Holy Family

Mary’s question, Son, why have you done this to us?, implies that she does not think that Jesus had a right to do what he did.  But Jesus’ reply to his mother surpasses her complaint in its trenchancy:  Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?  He seems surprised that they were looking for him at all, as if they should have known better.   But he’s speaking to them from another level of existence.  To his Did you not know?, Mary could well have retorted:  ‘No, indeed!  We did not know!  How could we have known?  You are, after all, only twelve years old!’  But Mary is too deeply wise and pure in her love to speak thus.  She abides in a silence full of awe and obedience.

Here is the point of extreme difficulty, when God chooses to reveal his nature as Redeemer through the agency of ordinary human beings.  These ordinary human beings are expected by God—whether they are ready or not—to rise to their divine vocation with a sudden violence to the heart, and to become pliant instruments for God’s self-manifestation to the world.  Nothing could have prepared Mary and Joseph specifically for this occasion, for this experience of the loss of their precious Son! Yes, they had received angelic revelations and promises about Jesus’ messianic vocation; but every time what shocks human expectations and demands painful sacrifices is the specific and surprising manner in which God’s designs take form in our flesh.  ‘Why like this, O God?’, Mary could well have asked.

The text becomes most demanding, however, when the evangelist uses the word ‘father’ twice in mutually contradictory senses that must have made Joseph wince.  When Mary says: Your father and I have been looking for you with great anxiety, Jesus replies:  Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?  Here Jesus seems to be rejecting the fatherhood of the very Joseph whom Jesus’ heavenly Father’s angel had persuaded to accept it! 

But they did not understand what he said to them: Joseph and Mary have to abide in the darkness of unknowing while continuing to care for Jesus with all their tender love, grooming him, we might say, for the day when he would leave them behind definitively. Thus, the mission of every parent to help their children grow in freedom, wisdom and grace becomes, in the case of Jesus’ parents, the mission to prepare Jesus to offer himself for the salvation of others through a life of sacrifice. 

Duccio di Buoninsegna, The Finding of Jesus in the Temple. Excerpts from a Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family by Father Simeon.

With Mary at Christmas

Mary ponders and treasures. Perhaps this is how we are meant to let the meaning of Jesus’ birth come alive in us. Such pondering isn’t about explaining or analyzing. It is about wondering and discovering. Silent treasuring and pondering seem to be the way of Mary. Might it also be our way? The Christmas gift she is offering us with her Son? She knows that her Son is the Way. 

What do you treasure about Jesus’ birth? What treasure does his birth hold for you? What does your pondering reveal about him; about you; about the life that he now shares with you? How would your life look and feel; how would it be different if you carried Jesus’ birth within you? The ‘continuing incarnation’; the incarnation which began in the womb of Mary is never ending; it continues in our lives.

Excerpt from Abbot Damian's homily for Christmas Eve.

Interrupted

At Christmas we are not just recalling past events. These events remain somehow present  as a live current that we are meant to plug into. As we celebrate the physical birth of Jesus into the world, we are meant to move from the fact of this birth to its meaning. What does this birth mean for your life and for my life? What do our lives look like now in light of this birth? Jesus’ birth, the birth of the eternal Son of the Father in each of our lives is as unique and particular as is each of our lives.

The angel’s announcement of Jesus’ birth interrupted the shepherds’ lives. It called them away from their field and the watching of their flock. They went to Bethlehem to find “the child lying in a manger.” The “good news of great joy” is announced in the ordinary, everyday circumstances of our lives. What are our particular fields and flocks? Family and friends, ups and downs, frustrations and consolations, joys and sorrows. That’s where he wants to be born. That’s where we are invited to ‘plug in’, to come and adore. This isn’t an escape from the fields and flocks, including the rocks and manure of our lives. The birth that called the shepherds away from their fields and flocks is also the birth that returned them to their fields and flocks again. Their fields and flocks weren’t different. But they were. They now carried the birth of Jesus wherever they went. 

The shepherds were directed to Bethlehem, to find an Infant lying in a manger; which, as we know, is a feeding trough. At each Mass we are invited to approach the feeding trough of the altar, not only to see and gaze and worship but to consume the very bread of life; the body, blood, soul and divinity of the Word made flesh. We are invited to become what we consume. Not only to pause in blissful adoration but also to go forth and feed others with the very same life of God which we are becoming. 
Adoration of the Shepherds, Bartolomé Murillo (c. 1617-1682), Spanish. Excerpt from Abbot Damian's homily for Christmas Eve.

Our Narrowness

He who was one in substance with the Father stooped down to share the substance of his mother and thereby took on himself our fallen nature, our human condition. Thus, the mystery of new birth shone upon us, so that through the same Spirit by whom Christ was conceived and brought forth, we too might be born again by a spiritual birth.

Nothing about his birth took place outside our human condition. What we really celebrate today is that Jesus continues to be born in the narrowness of our lives, taking on our very earthy humanness in order to give his love to the world through us, through our flesh and blood. The British mystic, poet, and spiritual teacher Caryll Houselander puts it this way:

The reason why we are where we are this Christmas...is because it is here in this place that Christ wants to be born; it is from here that he wants his life to begin again in the world. The reason that we are with these particular people is because it is precisely to these people that Christ wants us to give his love. This year we are his trustees for these people; he has put his love for them into our hands, into our hearts. We did not choose this place—Christ has chosen it. We did not choose these people—Christ has chosen them.

We are asked one thing: to have the humility and courage to open the secret place of our heart to Christ, conscious though we are that it is as derelict as the stable, and that his light will reveal the mouse and the spider.

It may have been puzzling, even to Mary, how Christ was giving his life to the whole world in the obscurity of Bethlehem, but it was enough for her that this was his way. It still is, and he himself is the Way, the only way to our peace.

We have truly received love upon love, grace upon grace; but we truly receive only by sharing: by sharing so great a gift from our own narrowness and darkness. Infant born in Bethlehem was not afraid of our narrowness and darkness, but precisely from there draws us and the whole world into his superabundant Light and Life.

Taken from Father Dominic's homily for Christmas Day.

The Christmas Mystery

The mystery that confronts us this morning is the birth of a very particular infant, the birth of someone who alone shows us the road to oneness with God; someone who came and dwelt among us in order to lead us all into this communion that is the very life of God. Incarnation is not so much “what” but “what for.” This Nativity is full of purpose!

“And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Jean Vanier expresses beautifully and in simple terms the meaning of this Christmas proclamation:

Here we have the heart, the center, the beginning and the end of the gospel: God, the eternal God, Creator of the heavens and the earth, became like us, a vulnerable, mortal human being. He became as a baby needing a mother, conceived in her flesh, nourished at her breast, needing her love and the love and presence of Joseph in order to grow and develop as a human being. Pitching his tent among us, he became a pilgrim and a brother, walking through the desert with us. He became part of history, revealing to us a way to God and to universal peace.

That humble birth in Bethlehem means that God is no longer distant or set apart from our world—indeed, it means a huge change for each one of us personally, for the Prologue of John's Gospel assures us that “from the fullness of life and love in Him we have received love upon love, grace upon grace.” In fact, we have received so much from him that his birth is, in a real sense, our birth

Excerpts from this morning's homily by Father Dominic

This Night

In peaceful silence, the all powerful Word, Our Lord Jesus will come to us this night from the hidden quiet of Mary's pure womb. Let us open our hearts to welcome him, who is our only Consolation, our Hope, our Refuge. His littleness is the sign of his divine grandeur.

Fourth Sunday of Advent

Mary has been visited from on High with the news that she is to be God-bearer. And this morning we watch as she heads into the hill country to share her extraordinary secret with her cousin Elizabeth, herself large with child, since God has intervened in her life as well. 

In their intimate encounter Mary and Elizabeth remind us that there is no place where God’s presence does not reach. Our stories as well as theirs are replete with God’s interventions, if we dare to notice them. God is no less intimate with us today as well, for we too have been welcomed into intimacy with God. 

The Creator of all has chosen to become one among his own creatures. God is with us, God now has a human face. Such a truth far beyond our grasp invites us to wonder, and wonder is the threshold of contemplation, a contemplation that is not so much seeing God, as entering God’s seeing. 

The Visitation, c. 1495, attributed to Rueland Frueauf the Elder, German (c. 1445 - 1507), Oil on panel,  27 5/8 x 14 15/16 in., Fogg Museum.   Meditation based on Father Isaac’s homily for the Fourth Sunday of Advent.

Promises Beyond Promises

"How can this be?" says Mary. And then, "Let it be to me, as you have said." O God of surprises. O God of upside-downness. You who bring joy out of sorrow. You who make deserts suddenly bloom with bright blossoms. You who soften the hearts of hungry wolves, as they curl up to nap with lambs. How dare we ever despair of your tender mercy? Or forget that you are always doing the most unexpected, most humble and compassionate thing? Always the God of reversals and making new. Barren wombs are suddenly, amazingly made fruitful. And a Virgin womb will bear your Son. 

Photograph by Brother Brian.

Joseph's Dream

Joseph has plunged into the mystery God has held out before him...What openness to God on Joseph's part, what willingness to start again and build his life according to God's latest designs!...Suddenly, from the heart of eternity, the lightning of divine revelation interrupts Joseph's human cogitations. By keeping the stage of his soul as empty as possible of all human accoutrements, Joseph has allowed God to enter as in as principal actor. Human meditation - protracted, labored, anguished - and divine illumination - sudden, intense, incontestable - go well with one another, call out to one another. Joseph's dark puzzlement, in piety before God, unwittingly invites illumination to come to his soul...It is in a dream that God speaks to him... 

Gaetano Gandolfi, Joseph’s Dream, c. 1790, oil, 95 cm X 76 cm., private collection. Reflection by Father Simeon.

Longing

As monks we are meant to live in incessant desire for God, to become all longing and hunger for him. The season of Advent, its prayers and readings speak to us of a mutuality of desire. For indeed, if we long to see the face of God, so God's desire to come to us outstrips our own desire and takes flesh in Christ Jesus our Lord. God wants to be with us more than we know. In Jesus, God's face has been revealed. During Advent we celebrate the emptiness that makes us totally available for all that God wants to give us in Christ. We are joyful in our neediness and longing, for God longs to fill us with God's own Self in Christ more than we dare imagine. Amen. Come Lord Jesus and do not delay!  

Photograph by Brother Brian.

At Guadalupe

On an chilly day in December of 1531, Our Lady promises Juan Diego that he will find flowers blossoming on a nearby hilltop. He gathers roses, lilies, carnations, iris, fragrant jasmine blossoms, yellow gorse and tiny violets. The Virgin arranges the flowers in the fold of Juan’s coarse cactus-fiber tilma and sends him to visit the bishop in Mexico City. When Juan opens his robe, the flowers tumble to the floor before the bishop, and he sees Our Blessed Lady’s lovely handiwork. He falls to his knees in prayer, for she has painted her self-portrait with spring blossoms on Juan's tilma. 

Mary is at the center of what Pope Francis has called “the revolution of tenderness." Today as we remember Our Lady of Guadalupe, we recall her words to Saint Juan Diego:

Do listen, do be assured of it, my littlest one, that nothing at all should alarm you, should trouble you, nor in any way disturb your countenance, your heart. For am I not here, I, your mother? Are you not in the cool of my shadow? In the breeziness of my shade? Is it not I that am your source of contentment? Are you not cradled in my mantle, cuddled in the crossing of my arms? Is there anything else you need?

Christian

In May of 1996 seven of our Cistercian brothers of Tibhirine in Algeria were kidnapped from their monastery and beheaded by a group of Islamic terrorists trained by the al-Qaida network. Caught in the conflict between the Algerian government and the extremist Armed Islamic Group, these monks chose to remain at their monastery and face death in solidarity with the Muslim neighbors whom they loved. These monks were beatified on 8 December in Oran, Algeria. We post below the moving Testament composed by their superior, Christian de Chergé, prior to their capture. May these martyrs teach us to be models of Christian friendship, encounter and dialogue, and may their example help us build a world of peace.

Yesterday our If it should happen one day - and it could be today -

that I become a victim of the terrorism which now seems ready to engulf
all the foreigners living in Algeria,
I would like my community, my Church and my family
to remember that my life was GIVEN to God and to this country.
I ask them to accept the fact that the One Master of all life
was not a stranger to this brutal departure.
I would ask them to pray for me:
for how could I be found worthy of such an offering?
I ask them to associate this death with so many other equally violent ones
which are forgotten through indifference or anonymity.
My life has no more value than any other.
Nor any less value.
In any case, it has not the innocence of childhood.
I have lived long enough to know that I am an accomplice in the evil
which seems to prevail so terribly in the world,
even in the evil which might blindly strike me down.
I should like, when the time comes, to have a moment of spiritual clarity
which would allow me to beg forgiveness of God
and of my fellow human beings,
and at the same time forgive with all my heart the one who would strike me down.
I could not desire such a death.
It seems to me important to state this.
I do not see, in fact, how I could rejoice
if the people I love were indiscriminately accused of my murder.
It would be too high a price to pay
for what will perhaps be called, the "grace of martyrdom"
to owe it to an Algerian, whoever he might be,
especially if he says he is acting in fidelity to what he believes to be Islam.
I am aware of the scorn which can be heaped on the Algerians indiscriminately.
I am also aware of the caricatures of Islam which a certain Islamism fosters.
It is too easy to soothe one's conscience
by identifying this religious way with the fundamentalist ideology of its extremists.
For me, Algeria and Islam are something different: it is a body and a soul.
I have proclaimed this often enough, I think, in the light of what I have received from it.
I so often find there that true strand of the Gospel
which I learned at my mother's knee, my very first Church,
precisely in Algeria, and already inspired with respect for Muslim believers.
Obviously, my death will appear to confirm
those who hastily judged me naïve or idealistic:
"Let him tell us now what he thinks of his ideals!"
But these persons should know that finally my most avid curiosity will be set free.
This is what I shall be able to do, God willing:
immerse my gaze in that of the Father
to contemplate with him His children of Islam
just as He sees them, all shining with the glory of Christ,
the fruit of His Passion, filled with the Gift of the Spirit
whose secret joy will always be to establish communion
and restore the likeness, playing with the differences.
For this life lost, totally mine and totally theirs,
I thank God, who seems to have willed it entirely
for the sake of that JOY in everything and in spite of everything.
In this THANK YOU, which is said for everything in my life from now on,
I certainly include you, friends of yesterday and today,
and you, my friends of this place,
along with my mother and father, my sisters and brothers and their families,
You are the hundredfold granted as was promised!
And also you, my last-minute friend, who will not have known what you were doing:
Yes, I want this THANK YOU and this GOODBYE to be a "GOD-BLESS" for you, too,
because in God's face I see yours.
May we meet again as happy thieves in Paradise, if it please God, the Father of us both.

AMEN !   INCHALLAH !   Algiers, 1^st December 1993 
Tibhirine, 1^st January 1994  


 

Mary Immaculate

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 on your word depends comfort for the wretched, ransom for the captive, freedom for the condemned, indeed, salvation for all the sons of Adam, the whole of your race. 

Answer quickly, O Virgin. Reply in haste to the angel, or rather through the angel to the Lord. Answer with a word, receive the Word of God. Speak your own word, conceive the divine Word. Breathe a passing word, embrace the eternal Word. 

Why do you delay, why are you afraid? Believe, give praise, and receive. Let humility be bold, let modesty be confident. This is no time for virginal simplicity to forget prudence. In this matter alone, O prudent Virgin, do not fear to be presumptuous. Though modest silence is pleasing, dutiful speech is now more necessary. Open your heart to faith, O blessed Virgin, your lips to praise, your womb to the Creator. See, the Desired of all nations is at your door, knocking to enter. If he should pass by because of your delay, in sorrow you would begin to seek him afresh, the One whom your soul loves. Arise, hasten, open. Arise in faith, hasten in devotion, open in praise and thanksgiving. Behold the handmaid of the Lord, she says, be it done to me according to your word. 

Lines from a Sermon by our Father, Saint Bernard.

Nicholas

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.

Father Matthew and Saint John Damascene

He is light, incomprehensible sweetness, incomparable, immeasurable perfection, an ocean of goodness, boundless wisdom, and power, who alone is worthy of Himself to excite admiration, to be worshipped, glorified, and desired… We must thank God for all created things, and show Him perpetual worship, as from Him and through Him all creation takes its being and subsists.  John Damascene, On the Divine Images.

Jesus is always coming toward us to fill us with an infinity of compassion and mercy. And his way of seeing things is very different than our own. We see measurement: “How many times?” God sees seventy-times-seven – immeasurability. Love and compassion and forgiveness increase unbelievably when they are shared. You never run out. It is simply foolish to be stingy and not to love and forgive as has been done to us by God. We are invited to imitate God’s immeasurable goodness.

As we were composing these lines, our dear Father Matthew passed away in the abbey infirmary. We remember his indomitable joy and loving presence; never a negative voice, never stingy with his love but always a brother and mentor who supported and encouraged us. Matthew always saw God's immeasurable goodness in all that occurred - God guiding and leading us, never abandoning us in any circumstance. Having undergone innumerable medical complications and sufferings during his long life, Matthew's spirit was ever-infused with hope that God would provide and sustain us.

Photographs  by Brother Brian.

The End is the Beginning.

 People will die of fright in anticipation of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken. And then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these signs begin to happen, stand erect and raise you heads because your redemption is at hand. Luke 21

Whenever I preside at Mass, I say this prayer after the Our Father: “the blessed hope and the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  My own death, whenever God wills it, is end enough for me.  Yet, I feel sincere when I pray this prayer, for in the Christian and Cistercian tradition, there are a number of ways that the Lord comes and puts an end to the world. When he came in the flesh from Mary's womb and lived among us, taught us, healed many of us, suffered and died and rose again, he ended the power of the “world” - the satanic powers and the power of our own fallen nature to destroy us. His Spirit poured out on us gives us the possibility of living in the new creation. So, the first coming of the Lord Jesus in the flesh presents us with his second coming through the Holy Spirit forming us into the likeness of Christ, both individually and corporately as the Body of Christ which is the Church. 

We all have a long way to go in becoming Christ, but we are on the way. While we are on the way, God in Christ though the Holy Spirit is constantly coming to us to end the worldliness in us as individuals and as Church and through the Church to end the blindness of the world to the reality of the God and our brothers and sisters and all creation which we were called to cherish from the beginning

God is always coming to us at every moment with his love and strength and healing, ending the life and world of the “old man” and giving life to the “new man in Jesus Christ.”  Certainly I pray for that as does Saint Paul: “Brothers and sisters: May the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we have for you, so as to strengthen your hearts, to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones. Amen.” We see that talking about our sanctification leads right into the end of everything as we know it.  Real holiness does indeed look forward to what the Cistercians of old celebrated as the third coming of Christ at the end of time, what most Christians call Christ's Second Coming which is the ultimate New Beginning.  The End is the Beginning. 

Photograph by Father Emmanuel. Excerpts from Father Luke's Homily for the First Sunday of Advent.

      

Advent

As monks we seek to live in incessant desire for God, to become all longing and hunger for him. The season of Advent, its prayers and readings speak to us of a mutuality of desire. For indeed if we long to see the face of God, so God's desire to come to us outstrips our own desire and takes flesh in Christ Jesus our Lord. In Jesus God's face has been revealed. This revelation stokes our desire for more intense experience of his presence and divine embrace. During Advent we celebrate the emptiness that makes us totally available for all that God wants to give us in Christ. We are joyful in our neediness and longing, for God longs to fill us with God's own Self in Christ more than we dare imagine. Amen. Come Lord Jesus and do not delay!