ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

...we are told that only through Christ did real joy appear and that in our life, in the last analysis, nothing matters more than coming to recognize and understand Christ, the God of grace, the light and the joy of the world. Only then will our joy be true, when it no longer relies on things that can be snatched away from us and can perish, but when it is rooted in the innermost core of our existence, which no power in all the world is able to take away from us. And every outward loss ought to become for us a pathway into these innermost realms and to prepare us ever more for our true life.”   Christ Jesus, our Joy and Hope has been born of the Virgin Mary for us, apart from Him, we  want nothing else on earth. Madonna and Child ,  detail, Sandro Botticelli and workshop, Vienna. Lines by  Benedict XVI

“Mary gave birth to her first-born son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes…” The literal verbal form says that she “swaddled him.” Various reasons were given for the practice of ‘swaddling’. It was clearly more than diapering the child, although such cloth bands had to be changed as often as modern-day diapers do. What Mary did for Jesus in swaddling him was what any ancient Palestinian mother would do for a newborn babe. It was not a sign of poverty or lowly birth. It was simply an expression of a mother’s loving, maternal care. Like any infant, Jesus, needed to be cared for. He couldn’t take care of himself. He would have died without that care. In the Christ Child God chose to need us. God chose to be dependent on his creatures. This is the core of the Christmas message and mystery: the profound dependency and vulnerability of the divine as it divests itself of power and glory in order to assume the form of a fragile creature. The Christmas mystery is more than just informat...

Christianity lives within the wonder first sketched out by the prophet Isaiah and heard in the liturgy throughout these past weeks of Advent. Lots of Isaiah! Today, as we zoom in on the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, we celebrate both the coming of Isaiah’s exalted Lord of Lords who became a servant, and the birth of Isaiah’s Suffering Servant who became Lord through his whole life of faithful love of God and neighbor, “even unto death, death on a cross.” Although historically birth comes before death, the early Christians celebrated the death of the Lord long before they came to ponder his nativity. His Passion and Death are always in the background of the Infancy Narratives, which were composed last. Looking back from the vantage point of Golgotha, Matthew and Luke recognized that, from the very first, this child is born to deal with evil and sin and love gone wrong. Humanly speaking, he will fail and be buried under the weight of it. Another victim in the bloodthirsty histo...

Just as Saint Stephen sees the heavens open and Jesus at the right hand of the Father, we too know that the heavens have indeed been torn apart - the newborn Christ lying in the manger has come down to us like the spring rain upon the tender grass.  With Stephen let us hand over our entire selves to God Most High who has become for us God most low.

Mary, the undefiled handmaid of the Lord: her message is the feminine willingness to receive and to conceive.... ‘The angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin. She was betrothed to a man named Joseph of the House of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary. The angel entered and said, “Hail to thee, full of grace . . .!” ’ This is one of the stellar moments in world history – for here and at this spot and in the fullest sense the presence of God began indeed. Here in truth ‘Advent’ came about. But let us be aware that this stellar moment in world history was at the same time one of its quietist moments. A moment overlooked, not reported in any newspaper nor mentioned in any magazine; nor would it have been reported if such means had then been known. What we are told here is therefore first and foremost a mystery of stillness. What is truly great grows outside the limelight; and stillness at the right time is more fruitful than constant busyness, wh...

It may seem a bit odd but perhaps the Spirit of God is pleading for our understanding in today's Gospel, as if to say, “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. ...

John was able to point out Christ at the Jordan, in a moment of fulfillment, which gave meaning to his whole life. John also had to witness to Christ in prison, in face of death, in failure.... So too, we may at times be able to show the world Christ in moments when all can clearly discern in history, some confirmation of the Christian message. But the fact remains that our task is to seek and find Christ in our world as it is, and not as it might be. The fact that the world is other than it might be does not alter the truth that Christ is present in it and that His plan has been neither frustrated nor changed: indeed, all will be done according to His will.  Our Advent is the celebration of this hope. What is uncertain is not the ‘coming’ of Christ but our own reception of Him, our own response to Him, our own readiness and capacity to ‘go forth to meet Him’. We must be willing to see Him and acclaim Him, as John did, even at the very moment when our whole life’s work and a...

On the one hand, t he season of Advent  is a season of joy and hopeful anticipation as we approach Christmas; on the other hand, it is filled with sober reminders of what will happen when the Lord comes. The prophets are particularly sensitive to this paradox.  St. John the Baptist  certainly knew the ups and downs associated with the Lord’s coming. His whole prophetic mission was focused on it. He had spent years in the desert preparing; he fearlessly rebuked the religious leaders as a brood of vipers and called out the king for his adulterous behavior; he had seen the heavens opened and the Spirit descending like a dove; and finally, he was bound in prison for his witness to the truth with only his conscience for company. Someone might think that Jesus would do something to assist John. But when his disciples bring John’s question to Jesus, that is, whether Jesus is the one who is to come, Jesus doesn’t send a rescue squad. He doesn’t offer words of sympathy. H...

At Tepeyac the Virgin Mary depicts herself as a pregnant, olive-skinned Indian maiden. Like the Son she carries in her womb, she identifies herself with the little ones and pictures herself as one of them. On an icy cold day in December of 1531,   she promises Juan Diego that he will find many flowers blossoming on the hilltop where he first met her. He does as she says and gathers Castilian roses, lilies, carnations, iris, fragrant jasmine blossoms, yellow gorse and tiny violets. The Virgin arranges them all in the fold of Juan’s coarse cactus fiber   tilma . When they fall to the floor before the dumbfounded bishop of Mexico City, he sees Our Blessed Lady’s lovely handiwork. She has painted her self-portrait with spring blossoms in winter. Jesus and his dear Mother long to be with us; and even now they are doing everything, anything to get our attention. Very often perhaps we have ignored His mercy-laden advances; or perhaps forgotten her promi...

Seeing tiny bird tracks in the new snow, we are reminded of God's desire to be small and hidden in Mary's womb and even now in our own daily experience - always waiting for us there. The divine Word belittled himself and he has remained pledged to smallness…he loves smallness…Jesus seeks smallness because he knows very well that there is nothing so truly great upon earth as that which is insignificant…small is the manger, small is the boat, narrow is the cross…He clothes the small with the immensity of his love, and to the little ones he entrusts great missions… Lines by Luis Martinez.

There are so many annunciations; God makes so many overtures to us all day long, trying to get our attention. There are so many invitations to embrace our fears, our inner loneliness as privileged places of encounter with as much courage as the Virgin Mary, who allowed herself to be invaded, tenderly overshadowed by Mystery, a Mystery who loves us beyond all telling to ...believe beyond believing, That life can spring from (fear and) death; That growth can flower from our grieving; That we can...turn transfixed by faith.   Let us step quietly, perhaps even a bit forlornly, into this place of deep trust. Photograph by Father Emmanuel. Lines from the Advent hymn  Each Winter as the Year Grows Older .

The Abbey's cloister garth is a kind of secret garden surrounded by the four cloisters. This garden enclosed is a symbol of the Blessed Virgin Mary, her beauty, and fragrance set apart for Christ alone, a place where he could nestle and grow.  On this Solemnity of her Immaculate Conception we celebrate Mary's  chosenness . And we rejoice in her privilege, for she reveals the breadth of our human capacity for God, the breathtaking beauty of our availability to all that God wants to accomplish in us.  A garden enclosed is my sister, my bride; a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed up.  Lines from the  Song of Songs. Photographs by Brother Brian.

Jesus invites us into a place of deep trust and freedom, where fear is conquered by the weakness of love. It is, after all, what he says over and over again to his disciples after his resurrection. “It is I, do not be afraid.” And so we are trying to learn  that God’s love for us casts out all fear. We can simply fall backwards into him, into that confidence, that knowledge that we like him are beloved ones of God. This is the work of trusting, choosing to believe. For our belovedness is simply the way things are. No one can take it away. God is with us, on our side; we can stop running. A group of doctors from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston went to Haiti after the earthquake in 2010. 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 without proper medicines or instruments. And at one point she became paralyzed by her helplessness...

In darkness and the gloom of these shortest days of the year, we pray for Christ's nearness, even as we know he is never far. He is always, always with us, within us. Still, in these days we want to deepen our desire, stoke our yearning, remembering with broken hearts our desperate need for the God who dwells within. We pray then for attentiveness to the One who is always and everywhere "toward us," drawing us to himself. We beg to be more and more deliberate in our awareness of our own desperate desire for him and his even more desperate longing for us. For as Saint Augustine reminds us, God thirsts to be thirsted after.