ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

To give oneself to God one must leave one's own self behind. Love is ecstatic by nature: in loving strongly, one lives in the other more than in oneself. But how could we practice that ecstatic dimension of love in our prayer, even to a small degree, if for the rest of the day we seek ourselves? If we are too attached to material things, our comfort and our vanity? If we cannot bear the slightest setback how can we live in God if we cannot forget ourselves for the sake of our brothers and sisters? JACQUES PHILIPPE Time For God, Ch. 1  

You shall see the Levites bringing loaves and a cup of wine, and placing them on the table. So long as the prayers of supplication and entreaties have not been made, there is only bread and wine. But after the great and wonderful prayers have been completed, then the bread is become the Body, and the wine the Blood, of our Lord Jesus Christ. And again: Let us approach the celebration of the mysteries. This bread and this wine, so long as the prayers and supplications have not taken place, remain simply what they are. But after the great prayers and holy supplications have been sent forth, the Word comes down into the bread and wine—and thus His Body is confected. ST. ATHANASIUS THE GREAT (A.D. 293-373) Sermon to the Newly Baptized

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, economies 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

Sunday Ordinary 17B 2024 | 2 Kgs 4:42-44/Eph 4:1-6/Jn 6:1-15 When Jesus raised his eyes and saw that a large crowd was coming to him, he said to Philip, “Where can we buy enough food for them to eat?” He said this to test him, because he himself knew what he was going to do. When Jesus sees the crowd coming toward him, he recognizes their need. He sees that they are physically hungry. Jesus, too, feels this physical hunger. He is poor and shares in their bodily weakness and needs. He knows that that he is the only one who can satisfy them with the bread that they need, but he does not want to do it alone. He wants to give his disciples a share in what he is about to do. So he turns to Philip and asks him what he suggests that they do. Jesus wants an answer from Philip that arises from out of the depth of his own experience; first, of physical hunger. Jesus has called Philip from the beginning to follow him as part of the group of his most intimate disciples. He has been set apart from ...

What good is it to me if Mary gave birth to the Son of God hundreds of years ago, if I do not give birth to the Son of God in my time and my culture. We are all meant to be Mothers of God, for God is always needing to be born. MEISTER ECKHART

Out of the darkness of my life, so much frustrated, I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament… There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity, and the true way of all your loves on earth, and more than that: Death: by the divine paradox, that which ends life, and demands the surrender of all, and yet by the taste – or foretaste – of which alone can what you seek in your earthly relationships (love, faithfulness, joy) be maintained, or take on that complexion of reality, of eternal endurance, which every man’s heart desires. J.R.R. TOLKIEN The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien

When another comes to us in his loneliness, the quick comforting word is not the first or best response. First let us respond to the real loneliness that is there by sharing it. In the deep emptiness and nothingness we need to experience the potential and the hope. Not curing but caring. M. BASIL PENNINGTON, OCSO Jubilee: A Monk’s Journal  

The call to holiness is accepted and can be cultivated only in the silence of adoration before the infinite transcendence of God: “We must confess that we all have need of this silence, filled with the presence of him who is adored: in theology, so as to exploit fully its own sapiential and spiritual soul; in prayer, so that we may never forget that seeing God means coming down the mountain with a face so radiant that we are obliged to cover it with a veil; in commitment, so that we will refuse to be locked in a struggle without love and forgiveness. All, believers and non-believers alike, need to learn a silence that allows the other to speak when and how he wishes, and allows us to understand his words.” POPE JOHN PAUL II Vita Consecrata, 38  

Fasts and vigils, the study of Scripture, renouncing possessions and everything worldly are not in themselves perfection, as we have said; they are its tools. For perfection is not to be found in them; it is acquired through them. It is useless, therefore, to boast of our fasting, vigils, poverty, and reading of Scripture when we have not achieved the love of God and our fellow men. Whoever has achieved love has God within himself and his intellect is always with God. If you wish to attain to true knowledge of the Scriptures, hasten to acquire first an unshakeable humility of heart. That alone will lead you, not to the knowledge that puffs up, but to that which enlightens, by the perfecting of love. True spiritual knowledge has sometimes flourished most grandly in some who were without eloquence and almost illiterate. And this is very clearly shown by the case of the Apostles and many holy men, who did not spread themselves out with an empty show of leaves, but were bowed down by the w...

Following Mary’s example, the fundamental practice for healing the wounds of the false-self system is to fulfill the duties of our job in life. This includes helping people who are counting on us. If prayer gets in the way, there is some misunderstanding. Some devout persons think that if their activities at home or their job get in the way of praying, there is something wrong with their activities. On the contrary, there is something wrong with their prayer. THOMAS KEATING The Mystery of Christ

16-B Sunday in Ordinary Time (Jer 23:1-6; Eph 2:13-18; Mk 6:30-34) Spencer, July 21, 2024 W e encounter the Lord Jesus in today’s gospel first of all as the shepherd of his own disciples . Returning from the mission Jesus had sent them on, the disciples are eager to tell their Master what they have accomplished. We see Jesus here gathering his disciples together and uniting them into a community around himself. This action starkly contrasts the evil shepherds in Jeremiah who, rather than gathering, violently scattered [the Lord’s] sheep and drove them away. Then Jesus listens attentively to the stories the apostles tell him about how their mission had gone. This exchange between Jesus and his disciples shows that authentic Christian mission cannot consist only in “doing and teaching”. Those who are sent also need to communicate their experience of mission to Jesus so as to internalize it, but above all in order to make sure their sacred mission remains centered on the person of the Sa...

For decades now and every day within them I have been singing the psalms—scores and scores of them, hours of each day. I sing them all—every one—and then start them all over again. I have become a long line of words, and arc of sound, a tone that tries to spin the dividing spaces that keep the world from what can save us. I do not get across. I call from the far side. I stretch all my being into the narrow lines that say those right and only words, words that every day trace our fall and point the path of return. I crawl over every word. I grope my way over and around every syllable, each phrase. JEREMY DRISCOLL, OSB A Monk’s Alphabet

It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance—for a moment or a year or a span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light…. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don't have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it? MARILYNNE ROBINSON Gilead (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004) By virtue of the creation and still more of the incarnation, nothing here below is profane for those who know how to see. On the contrary, everything is sacred. PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN Le Milieu Divin

Whenever we come together to listen to the Word of God, what we are seeking at bottom is not mental information or moral instruction or even a sentimental influence that will make us “feel” the presence and goodness of God. What we seek with all our soul, rather, is the possibility of opening ourselves up in prayer to God's transforming action. Whether we are fully conscious of it or not, in other words, we desire a change of life, a conversion from what we presently are to a more precise embodiment of the likeness of Christ at the center of our being, radiating out from us through all our thoughts, words, and actions. This is why the life of contemplation is the boldest and most adventuresome of undertakings, for what could be more radical, more truly earth-shattering, than the willingness to be dismantled and created anew, not once or twice in a lifetime, but day after day? ERASMO LEIVA-MERIKAKIS The Way of the Disciple, Ch.1

Hope would not exist if it did not come from the immense fire at the heart of things, if eternal love—contrary to appearances—were not the meaning of life. The Christian, together with everyone who has genuine hope, fights his way through the meaninglessness of the world. He establishes cells and islands of conspiracy, networks of hope in the kingdom of the dark lord of the world. Right from the beginning Christianity was seen as a total, highly dangerous revolution. Why else was it so persecuted? It is meaning’s revolt against the meaninglessness of dying, which cast a shadow of absurdity on all that lives. It is the revolt of Resurrection against the finality of bodily disintegration. The revolt of love’s absoluteness against any resignation on the part of the heart. HANS URS VON BALTHASAR You Crown the Year With Your Goodness, 97  

Our Lady of Mount Carmel, or   Virgin of Carmel, is the   title   given to the   Blessed Virgin Mary   in her role as   patroness   of the   Carmelite Order. The first Carmelites were Christian   hermits   living on   Mount Carmel   in the   Holy Land   during the late 12th and early to mid-13th century. They built in the midst of their hermitages a   chapel   which they dedicated to the Blessed Virgin, whom they conceived of in chivalric terms as the "Lady of the place." Our Lady of Mount Carmel was adopted in the 19th century as the patron saint of   Chile. The solemn liturgical feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel was first celebrated in England in the later part of the 14th century. Its object was thanksgiving to Mary, the patroness of the Carmelite Order, for the benefits she had accorded to it through its difficult early years. The institution of the feast may have come in the wake of the vindication...

"Although you feel tepid, approach with confidence, for the greater your infirmity the more you stand in need of a physician." "The best perfection of a religious man is to do common things in a perfect manner. A constant fidelity in small things is a great and heroic virtue." "Chastity without charity is a lamp without oil." “If you learn everything, except Christ, you learn nothing.   If you learn nothing, except Christ, you learn everything.” “When we pray,   the voice of the heart must be heard,   more than the proceedings   from the mouth.”

When we are distracted during prayer and find the time long because of our impatience to pass on to something else, it is good to say to yourself: My soul, are you tired of your God? Are you not satisfied with him? You possess him and do you seek for something else? Where can you be better than in his company? Where can you profit more? I have experienced that this calms the mind and unites it with God. SAINT CLAUDE DE LA COLOMBIÈRE Spiritual Direction

As Dietrich Bonhoeffer once observed, God is not simply a stopgap for the holes in our knowledge of the world, nor is He merely the source of ultimate answers to personal and human problems. In other words, God is not simply the one Whom we reach when we are extended to our limits. He is, on the contrary, the ground and center our existence, and though we may conceive ourselves as “going to” Him and reaching out to Him beyond the sphere of our everyday existence, we nevertheless start from Him and remain in Him as the very ground of our existence and reality. He is not merely “out there” in a vague beyond. He is not merely hidden in the shadows of what is unknown and pushed further away in proportion as we come to know more and more. He is the very ground of what we know and our knowledge itself is His manifestation: not that He is the cause of all that is real, but that reality itself is His epiphany. THOMAS MERTON Opening the Bible

“There was a man whose life was holy. His name was Benedict, and he was blessed by grace and by name.” With these words St. Gregory the Great begins the “Life of Saint Benedict”, found in the second book of his “Dialogues” which is the source for most of what we know about him. It continues: “Forsaking his father’s house and wealth, with a mind to serve only God, he sought for some place where he might attain to the desire of his holy purpose; and in this sort he departed, instructed with learned ignorance and furnished with unlearned wisdom” (Dial. St. Greg., II, Into.) .      After receiving the monastic habit from a monk named Romanus, Benedict spent three years in solitude at Subiaco, where he matured in both mind and character, in knowledge of himself and of his fellow-man. In time people were attracted by his sanctity and came to Subiaco to be under his guidance. It is there that he began to establish monasteries. The remainder of Benedict’s life was spent in realiz...

“Now, brethren, that we have asked the Lord who it is that shall dwell in His tabernacle, we have heard the conditions for dwelling there; and if we fulfill the duties of tenants, we shall be heirs of the kingdom of heaven. Our hearts and our bodies must, therefore, be ready to do battle under the biddings of holy obedience; and let us ask the Lord that He supply by the help of His grace what is impossible to us by nature. And if, flying from the pains of hell, we desire to reach life everlasting, then, while there is yet time, and we are still in the flesh, and are able during the present life to fulfill all these things, we must make haste to do now what will profit us forever.” *** “No one is to pursue what he judges better for himself, but instead, what he judges better for someone else.” SAINT BENEDICT OF NURSIA

How would you advise a person who is angry with another, not to the extent of wishing to harm him, but yet enough so that he would be glad to see harm befall this person? May one approach the altar in these dispositions, or should one rather stay away until the disturbance has passed? I can only say that I hope I will never find myself going to the altar of peace in such a state, or partaking with wrath and quarrelsomeness of the sacrament in which God is unquestionably present, “reconciling the world to himself.” If God will not receive my gift until I have restored peace to any brother whom I may remember having offended, how much less will he do so if I haven't even restored peace within myself. SAINT BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX On Precept and Disposition

The charity of God and obedience are bound each to each with an unbreakable bond and are in no way separated from each other. The Lord shows us that there cannot be charity without obedience when he says: ‘If anyone loves me, he will keep my word’ (Jn 14:23): that is to say, he will observe my commandments, and in observing them, he will obey me. He also shows that there cannot be obedience without charity when he says: ‘Whoever does not love me does not keep my words’ (Jn 14:24). If, then, he who loves obeys, and he who does not love does not obey, it follows that just as there cannot be charity without obedience, neither can there be obedience without charity. BALDWIN OF FORD Spiritual Tractates, Tr. 3

In all religions, mountains had been regarded as a link between heaven and earth: the center and image of the world, a place where the deity was met, where this world was left for his, the natural site of the temple to which he descended, and at which union with him took place. The place where all this happens is a holy mountain. This symbolism and this reality occur in the Bible, where the New Testament takes up the images and ideas of the Old, particularly the “favored mounts” where God revealed himself, to Moses, to Elijah and to Elisha, and those hills on whose summit a cult was practiced in his honor, where he was worshiped and sacrifice was offered to him. Jerusalem with her Temple was to be the mountain par excellence. In the Gospels and apostolic writings, she has a symbolic or geographical significance—sometimes both. Elevation, height, is the sign of a sublime mystery, of God made manifest and of his dwelling among men, and of the fulfillment of the prophetic utterances. JE...

The more a soul is dependent on grace, the higher the perfection to which it aspires. The grace of God is the more needful for each moment, as without it the soul can do nothing. The world, the flesh, and the devil join forces and assault the soul so untiringly that, without humble reliance on the ever-present aid of God, they drag the soul down in spite of all resistance. Thus to rely on God seems hard to nature, but grace makes it become easy, and brings with it joy. BROTHER LAWRENCE OF THE RESURRECTION The Practice of the Presence of God

What is a religion worth which costs you nothing? What is a sense of God worth which would be at your disposal, capable of being comfortably elicited when and where you please? It is far, far more God who must hold us, than we who must hold Him. And we get trained in these darknesses into that sense of our impotence without which the very presence of God becomes a snare. FRIEDRICH VON HUGEL Letters From Baron Von Hugel To a Niece In the Beginning it is usual to feel nothing but a kind of darkness about your mind. You will seem to know nothing and to feel nothing except a naked intent toward God in the depth of your being. You will feel frustrated, for your mind will be unable to grasp him, and your heart will not relish the delight of his love. But learn to be at home in this darkness. Return to it as often as you can, letting your spirit cry out to him whom you love. ANONYMOUS The Cloud of Unknowing

Death could never have been defeated except by the death of the Savior, nor any of the other sufferings of the flesh: for unless he had felt dread, human nature could not have become free from dread; unless he had experienced grief, there could never have been any deliverance from grief; unless he had been troubled and alarmed, no escape from these feelings could have been found. Every one of the emotions which assault human nature can be found in Christ…so that they might be thoroughly subdued by the power of the Word dwelling in the flesh, thereby changing the nature of man for the better. SAINT CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA Commentary on the Gospel of John