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." 

Crying wolf or "coywolf" ?

This week, Br. David Bryan continues his mission trip in Toronto, ON. Our postulant Jeff Costello moves from his pre-clothing leave (akin to a vacation) to his pre-clothing retreat (still at St Mary's House up the driveway). Br. Leonard arrived Thursday from Toronto to be present at next week's installation of Br. Ephrem as OHC's new Superior. For the same reason, our three intially professed Brothers from Harkerville, South Africa, arrived on Friday. It is starting to feel like a family reunion (not unlike at our annual chapter meetings).

This week, also saw the return of our hardy volunteeers after our August recess. Thank God for all the work they get done in support of our monastic lives and ministries.

Monastery peeps. From top left, clockwise: Associate Susan Barbarisi working with Br. John in the monastic library: old friends reunion (Br. Scott lived with our South African Brothers for several years) from left, Bros. Mpumelelo, Aelred, Scott (in front) and Josias; OHC Brothers Made in Africa, Bros. Mpumelelo, Aelred and Leonard; Br. Jacob transplanting a basil plant (2 pictures); Bros. Jacob and Bernard and more non-pictured enjoyin s'mores round our fire pit.

On Tuesday, we observed the feast day of David Pendleton Oakerhater, the first Native American saint in the Episcopal Church. This week, we hosted a retreat led by the Rev, Masud Ibn Syedullah, TSSF* and the neuro-scientist, Dr. Vladimir Miskovic on "Cultivating Loving Presence: Spirituality, Science and the Whole Human Being." Br. Bernard was blessed to attend. Subjects such a consciousness, awareness, neuro-modulation and the spiritual journey were discussed. Masud and Vladimir will repeat this program at the convent of our St John the Baptist sisters in Mendham, NJ, in November.

Monastery visitors. From top left, clockwise: an icon of David Pendleton Oakerhater in the entrance to St Augustine church; Vladimir Miskovic and Masud Ibn Syedullah leading the "Cultivating Loving Presence" retreat; lingering incense smoke caught in midday rays of sunshine; guests resting in the Gueshouse gardens; a mystery quadruped spotted in the meadow.

This past week, our Br. Randy captured the photo above of what appeared to us as a grey wolf. However, a Google search delivers the following on wolves in the mid-Hudson valley.

There are no established populations of wild, pure wolves roaming the Mid-Hudson Valley. Native gray wolves were extirpated from the Hudson Valley region by European settlers in the late 17th and early 18th centuries due to hunting and habitat loss. While occasional wandering wolves can be spotted, DNA tests proves it is rare. Genetic dispersals occasionally show up in upstate New York (such as the Adirondacks or near Canada), sightings in the Mid-Hudson area are almost exclusively large local canines. Eastern Coyotes are frequently mistaken for wolves, local coyotes often carry some historical wolf DNA from northern breeding corridors and can grow quite large (sometimes colloquially called "coywolves").

What do you think? Did Br. Randy spot an occasional wandering grey wolf or a "coywolf?"

Blessings and every good to you.

* The religious suffix TSSF stands for the Third Order of the Society of St. Francis.

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!

The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 10, July 12, 2026

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt

The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, July 12, 2026

Genesis 25:19-34

Romans 8:1-11

Matthew 13:1-9,18-23

In the name of our Loving, Liberating and Life-giving God. Amen!

Jesus leaves the house that day and walks down to the water. The crowd that gathers is so large that he has to push off in a boat just to have room to speak, while everyone else stands crowded along the shore. And there, with the sea at his back and the fields probably visible somewhere behind the people, he tells a story about farming.

It is worth pausing on how ordinary that story would have sounded to his first listeners. Nobody in that crowd had ever tested the pH of a field or laid down seed in neat, irrigated rows. In first-century Palestine, you scattered the seed first and plowed it under afterward. You threw it across the path, across the rocky patches, into the weeds, and onto the good ground, all in the same sweeping motion, because you could not always tell in advance which parts of the field would produce and which would not. Then you waited for rain that you could not control, over a harvest you could not guarantee. Every farmer in that crowd would have been nodding along, thinking, yes, that is exactly how it goes.

So when Jesus describes seed falling on the path, on rocky ground, among thorns, and on good soil, he is not describing something strange or symbolic to begin with. He is describing an ordinary Tuesday. The strangeness comes later, in the ending, and in what the story assumes about the sower who keeps throwing seed onto ground that, by any sensible calculation, is not going to produce anything.

Notice, too, how the story is framed. It opens with Jesus saying, "Listen!" and it closes with "Let anyone with ears listen." Whatever else this parable is doing, it is asking for our full attention, not our anxious diagnosis. And it arrives in Matthew's Gospel at a hard moment: the chapters just before this one are full of misunderstanding and outright opposition to Jesus' ministry, and the chapter will end with his own hometown rejecting him. Matthew is writing to a community that knew what it was to proclaim good news and watch much of it fall on ground that produced nothing — through persecution, through poverty that scattered people from the region, through false teachers sowing confusion inside the church itself. This parable was first heard by people who needed reassurance that a disappointing public response did not mean their message was wrong, or their labor wasted.

That is where I want to start today, because it is easy to hear this parable and immediately turn it into an inventory of ourselves. Which soil am I? Am I the hard path, closed off and unreceptive? Am I the rocky ground, quick to catch fire with enthusiasm and just as quick to burn out when life gets hard? Am I choked by thorns, distracted by ambition or worry or the hundred small hungers that crowd out anything deeper? I suspect most of us, if we are honest, have been all four kinds of soil at different points in our lives, sometimes in the same week. I know that when I was young, this parable was taught to me almost entirely as a checklist for self-improvement: figure out what is wrong with your soil and fix it. It is a tiring way to hear good news, because it turns the gospel into one more thing you are failing to get right.

But look again at where Jesus puts the weight of the story. He does not linger on the soils nearly as long as he lingers on the sower and on the harvest. And when the interpretation comes, in the second half of our reading, it is offered almost as an afterthought, a clarification added because the story on its own was too open, too strange, too likely to be misunderstood. The center of gravity in this parable is not the quality of the ground. It is the character of the one doing the sowing.

Picture that sower again: walking a field, throwing seed in every direction, including places that everyone standing nearby could see were hopeless. Not one seed reserved for the good ground and withheld from the rest. Not one calculation of odds before the throw. This is not a cautious, efficient sower rationing precious seed for maximum yield. This is a lavish, almost reckless sower, acting as though there is no such thing as too much seed, no soil too far gone to be worth the risk. If you have ever been on the receiving end of that kind of extravagance — loved by someone who did not first check whether you deserved it — you know it does not feel like sound business practice. It feels like grace.

That, I think, is the first piece of good news buried in this familiar story: the parable is not primarily asking whether you are good soil. It is telling you what kind of God is doing the sowing. This is a God who does not sort us first, who does not calculate our likely returns before showering us with love. God's word goes out toward hardened ground and rocky ground and weed-choked ground with the same generosity it goes out toward the ground already prepared to receive it. Nothing about our failures — the times our hearts were closed, the times we scattered under pressure, the times ambition or anxiety choked out something truer — makes God stingier with the seed. There is always more where that came from.

The second piece of good news is that none of us is only one kind of soil, forever. The path, the rocks, and the thorns are not fixed identities assigned to certain people while others get to be the good soil. They are conditions — seasons, really — that any one of us can move through. Hardened ground can be broken open. Rocky ground can have its stones cleared. Thorns can be pulled. We are not seeds, locked into whatever patch of earth we happened to land on; we have the strange and demanding freedom to notice our own condition and to let it change. That is part of what it means to keep showing up to listen, week after week: to let something soften that had gone hard, to let roots go down deeper than the last hard season allowed.

And then there is the ending, which is the part I think we are most tempted to skip past too quickly. Jesus does not conclude with a modest, reasonable harvest. A good year for a first-century farmer might yield seven or eight times what was sown. Jesus says thirtyfold, sixtyfold, a hundredfold. That is not agricultural realism; that is a promise of abundance that breaks the scale we normally use to measure return on investment. The point is not simply, keep trying and eventually something will grow. The point is that when God's word does take root, it produces far more than the effort put into it could account for. We are not meant only to endure; we are invited to expect abundance we cannot engineer or predict.

There is one more thing worth naming before we close. Paul, writing to the Romans, tells his readers that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ, because the Spirit of God dwells in them. I think that is close to the heart of this parable too. The sower is not standing over us with a clipboard, grading our soil. The seed that has already been planted in us is not something we manufactured through our own discipline or worthiness; it took root because the Spirit of the very sower who planted it also dwells within us, doing the slow work of clearing stones and pulling weeds that we could never manage entirely on our own. That is not permission to stop tending the ground of our own hearts. It is the reason we can tend it without dread, trusting that the outcome was never solely up to us in the first place.

So perhaps the truest response to this parable is not anxious self-examination but something closer to trust, followed by imitation. Trust that the sower sowing in us is patient, generous, and unbothered by our rocky or thorny seasons. And imitation, because we too are sent out to scatter seed without first demanding proof that the ground is worthy. Speak the kind word to the person who seems closed off. Offer forgiveness before it is requested. Show up for the neighbor whose soil, as far as you can tell, looks like nothing but path and rock. You will not always see what grows. But the sower we follow was never stingy with the seed, and the harvest, when it finally comes, is always far larger than anyone had a right to expect.

Let anyone with ears, listen. Amen.

Benedict of Nursia, Monastic, c. 543.

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Francis Beckham, OHC

Benedict of Nursia, Monastic, c. 543.

Click here for an audio of the sermon

Let us pray. "We give you thanks, almighty God, for the Saints of the Benedictine family; and we pray that the zeal of the holy monks and nuns of the ages may inspire us to holiness of life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.” Amen. 

In the 1999 comedy “Office Space,” Peter Gibbons, a young corporate drone working a soul-crushing job in the tech sector, has an epiphany. After years spent sludging through, doing “just enough not to get fired” from his job, he agrees to undergo hypnotherapy with his girlfriend in a half-hearted attempt to rescue his equally frustrating relationship. During the session, he begins to let go of attachments, worries, and cares associated with his job, his managers (he has eight, by the way, meaning that when he messes up, he has eight different people coming by his desk to tell him about it), his toxic relationship, and even the pointless expectations of the prevailing culture. This is, arguably, a healthy new outlook for Peter but, unfortunately, there’s a bit of a snag: the temporary trancelike state that enables him to see so clearly for the first time inadvertently becomes permanent when the hypnotherapist keels over from a heart attack before bringing Peter back out of it. 

Locked now into a perpetual state of hypno-bliss, Peter begins moving through his daily life completely unconcerned about anything aside from pursuing his newfound dream of “doing nothing.” Responsibilities, consequences, money, other people’s opinions about him – none of it matters to him anymore. He does continue showing up to work, but only when he feels like it. He finally asks out the pretty waitress he’s had a crush on for ages and she says yes. Bob and Bob, a pair of “efficiency consultants” brought in by the company basically to fire people, end up becoming enamored with Peter’s aloof, relaxed confidence, and – in a move that says a lot about how much corporate culture just loves rewarding incompetence – actually plan to promote him. 

Of course, the Bobs aren’t the only ones who notice Peter’s new outlook. When his burned-out work friends chide him about his deteriorating job performance and seemingly lazy attitude, he responds with surprisingly deep conviction. “We don’t have a lot of time on this earth!” he declares. “We weren’t meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about mission statements.” It’s a really good line. And in a real sense, it’s a line that changed my life. 

You see, during a particularly frustrating time in my early professional career, I began questioning whether the large financial services firm I worked for really had my best interests at heart the way they said they did. According to the HR material, I was one of their approximately 100,000 “most valued assets,” but I couldn’t help noticing that when we posted our first billion-dollar profit, their gratitude for us was mainly expressed by tabletop signs in the cafeteria exclaiming, “It takes a lot of zeros to make a billion!” Not surprisingly, none of those additional zeros managed to find their way into my paycheck.

Like Peter Gibbons, I knew I was a drone, but I also knew I was relatively safe. If I managed to numb myself enough, I could keep working for the company, pumping out tedious copy for marketing material, maybe getting a promotion, and hopefully retiring by the time I was seventy. But try as I might to just accept and bear it, I wasn’t happy. And that line, “We don’t have a lot of time on this earth! Human beings weren’t meant to spend it this way,” kept going through my head more and more often, until I finally decided: If I had only limited time, I didn’t want to sacrifice it to a corporation that couldn’t care less about me. I wanted to do something worthwhile with it. The pursuit of that thing would eventually lead me on a years-long journey through numerous monasteries and houses of various religious orders. But the first one was Benedictine. 

One morning at about five o’clock, in the darkened choir of a large Benedictine Abbey on the west coast, I found out for the first time what it actually takes to live a life of purpose. As the monks rose from their stalls to begin praying the office of Vigils, the precentor intoned the Invititory: “Come, let us worship Christ the Lord, we have left all things to follow him.” Then, in unison, the rest of the monks chanted the beautifully haunting line in response, repeating it several more times during the course of Psalm 95, the Venite. And I knew. 

In time, I gradually came to understand that Saint Benedict’s plan for teaching his monks how to follow Christ – to give up all things and seek God alone – was to establish the monastery as a school of the Lord’s service, a place where ordinary people come to learn how to follow the Gospel in the same way as the community of Believers described in our reading from the Acts of the Apostles: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” This is none other than the ideal Saint Benedict invites us to strive for every day, right here, in this monastery: to hear and study the Word, to be community to one another, to share the Eucharist, and to pray for each other and for the world. 

Saint Benedict understands that the Believers in Acts are living the way they are because they have heard and embraced the Gospel of Jesus, and they are orienting their whole lives toward living as Jesus taught. Indeed, the Acts of the Apostles is a literary continuation of the Gospel of Luke, both written by the same person and intended to be read in sequence. So, they have, as Jesus proclaims in our Gospel reading from Luke today, heeded Jesus’ invitation and left all things to follow him. They are using the Gospel as their rule of life. Saint Benedict’s intention in writing his Rule several centuries later is by no means to replace the Gospel, but to help his nuns and monks follow it as faithfully as possible within the contexts of their own times and places. For fifteen hundred years, this has worked, because it is founded on one thing alone: the timeless desire of the human heart to seek, and to be found by, Christ. 

The shared vision of the Believers and Saint Benedict of simplicity and love of God and neighbor is a far cry from the fundamentally disordered obsessions of our modern social, political, and economic structures, and it was equally counter to the decadence, chaos, and violence of Saint Benedict’s time. And so, for the sake of the salvation of souls, he makes it clear that we have a solemn duty to show forth to the world that another way is possible through lives of peace and prayer. “Your way of acting should be different from the world’s way,” he tells us in the Rule. Just imagine what a difference each of us could make if we really committed ourselves, every day, to being Jesus’ presence in the world. 

As appealing as that sounds – and we should do it – Jesus himself levels with us: “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” He then goes on to stress just how intentional and disciplined we must be in our quest, or else we’re sure to falter. Our towers will stand unfinished, or we’ll find ourselves making peace with oppressors to keep from experiencing persecution and ridicule. In the Rule, Saint Benedict echoes this warning in the chapter on receiving new brothers, which our community just happened to hear read yesterday: “Do not grant newcomers to the monastic life an easy entry,” Saint Benedict cautions, “[if] they promise perseverance in their stability, then after two months have elapsed let this rule be read straight through to them, and let them be told: ‘This is the law under which you are choosing to serve. If you can keep it, come in. If not, feel free to leave.’” There can be no illusions, no mitigations, and no excuses when it comes to following Christ, in the monastery or anywhere else. 

There’s one more thing to beware of. As I have moved from corporate zero to professed monk, I’ve learned that the decision to leave all things and follow Christ is, unfortunately, not really a one-and-done kind of thing. It’s easy to make; not so easy to keep. For my part, I certainly struggle with distractions, temptations, laziness, and selfish tendencies pretty much every day. Ask a monastic – especially an older one – when they decided to become a nun or monk and they’ll likely answer, “When I woke up today.” As with any committed way of life, if we’re serious about staying the course in the monastery, then always we must begin again. But Saint Benedict reassures us that, even in our human weakness, all things are possible in the One whom we seek: “What is not possible to us by nature,” he tells us,  “let us ask to be supplied by the help of God’s grace … [while] there is still time, while we are in this body and have time to accomplish all these things by the light of life – we must run and do now what will profit us for eternity.” That’s a mission statement we can all get behind. 

So then, having heard this invitation – and what, dear friends, is more delightful than this voice of the Lord calling to us? – let us set our resolve to bear our own crosses, calculate the cost, make our plans, and get about the business of following Jesus. “May we prefer nothing whatever to Christ, and may he bring us all together to everlasting life.” Amen.