The Holy Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, January 1, 2025

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Josep Martinez-Cubero

The Holy Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, January 1, 2025

• Numbers 6:22-27
• Galatians 4:4-7
• Luke 2:15-21

 Click here for an audio of the sermon

One of the experiences most present for me in the monastery is that of seasons and new beginnings. We are reminded of this every single day throughout the year. We live the seasons of the day- morning, afternoon, evening, night, sanctified, of course, by the Daily Office, each prayer with its own character serving as a pillar to mark each section of the day, reminding us to begin again, and to stay in the now. We live the seasons of the week. The beginning of the week, which for us is Tuesday, feels very different to the end of the week. On Tuesdays, I feel rested and energetic, and ready to face whatever may present itself. On Sundays, I’m usually tired and very much looking forward to leisure and rest. 

We live the seasons of the liturgical year- Advent, Christmastide, Epiphany followed by Ordinary time, Lent, Easter, Ascensiontide, Pentecost followed by the longer Ordinary time. We seem to experience and give meaning to the events of these liturgical seasons according to the season of the year during which they are celebrated. I’m sure, for instance, that we would be doing things in a slightly different way if we were to celebrate the Resurrection in the fall or in the dead of winter, or Christmas in the summer as people do in the southern hemisphere. 

The seasons of the year are very different from one another here in the Hudson Valley. During the spring, our grounds explode with color and beauty. The air is crisp and all the parks and mountains in the region seem to be calling us to come for a visit. Summers for me usually mean lots of gardening and looking forward to a much slower pace during the month of August when the guesthouse is closed. It’s usually very hot and humid around here making us slow down. 

The end of summer and beginning of autumn bring a burst of renewed energy to the monastery. Our guesthouse reopens for the fall. We look forward to seeing our regular guests as well as meeting the new people that will come to experience a retreat here for the first time. The end of autumn brings with it a reminder of the end of earthly life, and the remembrance of those who have gone before us with the celebrations of All Saints and All Souls.

Winters are gray and cold. There are several snowfalls during the season. At the beginning of the season, we are celebrating Christmas. I’m always quite busy doing all things music. Then, as it will happen after today, things become very quiet around here. The guesthouse will close and the community will go into deep silence during our annual eight-day retreat. After all the December celebrations, energy, and the welcoming of guests coming and going, we all very much look forward to the silence and everything stopping. It will be the occasion for spending quality time with God.

We are also aware of the seasons of monastic vocation- postulancy, novitiate, initial profession, life profession- and how these seasons intermingle with the seasons of our own life- youth, middle age, old age. We observe the flourishing of new vocations and the diminishment of older brothers day by day. 

Many new beginnings in life are accompanied by being named something new or by our taking on a new name. In marriage, for instance, people often decide to adopt their spouse’s surname, or add it to their full name. At profession a monk has the option of choosing a new name, and this action very clearly marks the beginning of something new, a new season in life. I have many former students who have come out as nonbinary or transgender and have changed their names to one better suited to their new identity and new beginning.

Names and naming are very important in the stories of Scripture. We read about God using names and name changes to establish relationship, identity, belonging and new beginnings. In the book of Genesis, God names things as God creates them, and then God names the first human: “Adam,” who is created out of adamah, the earth. After God creates and names the human, God asks Adam to name all of the animals. Later on, in that book Abram becomes Abraham and Sarai becomes Sarah for their new covenant with God. Jacob wrestles the angel and is named Israel. In the Book of Exodus, Moses is so named because he was drawn from the water. In the New Testament, Simon becomes Peter, the Rock upon which the Church is built, and Saul becomes Paul when his life is transformed.

Today the Church celebrates the Feast of the Holy Name. It is the celebration of the great mystery of that which is beyond naming taking a name for our sake. In the reading we heard from the Book of Numbers, which is one of the most beautiful passages in all of the Hebrew Scriptures, the Holy Name of God is placed on the people as a priestly blessing. “The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD’S face shine upon you and be gracious to you; the LORD lift up the divine countenance upon you, and give you peace. So they shall put my Name on the Israelites, and I will bless them.” And since, as Saint Paul says to the Galatians, we are heirs, the Holy Name of God is placed on us too, and the face of God is meant to shine upon us. Let us ponder for a moment the enormity and the beauty of that as we begin a new year! 

The word translated in the passage as “LORD” is the unspeakable Hebrew Name of God, the Tetragrammaton, or the letters (YHVH) pronounced by Christians as Yahweh, but never uttered by Jews. When the Name had to be spoken, it was replaced with “Elohim” (the strong God), or “Adonai” (the Lord) or “Hashem” (the Name). In the Bible we see it most often referred to as LORD in capitalized form. LORD, in this sense, is a way of pointing to what is beyond words and cannot be named. 

Many mystics believe that we carry the name of God on every breath. That is why it cannot be spoken, because it is the sound of breath. The spirit of God is within us and around us. Every time we take a breath during our chanting of prayers in this church we are breathing in the spirit of God and that same spirit comes out manifested in song, in beauty. So today’s feast presents one of the many paradoxes of the Christian faith- the tension between what can and cannot be named, between saying and unsaying. 

The name Jesus is a translation of the Greek Iesous, which is itself a transliteration of the Aramaic Yeshua, a shortened version of the Hebrew Yehoshua or, in English, Joshua. The most literal meaning of Yehoshua is “Yaweh is a saving-cry.” Cry in this sense means shout. In other words, the meaning of the Holy Name of our Lord Jesus the Christ is “Yahweh shouts salvation.”  Eight days ago we commemorated and celebrated the paradox of the Incarnation- the Unspeakable is spoken. Today, the Unnameable takes on a name and shouts salvation.

In first-century Aramaic there was no word for “salvation.” Salvation was understood as being made alive. It concerned the whole person. To  become whole is to be transformed from within into our true identity, our deepest freedom that only comes from God’s infinite love for us. A love that is always present, always meets us where we are, and always works with what is. We come from LOVE, and we are made to love one another as the LOVE that is beyond all that is loves us. 

So, as we begin again a new year, I invite you to return to your breath. Breathe prayerfully, in silent awe and humble gratitude because the Nameless and the Named are One within us and around us in immense love. There is a lot of darkness in this world right now, and I am convinced more and more that the higher solution, the best way to help is through the kind of prayer and meditation that takes us to the level of consciousness where all things resolve into harmony and where we can develop the will toward righteousness and goodness. The present darkness of this world will never overcome the light. Never! May we all be filled with joy and peace, yes, but also with the hope that keeps us reminded that sometimes, courage and perseverance count more. Most importantly, may our whole being be present to the LOVE that surpasses all understanding. Happy New Year! ¡Que así sea en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo! ~Amen+

The First Sunday after Christmas Day, December 29, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Adam McCoy

The First Sunday after Christmas Day, December 29, 2024

 

• Isaiah 61:10-62:3
• Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7
• John 1:1-18

Click here for an audio of the sermon

 

I seem to remember years ago how daring it was in a Christmas sermon to point out the revolution promised by the nativity story. Instead of painting a picture of conventionally comforting images, our brave preacher would try to shock us all:  The Angel promising that the holy child will by social standards seem  illegitimate; a very young but by no means unaware Mary saying Yes to all that may imply for her future; and her Magnificat: This is how the world will be set right, by turning everything upside down.  

The royal heir of David, born in David’s city, but excluded from even the most elementary human hospitality. The poverty of Mary and Joseph - their seeming lack of relatives and resources landing them away in the manger, no crib for a bed.  What a counter-intuitive way for the King of Kings to make his entrance!  And yet this is the narrative form in Matthew and Luke of God’s chosen entrance into his world. Every Christmas we take heart that God’s transforming work will start to be done in a small, obscure place by people of seemingly no account.  The real transformation is a revolution, replacing the rich with the poor, the powerful with the weak, the noble with the humble.

John doesn’t even hint at a nativity scene.  No angel, no shepherds, no magi, no meeting with Elizabeth, no Bethlehem, no manger, in fact, no Mary and no Joseph.  John starts his story at the top: Echoing Genesis he writes: In the beginning.... Beresit.... En arche....  The term John uses here, arche, means not simply the beginning of something in time, but also that which gives each thing its essential being: its structure, its innate properties.  The Word, the Logos, is not just a particular vocabulary item but is its underlying discoverable, communicable, rational pattern.

John seems to say, This is really how things have been, are, and always will be.  This is where the world really came from.  This is what it really is.  This is where it really is going, Because the Logos is its origin, its structure.  The Incarnation brings the Word itself into our lives, into our world, and in that process, changes everything.

This story, John implies, is going to tell us about reality.  Not the beginning of a social revolution, but a revolution in how reality itself is perceived.  In a world whose pagan culture, whose religious ideology, is fixed on beings, natural, animal and human qualities writ large and sculpted into believable images, this story will dethrone and remove every idol.  John sends us to what seems to be an empty room, to a holy of holies, where the One who is above all and through all and in all is found in quiet silence and in waiting.  And there we wait for the Word.  And we find that Word in a human person, the Word made flesh.  Jesus.

In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.

In learning this, in knowing this, in believing this, something entirely new is brought into our world.  No longer is the world complete in itself, self-explanatory.  Nothing in the world has its being in itself.  Nothing has power in its own essence.  Because everything is made by and through the Word, everything is contingent on the Word.  The strange thing is that this contingency sets human knowledge free: We need no longer be captive to things, or captive to our own images of truth as though they themselves are complete and eternal, but we are free to change our understandings of them as our minds lead us, as we stand secure in the knowledge that the Word alone is all truth.  The rest can change, will change, will always change, but our firm foundation is in holding fast to the Word who has created and sustains all that is, not holding fast to our already existing understandings.

Every act of greater understanding brings us closer to the Word.  The search for knowledge is a search for the Word, and that search is holy.  And that search is never, can never be, finished.  Just when we think we “know” all there is to know about something, something new appears.  The world brought into being by the Word is alive with the creating act of God and we are continually invited by the creative Word into a process of discovery.  

And like the up-from-the-bottom birth of the savior, this too is a revolution.  The Incarnation of the Word opens our eyes, opens our minds to understand that the material reality we live in is not itself ultimate, that there is another referent, a different stance which allows us to step aside and become observers, analysts, theorizers, communicators with each other, of a material reality whose essential nature we are always in the process of discovering.  Not that it itself changes, but that our understanding, always striving to come closer to the Logos in its arche, its beginning, is never complete for us.  Our journey is alive to the Word as long as we choose to be open to it. To the person who follows the Word, the world is alive.

When we think we have a grip on something, we discover it is actually something else.  For thousands of years the experts were sure that the heavens were a shell surrounding us and the stars were holes where the light came in; they were sure that human personality is determined by the four humors; they thought diseases were caused by nonphysical entities, sometimes demonic. They were wrong.  What are our present day confident but actually contingent certainties?

This happens in history.  For millennia we have depended on written sources, and when they are lacking, on narrative supposition, for knowledge of our past. These sources give us stories but rarely cooperate in giving us truth.  But something strange has begun to happen.   Careful archaeology, carbon 14,plant pollen, tree rings, long-buried disease bacilli, pandemic eruption tracings, DNA and its every-increasing and fascinating applications, have moved many historical narratives out of the realm of fable and attached them to knowledge.  Who knew that DNA would show that a human population could be stable, rooted in one place for 10,000 years, when DNA proved that Adrian Targett, a teacher in Somerset, England, was a direct descendant of the so-called “Cheddar Man”, a local skeleton which survived for ten millennia?  The imagined story becomes a fact: Their people came and stayed.

What has changed and is changing our perceptions of reality?  The growing understanding that John is right: that the Word is at the beginning of all things and defines their essential structures, that the Word is the essence of what is knowable and rational, and that we are invited to enter into its light, to follow its sacred and holy path to knowledge, to uncover it and theorize about it and test it and communicate it, as best we can.  

Knowledge is holy.  The pursuit of knowledge is holy.  Study is holy.  Libraries are holy.   Every act of the increase of knowledge brings us nearer to the Word who created the world and for that reason is holy.  The entrance into the world of this Word is the other revolution of the Incarnation.

But of course, for John, the Word, the creative, sustaining, pattern-giving Logos, is not an idea, but a person.  Jesus of Nazareth is the Word incarnate.  It is he who brings light into a dark  world.  It is he, and all he embodies, who makes possible our choice to follow these  revolutionary paths to greater and greater understandings of what is real, bringing us into the truth of our own lives and into the truth of the world itself.  Or not.

So it might be interesting to pay attention to what Jesus says.  It would seem that when Jesus speaks, the Logos itself is speaking, opening the mind of God to us.  

And so I find the very first words Jesus speaks in the Gospel of John interesting.  In the first thing he says in John’s gospel, Jesus asks two of John’s disciples who are following after him, “What are you seeking?”  A question which had a specific setting at the time, but which echoes again and again, and will open infinite worlds to us if we hear it asking us:  What are we seeking?

The Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ - December 25, 2024

Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY

Br. Scott Wesley Borden

The Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ, December 25, 2024

Christmas seems like one of those holy days that is filled with timeless traditions that have roots going all the way back to a stable in Bethlehem. We assume that Christmas has been at the center of the Christian Story since there has been a Christian Story. That is not entirely wrong, but it's not entirely correct. 

In scripture we have two versions of the birth of Jesus: Matthew and Luke. These days we have the two stories so thoroughly intertwined that we don’t much notice the differences, but they are very different stories. In Matthew, Jesus is born at home in Bethlehem. According to Luke, Mary and Joseph have made a difficult journey from their home in Nazareth to Bethlehem where Jesus is born in a stable because the no vacancy sign is on at the inn.  

Luke gives us shepherds. We supply the sheep, and we imagine them into lovely, homey scenes around the manger. Matthew gives us Magi – mysterious wise persons of an unknown quantity who bring gold, frankincense, and myrrh; A homicidal Herod killing all the young boys in Bethlehem, an escape to Egypt for Jesus and his parents, and from there they go back to Nazareth, not Bethlehem... 

In both stories Jesus is born in Bethlehem and in both stories, Jesus grows up in Nazareth. Mary is a virgin, and Joseph is not Jesus’ father in either story... That's about where the common details end... These stories tell us essential things, but they do not tell us the same things. Luke and Matthew are both subversive and the stories they tell us are pretty dark. Part of our challenge in keeping Christmas is to get past the sweetness and sentimentality that we bring. The Christmas Story, and for that matter the entire Gospel, is not sweet nor is it sentimental... Jesus is revolutionary and following Jesus means being part of the revolution.   

Christmas, more than any other sacred day in the Christian Calendar, for me at least, is defined by the music. That makes it the best of holy days... for me. From hymns to anthems and motets, from African American spirituals to Celtic folk songs, from Carols to the soundtrack of our shopping malls, Christmas rules the music charts. You will not convince me otherwise. Sure, Easter is important and it, too, has some excellent music, but the music of Christmas is without equal – in my humble opinion.  

However, the music of Christmas is not particularly ancient. It took the early church about four centuries to arrive at an agreed time for the keeping of Christmas and a few centuries after that to begin developing a catalogue of Christmas music. 

Christmas existed within the church year in a sort of second tier of holy days until the Reformation. Some of the currents in the Reformation were OK with Christmas – mainly Luther and his pals. Others rejected Christmas as a feast with no proper scriptural basis – think of Calvin and his companions. Our Anglican forebears, as they often did, stood with their feet firmly in both camps. Still, much of the keeping of Christmas took place outside of Church, with things such as madrigals giving Christmas its flavor. 

Closer to home, those Pilgrim forebears of ours, who gave us Thanksgiving, gave us absolutely no Christmas. In 1659 the Massachusetts Bay Colony officially outlawed Christmas (they could do that in those days), and it remained illegal for more than two decades. Their Puritan forbears in England had outlawed the keeping of Christmas in the 1640s. Even once the ban was repealed it took a while for Christmas to come in out of the cold. 

Meanwhile, the Quakers in Pennsylvania did not ban Christmas, they just didn’t keep it. They held that every day was a holy day. Every day was a good day to remember that Jesus came to bring salvation. It is hard to argue with that.  

In New York the Dutch did keep Christmas. Perhaps due to the commercial drive of the Dutch West India Company, who founded and ran the colony of New Amsterdam as agents for the Dutch government, Christmas began to take on commercial significance – which is still prominent to say the least.   

The Calvinist Dutch Reformed Church may not have loved the idea, but they had long since learned that you don’t mess with the Dutch West India Company... 

Other colonies in the US did not have the Pilgrim/Puritan heritage of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and so tended to keep Christmas as the English did, with food and family gathered. Did they go to Church? Maybe. They were just as likely to go Caroling with friends and family.  

Our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters were required to attend Mass for Christmas, but they were mostly still in Europe... the waves of Catholic immigration from Italy and Ireland were in the future.  

Christmas, for much of Christian history, was not the big deal that it is now. Some reviled the feast, including many of deep and abiding faith. Others were devoted to the feast, including many of deep and abiding faith... 

In the 18th Century, the love-hate relationship with Christmas transformed into a friendlier relationship. Services of lessons and carols began to appear. And the institution of Midnight Eucharist on Christmas eve began to appear meaning that people could go to church and still have Christmas as a mostly family-centered day, which is what it had largely become. 

In the 19th Century two big things changed our approach to Christmas. One of those big things was Washington Irving, the writer more or less local to this area. The other was Charles Dickens... another writer... Dickens was a generation younger than Irving and Irving exerted great influence on the young Dickens.  

When Irving penned his Sketchbook of Geofrey Crayon – a sort of New Yorker’s view of English Christmas, it was a sensation, especially in England. Among other things, Irving had a very high view of St Nicholas and is probably most responsible for our enduring love affair with Santa Claus. Irving helped found the Saint Nicholas Society of the City of New York which is still a thing. 

Irving saw Christmas not only as a pleasant indulgence, but a spiritual necessity. According to Irving, “He who can turn churlishly away from contemplating the felicity of his fellow beings… wants the genial and social sympathies which constitute the charm of a merry Christmas.” Sounds a lot like something Dickens would say... 

A recent movie about the life of Charles Dickens describes him as the man who invented Christmas. It may be a bit of hyperbole but also has some truth. In his beloved story A Christmas Carol, Dickens picks up where Irving left off. And while Mathew and Luke may be a bit austere in their telling of the Christmas story, Dickens more than makes up for that.  

Dickens describes in beautiful detail how the power of Christmas can transform even a dreadful, selfish person like Ebenezer Scrooge. This redemptive story of Christmas repeats in our popular culture in stories like How the Grinch Stole Christmas, It's a Wonderful Life, and Home Alone to name a few.  

Conspicuously absent from these stories is any significant place for the Church... The possible exception might be Charlie Brown’s Christmas which does conclude with Linus reading from Luke’s Gospel, but not in church... Even in A Christmas Carol, only Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim are reported to go to church.  

So here is the challenge on this lovely Christmas day: How do we, the church of our time, relate to Christmas? Fellowship and family are a good start – and we are on our way to these. Songs of prayer and praise are wonderful as well – clear echoes of the Shepherds as they sing Glory to God in the highest... 

But I think the real work for those Shepherds is when they stop singing and return to their fields with the conviction to make peace on earth – as in Glory to God in the highest, and on Earth, peace.  

Jesus doesn’t call us to think good thoughts about peace from the manger. Peace does not make itself. George MacLeod, founder of the Iona Community, defined heresy as praying for something without working for it. 

In this glorious celebration of Christmas, we get a glimpse, a foretaste of what God’s Kingdom might be like. This glimpse, this foretaste, fills us with love and, as Fr Huntington tells us, Love Must Act. We are not given a glimpse of God’s Kingdom as a private reward. We have an obligation to share it with all of God’ creation, those we love and those we don’t love. This glimpse is not unique to Christmas – it is a feature of all our liturgical life. 

I hope you will join me in making a mild adjustment to Luke: Let us offer Glory to God in the Highest by making peace on Earth, by making justice on Earth. And to that end and that beginning, I wish you a merry, happy, and blessed Christmas.