ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

  The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst, you have no further misfortune to fear. On that day, it shall be said to Jerusalem: Fear not, O Zion, be not discouraged! The Lord, your God, is in your midst, a mighty savior; He will rejoice over you with gladness, and renew you in his love, He will sing joyfully because of you, as one sings at festivals.   Zephaniah 3 With Our Blessed Lady, we too are tabernacles of the Most High God; the Lord is within us. As the Lord rejoices over us, singing joyfully because of our openness to him, we rejoice greatly with Our Lady for all that the Lord in his mercy has done for her, accomplished for all of us through her. The Visitation , c. 1495, attributed to Rueland Frueauf the Elder, German (c. 1445 - 1507), o il on panel,  27 5/8 x 14 15/16 in., Fogg Museum, Cambridge.

The practice of decorating graves with flowers on specific days in spring is an ancient custom and may be the remote origin of what we celebrate now on the last Monday of May as “Memorial Day” in commemoration of those who have lost their lives serving their country. “Decoration Day” (as it was originally called) began in the bloody wake of the Civil War, when women, especially in the South, began tending to the graves of fallen soldiers, often regardless of which side they fought for. Their willingness to overlook past divisions was lauded in the North, and their kindness was viewed as an olive branch to many—exactly what we need in our polarized country today. In the Gospel this morning, Jesus tells his disciples that they will have trouble in the world, but to take courage and have peace in him . This always begins with humbly acknowledging our sins. Meditation by Father Dominic.

Over and over during these final days of Eastertide, we have been listening to excerpts from the Last Supper Discourse, about four chapters long in the second half of the Gospel of John; today’s Gospel is from the concluding section of the Discourse. And this morning we eavesdrop on the prayer of Jesus the Beloved Son to his Father. It’s as if we’ve barged in on Jesus in the midst of a very intimate conversation. But Jesus draws us into the very heart of his prayer to the Father. So I listen, but I lose my bearings. There is surely a beauty to the language but also a circularity. It’s just not a simple, linear narrative. I get confused, and I want to analyze. I want to say to Jesus, “Wait, wait. What do you mean?” But clearly, that’s the wrong question. Asking what it means would be beside the point. It would be like standing at the Grand Canyon and saying, “Wait I don’t get it, what does it mean?” Or like asking a person who is doing an unexpected kindness for you, “What exactly do ...

  How to explain the experience of Jesus after his resurrection? There is the drastic reality of his physical presence, wounds and all; he is disarmingly familiar, but there is also, mysteriously, something much more, what we might call a transformed physicality. He walks through a door, eats a piece of fish with his disciples then disappears; he suddenly shows up again wishes peace, then opens the wound in his side for Thomas to touch, and vanishes again. This coming and going happens over and over again and then   after forty days, these appearances no longer occur. At this juncture the Ascension describes the event of his exaltation and enthronement as Israel’s Messiah, seated at God’s right hand; he is at last victorious Lord of the world, and he commissions his followers to act on his behalf and inaugurate this new epoch of his reign. It seems a bit incongruous, but I keep thinking of a scene from a Neil Simon comedy. The actress Anne Bancroft is just ...

  As we approach the great feast of the Ascension, we hear the Lord Jesus assure us yet again today: My peace I give you . Without doubt, Christ gives us his peace, and joyfully so, for that is what he came to do; his Death and Resurrection are intended to bring us his peace, that is, the magnificent joy and serenity that come from his perfect harmony with the will of the Father. But will we truly be able to receive Christ’s peace as he gives it to us? Peace, after all, cannot be simply handed over like a peach or a book! God forces neither his peace nor his love on anyone; indeed, he cannot. By their nature, such gifts cannot be imposed, since their very existence depends on their receiver engaging in a free, interpersonal relationship with their Giver. The Lord’s peace is not something that falls upon us in our passivity like the rain, and suddenly we find ourselves wet. We have to cooperate in order to receive inwardly this gift of peace since nothing can enter the inner sanc...

Jesus answered and said to him, "Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. 24 Whoever does not love me does not keep my words… In these opening two verses of today’s Gospel, Jesus distinguishes between two responses to him: those who love him and those who do not love him. Those who love him keep his word and those who do not love him do not keep his word. Of those who love him and keep his words, he says that his Father will love him and that he and the Father will come to him and make their dwelling with him. Of those who do not love him and do not keep his commandments he says nothing regarding their relationship to the Father and the Son; only that this word is not his but that of the Father who sent him.  These are solemn words of the Lord; they are a matter of eternal life. Jesus has set the weight of the Trinity behind them. They seem to divide people into two classes. It is true that there a...

  From Jesus’ parable of the Vine and the Branches, one thing should remain very clear: the Father as Vinedresser sooner or later is going to cut into all the branches—the withered ones to cut them away and burn them, the fertile ones to prune them so that they bear still more fruit. In other words, none of us, Jesus’ disciples, is going to escape this necessary and often painful process of purification in view of a more abundant harvest. True love always bears fruit because love is for giving away, and true love is the only thing God ultimately cares about. I don’t suppose it feels very good to be a branch and to be cut into, for whatever purpose! And yet God’s love for us must often take precisely this form, performing on us a painful operation in order to heal, purify and sanctify us, so that through us the fruits of God’s love may then be borne into our hungry world. We are sentient, soul-endowed branches on Christ the Vine. As such we are not fated to be either ster...

  Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known in any age that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help, or sought your powerful intercession, was ever left unaided. Inspired with this same childlike confidence, I fly to you, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother. To you I come, before you, I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word made flesh, despise not my petitions, but in your mercy, hear and answer me. Amen. In May Mary's month and in every month this ancient prayer to Mary called the  Memorare  is a great consolation. Mary is our protector and a model for all our efforts at prayer and faithfulness. Our  Constitutions  remind us, " By fidelity to their monastic way of life, which has its own hidden mode of apostolic fruitfulness, monks perform a service for God's people and the whole human race. Each community of the Order and all the monks are dedicated to the Blessed Virg...

  Today Jesus reveals to us the heart of the New Covenant in his blood: "I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so also should you love one another." This passage of John’s Gospel, brief as it is, packs a whole new world of meaning, transformation, and hope. It offers us the legacy—which is both a gift and a task—that Jesus leaves to his disciples.  Agápe  is Jesus’ legacy to us: loving as God loves. The Lord is communicating what he considers indispensable for his disciples in the future. As is always the case when the end of life approaches, he is disposing of his inheritance. The act of transmitting something precious has to do with death and fills the moment with solemnity. But Jesus is not simply handing over an inert something, like money or property. He is bequeathing to us the form of his life, a life characterized by the kind of love that is the most powerful antidote against death. Expressed in the form of a comm...

The apparitions of Our Lady exist in a very delicate, mysterious but always lovingly attentive atmosphere. Even as she pleads for penance and prayer at Fatima, Mary has not come to reprimand. Rather her concern is for all of us, her children lost, and often inured to our sinfulness. At Fatima and always, Mary’s compassionate care far exceeds our expectations. In 1917 three shepherd children from a village in Portugal are rapt in awe at her lovely presence and heed her requests. Let us follow them, as we remember our sins and beg her Son’s forgiveness.

So fully does Damien of Moloka'i take on the mind and heart of Christ, so devoted is he to the lepers, that soon, because of his fearless ministry, he will become a leper himself. In Saint Damien’s total self-gift, we have a true icon of Jesus, Jesus who constantly gives himself away to us in love and self-forgetfulness.  It is what he did on the cross, it is what he does each day in the Eucharist. He draws us into the life of God; we are "spliced" into the very life of the Trinity, into the self-forgetfulness that God is. Jesus wants to be our food, for he knows he is indispensable to us. “My Flesh is true food,” he tells us. “And my Blood is true drink. Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood remains in me and I in him.”  Jesus becomes bread and wine so that he can be dissolved in us, and surrender himself to us completely. Life in the monastery is meant to accomplish the very same self-forgetfulness in the monks. Like Jesus in his passion, like Damien in the leper co...

  The 23 rd  Psalm is the ambient music surrounding this morning’s Gospel. Words we know so well:  The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want. Fresh and green are the pastures where he gives me repose; near restful waters, he leads me to revive my drooping spirit. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for he is with me…  This cherished image, perhaps banalized by overexposure in song and art, nonetheless shines out as an enduring description of who God is. The ineffable One whose name could not be spoken by the people of Israel, would be fittingly, repeatedly described as Shepherd. Jesus appropriates this imagery for himself, boldly, lovingly, “signaling his consciousness of his Messianic role.” 1  This is the Father’s will for him. Earlier in the chapter from John that includes today’s Gospel, Jesus has announced, “ I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. ” Because he ...

Queen of Heaven, rejoice, alleluia. For He whom you did merit to bear, alleluia. Has risen, as He said, alleluia. Pray for us to God, alleluia. Small flowers, violets, bluets, and pussycat paws are blooming in the lawns and meadows of the Abbey. These simple, low-growing flowers remind us of Our Blessed Lady and her Son in their humility. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins responds: All things rising, all things sizing Mary sees, sympathising With that world of good, Nature's motherhood. Their magnifying of each its kind With delight calls to mind How she did in her stored Magnify the Lord.   The beauty and exuberance of springtime, profusion of blossoms, chanting of birds, all remind  us of Our Lady’s joy as she carried Our Lord in her womb. May is Mary's month.

After the meal, Jesus begins a dialogue with Simon Peter during which the Lord entrusts Peter three times over with the care of his beloved sheep. In this passage the evangelist plays alternately on two different Greek verbs for ‘to love’ when Jesus asks Peter Do you love me? The first, agapao, refers to selfless love originating in God. The other, phileo, refers to the human love of friendship. By distinguishing the two loves and including them both in his questions to Peter, the Lord is in fact affirming the need for both divine and human love in a Christian heart. The love of God excludes no authentic form of love, and friendship too was created by God. To be vibrant Christians we must first be fully alive human beings!  Jesus can now tell Peter everything. He does not remind him of his sin of denial and fear on the night of the Passion, but he reveals to him what awaits him, as if he were saying to him: ‘Yes, Peter, you were then young, full of life and enthusiasm, and at tha...

  So the disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, "It is the Lord." This final resurrection appearance of Jesus in John appears to many scholars to be an addition to the original Gospel, for various reasons, but mainly because it seems to draw to a close at the end of the previous chapter. For the reader of the Gospel, the effect is as though the narrator had tied things up and then thought, “O, there’s just one more story that I must tell. They need to know this also.” This is the attitude of a lover, who wants to tell you all the wonderful qualities of the one he loves and can’t resist telling you just one more thing. Just when you think he’s finished he starts up again: “If you are to get a full picture of the one I love, you must know this also.” This is the disposition of the beloved disciple, to whose vision the Gospel of John wishes to remain faithful, the one for whom Jesus had such affection, who reclined on his breast, and whose relationship with him was the most in...