The Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 25, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Josep Martinez-Cubero

The Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 25, 2025

• Acts 16:9-15
• Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
• John 14:23-29

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” What exactly is this peace that Jesus gives?  We get a clue in Saint Paul’s letter to the Philippians, where he describes the peace of God as the peace that surpasses all understanding. 

For the last three weeks the lectionary has taken us back to some of Jesus’s teachings prior to his crucifixion and resurrection. The focus has been on how the disciples would live and witness to Jesus after Jesus was no longer with them in the flesh. The Lectionary is preparing us for the Feast of the Ascension, which is later this week, as well as the Day of Pentecost with the receiving of the Holy Spirit. Today’s Gospel passage comes from the Farewell Discourse of Jesus at the Last Supper, right before his betrayal, crucifixion and death. 

The words of the discourse are intended as encouragement, concluding with a solemn farewell bestowing peace on Jesus’ disciples. The Greek word for peace translates the Hebrew “shalom”.  “Shalom” is more than absence of conflict. It includes total well-being for people and for society. Shalom is characterized by wholeness, healing, abundance, concord, reconciliation, social harmony, and spiritual and physical health.  

In popular first century understanding, the messiah was to be a more or less political figure with great military ability. The messiah would be like King David, who ousted Israel's enemies and ushered in a Golden Age. Author and Professor of Religious Studies Wes Howard-Brook wrote:

“If the messiah was supposed to be a military ‘peacemaker’ like David and Solomon, then Jesus certainly failed in the mission. But Jesus' peace does not end war directly; rather, it allows one to live through it without succumbing to the temptation to live according to its own logic and necessities.”

The peace of Jesus, peace without violence, is peace "not as the world gives." It is a state of the soul which cannot be compared with anything else and it is to be understood as something that goes beyond feeling. Jesus tells his disciples to not let their hearts be troubled. When we think of the heart, we tend to think of emotions and feelings. But the heart hasn’t always been thought of as the source of feelings and emotions. 

In the 4th century BC, the Greek philosopher Aristotle identified the heart as the seat of intelligence. He had observed that the heart is the first organ formed in the embryo of chicken eggs, so he concluded that the heart must be vital for life itself and our ability to think. All the other organs simply existed to serve the heart. In Jesus’ day, the brain was viewed as the location of the soul. The heart was where thinking happened. It wasn’t until late in the 17th century that the seat of intelligence moved to our brains. Jesus says, “Do not let your hearts be troubled; don’t be fearful.” In other words, “Don’t let your mind be troubled, there is nothing to fear.” 

We are living in a time in history when humanity as a whole seems to be chronically anxious and reactive. It seems as if the whole world around us wants us to be afraid and to react with anxiety, and it often seems as if this logic of the world is winning. Fear makes us forget who we are and whose we are. When I am afraid, I tend to forget who I am. The person that I truly am, is not angry, or greedy, or violent. But given enough anxiety or fear, I will react angrily. If I am pushed beyond my comfort zone, I will become anxious. If I fear deprivation or destitution, I will become greedy. Threaten me or someone I love with violence, and I may become a monster. Fear makes us forget to think, and to breathe, and it reveals a weakened faith. 

In his book, Mystical Christianity- A Psychological Commentary on the Gospel of John, the late Jungian analyst and Episcopal priest John Sanford wrote: “As long as our consciousness is limited to the information brought us by our physical senses and by our limited ego-consciousness, we tend to live in anxiety for we feel alone and unaided and therefore not able to cope with life’s threats and problems. Jesus’ prescription for this anxiety is faith in him, which also means faith in the reality of another world ordinarily unseen by us.” 

Jesus taught a new way of being in the world. He understood himself to be intimately related to the very Source of his being, the one he called Abba, a Creator intimately connected with creation. “I and the Father are one”, he said. God dwells in our midst. If we breathe deeply and feel the rhythm of the One who breathes in us, we can begin to remember who we are. The peace we so long for in this world will only be realized when we find peace in ourselves. If our inner peace depends on what others are doing, or how safe we feel, or what’s happening in our country, or what’s happening in the world, we will never find peace. The reality is that this wonderful world has always been, throughout its history, crazy and violent. 

Being truly grounded in who we are helps us overcome our fears, and it also helps us to better respond to the fears of others. Fear is the true enemy of peace. Jesus knew this and repeatedly told his followers to not be afraid. Fear separates us from ourselves, from one another and from God. 

So, when anxiety and fear threaten to make you forget who you are, breathe because we live each day precisely to the extent that divine breath is in us (Genesis 6:3). Breathe in and feel the presence of the One “in whom we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28). Breathe in the peace that surpasses all understanding; the peace that keeps us calm and assertive so we can stand firm in the face of all the craziness we are seeing around us without being sucked into its trauma.

Breathe in the peace that moves us to be the people God made us to be- a people of love, even in the midst of evil, love: incarnate and tangible. Love is never the only answer, but it is always the best and the one most likely to withstand the test of time. It is the solution we remember when the question has been laid down and all quarrels have been put aside. Love is the beginning and should always be the final word. So breathe in the peace that Jesus gives, the shalom of God, alive with the Spirit, abundant, healthy and whole, and may we always strife to be who God made us to be, people of love. ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+  

The Fourth Sunday of Easter, May 11, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Robert Leo Sevensky, OHC

The Fourth Sunday of Easter, May 11, 2025

• Acts 9:36-43
• Revelation 7:9-17
• John 10:22-30

Click here for an audio of the sermon

I'm afraid I have three sermons to preach this morning, so I'll try to make them short.

First, today is Good Shepherd Sunday. Every year on the Fourth Sunday of Easter we hear one or another passage from John’s Gospel and the beautiful collect or prayer reminding us that Jesus is the Good Shepherd of God's people. Truthfully, however, I know little, if anything, about sheep or shepherds. I worked one summer on a dairy farm, but it turns out that cows are rather different than sheep. And many years ago, I spent several weeks in New Zealand where it is said that there are four million people and forty million sheep. That struck me as just about the right ratio. But beyond that I have nothing to say except that we all need to be guided and protected, and in Christ Jesus God is both that director and defender.

Second, today is Mother's Day…and I know a little bit more about mothers than I do about sheep or shepherds. In fact, we all know something about mothers and mothering and nurturing even if we are not mothers in the literal sense of the term. Some years ago, I was preaching on Mother's Day and the first lesson from the Acts of the Apostles was about the Ethiopian eunuch. Later that day I was talking to my sister and mentioned this and said how odd it was that we should have a reading about a eunuch on Mother's Day. She paused for a moment and then said: “He had a mother too.” We all have a mother, whether we knew her or not, whether she was a ‘good’ mother or not, whether we had her for only a few hours or for many decades. Some of us here today are in fact mothers, whether our offspring are living or departed this life. And we honor you today. Your mothering is an embodied symbol of the nurturing and sustaining love of God. It reminds us that God is as much mother as father, as Lady Julian of Norwich and others have taught us. So happy Mother's Day to you all who are mothers. And happy Mother's Day to those of us who are the offspring of a mother, which is all of us. However complex, we like that eunuch each had a mother, and we hold her now, living or departed, in our prayers.

My third sermon for this morning has to do with memory and memorization. Memory is a central feature of the spiritual life, at least as we have received it and practice it in the Western faith traditions. So much of the Jewish roots of our lineage revolve around  remembering a history, factual or somewhat fanciful, and passing on that memory to those who come after us. It is a memory of creation and of waywardness, of enslavement and deliverance, of folly and wisdom, of getting lost and of being found again and again. In our Christian message we are reminded and urged to remember who we are and whose we are, never forgetting the great love of God who has brought us, and continues to bring us, to newness of life. Our very act of worship here this morning in this Eucharist is summarized at the pivotal point of our liturgy when we hear once again the words of our Lord: Do this in memory of me. Do this as a remembrance. Do not forget. 

Memory is strange and complex and rarely straightforward. But it is necessary. It is one of our central faculties, as the medieval philosophers called it, one of the central capabilities that makes us human. Yes, we can distort our memories, we can even remember things that never happened, but this doesn't lessen the fact that memory is important. We know how tragic the loss of memory is to those afflicted with neurological disorders such as dementia. Perhaps it's not an accident that for decades it was the practice in this monastery for each brother, upon entering the Chapel in the morning, to kneel and pray the Suscipe,  a prayer that begins: "Take, O Lord, and receive my entire liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my whole will. All that I am and all that I have, Thou hast given me; and I now give it back to Thee, to be disposed of according to Thy good pleasure.”  Our memory, our understanding, our will-- along with our emotions and our entire embodied being—are great gifts of the Creator and need to be nurtured and guided and used.

And one of the ways that our memory can be nurtured is through memorization. In his book Why We Remember (NY: Random House, 2024) the neuroscientist Charan Ranganath makes the point that the mind is more than memorization. He says:  “The human brain  is not a memorization machine; it is a thinking machine.”  True. But memorization is one of the tools that can help us to think in the broadest sense of that term to enter deeply into realities both scientific and spiritual, and to use our whole brain and our whole person.

I am thinking of memorizing today because of the psalm appointed for today which is the 23rd Psalm. Many of you probably know it verbatim. Somewhere along the way I memorized it in the King James Version: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters; he restoreth my soul….” And because I have it memorized, it's available to me at a deep level which I can revisit and explore, as it were, new levels of meaning. There is a kind of muscular memory or embodied consciousness in memorized texts which reaches beyond reading or listening and beyond ordinary linear thinking or rationality. Perhaps it was for this reason, and not just because manuscripts were expensive and in short supply, that early monastics were expected to memorize at least the entire psalter, all 150 psalms. 

There has been something of a revival of memorization. My old friend Jay Parini, a scholar and author and expert on Robert Frost recently published a book titled Robert Frost. Sixteen Poems to Learn by Heart (Library of America, 2024). He notes:  “….memorization makes a poem part of our inner lives. Once committed to memory a poem is available to us for recall at any time--and the occasions for remembering it will make themselves known to us. It isn't something we have to work at.”  And last week the New York Times initiated a weeklong series of articles titled The Poetry Challenge which aimed to lead the reader into memorizing a poem by the early 20th century poet Edna Saint Vincent Mallay. I must confess I haven't had much success with memorizing either Robert Frost or the poem by Mallay, but I hasten to add that as an adolescent I did memorize a poem by her that began with these words: “Listen children, your father is dead.” I know that sounds grim, but it was an amazing poem. And it still lives in me. I’m sure every brother here can attest that the constant exposure to the Scriptures results eventually in a place where an image or phrase or passage from our sacred texts appears within us as if by magic and at just the right time. And as my friend Jay says, without our having to work at it. 

So my third sermon this morning is simply an invitation to you and to me to develop our memory through memorization. Yes, it can be a poem by Robert Frost or TS Eliot. It can be a Psalm or the Beatitudes or some other passage of Scripture. All of you already know some of them beginning with the Lord's Prayer. It can even be doggerel. In addition to memorizing Milton’s “On his Blindness” and Poe’s “The Raven” (parts of it now sadly lost) and several soliloquies from Shakespeare, I glory in and enjoy reciting a poem from Mad Magazine circa 1957 that began: ‘I think that I shall never hear a poem as lovely as a beer.”  I'll spare you the rest. See me later if you’d like to hear more.

“Remember your creator in the days of your youth,” says Ecclesiastes. “Do this in memory of me,” says our Lord. And above all, remember to call your mother today if she's still around. And, whether alive or departed, let's offer a prayer for her wherever she may be. Perhaps the Hail Mail? 

Amen. 

The Third Sunday of Easter, May 4, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, New York

Br. Robert James Magliula

The Third Sunday of Easter, May 4, 2025

• Acts 9:1-6, (7-20)
• Revelation 5:11-14
• John 21:1-19

John begins today’s gospel (John 21:1-19) by telling us that Jesus “showed himself in this way.” He sets the third appearance of Jesus to his disciples amidst ordinary circumstances. The disciples have returned to their old routines: the same boats, the same nets, the same water, the same work. John gives a lot of small, seemingly unnecessary and even strange details in which Jesus showed himself. I suspect we’ve all returned to the routine of our lives since Easter Day. Perhaps John is pointing us in the direction of where we might recognize resurrection in the small details and routine rhythms of everyday life. 

John tells us that they fished through the darkness, but their nets were empty. The darkness, however, was not just about the night. The darkness was also in the disciples. In the same way, the empty net is not only descriptive of their fishing nets, but also of the disciples themselves. They are as empty as their nets. We all know what it’s like to experience darkness and emptiness especially in the wake of loss. Those are the times when we come to the limits of our own self-sufficiency, with nothing to show for our efforts and nothing left to give. I suspect that Peter, whether he knew it or not, was fishing for answers more than fish, when he returned to his routine. All the others were quick to join him. We can leave the places and even the people of our life, but we can never escape ourselves or our life. Peter may have left Jerusalem, but he could not get away from three years of discipleship, the last supper, the arrest, the denials, the cross, the empty tomb, the house with locked doors. In the context of the failures, losses, and sorrows we have all struggled with the same questions as Peter, looking for some sense of understanding and meaning. When life gets difficult, when we become lost, confused, and afraid, when the changes of life are not what we wanted or think we deserve, we tend to run away. We try to go back to the way it was before, something safe and familiar. Often, we revert to old patterns of behavior and thinking. Even when we know better and do not want to go backwards it seems easier than moving forward. That’s when and where we can expect Jesus to show himself to us. Resurrection doesn’t happen apart from our life but in it. Resurrection is not about escaping life but about becoming alive.

Nets cannot be filled unless they are first emptied. In the same way we can never be filled with Jesus until we are first emptied of ourselves, until we come to recognize our limits. Emptiness is not the end or a failure but a beginning. The miracle begins when the nets are empty. That’s when Jesus, still unrecognized by the disciples, says, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” That’s not so much a question as it is a statement, naming their reality of emptiness.

As soon as Jesus is recognized by the beloved disciple who tells Peter, a naked Peter gets dressed and jumps in the water. Peter’s nakedness is a strange detail, telling us more than that Peter wasn’t wearing any clothes. In our stripped and naked state is when we are most available to respond to Jesus, Peter clothes himself in a hopeful urgency and rushes in toward Jesus. 

What places or circumstances of your life need to be clothed with urgent hope today? What new possibilities would be open to you? How do you need to enliven your outlook on life and the world? Whatever your answers might be they are the places in which Jesus is waiting to show himself to you. John offers us another detail which is important to remember. He says that Jesus is “only about a hundred yards away,” reminding us that wherever we find ourselves, he is always within reach.

When Peter went ashore and saw a charcoal fire, I wonder if he recalled the one where he warmed himself in the High Priest’s courtyard when he denied Jesus? Was he overcome again with regret as we often are with our guilt and betrayals. Whatever Peter might have been thinking or feeling was interrupted by Jesus saying, “Come and have breakfast.” Jesus invites and sustains us even in our guilt, regrets, and betrayals. 

Peter and Jesus then share a conversation about love, freedom, and moving forward. “Do you love me?” Jesus asks Peter, not once but three times. One question for each of Peter’s denials. Three times Peter gives the same answer, “Yes, Lord; you know that I love you.” I have no doubt that Jesus knew that Peter loved him, but I think that Peter needed to know that he loved Jesus. He needed to understand that he was not bound to his past. How many of us also need to hear and experience that again and again? With each question and answer Jesus drew Peter from his past and freed him to become himself and more fully alive. That’s what today’s gospel is about.

Jesus showed himself in the empty nets that were filled with 153 fish, darkness gave way to light, nakedness was clothed with hope, betrayal gave way to welcome, and three denials were forgiven with three affirmations of love. In resurrection we discover that we have a future. It’s a commitment to hope and being reborn. It’s a commitment to creativity, to the Spirit who “makes all things new” (Rev. 21:5). The resurrection event isn’t the end of the story but a new beginning. 

As with the other evangelists, John leaves the resurrection as a story to be continued with something left to do, something more to happen. It’s a call awaiting a response, insisting you and I give existence to more life, for ourselves and others. 

 To be resurrection for another we need to first be resurrection for ourselves by listening deeply, to the hopes, needs, and pain of our own lives and then act to create life for others.  We are the ones to continue the story of resurrection. That’s the way John describes it in today’s gospel with Jesus saying, “Follow me.”  +Amen