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Listening
to today’s readings, it is hard not to feel that the Day of the Lord is at hand.
Lent is a Day of the Lord. God is intervening like a winnowing
fan which spares not his Church nor his monastic community at Spencer. It
seems especially important to me that this Day of the Lord is calling us as a
community to realize our vocation to communion and conversion; to deepen our
confidence in our communal life as a remedy for the miseries of the world and
our own miseries. The Prophet Joel and St. Paul are the Lord’s messengers for
us in this regard.
“Blow the trumpet in Zion!” the
Prophet Joel cries out. Blow the trumpet in this community to call us to one mind
and one heart, to confession, to gather in prayer as a community—call the elders,
the young, the infants in monastic life; have the priests of our community take
up their sackcloth and cry out, “Spare, O Lord, your people, and make not your
heritage a reproach…” This Lenten season is set before us as an opportunity to
gather our forces as one body, to speak the truth in love, and to remember and rekindle
the love that first brought us to the monastery. During Lent, the Lord will test
us with fire to know how devoted we are to him in our common life, prayer, and meals together.
Paul has a similar plea for us: “We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” Now is the time to bring any resentment or grievances from the past into the open, or at least to reveal them to a spiritual elder who knows how to cure his own wounds and those of others…” This is God’s gift in our communal life. Daily we are invited to become one body in the Body of Christ. Let us not receive this grace of God in vain.
A monastic community is a privileged place to allow the winnowing fan of Lent to do its work. The Day of the Lord is at hand when as a community we can bring hope to the misery of this world and to one another.
Photographs by Brother Brian. This morning's homily by Abbot Vincent.
