ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

For God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to bring to light the knowledge of the glory of God on the face of Christ Jesus .   2 Corinthians 4:6 Late this morning our dear Father Edward entered eternal life. He had been a monk of Spencer for over sixty years, having come to the Abbey in 1951. A man of deep prayer and a lover of the brethren, he has served the community generously in numerous capacities and was permitted to live  as a hermit for some 44 years of his monastic life . We are grateful to now have him interceding on our behalf with Our Lord and Our Lady in paradise. We remember that year or so ago he told us, “I love serving  the monks and being with them. They are Christ among us.  I wish the whole world were attracted to the beauty of monasticism."  Requiescat in pace.

  Perhaps you remember hearing about Stephanie Decker, the woman from Indianapolis who in March of 2012 saved her two little children during a tornado. As the storm ripped through their home, Stephanie covered her kids with a big quilt and protected them with her own body. She was crushed under a cascade of debris. She lost parts of both her legs and suffered a punctured lung. But her eight-year-old son and five-year-old daughter both survived the storm unharmed because Stephanie put her great loving body on top of theirs, sheltering them and absorbing the impact of all that debris. How like Jesus is this loving mother.   As we try to grasp what Jesus does for us in his passion, death and resurrection, Stephanie’s deed can help us understand. Like Stephanie, Jesus absorbs all the shock and pain- the great tornado of sin throughout history- wars, holocausts, all the evil choices, large and small, all the resistances to God, all the proud refusals that have always been...

This morning we see Jesus sneak in to visit his frightened disciples even though the doors are locked. He returns without recriminations or regrets, no reproaches. Think of all the things he could have said: “You left me, you denied me. You feel asleep. How could you have done this?” But he’ll have none of it. He is utterly defenseless, wounded, disfigured forever by his passion. The scene is absolutely astounding in its simplicity. He is essentially silent, almost forlorn, coming through the locked doors as if on tiptoe. Jesus simply says, “Peace.” He offers them the gift of silent acceptance and unconditional love. Peace. He gladly shows the disciples his wounds, the holes that love has made in his heart, in his hands and feet. And here at last in silence He teaches us with his Body. He shows us his wounds and so reveals God’s forgiving love in and through his own disfigured humanity.* For on the cross he has given himself completely and so has made known God’s great love for ...

How to adequately celebrate the grandeur of the Resurrection of Our Lord? The Church gives us eight days, an octave. Eight is the number of extravagant fullness, overabundance. For seven is fullness- a whole week, a seemingly perfect combination of three and four; three the heavenly number for the Trinity plus four the number of things earthly- the seasons, the classical elements. But eight is one more, the number of beyondness , infinity, life in God. In one festive hymn we call the Day of Resurrection, "the first and eighth of days." Alleluia!

Love doesn’t forget; love remembers; and the memory of Jesus in us throbs with the power of his Word and the promise of his Resurrection. ‘Do not forget what I have done for you,’ Jesus says to us incessantly. When we are overwhelmed by sorrows of any kind, or are perhaps suffering the pangs of a devouring guilt that can tempt us to despair; when it seems that our life has reached a dead-end either through the treachery of others or through our own grave errors: then our only salvation is to believe with all our might in the power of Christ’s creative anticipation, that is, in the sovereign ability Christ demonstrated at the Last Supper and on the Cross to take an evil deed that will lead to his own crucifixion and providentially transform it into an event of Resurrection.   Christ’s unconditional handing-over of himself to us in advance of anything we might do ought to give us the certainty that no sin we commit can defeat the Mercy of God, and that...

  Up to now we have been comforted by the luminous aspects of the Paschal Mystery. But we must pursue our meditation into the dark side of the Redemption, because this is a darkness we all carry within us. We must glimpse into the abyss of suffering into which our Lord Jesus was plunged in the hours that led him into the desolation of abandonment by the Father and, ultimately, to a horrendous death.  In the days of his Passion, Jesus, obeying the will of the Father, willingly and even joyously (Heb 12:2) entered into what Paul calls “the mystery of iniquity” (2 Thes 2:7). Fully aware of what was involved, and with full consent of heart and will, Jesus handed himself over into the hands of sinners, to be treated by them as they pleased.    But who are these “sinners” into whose hands Jesus so willingly hands himself? Ourselves, of course. And yet Jesus sits at our table and eats with us, scandalizing the Pharisees. He surrenders himself into our sin...

     The most striking aspect of Jesus’ actions in the text of the Mass is what can be called Jesus’ creative anticipation of his death. Christ sacramentally institutes in the present an action that overtakes in time the destructive historical action of his murder that hasn’t yet occurred, while at the same time giving to it a startling redemptive meaning. Thus, the interior significance and effects of the future action of betrayal are radically changed by divine intervention before the betrayal occurs. The malice of man is overtaken by the goodness of God. Love swallows up hatred, even though the lover dies of its poisoning. A hate-filled enemy—including both his evil intentions and his murderous deed—is embraced as brother and friend.      In the Sacrament, Jesus’ death becomes the source of our life because the power of his love anticipates the mangling of his body and the shedding of his blood, and it transforms their vital meaning and effect: f...

  The Gospel everywhere urges us to allow the irresistible tenderness of Christ to invade our person and take over our every thought, feeling and action. Realistically, however, none of us can by nature be as selfless as Christ, the Good Samaritan who has only to glance at a wounded or needy person to shudder with mercy. The problem is not so much that of willfully imposing on ourselves a strict consistency between faith and action; it is more a matter of allowing the power of the Christ, who has given himself to me with love, to have its full effect in my person, rather like a pregnant mother-to-be who allows the child to grow in her womb and simply nourishes it by offering it her whole being and doing nothing to harm it.  This is not our work, but the work of God in us. Christ in us is never a mere static object that we dispose of; he is the Subject acting in my soul, the risen Lord who lives in me and strengthens me, the true Protagonist of my life and personal history. ...

As always during this most holy week, we invite our friends and neighbors to join us at prayer.     Palm Sunday Vigils at 3:30 am Lauds at 6:40 followed by Solemn Mass with blest palms distributed following the Liturgy Vespers & Benediction at 5:10 Compline at 7:40 Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday our normal daily schedule with Vigils at 3:30 am Lauds at 6 followed by Mass Vespers at 5:40 Compline at 7:40 Holy Thursday Vigils at 3:30 amLauds at 6:40 The Beginning of the Sacred Triduum with The Solemn Mass of the Lord's Supper at 4 followed by procession to the Altar of Repose Compline at 7:40 Good Friday Vigils at 4:30 am Lauds at 7:40 Solemn Liturgy of the Lord's Passion at 3 Compline at 7:40 Holy Saturday Vigils at 3:30 am Lauds at 6:40 Vespers at 5:40 Compline omitted Easter Sunday Solemn Paschal Vigil Mass at 3 am Lauds at 7:30 Easter Day Mass at 11 Vespers & Benediction at 5:10 Compline at 7:40

In a special prayer for these last days of Lent, we pray, "By your sacred wounds, purify our senses..." Indeed, may the the Lord Jesus fill us with himself, so that all else is eclipsed by his brightness. 

“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.  He has not left me alone, because I always do what is pleasing to him.”   John 8 It is on the cross that Jesus is lifted up. And there in the hour of his crucifixion, we witness the truth of who God wants to be for us. For in his death and dying, he absorbs and transforms all the horror and contradiction of sin; he frees us from the sin that would otherwise hold us captive. Christ Crucified , Diego Velázquez, c. 1632, oil on canvas,   248 × 169 cm, Prado Museum. 

He cried out in a loud voice,  “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands,  and his face was wrapped in a cloth. So Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.” Jesus is our life and resurrection. And as he tells us, he can only do what he sees the Father doing. A s the Father will call  forth Jesus from the dead, so Jesus  calls forth his dear friend Lazarus from the tomb this morning.  As individuals, as Church, we are Lazarus, summoned by Jesus from death and darkness. The Lord's promise is that he wants this for us.   Photo by Charles O'Connor

 “When Christ came into our midst to redeem us,” says Hans Urs von Balthasar,, “he descended so low that after that no one would be able to fall without falling into him.” Now we can all fall down into our pain, the truth of who we really are and find him there. But how to be continually nonresistant to the falling?    A group of doctors from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston went to Haiti after that devastating earthquake in January 2010. And a young woman oncologist told the story of being totally overwhelmed by the situation in a very primitive tent hospital. There was a seemingly endless barrage of impossible medical traumas, and they were without proper medicines or instruments. And at one point she became paralyzed by her helplessness and fear. She was just then at the bedside of a little boy, whose leg had been amputated a few days earlier. It was all too much. Suddenly unable to function any longer, she began sobbing uncontrollably, her face hidden in he...

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. 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 instead, onc...

Snowdrops blooming at different spots outside Abbey windows, signs of hope in a seemingly endless winter. We long for spring days, as we long for Easter.