ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

Father Abbot Damian recently posted a message from Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Bertone asking for our prayers. The letter read in part: His Holiness Benedict XVI has asked all the faithful to accompany him with their prayers as he commends the Petrine ministry into the Lord’s hands, and to await with trust the arrival of the new Pope. In a particularly urgent way this appeal is addressed to those chosen members of the Church who are contemplatives. The Holy Father is certain that you, in your monasteries and convents throughout the world, will provide the precious resource of that prayerful faith which down the centuries has accompanied and sustained the Church along her pilgrim path. The coming conclave will thus depend in a special way on the transparent purity of your prayer and worship. And so it is that we monks clearly understand our role during this papal transition. We pray for His Holiness Benedict XVI and for the Cardinals who gathered  in concla...

If you were ever the new kid on the block, in the classroom, on the team, and remember how you just wanted to fit in... Or if you ever loved from afar and dreamed of being with a person who seemed too good, too beyond you and your clumsy efforts, and can remember how you just wanted to be close and somehow you just did not know how to do it... Or if ever you were all alone, far from home and had to eat in a restaurant by yourself at a teeny table and longed for family, someone familiar, a friend, the warmth of home and table, then perhaps you get a glimpse of what God is trying to do in the Incarnation. It as if for ages God had been trying to get closer, longing for intimacy with each of us, longing to be ordinary and hidden in our midst. Finally in Christ Jesus, God's desire for intimacy with humankind takes flesh. In Jesus God gives Everything, indeed His very Self.  God always makes the first move toward us in love.  “Love consists in this, not that we have lo...

In his homily this morning our Father Luke reminded us that in the Gospel of Saint Luke, Jesus is portrayed as a man of prayer. And so typically this morning before his Transfiguration, Jesus   " went up the mountain to pray ." Father Luke went on to say that our transfiguration, our transformation in Christ, will take place as we hold fast to our call to "pray without ceasing and never lose heart." Indeed as Saint Benedict admonishes us in Chapter 49 of his Rule , since our lives as monks  ought to be a continuous Lenten observance, especially during these forty days we should devote  ourselves to "tearful prayers, to reading and compunction of heart, and to abstinence." Raphael, The Transfiguration (detail) , oil on wood, 1516-1520,  159” X 109”,  Pinacoteca Vaticana. 

Lent, the springtime of the Church, situates us between two gardens- the garden of Eden, that lush middle Eastern paradise where the first Adam lost his innocence and the garden of the Resurrection on Easter morning where the new Adam wounded and resurrected will walk in peace restoring our lost innocence. In between we spend 40 days  with Christ Jesus our Lord  in the desert, the place where wild beasts and demons are most at home, this place of self-knowledge,  where we discover who we are and what we most desperately need- Mercy in abundance.

Essentially, everything proceeds from Love and tends towards Love. God’s gratuitous love is made known to us through the proclamation of the Gospel. If we welcome it with faith, we receive the first and indispensable contact with the Divine, capable of making us “fall in love with Love”, and then we dwell within this Love, we grow in it and we joyfully communicate it to others. These words from the Holy Father's recent Lenten message remind us that all that we try to do during Lent must lead to love. Love is the only reason for any effort at additional prayer, fasting and almsgiving.  As monks we always try to remember that all of our Lenten efforts are appropriate and useful only if they make us more loving. Photograph by Charles O'Connor.

Today Jesus is led into the desert by the Spirit to be tempted .  “Fly,” says Satan.  “Turn stones into bread. Be super -Jesus.” Or worse, “Be sub-human.  Worship me.” I t seems clear that  Satan is tempting Jesus to deny his humanity. As if to say, “Why bother? It will be too messy.” But this would be for Jesus to deny His very Self, for Christ’s humanity is the sacrament of His divinity; the full, real expression of God’s love for all creation. Satan wants Christ Jesus to deny the self-forgetful Love that he enfleshes. He desperately wants Him to forget the Love that will lead to his excruciating self-emptying even unto death, death on a cross.  The incarnation drives Satan crazy, he who is the Accuser, for he knows it will be his undoing. If only God would just stay in heaven, if only Christ would leave the earth as Satan’s domain, the domain of beasts and things-that-go-bump-in-the-night. If only Christ Jesus would deny his humanity- the reality ...

Here we are at the beginning of another Lent, gathered here in this liturgical assembly. We have just heard the Word of God proclaimed. And it is precisely that Word of God that is the beginning of our Lenten journey, specifically, the words of the prophet Joel, “Even now, says the Lord, return to me with your whole heart….” Can you hear God’s desire, God’s yearning, God’s loving plea in those words? This is the beginning, the birthplace of Lent: God’s loving, pleading desire. The ashes we will bless are the burned remnants from last Passion Sunday’s palms. And sometimes there is a grittiness to them. And well there should be. For, aside from being literally the gritty remains of palms, they symbolize the gritty remains of our earthly life, the gritty remains of our fallen humanity, our sinfulness, our mortality. But this very real, gritty truth of our brokenness is not what moves us, impels us to enter upon another Lent. What moves us to come forward and receive these ashes i...

Love is patient,   love is kind. It is not jealous or boastful, arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way. Love is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrong but in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things. Love never dies . Brother Benedict entered the monastery in 1974 after completing an engineering degree and working construction in his father's business. At present he is floor manager at Trappist Preserves, the Abbey's jam and jelly factory. In addition he is a member of the Abbey's fire department, he helps with community shopping trips and helps mop the community kitchen floor.  Brother tells us,  "I treasure the grounds and architecture of the Abbey, also the privilege of living in a Scriptural environment with the opportunity to cultivate interior silence. I particularly treasure the quality of the silence in the Abbey church. I enjoy the challenge of the relational matrix an...

We hear three stories of call this morning, three epiphanies really; three characters recognizing their unworthiness in the brilliance of divine presence and blessing: Paul and Peter and their holy forebear Isaiah. We witness their religious experience and its reverberations. “Woe is me,” says Isaiah, “I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” Then Paul, only recently back on his feet after falling from his horse, will proclaim, “I am the least of the apostles, not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am.” And finally in the Gospel there is that tremendous haul of fish and Peter falling at Jesus’ knees, “ Depart from me Lord, for I am a sinful man.” With the realization of divine favor, there is neither boasting nor complacency but wonder and bitter self-knowledge. In the brilliance of divine light, getting clos...

On this very snowy morning we celebrate the Virgin Mary on Saturday. The purity of drifting snow reminds us of her- her beauty and most chaste heart. We seek her protection always.

"In th e beginning was the Word and the Word was God."  We are all essentially listeners because God in and through Christ has spoken his dearest, most precious Word of Love to us in Christ Jesus, His Word made flesh, a Word who often does not roar but whispers.  God invites us, “Be still and know that I am God.” Said another way, “Be still and know that I am your Peace. Be still and know that I am with you always.” Silence grows out of reverent listening to this Word.  The brethren assembled for Sunday Chapter. Photograph by Brother Brian.

Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, it is not pompous, It is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails . Who have I made Christ Jesus out to be? How do I experience Him? How is He trying to reveal God’s own Self to me? And am I, are we often simply missing the point, the simple truth of who God wants to be for us in Christ? Paul shows up just in time this morning with the classic beauty of his hymn to love, a hymn to Christ Jesus who is God’s Word of love enfleshed for us. Love is patient, love is kind, he says. Christ Jesus our Lord is patient, always waiting for us, in no hurry, never coercive; waiting outside the door for us to let Him in; awaiting our return to God, and so bearing the cruel ha...

The section of Luke’s gospel that we just heard verbally brings his birth narrative to a close. His account of the birth of Jesus began with Mary and Joseph journeying from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Appropriately the narrative ends with them returning to Nazareth. Tradition portrays the evangelist Luke as an artist, a painter. In a way, his gospel can be viewed as a portrait of Jesus, a verbal portrait that gradually becomes clearer and more distinct. It is a portrait of Jesus as the true world leader: the Lord, the Messiah, the Liberator, the true Son of God, the real king of the world instead of Caesar Augustus. And the colors Luke uses are not limited to gold leaf and bright hues. He also includes somber tones. The more he fills in the picture, the more we realize that this really is a different sort of kingdom that Jesus is initiating. It is truly the kingdom that God had promised Israel’s prophets and patriarchs. But, not for the last time in his gospel, Luke is warning us that...