ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

I am the great sun, but you do not see me,   I am your husband, but you turn away. I am the captive, but you do not free me,   I am the captain but you will not obey. I am the truth, but you will not believe me,   I am the city where you will not stay. I am your wife, your child, but you will leave me,   I am that God to whom you will not pray. I am your counsel, but you will not hear me,   I am your lover whom you will betray. I am the victor, but you do not cheer me,   I am the holy dove whom you will slay. I am your life, but if you will not name me,   Seal up your soul with tears, and never blame me.   Image by Bradi Barth. Poem f rom a Normandy crucifix of 1632.

Here we see Brother Jude hard at work in the community kitchen preparing our noon meal. He always manages to come up with dishes that are simple but innovative and quotes Saint Elizabeth of Hungary who once said, "We must make people happy."

  Faithful Cross, O Tree all beauteous! Tree all peerless and divine! Not a grove on earth can show us, Such a flower and leaf as thine. Sweet the nails and sweet the wood, Laden with so sweet a load. On Good Friday we will kiss the cross because this ancient instrument of torture was embraced by Christ Jesus, for here in his love for us, he could destroy death. Truly "the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing” – incessantly pouring Godself out for us. On the cross, God in Christ gives all his love to the shedding of his last drop of blood. And death becomes a gateway. And as he did for Lazarus, so he does for us - Jesus goes to the dead silence of the tomb, of our tombs, and confronts the mute stillness and the stench, as he cries out: “ Arise my fair one, my beloved and come forth. Come forth, you whom I love, arise from the dead, step out into the light. Come to my side. Awake, my Father did not make you to be held a prisoner...

  The transition from death to life is the theme of today’s readings. In particular, the raising of Lazarus from the dead is a prelude to the Easter event whose celebration is now at hand. Jesus loves Lazarus into rising from death! In our readings three dimensions run through the dynamics of death and resurrection. Ezekiel speaks of the death of hope . Paul glimpses the situation of a person locked up in what he calls “the flesh”: it is the condition of one who has betrayed her relational vocation , her being called to love. This is the death of love. Finally, the Gospel passage is faith-centered and is an initiation to faith in Christ who in his person is the Resurrection and the Life. The dialogue between Jesus and Martha is centered on believing: “Whoever believes in me, even if he dies, will live. Do you believe this?” asks the Lord; and Martha replies: “Yes, Lord, I believe”. { For the Bible, death is not exclusively biological but is a much more complex reality, one that cr...

Tomorrow is the Fifth Sunday of Lent, exactly two weeks from Easter. The readings and prayers will begin to point more directly toward the events of Holy Week. Today, the Feast of the Annunciation calls us to shift our focus for a moment to the encounter of the angel with Mary in Nazareth. This is a grace, because this encounter has much to teach us as we take up the final ascent to the celebration of the Paschal mystery. The first word spoken to Mary in the Bible is “Hail.” The Greek is chaire , which literally means “rejoice”. Of all the things that the angel has to communicate, this is the first: “Rejoice.” In my opinion, it is difficult to overestimate the importance of this word. There is much exegetical evidence that Luke intended his listeners to hear in this word a reference to the great prophecies of Zephaniah and Zechariah announced to the remnant faithful of Israel: Shout for joy, daughter Zion! sing joyfully, Israel! Be glad and exult with all your heart, daughter Jerusalem...

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 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. Detail of a polychromed bronze corpus, after a model by Michelangelo.   Lines from a Gaelic hymn at Friday Lauds.

  The grass never sleeps. Or the roses. Nor does the lily have a secret eye that shuts until morning. Jesus said, wait with me. But the disciples slept. The cricket has such splendid fringe on its feet, and it sings,  have you noticed, with its whole body,  and heaven knows if it ever sleeps. Jesus said, wait with me. And maybe the stars did, maybe the wind wound itself into a silver tree, and didn't move, maybe,  the lake far away, where once he walked on a blue pavement,  lay still and waited, wild awake. Oh the dear bodies, slumped and eye-shut, that could not keep that vigil, how they must have wept, so utterly human, knowing this too must be a part of the story. In watching and prayer during these latter days of Lent, we accompany the Lord in his agony and suffering. But even more, we come to understand that he is accompanying us in all the sorrows of contradictions of our lives. Mary Oliver, "Gethsemani" from her collection of poems, Thirst . 

On 21 March 1950, the Feast of Saint Benedict, the monastery of Our Lady of the Valley in Lonsdale, Rhode Island was ravaged by a devastating fire. The original wing was destroyed; the church was rendered structurally unsound and would have to be demolished. The community of 140 monks was homeless. Well before the fire the monks had been searching for a new location that would insure their solitude and economic stability since the population in the area around the monastery had increased considerably. And by 1949 the community had purchased a large agricultural property, Alta Crest Farms in Spencer, Massachusetts. The 1950 fire merely accelerated the community's projected move. In God's providence, the end of one story became the seed for a new one. 

We celebrate Saint Joseph today because, in his story, we see our story. At first sight, there seems to be little material for a meditation on Joseph, for what do we know of him, apart from his name and a few events that occurred in Our Lord’s childhood? He is remembered for his attention to the angelic voices that spoke in his sleep, for his prompt and generous obedience to what was demanded of him, for his manual labor in one of the most modest and fatiguing occupations of his day (which earned Jesus the reputation of being “the son of the carpenter”), and for his care of Mary and Jesus in Nazareth. There is practically nothing else known of him, so it might well be said that he lived an unknown life, the life of a simple artisan, with no sign of personal greatness. As is often pointed out, the Gospel does not record a single word from him; his language is silence . In considering Saint Joseph as a “man of silence,” Pope Francis once said: “The Gospels report none of his spoken words...

  St. Paul sounds the trumpet today: Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you! Blindness of the eyes is a symbol of the death of the soul, of our inability to receive into our being the fullness of illumination God wants to communicate to us, that we may come to share in his own splendor and glory, that we may come to understand in depth the wonders of God’s most intimate life and so enter into divine joy. And Paul further admonishes us: At one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light! If Christ has awakened us with his light, we must walk as children nourished by light and not deny his gift. Our behavior must be transformed by this illumination that changes the manner of our relationship with others. We must strain with every fiber of our being to give admission the light Christ gives us and actively allow it to do its transformative work in us, just as the sunlight makes plants grow and blossom. Our hearts...

  I arise today, through The strength of heaven, The light of the sun, The radiance of the moon, The splendor of fire, The speed of lightning, The swiftness of wind, The depth of the sea, The stability of the earth, The firmness of rock. I arise today, through God's strength to pilot me, God's might to uphold me, God's wisdom to guide me, God's eye to look before me, God's ear to hear me, God's word to speak for me, God's hand to guard me, God's shield to protect me, God's host to save me From snares of devils, From temptation of vices. Stained glass by Harry Clarke. Excerpts from  St. Patrick's Breastplate , a prayer also known as  The Lorica  (The Cry of the Deer).  This prayer reflects the spirit of the faith that St. Patrick brought to Ireland. 

  At the conclusion of her encounter with Jesus, the Samaritan woman experiences untold joy at the center of her being. She has been liberated from both  personal sin  and  social ostracism , and her life has been revolutionized by her budding  friendship with Christ . This explosive joy launches her on a life of  apostolic action . Her apostolate is the dynamic fruit that proves the authenticity of her conversion: she wants the whole world—even those who had ostracized her—to experience the deliverance and the love she has received from Jesus. Thus, transformed into an apostle, the woman  abandons her water jar,  symbol of her previous life and all its hardships, by the edge of the well and hurries full of zeal to her fellow Samaritans to proclaim the Gospel to them. She has found the Messiah and wants them, too, to recognize him as such and so experience the joy of salvation bestowed on her by Jesus of Nazareth.  Initial from an ancient C...

       During a parish retreat Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen related an incident that took place when he was ministering as a young priest in New York City. He was called urgently to an apartment where a woman named Kate was dying. It was one of the dirtiest apartments that he had ever seen. He asked her if she would like to make her peace with the Lord. She said she couldn’t because she was the worst woman in New York City. She was a prostitute. Her unemployed, live-in boyfriend was unhappy with her because she didn’t bring in enough money to support his drug habit so he poisoned her. Fr. Sheen immediately replied that she was not the worst woman in New York City, because the worst woman would think she was the best. After telling her some of the parables of Jesus she agreed to go to confession, Fr. Sheen anointed her and immediately she got better. She was healed physically and even more importantly she was healed spiritually. After her recovery she became an apostle ...

Central to the mystery of Christ’s Passion and Death is the fact that these do not overwhelm him inevitably as a part of his enforced destiny. Jesus is not the victim of circumstance or a badly failed Messiah. Rather, the Gospel shows Jesus moving very deliberately toward his consummation on Golgotha with the pure freedom of love. In a real sense, Jesus is both the protagonist and the author of his own story, the writer of its plot. Through his suffering he wants to make of his life and person a gift to others, to save them and offer them up to the Father together with himself, as a holocaust of peace and reconciliation. See with what determination, sovereignty and clear knowledge he expresses himself: The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. Let us, then, rejoice with immense gratitude and decide once and for all to follow our Lord in a life of sacrificial service.  Meditation by Father Simeon.

  Perpetua was a 22-year-old mother with an infant son, Felicity was her pregnant servant. Both were discovered as converts to Christianity and arrested. As they anxiously awaited their ordeal in the amphitheater of Carthage in 203, Felicity went into premature labor and gave birth to a daughter. Both women entrusted their babies to Christian friends and set their faces toward the arena. What could have possessed them to do such a thing? Only a deep love for Christ can account for their ardor and steadfastness. Both were stripped, exposed to the wild beasts, and then put to the sword.  As monks, the martyrs are our forebears in the struggle. For our sometime half-heartedness let us pray for the Lord’s mercy.

Before I was a monk, I made a living cooking, and back in the 80’s I worked for at a summer camp in Sweden, Maine, and for fun, I and some of the counselors decided to drive to New Hampshire and climb Mt. Washington. We had our backpacks, our snacks, we were dressed in layers, we had on hiking boots, and we were ready to go. It cool when we arrived at the base of Mt. Washington, and clear, we were told the top of the mountain was covered in clouds, and that the cloud cover may or may not burn off as we climbed. None of us had ever climbed Mt. Washington before and we had no guide to take us up, so we just had to follow the trail markers and other hikers who hopefully knew their way.  But this was our first and maybe only chance to climb Mt. Washington, so we decided to go for it and started our climb. The first half hour was slow going, not because of the terrain, but because there were so many other people who had decided to hike Mt. Washington that day. To tell the truth, it wa...

As we hear Matthew’s Gospel today, it's clear Jesus is raising the bar, calling us to more, and fine-tuning the Law to a fever pitch. There is to be no name-calling, we’re not allowed to call anyone an airhead, or a blockhead (that is what  raqa  means after all). None of that kind of language, any of those subtle, snide hurtful things. Tiny as they may be, Jesus reminds us, they are deadly, even murderous. And as Jesus calibrates, readjusts, and ups the ante on discipleship, we may wonder who can make the cut? Therefore, if you bring your gift to the altar,   and there recall that your brother   has anything against you,   leave your gift there at the altar,   go first and be reconciled with your brother… Each time I hear these words I imagine that if we took Jesus literally, we might have an awfully long wait before any gift got brought to the altar. Perhaps we’d all be on the phone or texting or perhaps at the airport or driving somewhere to clear up al...

Along with Jesus, and by the power of his fidelity to the Father, the whole Kingdom of heaven comes to earth. Because the Incarnate Word plainly refuses obeisance to anyone but the Father who utters him incessantly, Jesus himself receives the worshipful heavenly service that Satan had tried to wrest for himself from him, the humble Son. And we ourselves experience God’s marvelous generosity with us when, after we have struggled to serve only the Lord steadfastly come hell or high water, he then overwhelms us with the very things we thought we had renounced forever, only now raised to an infinitely higher potency of truth, durability, and delight. In a small, intimate way we experience Paradise restored! Let us, then, embrace the freedom given us by the power of the words of this Gospel and by the grace of this Holy Eucharist. Let us choose with a joyful heart to follow Christ more intimately step by step wherever he may lead us during this particular Lententide. Together with him a...