ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

  In the presence of the angels, I will sing your praises Lord. As we celebrate Saints Michael, Gabriel, Raphael and all the holy angels and archangels, these messengers of God Most High, we recall that as we chant our praise to God, we join them in their endless praise. Indeed, when we pray the heavens are thrown open, and we are one with the angels and saints in their ceaseless adoration.  And we invoke the help and protection of the angels. Because of their roles in salvation history, traditionally Saint Michael is known as patron of police officers and guards; Saint Gabriel, patron of messengers and mail carriers; and Saint Raphael, patron of physicians. Detail of  The Assumption  by Fra Angelico.

We mourn the passing of our dear Brother Bernard, a beloved senior who passed to the Lord last evening during a brief stay in the hospital. Dom Vincent was at his side as he breathed his last.  Brother Bernard edified us continually with his dedication to simple work. In recent years this meant patiently raking leaves and sweeping the cloisters each day. For several years he supervised Trappist Preserves. Later he served as monastery cellarer diligently overseeing the work assignments of the brethren.  He was always well respected as one who would listen. May Brother Bernard now rest in peace and enjoy everlasting joy and light in the Lord, whom he loved and served so faithfully. Photographs by BrotherBrian.

We’ve all heard of the “terrible twos” And probably you can remember a child you knew, a nephew or niece when at around two years old they learned the power of no. “No.” It's embarrassing to admit, but I don't think I ever outgrew the grip of that no. I think my terrible twos morphed into the terrible twenties, forties and now worst of all now the terrible sixties. Deep inside there’s a repeating sound bite that often goes off automatically when I’m asked to do something. It goes like this: “Not yet. When I’m good and ready. I’ll think about it. Maybe. I’ll see.” Or simply, “No, I won’t.” Or “No one’s gonna tell me what to do.” This morning that hauntingly beautiful phrase from St. Paul cuts through all the babble: “Have this mind in you that was in Christ Jesus.” (That is the more literal translation of “attitude” in today's second reading.) Have Jesus’ beautiful mind in you. Beautiful to ponder, but seemingly impossible. Perhaps we feel too sharply the reproach of our r...

In blue-green air & water  God   you have come back for us,  to our fiberglass boat. You have come back for us, & I’m afraid. (But you never left.) Great sadness at harms. But nothing that comes now, after, can be like before. Even when the icebergs are gone,  and the millions of suns  have burnt themselves out of your arms, your arms of burnt air, you are with us,   whoever we are then . Lines from the poem,  Icebergs, Ilulissat , by Jean Valentine.

Cultivating mindfulness of God throughout the day is the goal of each monk. Our  Constitutions  tell us:  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.... In a spirit of compunction and intense desire, monks devote themselves frequently to prayer. While dwelling on earth, their minds are occupied with heavenly things, desiring eternal life with all spiritual longing. Photographs by Father Emmanuel & Brother Brian.

The mother of Jesus and his brothers came to him  but were unable to join him because of the crowd.  He was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside,  and they wish to see you.”  He said to them in reply, “My mother and my brothers  are those who hear the word of God and act on it.”   Luke 8 Certainly Jesus is not insulting his Mother or his cousins in today's Gospel. Indeed Mary's attentiveness to God's invitation at the Annunciation is the essence of her divine maternity and the enfleshment of the Word. She it is who first of all heard the word of God and acted upon it. In and through her, God is truly with us. In today's Gospel Jesus assures all attentive believers that they are truly members of his own family,  members of  the household of God. As we treasure the Word, treasure his words to us, we are intimates of the the Son of Mary.

This morning we have from Jesus yet another parable on the kingdom. In it we have a landowner who goes out at various times during the day to contract workers to work in his vineyard. The first group he hires at the first hour of the day after agreeing with them for the usual daily wage. The last group he hires toward the end of the day and they work only an hour. At the end of the day each of the groups receive their pay beginning with the last. When the first group sees that the last group receives the usual daily wage, they assume they will receive more. However, to their consternation, their pay is the same, the usual daily wage.   Those who were hired at the first hour grumbled against the landowner because to their mind he had violated the just order. The landowner takes one of the complainers aside and reminds him of the terms of the contract they had agreed upon, the usual daily wage. Therefore, the landowner had not done anything wrong but justly and honestly fulfilled t...

Signaling the end of the summer, great flocks of Canadian geese have returned to rest and and feed in the Abbey fields on their way south. We are told that since early Roman times, geese have been used in literature and art as symbols of vigilance and divine providence. An ancient legend recounts that geese on the  Capitoline hill  honked their warning and saved Rome from the invasion of the Gauls. As we keep watch in vigils and prayer, the geese are our September companions.

In the  Ratio  one of the important documents of our Order, we read that "a humble docility born of faith, hope and love" will make the newcomer to the monastery "instinctively open to both the solitary and communal dimensions of Cistercian life." Indeed, our life is one of alternation and rhythm - a life of social warmth and interchange and deep interiority. Seeking God in all things, in this life entirely devoted to contemplation means that whatever we do, wherever we are, we are available to the overtures of Christ Jesus, to his drawing near and seeking refuge in our wounded hearts.

  At the cross her station keeping, Stood the mournful Mother weeping, Close to Jesus to the last. If ever you have silently accompanied someone you loved as they lay sick and dying, and had to trust that your quiet presence alone would somehow suffice, then you understand the power and beauty of Mary's presence with Jesus our Lord in his agony and death. Loving presence means everything.  As he died on the cross, Jesus gave us his Mother to be our Mother as well. Now and always she lovingly accompanies us in all that we suffer. Weeping Madonna  (detail), Dieric Bouts. Netherlandish,  ca. 1415 – 1475.

  In Christ we never have to look back with regret, pining with melancholy to recapture what we have lost, or sorrowfully longing to undo what cannot now be undone.  In Christ, nothing that is truly precious in the entire experience of our lives will ever be lost to us.  Everything good and love-worthy and dear to us from every minute of our whole life’s experience is safely stored in the Heart of Christ for us to encounter and enjoy again in God’s good time.  Alive in Christ, living his own life by his gracious Mercy, every day we can, if we want, again become “like newborn babes”, wholly enjoying the present moment offered us  (that and that only, for only that is real),  wholly occupied with drinking milk from the breasts of Christ’s consolation and sharing that milk with every other thirsty person we know. Do you think for a moment that he, the eternal Wisdom of the Father, is ignorant of the endless deaths that continually gnaw away at our hearts, soul...

Jesus’ parable this morning begs reflection on two subjects, which I can assure you, I am ill-equipped to speak about – finances and forgiveness.  To understand today’s parable, we really have to do the math. The sum the debtor owes the king, blandly translated for us as “a huge amount,” is in the original Greek an astounding 10,000 talents. A single talent was worth about 6,000 denarii. A whole day’s work was required to earn just one measly denarius. 1  So, 6,000 denarii or one talent amounts to at least 20 years of work. To repay  the 10,000 talents  in the story, the servant would have to work for about 200,000 years! It is this impossible debt that is forgiven by the compassionate master in today’s Gospel. It is absurd for the servant to say that he will “pay back everything.” As a day laborer, he had no hope of ever repaying such a debt. 2  It’s ridiculous.  And we can well imagine the astonishment of the crowd as Jesus told his story. What is he talk...

The return each day to silent prayer...means to face the discomfort of silence. There can be a strong temptation to give up prayer or to find some activity in silent prayer to counter frustration. A more superficial prayer can be adopted which discards the effort of listening in silence to God. One might opt, for instance, to spend time in prayer simply reading. In that case the dryness and distraction may lift to a degree because they are less noticed. This may seem to restore relations with God. It would be a poor exchange, however, a step backward. The soul would forfeit a grace it was beginning to taste of a deeper thirst for God. The thirst of the soul for God is stronger in the desert. It is easy, nonetheless, to run for the shade. Lines from Contemplative Provocations by Fr. Donald Haggerty.

Your birth, O Virgin Mother of God,  proclaims joy to the world,  for from you arose the glorious Sun of Justice, Christ the Lord .

Why is it so difficult for us to offer correction or to receive it? In his homily this morning Father Isaac quoted Saint Dorotheus, the sixth century abbot of Gaza, who gives us the following insights: All in all, then, no one is disturbed or troubled if he scorns and disregards what is said. But on the other hand, it is also possible for someone to be disturbed and troubled by his brother’s words, either because he is not in a good frame of mind, or because he hates his brother. There are a great number of other reasons as well. Yet the reason for all disturbance, if we look to its roots, its that no one finds fault with himself. This is the reason why we become angry and upset, why we sometimes have no peace in our soul. We should not be surprised, since holy men have taught us that there is no other path to peace but this. We see that this is true in so many other people; and yet we hope, in our laziness and desire for peace, we hope or even believe that we are on the right pa...

  …mystical union begins with an ordinary level of zeal for the doing of God’s will…We grow not by acquisition of arcane skills but by the diminishment of self by relativizing its demands and transcending its vision. The monastery does not help us by providing us with brilliant insights and new horizons. The institution’s contribution is…to undermine the tyranny of self; it is God who creates what is new. When we say that contemplation is a gift, we mean precisely that. It cannot be acquired or merited by ourselves or communicated to us by others. Contemplation comes by virtue of our being absorbed within the Paschal Mystery.  Lines by Michael Casey

In this morning's Gospel Peter states, "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man." No doubt these words are his spontaneous response to the the miraculous catch of fish, and in time these words will gradually sink in. But the full import of his self-understanding as sinner will hit him with full force only when Jesus looks at him in the courtyard of the High Priest's house. Then come the bitter tears, and gradually Peter comes to understand what love there is in Jesus' willingness to forgive his great betrayal. More and more Peter realizes that it is precisely as a sinner that he can trust in the love of the One who said, "I have not come to call the righteous but sinners." It was only in falling so low, that Peter could believe in such love. The Gospel is not about greater than life-sized heroes. It is about broken men, whose being chosen is unpredictable and unmerited, men so well exemplified by Peter. Indeed e ach of our vocations is not intended t...

  Living our vocation to be protectors of God’s handiwork is essential to a life of virtue; it is not an optional or a secondary aspect of our Christian experience. -  Pope Francis , Laudato Si’ Pope Francis has designated  September 1st as the commemoration - World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. In his encyclical   Laudato Si’   he states: “The life of the spirit is not dissociated from the body or from nature, but lived in communion with all worldly realities. The ecological crisis, is a summons to a profound spiritual conversion and to a way of life that clearly shows that we are believers. It is a time to reaffirm our personal vocation to be stewards of creation, to thank God for the wonderful handiwork which he has entrusted to our care, and to implore his help for the protection of creation as well as his pardon for the sins committed against the world in which we live.” Praise be to Thee, my Lord, with all thy creatures. -  Saint Francis of ...