The Anniversary of the Dedication of the Monastic Church of Saint Augustine

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Scott Wesley Borden

The Anniversary of the Dedication of the Monastic Church

 Click here for an audio of the sermon

Today we celebrate the anniversary of the dedication of this church – and we could do no better than to hear again the words of Jacob from the book of Genesis... “How awesome is this place! It is none other than the house of God and gate of heaven.” Stirring and powerful words... 
Of course, back when this church was dedicated those words would have read a little differently, as you may have noticed in the Sequence Hymn penned by Isaac Watts: how awful is this place... That conjures a somewhat different experience... and even before it was awesome or awful, the King James translation used the word “dreadful” as in “How dreadful is this place...” That does not seem like the basis for much of a celebration...  
In fact, through the awesome and awful miracle of Google, I can tell you that this place is awesome and awful... fearful, terrifying, sacred, terrible, holy, worshipful and more. Translators clearly struggle to find just the right word. How challenging is this place...  
The problem is not with the translators. It's not that they have failed to find the right word. The problem is that a single word is not enough. All these various words bring particular insights in describing this place – it is awesome and dreadful, terrible and holy. It is, after all, the house of God – who is beyond description and comprehension. How could one word be enough? 
Our Orthodox brothers and sisters like to refer to God in contradictions – a way of acknowledging that human language, human comprehension, is never adequate to fully express or comprehend God.  
Of course, a story involving Jacob must, like Jacob, be conflicted. Jacob has, after all, lied his way into his position – he impersonated Esau his brother to steal Esau’s rightful inheritance. Jacob is a fraud and a cheat. He has good reason to be fearful in the presence of God... And yet, Jacob will become Israel – the progenitor and namesake of God’s chosen people. Jacob is a very deeply flawed person. Yet he is the foundation of Israel, and by extension a foundation stone of Christianity. The story we call to mind to celebrate this building is not a simple, easy story.  
For more than a century people, specifically Monkish sorts of people, have prayed in this awful place. I like numbers, so I had to do some calculations... I calculate that, over that time, perhaps one hundred and ninety thousand hours of worship and prayer have been offered in this terrible place. That is something like fourteen continuous years of prayer and praise... how sacred is this place... 
When we think of the house of God, the gate of heaven, we must think of Jesus. In today's Gospel Jesus is quite angry that God's house is turned into a den of thieves. We could comfort ourselves by reminding ourselves that Jesus has in mind the folks nestled around the temple in Jerusalem – so that lets us off the hook... except it doesn't, any more than it lets Jacob off the hook. If we think God is confined to just the inside of that house, or this house, or any house, we are wrong. God’s house is not just this place, not just this neighborhood, not just this entire planet. God’s house is all of God’s creation and we are stewards of God’s house. 
Can we be proud of our stewardship... of how our world is functioning today? Do we live in a land where peace and justice flow like a mighty river? Or even trickle like a little stream... How frightening is this place because here we must answer to God...   
Sometimes I wonder at Jesus walking among us and visiting the great and marvelous edifices we have built just for him... the cathedrals and shrines and sprawling mega-churches, and yes, monasteries with their chapels... And I hear Jesus saying, “its lovely, but what is it?”  
There is also a darker history we must not forget... a history of exclusion – when in this country, for example, some churches were built with special galleries so that black people could be kept away from white people... in Jesus' name. Or when our industrial scale greed allows us to despoil much of the planet destroying the homes of countless of God’s creatures... in Jesus’ name.  
When this church was built it had many steps... you could not enter without facing a barrage of steps, of physical barriers... those who had physical disabilities would have struggled mightily to enter; or more likely would have just stayed away... been excluded. But now, starting with the vision of Br Timothy and others over decades and with great effort and expense, we are barrier free so that all are not just welcome but can actually enter. How accessible is this place... (no, I didn't find that in any known translation, but it could be).  
This minster, this monastery church is certainly worthy of honor and praise. It is a very prayerful place. But it is not the stones and timber, the parging and paint, the crosses and icons that make it holy. It isn't even the altar standing in the east. This place is holy because this is where we gather to praise God.  
Two thousand years ago in Bethlehem a group of shepherds gathered to make a stable holy by greeting Jesus, praising God in heaven, and praying for peace on earth. How awesome, and how fertile, how smelly, how humble was that place.  
This place is certainly less smelly and less humble... but that doesn’t make it more awesome. There is no place in which God does not make a home, an awesome, awful, wonderful, and terrifying home. 
In this awesome and awful, dreadful and sacred, frightening and accessible place, we do just what those shepherds did – nothing more and nothing less. We meet Jesus. We pray glory to God in the highest. And having met Jesus – having become one flesh with Jesus in the mystery of the Eucharist – we are called go forth from this holy place to make peace on earth – just like those shepherds... 
God is present in the place, but God is not confined to it, or any of the houses we build... God is just as surely present in Sing Sing Prison, a little way down the Hudson from here. God is also surely present in the Manhattan Psychiatric Center which started its life as Blackwell’s Island Lunatic Asylum, still further down the river. God is not just present in the beautiful places we create to honor God. God is present in all places – the beautiful and the wretched – the places we would feel better if God never saw... 
London’s infamous Bedlam Hospital, a place so horrendous that it gave its name to our language to mean chaos, was not actually named Bedlam. It was Bethlehem Royal Hospital. That wild and notorious hospital was named for the place where God took on human flesh and entered our world. How appropriate – because Jesus entered a world that was more bedlam than beauty.  
We remember that Jesus always had special affection for those furthest on the margin – for lepers, for prostitutes, for prisoners, for lunatics... The example of Jesus is one of incredible, reckless, endless love... for everyone... As followers of Jesus, we are called to that same love for all of God’s creation. 
We might think of this church, on its dedication anniversary, not so much as God’s house as God’s womb – a womb where we can be reformed (born again, if you will)... a womb where we can be nurtured ever more into God’s likeness, where we can learn to love as God loves. It is a tall order, but God is patient and infinitely forgiving. So, we pray with those shepherds: glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth. 
And as we celebrate the dedication of this church, we call to mind the founding of the whole church in all forms, in all places, and at all times. The foundation of God’s Church is not made of stone, but rather of that incredible, reckless, boundless love to which Jesus calls us. How awesome is this place! It is none other than the house of God and gate of heaven. 

Dedication of the Monastic Church, October 1, 2023

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Randy Greve OHC

Dedication of the Monastic Church, October 1, 2023

1 Kings 8:22-30
1 Peter 2:1-5,9-10
Matthew 21:12-16

 

The Second Council of Nicaea, the Seventh Ecumenical Council, which met in 787, is most remembered in that it established the theology of icons and their veneration.  After centuries of iconoclastic furor and destruction by political and church leaders, the church finally spoke definitively on the question of icons and holy objects.  The motivation for the destruction or banning of icons was based in a reading of the second commandment prohibiting “graven images”. The conviction of the iconoclasts was that the image itself evoked the adoration which belongs to the divine alone, therefore any image was by definition a “graven image” and in violation of the commandment.  The council approved and protected icons by making an important distinction.  The council said that the icon in itself was not a graven image because it was not made to be worshiped nor was the worship of the image supported by the Church.  An icon was not a golden-calf level of idol as if it was claiming to depict or contain the divine or to be worshiped as divine.  What the council asserted was that an image, properly understood, was a door or window through which the person praying before the image perceives and adores the heavenly personage who is depicted in it. 

Any sound theology of icons will be quick to repeat this point - that an icon is an image that is looked through, not looked upon.  It points to something beyond itself.  The icon presents us with the paradox that in the existence of the icon is the truth that the icon itself is not the object, but is meant to point to its subject.  As physical, sensory creatures, we need the image to point beyond the image.  We are dependent on some means, some mechanism as an intermediate link between our finitude and the infinite.  We need the icon to remind us that the icon is not the point.  Further still, the veneration of icons is partly about the person seen, but more fundamentally about the act of seeing itself.  When the icon teaches us how to see, we have changed our relationship to it from taking meaning to receiving insight.  They are templates that reveal how I am in the world, how I relate to my humanness and God’s self revelation.  This distinction between veneration and adoration, between seeing into and through the object and idolatry of the object, is profoundly helpful in our practice of inhabiting this house of prayer.  Indeed, we cannot find authentic peace and joy unless we hold this tension.

Each of the readings for today is about the nature of God’s communion with the material world and the means of our perception of that communion.  In the first reading recounting the dedication of the temple by Solomon, this ambivalence toward the notion of a holy place, a house for God, is named as a question that sits alongside the building.  After all the effort of raising this colossal structure, he says, “but will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built.”  Maybe he should have thought about that before construction began!  And at the same time we can identify with the need for a material place and focus for worship that is set apart.  It will be over the next thousand years while the temple is standing, as prophets arise to interpret it, that the paradox of sacred space as both gift and danger will become the central question in Israel’s life.  The biblical epic preserves both the priestly tradition and the prophetic counter-voice.  The priestly narrative is concerned with right ritual piety, sacrifices and sabbaths, festivals and fasts, that preserve the memory of the exodus, the giving of the law, and the retelling and reenacting of these events of God’s salvation.  The holy of holies where resides the ark of the covenant, in the center of the temple, is regarded as the tangible presence of God on earth.  The prophets as counter-voice function as a social conscience toward how the ritual is viewed and lived.  They warn about the dangers of temple worship that degenerates into mere outer form and neglects an equal passion for justice and righteousness.  The goal is ritual and remembrance that informs and is transformed into faithful living toward the poor, the outcast, the foreigner.  The prophets say, essentially, “have the ritual, but the ritual itself is no substitute for faithful living.  Authentic liturgical remembrance always expresses itself in justice and compassion.”   In fact, they continue, outer piety can blind the heart to what God is most concerned about in human relationships, so watch out that you do not make the practices into idols of self-righteousness. 

 
It is into this prophetic tradition and perspective that Jesus enter and exorcizes the temple of the corrupt practices into which the ritual has slid.  The danger was real. Solomon’s caution was ignored. By now the temple does seek to contain God in patterns of power, exclusion, and legalistic judgmentalism.  The worst possible path of misinterpretation and misunderstanding of the icon-like nature of the temple has come to pass and robbery has replaced the central purpose and priority of prayer.  Taking on the prophetic mantle of the one who fully embodies remembrance and prayer becoming  justice and compassion, Jesus sees through the institutional processes designed to keep the temple going and names what is below the surface.  Our Lord sees the temple from the perspective of a window through the stones into the divine. It is this violation of the intent and veneration of its very nature that so angers him.  
 

The epistle reading from 1 Peter, reflecting on the Jesus tradition, borrows building imagery but redefines it to declare the human person the temple of divine presence. We ourselves are the living stones, a spiritual house, no longer focused on a building, but in Christ are indwelt in our flesh by the spirit of God as God’s own people. The icon, the object, the building are all reflecting back to us our true nature as image bearers.

I remember reading Brother Lawrence’s The Practice of the Presence of God when I was in my twenties and the confusion I felt when he said that for him there was no difference between the kitchen and the oratory.  In my young dualistic way of thinking, the kitchen was common and the church was the set apart sacred place of God’s presence - never the twain shall meet.  As I have gotten older, I can at least aspire to Brother Lawrence’s integration of perception of God’s presence everywhere.  When I talk to groups about the rule of St Benedict, the archetypal verse I always use is Benedict’s admonition to the cellarer to regard the pots and pans as the sacred vessels of the altar.  I don’t know if Brother Lawrence was aware of the ecumenical councils, but St Benedict is certainly foreshadowing and intuiting the reverence and veneration of created things and seeing all the world as infused with this wonder and care because all of it is sacred, every place is a place for worship. Amen.

 

Feast of the Dedication of St Augustine’s Church- October 4, 2018

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Bob Pierson, OHC
Feast of the Dedication of St Augustine’s Church
Thursday, October 4, 2018

To hear the sermon in its fullness click here.

Br. Bob Pierson, OHC

Genesis 28:10-17
First Peter 2:1-5, 9-10
Matthew 21: 12-16

This truth shouldn’t surprise us because if we are honest, we know that God uses the less than perfect to make Godself known, repeatedly.  No one that God calls is ever perfect.  

God works with flawed humanity to make God’s purpose real in the world.  Which of course means, God uses us, along with all our imperfections, to be God’s people in the world. 

The same is true for “The Church,” the Body of Christ made up of baptized believers of every race and nation, of every denomination and social class.  We all are called to be “living stones” that are “built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood.” That doesn’t mean that we don’t need to try to be the best that we can be.  But it does mean that God is not limited by our faults and foibles.

And we do that by “ridding ourselves of all malice, and all guile, insincerity, envy, and all slander.” We are God’s own people.  God help us to really become who you call us to be, so that those who know us can truly say, “Surely the Lord is in this place!”

“How awesome is this place!  This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”  These words from the mouth of Jacob describe how I feel about every place of worship I have ever seen, including this church.  This IS an awesome place, and yet it is far from perfect.  It’s still going to be cold in the winter, and the walls still look like we have a permanent water feature that doesn’t work very well.  And yet, this IS the house of God for us, where we meet God in the liturgy of the church day in and day out.

Feast of the Dedication of St Augustine’s Church- October 4, 2017

Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Feast of the Dedication of St Augustine’s Church
Tuesday October 4, 2017

Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC

Genesis 28:10-17
First Peter 2:1-5, 9-10
Matthew 21: 12-16
 
“How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” says Jacob.
 
This church of St Augustine is awesome indeed. Not only is it a pretty nice piece of architecture by Ralph Adams Cram but it has been this monastery’s main sanctuary for 96 years today.
 
In 96 years, it has seen generations of monks worship, pray and chant within its walls. Several dozens of our Holy Cross brothers have preceded us here. Many stayed till they were stationed to another house of this order or until they were stationed to heaven.
 
More men tried their vocation here and found that God did not call them here but took the experience with them for the rest of their lives.
 
In 96 years, this church has seen thousands upon thousands of visitors worship with the monks. Over 10,000 hours of worship drench its walls with prayer and chanting. That’s as if we started chanting now and kept going 24/7 until Christmas 2018.
 
As Brother Ronald Haynes of blessed memory liked to say, this church is a thin place - indeed he said this of the whole monastery. A thin place is a Celtic Christian term for those rare locales where the distance between heaven and Earth collapses. It is a place where the separation of Earth and heaven is worn thin like a veil by the passage of prayer from Earth to heaven.
 
Places like these are precious. They teach us in the nearness of God. Eventually, we take the conscience of that nearness with us wherever we go. The whole Earth, the whole Universe becomes a thin place to us. But many of us need places like these to teach us that, to attune us to that reality.
 
“How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
 
This is also a place of enduring love. It is a place where day after day, God’s love is manifested in the Eucharist. And in between masses, the consecrated elements are reserved in our tabernacle to remind us of the ever present God and his all-giving love.
 
By the way, make sure to visit our new tabernacle and pay your respect to Jesus there. It was consecrated this past Friday and is a work of beauty that echoes many decorative motifs of this church.
 
This church is a place where visitors and residents alike bring their own selves to God and offer their love in worship and prayer. If all goes well, they eventually realize that their own heart is God’s preferred tabernacle and God never leaves it empty.
 
Tabernacles are supposed to be portable. It should be possible to take it from place to place along our communal journey. Hearts are the ultimate in portability. God goes along wherever we go. And while we are there, we encounter the image of God in one another. This happens here too.  For example, we recognize our mutual participation in the divinity at the exchange of the peace.

If all goes well in this awesome place, visitors and monks alike take what they receive in this church into the world and they become aware that the whole universe is Eucharist.
 
“How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
 
May your body visit this church often. May your heart open and your soul be nourished deeply here. And may you take what you receive here to all the places of your lives.
 
As the coordinator of our capital campaign, I would be remiss if I didn’t tell you that this church will be an important focus of our upcoming fund-raising. We want to make this church ever more welcoming. Look out for our capital campaign brochure and video in the weeks to come.

We give thanks to God for this 96-year young church of St Augustine. Yes, thanks be to God. And may it nurture monks and guests alike for many generations to come.
 
Amen.

Feast of The Dedication The Monastery Church, October 4, 2016

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. John  Forbis, OHC
Feast of The Dedication The Monastery Church, October 4, 2016

This wonderful church that has been part of the prayer life of this Order for over a hundred years.  And we are to give thanks for the fellowship of those who have worshiped here for all of those years including now.  We can think of this structure as a safe place to find God and be filled with God’s joy and peace, but we would be in denial if we didn’t recognize that right at the doorway of this place there is the threat of injustice, exploitation and wide divisions between races, between the haves and the have—nots, and other discriminations against those who are the other, due to gender, sexual orientation, beliefs and simply those who experience life differently from ourselves. 


The Church is to be a place of vigilance and perhaps even the first line of defense against the moneychangers, whose only goal is to gather as much and make as much profit as they can at the expense of many, to block the entrance for the other to enter and be filled with God’s joy and peace.  The symbol that this building represents is sometimes a space that confronts us. If we are truly praying and seeking to find God here, we may have to face and become sensitized to such discomfort and astonishment before we are filled with God’s joy and peace.  There is not a more appropriate day to remember this than on this Feast of the Anniversary of the Dedication of this Church.

When Jesus enters the Temple after entering the city of Jerusalem riding on a colt and causing enough turmoil in the city, the first group he seems to zero in on are those who are exploiting people during a religious ritual in what is possibly called the Gentile court.  This is the entrance where the foreigners and “outsiders” are to enter, but the moneychangers are blocking their way.  Jesus’ anger is directed at them, certainly, but maybe even more directed at the authorities of the Temple who allow this kind of travesty to take place. 

Perhaps their motives are to keep the Gentiles, those who are unclean, out of the Temple.  His turning over the money-changers’ tables clears the way for the “impurities” to flood into the Temple.  But in and with Christ, there are no “impurities”, no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no man or woman, no black or white, gay or straight, rich or poor but all have a place in this “house of worship”, not only in fellowship but as one.

Christ makes the mountains level and rough ways smooth.  He is the great leveler and any kind of duality has no more place here.  In this “House of Prayer”, there is only room for unity, not injustices or exploitation. 

In this “House of Prayer”, Christ is also the great leveler within each of us and a challenge against our own dualities, our own prejudices and unjust attitudes against others or ourselves.  Otherwise, each of our Temples, either in the midst of our community or within ourselves, are just another “den of robbers” and therefore nothing to celebrate at all.

The way is now clear for all of us to enter, to have access to God’s abundance and love. And if we are to receive this abundance and love fully, we are to become mere children, and yet no less than children of God, heirs of God’s promise.  However, that fact demands a certain responsibility.  The Church is to be alive in us and through us.  The Church is to be the flesh and bones of who we are as God’s own.  We become the very stones of this Church itself. 

The heart of the Church is to beat with our heart and still beats with the hearts of all the children that have entered here to worship and to find God.  Its voice of praise has to be our voice of praise, even to have the audacity to say, Hosanna, to the Son of David to the threats of all who act unjustly, who exploit, who block the way for some to enter.  And at the very foundation, the cornerstone of this Church, must be Christ, where our heart ultimately beats with his heart because we are filled with his life through the Spirit which breathes with us, through us and in us. 

So we act, not with guile, insincerity, envy or slander, but with the righteousness, mercy and justice to clear the way and even drive out all that blocks some of the doorways so that all who desire to seek God may find him here in these walls, amongst all of us.  It may even mean having more audacity to knock down tables and disrupt business as usual.
This action may be out of our comfort zones, but we can also thank God that, depending upon our motivations, such a deed, is what can keep us alive as a Church in Christ and with Christ, no matter what the consequences might be.  For Christ, the consequences, of course, led to the cross, and yet he is still alive within us and we are alive through him and in him, particularly if we are to follow him.  Amen.