All Saints A - Nov 1, 2014

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC
All Saints A – Saturday 01 November 2014

Revelation 7:9-17
1 John 3:1-3
Matthew 5:1-12

The Communion of Saints

Today is a joyous day as we celebrate All Saints, every one of them: alive, or in heaven, known or unknown. Saints are a gift from God to help us on our own journey towards holiness.

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Saints have virtuous and godly lives as today’s collect suggests. In their amazing diversity saints share many traits. John A. Coleman, a Jesuit teacher at the Graduate Theological Union of Berkeley lists 6 common traits of saints across religions:

1. They are exemplary models. Their lives give us something to emulate.
2. They are extraordinary teachers. They throw light on special parts of the religious life that we learn more about in studying them.
3. They are wonder workers. They achieve signs in their lives, and beyond, that point to God. 
4. They are intercessors. They are friends in our prayer.
5. They often refuse material attachments or comforts. They only need God and very little else.
6. They possess a special relation to the holy. They find meaning and purpose in their relationship to the divine and they teach us that.

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Some of us may have favorite saints in heaven. A few of my favorites are St Bernard of Clairvaux, St Teresa of Avila, St John of the Cross, St Therese of Lisieux and Father Huntington, our founder.

Some of us may suspect we know saints on earth. In any case, there are many more saints to be emulated than would fit in any church’s calendar.

Earthly or heavenly, each of them can help you towards union with God.

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In today’s gospel, Jesus teaches us something about holiness, about sainthood.

Matthew describes Jesus as sitting among his disciples and teaching them about values of the Kingdom of God. We know those teachings as the Beatitudes.

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The Beatitudes according to Matthew are like a program for the Kingdom of God. Not only do they comfort those who are not usually seen as the strong ones in this world; but in so doing, they also give us a model to follow in our lives.

The Beatitudes tell us of realities that already are and of realities that are in the process of becoming. Each Beatitude uses the present tense in its first clause and often the future tense in its second clause. 

The Beatitudes have that paradoxical quality of the Kingdom of God; the reality they state is already here and yet not fully completed. We are to live into the Kingdom of God as it already is and to build it up as it is yet in progress.

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The word that we translate into Blessed or Happy in English is Ashar in Hebrew. The meaning of Blessed or Happy in English is a bit too meek for the richer, more dynamic content of Ashar.

Literally, Ashar means “to find the right road.” In its nine uses in the Beatitudes, we can think of it as “you are on the right road when… fill in the blank”.

For example, “You are on the right road when you walk not in the way of unrighteousness but in the way of the Law of God.”

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That meaning of the Hebrew word Ashar puts the stress on the beatitudes as a program towards holiness. And a journey toward holiness is what sainthood is about. And we are meant to be on that same journey with all the saints in heaven and on earth.

That doesn’t mean we have to be perfect now. Saints are not perfect, but they are exemplary in their steadfast journeying towards perfection. So we have to get on the road and keep walking in the direction of holiness, no matter what detours we may get waylaid on.

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And luckily for us, we are not alone on our journey. Jesus promised to be with his disciples till the end of time. And Jesus is with us through his mystical body, the communion of saints. When we come forward for the Eucharist, we renew our consent to Jesus’ redeeming work in us and we renew our belonging in the communion of saints.

The communion of saints is the spiritual union of God’s children, living and dead, those on earth and those in heaven. Note that, that communion of saints includes you, as it befits one whose duty is to seek holiness in your relationship with God and humanity. 

For some of us, myself included, that communion of saints is way wider than any one church or religion. It is even wider than all churches and religions. For me the communion of saints includes all those whom God considers her children and I am not to judge whether anybody qualifies or not.

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My hope is that in God’s infinite mercy and loving-kindness, most everyone who at some point, in this life, or in the next, embraces God and God’s commandment to love universally is counted as a child of God. 

I know, that’s pretty radically inclusive, but it preserves each soul’s freedom of choice. And maybe some souls continue to choose to be alienated from God no matter how loving God’s invitation to relate with her is. But in God’s infinite mercy, we all get repeated chances to keep choosing to be a child of God.

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We may not be saints yet, but with God’s help anything is possible. We can steadfastly keep walking towards sainthood. Let the Beatitudes be your guide and invite the saints to be your mentors. Know that God is rooting for you and wants you to be a saint, a faithful pilgrim on the road to union with her. And we can always rely on God’s love to give us yet another chance at holiness.

So as you go on celebrating All Saints today, know that you are surrounded by an infinite cloud of witnesses who desire to support you in your journey towards God.

God is glorified in each and every one of God’s Saints.

All Saints of God, pray for us. Amen.

Proper 23 A - Oct 12, 2014

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Roy Parker, OHC
Proper 23 A, Sunday, October 12, 2014

Isaiah 25:1-9
Philippians 4:1-9
Matthew 22:1-14

Scene from the movie "Babette's Feast"

This first part comes from my days in Berkeley, CA during the 1970s and 80s.

As some will recall, Holy Cross brothers, at the invitation of the Dean, Fred Borsch, once occupied a suite of rooms in Parsons Hall on the campus of the Church Divinity School of the Pacific in the 1970s and 80s where we participated in the life of the student body, offering spiritual mentoring, monastic witness, and occasional special events such as Sunday waffle suppers for Parsons residents during intersemesters. CDSP, as itʼs called, is a member of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, CA.

When students would remark the sparse attendance at the 10 a.m. Eucharist in All Saintsʼ Chapel, the generallyexpressed opinion was that the dayʼs real liturgy was actually lunch, when people felt drawn together in a different sort of way, the meal itself a vehicle for the satisfaction of hungers which had little to do with physical hunger, a reminder of the motto once displayed on the refectorian readerʼs desk of this monastery - Cibor Melior Cibor (Food Better Than Food).

In those days closer to Vatican II when ecumenism was relatively alive and well, students at the Jesuit School of Theology a couple of blocks away enjoyed teaming up with those at the Church Divinity School to plan services which integrated the eucharistic rite into a sit-down meal in such a way that the entire event was a seamless whole.

Those who took these models into their field work parishes were astonished at the enthusiasm with which they were greeted . . . as if ancient hungers were satisfied in ways the traditional rites could not provide. Underlying this cooperative Jesuit and Episcopalian enterprise was the principle taught at the Jesuit School of Theology that the eucharist was crippled by wrenching the bread and wine out of the context of a meal.

A meal: Why were meals and their table fellowship so central to Jesusʼ ministry? Because sharing a meal has always been one of the most effective means of achieving and celebrating reconciliation, and of bonding in general, and one of the great symbols for well-being. Hence the disturbance which this practice exerted on Jesusʼ opponents who were always asking the disciples, Why does your teacher eat and drink with all that despicable riff raff? Well, because those on the straight and narrow donʼt need a physician, but those who are sick, and their healing occurs in the reconciliation and bonding achieved in sharing a meal by which they are reconciled and bonded to God, incorporated into Godʼs very self.

It goes back to the vision of Isaiah that on the holy mountain God will make a feast of rich food for all peoples, rich meats served with oil, marrow extracted from bones, and of course choice wine - a menu calculated to alarm the health-conscious today but in those days standard fare for a banquet. Furthermore, Isaiah proclaims that this banquet accomplishes the defeat of death, the wiping away of tears, the eradication of the disgrace of Godʼs people, in short - the salvation which we await.

God lays on a rich banquet, above all possibilities, as the instrument par excellence for the defeat of death, the wiping away of tears, the reconciliation of enemies, and the bestowal of great well-being.

It should be no surprise, therefore, that the host of the wedding banquet in Matthew would be, to say the least, ticked off by the disdain of those invited. Folks, this is not a McDonaldʼs Happy Meal.

Do you remember the popularity of the film “Babetteʼs Feast” when it was current in theaters some years ago? This beautifully-made Danish film was so appealing then, and remains so, because it depicts the divine chemistry by which a banquet accomplishes everything described about the Supper of the Lamb, why the wretched of the earth were so drawn to Jesusʼ table fellowship.

At a certain point in the feast, General Loewenhieln, a distinguished guest, is so transformed by the magic of the occasion that he must rise to make this rhapsodic utterance, a kind of impromptu eucharistic prayer: 

Mercy and truth, my friends, have met together. Righteousness and bliss shall kiss one another. Humanity, my friends, is frail and foolish. We have all of us been told that grace is to be found in the universe. But in our human foolishness and shortsightedness we imagine divine grace to be finite. For this reason we tremble before making our choice in life, and after having made it, again tremble in fear of having chosen wrong. But the moment comes when our eyes are opened, and we see and realize that grace is infinite. Grace, my friends, demands nothing from us but that we shall await it with confidence and acknowledge it in gratitude. Grace, sisters and brothers, makes no conditions and singles out none of us in particular; grace takes us all to its bosom and proclaims general amnesty. See! that which we have chosen is given us, and that which we have refused is, also and at the same time, granted us. Aye, that which we have rejected is poured upon us abundantly. For mercy and truth have met together, and righteousness and bliss have kissed one another.

Mindful that a eucharistic prayer is a kind of extended toast to God, one can see that the unconditional grace of Jesus embodied in Babetteʼs Feast, as in any such intentional meal, inevitably expresses itself in a kind of eucharistic prayer such as that offered by the General.

Letʼs imagine ourselves at such a supper on a given Saturday night. Of what happened in the evening nothing definite can be stated. None of us later on will have any clear remembrance of it. We only know that the room had been filled with heavenly light, as if a number of small halos had blended into one glorious radiance. Taciturn old people received the gift of tongues; ears that for years had been almost deaf were opened to it. Time itself had merged into eternity. 

Long after midnight the windows of the house shone like gold, and golden song flowed out into the night air. It never occurred to any of us that we might have been exalted by our own merit. We realized that infinite grace had been allotted to us and we did not even wonder at the fact, for it had been but the fulfillment of an ever-present hope. The vain illusions of this earth had dissolved before our eyes like smoke, and we had seen the universe as it really is. We had been given one hour of the millennium.

Dedication - Oct 4, 2014

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Br. Scott Borden, OHC
Feast of the Dedication of our monastery church, October 4, 2014

The chancel in the St Augustine church at Holy Cross Monastery

Today we celebrate the dedication of this church – and I could do no better than to echo Jacob quoted in Genesis... “how awesome is this place. It is none other than the house of God and gate of heaven.”

Of course, back when this church was dedicated that sentence would have read a little differently – how awful is this place... which conjures somewhat different images of the place... and even before it was awesome or awful, the King James translation used the word “dreadful”. How dreadful is this place... At least to my modern ears, that takes all the celebration right back out of the day.

In fact, through the awesome and awful miracle of Google, I can tell you that this place is awesome, fearful, terrifying, sacred, terrible, holy, and so on and so forth. Translators clearly struggle to find just the right word. How awesome is this place.

The problem is not with the translators... the problem is that a single word is not enough. All of these various words are good and bring particular insight in describing this place – it is awesome and dreadful and terrible and holy. For it is the house of God – who is beyond description and comprehension.

For nearly 100 years people, specifically monkish sorts of people, have prayed in this awful place. Just because I think in terms of numbers, I had to do some calculations and I discovered that, over that time, perhaps 120 thousand hours of corporate prayer and worship have been offered. That is something like 15 solid years of prayer... how sacred is this place.

But when it comes to being the house of God, the gate of heaven... well I think we then have to have Jesus in mind – in today's Gospel reading he is quite angry that God's house is turned into a den of thieves. We could comfort ourselves by reminding ourselves that he has in mind the folks nestled around the temple in Jerusalem – so that lets us off the hook... except it doesn't. If we think God is confined to just the inside of this house, we are wrong. God wanders the neighborhood and the entire planet for that matter. Can we be proud of how the world is functioning today? Do we live in a land where peace and justice flow like a mighty river to cover the entire earth? How dreadful is this place.

Some times I wonder at Jesus walking among us and visiting the great and marvelous edifices we have built more or less just for him... the cathedrals and shrines and sprawling mega-churches, and yes, monasteries with their chapels... And I hear Jesus asking “what has this got to do with me?” Worse still, there is the history we must not forget of exclusion – when in this country, for example, some churches were built with special galleries so that black people could be kept away from the white people... in Jesus name. Or when, to get a little closer to home, in this very church a gallery was built at the back so that women could be kept away from men... in Jesus name. How terrible is this place...

When this church was built it had many steps... you could not enter without facing a barrage of challenges... those who had mobility challenges would have struggled mightily, or just stayed away. But now, at fairly great expense, we are barrier free so that all may enter. How accessible is this place... (no, I didn't find that word in any known translation, but I think it belongs).

This monastery church or “minster” if you will – for that is just a corruption of monastery – is certainly worthy of honor and praise. It is a very prayerful place. But it is not the stones and timber and parging and paint that make it holy. It isn't the various crosses and icons. It isn't even the altar standing at the east. This place is holy because this is where we gather to praise God.

Two thousand years ago in Bethlehem a group of shepherds gathered to make a stable holy by greeting Jesus, praising God in heaven, and praying for peace on earth. That is what makes this place awesome and awful, dreadful and sacred, frightening and accessible. Here we do just what those shepherds did – nothing more and nothing less. Here we meet Jesus. Here we pray glory to God in the highest. And having met Jesus – having become one flesh with Jesus in the mystery of the Eucharist – we go forth from this holy place to make peace on earth.

Isaac Watts – one of the great hymnodists of all time – penned a text some centuries ago that I want to leave us with:

How sweet and awful is the place with Christ within the doors,
while everlasting love displays the sweetest of her stores.

While all our hearts and all our songs join to admire the feast,
each of us cries, with thankful tongues, Lord why was I a guest?

Twas that same love that spread the feast that sweetly drew us in.
Else we had still refused to taste and perished in our sin.

Pity the nations, O our God, constrain the earth to come.
Send your victorious Word abroad and bring the strangers home.