Be Holy

Do not aspire to be called holy before you really are, but first be holy that you may more truly be called so. Live by God's commandments every day; treasure chastity, harbor neither hatred nor jealousy of anyone, and do nothing out of envy. Do not love quarreling; shun ignorance. Respect the elders and love the young. Pray for your enemies out of love for Christ. If you have a dispute with someone, make peace with him before the sun goes down. And finally, never lose hope in God's mercy.

ST. BENEDICT The Rule

Above All, Clothe Yourselves With Love

At the close of life you will be examined as to your love: learn to love God as he wishes to be loved, and give up all that is your own.

SAINT JOHN OF THE CROSS Spiritual Maxims

Homily For The Fourth Sunday of Easter

Does it not strike you how much the Lord loves to spoil us, especially during these Fifty Days of Easter? All the texts of the Liturgy overflow with expressions that should fill our hearts with joy and gratitude. On this 4th Sunday of Easter, for instance, the Church invites us to contemplate the image of Jesus the Good Shepherd. This is much more than just a comforting theme, since it is not any poet or preacher who announces it to us but the Lord Jesus himself. He looks into our eyes and, with all the ardor of his Heart, reveals to us his identity: I am the Good Shepherd! It is the Son of God himself, dead and risen, who speaks to us. And what does he seek from us by doing so? Quite simply, that we give him permission to take care of us! 

Jesus is indeed the Good Shepherd; but are we humble enough to allow him to cast us in the role good sheep? Do we even want to be such? Admittedly, it is more than a little humiliating to be called a “sheep”, an animal famous for its stupidity… There are so many things that must first change in me if I am finally to rejoice in having been elected to the humble flock of Jesus Christ!

First of all, I must agree to be a follower rather than a leader when it comes to the spiritual quest, and I must admit to my existential condition of being lost, of having gone astray. I will only be sensitive to the approach of this divine Shepherd, and tuned in to the sound of his voice, if I feel the urgent need to be sought and found by Someone who can save me from my lost condition. For this I need humility and realism, springing from a certain honest knowledge of myself, out of a bitter experience. Sometimes we first have to fall very low for our pride to finally surrender to the action of grace, and for me to cry out from the bottom of my heart: ‘Lord, save me! Now I truly know that I cannot save myself!’

Within our family and community, we must have the humility and realism to look at ourselves and each other and admit with good humor that we are all of us, most of the time, rather stupid and lost sheep, and that it is not from someone in our midst that we will find a shepherd who saves us: neither heads of state, nor politicians, nor scientists, nor economists, nor (believe it or not!) abbesses or abbots or superiors ad nutum, nor above all the generals and their soldiers, whose god is war. And yet, socially and culturally speaking, it is not so easy to give up our instinctive search for salvation from among those whom the world presents to us as the “wise and strong” who will “take good care of us”.

No, we must definitely look elsewhere, realizing that the only one who can save us is the One who declares to us today in the tone of a lover: I am the Good Shepherd, [and] a good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. This moving and consoling statement is nevertheless difficult to accept, for two further reasons. First, it seems insane to us that a shepherd could save his sheep by offering himself as a sacrifice to the wolf. Why would this wolf ever stop his carnage after having devoured the shepherd? And the second reason touches us even more closely: If this Shepherd saves others by giving his life, will not his own tough logic apply to us, too, as having been saved: namely, that we also, in turn, become shepherd for others and give our own lives so that they may be saved? Something in us recoils at that thought, and whispers: ‘Yes, you want to be a good Christian, but surely not a fanatic!’

The Word of God we have just heard, on the other hand, intends to persuade us to become more available, more consenting, to the action of God in our lives through the coming of his Son. The Paschal Mystery requires that I radically change the commonly shared logic I have received. Like Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, I must come to be totally convinced that only God can raise from the dead the One whom human beings have put to death. God follows precisely the logic that you and I conventionally reject, in order to bring about the salvation of the world, instanced here in the healing of a cripple: There is no salvation through anyone [other than Jesus Christ, the Nazorean]; nor is there any other name under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved. The strength and courage to affirm such an unheard-of thing, first in our own inmost heart and then before the hostile world, can only come to us from the power Holy Spirit dwelling within us, as in the case of St Peter.

The intimacy with himself to which Our Lord invites us today is so extraordinary that it can have its source in only one place: the sphere of the Blessed Trinity, and more precisely in the mutual love and trust existing between the Son and the Father in the bond of the Spirit. Let’s listen carefully to what Jesus is revealing to us today: I am the good shepherd, and I know [my sheep] and [my sheep] know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. This revelation seems to me almost unimaginable: the same reciprocal and eternal knowledge and love between two divine Persons who are inseparable and necessary to one another—this same mutual knowledge and love has been communicated to us, poor creatures that we are. We exist within the Trinitarian relationship; the roots of our life suck up sustaining sap from the ground of God’s own intimate life! 

As if that weren’t enough, the Lord adds: This is why the Father loves me: because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. Now, for whose sake exactly is Jesus laying down his life? For the Father’s sake, since he says: the Father loves me because I lay down my life? But the Father has no need of such a sacrifice! For what precisely, then, does the Father express so much gratitude to the Son? It must be for Jesus’ laying down his life for our sake. The inevitable conclusion may sound blasphemous to rigid ears: namely, that the Father must not love us any less than he has loved the Son from all eternity. I leave you to ponder this unbelievable truth, which we must nevertheless believe because nothing less would be worthy of the God we worship, and nothing less can raise us from the dead. As we have just heard in the First Letter of John: See what love the Father has bestowed on us, that we may be called the children of God. Yet so we are! … We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

Changing the Tide of History

Selfishness makes people deaf and dumb; love opens eyes and ears, enabling people to make that original and irreplaceable contribution which – together with the thousands of deeds of so many brothers and sisters, often distant and unknown – converges to form the mosaic of charity that can change the tide of history.

ST. POPE JOHN PAUL II World Day of Youth, 26 Nov. 1995

Homily: All You Need is Thirst

Have you ever been struck by this astonishing fact of the Easter Mystery: that the risen Jesus, instead of returning immediately to the Father in heavenly glory, insists rather on pursuing his beloved disciples doggedly over the course of fifty days by visiting them repeatedly wherever they may be, searching for their love and wanting to heal them with his presence? When the Risen One appears to them today, we hear that they were startled and terrified. And what Jesus does on first encountering them is to take away the fear they feel thinking they are seeing a ghost. He does this by urging them to explore his corporeality in the most tangible way possible. Yes, he offers them his body for palpable contact, with repeated protestations of love in the form of commandments to intimacy: Peace be with you! It is I myself! Touch me! He seems bound and determined to remove any obstacle still separating him from constant union with his friends. He knows his work of redemption will not be completed until he accomplishes this; only then can he return to the Father.

Now, the Greek word psêlaphêsate, here translated simply as ‘to touch’, has the more precise meaning of ‘examining closely’ or ‘searching by feel’, just as blind persons do with their hands when feeling their way in the dark. It is as if the Lord were saying to his apostles: ‘You are blind with fear and unbelief. But go ahead: handle me familiarly. Through your eager touch I, who am the Light, will enlighten the eyes of your heart!’ 

Indeed, any true lover always wants to know, without intermediaries, all the details of the beloved’s whole being. Jesus clearly wants his friends to see and touch the wounds on his hands and feet; he wants them to handle him intimately to make sure that he really has a human body like their own; and he also wants them to see him eating very earthly food, to be assured that he is not removed from their own sphere of experience. A ghost has no flesh and bones as you see that I have, he tells them with some humor. How fundamental to our faith is this bodily and, indeed, Eucharistic experience of Jesus’ presence! 

But this encounter between Jesus and the disciples in the truth of the flesh is only the preamble to what Jesus really wants to teach them: namely, that his bodily Death and Resurrection is the ultimate fulfilment of God’s age-old plan of redemption from the beginning. Jesus wants them to know that all prophetic allusions to salvation in the Old Testament have now become palpable reality in himself: Everything written about me … must be fulfilled, he affirms. Now, in the context of traditional Jewish piety, this is truly an earth-shaking claim on Jesus’ part: that the deepest meaning of the Law and the Prophets—that is, what Israel held most sacred as God’s revelation of himself to them—was always a hidden reference to himself, Jesus of Nazareth, and that this fulfilment is communicated to all humankind in the historical and mystical event we call the Paschal Mystery. It all comes down to the truth of his body, because only a body is capable of undergoing both death and resurrection. In this way we can clearly understand the close link that Jesus establishes between his bodily truth (flesh and bones) and the victory over death communicated by participation in the Paschal Mystery. Jesus is no mythological figure and his death and resurrection are no merely helpful Jungian symbols. Here we are talking real and concrete human existence, both before and after the Resurrection.

Further, at the heart of this Paschal Mystery is the forgiveness of sins: all of our torturing guilt is wiped away because the Lord has taken on, in his body, the consequences of everyone’s failings. The passion that always drives Jesus’ love is the forgiving of the sins of all, the removal of all guilt. He fervently wants everyone to feel forgiven and thus loved by his Father. This mystery of forgiveness through Jesus’ death and resurrection must from now on also be preached to all peoples by Jesus’ own chosen witnesses. Of this you are witnesses, he solemnly declares to them, which means: ‘You must proclaim and give to others the forgiveness you have already received from me. Share generously with all my gift to you: your own joyful experience of being forgiven!’

In his sermon in the temple Peter shows that he understood this well. He first rebukes the people harshly for their crime, saying: You have killed the author of life; but immediately he softens his tone and adds that the people and their leaders had acted out of ignorance because they had not understood the Prophets’ teaching that the Messiah should suffer. Here we see a magnificent example of the forgiveness of others that authentic faith demands. From his personal experience of redemption and conversion, Peter first rebukes his listeners as he had indeed rebuked himself so bitterly; but immediately afterwards he spontaneously forgives them, excusing their infidelity, because he cannot forget what the Lord had already done for him in the face of his own unfaithfulness and inability to accept a suffering Messiah. Peter does not ask whether this ignorance on the part of the Jews was culpable or innocent; he simply addresses to them the same exhortation he directs to all: Repent and change your lives, that your sins may be blotted out. 

This universal forgiveness and remission of sins is celebrated in the second reading as an event full of consolation and hope for everyone: We have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. He is expiation for our sins. Each of us can indeed participate in this immense absolution pronounced by God upon the whole world. The only condition is that we convert our hearts and return to Jesus. Conversion is always necessary because those who call themselves “Christians” but do not keep God’s commandment are liars and stubbornly persevere in pre-Christian ignorance. They are a living contradiction and the truth is not in them. Without repentance and conversion, we cannot live in truth nor can we enjoy God’s mercy given to us in his beloved Son. Mercy is not like rain falling idly on a cement sidewalk. The cement merely gets wet and there the effect ends. Mercy, rather, is like rain falling on sensitive seeds buried deep in the ground, seeds that have to open up thirstily to the promise of growth that the water brings. As our Guerric of Igny has written: To benefit from “the living waters of Christ, you do not need merit: all you need is thirst”. But this thirst is an absolute requirement. How thirsty are we, in fact, right now, for Christ’s love? How eager are we to touch him? How willing to put him at the center of our lives, where he belongs, no matter what the cost to our ego?

Hidden With Christ in God

The unbounded loving surrender to God and God’s return gift, full and enduring union, this is the highest elevation of the heart attainable, the highest level of prayer. Souls who have attained it are truly the heart of the Church, and in them lives Jesus’ high priestly love. Hidden with Christ in God, they can do nothing but radiate to other hearts the divine love that fills them and so participate in the perfection of all into unity in God, which was and is Jesus' great desire.

SAINT TERESA BENEDICTA OF THE CROSS (EDITH STEIN) The Hidden Life

There Are No Bad Things

That “God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good” contains a subtlety which the popular pessimist cannot follow, or is too hasty to notice. It is the thesis that there are no bad things, but only bad uses of things. If you will, there are no bad things but only bad thoughts; and especially bad intentions. Only Calvinists can really believe that hell is paved with good intentions. That is exactly the one thing it cannot be paved with. But it is possible to have bad intentions about good things; and good things, like the world and the flesh, have been twisted by a bad intention called the devil. But he cannot make things bad; they remain as on the first day of creation. The work of heaven alone was material; the making of a material world. The work of hell is entirely spiritual.

G.K. CHESTERTON St. Thomas Aquinas

Homily for the Annunciation

 An unwanted interruption, a sigh, my eyes roll back, I force a smile, then, “Sure, let me get the car.” This was a damp, foggy Sunday morning years ago, when a brother asked me to take him driving around the property. He was a bit unsure of himself after an injury and wanted some practice behind the wheel. I sat in the passenger seat; we didn’t speak much. He was intent, maneuvering carefully down north road, then around to south. I gazed out the windows transfixed. There was a breathtaking, most delicate beauty all around us. Our hills and fields were wrapped in deep fog, as we inched along through what seemed a Japanese watercolor painting, thick mist resting on early spring trees, droplets on the branches’ delicate tracery. Hills and fields would disappear and then softly emerge into view. A mystical ride, unexpected and experienced only because a brother rudely interrupted my morning routine, as he relaxed with relief and good pleasure and found his flow behind the wheel.

This morning we celebrate the great feast of divine interruption. Mary opens herself to God’s intrusion, an angelic messenger, an invasion of grace. Mary is the spring meadow heavy with soft mist, enveloped by God’s fair Shekinah, God’s Spirit overshadowing her. Amazed at what the angel calls her “favor with God,” nonetheless, her faith allows, her faith sees grace in the interruption. Her faith enables God to take her. Our faith. This is always God’s way; it’s what Jesus her Son will always say when a healing takes place, Your faith has made you well. Mary’s faith in the God of outlandish proposals and promises, enables God’s dream to become reality, real flesh. God’s proposal depends on her cooperation and thus exalts her nature. 

It is Mary’s faith that allows God to take our flesh, so that he can transform, reform, inform it with his love and tender mercy and bring it to new resurrected life. This has been God’s intention from the beginning., this incomprehensible, unjustifiable love, which now can come to full fruition because of Mary’s cooperation. Her flesh given to God will enable God to save us from the trap of our sin-proneness. Mercy grows and swells within her, her blood is his blood, the blood that will heal and redeem us, that will gush with water from his pierced side.

Unlike two despondent disciples on their way to Emmaus, Mary of Nazareth is not slow of heart to believe. Her virginal emptiness, her utter poverty, is our poverty, even our sinfulness and emptiness made a great empty space that God can fill with himself. Mary invites us to go down into the dark recesses of our own hearts and discover there a great emptiness that God can fill. Through Mary all the dark ambiguity and all the empty incongruities of our lives are pregnant with presence and possibility. 

With her we encounter the baffling extravagance of God’s desire for us. Our surrender is the secret we were born for, to be totally defenseless in the face of God’s offering of himself; utterly nonresistant to God’s desire for our bodies, our hearts, our wills, our memories, our whole selves. Mary shows us how to how to fall backwards into this desire, how to receive with joy what we cannot, will never understand; to surrender to the Mystery of God’s unfathomable predilection for each of us in our own particular poverty and smallness. Mary allows the lovely dewy fog of divine tenderness to envelop her. She invites us to do the same - allow God to interrupt us with the ridiculous truth of his favor.

The Annunciation

"When the angel appeared to Mary, God was announcing this love for the new humanity. It was the beginning of a new earth, and Mary became ‘a flesh-gift Paradise to be gardened by the new Adam.’ As in the first garden Eve brought destruction, so in the garden of her womb, Mary would now bring Redemption.”

FULTON SHEEN

"The Annunciation teaches us that God's ways are not our ways, and his plans are not our plans. It invites us to trust in his providence, even when we do not understand."

ARCHBISHOP CHARLES CHAPUT

Mercy Sunday Homily

Today is the Octave of Easter, meaning that it has been Easter Day all week long, culminating today. This Octave Day has lately been given the name Divine Mercy Sunday as a way of attesting to the fact that the Easter Resurrection is the epitome of the Divine Mercy revealed to us in the Paschal Mystery of our redemption: the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. We need not look to the writings of St. Faustina or to a somewhat recent liturgical directive for the origin of the name for this Sunday: it is rooted in the New Testament, most explicitly in the First Epistle of St. Peter, our first pope. He writes, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who in his great mercy ( IN HIS GREAT MERCY!) gave us a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.”

We hear in this passage the resurrection of our Lord Jesus as the manifestation of the the Divine Mercy. This outpouring of the Divine Mercy upon all humanity began two thousand years ago in the mysteries of Christ that we celebrated in Holy Week and the Paschal Triduum. It is radically applied to each of us by the Holy Spirit's work in the Church at our baptism and confirmation. That new birth is nourished through the Word of God and the Eucharist and other sacraments: among those other sacraments particularly the sacrament of Reconciliation. As the Lord's Paschal Mystery began he instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper in which he stated upon taking up the chalice, “Drink from it all of you, for this is my blood of the New Covenant, which will be shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins.” Then, days later, as Easter Day of the Lord's Resurrection was drawing to a close, the risen Christ appeared among the apostles and instituted the sacrament of Reconciliation with the words, “Receive the Holy Spirit. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven them, and whose sins you retain are retained.” There is, thus, an arc of Divine Power stretching from one sacrament of Mercy to another—from the Eucharist to Reconciliation—an arc of sacramental power that is generated by the saving events of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

The apostles had locked themselves up in a state of fear. The Divine Mercy in the person of the risen Christ came miraculously into the room to mercifully free them from fear through the gift of His Peace and to give to them a share in the Father's love and mercy towards us. Jesus says to them, “As the Father sent me, so I send you.” I think that if you put the emphasis on the word “As” in this sentence you can interpret it to mean, “The intention with which the Father sent me is the intention with which I send you and empower you in turn to have.” What is that intention? The Gospel of John spells it out very clearly at John 3:16-17, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him.”

We, all of us Christians, are sent by our merciful Father through his Son, who poured out his love for us. With that, we ourselves become for the world vessels of divine mercy. Too often in the past and at times still in the present, we Christians have been vessels of wrath and condemnation. We see the witness of Pope Francis to reconcile the Church with marginalized, alienated groups and peoples throughout the world—efforts that are sometimes highly scorned. We hear in the Gospel this morning how Our Lord approaches Thomas the Doubter so gently as to help him to come to belief in the risen Jesus to the point that Thomas makes the most explicit, the strongest statement in the whole New Testament about who Jesus really is: “My Lord and My God!” Again, as St. Peter writes in the First Epistle, “Always be ready to give an explanation to anyone who asks you for a reason for your hope, but do it with gentleness and reverence, keeping your conscience clear...”

When I was a kid, I had the Sisters of Mercy in Our Lady of Mercy School in Our Lady of Mercy Parish in East Greenwich, R.I. I suppose you could call that “Mercy upon Mercy upon Mercy.” They taught us to say as a silent prayer in our adoring hearts the exclamation of St. Thomas the Apostle at the moment in the mass when the priest held up the host after the consecration: “My Lord and my God!” May our reception of the Holy Eucharist transform us into apostles of Divine Mercy in this world that God loves so much as to send his Son to die for us that we might live His risen life.

The Divine Invitation

God does not belong in a special way to any one people; for it is he who calls us, convokes us, invites us to be part of his people, and this invitation is addressed to all, without distinction, for the mercy of God “desires everyone to be saved.” Jesus does not tell the apostles or us to form an exclusive group, a group of the elite. Jesus says: go out and make disciples of all peoples (see Matt. 28:19). Saint Paul says that in the people of God, in the Church, “there is no longer Jew or Greek…for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28).

I would like to say to anyone who feels far away from God and the Church, to anyone who is timid or indifferent, to those who think they can no longer change: the Lord calls you to become part [of] his people and he does this with great respect and love! He invites us to be part of this people, the people of God!

POPE FRANCIS General Audience

Why Jesus Was on the Shore

We may ask why, after Jesus’ Resurrection, he stood on the shore to receive the disciples, whereas before he walked on the sea. The sea signifies the world, which is tossed about with various causes of tumults, and the waves of this corruptible life; the shore, by its solidity, symbolizes rest.

The disciples then, in as much as they were still upon the waves of this mortal life, were laboring on the sea; but the Redeemer, having by his Resurrection thrown off the corruption of the flesh, stood upon the shore.

ST. GREGORY THE GREAT Homilies on the Gospel of John

The Core of All Mankind’s Questions

The modern technological world may have tremendous problems that seem utterly remote from the Gospel, but ultimately it comes down to the attitude adopted by Jesus in his living and dying: the attitude of perfect, selfless love, service to the very last and the fruitfulness that comes from it. This is the innermost meaning and core of all mankind’s questions, including those of politics, economics and other fields. And the attitude shown by Jesus is the attitude of God himself to the world. Thus anyone who follows Jesus is walking in God's footsteps, in the footsteps of absolute truth and goodness.

HANS URS VON BALTHASAR You Crown the Year With Your Goodness, 255

Why the Disciples Believed

If any persons had removed the body of Jesus, would they have stripped it before doing so? Or if anyone had stolen it, would they have taken the trouble to remove the cloth, and roll it up, and lay it in a place by itself? They would have taken the body as it was.

On this account John tells us, by anticipation, that the body of Jesus was buried with much myrrh, which glues linen to the body even more firmly than lead. So when you hear that the linen wrapping lay apart, you may not endure those who say that the body of Jesus was stolen.

For a thief would not have been so foolish as to spend so much trouble on a superfluous matter. Why should he undo the clothes? And how could he have escaped detection if he had done so? He would probably have spent much time in so doing, and be found out by delaying and loitering.

But why do the clothes lie apart, while the cloth was folded together by itself? That you may learn that it was not the action of men in confusion or haste, the placing some in one place, some in another, and then wrapping them together.

From this disciples believed in the Resurrection. On this account Christ afterwards appeared to them, when they were convinced by what they had seen.

ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM Homilies on the Gospel of John

Easter Vigil Homily

Pope Benedict XVI in his second volume of Jesus of Nazareth, commented on how the resurrection utterly exceeded the disciples’ expectations. The fact was clear. He was alive. They had heard him, seen him, looked upon him and touched him with their hands; this they could not deny. But they still struggled to express and make sense of their experience. However, little by little they could pick up resonances with the Scriptures, most especially, the fact that he did not experience corruption in the grave and that the suffering servant of Isaiah seemed to correspond exactly with what happened to him. The more they returned to the Scriptures and re-read them, and the more they kept his memorial in the breaking of the bread, the more they understood the immensity of the mystery. Our vigil this morning is intended to help us move through this same progression. We, too, by listening to the Scriptures and by gathering for the memorial of what Jesus did in the breaking of the bread, will recognize the risen Lord in our midst. 

I mention this, because we can become all too familiar with the Easter story and take it for granted. The newness and amazement can wear off. Take this example: the women who came to anoint the body of Jesus. How many times have we heard this story? We know all the punch lines. But can we really imagine the scene? We have a group of women traveling early at the break of dawn to the tomb of a convicted and crucified enemy of the state and, apparently, of their own religion. Any association with Jesus could put them at risk for harassment, including the suspicion of trying to steal his body, and for this be severely punished. But they were not intimidated. 

Then they had their encounter with a young man in the tomb. Of all things, a man sitting there, seemingly waiting for their arrival. His clothing was enough to make him suspect—a white robe in a dark tomb. But his announcement was even more disturbing. He knew exactly why they had come. He gave them no polite welcome, just an abrupt statement, as though he had read their minds: “You seek Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified. He has risen; he is not here.” Is it any wonder that the women were not only amazed but trembling and bewildered? Tell me: how often have you run into an angel at the break of dawn who read your thoughts and questions and supplied an answer…not to mention sending you on a mission to tell others about something that totally transcended human experience. 

The resurrection is the ultimate overflowing of Jesus’ self-gift for his Church. We will always have trouble expressing all that is contained in this reality. The resurrection of Jesus is like the water flowing down from the right side of the temple in Ezekiel’s vision, gathering depth and width, creating first a stream, then a river, then a fresh water sea where the fish and the birds and the humans can refresh themselves. It is the source of our hope and the basis of our religion. Tonight, the Risen One will set our hearts on fire as he opens the Scriptures for us and breaks the bread. Let us follow him on the way.

The Consummation of the Cross

Through Christ dying on the cross, the humanity which he bore whole and entire in his own person renounces itself and dies. But the mystery is deeper still. He who bore all men in himself was deserted by all. The universal man died alone…. This is the mystery of solitude and the mystery of severance, the only efficacious sign of gathering together and of unity: the sacred blade piercing indeed so deep as to separate soul from spirit [Heb. 4:12], but only that universal life might enter.

HENRI DE LUBAC Catholicism

The Crucifixion Disintegrates the Forces of This World

There is no common ground between what happens in the Gospels and what happens in myths, particularly the more developed myths. Later religions diminish, minimize, soften, and even totally eliminate sacred guilt as well as any trace of violence; but these are minor dissimulations and bear no relation to the system of representing persecution. This system collapses in the world of the Gospels. There is no longer any question of softening or sublimation. Rather, a return to truth is made possible by a process which, in our lack of understanding, we consider primitive simply because it reproduces the violent origin once more, this time in order to reveal it and thus make it inoperative.

[Peters denial, the murder of John the Baptist, and the Passion itself] are all examples of this process. They correspond perfectly to the way in which Jesus himself, and after him Paul in the epistles, defines the effect of disintegration that the crucifixion had on the forces of this world. The Passion reveals the scapegoat mechanism, i.e., that which should remain invisible if these forces are to maintain themselves.

RENÉ GIRARD The Scapegoat

Holy Thursday Homily

On Palm Sunday I spoke about the scene from Mark’s gospel in which an unnamed woman poured out costly perfume on the head of Jesus. It was an extravagant gesture, described by Jesus as her anointing of his body for burial. Today we focus more closely on Jesus’ extravagant gesture—pouring himself out as food for the Church. He had already set aside his honors by washing the feet of his disciples. Then he patiently endured the presence Juda at table plotting to betray even as they ate. What more could Jesus do? Could he humble himself any further? 

Well, of course, the answer is yes. His love always reaches deeper. He always takes a lower place so that whatever depths we find ourselves in, he has already gone lower to meet us there. This is what we celebrate today. Our Lord pours himself out further to draw us closer to himself: first, by pouring out his very self into a bit of bread and wine; and second, by manifesting how close God is to us by revealing his holy name. 

Today’s responsorial psalm points to these two outpourings: “I will take up the cup of salvation and call upon the name of the Lord.” The cup of salvation that the psalmist refers to is the blessing cup offered in thanksgiving for the mighty works of God. Jesus prays this psalm with the same sentiments—gratitude for the mighty works of his Father. At the same time, I think Jesus has another cup in mind: namely, the cup that led him to say, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Take this cup away from me, but not what I will but what you will.” He takes up this cup of suffering for our sakes. We, too, must take up this cup, both the cup of gratitude for God’s mighty works and the cup that shares in Christ’s sufferings.

The psalmist then goes on to say, “I will call on the Lord’s name.” Pope Benedict comments that when the Scriptures refer to the name of the Lord, it is a way of speaking about God’s nearness. Knowing the name of someone, calling the name of someone brings that person near. Jesus reveals the nearness of God. He and the Father are one. He emphasizes this in his final discourse to his disciples, saying things like: “I revealed your name to those whom you gave me out of the world.” “Holy Father keep them in your name which you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are one.” “I made known to them your name, and I will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.” Jesus pours out the store of his most intimate knowledge and relationship with the Father and the Spirit so that we, too, can speak familiarly with the Lord. 

On this day of the institution of the Eucharist, we are witnessing how far Jesus will go to draw us into the mystery God’s nearness. It is an extravagant gesture. He will stop at nothing to pour himself out on our behalf. 

The Eucharist

The miracle of [Jesus’] Eucharist: he is in you and you are in him—a wedding-feast without end between you and him, compared with which the union of man and wife is but a brief and poor effort.

HANS URS VON BALTHASAR Heart of the World, 128 

Faith is the Cross

What people don't realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross.

FLANNERY O’CONNOR The Habit of Being

The Example of Christ's Suffering

Christ wished to suffer for us. The Apostle Peter says, “Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps.” He taught you how to suffer, and he taught you by suffering. Words would not be enough, unless example were added. And how, precisely, did he teach us, brothers and sisters? He was hanging on the cross…. He was hanging by the harsh nails, but he never lost his gentleness. They were raging, they were barking and  snarling all round him, they were jeering at him as he hung there. He was hanging there, and healing them. “Father,” he said, “forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). He was praying, and yet he continued to hang there; he would not come down, because with his blood he was making a medicine for the frenzied mob.

ST. AUGUSTINE Sermon 

Abbey Hermitage Refurbishing

This winter Br. Adam and Fr. Isaac have undertaken the renovation of the hermitage here at the abbey.  It was left vacant 10 years ago at the death of Fr. Edward Steriti of very happy memory.  Fr. Edward had been the resident hermit here at St. Joseph’s for many decades.  Happily, Fr. Isaac received permission to take up where Fr. Eddie left off to be our next resident hermit.  

The hermitage, built in the 1970s, had a good amount of wear and tear but the “bones” were good and the structure solid.  So, we began the process of deconstruction both inside and out.

The hermitage now has a new roof, new windows and an electrical upgrade, but a good amount of work is still to be done - plumbing upgrade, insulation, siding, dry wall and flooring – plus a heap of lesser things.

Many people have stepped up to help with labor, materials or donations which have greatly speeded up our progress. More is still to be done.

The Transitus of Saint Benedict

On March 21, Benedictines around the world celebrate the “transitus“ of St. Benedict, the day Benedict entered eternity. “Transitus” in Latin means passing from one state to the next—death is not the end of life, but the transition into eternity with God.  It is one of two days that St. Benedict is recognized on the Benedictine calendar. Since this feast day is always during Lent, another commemoration date was set when Pope Paul VI declared St. Benedict the Patron of Europe at the rededication of the Church at Monte Cassino on July 11, 1964. July 11 is the Feast of St. Benedict for the Universal Church. Only Mary, the mother of Jesus and John the Baptist are remembered with both their birthdays and their day of entry into heaven.

Homily for the Feast of St. Joseph

“Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary your wife into your home. For it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived in her. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

Jacob was the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Of her was born Jesus who is called the Christ. Joseph and Mary are both people of extraordinary faith deeply rooted in the tradition of God’s covenant relationship with his people Israel. They are betrothed to one another as people who want to serve God and belong to one another. As pious Jews, this will-to-serve comes first. It is this divine service that forms the basis of their commitment. Their betrothal and their whole lives were consecrated to this service, and they entered into their betrothal with this awareness. The openness to one another in their gift to one another would have in no way displaced this primacy of the love of God in their hearts. It was only within this love for God that their love for one another would have been meaningful to them.  

For Mary, as a first-century Jew, marriage was a duty. In her betrothal to Joseph, she fulfills an obligation to God, a law, and through her betrothal she is bound more firmly to God. For Mary, surrender to God and surrender to her husband would have been a unity, not the same, but a unity. Due to her freedom from original sin, this surrender means that Mary’s whole being was caught up in the activity of discerning God’s will, this will was primary, its discernment, its acceptance and its implementation, over any specific expectations of what form her married life would take, children, how many, etc. All would have been joyfully left in God’s hands, in union with her bridegroom.

Joseph’s case is different. He is a just man, deeply rooted in the traditions of God’s covenant relation to his people Israel. He is chaste. But his is also subject to original sin. For him, the betrothal is the prelude to a normal earthly marriage. In his betrothal to Mary, he experiences real feminine love, and this love of his bride will enrich him as only a feminine love can fulfill a man. But since he is preparing for a normal human marriage, he will have to take a step back from his plans more than Mary. For Mary, being free from sin and thus always totally at the disposal of the divine will, although she was not expecting the angel’s appearance, and was “greatly troubled” by his message, his coming would have functioned more as a clarification of her mission, a determination of the purpose of her life, than as a going back on her plans. Joseph, on the other hand, had to forget his former ideas and begin anew. He will have to make a renunciation, but in doing so he will receive everything back many times over. He will receive the hundredfold Jesus will later promise his followers. Because Joseph makes his renunciation in faith and love, it will result in an openness toward the mysteries of God, which God will unfold for him.

We do not know when Joseph became aware of Mary’s pregnancy but at some point, it becomes clear that it can no longer be hidden from others and so he must come to a decision about what to do.  The Gospel tells us: “Joseph her husband, since he was a righteous man, yet unwilling to expose her to shame, decided to divorce her quietly.” This statement tells us a lot about Joseph. He is determined to act within the divine will and discerns this will by considering, at one and the same time, the divine law, its expressions in the traditions and customs that have been passed on, and the concrete situation itself with the persons involved, Mary and the history of their personal relationship. He recognizes that there is a mystery in his wife’s pregnancy that lies beyond his understanding. Free from judgment, self-righteousness, or the impulsive response of a wounded ego, and in great respect for her person, whom he loves, and from whom he has experienced nothing but love and full surrender, a person of extraordinary sincerity, genuineness and transparency, in whom he can discern no ill will, not even any fault, he decides that the best way to act and remain within God’s covenant is to divorce her quietly. He is firmly rooted in the Old Covenant but is about to be brought over into the New.

At this point, God sends his angel to Joseph in a dream. The angel encourages him to take Mary as his wife, because it is through the Holy Spirit that this child has been conceived, and in the process, he reveals to Joseph his mission. As son of David, his task is to name the child. Everything hinges on his response. For by naming the child, he claims it as his own. As his legal son, he would have all the hereditary rights of a son, including Joseph’s royal Davidic descent. He would make this child a legal heir to David, he would pass on to him his own royal lineage. Much is at stake if Joseph leaves Mary and does not accept this child. God takes a risk here. God gives Joseph an extraordinary task, but he leaves Joseph the full freedom to make a choice, to give his assent or not. God needs this “yes” from Joseph but there is no coercion, no threat, no compulsion. Simply the presentation of the mission. 

Nevertheless, Joseph did not just happen to be the one who was betrothed to Mary. He was chosen. God selected him from all eternity for this commission. The Spirit of God was present to Joseph from the beginning, accompanying him and those around him, preparing him for this moment, as a culmination of all that went before. At the same time, his consent will mean a binding to the divine will that will determine the whole of the rest of his life; all else will flow forth from this revelation of his mission and going forward it will always remain his point of reference. 

Joseph, for his part, did not just now begin to assent to the divine will. Throughout his life he has been cooperating with this shaping power of the Spirit. From the beginning there has been this fruitful interplay between God’s divine freedom and Joseph’s created, human freedom. With each discernment of the divine will and with each ‘yes’, Joseph grew in his capacity to trust and surrender to God. He learned to see the rewards of an obedient faith and to experience its fruits. He learned that although things did not always turn out the way he had expected, what God had in mind was always greater than what he had imagined. In this way, the original freedom that had been bestowed on him by virtue of his dignity of being made in God’s image began to grow into a deep personal freedom that expanded into ever-greater knowledge of God and his ways and a fundamental interior accord with God’s freedom. So when the angel approached Joseph, he found a man already deeply attuned to the divine will, open and ready to receive it in whatever way it should make itself known. 

The angel presented Joseph with a definite task: to be faithful to this woman, to care for this child as a father, and to remain so completely at God’s disposal that all that he does is for the sake of this task. In a sense he has certain insight into how his life is to unfold. But at the same time the angel has presented him with a great mystery that lay way beyond his comprehension, and with a great responsibility – to be guardian of the mystery of God. 

His wife has conceived by the Holy Spirit, her son is destined to be a king, but not just any king but one with a very particular mission: to save his people from their sins. Joseph cannot possibly acquire an overview of a mission of such vast dimensions. Its implications lie beyond him. They must unfold over time. Much of his responsibility will consist of providing a home for his wife and her child, for this he will plie his trade, but he will also have some share in her task of initiating him into the traditions of Israel. For guidance he will certainly look to the Scriptures and to the law and traditions of Israel. And he will strive to serve his family by means of its teaching. But how to interpret them in accord with this extraordinary new thing that God is bringing about?

Once the angel ceases to appear, he will look to the Son and his Mother. As the Word Incarnate, the Son is from the beginning Scripture’s definitive interpretation. In him, Joseph will see the face of the Father.  In Mary, Joseph will see pure readiness to receive and to respond to this mystery. In them he will find the deepest meaning of the Scriptures break open and his path made clear as guardian of the mystery of God. Through them he will learn what it is to be totally at the disposal of God and in them he will discern his will. Joseph will lead by being led.

Today it is no different. St. Joseph is our patron. He is the guardian of the mystery of God as God wishes it to unfold at St. Joseph’s Abbey. He is our protector. As such he offers us Mary as our Mother and Jesus her Son in whom we are to be led to the Father. Let us open our hearts and minds to receive this gift as we celebrate this sacred Eucharist. 

Saint Joseph – Patron of Our Monastery

Saint Joseph Holding the Infant Christ

Anonymous

After Guido Reni

Italian, 17th century

From the Met Collection, used with permission

Joseph is portrayed in works of art with grey hair and a beard, an older figure next to Mary and Jesus, and often in the background. In the pope’s Apostolic Letter entitled Patris Corde, he wrote, “In his relationship to Jesus, Joseph was the earthly shadow of the heavenly Father. He watched over him and protected him, never leaving him to go his own way. We can think of Moses’ words to Israel: ‘In the wilderness … you saw how the Lord your God carried you, just as one carries a child, all the way that you traveled’ (Deuteronomy 1:31). In a similar way, Joseph acted as a father for his whole life.”

Homily for the 5th Sunday of Lent

Just two days ago we heard these words in John’s Gospel, fromchapter 7: They were trying to arrest Jesus, but no one could lay hands on him, because his hour had not yet come (7.30). Here John gives us a historical fact with its theological explanation. But today it seems that everything has changed. From the lips of Jesus himself we hear, with somewhat trembling hearts, these solemn words from John’s chapter 12 that with great urgency immerse us into the full Paschal Mystery: The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.  These words, and the crucial shift they proclaim, are very important. They call our attention to a vital aspect of Jesus’ Passion and Death. 

The statement, The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified, announces to us three capital realities: 1. God’s freedom as the driving force behind the Passion of the Messiah; 2. God’s sovereignty as Lord of all history; and 3. God’s glorification through the Death of the Messiah. 

Jesus does indeed approach step by step a Passion full of suffering; but we should not overlook the fact that he does so with full freedom, in a totally free, voluntary, and intentional way. In other words, the only force that drives Jesus into it is his Father’s will to save. Because Jesus is impelled into the Passion by the force of the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ own will is in perfect harmony with the Father’s. We cannot speak here of simple “blind” or “accidental” suffering, or of “suffering for suffering’s sake”. Otherwise we could not speak of a passion of love, or of a life poured out voluntarily— not as a result of unfortunate circumstances, but poured out as a voluntary libation, as a gift of self. Love always demands freedom in the giving of the heart. No one could lay hands on Jesus until his hour had come in keeping with the Father’s saving plan. 

This means that God’s vulnerability in Christ Jesus is the greatest sign of the omnipotence of a God who is love and who wants to save humankind by giving his divine life for mortals. God’s vulnerability in Jesus is a weakness freely chosen and accepted by God as the most effective means of communicating his love and life to the world. It is precisely by means of Jesus’ voluntary Passion that God has placed his law of love within us, inscribing it deep within the flesh of our hearts.

So now the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified: this declaration of Jesus reveals the absolute sovereignty of God. It is the Father who decides when and how his Son will give his life. Without this decision, humans are powerless to take any initiative. Their hands are tied and their own wickedness can do nothing.  The Lover of the human race will hand himself over into the hands of those who hate God only when his loving heart has decided that the perfect time has come. He exclaims: For this very reason I have come to this hour! Father, glorify your Name. Here again we see that what is involved is sovereignty, but not the arbitrary autonomy of a tyrant god but the majestic supremacy of a Creator and Redeemer God, who uses all his wisdom and all his Trinitarian power only to foster and increase life, never to destroy it.  

And such is also the glory of love: God is truly glorified not by triumphing over mortals and crushing them, but by overcoming the Prince of this world who is the beginning of all evil and the enemy of both God and man. This divine victory happens without the noise of weapons, and it takes place precisely when Jesus dies obediently on the Cross: Because of his full surrender to God, Jesus was heard, and ... being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him. In this way, Jesus shows that his faithful love to the Father—not only as divine Son but also as human Servant—is stronger than the Adversary’s hatred, stronger than human infidelity. The Father is fully glorified by the Son when, by dying freely and sovereignly, the Son reveals who the Father is: none other than the one who sent him to give his life and bring eternal salvation to all. In Christ, on Calvary, divine Glory and human Passion become one.  

But love does not want to be alone; love always wants to share in its redemptive adventure. Therefore, Jesus further tells us: And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all to myself. Jesus is lifted up to heaven, paradoxically, at the very moment when he descends into death. For him, to descend into death is the same as to ascend to glory. Such is the logic of divine love, so different from ours!  And Jesus ascends upward, toward Life, not to remain alone but to draw all to himself in his trajectory back to the Father. The glory of love is to die to self in order to multiply love as much as possible, for if the grain of wheat dies, it produces much fruit.  

This spreading of love, moreover, is not automatic. Just as the Messiah’s giving of his life had to happen in complete freedom, so too must we accept Jesus’ giving of his life in complete freedom. Indeed, we must allow ourselves to be drawn by Jesus to his throne of glory on the cross! Where I am, there will my servant also be, he says. Where love truly exists, there also is the burning desire for union, for intensely shared life. Love never asks itself in what kind of situation—whether of joy or suffering—the beloved might be, before reaching out to her. Love only asks where the beloved is in order to reach him as soon as possible, exactly as Mary Magdalen magnificently asked the supposed gardener concerning her beloved Jesus, whom she thought dead: If you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away (Jn 20:15).  

We who have gathered in this chapel this morning, eager to receive the Body and Blood of Christ: Will we be among the blessed who joyfully allow themselves to be drawn toward Jesus crucified no matter what? Shall we say to him, Here we come, Lord!, even knowing that his soul is now beginning to be troubled unto death—even knowing that, in order to produce much fruit together with Jesus, we must die to ourselves? And yet, what could be clearer and more piercing than the following words of his intimate invitation to us, his professed disciples, words so brimming with yearning and full of promise: If anyone wishes to serve me, let that person follow me; and where I am, there shall my servant also be.