ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

Like Saint Paul and all the saints, we very often long to depart to be with Christ. Daily we try to set our minds and hearts on things that are above where Christ is. For truly we have died, our lives are hidden now with Christ in God. Don’t we consider everything to be nothing at all compared with knowing Christ Jesus, our Lord? Isn’t knowing him the best thing of all? Isn’t it because of him that we set everything else aside? Don’t we consider everything else a pile of rubbish, so that we can get to know him even more? Don’t we want to know only Christ and the power of his resurrection? Aren't all of us sharing in his sufferings even now and so becoming like him in his death? And isn’t it worth it, if somehow we may attain the resurrection from the dead? True, we haven’t yet reached the goal; but we are pressing on to make it our own, because Christ Jesus has made me each of us his own. And so each morning we go up to the altar of God, the God of our joy, and receive his rise...

Careful lectio divina greatly strengthens the brothers' faith in God. This excellent monastic practice, by which God's Word is heard and pondered, is a source of prayer and a school of contemplation, where the monk speaks heart to heart with God. For this reason, the brothers are to devote a fitting amount of time each day to such reading... Tradition greatly values lectio divina done in common. Photographs by Brother Brian. Lines from The Constitutions of the Monks.

Jesus reminds us this morning to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul and all our mind. An invitation, broad, practically immeasurable and magnificent. As Father Emmanuel reminded us, what was new was that Jesus coupled this great commandment with another: to love our neighbor as ourself. Two great commandments, indeed three; the totality of the Christian message. All-encompassing, for love is one. Loving God, loving neighbor, loving self are all of a piece. Hidden within this teaching is the reality that God in Christ first of all loves each of us  with all his heart, all his soul and all his mind. This is truly breathtaking. Imagine what it might be like to live continually with this knowledge: that God loves me, likes me, delights in me. Loving God and neighbor would then be obvious and wonderfully appropriate responses to such love. Photographs by Brother Brian.

In today's Gospel we hear Jesus cry out  for our love and faithfulness: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing! Saint Paul seems to understand the desire of the Lord. He prays that we may understand  what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, (and) be filled with all the fullness of God.

God is love. Love is never ugly, and God’s love is always creating beauty in place of irregularity and unevenness. 1  And at best we come to see and understand that fragmentation and precariousness ultimately belong to the phenomenon of beauty, because through fragmentation the beautiful ultimately reveals the promise it contains. 2  The crucified and risen Jesus reveals that beauty may be hidden behind fragmentation and woundedness: the beauty of love seemingly concealed but really present. Photograph by Brother Jonah.  1.  Augustine Through the Ages: An Encyclopedia , ed. Allan Fitzgerald, p. 704. 2. Hans Urs von Balthasar,  The Glory of the Lord,  vol. I, trans. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, p. 460.

Jesus’ answer to the disciples of the Pharisees in today's Gospel, “Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God”, is remarkable for its clarity and good sense. He is able to respond to the conundrum presented by the Pharisees with such a limpid and liberating interpretation of the law, because of his standpoint at the heart of the covenant. It is where he lives. His understanding and sovereign freedom come from living the covenant at its core. Just as the coin bears the image and inscription of Caesar and so belongs to him, so does man who bears the image of God and have his word inscribed in his heart belong to God and so ought to give his life wholly to him.  Jesus’ response is so right because it is in accord with his experience. He receives everything from the Father and gives everything back to him in total conformity to the mission the Father has entrusted to him. He is handed over wholly to the Father’s will. The Greek word translated as ...

Ignatius of Antioch, old but self-possessed, goes off to Rome and martyrdom in the arena; ardent, focused, burning with love for Christ. He begs not to be deterred from his goal: All the way from Syria to Rome I am fighting with wild beasts, by land and sea, night and day, chained as I am to ten leopards (I mean to a detachment of soldiers), who only get worse the better you treat them. But by their injustices I am becoming a better disciple, “though not for that reason am I acquitted.” What a thrill I shall have from the wild beasts that are ready for me! I hope they will make short work of me. I shall coax them on to eat me up at once and not to hold off, as sometimes happens, through fear. And if they are reluctant, I shall force them to it. Forgive me— I know what is good for me. Now is the moment I am beginning to be a disciple. May nothing seen or unseen begrudge me making my way to Jesus Christ. Come fire, cross, battling with wild beasts, wrenching of bones, mangling of...