ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

Now the one-handing-him-over had given them a sign, saying, ‘The one I shall kiss is the man; seize him’ A  kiss the sign of betrayal!  Why, Judas, why? Is it just one more ruse, aimed at catching your prey wholly unaware until the very last second when lightning-like, the cobra strikes? When one considers what Jesus has meant to you until recently, and you to him, your tone of ruthless self-determination fairly chills the blood. Now, finally, it is  you  running the show, running  him  in fact, literally shaping his earthly destiny. You have become wholly depersonalized, rather like a meticulously poised, infinitely accurate nuclear missile hurtling unstoppably toward its target. And yet your language and gestures retain all the outward symbols of reverence and friendship. In advance, and with clever premeditation, you have instructed those who hate your Master:  The one I shall kiss is the man; seize him.  But why do you approach him this time s...

  In the monastery we live in a kind of in-between place; a place where the urgency of God’s just demands on us is always coupled with the ample grace of His ever-present mercy. And if Christ Jesus calls us so urgently to repent, to a complete change of heart, it is because He longs to be Mercy for us, to have access to our broken hearts, and be compassionate to us. Christ Jesus our Lord is constantly turning toward us in love and mercy. And He asks us to do likewise- to keep turning to Him and to one another in love and mercy and reconciliation over and over again.  This is what we have vowed to do by our  conversatio  as monks- to continually allow our hearts to be broken open. Perhaps this is why Saint Benedict will remind the monk to keep death always before his eyes. As monks, we are meant to live on the edge, in a place of urgency that perhaps many will only experience in the wake of horrible tragedy or on their deathbeds, a place where all we have to depend on...

Our Lord’s entrance into Jerusalem, and our participation in it, begins the fulfillment of his words in St. John’s gospel: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified…Now is the time of judgment on this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to myself.” Jesus is drawing our community into this great mystery which has many elements: witnessing and passing through judgment; being drawn to the one lifted up; and making a choice, a radical choice. Our community has a special mission in these holy days: to allow ourselves to be drawn to the Lord, and thereby contribute to the lifting up of the Church and the world. Let us begin with our being drawn into the judgment on this world. Our Lord was waiting all during his earthly ministry for the final confrontation with the ruler of this world, the father of lies whose nature is to lie, and who draws as many people as he can into his lies. Today’s gospel gi...

My song is love unknown my Savior’s love to me.  Love to the loveless shown, that they might lovely be. Oh, who am I that for my sake, oh, who am I that for my sake my Lord should take frail flesh and die?   He came from heaven’s throne salvation to bestow; but they refused, and none the longed-for Christ would know. This is my friend, my friend indeed, this is my friend, my friend indeed, who at my need, his life did spend. Safet Zec,  Deposition,  detail, 2014. Lines from the Lauds hymn for Lent, Love Unknown by John Ireland.

Imagine all through the ages God Most High searching, searching for a place to rest. Finally, in the fullness of time, God comes upon the perfect place for encounter, a place of quiet, beauty, peace, and complete openness to Him. This place is Mary. Imagine God’s joy. Through Mary, in Mary God can finally be what He could not be without her. In Mary God finds one who trusts Him absolutely. Mary is a flawless nesting place for God, who is always captivated by what is little, humble, and small. There are so many annunciations, so many invitations to embrace our littleness, our nothingness, that great open space as a privileged place of encounter with the God of love. How to allow ourselves to be tenderly overshadowed by the God who loves us beyond all telling?

Saint Oscar Romero was privileged to join himself to Christ in his self-offering - tragically, brutally a ssassinated while presiding at Mass on this day in 1980. All of this because of his solidarity with Christ's poor in El Salvador. As monks we are called to be poor with the poor Christ, poor with Christ's own little ones, we regret our hesitation and ambivalence and our failures and beg the Lord's mercy, trusting in the prayers of the Bishop, Saint Oscar.

Think of the Son of God, how He Died on the tree our souls to save, Think of the nails that pierced Him through, Think of Him, too, in lowly grave. Think of the spear the soldier bore, Think how it tore His holy side, Think of the bitter gall for drink, Think of it, think for us He died. Think upon Christ Who gave His blood Poured in a flood our souls to win, Think of the mingled tide that gushed Forth at the thrust to wash our sin. Think of repentance timely made, Think like a shade our time flits, too Think upon death with poisoned dart Piercing the heart and body through. Photograph of Abbey processional cross by Brother Brian. Text of traditional Gaelic hymn.

There’s really no graceful way to fall. Losing your balance. Losing your foothold. Who wants that? Slipping on the ice a few weeks ago - I’m upright and suddenly I’m aching in a heap on the ground, and not really sure how I got there. Thinking about my mom; she was always falling down on the ice. Every winter it would happen at least once; the poor thing was bottom-heavy. Or was it weak ankles? Whatever. She seemed to have a sixth sense for every unsanded patch of smooth ice, and she would tumble, falling back on her bottom. I’d watch in anguish as a child. "Oh, mommy. Are you ok?" My dad would simply glance back, look over his shoulder and say, "There she goes again." Grown too accustomed to her falling. For him, it was an inevitable part of a New England winter. Or the story of that foolish college student, drunk, partying with his friends, he scampers up the stairs to dance on the roof of his dorm and suddenly, carelessly steps over the edge and descends story pa...

There is no doubt that the Joseph to whom the Savior's mother was betrothed was a good and faithful man. In him, the Lord found a man after his own heart to whom he could safely confide his most holy and secret design. To him, he revealed the unfathomable, hidden depths of his wisdom and granted him knowledge of that mystery that was known to none of the princes of this world. In a word, that which many kings and prophets had longed to see and had not seen, to hear and had not heard -   that was granted to Joseph.   Joseph the just, Joseph, noble and faithful, who could have been more brokenhearted, felt more betrayed than he? He is betrothed to Mary; they are formally committed to one another by contract and bride-price. According to Jewish law, she belongs to him, and then she is found to be pregnant. Imagine how his most private joy and expectation, his tender love and dreams are turned to heartbreak. Certainly, he must have been bewildered, brokenhearted, as his world, hi...

  Christ be with me, Christ within me, Christ behind me, Christ before me, Christ beside me, Christ to win me, Christ to comfort and restore me. Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ in quiet, Christ in danger, Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger. Excerpts from  The Breastplate of Saint Patrick  with photos of Abbey glass by Brother Daniel.

  O Pelican of Mercy! O  Jesus  Lord !  Unclean am I, but cleanse me in your Blood;  Of which a single drop, for sinners spilt,  Is ransom for a world's entire guilt. In this mosaic, we see the "pious pelican," traditionally a symbol of the wounded Jesus, since according to legend the pelican is the most loving of creatures and pierces her own breast to feed her young.      Where can the weak find a place of firm security and peace, except in the wounds of the Savior? Indeed, the more secure is my place there the more he can do to help me. The world rages, the flesh is heavy, and the devil lays his snares, but I do not fall, for my feet are planted on firm rock. I may have sinned gravely. My conscience would be distressed, but it would not be in turmoil, for I would recall the wounds of the Lord: He was wounded for our iniquities. What sin is there so deadly that it cannot be pardoned by the death of Christ? And so if I bear in mind this stro...

So often, perhaps too often in the past, we may have thought that the way of discipleship was one of peace and unbothered happiness. Instead, we learn that the path to salvation is through emptiness, the way of the crisis. A  form of the Greek word  krisis, it meant literally a  "turning point in a disease which indicating either recovery or death."  Surely then it is so often at these crisis points that we experience God loving us and saving us, when are wise enough to cry out to Him. Our desperation is good news when it turns us humbly to the Lord Jesus, our Rescuer, our Rock. And so we pray for a continuing willingness to forget our foolish pride and to let go of any myth of self-sufficiency and give God our emptiness and neediness - always.

And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,  so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. The episode of the bronze serpent seen as a type for Christ’s passion, as John uses it here, is a very rich, evocative, but also mysterious image. To get the most out of it, I have found it helpful to see it within its context in the Book of Numbers. This context is what I’d like to focus on this morning. A good part of what motivated me to take this direction was our discussion topic of asceticism. The episode takes place at a turning point in Israel’s journey in the desert. It is Israel’s seventh and final rebellion since leaving Sinai and before they reach the plain of Moab. These seven rebellions make up almost eleven chapters, about a third of the book, and are laid out in a carefully constructed chiastic structure. Clearly, a lot of thought and purpose has gone into it. As the last of the rebellions, the episode of the bronze...

The noted scholar NT Wright tells us that “the kingdom that Jesus preached and lived was all about a glorious, uproarious, absurd generosity. Think of the best thing you can do for the worst person and go ahead and do it. Think of the people whom you are tempted to be nasty to, and lavish generosity on them instead.”  He points out: “Jesus’ instructions have a fresh, spring-like quality. They are all about new life bursting out energetically like flowers growing through concrete and startling everyone with their color and vigor.” “Jesus’ point was not to provide his followers with a new rule-book, a list of dos and don’ts that you could tick off one by one and sit back satisfied at the end of a successful moral day. The point was to inculcate and illustrate, an attitude of heart, a lightness of spirit in the face of all that the world can throw at you. And at the center of it is the thing that motivates and gives color to the whole: you are to be like this because that’s what God i...

God of love and peace, you invite us in this time of penance to steer our course towards self-mastery and self-giving, but not towards sadness. Give us the grace to find our joy and our security in love, through Jesus, the Christ, our Lord. Photograph by Brother Brian. Lines from Proclaiming All Your Wonders, Dominican Publications.

It seems the needier we are, the more impossible our impediments, the greater the opportunity for Jesus’ graced entrée, for God longs to be ordinary. Why else would he choose to be a child, why else a carpenter and a wandering teacher? Why else allow himself to be done in by thugs and jealous bureaucrats? Why else choose to be hidden in a morsel of bread on our altars? It is why Jesus has come, God with us, near us, in us. Our messes personal, communal are charged forever with his kind, incessant presence. God longs to encounter us there. Jesus has come to stay with us, now right now. His mercy finds us here over and over again. Eternity is always interrupting. The amazing yet ordinary things- the beauty, the sorrow in human experience and in all of creation- beckon to us and draw us to him, who is constantly seeking opportunities to engage us, here and now, without fanfare. It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to ...

Where to find souls of deeper interiority, contemplative souls? Among the crowds and coteries vying for recognition from one another, seeking attention for themselves? A true interior soul is found only when these drives are conquered. These souls are of course not just in cloisters and monasteries, living in solitude. Some may be living next to us. There is no unmistakable sign to indicate them, but if we look closer, we may notice a hint. Even while content or affable or engaging, they are captive to a solitude they cannot escape even in company with others. But of course, they are not actually alone. They have a companionship even when it may seem they are plunged far into their desert aloneness. Photograph of Brother Adam by Brother Brian. Selection from Donald Haggerty, Contemplative Provocations

Unlike the other gospel writers, who place the Cleansing of the Temple at the end of Jesus’ ministry, John places this event at the beginning, right after the wedding feast at Cana. Both events are signs highly symbolic of purification and transformation. But in contrast to Jesus’ low-profile rescue of a wedding celebration by miraculously replenishing the wine, in this morning’s Gospel, we have a wild scene of disruption in the Jerusalem Temple. Here, the as yet unknown prophet from Galilee comes in and turns everything upside down. We can imagine the commotion, the screaming, the noise of the animals, the sound of money falling to the ground as Jesus, filled with “zeal for his Father’s house,” overturns tables and chases the animals out. The whole place is suddenly in chaos! Familiar with the story, we may not appreciate just how shocking this was…. The Temple, we have to remember, was the beating heart of Judaism. It was the center of worship and music, of politics and society, of...

Seeing our potential for conversion, Jesus wants to cultivate the soil, the  humus , the humble reality of who we are. And he can accomplish in the humble heart, what spring brings about in nature. But he never forces his way. Christ Jesus is on our side, but always, always waiting upon our request, our admission of our sinfulness to do his work. We must open to him, even a tiny crack will do. Jesus the good gardener only wants us to depend on him, repent and beg his mercy, the Father’s mercy that Jesus is for us. Beg his care, his way, his life, his compassion. Only his tender mercy can retrain our tendency toward sin. Tendency literally means, we’re naturally inclined, leaning toward it, stretching out toward it haplessly like vines programmed to cling to the nearest solid thing. But always, always he begs our cooperation, not to resist the painful trimming, the smelly fertilizing, the shock of his loosening the hard soil at our feet and the sudden drenching with clean...