ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

In the closing meditation of his  Spiritual Exercises , Saint Ignatius Loyola asks the retreatant to ponder,   cuánto el Señor desea dárseme   -  how much the Lord wants to give himself to me.  Certainly, this arises out of Ignatius' own experience of Christ's love for him. In Ignatius' expression, we hear an echo of Saint Augustine's words centuries earlier, "God thirsts to be thirsted after."   Given the endless loving desire of our God and Lord for us, our only work minute by minute, all day long is to allow the Lord easy access to our hearts. He only asks us to crack the door open. If we give him even just a little space, he will enter and love and transform our hearts, our very selves. How much the Lord desires to give himself to each of us. Relentlessly. If only we understood. 

  Saint Peter Chrysologus, whom we honor today, puts the following words on the lips of the Risen Lord Jesus, who still bears his wounds as he appears to his disciples: In me, I want you to see your own body, your members, your heart, your bones, your blood. You may fear what is divine, but why not love what is human? You may run away from me as the Lord, but why not run to me as your father? Perhaps you are filled with shame for causing my bitter passion. Do not be afraid. This cross inflicts a mortal injury, not on me, but on death. These nails no longer pain me, but only deepen your love for me. I do not cry out because of these wounds, but through them, I draw you into my heart. My body was stretched on the cross as a symbol, not of how much I suffered, but of my all-embracing love. I count it no loss to shed my blood: it is the price I have paid for your ransom. Come, then, return to me and learn to know me as you father, who repays good for evil, love for injury, and boundles...

We celebrate Mary, Martha, and Lazarus today, and so we travel to  Bethany. After Lazarus has been raised by Jesus there is a dinner in the house of his dear friends and Mary washes Jesus’ feet. This often reminds us of another scene in John’s Gospel- Jesus washing the feet of his disciples on the night before his crucifixion. We know that foot washing was something a Gentile slave could be required to do, but never a Jewish slave. Foot-washing was typically something wives did for their husbands, children for their parents, and disciples for their teachers. There is undoubtedly a level of intimacy is involved in these last scenarios. And in Jesus' case, there is an obvious reversal of roles.* Jesus calls his disciples his friends. And by washing their feet he overcomes in this act of loving intimacy the inequality that exists between them. And so he establishes an intimacy with them that signals their access to everything he had received from his Father, even the glory that i...

Perhaps most especially for us as monks, loving our enemies will mean praying for them, for to pray for those who hurt us is to love them. And if you’ve ever tried it, you know how dumb and awkward and even phony it can feel. But we also know that not doing so may have dire consequences. For soon the inner room of our heart will no longer be a place for prayer but a shoddy hovel for wound-licking. We pray for those who hurt us, even though sometimes it feels impossible.    It is our work, our duty, our promise is to pray. And we know it is the only way to make sense of hurts- individual, communal, national. And so we pray. We pray for victims and for perpetrators, for politicians who believe what we do, and for those who might seem to disregard our cherished values. And our praying helps us parse the incongruity, make some sense of it. Prayer helps us get to the core of things. We pray; for craziness and hurt and broken hearts are too many. We can pray because we kno...

When Jesus feeds that enormous crowd, the dream comes true - a banquet has been prepared by the Messiah for God's holy people. Jesus, God’s own Word of love, himself feeds the hungry as they recline on the grass, in their Sabbath rest. And the Psalmist’s dream comes true- “He has prepared a banquet for me…fresh and green are the pastures where He gives me repose.” And what Isaiah glimpsed from afar in prophetic reverie is now seen clearly- “they shall be fed with rich sweet food on my holy mountain; no more fear or hunger or tears or mourning.”  All this abundance only dreamt of has come true, taken flesh in Jesus; bread ‘as much as they wanted,’ as much as we want. Perhaps it was on this mountain that Jesus understood most clearly for the first time that it would never be enough for Him, merely to feed those He loved even with such abandon and abundance. Perhaps it was after this busiest day of blessing and doling out all that bread that Jesus dreamt of Himself being our Food, dr...

O Jesus! I remember the abundant outpouring of Blood which You shed. From Your Side, pierced with a lance by a soldier, Blood and Water poured forth until there was not left in Your Body a single Drop; and finally, the very substance of Your Body withered and the marrow of Your Bones dried up. Through this bitter Passion and through the outpouring of Your Precious Blood, I beg You to pierce my heart so that my tears of penance and love may be my bread day and night. May I be entirely converted to You; may my heart be Your perpetual resting place; may my conversation be pleasing to You; and may the end of my life be so praiseworthy that I may merit Heaven and there with Your saints praise You forever. Amen.   Saint Bridget of Sweden When I finally understand that my heart is desperately in need of mercy, it becomes a perfect resting place for our Lord, who is himself all Mercy.

But some seed fell on rich soil and produced fruit,  a hundred or sixty or thirtyfold.  Whoever has ears ought to hear .     Matthew 13 The seed is the Word of God, Jesus himself. In his Incarnation, he has fallen into the soil of our humanity, our lowliness.  Humus  is the Latin word for soil and is the origin of the word humility. In the rich loamy earth of our sometimes-bitter self-knowledge, we are on the ground, in the  humus  of our reality. It is in the lowliness of this truth, that we realize who we are, what we are, who we long for, who it is we need.  Perhaps this is our most important work - to realize that we are always in desperate need of his mercy.  Jesus always comes to meet us down there.  Humiliation is the only way to humility, just as patience is the only way to peace, and reading to knowledge. If you want the virtue of humility you must not shun humiliations.   St. Bernard of Clairvaux It’s never been ...

“The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I shall want”. We have just sung this refrain many times over. But do we really believe it? Because, if we did, we’d be the most blessed and happy of people already at the center of our souls, regardless of what else might be happening in our life or in our world. Today’s readings reveal to us Jesus as a true and good shepherd, not in theory but in action. By extension, these passages the Church addresses to us today teach us what it means to exercise the ministry of a shepherd in the Church at any level. An irate Jeremiah denounces all evil shepherds—that is, kings, presidents and all political, military and especially ecclesiastical leaders of the people who have made their position of power an occasion not for service but for exploitation. In its positive aspect, this denunciation demands the necessary conversion of power into service on the part of all in authority. God himself will judge and vindicate the wrongs committed by unworthy sh...

During this coming week, the community will be on its annual retreat, a special time for greater silence and solitude. Daily conferences will be given to us by Dom Joseph of Berryville.  The love of God has been poured forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." Love itself moans, love itself prays; against it he who gave it cannot close his ears. Be free of anxiety; let love ask and God's ears are there.      We send our prayers and blessings to all our friends and guests. Tractate 6: On the First Epistle of John , by Saint Augustine.

I grew up in a world of deals, connections, bargaining, and tit for tat, a world of duty and obligations. And whether you were buying furniture, a transistor radio, or an ear of corn it was who you knew. It went something like this. My Dad would call Louie who knew Freddy who would give us a deal and then once we got to the store my mum would look at my dad and then one would eventually say, “Freddy is that the best you can do for us?” It was a very loaded question because Freddy was the next-door neighbor of Louie who was cousin to Angelo, my mother’s brother-in-law. A lot was at stake. Freddy knew it. There were obligations; they owed you something because you’d done something nice for them or someone close to them. It was unspoken but understood. You were connected.  For my parents and their generation, this balance of deals and obligations and connectedness overflowed into the world of religion. Perhaps it wasn’t as explicit but awfully similar - you made deals with God, with...

Ordinary Saturdays in our liturgical calendar are always dedicated to Our Lady. And so today Vigils, Lauds, and Mass were sung in her honor. She is always with us. And there are numerous images of her all around our Abbey. Here is a charming bas relief from the seventeenth century carved on the back of a giant armchair in our sacristy. Mary is shown as Mother of Good Counsel with the Christ Child's arms twining about her shoulders. Somewhat crudely carved, the image is suffused with great tenderness despite its rather naive execution.

Today's Mass and liturgies are dedicated to special prayer for the faithful departed, remembering in a special way  our relatives, friends, benefactors, and brethren who have died.  For these departed "life is changed, not ended;" they have entered the great mystery of Christ's resurrection. As we beg the Lord in prayer to draw all the faithful departed to himself, we remember our love for them and our connectedness with all those who have gone before us in faith.

  At the sight of the crowds, his heart was moved with pity for them  because they were troubled and abandoned,  like sheep without a shepherd.   Matthew:9 Jesus enfleshes the compassion of God, which flows in abundance from his heart, the heart of God, a heart full of mercy. Like her Master, Maria Goretti, at only twelve years old, would speak altruistically to the young man who was trying to rape her, begging him to spare her because he would commit a grave sin.  

Our Heavenly Father approaches with love every one of his children, each and every one. His heart is to open to each and every one. He is Father. God’s “style” has three aspects: closeness, compassion, and tenderness. This is how he draws closer to each one of us. Detail of an ancient Cistercian manuscript. Words of Pope Francis.

Jesus comes home, and his own people don’t know what to do with him. Their initial response to his mighty deeds and to the wisdom of his teaching is amazement. “Wow. Where did he get all of this? What kind of wisdom is this? What mighty deeds!” But then the whole thing unravels. They talk themselves out of wonder, and they try to make Jesus somehow manageable. “He’s only a carpenter, after all, Mary’s son. We know his relatives. Come on. We know where he comes from.” In the end, they find Jesus offensive and altogether too much for them - that divine power could be so mundane, so accessible, so familiar. The result is tragic indeed, the tragic loss of wonder. Jesus is so confounded by their lack of faith that he finds himself unable to perform any mighty deeds there. He is as powerless as Samson with his hair cut off. Wonder allows God to be God. It beckons us to be aware, to see as God sees, and to take nothing for granted. Wonder receives with open hands, open heart; it never grasp...

  We saw this wonderful little  rosy maple moth  resting on one of the screen doors of the monastery.  W e were filled with wonder.  Noticing something, anything of beauty, perhaps even a teeny moth, we can be amazed.  Such is the power of b eauty. It draws us beyond ourselves to a place beyond simple logic and reasonableness. Beauty draws us into the extravagance of God, the extravagance of his love for us.   We gaze in reverence.