The Feast of St. Joseph -- The First Profession of the Monastic Vow by Br. Luc Simon Thuku, OHC

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC
The Feast of St. Joseph
The First Profession of the Monastic Vow by Br. Luc Simon Thuku, OHC

2 Samuel 7:4,8-16
Romans 4:13-18
Luke 2:41-52

Click here for an audio version of this sermon and the rite of Profession.

It seems appropriate that we celebrate a monastic profession on the feast of St. Joseph. Joseph and monastic life have much in common, not only because tradition and culture have never quite known what to make of either, but more importantly, because of the virtues Joseph exemplifies---like steadfastness, courage, compassion, hope, faithfulness, and perseverance. All are required to live the monastic life with integrity. This makes Joseph the ideal model for the monastic. These virtues have brought Simon to the place he now stands today. Desire for God is not a merely personal, or even an eccentric choice. It is a consequence of what we are as humans. We are made to meet God, and it is in this encounter that we become simultaneously fully human and fully divine.¹ The only people who are transformed by this life, are people who feel safe, who feel their dignity, and who feel loved. That’s what we try to do for one another—offer relationships in which we can change. Human beings need a combination of safety and conflict to keep moving forward in life.

As you well know, Simon, initial formation takes us outside of our familiar framework and can conjure basic questions where meaning is challenged, decisions reconsidered, and doubts unearthed. It’s alarming and exhausting. It can drain us of joy. This is true now for all of us in these uncertain times. When our private little worlds go to dust, as St. Joseph’s did also, hope digs in the ruins of our heart for memory of God’s promise to bring good out of bad, joy out of sadness, and life out of death. Hope is not optimism in the face of the dire circumstances of this pandemic.  Hope is not founded on denial. Hope is made of memories which remind us that there is nothing in life we have not faced that we did not, through grace, survive. Hope is the certainty that something will make sense, regardless of how it turns out. In a dream an angel ignited hope in Joseph; in our own conversion, we can experience the same.

Today, Simon, as you make your commitment to continue to discern your call to this life, you remind all of us that the paschal mystery of Jesus’ dying and rising is the pattern of our monastic life. The vow gives less opportunity to run away from those parts of us that God is seeking to convert and transform. Our conversion is a sign of our commitment to allow God to continue to work within us. Day by day God reveals to us more and more of the true self we are made to be.

While we come here seeking God, it becomes more and more evident that God has sought us. In the depths of the heart we hear the invitation to abide with Christ. We cannot live this life apart from abiding in the love of Christ. He is the source of our life and love and all that flows from it in community. Our monastic life is the call to the all-inclusive love of God. Love is a transforming power. It is a disciplined habit of care and concern, that like all virtues, can be perfected only over a lifetime. Giving a witness to that love, leads deeper and deeper into the meaning of being chosen by Christ, and of preferring nothing to Christ.

Before Jesus’ birth, Joseph surveyed the mess he had absolutely nothing to do with and decided to trust that God was present in it. That same trust is required of all of us today. As Benedictines, stability provides the context for faithfulness in the instabilities of life which lie ahead for all of us. Faithfulness is a prerequisite to trust and intimacy. With divine love flowing through us we can see others and ourselves in our connectedness and wholeness. The vow does not put an end to struggle. Struggle stretches us beyond ourselves. It is what leaves us open to truth, however difficult it may be to accept. Without it, our faith would be the kind that happens around us but not in us. God intends us to live together in the fragility of human imperfection. So even though we will constantly fail, it is not the final word. In this we come to know ourselves, each other, and God.

Today, we are most like Joseph, presented with situations beyond our control, tempted to divorce ourselves from it, when an angel whispers hope in our ears as it did in his: “Do not be afraid, God is here.” It may not be business as usual, or how we had planned it, but God is present here too, if we will own it.

As you continue your discernment, Simon, the more honest you are in examining your own motives, the closer you are to being yourself. The more equipped you are to distinguish the person you want to be from the one everybody else wants you to be, the more likely you are to become it. Without the honesty it takes to unmask the self, there is no hope for liberation, let alone fulfillment. When we refuse to listen to the dreams that cry within us for fullness of life, we fossilize ourselves. When we give way to the obstacles that we create for ourselves, we doom ourselves to underdevelopment.²

To make a truly life-giving discernment, we all need to squarely face what it is that gives us life. We need to speak the truth of our interests, our abilities, our desires, our boredom, our dissatisfaction—even our long-time need to satisfy others. We need the help that comes from having our confusion and despair, our disappointment and anxiety accepted and understood by those who are not themselves threatened by what we might do with our own lives. We need the acceptance and encouragement of each other so we can move beyond fear to the freedom it takes to be who we are. The power that comes with self-discovery at any age catalyzes us. It drives the young; it surprises the middle aged; it emboldens those who might be tempted to declare life over before it has even truly begun. Our fundamental obligation in obedience is to be or to become what God wills. To do what God wills is secondary. We act according to what we are, so that we can stop doing what everyone else wants us to do and begin to care more about what God has made us to do.

The Gospel gives us an assurance that we are operating inside of an abundant, infinite Love.³ Within that abundance, Simon, it’s time for you to take the next step. We give great thanks that you’ve decided to do so, as we continue this journey together.  +Amen.

1. Michael Casey, Grace: On the Journey to God (Brewster, MA: Paraclete Press, 2018),41.
2. Parker Palmer, Let Your Life Speak: Listening to the Voice of Vocation (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,
2000), 49.
3. Adapted from Richard Rohr: Essential Teachings on Love, eds. Joelle Chase and Judy Traeger
(Orbis Books: 2018), 224-225.

Br. Andrew's Sermon for Br. James' Life Profession - 28 Apr 2011

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Andrew Colquhoun, OHC
Br. James Michael Dowd's Life Profession - Thursday, April 24, 2011

Acts 3: 11-26
1 Peter 1: 3-9
Luke 24: 36b-48

What a great time for a Profession of the Vow for Life! The octave of Easter.
This holy time when life is at the highest point of triumph. Death has tried its best and has been defeated. One Sabbath day of rest between crucifixion and resurrection and all fear is beaten down. Life blossoms and fruits. God has said “Yes!” absolutely to life.

There’s an image that has kept coming to me as I have been praying about this sermon and I have to tell you about it… when I first started my CPE (Clinical Pastoral Education) residency I was on call one night. That involved making rounds on all the floors. I got to Obstetrics and checked in. “Anything going on?” The nurse said “There’s just one woman in labor… it won’t be very long now.” I remarked that I had never seen a birth. She said “Wait a minute” and left. Pretty quickly she came back with a scrub suit and said that the patient’s husband wasn’t willing to go into delivery with her and she would like the chaplain! Oh!!

I did as I was told and trembled my way to the mother’s bed. She grabbed my hand, kissed it and thanked me. “I don’t want to be alone and my husband is afraid.” I thought “you think he’s scared?” Just then they came to wheel her into the delivery room and I was dragged along ruing my bravado.

Well, she did great. I didn’t faint. The baby was born. on the 25th of September… the mother’s own birthday, the doctor’s birthday and my younger son’s birthday. So we all sang Happy Birthday and the baby responded…. He howled and then he peed all over us!

I know that’s a pretty earthy story for this solemn occasion. But so is our Gospel reading. Jesus tells the disciples to look at his tortured flesh and believe. He then asks for something to eat because ghosts don’t do that. This is a living Lord… not an ethereal concept. There is no mistaking the reality of his appearance. No chance is given to explain it away to themselves as a wishful thought or a grief conjured manifestation. Here is the Lord embodied and transformed. New life. Earthed yet transcendent.

And from Acts we read that Peter and John react to the surprise of the crowds after they had healed the crippled man by asking why the crowd is surprised. What did they expect? What else could life in Christ bring but immersion in the living of life and its restoration to wholeness?
Our faith is not a philosophy, not a finely worked out way of walking through life unscathed, sheltered and immersed in one’s own spiritual development. It is rooted in the earthiness of the Incarnation. It is humanity glorified but still human.

And although much of the world will ask why you, James, want to “bury” yourself in a monastery, we all know better. Today when you make your profession you do not die to life, you do not remove yourself from the pain of your fellow human beings; you do not become indifferent to the world God has planted us in.

Making your commitment does not mean retreating from life – dying to self, yes! Giving up your own willfulness and selfishness, yes! Monasticism is a call to enter fully into life with all its joy and all its grief. What happens today is that the labor you have been going through for fifty years will come to fruition finally. And just as that mother’s labor I spoke about was inexorable, irreversible, so is yours now.

James Michael you are being born yet again. Not into a sheltered existence but into a life that will take you deeper into the joy of your humanity and yet render you more and more vulnerable to the sufferings God’s children undergo. If you are faithful there will be no escape.

Benedict tried to escape at first. The cave at Subiaco seemed like a good idea for a while but the more he tried to withdraw the more the poor and the lost beat a path to his door. And finally, there at Montecassino his monastery guarded the road to the city he had fled from. It became a shelter and a beacon to the weary and the wanderer.

Benedict’s story is a great one. And it is the story of every monk. It is the story of being drawn by God’s love until the heart fills and overflows and the cloister cannot contain it. It’s not a story of escape or gentle piety. It’s a story of walking on into the full, messy humanness of life. It’s about perseverance and not turning back. It’s about trying to incarnate the love of Christ in this earthy mess we call life.

James, no one needs to teach you to love the poor. You are no stranger to the streets. And yet you give yourself to a life of seeking God that requires stability and labor. Today you claim a life that will be so abundant, so earthy, and so blindingly full that you will never rest again if you listen.
Today you are being born as a finally professed monk of the Order of the Holy Cross. Our roots are not genteel. Our Founder stood against the injustice which grinds down the poor. We don’t draw back. We keep our doors open, we venture out, but we always come home…home to our community, to our life together rooted in Christ.

This is your monastic day of birth. I trust you will be more circumspect in your response to the gift of life than that baby boy was those years ago! You will undoubtedly howl. But know you have come home. Alleluia!

Br. Charles/Julian's First Profession - 06 Apr 2011

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC, Superior
First Profession of the Benedictine Vow of Br. Julian - Wednesday April 06, 2011
Br. Julian Mizelle was previously known as Charles

In just over two weeks we will celebrate Easter. There are, of course, many ways to celebrate that great feast, from sunrise services at the Hollywood Bowl to ancient and competing liturgies in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.

Here at Holy Cross we will celebrate it, as we always do, with the traditional Western liturgical rites. It will begin in darkness with the kindling of a new fire and the lighting of the Paschal candle.

Just before that great wax pillar is lit, the celebrant inscribes a cross on the candle and says the following words:

Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, Alpha and Omega. All time belongs to him and all the ages. To him be glory and power through every age forever. Amen.

It is, for me, a deeply moving moment, the very sum and substance of the Easter proclamation.

Our lives, our vocations are each written out over a brief period of years, but it is a time, a period, inscribed in a larger drama, in that eternal span of time that goes from everlasting to everlasting and which belongs wholly and entirely to Jesus Christ. It is with the proclamation of this truth that we begin our Easter observance.

Timothy Radcliffe, OP, once commented that:

The religious life [the monastic life] is perhaps in the first place a living Amen to that longer span of time. It is within the stretch of the story from Alpha and Omega, from Creation to Kingdom, that every human life must find its meaning. We are those who live for the Kingdom when, as Julian of Norwich says, ‘All will be well, all manner of thing will be well.’

And so it is for you today, Charles. Today, this day, this event, this hour finds all its meaning within that greater time and that greater story that is Jesus Christ’s and Jesus Christ’s alone.

And what a wonderful day it is. It is a day when so much of your fifty-four years comes together in a new and exciting way, in a way wherein nothing is lost and all is redeemed and set upon a yet firmer foundation and a renewed path. It is a day when all those graced choices and experiences that make up your life, that are you, are now offered to God to be transformed yet more: that experience as a young man welcoming Christ into your heart as Lord and Savior, that day where you were plunged into the cleansing waters of baptism, that day when you first fed on the Bread of Life, when you were confirmed, when you claimed the truth about your adult self, when you reached out to others in ways that went beyond your accustomed ways… and found God reaching back.

And these are only the public moments. How many more hidden, private, graced events do you bring with you to this ceremony? Each is an Easter moment, each a little resurrection. Indeed, the God who chose you long ago has done great things in you, and he is again doing something new in you… and through you, in us as well. In you, each of us is reminded of similar graced moments in our own lives, similar eastering times of resurrection and new birth. Today is a feast day for all of us.

Br. Julian signs the Benedictine Vow written in his own hand

But as we know, Easter comes only after Good Friday with its focus of the mystery of the holy and life-giving Cross. It is an event that is too little understood today, yet it is a reality that is widespread, indeed one that is everywhere.

Even as a symbol, the power of the cross is easily lost on us. Because it is everywhere around us, on our walls and towers and necks, it often becomes invisible. We get used to it. We fail to see it for what it is. We lose out on its power to shock, to challenge, and to convert.

One example. Just a few weeks ago the European Court of Human Rights ruled that crucifixes are acceptable in public school classrooms throughout the forty-seven countries that comprise the Council of Europe (an international organization with a broader membership than the European Union). The reasoning they gave for this decision is, to say the least, troubling. Quoting from the Guardian:

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that crucifixes are acceptable in the continent’s state school classrooms, describing them as an ‘essentially passive symbol’ with no obvious religious influence. In its judgment… the court found that while the crucifix was ‘above all a religious symbol’ there was no evidence that its display on classroom walls might have an influence on pupils.

One is left breathless or despairing—or both—at this claim. But the sad thing is: it may be true.

I think of the story that circulated a few years of the English girl who went into a jeweler’s shop seeking to buy a cross for her necklace, at that time an essential element of punk rock couture. She was shown some very simple crosses in gold and silver. But she demurred. She wanted one, as she put it, “with the little man on it.” That little man… Jesus.

We have in many places and in many ways entered into the post-Christian era.

And yet the cross of suffering is everywhere, and it is everyone’s lot. It has been yours, Charles, as you well know, as it has been mine, and it has been and is that of every person present here today. And yet we know that our Lord Jesus accepted the cross—his cross and ours—so that he might taste most deeply our human pain and bear the shame, and take away the sin and redeem the suffering. How he does this is, of course, the great mystery of our faith. That he does it is the great hope on which all our other hopes are founded.

In the intersection of those arms of the cross, all contradictions meet and are reconciled: time and eternity, the vertical and the horizontal, here and everywhere, past and future, now and eternity. But it is a reconciliation that is bought at great price, where the old is sometimes gently, but no less often vigorously, refashioned and sometimes yanked out, where our many defenses are disarmed and the heart is opened to the endless work of reformation. It is frequently dirty work, hard work, humbling work, amazing work. It is God’s work in us and through us. It is the precious fruit of our obedience and surrender to that eternal story that stretches from Alpha to Omega.

In his Rule written in 1900 for the Order of the Holy Cross and referencing the story of Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28, our Founder says:

The ladder of the cross is planted firmly within the walls of a religious house and angels pass up and down that stairway. Our house is a house of God; let us strive to make it for ourselves the gate of heaven.

What a wonderful image. The cross as ladder, as stairway, as bridge, as passageway, as a royal road, indeed the royal road. Angels are indeed on it, but oh, in what strange and often disturbing disguises. And there too is God, waiting expectantly and patiently and joyfully for you and me and each of us here today to climb that ladder. Let us climb it together. Let us climb it as brothers and sisters.

One more thing. Charles, you have elected to adopt a new name. In the community from now on you will be known as Br. Julian, at least after we get the hang of it… though I imagine you will always be Charles to your family and old friends. Taking a new name is a sign, a sacrament, and a reminder of the change and growth that God is working in you and through you, a sign of a new emerging identity. Many cultures and societies and faith traditions do this. But always remember: this is not your final name or even your true name. Hold dear the words of Revelation 2:17: “To everyone who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give a white stone, and on the white stone is written a new name that no one knows except the one who receives it.” God, and God alone, knows your true name, and in God’s good time that too will be revealed to you.

So we receive today your solemn vow to follow the monastic way of life for one year. But of course your intention—like ours—is that, unless it becomes strikingly clear over the next several years that this is in fact not your path, we are headed together for life. Bound for life. Life with Christ. Life in Christ. Life through Christ.

Charles/Julian… God is with you in this adventure. Your family is here with you. Your friends are with you. Your brothers are with you.

Come, let us climb that ladder. Let us together embrace that cross. Let our faces and our hearts be turned toward life… fullness of life, life lived in faith and joy and courage and peace and risk.

The Father delights in such a life. So do we all. May it be yours and ours, each of us here today. Always.

Amen.

Sermon for Br. Robert Magliula's Life Profession - 01 Jan 2011

Mariya uMama weThemba Monastery, Grahamstown, South Africa
Brother Robert Sevensky, OHC
Feast of the Holy Name - 01 January 2011
Life Profession of Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC

Br. Robert James Magliula, OHC, prostrate at the foot of the altar,
as a symbol of full self-giving to God through the monastic profession.

This past February I had the great privilege of attending the annual Benedictine Abbots' Workshop in Oceanside, California. The principal speaker was Dr. Michael Downey, a Roman Catholic layman and theologian. His theme was the Holy Trinity and its relationship to community, communion, and contemplation

His thesis was somewhat surprising. And that is that, far from being the most abstract and general of Christian beliefs, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is in fact the most practical and important teaching of our faith, important for the theologian, to be sure, but important also for the ordinary believer and, most particularly, for the monastic. And not for the reasons that I or most of us might have expected.

The central mystery of the Christian life and faith is the Trinity because it shapes and models and guides the way we relate to ourselves and to each other and to the whole created order. But the point of entry into the mystery of the Trinity is very concrete, very tangible and very revolutionary. And that point of entry is the self-emptying of God in Jesus Christ, what theologians, using the Greek word from today's reading from the Letter to the Philippians (2:5-11) call kenosis.

If we are to understand and savor the mystery of God and be brought into union with the Triune God, we begin not from some kind of abstract reasoning about the nature of the infinite or the attributes of perfection, but from an event—the event—in human history: the folly of the cross. According to Downey, the divine mystery rests not primarily in God's inscrutability but in the astonishing claim that God should appear in such a fashion—poor, weak, vulnerable—both then and now. It is a mystery we ponder at this Christmas season and one that we will continue to ponder through Holy Week and Easter and throughout eternity. We speak of a God who does not take away human wanting or longing but of one who is present precisely in and through our human desiring. We speak of one who knows us in our suffering and brokenness and who, emptying self of the divine nature, embraces this humanity, so that we might put on and share that divinity. As an antiphon sung over and over this Christmastide puts it with uncharacteristic exuberance: “Oh wondrous exchange! Christ became a human child so that all the children of Eve might become gods.”

Kenosis, the self-emptying of God in Jesus Christ, is in fact the gateway to theosis, that is, the gateway to being ever more shaped and molded into the image and likeness of God.

But if kenosis, God's self-emptying, is the key to understanding the mystery of the Trinity, it is also, according to Downey, the key to understanding the mystery of monastic life. That central dynamic of the monastic adventure which we call conversatio morum, conversion of life, is none other that what the author of the Letter to the Philippians proclaims: “Let the same mind be be in you that was in Christ Jesus.” And to put on the mind of Christ is to be emptied of self.

But what does kenosis look like? It is difficult to describe inasmuch as it is slightly different for each of us. Each one of us must be emptied in a slightly different way, a way uniquely adapted to our own personality and sinfulness and giftedness. The best description I have been able to find of the process comes from the pen of the popular Catholic theologian, Ronald Rolheiser:

“Scripture says that in Christ, God offers a love so pure, so self-effacing, so understanding of our weaknesses, so self-sacrificing and “self-emptying”, that it's offered without any demand, however veiled, that it be recognized.... To “self-empty” in the way Jesus is described as doing means to be present without demanding that your presence be recognized and its importance acknowledged; it means giving without demanding that your generosity be reciprocated; it means being invitational rather than threatening, healthily solicitous rather than nagging or coercive; it means being vulnerable and helpless, unable to protect yourself against the pain of being taken for granted or rejected; it means living in a great patience that doesn't demand intervention, divine or human, when things don't unfold according to your will; it means letting God be God and others be themselves without having to submit to your wishes or your timetable. Not an easy thing at all, that's why we've sung Jesus' praises for two thousand years for doing it, but that's the invitation.”

That's the invitation to which you, Robert James, are responding today and one that we must all respond to in one way or another. Today, Rob, you enter yet more deeply and definitively into the mystery of that kenosis that is yours and Christ's.

Br. Robert James Magliula,
signing, on the altar, the instrument of profession written in his own hand.
In the foreground, is the profession cross he was to receive from the Superior.

Liturgically it seems a most appropriate time time for you to do this. We are gathered here on New Year's Day, the Feast of the Holy Name, halfway between the feasts of the Nativity and the Epiphany. I am reminded of a tradition that we have at West Park of placing the figures of the Magi, the three wise men, hundreds of meters away from the Christmas creche. Slowly over the course of the twelve days between the Nativity and the Epiphany they make their way, and I'm often startled to find one peering out at me from behind a doorway or resting in apparent exhaustion on a guesthouse sofa. And somehow, as if by a miracle, they arrive at the stable just in time for First Vespers of the Epiphany.

And I think then of the T. S. Elliot's early poem, “Journey of the Magi”

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey;
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
….
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Rob, you yourself have had a long journey and, at times, a cold coming of it. From your teen years hoping to be a member of the Xaverian Brothers, a Roman Catholic religious community, to leaving them in order to find your truer, more authentic self, to your training and work as an artist, art therapist, counselor, hospital chaplain, and beloved parish priest for seventeen years; seeking human love, finding it, and then losing the beloved, and still always, always journeying on. And like the Magi in Eliot's poem, you have no doubt heard the voices saying that this was all folly. But like them you've pushed onward. Like them you've had your turning points, your disappointments, your triumphs, your beginnings and your endings and your new births. And like them, you found the place you were seeking. To quote the poet once more: “It was (you may say) satisfactory.”

What strikes me today, Rob, is how you've ended up back with your first love, that deep desire to serve God and be yourself in a religious order, in a monastic community. How vital and necessary it was that you left the Xaverians forty years ago. And how vital and necessary it was to have experienced life in all its sweetness and splendor and pain. And how very vital it is that you have come to this day...the day of your solemn monastic profession.

Six years ago, on January 3, 2006, you submitted your spiritual autobiography as part of your process of applying to enter the Order of the Holy Cross. I know it is a confidential document, put permit me to quote a few sentences from your conclusion.

“After my time in the community [as an Oblate of Holy Cross Monastery], I have no illusions about what I am getting into. Even so, as messed up as our humanity can get, I have glimpsed the kingdom in those moments of care, love, humor, and support that erupt in community, often when least expected. As imperfect as we all are in our loving, we commit ourselves to keep at it, knowing that it is God's love that undergirds all our efforts, whether they succeed or fail. I want to spend the rest of my life being part of this venture.”

Rob, all of us gathered here today as well as those who know you and love you but can't be here today, want you to be part of that venture as well. Your brothers in the Order want it. Your family wants it. Your friends want it. Your former parishioners want it. William wants it. The children here want it. The Church wants it. And above all: God wants it. God wants you. God desires you. You and none other.

Let me quote one final time from the poet T. S. Eliot, since he says it so well:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we have started
And know the place for the first time.
….
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

So Rob...Shall we begin?

He did it!
Br. Rob celebrating his profession with good friend
and presider at the profession mass, The Rev. Janet Vincent,
rector of St Columba's, Washington, D

Initial Profession - Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, - 03 November 2006

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Scott Wesley Borden, OHC
Sermon preached at the Initial Profession of the Monastic Vow by
the Brother Bernard Jean Delcourt - Friday 03 November 2006


Not long ago I had the great privilege to be present in South Africa as a new building was dedicated at our monastery there. It was an occasion of great celebration and an expression of great optimism. It was a day in which God's love flowed over all who were there.

As great as that day was, in a deep sense it pales next to this day. Buildings are lovely... But people are more than lovely. People are Godly. The only point in a monastic building, however modest or magnificent, is that it a place where a community lives. Today is not about a place to live, it is about life itself.

Normally this is the time for reflection on how the scripture readings we heard help us encounter the good news of Jesus. But I want to reflect on the living word rather than the written word. How might we encounter the good news of Jesus through this profession?

In a few moments Bernard will sign his vow, a commitment for one year. That vow calls for stability, obedience, and conversion of his life to the monastic way of life. The vow is not about arriving in "monk-dom" - wherever that may be... Its about traveling. Bernard will be vowing to keep growing. At some future date, if and when Bernard takes the life vow, it will be just the same - a vow of conversion, a vow to keep growing, a vow never to arrive.

This creates a mixed message. Today is of great symbolic importance, but in a practical sense very little unusual happens today. It is a day when Bernard, and all of us, will take some steps forward (and perhaps some steps backward) in our conversion of life. Not just monastics, but all of us. It is a day, in other words, like any other.

For years now Bernard has been exploring a call to life in the Order of the Holy Cross. He has been coming to the realization that God calls forth from him gifts that mean this vow will give him life.
For Bernard there will be glorious days ahead... there will be painful days ahead... some boring days ahead... average days... The monastic life is not an insulated, sheltered, easy life. St Benedict uses the term "battle" to refer to this life. I don't find the term battle very helpful. Modern weaponry has turned the nature of battles into something far more horrible and perverse than Benedict could have imagined. There is truly nothing horrible about the monastic way of life. Though some days it can be a bit perverse...

But it is a struggle - a struggle that does not end. Jesus may describe that struggle best when he says "Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence." That's a big enough struggle... but there's more... "Love others as well as you love yourself." Obviously this is not a unique monastic struggle. Jesus addresses it to everyone. All faithful people struggle to answer this call. In slightly different terms we might describe it as the struggle to become whole - whole with God and whole with God's creation.

In the popular romantic imagination, monasticism is a path that involves giving up many things. It is a path of stony silence, hard beds, grim food, and general deprivation. But as is always the case, romantic notions and reality have little in common. As you look around Holy Cross Monastery, its hard to find too many signs of deprivation.

Monastic life is not about giving things up. Monastic life, believe it or not, is about falling in love - falling in love with God and falling in love with God's creation, especially God's children. In order to make space to do this we do give some things up. Falling in love always means some sacrifice, some giving up. When Bernard takes the vow he will be saying that yesterday he fell in love, today he is falling in love, and tomorrow, with God's help, he will fall in love even further. You see what a joyful vow this is.

There are two other key words in the vow: Stability and obedience. Without them the vow is empty.

Without stability love has no meaning. It is just a superficial and occasional illness from which you can easily recover (OK - sometimes the recovery is not so easy...). Unstable love is also known by names such as infatuation, obsession, romance, lust. It can be a great deal of fun, but it is shallow and cheap. It lasts while the weather is fine, but evaporates when the weather turns foul. Stability allows love to endure through sickness and health, through sorrow and joy, through good times and bad. Only with stability can love become whole. This is true for all of us.

Without obedience Bernard would not be here at all this day. God calls and Bernard is obedient in answering. Saint Irenaeus says "the glory of God is the human person fully alive." I think this is God's call to Bernard and to all of us: "find a way to become fully alive."

In faithful obedience Bernard is finding a way, a vowed way within a monastic community, to become fully alive. Its not the best way, or the most holy way, or the deepest way to wholeness. Its just the way some of us are called. The witness of the vow is to call all of us in the direction of God's boundless, gracious love.

With deepest gratitude we give humble thanks that we can be part of the way and share the struggle with Bernard. And we bless him on his journey.

Amen.