Proper 26 A - Oct 30, 2011

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY --- Br. James Michael Dowd, OHC
Proper 26, Year A - Sunday, October 30, 2011

Joshua 3:7-17 --- 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13 --- Matthew 23:1-12

On Humility

This morning's Gospel, among other things, is one of the great “monastic” passages in the Bible.  Jesus' call to humility is a theme that all of the most important monastic writers spent a good deal of time with from the earliest days of our tradition.

Chapter Seven of the Rule of Benedict is totally devoted to the idea of humility.  In it, our father Benedict teaches us that there are twelve steps of humility and begins the chapter with this quote from St. Luke, actually found twice in that Gospel, and also found in today's passage from St. Matthew: “All who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

In both Gospels (Luke and Matthew), Jesus tells different stories to communicate this essential truth.  In all cases, however, he is speaking about various aspects of Jewish culture and society in First century Palestine.  As I was reflecting on this morning's Gospel passage, I found myself pondering how this applied to the Rule of Benedict and to our lives here in the monastery as we live it today.

And it's in the introduction of Chapter Seven, entitled, by the way, “On Humility”, that I found some answers to these questions.  Benedict uses the image of Jacob's Ladder to set up his discussion regarding monastic humility.  He writes about the monk's body and soul as being the sides of the ladder and the divine summons being the various rungs of humility and discipline for the ascent.  The monk descends the ladder by being prideful and ascends the ladder by being humble. The higher you ascend that ladder, the closer to heaven you get.

Picture credit: Albert Houthuesen

Now this was a theme used by many of the Monastic and Church Fathers in the Sixth century and for several centuries before, but I think it might be hard for us to connect with in our own time.  The verse, however, in this section of the Rule that absolutely grabs me, and that has real repercussions in my life is this: “When the heart is humble, God raises it up to heaven.”

Brendan Freeman is the Abbot of New Melleray, a Trappist Abbey in Iowa. Recently he released a book collecting some of his homilies and Chapter Talks and in one section he reflects on this theme of the heart.  Allow me to quote to you a passage:

Formation in the monastic life is formation of the heart.  Once we have found our hearts, we move from the effort of prayer, the work of prayer, from strenuous prayer to self-acting prayer.  The heart has two meanings.  It is the center of our being and the point of meeting between each of us and God.  Two do not exist in this place, but only One.  Our prayer becomes Christ's prayer.

Abbot Brendan's phrase “once we have found our hearts” is so moving to me.  It seems to me that Christian formation – be that monastic or non-monastic – is about finding our hearts.  If we are one with God in that place, in our hearts, then that is where the spiritual journey must, by definition, lead us.  And Benedict teaches us that when the heart is humble, God raises it up to heaven, that is, to Himself.

So, what does it mean to be humble?  To have a humble heart?  Well, in the Carmelite tradition, St. Teresa of Avila teaches us from the 16th century:

I was once pondering why it is that our Beloved is so fond of the virtue of humility.  Without it ever having occurred to me before, this thought suddenly came to me: It's because God is supreme truth.  To be humble is to walk in truth.

Now Benedict and Teresa and virtually every other monastic writer up until the second half of the Twentieth century often wrote about how wretched and awful we all are.  But if being humble is to walk in truth, then we must have a full understanding of who we really are in the context of an eternal life which already began for us at our conception.  And so, yes, we must know, for example, those areas in which we are weak, damaged, sinful, fearful and lacking faith.  But to walk in truth is also to know those areas in which we are good, holy, whole, trusting, loving, and charitable.

If we are truthful with ourselves, we know that many, if not all of those things I just listed are true about ourselves.  God already knows the truth about us.  He knows that truth because he created us in his own image and likeness and longs for us to know him as our Father.  Our journey is to discover that truth so that we can move closer to becoming one with God.  So that two no longer exist in our hearts, but only One.

For us, in the Twenty-First century, “the truth” has become reduced in some circles to simply a psychological understanding of ourselves.  And the psychological understanding of the human mind is a great gift that God has revealed to us over the course of the last hundred years or so.  But it is only part of the the truth - seeking that we are called to do.  In fact, knowing ourselves and reflecting on our own psyches, environment, families, social, political and economic situations can teach us a great deal about ourselves.

But the bottom line is that all of that information is only that: information.  To be a Christian in formation is to be a Christian in prayer.  To be a Christian in prayer means not that we are exalted, but that we have willingly humbled ourselves in truth, so that Christ can unite us with himself as he prays within us.  It is Christ's praying within us that brings us to the heights of exaltation, to heaven, to God our Father.

The Christian never arrives at The Truth. Rather, the Christian journeys within a context of truth, learning more and more about themselves and in the process about God. The Church, representing the entire Christian community makes this same journey of truth on a communal basis. That truth is revealed in prayer. A prayer of  the heart. A prayer of Christ's heart.

The goal of prayer is to help us to arrive at a place of silence. There are certainly many different prayer techniques and different techniques are appropriate for different people. But the goal is all the same: silence.

God leads us, as he led Joshua into the Promised Land. On the banks of the River Jordan, he and all the people ritually prepared themselves so that they could enter the Promised Land thus exalting their people. Our way to the Promised Land is the silent way.  Silence is a way of being that places us in right relationship with God. It is a knowledge that in our silence before God, we are exalted because only then are we able to hear Christ praying within us. Uniting with us in an eternal love that carries us up that ladder to heaven, to God who is our Father.

AMEN.

Votive for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Holy Cross Priory, Toronto, Ontario
Br. Robert Sevensky, OHC Superior
Saturday, October 29, 2011
Votive Mass of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross

This morning at Matins we remembered the life and witness of Bp. James Hannington and his companions who were martyred for their Christian faith in 1885 in what is now Uganda.

 James Hannington

As is often the case, the situation there was complex.  Colonial powers (English, French, others) were moving into the country and the young kabaka or king, Mwanga, was alarmed.  He feared that the new religion these Christian missionaries were introducing would bring down the wrath of the ancestors.  He feared a rapidly changing social order.  He feared the elimination of his royal powers and privileges.  And so he responded with violence.  He ordered the bishop and his party killed. The next year he had many of his own pages tortured and burned alive for their faith because they would not or could not conform to ancient tribal customs.  Still others were eliminated.  Mwanga, the king, was between 16 and 18 years old when all of this took place. 

Mwanga was in no sense an innocent.  But neither was he a monster.  He was someone caught up in a political and social upheaval whose response, driven by fear, was both immoral and ineffective, but not, unfortunately, surprising.  He did, by the way, go on to lead several insurrections against the British and late in his life converted to the Anglican faith.

As we do on feasts of martyrs, we began this morning’s service with the invitatory, setting the theme for the feast.  It was: "Christ calls the faithful to embrace his cross. Come let us adore him."
I have said these words regularly for over 25 years.  But this morning I was struck by the ambiguity of the invitation.  Exactly whose cross are we being invited to embrace?  Christ’s... or our own?

The answer, of course, is both... always both.  And in saying this we come up against the mystery of suffering.  For in all genuine suffering — whether we recognize it or not — the thin membrane or veil or curtain between Christ’s life and our own is pierced, pulled aside, or, in the words of scripture, torn from top to bottom.  The one cross — Christ’s — is certainly not the same as the other — yours or mine.  But in the wonderful economy of God, they each illuminate the other, concretize and enflesh and give meaning to the other.

This was true for Bp. Hannington and his companions in 1885 when in the midst of the complex marriage of British colonialism and Christian evangelism he saw the image of the cross of Jesus shining through.

The bishop’s last words:  "Go tell  Mwanga that I have purchased a road into Uganda by my blood" are a ringing testament to the Christian hope, that out of death, and paradoxically through death, comes life, new life, larger life. 

This was true for those Ugandan martyrs the following year.  Though they may not have been able to express it as eloquently as did the bishop, but they knew that they had been called to a greater loyalty, to a greater king, one whose claims trump the demands and desires of a frightened young tribal chieftain, indeed of any human monarch or ruler or power

This was true for Archbishop Janani Luwum who in 1975 went to his death in Uganda as a witness to justice and Christian charity in opposition to the mad dictator, Idi Amin.
And it is true for us here today.

Of course we pray that we may be spared.  And like Jesus, we neither desire nor intend nor orchestrate our own sufferings.  To do so would be madness.  But like Jesus and like the martyrs, we embrace the sufferings that are sent us when they cannot be averted.  We freely say: Yes.  We even, dare we say it, embrace them.

"Christ calls the faithful to embrace his cross."

Our own crosses take many shapes, many forms:  physical or emotional suffering, diminishment, betrayal, limitation, failure, and ultimately death.  But the cross of Jesus has power to illumine and suffuse with meaning and hope these dark corners.

It is important to remind ourselves that we don’t have to like our crosses.  But to embrace, to say yes, is to acknowledge and consent to a wholly other order.  It is to confess to ourselves and sometimes to others and occasionally even to the world that yes, even here, God is not absent.  It is to confess that even here — perhaps especially here — God can be found.  Even here, in sharing with Jesus the often painful predicament that is the human condition, we are not abandoned or left alone. 

Our morning worship climaxes with the recitation of the Benedictus, the Canticle of Zachariah.   Its antiphon for the feast of martyrs includes the following words of encouragement:  “These are the ones who have come safely through the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.”

The cross of Jesus that we celebrate today is the source and symbol of that wondrous cleansing.  It is, in all its scandal, a promise that suffering and death do not have the final word.  The final word for Jesus, for the martyrs and for us is always: Life.  Life into death.  Life through death.  Life beyond death.

At our midday service today we prayed:  “Happy are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb.”   This Eucharistic meal is not yet that supper in its all its fullness... but it is a foretaste.  Let us feast together now, confident that what we share here will strengthen us and lead to embrace, to consent, to say yes, to the cross and to life.

“Christ calls the faithful to embrace his cross.  Come let us adore him.”

Proper 25 A - Oct 23, 2011

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY --- Br. Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC
Proper 25A – Sunday, October 23, 2011

Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18 --- 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8 --- Matthew 22:34-46


Matthew situates today's gospel passage at the beginning of Jesus' last week.  Only yesterday, Jesus made a triumphal entry into Jerusalem, seated on a donkey, treading palms and coats thrown on the ground.

In only four days, Jesus will die the infamous death of a crucified.  At this stage, the spring is still being wound up that will burst into tragedy before the Passover even begins.

It is Monday.  Jesus is teaching.  And several religious factions seek to challenge him into dishonor.  He will win every challenge.  And we can imagine that this only heightened his opponents' desire to do away with him.

*****

Last Sunday's Gospel reminded us of the Pharisees' challenge to Jesus about paying taxes to the Empire.  The lection of today alludes to a second challenge; this time, from the Sadducees, and about the resurrection of the dead.

Today's third challenge seems mild in comparison.  Maybe it is even a genuine question, not a trap.  Maybe a Pharisaic opponent was so allured by Jesus' masterful response to the two earlier challenges that he just had to ask a most important question to Jesus.  Maybe.

The Greek text of that question could be rendered into "Teacher, what sort of commandment is of great import?"  This would have been a critical question for a Pharisee.

They were religious practitioners who tried to obey every commandment in the Torah.  That’s no less than 613 commandments (248 positive injunctions and 365 prohibitions, to be exact).  Many would have entered into discussions as to which commandments were the heaviest and which were lighter.

*****

Jesus answers this last challenge succinctly and with authority.  He quotes scripture.  He puts a hierarchy in his answer.

"`You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.'
This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'
On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."

The first part of Jesus' answer is a quote from Deuteronomy (6:5).  It is said by our Jewish brethren as part of their most cherished prayer, the Shema.

The second part of Jesus' answer is a quote from Leviticus (19:18).  We read that passage this morning.

I shall come back to these commandments, if only too briefly -- for all of our religion should flow from their combination.

*****

The second pericope in today's gospel reading seems puzzling to modern readers.  This part about David and Messiah.  I believe that it is an integral part of Jesus' response to the three challenges that Matthew has described in this chapter of the gospel.

These challenges all attempt to strip Jesus of any authority to teach.  Their sequence shows all the worry that Jesus' opponents feel.  They don't want anyone to get any ideas that this young rabbi might be the Anointed One of God, the Messiah.  He doesn't fit their bill, therefore he can't be genuine in their minds.

But in Jesus' rhetorical question to his challengers, he introduces the idea that a Davidic ancestry is irrelevant in identifying the Messiah.  Once more with scripture at the ready (this time Psalm 100:1 allegedly composed by David himself), Jesus undermines the Messianic expectations of his challengers.

Jesus continues to drive home to them that the Messiah is so much more and so different than the Messiah they have neatly boxed for their political and religious convenience.

So, Jesus crushes verbally three onslaughts from his opponents and, having demonstrated his natural authority, he crushes their preconceptions of the Messiah.

How many of his hearers did have a conversion experience that day and understood Him to be Messiah?  Not enough to stop the dynamic that would put him on a cross by week's end.

*****

Now back to the two commandments that the Messiah teaches us are of greatest import.  In these two commandments, Jesus gives us a summary of his mission and ministry.  The two commandments interpret one another and the two need to stand together.

In a more hebraic rendering from the Greek text, they read:

"`You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your being, and with all your intelligence.'
This is the greatest and first of the mitzvoth. And a second is like it:
You shall love your companion as yourself.'
On these two orders hang all of Torah and the inspired ones."

The aim of our life is orient all of our being and all of our existence towards God.  In so doing, we are to love as God loves.

*****

And what does God love?  God loves all of creation, with no exception.  We are to love all that God loves.

Now, all is all.  We are not allowed to exclude anything or anyone, not even our enemies.  As Matthew reports Jesus saying earlier in his gospel: "God makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous."

We are even to love God's sun and God's rain.  We are to keep no part of creation out of our love and concern.  It all hangs together in the loving hands of the Creator, we are not to consider any of it as disposable or beyond our care.

*****

We are to love as God loves - without discrimination.  We are to love what God loves - everything.  Because God is the source of all Being and God loves all of God's creatures.

By the way, love of self is included in all this but it is not emphasized; rather it is assumed it should be there.  Self-hate is not like God’s Love.  Self-absorption is not like God’s Love.  But I am deeply lovable and loved and so are you.

So, we are to love like God; we are to love everything, everyone and indiscriminately.  This is a big God.  This is a big Love.  We are going to need to keep stretching.  But it is better than to stick around within the box where we'd like to keep a God more to our proportions, one who loves as I love, one who loves what I love.

As W. Paul Young, author of "The Shack" once wrote: " The only reason that God is ever in a box is because God wants to be where you are."

Step out of your box, Love the God who awaits you there and let your Love expand divinely.

Amen.