ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

Jesus wants to look at us as he looked at Mary, and He wants to be looked at by each of us as Mary looked at Him. He came to earth for that purpose, so that by His looking at us and by our looking at Him, our hearts might be carried away to the heights of invisible things...The first look of Jesus had something transitory about it as if subject to time, but it also had something immutable and permanent, divine and eternal. Out of the centuries there comes to each person of goodwill the unspeakable delight of the first look of Jesus without the fading of its freshness, the lessening of its ardor, or the loss of divine clarity. Lines by Luis M. Martinez.

The martyrdom of the Holy Innocents, victims of human cruelty fueled by fear and ambition, confounds all of our neat theological categories with its dazzling simplicity. The only explanation, it seems to me, for the authenticity of this collective martyrdom of will-less children who cannot even speak, comes from Jesus himself: “Blessed are those persecuted for justice’ sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Why did God become man? — To die in the place of man. And why were the Holy Innocents born? — To die in the place of Christ, so that he could go forward with his work of redemption. In both cases, the reason is: just because… the just-because of pure love. It is the gratuity of God’s choice and the absolute efficacy of divine grace, and not human purposefulness and effort, that create witnesses to the magnificence of God’s saving love. Let us, then, reap the great hope offered us by this feast—to us who have to struggle daily with the sluggishness of our rebellious will and...

The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world came to be through him, but the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, but his own people did not accept him.  from the  Prologue to the Gospel according to John The story about Christ’s birth has been told in the Gospels and down through the ages to help us know him whom “the world did not know … or accept.” Ever since our childhood, no story could be more familiar to us, and today, once again, we celebrate its mystery and concreteness . . . But perhaps we need “stories about the story” to gain fresh access to “him who came to what was his own.” In the late 1970s, the old Belgian Dominican chaplain at my aunt’s monastery used to go to the NYC Public Library to research wonderful medieval French Christmas stories, which he then used each year when preaching to the nuns. Perhaps they were so effective in bringing the Lord’s Incarnation home in a fresh way...

  The opening words of today's second reading from First John give us to understand that in celebrating the Feast of the Holy Family we are celebrating not only Jesus, Mary and Joseph, but all of us who have been adopted into that hallowed trio. John writes, “Beloved, see what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called the children of God. And so we are.” And so we are! We are all the children of God's Holy Family. According to the Gospel of Luke, Jesus, Mary and Joseph got settled into a regular family life only after they returned to the little village of Nazareth following the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. There is no mention of Egypt in Luke. There, in Nazareth, Luke says, “The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.” Of Jesus as an older boy who had just been found by his parents in the Temple among the teachers, Luke says in today's Gospel that he returned with them to Nazareth and was obedient to his p...

             O marvelous exchange which we celebrate tonight and which is summed up in the words of our Marian antiphon: “Man’s creator has become man, born of a virgin. We are made sharers in his divinity, who deigned to share in our humanity.” But I would like to shift the focus a little to the woman, the mother, Our Lady, who makes this marvelous exchange possible by accepting God’s desire to come so close to his people and in such an ordinary way. The Gospel proclaims this mystery in a few short words: “…the time came for her to have her child…”             “…(T)he time came for her to have her child…” Isn’t that why we are all here, to accompany the mother and welcome the child. The world is going about its normal business with rulers trying to boost tax collection by issuing decrees; simple people being interrupted in their daily lives at the words of the elite, and th...

“Now this is how the birth of Jesus took place…This is the way, no other way, sorry to disappoint you but it really is as amazingly beautiful and as crazy mixed up as this.” So it is that the Christmas story unfolds each year. “Now this is how the birth of Jesus came about.” And each year those few words sound so promising, almost like, “Once upon a time…” But as the story unfolds, things fall apart, and it’s more like a fractured fairy tale, not at all neat and uncomplicated. There is Mary’s unexplained pregnancy, Joseph’s sense of betrayal and his decision to put her aside, then an angel’s reassurance in a dream; you know the rest of the story so well - an uncomfortable journey for a census, demanded by tax-greedy Romans, not a room to be had, and God’s Son ends us being delivered in a cattle stall; and very soon these three will be refugees fleeing to Egypt. All of it seems a glaring reproach to our pretentions, whatever they may be. But this is how the birth of Jesus God’s only Son...

  “The Word of the Lord came to me thus,” says the prophet. And each of us, I suspect, have a word, a passage of Scripture that has torn our hearts open. Indeed, when the Lord speaks, things get rearranged, there is always a need for reorientation. So it is that today’s Gospel remains very significant for me. Many years ago, I read these words in the grey light of a December morning as I sat in the Cottage. For months I had felt an inexplicable longing to be a monk in this monastery. But how could it happen? I was scared, terribly confused but somehow the desire would not leave me. And that morning as I read the words of Saint Elizabeth to Mary: “Blessed is she (me) who believed that the Lord’s promises would be fulfilled,” very deep down I felt loved and understood, reassured and even chosen. (Only God knows why.) My fear would be useless. God could accomplish this for me, if I would only trust him, give him space and time. God wanted me here more than I knew. God is always toward...

Our sense of expectation intensifies as we begin the last week before the Great Day. The Church puts on our lips today the invocation O Wisdom from the mouth of the Most High!  addressed to our awaited Messiah.  Matthew’s long genealogy of Jesus shows how the divine Wisdom can give form to a history of salvation out of the mess that we humans always manage to make of our individual and collective lives. The birth of Jesus, the fruit of no less than 42 generations, is what confers lasting meaning on everything that has gone on before. It is to this birth that the all-wise God had from the outset been directing the course of world history, interweaving his own secret design into an often chaotic pattern. The beauty of the whole could be seen only after its completion. But let us not consider that genealogy from afar, as if we were mere spectators. We should strive to find our own unique place within it. The German poet Angelus Silesius says rather boldly: What good to me, O Gabr...

We've all heard about the “terrible twos” And probably we can remember a child, a son or daughter, a nephew or niece who at about two years old learned the power of no. “No.” I’ve been thinking, with no small amount of embarrassment, that I never really outgrew the grip of that no. Sad to say, I think my terrible twos morphed into the terrible tens, twenties, forties, and now worst of all now even the terrible sixties. Deep inside me, there’s a repeating sound bite that often goes off automatically when I’m asked to do something. It goes something like this: “Not yet. When I’m good and ready. I’ll think about it. Maybe. I’ll see.” Or simply, “No, I won’t.” Or “No one’s gonna tell me what to do.” But the hauntingly beautiful phrase from St. Paul cuts through all the babble: “Have this mind in you that was in Christ Jesus.” Have Jesus’ beautiful mind in you. Beautiful to ponder, but seemingly impossible for me. I feel too sharply the reproach of my reality, my no. I come to you thi...

Shout for joy, daughter Zion! sing joyfully, Israel! Be glad and exult with all your heart, daughter Jerusalem! It is important that we heed this command of the prophet with the utmost seriousness, so to speak, that is, that we hand our hearts over completely to the joy that is genuinely ours because, on the one hand, we know that in the crucified and risen Lord the mystery that he proclaims has already been accomplished. The Lord has already removed the judgment against us, sin and death no longer reign over our world, the Lord has not only done the astonishing, unheard-of thing of assuming our flesh, but on the Cross, he has borne the burden of our sins cross and blotted them out, freed us from death, and granted us a share in his own eternal life. In baptism we have already died to ourselves, awaiting our Savior in faith and love we already have our citizenship in heaven. This is the starting point in which our Advent expectation plays out. Yet, even more, we rejoice on account ...

  As we celebrate Our Lady today, we recall these words of our own Saint Bernard of Clairvaux: You have heard, O Virgin,  that you will conceive and bear a son; you have heard that it will not be by man but by the Holy Spirit. The angel awaits an answer; it is time for him to return to God who sent him. We too are waiting, O Lady, for your word of compassion; the sentence of condemnation weighs heavily upon us. The price of our salvation is offered to you. We shall be set free at once if you consent. In the eternal Word of God we all came to be, and behold, we die. In your brief response we are to be remade in order to be recalled to life. Tearful Adam with his sorrowing family begs this of you, O loving Virgin, in their exile from Paradise. Abraham begs it, David begs it. All the other holy patriarchs, your ancestors, ask it of you, as they dwell in the country of the shadow of death. This is what the whole earth waits for, prostrate at your feet. It is right in doing so, for...

Today the Church celebrates Saint Nicholas remembered through the ages for his generosity to the poor. We recall these words of the martyred archbishop Saint Oscar Romero, which we imagine the holy bishop Saint Nicholas would have appreciated. No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need even of God — for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Without poverty of spirit, there can be no abundance of God. Artwork by Elisabeth Jvanovsky.

 The nights were cold; the moon was dark; they could hear the bleating of sheep and the howling of the wind through the trees. But they watched, and they waited. The nights seemed to drag on forever; these shepherds were waiting for the dawn to bring its light and warmth, every hour seemed to grow colder and darker, and it was hard to stay awake and alert. But they watched, and they waited. These shepherds were waiting for the dawn on the sun and of a new day. They watched, and they waited. The day was hot, the sun was blinding, and when the wind blew, it was scorching and often carried grains of sand that became projectiles that assaulted any unprotected skin.  But they watched, and they waited. God had told their ancestor that he would have as many decedents as there are stars in the sky, and they would poses and live in the Promised Land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Now they were slaves in a foreign land, a place that once welcomed them as honored guests. Now they w...

  Fittingly enough on this Advent morning, we celebrate Saint John of Damascus the great defender of icons.  In the eighth century when there was fanatical opposition to images in the Eastern churches, John argued that Christ’s coming in the flesh as the image of the invisible God had changed everything.  These are his words: I make an image of the God whom I see. I do not worship matter, I worship the God of matter, who became matter for my sake, and deigned to inhabit matter, who worked out my salvation through matter. I will not cease from honoring that matter which works my salvation. I venerate it, though not as God. How could God be born out of lifeless things? And if God’s body is God by its union with him, it is changeless. The nature of God remains the same as before, the flesh created in time is brought to life by a logical and reasoning soul. I honor all matter and venerate it. Through it, filled, as it were, with divine power and grace, my salvation has come t...

Today we remember Saint Francis Xavier, one of the first companions of Saint Ignatius Loyola. They always remained close friends and exchanged letters while Francis Xavier was on mission in the Far East and Ignatius stayed in Rome. One letter from Ignatius to Francis Xavier concludes poignantly, "I shall never forget you. Entirely your own, Ignatius.”  Imagine the deep friendship between these two saints. We hear an echo of the words of our own Cistercian Father, Saint Ælred of Rievaulx. Indeed, it is through the love of those we love, that we may learn what God is like.

On this Advent morning in the first reading at Mass, the prophet Isaiah presents us with his vision of a real place where all of God’s promises will be fulfilled for us: On this mountain, he will destroy the veil that veils all peoples, The web that is woven over all nations; he will destroy death forever. The Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces; The reproach of his people he will remove from the whole earth; for the Lord has spoken. In the proclamation of the Gospel, we see this place of fulfillment. It is Christ Jesus our Lord. He himself is the fulfillment of Isaiah's dream: Great crowds came to him, having with them the lame, the blind, the deformed, the mute, and many others. They placed them at his feet, and he cured them. The crowds were amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the deformed made whole, the lame walking, and the blind able to see, and they glorified the God of Israel.