Holy Cross Monastery Sermons

(Guardian Angel, my sweet companion, do not desert me during the night or during the day, until you deliver me into the arms of Jesus and Mary. With your wings I make the sign of the cross and embrace it, and in my heart a carry my sweet Jesus. ~Amen)

I was a very devout little boy growing up in Puerto Rico, and this is a prayer I said on my knees by my bedside every night. I looked for the English version of the prayer and it does not seem to exist. The prayers to the Guardian Angel in English are very different. So, what you just heard is my own translation.

We all have either talked about or heard someone talk about guardian angels. And we have either experienced or heard about what is described as ‘third person’ experiences, following a line in T.S. Eliot’s poem, The Wasteland: ‘Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together. But when I look ahead up the white road, there is always another one walking beside you’.

I must admit that the Feast of Saint Michael and All Angels is one of my favorites. For one thing, the music for the antiphons of the Offices is awesome. And the texts are awe-inspiring and remind us that the richness and diversity of God's creation far exceeds what our eyes can see, or our rational minds can comprehend. I said I was a very devout little boy, and then, I became an actor, of the operatic kind, so you know, that’s drama times four! The older I get the more aware I seem to become of the mysterious cosmic drama we are all are part of. There is a much bigger picture that we mostly don’t pay attention to or think about.

The lectionary today treats us to three familiar scripture stories about angels: the story of Jacob’s ladder; the story of the war in heaven in which Michael, leading the angels (the good ones!), beats the dragon, Satan, the deceiver of the whole world and his angels (the bad ones!); and finally, the gospel story of Jesus telling Nathanael that he will see something like Jacob’s ladder, “ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

But accounts in both, the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament, of created beings other than humans who worship God in heaven and act as God’s messengers and agents on earth abound. We are not told much about them, and it is not clear how much of what is told is figurative, but it is all, nevertheless, important truth. In the Hebrew Scriptures, it is occasionally reported that someone saw a person who spoke to them with authority, and who they then realized was no mere human, but a messenger or agent of God. The word for “messenger” in Hebrew is malach, in Greek, angelos, from which the word "angel" derives.

Angels have appeared to Abraham, Lot, Daniel, Zechariah, the Virgin Mary, and to those at Jesus’ tomb on the morning of the Resurrection. Angels have spoken to prophets, closed the mouths of lions, forced donkeys off their paths (remember that one?), appeared in dreams, guarded a garden, and killed off enemies of God’s people.

There are specific kinds of angels identified in the Hebrew Scriptures. The Cherubim (who apparently are not cute chubby babies!)– one of whom is placed with a flaming sword to guard the gateway to the Garden of Eden in Genesis (Ch. 3) and who are said to flank or support God’s throne as, for example, in Hezekiah’s prayer in the book of the Prophet Isaiah (Ch. 37). The Seraphim – whom Isaiah describes as having “six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew,” and who sing God’s praises at the heavenly throne.

We know the names of the archangels: Gabriel, who is named in the Book of Daniel and identified in the Gospel of Luke as the angel of the Annunciation; Raphael, who is identified as a companion and advisor to Tobias in the apocryphal Book of Tobit; Uriel, who was sent to test the prophet Ezra according to the apocryphal Second Book of Esdras; and Michael, who is the leader of God’s angel army in today’s passage from Revelation.

According to the Book of Job, angels were created before the physical world: in questioning Job, God asks him if he was there when the foundations of the earth were put in place, “when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy?”

So, we know a lot about angels, but why do we venerate them? What is the value to us of remembering the Holy Angels? What can we learn from them? Angels prick our conscience and point in the right direction so that we can recognize and follow the will of God. They connect heaven and earth, climbing up and down that ladder, which is Christ, drawing us closer to the Divine Presence, and opening our eyes to God. Demons, those bad angels who chose to disobey God and be God’s enemies, remind us that the higher we are the lower we can fall. The greater our gifts and talents, the greater the damage if we use them with the wrong intensions and without humility.

In his book, “The Better Angels of Our Nature”, a phrase taken from the conclusion of Abraham Lincoln’s first inaugural address in 1861, Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker named four of these “better angels:”

• Empathy, which “prompts us to feel the pain of others and to align their interests with our own”

• Self-control, which “allows us to anticipate the consequences of acting on our impulses” and thus to regulate those impulses

• Moral sense, which “sanctifies a set of norms and taboos that govern the interactions among people”

• Reason, which “allows us to extract ourselves from our parochial vantage points.”

These are a sort of modern merging of the nine attributes St. Paul called the “fruit of the Spirit”: love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. (Galatians 5:22-23) It is through these fruits and gifts that human conscience is informed, and conscience, as Thomas Merton said, “is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.” (No Man Is an Island)

We can learn much from angels as the prompters of our conscience, as the “better angels” of empathy, moral sense, self-control, and reason, as the communicators of the gifts and fruits of the Spirit, and as mediators of God’s presence in the Church. But perhaps most importantly, angels help lead us to the passion of Christ and the cross. And this is important because it is only through embracing the cross that we find our way to God.

So, as our beloved Brother Andrew Colquhoun once said, if you don’t believe in angels, then for Christ’s sake become one. Become a healer, and a proclaimer; become a warrior against hunger and hopelessness and evil; be a Light Bearer in the darkness around us. And remember to always “show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it. (Hebrews 13:2)

¡Que así sea, en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo!

Amen+

Sunday, September 26, 2021

Proper 21 B - September 26, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Bernard Delcourt, OHC

Proper 21 B - Sunday, September 26, 2021

Numbers 11:4-6,10-16,24-29

James 5:13-20

Mark 9:38-50

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

In the name of God, the Lover, the Beloved and the Love everflowing.

I’ll focus on our passage from the epistle of James today. These are the last verses of the epistle. James concludes his letter by encouraging his readers to pray in all situations.

In this, he echoes the apostle Paul in his epistle to the Ephesians (6:18a): “Pray in the Spirit at all times in every prayer and supplication.”

James, the author of this morning’s epistle is thought to be James, the brother of Jesus. Did he learn about prayer from his Brother? Or did he learn more about prayer from his Brother’s disciples?

In any case, he was a major leader of the Jesus-following Jews of Jerusalem, a proto-Christian community. And he encouraged them to pray in all circumstances.

James is the one best known for writing in this same epistle (James 2:17): “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.”

It would appear that James counts prayer as one of those good works he enjoins us to do to strengthen our faith.

The brother of Jesus tells us to pray whether we are up or down; whether we are suffering or cheerful. In both instances, it can be easy to be all involved in our feelings and forget to pray.

Do we remember to ask for fortitude, wisdom and healing when we suffer? Do we remember to say or sing “thank you, God!” when we have had happy moments.

When we are sick, do we stick to what the medical authorities prescribe? Or do we also ask fellow believers to pray for our healing? As the new Director of Associates, I notice I get those requests if I elicit them but rarely spontaneously. Why know a monk, if you don’t dare ask him to pray for you?

Do we dare to have some of our fellow believers visit us when we are not at our best? Do we invite them to bring us comfort and pray with us, over us?

How often do parish priests find out, after the fact, that a parishioner was hospitalized and did not want to bother her with a request for a pastoral visit?

She would probably have been glad to bring some chrism (a blessed mixture of oil and balsam) to anoint her sick parishioner in the name of the Lord.

James invites us to not let opportunities to pray or be prayed for pass us by.

“The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up” he writes. We hear a verse like that and don’t believe it because as modern folks, we are looking solely for the relief of the physical symptoms and the eradication of the physical cause of illness.

Those two healing outcomes are very good indeed. But healing is much more than that. It also involves the restoration of wholeness and belonging. And prayers are part of the pharmacy for that.

James also advises us to unburden ourselves of our sin by confessing it to other members of the community of faith and prayer. What he suggests here is mutual. I confess my sins to you and you confess yours to me.

And the important part is that we commit ourselves to pray for one another. And that is also where an important healing occurs.

We recognize that we are both sinners and righteous ones at the same time. None of us is perfect and we are all in need of mercy; each other’s mercy and God’s mercy.

James tells us the prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. That is true regardless of whether you get to observe the effects of your prayer or not. Sometimes, God gives us the grace of seeing how we have been an instrument of divine grace. But most often, God doesn’t bother. We need to trust in God’s grace regardless of measurable effects of our prayer. After all, this is not about us and our very own superpowers, is it?

So this coming week, see if you can remember to pray your life and pray the lives of your fellow creatures more often. Happy, sad, healthy, sick, culpable or innocent; those are all states that bear praying about.

Beloved Lord, help us to pray as you would have us pray.

Beloved Creator, help us to be instruments of your grace to all your creatures.

Amen

Sunday, September 19, 2021

Proper 20 B - September 19, 2021

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Randy Greve, OHC

Proper 20 B - Sunday, September 19, 2021

Wisdom of Solomon 1:16-2:1, 12-22

James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a

Mark 9:30-37

Click here for an audio version of this sermon

“Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Before the physical cross is laid on Jesus, the way of the cross is present in the Gospel of Mark. It is this Gospel’s central theme and image of speaking about discipleship. This way is nothing less than the remaking of the world by self-offering love and thereby the abolishing of the world’s idols of power and domination. With the coming of Jesus, no more will fear and violence claim power, but now welcome, sharing, a new community of brothers and sisters will subvert empires and plant hope that no politics can stop, no evil defy.

The powers fight back with crosses and swords, and inflict the pain of their hatred of life. In Jesus the cross and sword and the terror that come with them is unmasked, exposed to the light of truth. Jesus has a word for the cycle of fear and revenge - hell. Only something - someone - more powerful can break the cycle. The way of the cross is the end of this cycle, the end of hell itself, in the power of a promise. The promise is Christ in us and in one another which is a foretaste here and now, today, of the new heaven and new earth that are on the way.

The stories which show the disciples not understanding, not having faith, which in Mark are numerous, are not there so that we will look down on them from our perch of superiority. Their hardness and dullness is a cautionary tale to us that we are always susceptible to the temptations of the way of rivalry rather than the way of humility. Without steady vigilance, we will slide into the easy, broad road of judgment and prejudice. Being last of all and servant of all will require intentionality and discipline.

The words of Jesus become so familiar that we have to imagine the initial shock and crisis of such a saying as this - choosing to be last of all and servant of all. He himself will be the model and supreme sign of this self-giving in his death and resurrection. What the disciples would have heard as Jesus’ failure and defeat in crucifixion, is, within the new life of the way of the cross, the triumph of love and the abolishing of the powers of death and hell. If Jesus can begin to open the minds and hearts of the disciples to a new way of seeing the world, of Jesus doing something grander and more monumental than they could dare think or imagine, they will begin to see the cross as the saving of the world that it is.

The disciples are beginning to understand that their rivalry with one another is not how Jesus invites them to be, yet they are still attached to status and the avoidance of suffering. Jesus’ response to their arguing with one another about who is the greatest is extraordinarily beautiful and insightful. Notice that Jesus does not rebuke the impulse to greatness, he rejects their divisive application of the impulse. He replaces a greatness that seeks power over others, at their expense, that believes we can only gain status if others lose it, with something even greater. “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” He is not saying that wanting to be first is the problem. He is saying that using that desire to gain power for myself while taking it from you is the problem because it is not true or real.

The goal to which we aspire is not domination of status over my brother or sister, but to imitate Jesus in the way of the cross in self-offering love. He is saying, “Yes, compete with each other! Seek to outdo one another! Strive for the place of greatness - the last place!” This is not as the world competes, not as another status game or as a way to show off and become thought of as special and elevated, but in order to build up the whole community, even at the expense of acclaim and praise focused on me. The way of the cross means rising to the lowest place and thus lifting up all of us together.

What might the practical implications of this imperative from the Lord look like? Choosing to be last of all and servant of all is an ethic that is intended to be real in the concrete. Even our smallest acts participate in the cross. We can rest in the acknowledgement that while the way of the cross is the way of joy and community, it is also always disorienting and disruptive to that part of me that wants to know, control, and define. This is the heart of the drama of trust, risk, and conversion.

In Tools for Peace, Abbot Andrew Marr writes of the Rule of St. Benedict, “Benedict envisions a community where everybody outdoes everybody else in caring for everybody else. This is quite a contrast to the usual mode of human competition, where people seek to come out on top of the pack by making everybody else a loser.” He goes on to say, “We prefer nothing to Christ only if we prefer everybody else to ourselves, since Christ preferred everybody to himself.”

Jesus was the Messiah, but he did not have a Messiah complex. Since we believe that Jesus was the perfect model of human life, living last of all and servant of all, we can learn from observing him how it really works. How did Jesus live this out? He showed up. He gave freely of his energy and compassion. He also needed to renew himself and was aware of and attentive to his needs. He took time for rest and silence and solitude. He said no. Being last of all and servant of all in no way ever means dismissing or sacrificing our presence, our voice, or our value to anyone or anything.

Jesus reminds us that being last of all and servant of all sometimes takes the form of speaking the hard truth, naming what is uncomfortable, making an unpopular decision, disrupting and stopping what is harmful and abusive and corrupt. Last does not mean conformity and servant does not mean passivity. When we are freed from the game of rivalry and chasing status, we can take risks for the sake of the greater good because there is nothing to defend, no agenda other than that we are all growing and thriving.

The way of the cross gifts us with a new vision of identity. Jesus is not a mascot to defend nor is his call a weapon to inflict pain. He is the one who leads us into seeing the worth and value of the invisible and lost. The old labels of insider and outsider, worthy and unworthy, acceptable and unacceptable are burned away under the radiant light of a love that has abolished such ways of being. In the way of the cross, fear becomes identity, rejection becomes community, division becomes welcome - the welcome of Jesus himself.

Amen.