ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

    At this beginning of a new liturgical year the Church invites us to lay aside all distress, worry and hopelessness in order to give the light of God’s Word a chance to penetrate our darkness. St. Paul assures us: God, who is ever faithful , calls us to communion with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.   All our hope resides in that trustworthy call.  Would God deceive us and call us to something illusory?  But will we truly open our hearts and allow ourselves to become like expectant children, dazzled by reliable promises of a joyful life?      Today is also the first day of what our Holy Father Francis has declared to be the Year of Consecrated Life.   Though all Christians have been consecrated to God by baptism into Christ, there are in the Church those of us called to live this consecrated life in a particular manner, totally at one with all the faithful and in no way superior to anyone, yet witnessing before the whole wor...

   Pope Francis has proclaimed 2015 a Year of Consecrated Life, beginning the First Sunday of  Advent.  This year also marks the 50th anniversary of Perfectae Caritatis , the decree on  religious life, and Lumen Gentium , the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Church. During this Year the Church wishes to  “make a grateful remembrance of the recent past” while  embracing “the future with hope.”    As a fitting way to begin this  Year of Consecrated Life,   the Abbot has invited us monks to gather in Chapter and respond to the question: Why have you come here?  Or in other words:  What brought you to the monastery? What attracted you? What drew you to write that first letter of enquiry? Or make that first phone call? Or come for that first visit? It has been moving and edifying to listen to each other tell the story of his vocation. The Lord is gentle, sometimes insistent even perhaps charming as He draws us ...

As little children our parents would often tug at our sleeves when were given a gift or a small treat and remind us, “What do you say?” Recognizing all we have been given by God in his love and mercy, on this Thanksgiving Day we gather to pray and feast and remind one another, “What do you say?” Thank you, thank you Lord from the bottom of our hearts for all you have given so freely, so lavishly. Our hearts are full, filled to overflowing, for what do we have that we have not received? Wonder, praise, thanksgiving become one. And so fittingly, wonderfully, jubilantly we celebrate Eucharist on this day. Eucharist means thanksgiving. God never stops giving God’s very Self to us. God is love. Love never ends. And even as we come to thank and praise God for all he has given us, it is he who is gathering us at this Eucharist to feed us once again with himself. Our thanksgiving overflows.

    We are all too familiar with how the human family has been divided and scattered in our days: in family life and marriage; through vast migrations due to wars, drugs, and terror; even within the Church there is a vast alienation of so many Catholics. It seems to me that the mission of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, is to reverse this wholesale scattering of peoples and families by gathering them once more under His gentle and liberating rule.     The words of the prophet Ezekiel seem particularly important here. Ezekiel speaks of the true king who like a loving shepherd would gather the Israelites from every place where they were scattered. Listen to the words of this king: “I myself will look after my sheep…I will rescue them…I will give them rest…I will seek out…bring back…bind up…heal.” Is there a better description of what Our Lord Jesus did to reverse the forces of scattering? He took responsibility for us. Perfectly one with His Father,...

An ancient tradition holds that Mary was presented in the Temple of Jerusalem as a little girl. And so today the Church celebrates Mary as Ark of the Covenant and House of Gold, the dwelling place of God Most High who chose her chaste body as his nesting place. At this morning's Mass we heard the Gospel reading in which  a woman from the crowd listening to Jesus is so taken with him that she cries out, "Blessed is the womb that carried you and the breasts at which you nursed."    Jesus responds,  “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep  it.” Jesus tells us that we are like his mother when we hold on to the words he speaks to us and ponder them in our hearts. Then like Mary we become Christ-bearers. The Child Mary Asleep , Francisco de Zurbaran, 1630-1635, oil on canvas,  Galerie Canesso, Lugano.

Today we celebrate the memorial of Saint Mechtilde, a thirteenth century Benedictine nun from the monastery of Helfta in Germany. Mechtilde had a tender devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, who opened His wounded side to her in love and gave her His Heart as a place of refuge and consolation. In one of her visions Jesus told Mechtilde that His Heart was like a kitchen where we could go to get whatever we needed at any time. In another He told her, "In the morning let your first act be to greet My Heart and to offer Me your own." Jesus continued, "Whoever breathes a sigh toward Me, draws Me to himself."  It only takes a sigh. Let us sigh quietly, insistently, confidently. Photograph by Brother Brian  of  a bas-relief crucifix by Suzanne Nicolas   in the Abbey church .

        What sort of fairness is going on here? We are obviously not talking about fairness at all. What we are talking about is a higher level of consciousness where the normal rules just do not apply. This is a theoretical story told to make a point about three kinds of people.  Each of the three responds to the divine good fortune differently.  In neither case is the amount of money determined by the servant “earning” it. Neither of them deserves anything. We think that because we are good and work hard, it is only fair that we should be rewarded. This is fairness in the way of the world. However, Jesus is not talking about that kind of “fairness.” He is trying to raise our consciousness to a divine level. His Father who sent Him loves him (and loves us), unconditionally and without limit.  Five talents or two talents or one talent are all irrelevant in this story. In this parable the first two servants got this point and were not afraid to ris...

   Truly Jesus is our place of prayer. All of our praying takes place in his heart; for we can only pray in him, through him. Indeed, we can only pray at all because he prays first, begging the Father incessantly on our behalf. And each time we step into the Abbey church, we enter Christ’s wounded heart, the sanctuary that he is for us. In our praying through him, in him we are becoming more and more with him a most beautiful temple, a life-giving flood of mercy gushing from our woundedness, if we will allow it.     This transcendent beauty of the wounded, resurrected Jesus is what we reveal as individuals, as monastic community and as Church. We are his most beautiful body, a temple meant to overflow with mercy and compassion. He is our broken wounded Self, forever risen and pierced. Photographs by Brother Brian.

Saint Martin shares his military cloak with a shivering beggar, and Jesus notices. That night in a dream He visits Martin wearing the half-cloak he had shared. The beggar is Christ. A bit of u nseasonable balminess this morning reminds us that in Italy a warm spell at this time of the year is called  l'Estate di San Martino - Saint Martin's Summer. Legend has it that after Martin had shared his cloak, God made it a little warmer so that neither Martin nor the beggar would suffer from the cold with only a half a cloak each.   Those who need us are the Lord Jesus in disguise. How will I encounter Him this day?  El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos), Greek, 1541 – 1614,   Saint Martin and the Beggar,   1597/1599, oil on canvas with wooden strip added at bottom, 76 3/16 x 40 9/16 in. National Gallery of Art, Washington.      Francí Gomar , Spanish, Aragon, active by 1443–died ca. 1492/3 ,   Altar Predella of Archbishop Don Dalmau...

“He was speaking of the temple of his Body.”  The temple of his Body.  The temple that will be destroyed and raised up is not the temple of stone but the temple of Jesus’ own body. The temple, the sanctuary, will no longer be a place, but a person. Jesus declares himself now and forever the meeting place between God and his people, the place where God’s desire for us and our desire for God merge. Jesus will restore the meaning of temple as sacred place of wonder and worship; the sanctuary where we may encounter God’s mercy. Jesus himself is God’s Lamb who will be slain once and for all. His self-offering in its bitterness and pain, in its immeasurable mercy and compassion will fulfill all that the temple liturgy aspired to. Jesus’ sacrifice will reinvigorate the meaning of all liturgy, for it means service-  leitourgía . And liturgy is always, always first of all God’s service of us. This is the true meaning of worship: our celebrating with gratitude and praise...

We believe that the divine presence is everywhere and that "the eyes of the Lord are looking on the good and the evil in every place." But we should believe this especially without any doubt when we are assisting at the Work of God. To that end let us be mindful always of the Prophet's words, "Serve the Lord in fear" and again "Sing praises wisely" and "In the sight of the Angels I will sing praise to You." Let us therefore consider how we ought to conduct ourselves  in sight of the Godhead and of His Angels,  and let us take part in the psalmody in such a way  that our mind may be in harmony with our voice. Photographs of monks at the Divine Office by Brother Brian. Text from Chapter 19 of   The Rule of Saint Benedict. 

We notice transitions as autumn wears on; transitions subtle and bold; and the leaves dying and falling in this most beautiful of ways.    Nature helps us, as we learn how to welcome the dying, the falling, all the alternations and transitions in our lives together as opportunities for God, opportunities for hope, opportunities for grace. 

Born in Peru in 1579, the illegitimate son of a Spanish nobleman and a freed black slave, Martin de Porres embodies quite literally the often conflictual encounter between the cultures and races of very different worlds.  But as a barber-surgeon and Dominican tertiary with the heart of Jesus his Lord, Martin knew how to become an instrument of universal reconciliation through active mercy, ardently loving and serving the poor and the sick.  He truly "regarded others humbly as more important than himself, putting their interests before his own,"( Phil 2:3-4)  and so he emptied himself through works of outpoured love.  Let us, too, welcome this same action of transforming grace in our own lives. Meditation by Father Simeon.

Today we think of the last things, as we marked this solemn day with our traditional procession through the cloisters and the blessing of the graves in the Abbey cemetery. The dear departed, our brethren, friends, relatives and benefactors, belong to us and we pray that the Lord Jesus will raise them up to himself. With them we belong to God in Christ; we are filled with hope because he promises us that he will raise us up with them on the last day. Photograph by Brother Brian.