sometimes it’s the destructive effect of forceful winds uprooting trees or driving wildfires.  Or the mysterious scent of distant flowers or a decaying carcass or whatever. It's the wind, the air, the breath that brings us these. But it is not given for us to see the wind. We know it by its effects. I believe it is the same with the Holy Spirit.  As Jesus says in another context: “You will know them by their fruits.”

The spirit of God, the spirit of Jesus, that which/whom we call the Holy Spirit can't be apprehended directly, but we can see it and experience its effects. We see it in creative work around us. We see it in surprising reconciliation between and within people. We come to know it in a thousand little acts of love which punctuate world and our lives. And we celebrate it in the experience of human solidarity. St. Paul in that wonderful passage from his Letter to the Galatians offers a list of the fruits of the Spirit, extensive but by no means exhaustive:  love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.  Paul adds: “Against such things there is no law.”  No indeed.  See these and while we are not directly seeing the Spirit, we are seeing the Spirit’s footprints. Become these, and we become Spirit bearers whatever our faith or family or lack thereof. 

We can’t, I’m afraid, define the Spirit or reduce Spirit to a concept or a category.  But we can rest assured that whenever and wherever God’s spirit is loosed upon the world, if these signs are present, there is God.  And we can be equally certain that God’s spirit does not act by anger, hatred, ignorance, rudeness, envy, exploitation, indignity or a multitude of other sad and destructive attitudes, habits or works which oppose and frustrate the Spirit of the living God.

On Pentecost, I often think of my experience as a child growing up in a Polish religious tradition. And among Poles, as among almost all the Slavic peoples, Pentecost is not much about red vestments. In fact, in Polish the name of the feast is Nieziela Zielone, that is to say, Green Sunday. And on that morning—terribly ecologically unsound but what did we know back then? —whole birch trees were cut down and set up at the doors of the church and around the altar and the pulpit. There was no mistaking it:  Pentecost was and is above all else a feast of life, a feast of new creation, a festival of new birth. Yes, this Slavic custom likely points back to a pre-Christian agricultural festival.  So, I might add, do the Jewish festivals of Passover and Shavous, the latter otherwise known as Pentecost among Greek-speaking Jews. It is a folk custom that speaks with an insight that begs to be emphasized. And that is that the Spirit of God, however we understand Spirit, is all about life, abundant life, fullness of life. And that God is on the side of life always: yesterday, today and forever.

Some of you may remember our late brother Roy Parker whose calligraphy was so beautifully done and so popular, and none more so than his simple work that quotes Irenaeus of Lyon, a second-century Bishop. It says simply: “The glory of God is the human person fully alive.” That, my friends, is Pentecost today and tomorrow. 

But remember there is a second line to this epigram from Bishop Irenaeus which is equally important: “…and that life consists in beholding God.”

May we each today catch some glimpse of God or God’s footprints, in the power and agency of the life-giving Spirit.  

And now, friends, perhaps it is time to pick up those red streamers and party.  Amen.

The Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 17, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Ephrem Arcement, OHC

The Seventh Sunday of Easter, May 17, 2026

• Acts 1:6-14
• 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11
• John 17:1-11

 Click here for an audio of the sermon

Religion can be a very dangerous thing. We have used it to say all kinds of things about God, about ourselves, and about each other, often with frightening certitude, that entrap us in belief systems that perpetuate ideology over humanity, blind assertion over wisdom, and security over generosity. In the post-modern era, this realization brought about the condemnation of religion itself, a convenient way to circumvent the demands of healthy religion. Instead of deep observation and reflection on how religion can be manipulated, how God can be made to say what may serve our will instead of the divine will, or acknowledge the great good that religion has often inspired out of the heart of humankind, an easier option has been

chosen by many…to throw the baby out with the bath water and go at it religionless. This choice was understandable, even if shortsighted, in light of the gross violence perpetrated in the name of religion, indeed, in the name of God, throughout the centuries. In saying religion can no longer be trusted, the post-modern mind has, though, in effect, too quickly said God can no longer be trusted. And in this vast theological wasteland what has emerged is a human consciousness rootless and without a ground on which to stand and a spirit parched wondering where to slake its thirst.

This is not, however, an entirely bad thing. Sometimes, maybe oftentimes, our images of God need to die in order to give birth to more adequate ones. The crises of church history have done just this…forged theological revolutions which birth new belief systems which better serve the human spirit and better foster a more universal peace. Perhaps we are living in such a time now.

Liturgically speaking, we are indeed at the cusp of a new birth. The tide of Easter has crested, the Lord has Ascended, and, in a week’s time, the Holy Spirit will fill us anew. And the lections for this  seventh Sunday after Easter (note seven being the number of fullness), take us right into the heart of the story of this new birth…this revolution of a religion.

The birthing of Christianity out of Judaism is not about a Christian but about a Jew…a Jew suffused with the ancient stories of his faith and the sacred traditions which helped form his religious sensibilities and belief system. Yet, Yeshua (Jesus), son of Joseph and Mary from Nazareth of Galilee, had a special attunement to the divine, and this attunement allowed him to sniff out bad religion with the snout of a bloodhound. His fidelity to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was at once doggedly traditional and daringly original. In being traditional, Jesus would assert the messianic hope and hold to the fulfillment of the covenantal promises of Israel’s God. In being original, he would also assert that he was himself that fulfillment.

A rupture of the old from the new was bound to follow. Or from another perspective…a new birth.

From reading the Gospels one doesn’t, however, get the sense that Jesus saw himself as a religious revolutionary. One, rather, gets the sense that he was just a faithful Israelite with a strikingly original vision of God and his intimate proximity to this God. Jesus was less interested in intentionally overthrowing a religious system as in simply…and wholeheartedly…living inebriated in the love of the God his own religious system proclaimed and which so claimed him. This was no new god. This was the same God of the covenants, of the prophets, and of the sages of old but internalized in such a way that first-hand experience gave validation to the testimony of the sacred page. And it was this…his experience of the covenantal love of his God as a faithful Jew…that would become the arbiter of his spiritual compass and would lead him along a path where he would at once put forth his revolutionary teaching about God’s kingdom and simultaneously critique with the fire of a prophet any misrepresentation of this God he had come to know with such

personal assurance.

From reading the Gospels we also get a clear sense of Jesus’ own

understanding of his mission. The course of his life was set and his destiny was never in doubt. From the perspective of the Fourth Gospel, the purpose and identity of Jesus are intertwined as one. He is the Word of God come to reveal, at the appointed time, the glory of God, and he is the Son of God come to bestow the eternal life and love of the Father…and no one who heard him was prepared to

receive either.

The clashing of light and darkness that resulted was not just a clashing of good and evil, it was a clashing of competing theologies, ideologies, and authorities. There was no way that there would be two left standing in the end…one of these would have to be defeated for the other to survive. And Jesus was well aware of this. He had calculated the cost but there was no question that he could ever deny his experience of the one he knew as Abba. The love that so claimed him was the one and only truth of his life. Everything about him flowed from it and led back to it. And it was his mission, as he understood it, to share this love every chance he got.

So he calls others to follow him. He shepherds them, nurturing them on this good news about God’s love and merciful kindness. He challenges many in authority to see God differently. He incarnates the way of God not as a way of dominance and power but as a way of service and compassion. He confounds everyone while intriguing some and repelling others. Those who stick with him are asked what seemed impossible: to bear a cross of suffering and persecution for

remaining true to their own experience of the God they encountered in Jesus and his teaching.

This is all the backdrop of the “Farewell Discourse” of John’s Gospel. Beginning in Chapter 13 and stretching through Chapter 17, in the context of a meal, Jesus opens up his heart and shares God’s vision with astounding beauty and clarity. He first kneels before each of his friends and washes their feet, an act embodying what he is about to speak. He breaks bread with them not even leaving his betrayer out. And after his betrayer departs and the final act of Jesus’ life on earth is commenced, he begins to tell them what is about to take place.

He tells of the way God’s love will be made known to them very soon when he will be lifted up and glorified. This glory, he explains, is the very love of God, and it will also become their glory. So, he gives his friends a new commandment…to love one another. This is how the world will come to know who God really is. He tells them not to worry or be afraid in the troubling days ahead because he will soon send the Advocate to be with them always. He will have to depart soon. But this is a good thing because it is in this very departing that the love of God will be made known with the greatest intensity…with the greatest glory. This Advocate, the Holy Spirit, will strengthen their hearts when they are weak in faith and will comfort them in their sorrow at his departure. Stick to this Spirit, he says, as a branch to a vine, and you will indeed be comforted. This Advocate will also teach you everything about God’s love and you will come to know, he assures them, the Father in the very same way as he knows him.

It is here, after these instructions, that Jesus raises his eyes to heaven and, surrounded by his disciples, prays his prayer for glorification we hear in today’s Gospel. In his prayer he acknowledges that he is done preparing his disciples for his departure, “the hour has come” for him to be glorified. His glorification, his being lifted up both on the cross and back to the Father, he acknowledges, will be the gift of eternal life for those who have become his own. These, his own, will then come to know the love that has eternally existed between the Father and the Son…they will come to know the very name of God. There is nothing that will be held back. The name of God…God’s essence, reality, being…they will come to know as love itself in this glorious lifting up. Everything that God has is gifted. Everything that Jesus has is gifted. And the glory of the Father and the Son is to be known in the abounding love of God’s own: “All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them.” So, Jesus prays that the Father may protect those that are his own in this name of glorious love and bear witness to this love in their unifying love they will share with one another. 

Friends of Christ, we too find ourselves now present at this same meal of Jesus’ “Farewell Discourse.” We have heard the Word, and we will soon call down the Holy Spirit upon bread and wine as a commemoration of his being lifted up and

glorified. The very same gift of God given once upon a cross is now given in bread and wine…and nothing will be held back. The full expression of God’s love,

God’s glory, will become personalized to you and to me. Spirit and sacrament together we will encounter and no one should be left wondering if they too are included in this family of love. Time, this moment in which we now find ourselves, will be impregnated with eternity, and heaven and earth will kiss. And the God of heaven will, once again, take abode in human flesh. This is the glory of God!

So, yes, religion is a very dangerous thing. But it needs to be purified rather than discarded. The Gospel of John presents us with a theological vision that does just this: it dismantles every form of human impulse that would seek to use religion as a cloak to buttress any form of self-propagation and strips it bear upon the altar of a cross. If religion is about anything other than love…and many have been, including Christianity…then it deserves to die. For the only hope for our world and its transformation is a religion where glory is found in sacrifice and power in a cross.

Feast of the Ascension, May 14, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt

Ascension Day, May 14, 2026

• Acts 1:1-11
• Ephesians 1:15-23
• Luke 24:44-53

 Click here for an audio of the sermon

In the name of God, the Lover, the Beloved, and the Love ever flowing. 

***** 

There is a moment in Luke's telling of the Ascension that I find quietly astonishing. Jesus leads his disciples out to Bethany, lifts his hands over them in blessing — and while he is still in the act of blessing, he is carried up into heaven. He does not finish and then depart. He departs in the blessing itself. The blessing does not end. It simply expands beyond their sight. As today’s collect puts plainly: he ascended “far above all heavens” — not to be removed from us, but precisely that he might fill all things.

 

That detail arrests me every time. Because it tells us something essential about what the Ascension actually is — and what it is not. 

***** 

It is not an ending. It is not Jesus leaving us. It is Jesus becoming, as Meshali Mitchell puts it*, "restored to full presence and access to all time and all space” and, I might add, beyond space-time. The one who was constrained by a single body in a single place at a single moment is now — by virtue of the Ascension — present everywhere, to everyone, always. The blessing that began in Bethany is still, right now, in motion. 

This is why Luke tells us the disciples returned to Jerusalem not in grief but with great joy. That is a startling response to watching someone you love disappear into a cloud. But they understood, or were beginning to understand, that they had not lost him. They had gained something far wider. What they were being given, is faith to perceive that, according to his promise, he abides with his Church on earth. The joy in their returning was not denial. It was the first fruit of that perceiving faith. 

***** 

But before the departure, Jesus does something equally remarkable. Luke tells us he "opened their minds to understand the scriptures." Notice that word: opened. And notice, too, that Luke uses the singular — not "their minds" in a diffuse, general sense, but one unified act of illumination, touching them together. Throughout the Gospel, it is the failure to understand that marks the disciples — they are confused at the transfiguration, bewildered at the passion, slow to believe the resurrection. Here, at the very threshold of his departure, the risen Jesus gives them the gift of comprehension. 

What do they come to understand? That his life is not an interruption of history, but its fulfillment. That everything written in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms — the whole long arc of God's covenant with humanity — was bending toward this. Jesus insists that his life and ministry is continuous with God's presence from the very beginning. He embodies God's deepest longing for us and for all creation. His ministry is not a new plan; it is the ancient covenant reaching its fullness. 

This is a God, we might say, who allows the triumph of love to become clear through the life and ministry of a human being who is finally tortured and killed because of the way he loves — and whom he loves. Death does not have the last word. Death simply makes terribly, luminously plain how powerful God's love is. 

***** 

Luke also reaches back, as he does so often, to frame Jesus in the company of Moses and Elijah. The image of Jesus raising his hands in blessing recalls Moses. The description of his being carried up into heaven recalls Elijah. And what those two figures have in common — beyond their appearance at the transfiguration, speaking of Jesus' "departure which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem" — is this: at the end of their ministries, they each passed the mantle to the next generation. Moses to Joshua. Elijah to Elisha. Now Jesus, in the same gesture, passes his prophetic mantle to his disciples. To us.

 

The question the two men in white robes put to the disciples is therefore not a gentle rebuke. It is a commission: "Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?" In other words — the baton has been placed in your hands. You know what you have witnessed. You know the scope of God's saving love. Now: go. 

***** 

At the close of his ministry on earth, Jesus is focused on helping believers understand his life and ministry, death and resurrection, and the scope of God's saving love. He is not focused on escape routes or end-time timetables. When the disciples ask, "Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?" — fishing, perhaps, for a celestial schedule — he redirects them entirely. It is not for you to know the times or the periods. What you are to know is this: you will receive power, and you will be my witnesses — in Jerusalem, in Judea, in Samaria, to the ends of the earth. 

That expansion — Jerusalem to the ends of the earth — mirrors the expansion of the Ascension itself. The particular becomes universal. The local becomes cosmic. And we are the instruments of that widening. This widening does not end — he abides with his Church on earth even to the end of the ages. We do not labor toward a distant God who has retreated beyond the clouds. We labor with one who has promised to remain. 

***** 

This lection today, puts me in mind of this prayer, commonly attributed to Teresa of Ávila: 

God of love, help us to remember that Christ has no body now on earth but ours, no hands but ours, no feet but ours. Ours are the eyes to see the needs of the world. Ours are the hands with which to bless everyone now. Ours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good. 

That prayer takes on new weight when we hold it alongside the Ascension. It is precisely because Jesus has ascended — precisely because he is no longer bounded by one body in one place — that his body is now ours to offer. The universal Christ works through particular hands. Our hands. In a climate-changed, war-torn, beauty-starved world that needs blessing now, today, in this moment. 

***** 

So we do not stand gazing up at heaven — not because heaven is unreal, but because heaven is already here, pressing into every atom, every quark, every suffering face we will meet this week. The Ascension does not remove Christ from the world. It releases him into all of it. 

The blessing that began over Bethany is still extending. And according to his promise, the one who ascended far above all heavens abides still — with this Church, with every church, with every trembling heart that dares to believe — even to the end of the ages. We are living inside that promise. 

May we have the courage — and the joy — to extend it further still. 

Amen. 

*Meshali Mitchell, an author, storyteller, and acclaimed photographer wrote that phrase in her debut b ook, “Restored: Partnering with God in Transforming Our Broken Places.”