ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

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...

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.

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. Th...

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 p...

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...

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.

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...

"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 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.

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.

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, w e 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  yo...

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, p rior 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 w...

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, freed...

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.

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,  O n 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 ...

  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 possibi...

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!

Truly the Kingdom of God is among us, within us. And Saint Paul reminds us,  “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!  Let your gentleness be apparent to all. The Lord is near. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Phil. 4 How do we dare to rejoice amidst all the crumbling and brokenness and pain? We dare to, because Jesus is with us, always near. He is our only reason to rejoice and hope. Photograph of Abbey glass by Brother Daniel.

Too much is happening, too much is falling apart everywhere. And it’s not the time for us to hide from one another or from Christ Jesus our Lord. It is a time to be vigilant and come together, for Jesus our Lord beckons us and leads us forth into battle. On one side are those forces within us and without that sow division, discord and isolation. On the other side there are all those forces that nurture attachment, connection and solidarity. And that’s where he wants us to be, that’s where his kingdom is going to happen. It’s a showdown between cynics and optimists, a war between “rippers and weavers,” that runs down the middle of every heart. *  With Jesus we need to be weavers, creating a tapestry of loving relatedness and bonds of trust. This is why we’re here in the monastery, this school of the Lord’s service, this school of love - to practice connecting and reconnecting, obeying and deferring to one another out of love. The Lord of gentleness and compassion...

We desperately need someone to help us reconnect. The good news is he has come. This morning we behold him on trial; he is a lonely man, his best friends have panicked, run off and left him. He is a warrior in a righteous cause – his cause is truth, compassion and self-forgetfulness. He calls this truth the kingdom, a place where no one gets excluded, a place where everyone matters. He stands before us, condemned, humiliated, spat upon and rejected by jealous leaders threatened by his brand of compassion. And they are right to be concerned, he is dangerous. The immeasurableness of God’s mercy has been breaking through in all his signs and healings. He brings good news to the poor, sets free those oppressed and heavily burdened. And he is unraveling things. He eats with sinners, heals outsiders, cures people no matter which day of the week it is, even touches lepers and so has become unclean. Everybody knows a Messiah is not supposed to do that kind of stuff. He shocks by his u...

In a recent address Pope Francis expressed the great appreciation of the Church for our contemplative form of life. What would become of the Church without the contemplative life? What would become of the weaker members of the Church who find in you a support to continue the journey? What would happen to the Church and the world without the beacons that signal the port to those who are lost on the high seas, without the torches that illuminate the dark night we are going through, without the sentinels announcing the new day when it is still night? Thank you, sisters and contemplative brothers because you offer all this for the world: support for the weak, beacons, torches and sentinels. Thank you for enriching us with so many fruits of holiness, mercy and grace.” With the whole Church, I also pray that the Lord may ‘be ever present and active in your heart and transform you entirely in Him, the ultimate aim of the contemplative life, and may your communities or fraternities ...

In all circumstances, give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus. This verse comes from Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians. The directness and unequivocalness sort of stopped me in my tracks. “In all circumstances, give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus”? This doesn’t sound like Paul is offering us a pious nosegay or a sort of optional extra that we can take or leave. After hearing this proclamation, I decided to go to a biblical commentary. I must admit that I did this in part, at least, looking for, if not an outright qualification, at least a nuance on what Paul is saying here. I admit that this says more about me than about Paul. What I discovered after my biblical commentary exploration is that Paul most certainly does not qualify the circumstances in which we are to give thanks. He says “all” and he means “all.” In fact, the two previous imperatives that he offers us in this passage are just as comprehensive and u...

Today we recalled these words of Julian of Norwich: "Our Lord is full of mirth and gladness because of our prayer." How good to remember that Christ Jesus in his love for us is attentive and delighted by our efforts at prayer, our desires to please and praise Him, no matter how feeble or faltering we may believe them to be. It is good to wonder and imagine things from the other side, God's side.  Photograph by Brother Brian. 

We rejoice as we celebrate today Our Lady's Presentation in the Temple. Tradition holds that she was set apart from a very young age, since she was to be the dwelling place of the Most High.  Detail from  The Presentation of the Virgin Mary, Titian, 1534-38, Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice.  

Grant us, we pray, O Lord our God, the constant gladness of being devoted to you, for it is full and lasting happiness to serve with constancy the author of all that is good.  This moving collect prayer for the Thirty-third Sunday of the Year reminds us that serving God is our joy. We may have thought in the past that surrendering our will would entail unbearable hardship. We come to discover that choosing to obey and to serve grants joy and freedom. Jesus said, "I have not come to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me." Pleasing the Father was Jesus' delight. May it be ours as well.

We can easily forget that every beginning finds its fullness in an ending, and every ending is the context for a new beginning. As Christians we believe this happens ultimately in Christ—the one who called himself the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. But how will we find our way forward when the usual lights that illumined our path no longer shine? What do we do when we feel our world (personal, ecclesial, societal, environmental) falling apart? Where do we go when it seems as if darkness is our only companion, and God is nowhere to be seen? The Gospel, indeed all salvation history, insists the dark times of life are threshold moments. The temptation is to do something; to fix it, to ease the pain, to escape the uncertainty, and to get back to what used to be. But we can never go back to the way it was before the lights went out. God does not undo our life. God redeems our life. If we allow them, these dark threshold places of life can draw us more deeply int...