Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Lary Pearce, OHC
RCL - Proper 27 B - Sunday 08 November 2009
1 Kings 17:8-16
Hebrews 9:24-28
Mark 12:38-44
The Transformation of the Widow's Mite
Today’s readings provide us with interesting ideas about the possibility of doing God’s will. In the Old Testament Lesson a great prophet assures a seemingly powerless woman that she too can be an instrument of God’s will. In the Gospel Jesus says that in the eyes of God the poor widow who gives her all for God’s glory does more than the rich man who gives to build up his own reputation. The epistle teaches that Christ himself intercedes in heaven for the honest giver.
Here Elijah is God’s messenger who assures the destitute widow of God’s providence. Elijah assures the widow with whom he wishes to stay that if she takes him in even though there is a major famine in progress, her jar of meal would not be consumed and her jug of oil would not be emptied until the day when the lord sent rain and fresh crops. What was required was that she trust in providence of God to fulfill her needs. She trusted and her supplies did not run out. This reminds me of the miracle of the loaves and fishes which fed the 5,000.
Christ has entered into a sanctuary not made by human hands to appear before the presence of God on our behalf. God himself enters into eternity to plead for us. Paul assures believers that things will be all right in eternity; his assurance does not extend to this world. The emphasis here is on the necessity of trust in God.
When Jesus encountered the poor widow who contributed her “mite” there was a big fund raising campaign underway. The king, Herod the Great started constructed of a new temple probably in 19 B.C. Construction was still underway in 33 A.D. Herod the Great was the author of the plan to replace the second temple which had been built 500 years earlier after the return from the Babylonian captivity. Herod, under Roman control, was a rich and powerful client king who ruled over much of the eastern Mediterranean. Powerful as he was, he was dependent on Rome. He was a paranoid ruler, willing to do anything rather than be assassinated. He even had his own son executed. One Roman wit said that he would rather be Herod’s pig than his son. Because Herod probably wouldn’t eat pork, the pig was less likely to be killed than his son. Herod the Great died in 4 B.C.; his death was particularly disgusting referred to guardedly as “Herod’s Evil.” His son Herod Antipas was still at work on the temple in Jesus time.
The widow poor as she was wanted to do what she could for the glory of God. Unlike the wealthy and powerful she gave everything she had to live on. Her gift was of greater merit than those of people wealthier than she. She gave everything; the wealthy gave only part. In God’s eyes her gift was of infinite value and contributed the building up of the Kingdom of God. The gifts of the wealthy and powerful contributed to the building up the earthly kingdom and, though good in themselves, were of finite value and would eventually perish. In fact Herod’s new temple was completely destroyed in 70 A.D. when the Romans suppressed the First Jewish Revolt. It didn’t last long.
When I think of the dichotomy between the early temple and the heavenly temple, I think of Mt. Calvary, the Order’s beautiful monastery in Santa Barbara. The building and its location were a place that was of almost other worldly beauty. Many holy things happened there and there were many holy people there. One of those holy people was Fr. Joseph Parsell, who spent most of his life as a monk and a missionary in Liberia. I believe he gave his all and I know absolutely that to his last breath he died loving Liberia and the Liberians. The Ghanaians affectionately called him “Fr. Buffy. He died in Santa Barbara. There was a wonderful memorial service for him at Mt. Calvary. Bishop Edward Neuville, then Bishop of Liberia, preached at the service. It was a holy event and commemorated a holy life of eternal value.
Mt. Calvary Monastery was a beautiful place where many holy things happened. When I think of the fire that completely destroyed it about a year ago, I still grieve. However, I trust in God’s mercy, and with Julian of Norwich I believe that on the last day God will work a great wonder, and “All will be well.”
Monday, November 9, 2009
Homily for Br. Bernard's Life Profession - 04 Nov 2009
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Sr. Hildegard Magdalen Pleva, OSsR
Profession of the Life Vow by Brother Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC
Wednesday 04 November 2009
Romans 8: 18-27
Luke 11:9-13
The early twentieth century British writer W. Somerset Maugham was a keen observer of human behavior. He was particularly astute concerning motivations of the mystical kind.
Paul did not know that his dual identity as an educated Greek-speaking Jew and citizen of Rome uniquely suited him to God’s purpose in the plan of salvation. Bernard did not know that the longing in his heart would best be satisfied not in the canyons of Wall Street but in the monastic cloister.
Our reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans spoke of “eager longing”, that desire of the heart to see the face of God. It is possible for the world to provide a trysting place for that desire. But the trick is to find the place, to find what Marist Brother Don Bisson describes as the best container for next stage of the journey to God, fertile ground for the process to which we are drawn, to find the home we long for but do not know.
Bernard has found that “place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.” To live out of that longing, to live out of the desire for God, demands the virtue of hope. All creation groans in its steadfast clinging to the hope of salvation in our brother, Jesus Christ.
In a few minutes, after Bernard consecrates himself to the vows of stability, conversion to the ways of monastic life, and obedience to that life, we will hear an ancient and plaintive plea. It is a prayer rooted in Paul’s expression of longing and hope. “I have done what you asked, according to your promise, do not disappoint me in my hope.” How do we sustain such hope, hope in what cannot be seen?
In James Otis Sargent Huntington’s first rule for the Order of the Holy Cross, all the details of the rule are arranged according to three over-arching principles of monastic life: prayer, mortification and good works. Prayer, the first principle, makes all that follows possible. Prayer sustains our hope. Paul sees it this way too but he knows his failures in courage and assumes that we will have ours. So he consoles himself and us. “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.”
The occasion of Bernard’s Life Profession, his solemn promise to follow the monk’s path of interior silence and solitude lived in community; his promise to make himself available for conversion of heart and generosity in service; that promise is made public today. In its wisdom, the Church makes it public so that the promise is known to us. In this way his promise becomes a mirror for our promises, every promise represented here; fidelity in marriage and relationship, dedication to nurturing children, the promises of the sacrament of ordination, perseverance in religious vows, faithfulness in honoring the true self, the mundane obligations of earning a living, or the duties of citizenship and service.
Neither our friend’s pledge here at this altar nor the ones we have made are easy to keep. “But the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.”
And Jesus, our Savior, whose promise is the source of Bernard’s hope today – our Jesus assures – “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” Oh, blessed assurance.
And before all things, the monk is a person of prayer – a praying presence before the throne of God. One who, in the words of Thomas Merton, is “like the trees which exist silently in the dark and by their vital presence purify the air.” (2)
Many today question the need for any life long promises. They find the promise of religious vows particularly confounding. They do not appreciate the transformation and the joyful liberation made possible by the promise and its fulfillment. Such freedom is what St. Paul described as “the liberty of the children of God.”
In that spirit of freedom, grounded in the love of Jesus - grounded in the Paschal Mystery of his life, death and resurrection - in that freedom, our friend, our brother Bernard, makes his pledge today.
Inspired by that love and with confidence in God’s Word, let us revisit our own promises. With Bernard, let us enter into our deepest longing. Let us recommit to the journey on our way to a home we have not seen, trusting that the Holy Spirit will be our guide.
Today we can pray with the poet T.S. Eliot:
Footnotes
(1) W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Six Pence
(2) Merton, Thomas, Basic Principles of Monastic Spirituality
(3) Eliot, T.S., “Little Gidding” in Four Quartets
Sr. Hildegard Magdalen Pleva, OSsR
Profession of the Life Vow by Brother Bernard Jean Delcourt, OHC
Wednesday 04 November 2009
Romans 8: 18-27
Luke 11:9-13
The early twentieth century British writer W. Somerset Maugham was a keen observer of human behavior. He was particularly astute concerning motivations of the mystical kind.
I have an idea, [he said,] that some men are born out of their due place…they have always a nostalgia for a home they know not…this sense sends men far and wide in search of something permanent…sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs. (1)The great St. Paul and my friend Bernard seem to me to have had that nostalgia, that longing, for a place they knew not. Each began life with a sure desire for God. Each followed life’s circuitous and astonishing path – an exploration of longing and discovery – to an end surprising and yet familiar.
Paul did not know that his dual identity as an educated Greek-speaking Jew and citizen of Rome uniquely suited him to God’s purpose in the plan of salvation. Bernard did not know that the longing in his heart would best be satisfied not in the canyons of Wall Street but in the monastic cloister.
Our reading from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans spoke of “eager longing”, that desire of the heart to see the face of God. It is possible for the world to provide a trysting place for that desire. But the trick is to find the place, to find what Marist Brother Don Bisson describes as the best container for next stage of the journey to God, fertile ground for the process to which we are drawn, to find the home we long for but do not know.
Bernard has found that “place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs.” To live out of that longing, to live out of the desire for God, demands the virtue of hope. All creation groans in its steadfast clinging to the hope of salvation in our brother, Jesus Christ.
In a few minutes, after Bernard consecrates himself to the vows of stability, conversion to the ways of monastic life, and obedience to that life, we will hear an ancient and plaintive plea. It is a prayer rooted in Paul’s expression of longing and hope. “I have done what you asked, according to your promise, do not disappoint me in my hope.” How do we sustain such hope, hope in what cannot be seen?
In James Otis Sargent Huntington’s first rule for the Order of the Holy Cross, all the details of the rule are arranged according to three over-arching principles of monastic life: prayer, mortification and good works. Prayer, the first principle, makes all that follows possible. Prayer sustains our hope. Paul sees it this way too but he knows his failures in courage and assumes that we will have ours. So he consoles himself and us. “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.”
The occasion of Bernard’s Life Profession, his solemn promise to follow the monk’s path of interior silence and solitude lived in community; his promise to make himself available for conversion of heart and generosity in service; that promise is made public today. In its wisdom, the Church makes it public so that the promise is known to us. In this way his promise becomes a mirror for our promises, every promise represented here; fidelity in marriage and relationship, dedication to nurturing children, the promises of the sacrament of ordination, perseverance in religious vows, faithfulness in honoring the true self, the mundane obligations of earning a living, or the duties of citizenship and service.
Neither our friend’s pledge here at this altar nor the ones we have made are easy to keep. “But the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words.”
And Jesus, our Savior, whose promise is the source of Bernard’s hope today – our Jesus assures – “Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.” Oh, blessed assurance.
And before all things, the monk is a person of prayer – a praying presence before the throne of God. One who, in the words of Thomas Merton, is “like the trees which exist silently in the dark and by their vital presence purify the air.” (2)
Many today question the need for any life long promises. They find the promise of religious vows particularly confounding. They do not appreciate the transformation and the joyful liberation made possible by the promise and its fulfillment. Such freedom is what St. Paul described as “the liberty of the children of God.”
In that spirit of freedom, grounded in the love of Jesus - grounded in the Paschal Mystery of his life, death and resurrection - in that freedom, our friend, our brother Bernard, makes his pledge today.
Inspired by that love and with confidence in God’s Word, let us revisit our own promises. With Bernard, let us enter into our deepest longing. Let us recommit to the journey on our way to a home we have not seen, trusting that the Holy Spirit will be our guide.
Today we can pray with the poet T.S. Eliot:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning; ……..
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 fire and the rose are one. (3)
Footnotes
(1) W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Six Pence
(2) Merton, Thomas, Basic Principles of Monastic Spirituality
(3) Eliot, T.S., “Little Gidding” in Four Quartets
Sunday, November 1, 2009
RCL - All Saints - 01 Nov 2009
Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Adam McCoy, OHC
RCL - All Saints - Sunday 01 November 2009
Isaiah 25:6-9
Revelation 21:1-6a
John 11:32-44
We are here this morning to praise the saints, and so, as I speak this morning, I want each of you to think of a saint you have personally known – a holy person who touched your life, who helped you in your journey of faith, or who challenged you, or who opened up something new to you. Someone whose life brought you closer to God. In doing so, I want us to recognize something wonderful – that there are so many saints, so many, many saints. Who can count them?
But we can try. Yesterday I googled the question, How many saints are there? At the top of the pile of possible responses something called wikiAnswers gave two possibilities: for Protestants, everyone who receives Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour becomes a saint. This concept has the advantage of being based in scripture, where by one count there are between 40 and 50 uses of the word “saint” for “member of the church”. “To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,” says St. Paul at the beginning of the Letter to the Romans. Such a large number! Who can count them?
For Roman Catholics, there are apparently some 10,000 saints recognized by name, which is a suspiciously round number, encouraging me to think that our wikiAnswerers haven’t counted one by one, but have a process analogous to the crowd counting in our nation’s capitol when there is a march or demonstration, in which the number reported seems to depend on your point of view. But let’s take the 10,000 as a starter. That’s just the named saints. Think of all the saints whose names we don’t know, beginning with the baby boys of Bethlehem, slaughtered by Herod because they were in the same age cohort as Jesus. It’s often that way with martyrs – they’re in the way of power, and so they’re mowed down like the grass of the field – not only do we not know their names, we don’t even know how many there were. Such a large number! Who can count them?
In our worship here at the Monastery there are so many saints we have to lump them into categories: apostles and evangelists, patristic martyrs, martyrs, doctors of the church, missionaries, monastics, teachers, pastors, confessors. The Blessed Virgin Mary gets her own category. And that doesn’t include Israel’s holy patriarchs, prophets, priests and kings, its matrons and mothers and women of war, our ancestors in the faith. Not every saint fits easily into these categories, but quite a lot do. The point is, there are so many that we can’t deal with each one individually, but we have to perform a sort of spiritual taxonomy to accommodate them, like lepidopterists with butterflies. Such a large number! Who can count them?
The saints can also provide a lens through which to view the history of the Church. St. Paul and the other writers of Epistles expected that people called into the Fellowship of Jesus Christ would be saints. This is an attractive notion, but over time it proved to have its problems as an adequate description of Church membership. In the succeeding age the dominant type of saint is the confessing martyr, the believer who suffers for his faith, of whom Stephen in Acts is the proto-martyr. As Christianity assumed power, saintly action moved from the martyrdom of blood to the martyrdom of askesis, to the desert fathers and mothers, to Anthony and Pachomius in Egypt; to the study, to brilliant theologians like Basil and Gregory Nazianzen and Augustine; to church leaders like Pope Leo the Great and preachers like John Chrysostom; and even to politicians, like Constantine himself. As the Roman empire disintegrated, at least in the West, and society became less sophisticated, a new kind of saint arose, the fearless missionary wielding God’s power, like Martin of Tours, and in the East the ascetic channeling divine power for the people, like Simeon Stylites. As the Middle Ages progressed, so did the need for saintly power, to the point that no church was complete without a saint present in bodily form, offering access to the throne of grace to every ordinary needy person who came and prayed and wanted to change. Monks and mystics, scholars and the very simple, royals and peasants, famous church leaders and the nameless faithful, they are all there. Such a large number! Who can count them?
And with the Reformation and the beginning of the modern world, a new kind of saint: the person made holy by opposition to the Church itself, the follower of truth for the sake of the Gospel as that saint understood it, the Protestants first, and then the Catholics, speaking truth to power: William Tyndale the translator of the Bible and Thomas More, the upholder of papal power, both of them speaking the truth to Henry VIII. We can still hear the screams from England’s martyr fires and from the autos da fe of the Inquisition, we can still see the blood running in the streets of Paris in the St. Bartholomew Day Massacre, we can still smell the reek of gunpowder, destruction, famine and death from the Thirty Years War which destroyed as much as 30% of the populations of Central Europe in the name of the Faith. So many lost for faith. Such a large number! Who can count them?
And in our own day: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Janani Luwum, Martin Luther King, to name only the most famous. Such a large number! Who can count them?
There is so much holiness. The famous, public holiness of the martyrs, the holiness of blood, but also the quieter holiness of dedication to the welfare of others, the holiness of those who choose their work to benefit the rest of us. And the quietest of all, those who choose the path of love rather than the path of self, for whom philia replaces eros, and for whom then agape replaces philia, working selflessly with little reward or regard, grandmothers, teachers, friends of the destitute and the lost and the lonely and the innocent and the ignorant and the irresponsible, who stand like beacons of light in a world that seems to be not very friendly to its children. Think of the saints I asked you to find in your own life. Our own encounters with holiness show us another way, a better way, a possibility that the world is different than we thought, that the world is in fact God’s world, shot through with rays of love and hope and joy. Such a large number! Who can count them?
I have spent so much time enumerating saints – and I’ve left quite a lot of them out – because I want us to consider that as Christians we are called to a different reality. The “world” is always presenting itself to us as a problem. It wants us to believe that life is a problem to be solved. Most of us here today are from New York. Is anything ever good enough for New Yorkers? Of course not. Life is problems. If they can be solved, there will be more problems to be solved, and then more problems, and then more problems. The multi-headed hydra should be our mascot: solve one problem and nine others spring up in its place. Problems without end. Or so we are told.
But the way of faith – the way of the saints – presents a different reality: a world infused with God’s inbreaking love and undefeatable goodness, a goodness which never stops calling out for witnesses, which never stops recruiting collaborators. Who could have imagined how much holiness the revelation of God to his people would let loose in the world? Who could imagine the millions of lives that are entry portals for the love of God into the world? Who would have thought the transcendent holiness of God could be found in the murky depths of the last days of Nazi Germany, or in a car on a dusty rural road in Uganda, or in an inexpensive motel in Memphis? And yet the bright light of God shone there. And where else might it shine? For in truth, God’s goodness in the world is not limited by the capacity of the Christian community to express it.
I want to suggest that a large part of our work as Christians is to learn to see the signs of sanctity. We need to develop an eye for saints, as the botanist develops an eye for plants. I remember driving upcountry in Liberia from Monrovia to Bolahun years ago with Brother Laurence. The vegetation on either side of the road was just green to me. It didn’t seem much like the African jungle of my imagination, and I was disappointed. I was looking for Tarzan, I suppose. Or an elephant, at least. But then Laurence started to show me, like the science teacher he was, which trees were the rubber trees, and what that meant in the economy of Liberia, and my eyes were opened.
We have to be trained to see. And once we are, our consciousness is changed. Too often we accept the “world’s” terms and see mainly problems, which are so great that we are overwhelmed. But truly those problems are only part of the reality of God’s world. What if we change our focus and train ourselves also to see holiness, also to see joy, also to see generosity? Who in the circle of our friends is being kind, right now? Who is bearing a burden they don’t have to bear? Who is giving so that another may have? That is holiness. Train ourselves to see. Who in our community is working harder? Who is giving sacrificially? Who is quietly going about their daily work with integrity and skill when they could more easily slack off? We can all see the great heroes of holiness. We need to learn to see the holiness around us now. The Holy Spirit is at work. Let us train our eyes to see.
And when we do, the world is different. Instead of the grey place of problems, it is the field of God’s love, filled in unexpected ways with the love and power and joy and light and life of God. The world is alive with holiness. It breathes holiness. Its life is God’s holiness in the lives of His people. Is there any more unexpected place to find God than on a cross? Then why should we be surprised to find God around the corner, down the street, in this very room? Look around you. The Holy Spirit is here, at work, now, this instant.
I cannot put it better than that great prophetic sonnet of Gerard Manley Hopkins (God's Grandeur - poem from 1918):
Br. Adam McCoy, OHC
RCL - All Saints - Sunday 01 November 2009
Isaiah 25:6-9
Revelation 21:1-6a
John 11:32-44
We are here this morning to praise the saints, and so, as I speak this morning, I want each of you to think of a saint you have personally known – a holy person who touched your life, who helped you in your journey of faith, or who challenged you, or who opened up something new to you. Someone whose life brought you closer to God. In doing so, I want us to recognize something wonderful – that there are so many saints, so many, many saints. Who can count them?
But we can try. Yesterday I googled the question, How many saints are there? At the top of the pile of possible responses something called wikiAnswers gave two possibilities: for Protestants, everyone who receives Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour becomes a saint. This concept has the advantage of being based in scripture, where by one count there are between 40 and 50 uses of the word “saint” for “member of the church”. “To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,” says St. Paul at the beginning of the Letter to the Romans. Such a large number! Who can count them?
For Roman Catholics, there are apparently some 10,000 saints recognized by name, which is a suspiciously round number, encouraging me to think that our wikiAnswerers haven’t counted one by one, but have a process analogous to the crowd counting in our nation’s capitol when there is a march or demonstration, in which the number reported seems to depend on your point of view. But let’s take the 10,000 as a starter. That’s just the named saints. Think of all the saints whose names we don’t know, beginning with the baby boys of Bethlehem, slaughtered by Herod because they were in the same age cohort as Jesus. It’s often that way with martyrs – they’re in the way of power, and so they’re mowed down like the grass of the field – not only do we not know their names, we don’t even know how many there were. Such a large number! Who can count them?
In our worship here at the Monastery there are so many saints we have to lump them into categories: apostles and evangelists, patristic martyrs, martyrs, doctors of the church, missionaries, monastics, teachers, pastors, confessors. The Blessed Virgin Mary gets her own category. And that doesn’t include Israel’s holy patriarchs, prophets, priests and kings, its matrons and mothers and women of war, our ancestors in the faith. Not every saint fits easily into these categories, but quite a lot do. The point is, there are so many that we can’t deal with each one individually, but we have to perform a sort of spiritual taxonomy to accommodate them, like lepidopterists with butterflies. Such a large number! Who can count them?
The saints can also provide a lens through which to view the history of the Church. St. Paul and the other writers of Epistles expected that people called into the Fellowship of Jesus Christ would be saints. This is an attractive notion, but over time it proved to have its problems as an adequate description of Church membership. In the succeeding age the dominant type of saint is the confessing martyr, the believer who suffers for his faith, of whom Stephen in Acts is the proto-martyr. As Christianity assumed power, saintly action moved from the martyrdom of blood to the martyrdom of askesis, to the desert fathers and mothers, to Anthony and Pachomius in Egypt; to the study, to brilliant theologians like Basil and Gregory Nazianzen and Augustine; to church leaders like Pope Leo the Great and preachers like John Chrysostom; and even to politicians, like Constantine himself. As the Roman empire disintegrated, at least in the West, and society became less sophisticated, a new kind of saint arose, the fearless missionary wielding God’s power, like Martin of Tours, and in the East the ascetic channeling divine power for the people, like Simeon Stylites. As the Middle Ages progressed, so did the need for saintly power, to the point that no church was complete without a saint present in bodily form, offering access to the throne of grace to every ordinary needy person who came and prayed and wanted to change. Monks and mystics, scholars and the very simple, royals and peasants, famous church leaders and the nameless faithful, they are all there. Such a large number! Who can count them?
And with the Reformation and the beginning of the modern world, a new kind of saint: the person made holy by opposition to the Church itself, the follower of truth for the sake of the Gospel as that saint understood it, the Protestants first, and then the Catholics, speaking truth to power: William Tyndale the translator of the Bible and Thomas More, the upholder of papal power, both of them speaking the truth to Henry VIII. We can still hear the screams from England’s martyr fires and from the autos da fe of the Inquisition, we can still see the blood running in the streets of Paris in the St. Bartholomew Day Massacre, we can still smell the reek of gunpowder, destruction, famine and death from the Thirty Years War which destroyed as much as 30% of the populations of Central Europe in the name of the Faith. So many lost for faith. Such a large number! Who can count them?
And in our own day: Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Janani Luwum, Martin Luther King, to name only the most famous. Such a large number! Who can count them?
There is so much holiness. The famous, public holiness of the martyrs, the holiness of blood, but also the quieter holiness of dedication to the welfare of others, the holiness of those who choose their work to benefit the rest of us. And the quietest of all, those who choose the path of love rather than the path of self, for whom philia replaces eros, and for whom then agape replaces philia, working selflessly with little reward or regard, grandmothers, teachers, friends of the destitute and the lost and the lonely and the innocent and the ignorant and the irresponsible, who stand like beacons of light in a world that seems to be not very friendly to its children. Think of the saints I asked you to find in your own life. Our own encounters with holiness show us another way, a better way, a possibility that the world is different than we thought, that the world is in fact God’s world, shot through with rays of love and hope and joy. Such a large number! Who can count them?
I have spent so much time enumerating saints – and I’ve left quite a lot of them out – because I want us to consider that as Christians we are called to a different reality. The “world” is always presenting itself to us as a problem. It wants us to believe that life is a problem to be solved. Most of us here today are from New York. Is anything ever good enough for New Yorkers? Of course not. Life is problems. If they can be solved, there will be more problems to be solved, and then more problems, and then more problems. The multi-headed hydra should be our mascot: solve one problem and nine others spring up in its place. Problems without end. Or so we are told.
But the way of faith – the way of the saints – presents a different reality: a world infused with God’s inbreaking love and undefeatable goodness, a goodness which never stops calling out for witnesses, which never stops recruiting collaborators. Who could have imagined how much holiness the revelation of God to his people would let loose in the world? Who could imagine the millions of lives that are entry portals for the love of God into the world? Who would have thought the transcendent holiness of God could be found in the murky depths of the last days of Nazi Germany, or in a car on a dusty rural road in Uganda, or in an inexpensive motel in Memphis? And yet the bright light of God shone there. And where else might it shine? For in truth, God’s goodness in the world is not limited by the capacity of the Christian community to express it.
I want to suggest that a large part of our work as Christians is to learn to see the signs of sanctity. We need to develop an eye for saints, as the botanist develops an eye for plants. I remember driving upcountry in Liberia from Monrovia to Bolahun years ago with Brother Laurence. The vegetation on either side of the road was just green to me. It didn’t seem much like the African jungle of my imagination, and I was disappointed. I was looking for Tarzan, I suppose. Or an elephant, at least. But then Laurence started to show me, like the science teacher he was, which trees were the rubber trees, and what that meant in the economy of Liberia, and my eyes were opened.
We have to be trained to see. And once we are, our consciousness is changed. Too often we accept the “world’s” terms and see mainly problems, which are so great that we are overwhelmed. But truly those problems are only part of the reality of God’s world. What if we change our focus and train ourselves also to see holiness, also to see joy, also to see generosity? Who in the circle of our friends is being kind, right now? Who is bearing a burden they don’t have to bear? Who is giving so that another may have? That is holiness. Train ourselves to see. Who in our community is working harder? Who is giving sacrificially? Who is quietly going about their daily work with integrity and skill when they could more easily slack off? We can all see the great heroes of holiness. We need to learn to see the holiness around us now. The Holy Spirit is at work. Let us train our eyes to see.
And when we do, the world is different. Instead of the grey place of problems, it is the field of God’s love, filled in unexpected ways with the love and power and joy and light and life of God. The world is alive with holiness. It breathes holiness. Its life is God’s holiness in the lives of His people. Is there any more unexpected place to find God than on a cross? Then why should we be surprised to find God around the corner, down the street, in this very room? Look around you. The Holy Spirit is here, at work, now, this instant.
I cannot put it better than that great prophetic sonnet of Gerard Manley Hopkins (God's Grandeur - poem from 1918):
THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
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