Thinking and Contemplation

To progress in thinking about creatures is painful and worrisome. The contemplation of the Holy Trinity is ineffable peace and silence.

EVAGRIUS OF PONTUS Centuries, I,65

Homily — Dedication of the Church of Saint John Lateran

In the Gospel of John we always stand contemplatively before the figure of Jesus. We have seen him enter the Jerusalem the holy city riding on a donkey’s foal to begin his reign as humble king. And this morning we watch as he comes into the Temple. And when he discovers the confusion of buying and selling in this sacred place, he is outraged. “Take these out of here,” he says. “Stop making my Father’s house into a market.” These words and actions recall the prophecy of Zechariah who foretold what would happen when the Lord entered the holy city of Jerusalem: “On that day…there shall no longer be a trader in the house of the Lord.” And amidst the chaos of upturned tables, coins scattered and lambs and oxen scrambling, his disciples recall the words of Scripture, “Zeal for your house is eating me up.” 

“What right has he to do such a thing?” As king Jesus has “ultimate authority over the Temple,” and as such he is its “reformer and rebuilder.” His right is the “right of Truth to name flagrant infidelity and to demand righteousness.” “Destroy this temple,” he says. “And in three days I will raise it up.” We can imagine the indignation that this interruption of the temple business and its cult along with his talk of destruction engendered. Small wonder that the scene in today’s Gospel is viewed by most scholars as the act which precipitates the decision of the authorities to kill him. But Jesus does not “condemn the temple cult; he intervenes because he truly understands and loves it” and demands more for God. His action is directed against everything that does not correspond to the holiness of this Temple. 

Jesus predicts the destruction which will befall the Temple and the institution within a generation as God’s judgment on religious leaders who have corrupted Israel’s sacred traditions. They have made the Temple a political symbol of resistance to Rome, believing that scrupulously preserving cult and tradition will safeguard their identity vis-à-vis their Roman oppressors. And so the sacred place where the Most High comes to meet his people has been profaned. 

Religious leaders have lost sight of the mystery of the temple in all its gracious demands; and worst of all they have refused to acknowledge the living presence of this mystery in the person of Jesus - this is tragic blindness to the nearness of all Israel had longed for. Jesus embodies the love, grace and mercy of the God of Israel, at a time when these ideas have become particularly unpopular among the Jews. He proclaims the coming reign of God, a place he calls the kingdom, a place where no one gets excluded. They are threatened by his brand of compassion. Make no mistake, they are right to be concerned, Jesus is dangerous. The breadth of God’s compassion has been breaking through in all his signs and healings. He brings good news to the poor, sets free those oppressed and heavily burdened, and he is teaching the people how to hope again. Indeed it is in the person of Christ Jesus that the new Temple is being rebuilt, a Temple “gleaming with holiness, the Temple promised and longed for by the prophets.” 

Finally we hear this most beautiful phrase, whispered to us by the evangelist, “He was speaking of the temple of His Body.” The temple of His Body. It is in the Hour of his passion that Jesus will become most truly Temple. For it is most of all in that hour of great anguish and self-emptying love that he will truly become the place where we can encounter the most tender, self-emptying love of the Father for all creation. There on the cross Jesus’ body broken open, destroyed by the horror of his passion will become the leaky life-giving temple of Ezekiel’s vision, the temple from which living, life-giving waters flow out. Jesus’ crucified flesh is the Temple; all our grace, our hope, our life gush out of the sanctuary of his most sacred, pierced heart to recreate paradise in our midst. 

The Temple that will be destroyed and raised up is not the temple of stone but the temple of Jesus’ own body. Jesus is the new gift of God that replaces the former. Jesus is himself now and forever the meeting place between God and his people. “With Jesus’s Passover – with His body destroyed and restored to life – the new cult, the cult of love will begin in a new Temple – Jesus himself. Jesus’ resurrection is the key that will allow the disciples to finally understand.” 

My brothers and sisters, the Temple is no longer a place but a relationship with Christ Jesus our Lord.  Jesus makes his own “the least movements and deepest wounds of our humanity and even now fill(s) them with the life of his Father.” He makes us his growing living body, and so we participate in his life-giving power. It is he who leads us beyond ourselves, to cross and tomb and resurrected life and makes us Temple – a living, life-giving sacrament that we are becoming together when we dare to forgive over and over and allow our hearts to be stretched open in compassion. 

As we gaze contemplatively on the person of Jesus, we see who are meant to be and who we are becoming, his wounded body. And like those who fall in love, we become more and more like the beloved. And it is here at this table most of all that we become who we are; we become what we eat- Temple, Church, true Body of Christ, wounded, risen, present. 

God First Loves Us

If we are capable of loving, it is because we are responding to God's love: God first loves us. Love becomes incarnate and comes to us in Jesus. The Holy Spirit is this love that is poured out in our hearts. Thus we are loving God by means of God; the Spirit enables us to share in the love with which the Father loves the Son and the Son the Father. Love casts us into the Trinitarian realms; the Trinitarian realms are those of love.

OLIVIER CLÉMENT The Roots of Christian Mysticism

One Who Truly Loves

The love for a person which results from a valid act of choice is concentrated on the value of the person as such and makes us feel emotional love for the person as he or she really is, not for the person of our imagination… The strength of such a love emerges most clearly when the beloved person stumbles, when his or her weaknesses or even sins come into the open. One who truly loves does not then withdraw his love, but loves all the more, loves in full consciousness of the others shortcomings and faults…. For the person as such never loses it's essential value.

ST. POPE JOHN PAUL II Love and Responsibility

Himself For Our Self

For God does not give us just something: he gives us himself, his heart, his word, his mind. And what he requires from us, in response, is not just something but the entire investment of our selves, our binding word, our heart.

HANS URS VON BALTHASAR You Crown the Year With Your Goodness, 229

Homily – All souls Day

We just concluded our procession to the cemetery to pray for our deceased monks, family, friends, and benefactors. Now we offer on their behalf the expiatory sacrifice of the Most Holy Eucharist. This is a very excellent and noble thing to do. It is similar to what we heard in today’s first reading: “Judas made atonement for the dead that they might be absolved from their sin.” The Scriptures justify his actions by adding, “…inasmuch as (Judas) had the resurrection in mind; for if he were not expecting the fallen to rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead.” 

In our world today there are many who do not believe in the resurrection of the dead. Some would call us fools for thinking we can do anything to help the dead. They are incredulous at the simplicity of our faith that believes what the Church has handed down: that God raises the dead and hears our prayers on their behalf, which is precisely what we are doing today. They are like the Athenians in St. Paul’s day when, at his mention of the resurrection of Jesus, they scoffed and said, “We should like to hear you on this some other time.”

But we hold fast to our message: Death is not the final word. Those who belong to Christ, even if they need further purification after death, the Father will raise up with Jesus. We believe this, and we can help by our prayers. Our faith in the resurrection from the dead is the cause of our hope. We belong to Christ, and he will give us his own life which is indestructible and eternal. May our brothers, families, friends and benefactors who have died enjoy this life with us. We are truly doing a noble and excellent thing today.

Human Will and God’s Will

To join one's will to the will of God, so that the human will consents to whatever the divine will prescribes, and so that there is no other reason why it wills this thing or another except that it realizes God wills it: this surely is to love God. The will itself is nothing other than love, and good or bad will should not be called anything but good or bad love.

AELRED OF RIEVAULX The Mirror of Charity