ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

Then they said to each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?" So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the eleven and those with them who were saying, "The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!" Then the two recounted  what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of bread. Pondering these words from today's Gospel from St. Luke, we recall all the things the Lord has spoken to us in the quiet of our hearts, words that are our food, our sustenance. We pray that  our hearts may ever burn within us  as he speaks to us  and opens himself to us. Photograph by Brother Brian.

Jesus assures us,   "I am the way and the truth and the life." In other words,  “I am the way that leads through darkness and confusion, obscurity and doubt; through seeming absence to a richer, darker, mysterious presence.” He draws us higher to the place that he is preparing for us, the place of our  belovedness . Jesus clearly understands himself as the Beloved of his Father. (How else could he have made it through the horror of his passion?) And he envisions the same identity for us, and says that where he is, there will we be- hidden in the bosom of the Father. “I will come back again and take you to myself,” he says, “so that where I am you also may be.” For all our lack of understanding, certainly these words of Jesus are tremendously consoling. “I will take you to myself.” Where else would any of us want to be? And so we continue to hold fast to his promise, for only love and surrender to him can quiet our questioning.  Jesus is   taking us to him...

He who pities them leads them  and guides them beside springs of water.  Sing out, O heavens, and rejoice, O earth,  break forth into song, you mountains.  For the Lord comforts his people  and shows mercy to his afflicted.  But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me;  my Lord has forgotten me.”  Can a mother forget her infant,  be without tenderness for the child of her womb?  Even should she forget,  I will never forget you.            Isaiah 49.8-15. The Prophet Isaiah reminds us of God’s tenderness and loving pursuit. This is the real truth of Jesus' passion and death and resurrection. Our God enfleshed in Jesus will be wounded out of love for us. And so the invitation is to honestly even joyfully take ownership of our lostness, our very real need for mercy, our desperate need to be found and "pitied" by Jesus. For our sinfulness, apartness from God can never estrange us from him. But in...

We should never attempt to separate these three graces of the Gospel: its truth, which is non-negotiable; its mercy, which is unconditional and offered to all sinners; and its joy, which is personal and open to everyone.  The truth of the good news can never be merely abstract, incapable of taking concrete shape in people’s lives because they feel more comfortable seeing it printed in books. The mercy of the good news can never be a false commiseration, one that leaves sinners in their misery without holding out a hand to lift them up and help them take a step in the direction of change. This message can never be gloomy or indifferent, for it expresses a joy that is completely personal.  It is “the joy of the Father, who desires that none of his little ones be lost”  (Evangelii Gaudium, 237) .   It is the joy of Jesus, who sees that the poor have the good news preached to them, and that the little ones go out to preach the message in turn. The ...

This joyful Eastertide, away with care and sorrow! My Love, the Crucified, hath sprung to life this morrow. Had Christ, that once was slain, not burst his three-day prison, our faith had been in vain; but now is Christ arisen, arisen, arisen, arisen. Fresco by Piero della Francesca. Excerpts from Abbey lauds hymn by George R. Woodward, 1894

A stream has welled up, and become a torrent … It has flooded the universe, and it filled everything. Then all the thirsty on earth drank, and their thirst was quenched, For the Most High has given them to drink. By means of the living water, they live forever. Alleluia!    Odes of Solomom, 8  Jesus is himself the Living Water, may we thirst for him more and more. Photograph by  Brother Brian.

The crucifixion happened at the edge of the city, just outside its walls. Jesus of Nazareth was pushed out of the world in apparent ignominy and failure. There was no room for him in the inn at the beginning of his life among us and at the end there was still no room for him.  Jesus absorbs, without any self-protection or resistance, the sin of the world, all of it. We can name and lay all our burdens at his feet- failure, injury, self-loathing, guilt, shame; everything that we cannot change or transform by ourselves. This is the very edge of the world, the periphery where God is. Jesus has gone where we hardly dare even to look, taking into God’s own life all that separates us from love, so that we might be totally healed, forgiven and restored.  Photograph by Brother Brian. Reflection by Abbot Damian.

A whole Sunday is set aside by the Church to celebrate the abundance and constant availability of Jesus' mercy. As we see Thomas put his hand into Jesus' open side, we pray with our Cistercian Father, Blessed William of Saint Thierry: Those unsearchable riches of your glory, Lord, were hidden in your secret place in heaven until the soldier's spear opened the side of your Son our Lord and Savior on the cross, and from it flowed the mysteries of our redemption. Now we may not only thrust our finger or our hand into his side like Thomas, but through that open door may enter whole, O Jesus, into your heart, the sure seat of your mercy, even into your holy soul that is filled with the fullness of God, full of grace and truth, full of our salvation and our consolation. Open, O Lord, the ark door of your side, that all your own who shall be saved may enter in, before this flood that overwhelms the earth. Open to us your body's side, that those who long to see the secre...

On the night before he died, when Jesus wanted to give his disciples the most accurate understanding possible of what he was about to do on the cross, he did not give them a theory. He gave them an action: a meal interpreted by a foot washing. It was very intimate, precious and personal. It was as if Jesus were saying: "I am doing this for you; yes, you. Not just the person sitting next to you. I can cleanse and refresh every part of you: the sad parts, the lonely parts, the messy and muddled parts, the parts you wish with all your heart could be healed. They can be. Let me wash you. Taste my bread and drink my wine. This is what my coming death is all about." Indeed this is what his Resurrection is all about. Meditation by Abbot Damian. 

When a man's intellect is constantly with God, his desire grows beyond all measure into an intense longing for God and…is completely transformed into divine love. For by continual participation in the divine radiance his intellect becomes totally filled with light; and when it has reintegrated its passible aspect, it redirects this aspect towards God, filling it with an incomprehensible and intense longing for Him and with unceasing love, thus drawing it entirely away from worldly things to the divine.  Photograph by Brother Brian. L ines from Maximus the Confessor.

Our Easter celebration is imbued with joy, marked by the ringing of bells, the lights, incense, solemn vestments, and the seemingly continuous chant of Alleluia.  And this is entirely as it should be.  For what other emotion could we feel when, after reliving the Lord’s suffering and death, after contemplating his lying in the tomb, we encounter him risen from the dead, returned to us with his promise, “I shall remain with you always." We naturally assume  that this same joy also permeates the Scriptural accounts of Christ’s post-resurrection appearances, that the disciples were overjoyed to see the risen Lord, but in fact, only Luke makes specific mention of joy, and then only once.  In verse 41 of chapter 24, while the two disciples who met Jesus on the road to Emmaus were recounting their experience to the Eleven, Luke mentions, almost in passing, that when Jesus himself appeared, “they still disbelieved for joy.” Strangely enough, the emotion that domi...

Not long ago we heard about a disabled man named Walter who lives in a group home for the severely physically handicapped. Walter loves to dance. But this is next to impossible given his condition. And at parties when he has made attempts, wiggling and shaking, he has been restrained by staff who fear for his safety. One day the sounds of rock music and loud crashes are heard upstairs in the residence. The ruckus is traced to Walter’s room. Nurses rush upstairs, knock frantically, call Walter’s name and finally burst into his room. They see him twirling around and falling to the floor as the music booms. He is flushed and sweaty and laughing. As they rush to help him up, he reassures them, “It’s OK, the falls are part of the dance.” It is probably something we all get to learn sooner or later- how to welcome the falling, the mess and see it as opportunity, perhaps even grace. How wonderful then to have the Lord Jesus remind us this morning in the Gospel, "Oh, how fooli...

T The organisation of the monastery is directed to bringing the monks into close union with Christ, since it is only through the experience of personal love for the Lord Jesus that the specific gifts of the Cistercian vocation can flower. Only if the brothers prefer nothing whatever to Christ will they be happy to persevere in a life that is ordinary, obscure and laborious. And may he lead them all together into eternal life.  Detail of resurrected Christ by Bergognone. Lines from The Constitutions of the Monks.

Resurrection is not simply a doctrine. It is not just a future fact for us, or a past event for Jesus that we celebrate on Easter Sunday. It is a person, and according to the Fourth Gospel the disciples believed that when resurrection happened, it would happen to all God’s people all at once. Not to one person in the middle of time. Not just to Jesus. That would be an odd, outlandish event, unimagined, unheard-of. Resurrection is a new creation in the person of Jesus for all of creation.  There was another “emptying of a tomb” shortly before Christ’s death and resurrection. When Jesus raised Lazarus, Lazarus returned to present life. The echoes of the Lazarus story in the Easter Gospel are there partly to tell us that it was the same kind of event, but mostly to tell us that it was not.  Lazarus came back into a world where death still threatened. Jesus goes on through death and out into a new world, a new creation, a new life beyond, where death itself has been defeate...

In celebrating Christ’s resurrection, we are celebrating the fact that God has made the impossible possible for us.  The resurrection has made it possible for us to live, together, in God’s love, to overcome all differences of language, ethnicity, station and culture and be united in the body of the Church. The resurrection has made it possible to break the cycle of sin and violence, by enabling us to resist responding to hatred with aggression, to turn the other cheek and even offer a good word. The resurrection has made it possible to be holy, as our heavenly Father is holy, to love others as God loves. The resurrection has made it possible for us discard the myths of individuality, independence and self-sufficiency and to live with and for each other. To finish a little closer to home, the resurrection has made it possible for us to lead this impossible and unnatural life of ours in the monastery, to love the brothers and the place, to prefer nothing to t...

Something strange is happening - there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh... In the stillness of Holy Saturday we await all that Christ's Resurrection will bring. Illustration by Eric Gill (British, 1882-1940). Lines   from an ancient homily for Holy Saturday

Yesterday we shared with Jesus in the foot washing and in his last supper. That sharing continues today as we participate in the mystery of his death. We stand at the foot of the Cross because there is really nowhere else to go. During today’s liturgy, we pray the solemn collects for the Church, the nations and the people of the world. We name the suffering, the messiness of our lives and of our world. We feel and enter into the isolation and abandonment of this day. We dare to ask ourselves the question that so often haunts us and haunts so many of our brothers and sisters around the world: “Where is God?” We ask it not so much looking for an answer but as a portal into the mystery of God’s absence. And we do not stop there. We glory in the Cross of Jesus. We declare that joy has come to the world by virtue of his cross. We adore and bless Christ because by his holy cross he has given us life. We sing about the faithful Cross This is the mystery and paradox of Good Friday. I...

Perhaps more than any other liturgy of the year, the liturgy of Holy Thursday is about intimacy. Intimacy revealed in a bath, a washing, and in a a meal. The bath occurs in the Chapter Room, where we commemorate John’s account of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet.  In John’s account of the washing of the feet, Jesus kneels on the floor in front of each disciple. One by one, the water of his life and love washes over each of them. No one is left out. Peter, even though initially , along with the others whose words are not recorded. Even Judas is not left out. All are washed. All are loved. Each one and all. This evening’s liturgy holds before us, each one of us---a choice. That choice, fundamentally, at its core, is about vulnerability and intimacy, because it is about love. In some ways this choice may be more challenging, more real, more bodily than many of us are comfortable with. It is somewhat easy to talk and sing about love. In so doing we can easily forget or lo...

Christ Jesus comes to all the dead-ends in our lives, what seems impossible, what seems to trap and bind us. He resolutely steps into our primordial darkness and says, “No! I won’t have it. God won’t have it. Let there be light.” For the Light that is Christ Jesus our Lord cannot abide the darkness, the shame and isolation.  He is Light that transforms us. Jesus who is sent by his Father to heal and redeem and relieve us will anoint us with the blood and water flowing from his sacred wounded side. He is the Living Water that recreates and refreshes. And even as he prepares in these days to step into the darkness of rejection that is hanging over him, oppressive, inevitable; he does not hold back, he moves steadfastly into it all, knowing that he can bring life out of what seems impossible; all the while trusting in his Father's love. 

Jesus is the in-breaking of God’s regenerative intimacy with us. On Calvary in his Hour, he will pour himself out, the blood and water gushing from his hands and feet and his wounded heart will drench and anoint the earth, from this sacred clay a new creation will blossom. And all of creation gone hopelessly astray will be released from the burden of sin and all darkness and shame and Satan’s constant deceptions. Things must made right again. Light will indeed conquer darkness once and for all, because God will allow Godself to be crushed by death or darkness. They will be duped and reversed, for they are no match for the light that he is. 

We pass this statue of Saint Benedict often. His admonition to silence is a fitting reminder for us, as we go up to Jerusalem with Our Lord during this most holy week.  Photograph by Brother Brian.

I would like to welcome you all to the discomfort of another Holy Week. In Matthew’s gospel reading of Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, he says that when Jesus “entered into Jerusalem the whole city was shaken (in turmoil)”… The Greek word here literally means to shake or to quake, as in an earthquake. Matthew likes this word. He will use it to describe the shaking of the earth and the splitting of the rocks at Jesus’ crucifixion; at the earthquake that accompanies the angel rolling the stone away from Jesus’ tomb and the shaking of the guard who stood at the tomb. Holy Week is meant to be one earthquake after another. On Monday Mary will pour costly oil on Jesus’ feet and everyone in the house will be shaken with dismay. (Why is she wasting this costly oil!) On Tuesday, Peter (and each one of us) will hear Jesus’s invitation to die before we die. And that invitation becomes the epicenter of our faith. On Wednesday Judas’ betrayal will reveal the fault line that runs through eac...

When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me. The one who sent me is with me.  John 8 Jesus reminds us that it is in the Hour of his lifting up on the cross  that God's identity will truly be made clear to us. God  is always toward us, pouring himself out for us in  self-forgetful love .  And in Jesus crucified we see this most unambiguously. God could not bear to have us trapped in sin, death and darkness, and so he rescues us in Christ. Jesus' unimaginable suffering reverses everything; death is overcome forever because God cannot die. Death dies in Christ. Crucifixion by Diego Velasquez,

In the midst of the soberness of Lent, we rejoiced last Sunday as our Brother Mikah  was clothed in the   novice's habit  d uring Chapter . As is our custom the ceremony began with Dom Damian asking Brother Mikah, "What do you seek?" He responded, "The mercy of God and of the Order." This brief dialogue reminded all of us that our life as monks is a life of total, loving dependence on Christ our Savior who constantly invites us to draw water in joy from the fountains of his mercy flowing from his wounded side. O God, in that unutterable kindness by which you dispose all things sweetly and wisely, you gave us clothing, so that a triple benefit might be ours: we are covered with dignity, kept warm and protected in body and soul. Father, pour forth the blessing of your Holy Spirit upon us this morning and upon these clothes which your son here before us has asked to receive, so that he may serve you faithfully in the Cistercian way of life. Photogr...

Ezekiel begins: “O my people…” He reminds the Israelites of the very foundation of their faith: God always takes the initiative and chooses them first. They were like dry bones, scattered abroad, but he knit them together and raised them up. God always takes the initiative with us, too. We are a people, not held together by our own likes and dislikes, but by the hands of our heavenly Father. We belong to Jesus. His Spirit dwells in us. The heart of Jesus embraces his closest friends and disciples without shunning those leaders who wanted to see him dead. Ezekiel continues, "I will open your graves and have you rise from them.” What a word of hope, for the Israelites and for us. Perhaps these words filled the heart of Jesus as he approached the tomb of Lazarus. He trusted in his Father to bring Lazarus back and in doing so to glorify both himself and his Son. As opposed to the fear of death that holds so many people in its clutches, Jesus’ mission is to banish that fear by p...

I like a trusting lamb led to slaughter, had not realized that they were hatching plots against me: "Let us destroy the tree in its vigor; let us cut him off from the land of the living, so that his name will be spoken no more." But, you, O Lord of hosts, O just Judge, searcher of mind and heart...  to you I have entrusted my cause!    Jeremiah 11 Jesus is the most beautiful young tree cut off in his vigor. But he will foil the forces of destruction, for he is truly God. The blood-soaked cross of his agony and death will become the radiant Tree of  Life. Madonna and Child with Saints ,  Girolamo dai Libri, Italian, Verona 1474–1555, ca. 1520, Tempera and oil on canvas, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Used with permission.