Homily — Christmas Midnight Mass

Brother and sisters, during the octave before Christmas, we prayed the following words from the preface: “…The Virgin Mother longed for him with love beyond all telling…” On this Christmas night, enveloped as we are by the great mystery of God become man, let us try to enter into Our Lady’s love beyond all telling: What moved her to so great a love? How did she express this love? And how can we share in this exchange of love? Her love beyond all telling includes her desire that we, too, should share in the great mystery of our religion, that is, her Child Jesus who is our God and savior, Christ and Lord. 

Of course, Our Lady did not approach mystery of the incarnation with the erudition of a Church Father. She was a young woman, a simple Jewish maiden and wife, and in the last days of her pregnancy. I assume she would have been familiar, at least to some extent, having listened to her parents and the synagogue liturgy, with the words we have just heard proclaimed: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light, upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom, a light has shone.” Darkness and gloom are all too present in our world today, but what seems to have inspired her love beyond all telling was God’s fidelity. God is faithful. God wants to penetrate the gloom of this world and bring to light the mystery that surrounds us. He, indeed, shows his fidelity by binding the strong one, that is, the devil, retrieving his spoils, and smashing the rod of this taskmaster that afflicts us; but even more, he shows his fidelity by the gift of a little child, his only begotten Son. At the same time, he shows us the matching gift of a woman who accepted the call to bear this child. We have here a mutual exchange of love that is beyond all telling.

In the second reading we heard another reason for Our Lady’s love: “The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation…” The Lord could not have made his grace more tangible then in this pregnant woman whose time had come to have her child. Who could understand this grace better than Mary. She never had relations with a man, but by God’s grace she was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit as in the days of old when the cloud covered the meeting tent and led the Israelites through the desert. Now, the glory of the Lord is manifested to us by a child in a manger lying beside his mother. This is the blessed hope we await, “the appearance of the glory of our great God and savior Jesus Christ…” But why did our Lady long for this manifestation of God’s grace with such longing? I think she was inspired by God’s desire that “all people be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.” God’s desire for our salvation was the source of Our Lady’s love beyond all telling. She realized she had received the grace to bear the Prince of Peace who could bring God’s desire to fulfillment despite all the efforts to destroy it. This holy virgin was the first to know this tangible, overwhelming grace that has appeared and she wants to share it.

Finally, after the child is born, we hear this phrase repeated in the Gospel narrative: “She wrapped him in swaddling clothes…you will find an infant in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger…” Women know how to care for newborns, to keep them warm and safe in swaddling bands. These bands serve as a transition from the warmth and security of the mother’s womb to the environment of the outside world. How intimate a scene. Mary was not a passive spectator, but an active cooperator. Our Lady’s time had finally come to see with her own eyes the mystery hidden for ages or at least for 9 months in her womb. The intimacy and care she lavished on her son were certainly love beyond all telling. 

Today’s Christmas mystery is certainly an exchange of love beyond all telling, beginning with the fidelity of God’s mercy and the reciprocal fidelity of the Virgin Mother, who is full of grace and truth. With her help we, too, have seen a great light that drives out darkness and gloom. It is reflected back to us in the mutual love of Our Lady and her child. Let us rejoice in this exchange of love and join the angels in singing “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

God is Seen in the Flesh

Of old, God the incorporeal and formless was never depicted, but now that God has been seen in the flesh and has associated with humankind, I depict what I have seen of God. I do not venerate matter, I venerate the fashioner of matter, who became matter for my sake and accepted to dwell in matter and through matter worked salvation, and I will not cease from referencing matter through which my salvation was worked.

SAINT JOHN DAMASCENE

Merry Christmas from all of us here at St. Joseph's Abbey!

John the Baptist and Advent

Mother church places John the Baptist before her children precisely as we are preparing for Christmas for a good reason…. His life and message remind us that Advent is not yet Christmas—that this penitential time leads to joy only if we heed it's message. John the Baptist—who leaped for joy in his mother's womb—is joy's perfect messenger because he shows us it's necessary elements: Repentance, humility, and sacrifice.

FR. PAUL SCALIA

Journey to Bethlehem

Let us arise, then. Let us shake the sleep out of our eyes—the sleep of emotions run amuck; the sleep of indifference, of tepidity, of self-pity, of fighting God… Let us arise from that sleep…and begin our journey to Bethlehem. But let us understand that this Bethlehem we seek is within our own souls, our own hearts…. It is an inner pilgrimage, a pilgrimage in which we don't use our feet…. So, then, let us enter, you and I, into the pilgrimage that doesn't take us from home. For ours is a journey of the spirit, which is a thousand times harder than a journey of the feet. Let us “arise and go.”

SERVANT OF GOD CATHERINE DE HUECK DOHERTY

The Value of Humility

There is more value in a little study of humility and in a single act of it than in all the knowledge in the world.

ST. TERESA OF JESUS

Waiting in Prayer

God always answers, maybe today or tomorrow, but he always answers, in one way or another. He always answers. The Bible repeats it countless times. God listens to the cry of those who invoke Him. Even our reluctant questions, those that remain in the depths of our heart, that we are ashamed to express: the Father listens to them and wishes to give us the Holy Spirit, which inspires every prayer and transforms everything. Brothers and sisters, in prayer there is always a question of patience, always, of supporting the wait. Now we are in the time of Advent, a time that is typically of expectation; of expectation of Christmas. We are in waiting. This is clear to see. But all our life is also in waiting. And prayer is always in expectation, because we know that the Lord will answer.

POPE FRANCIS General audience, 9 December 2020

Homily — Fourth Sunday of Advent

 When one of my grandnephews was born, he was so tiny that when I first met him, he fit easily into his father’s hands. Today, he is a tall, strapping young man.  I suppose that I could apply to him the saying, “From tiny acorns mighty oak trees grow.”  The acorn is the seed of an oak tree, and today in the gospel we hear of the miraculously fertilized ovum of Mary, now a noticeable fetus; the divine-human seed of her son has been growing in her womb.  At first, this is to the consternation of Joseph who has not yet taken her into his home, the second stage of a Jewish marriage at that time.  But he is calmed by a heavenly message which informs him that the child is conceived of the Holy Spirit, and that this child will save us all from our sins.  Yes, he will be our Savior, Emmanuel, God with us.

      What does that in face mean, that Jesus is our Savior, or Redeemer? I certainly could never buy the medieval ideas that “redeemer” meant the Father, as actual Redeemer, redeemed or ransomed us back from Satan and that Jesus was the redemption price that was paid. No.  I have in the last few years tried to find the best simple statement of how we are saved or redeemed.  Reading our Trappist brother Dom Eugene Boylan’s book This Tremendous Lover, I came upon this passage, “When we ask ourselves the question, ‘How did Christ redeem us?’ we find the answer is: by making us part of Himself.”  Yes, by making us part of Himself.  He became part of Mary, his Mother, in order to make Mary and all of us part of Himself—members of his Mystical Body, the Church, divinizing us by our union with him and truly humanizing us by our union with his resurrected and glorified human nature and with the glorious Ever Virgin Mary.

      Here let me explain why I brought up the word “seed.”  I will have to discuss a little biology. Please bear with me.  The word “seed” significantly appears in the second reading this morning from Romans where it is prudishly buried by the translation: the words “descended from David” are literally in the Greek “of the seed of David.” That was indeed the translation in the Douay-Rheims Bible when I was young.  This word “seed” reflects the ancient understanding that the complete seed (or sperma in Greek) came from the man and that it contained a very tiny human being who upon entering the womb was nourished into a full-sized fetus. It was thought that the woman contributed nothing but nourishment through her blood.  Great minds in the Church (such as St. Thomas Aquinas) inferred that there must be more to the story than this, but they lacked the precise instruments and science we have today.

      In the 17^th century and especially in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, as the microscope was developing greater and greater accuracy, scientists discovered the woman’s ovum or egg which was, in fact, the other half of the human “seed.”  Thus, for most of Christian history the source of the human nature of Jesus could incorrectly be understood as not coming from Mary  at all, but from a complete divinely implanted seed—Mary’s physical contribution being only nourishment and protection.  Both the ovum and the sperm are in themselves incomplete cells until they combine with each other to form the zygote cell (the real human seed) that then divides and differentiates into a fetus.  In Mary the fecundating power is from the Holy Spirit, but the fertilization of the ovum from her results in a natural zygote, and so the fetus grows naturally. The human soul of Jesus is miraculously infused by God in the same way it is miraculously infused into every human person.  It is important to remember that everyone you meet is not only a wonder of God’s creation in nature but is also a miracle of God’s intervention in nature. No one is “garbage” as some people are now saying.

        In the Catechism of the Catholic Church in paragraph 485 we read, “The Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, is sent to sanctify the womb of the Virgin Mary and divinely fecundate it, causing her to conceive the eternal Son of the Father in a humanity drawn from her own.” IN A HUMANITY DRAWN FROM HER OWN.   The paragraph describes, using general terms, the miraculous fertilization of the ovum of Mary and its implantation in her womb as the zygote.  With the science we now have we can say that Jesus and Mary share the same DNA—his humanity is drawn from her own.  Mary of Nazareth is truly the physical mother of the man Jesus in the same sense that I am the son of my mother Mary Truhan.  A contemporary canard against Mary that she is a surrogate mother is shown to be baseless.  Indeed, Jesus is the Son of God, but also Mary’s son without question.  Also, the miraculous conception of Jesus through the creative power of the Holy Spirit prevents any haploidy or chromosomal anomaly in the child. 

       The Catholic Church and our religion are often criticized for being too Marian.  I would answer that if the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, is seen as very Marian in its nature, culture and prayer, it is because the humanity of Jesus Christ himself is Marian and that St. Luke implies that the teaching and example Jesus received from Mary as a child blossomed in his teaching as an adult.  Perhaps, he resembles her not just spiritually, but also physically.  After all, Mary and Jesus share the same DNA.  We are called to share in a grace of spiritually resemblance to Christ and Mary through the Holy Spirit who overshadows us all with his transformative power.

        The Vatican Council proclaimed in its first document Sacrosanctum Concilium that the humanity of Jesus united with the divine person of the Word is the instrument of our salvation.  Thank you, Mary, for your Son and for the encounter with his body and blood, soul and divinity that you helped to make possible for humanity in Christ’s earthly life, then in our Baptism and now in this and every Eucharist, our living Bread of Eternal Life, our Cup of Blessing, and the pledge of our salvation.  Through it we become ever more and more part of Jesus Christ Himself in his Mystical Body and grow personally in holiness.  As Dom Eugene Boylan wrote, “When we ask ourselves the question, ‘How did Christ redeem us?’ we find the answer is: by making us part of Himself.”  Let me close with a quote from the Catechism of the Catholic Church which connects our membership in the Body of Christ with Mary’s holiness—the first sentence of which is profound, “The Church’s structure is totally ordered to the holiness of Christ’s members. And holiness is measured according to the ‘great mystery’ in which the Bride responds with the gift of love to the gift of the Bridegroom.  Mary goes before us all in the holiness that is the Church’s mystery as ‘the bride without spot or wrinkle.’ This is why the ‘Marian’ dimension of the Church precedes the ‘Petrine’”

A Sanctuary In Your Heart

You must accustom yourself to make a little sanctuary in your heart where you will always find our Lord even in the midst of occupations and distractions; and then, as soon as you are alone, as soon as you have a few minutes a fire shall flame out.

BLESSED COLUMBA MARMION Union with God

The Spirit of Simplicity

Jesus, the Lord, expects us to have the simplicity of a dove. This means giving a straightforward opinion about things in the way we honestly see them, without needless reservations. It also means doing things without double dealing or manipulation, our intention being focused solely on God. Each of us, then, should take care to behave always in the spirit of simplicity, remembering that God likes to deal with the simple, and that he conceals the secrets of heaven from the wise and prudent of this world and reveals them to little ones.

SAINT VINCENT DE PAUL

Mildness

Many appear full of mildness and sweetness as long as everything goes their own way; but the moment any contradiction or adversity arises, they are in a flame, and begin to rage like a burning mountain. Such people as these are like red-hot coals hidden under ashes. This is not the mildness which our Lord undertook to teach us in order to make us like Himself.

ST. BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX

Trinitarian Life

Trinitarian life is also our life…. There is one life of the Triune God, a life in which we graciously have been included as partners…a comprehensive plan of God reaching from creation to consummation, in which God and all creatures are destined to exist together in the mystery of love and communion.

CATHERINE MOWRY LACUGNA God for Us

God’s Foolishness

For Christians, the mystery of the death and resurrection of Christ constitutes an extraordinary revelation of divine love in the act of overcoming the human sinfulness that lies at the root of evil in our world. The relevance of this…needs to be further elaborated by drawing out its implications in a number of areas, beginning with the sinfulness of human beings and how that sinfulness distorts fundamentally our understanding of God. In this Christological perspective, conventional human wisdom is subverted and turned entirely on its head by the foolishness of God. Likewise, the conventional perception of risk is shattered, for the death and resurrection of Christ revealed God to be utterly reckless in wagering everything on human freedom, in surrendering the success or failure of the entire project of creation into human hands, and to be utterly vulnerable in having to pay the price of that wager.

JOE EGAN The Godless Delusion

The Secret Chamber

We must remember that the Word, the Son of God, together with the Father and the Holy Spirit, is hidden in essence and presence, in the inmost being of the soul…. Oh thou soul, then, most beautiful of creatures, who so long to know the place where your beloved is, that you may seek and be united to Him, know now that you are yourself that very tabernacle where He dwells, the secret chamber of His retreat where He is hidden.

ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS Spiritual Canticle, st. 1.6-7

God's Love Beyond Comprehension

Our soul is so preciously loved of Him that is highest, that it passes the knowing of all creatures. That is to say that there is no creature that is made that may fully know how much, how sweetly and how tenderly that our maker loves us.

JULIAN OF NORWICH Revelations of Divine Love

The Heart of Jesus

The heart of Jesus will dilate our hearts by teaching us to love above all else the glory of God and the salvation of souls.... We rely far too much on our own strength when our helplessness is obvious, and because we do not depend enough on the heart of Jesus, on his love for us. The heart of Jesus is able and desires to give us the saintly powers we need, confidence and love, which inspire adoration, thanksgiving, and atonement, by placing the glory of God above all else.

FR. REGINALD GARRIGOU-LAGRANGE, O.P.

The Old Age of the World

The world, when it comments upon the shortness of life, does so with a note of sadness, it complains about the brevity of things; man often lives on his memories. And the past, what good does it serve? It can't be changed. He keeps searching in the time remaining to him for what he missed in the past; he comes to his last years, and in these the nostalgia for the past and the sense of the brevity of things is even sharper. How sad the old age of the world!

SAINT RAFAEL ARNÁIZ BARÓN

Our One Happiness

Is there anything He can refuse us in the future, if already in the present He gives himself to us as our food? The Eucharist is our one happiness on earth.

BLESSED JOSEPH CASSANT, OCSO

Update on Our Abbey Hermitage

Br Adam and Fr Isaac last wrote you about the renovation of the hermitage here at the abbey. Here is a timeline report to bring you up to date on this project.

The re-building of the hermitage was substantially completed mid-December 2024.  Our abbot Dom Vincent and a substantial cohort of the community came out on Gaudete Sunday to bless the hermitage and the hermit, placing both under the care of Santa Maria del Silenzio.  Fr. Vincent noted that the hermitage shares in the monastery’s mission as a “monastic institute wholly dedicated to contemplation”.  Likewise, the hermitage in particular makes present the life of Nazareth in its silence, hiddenness and ordinariness.  

The Vigil Mass of Christmas 2024 resumed the Liturgy at the hermitage and was offered in thanksgiving for the generosity of all of you who supported this endeavor in every and any way.  The everyday life of the hermitage was resumed on the feast of the Holy Family and continues uninterrupted for 11 months now.

In our previous photo we showed the building stripped down to the rough-cut studs that formed the frame of the building.  The framing of the original hermitage was entirely of white pine from the abbey forest, which was milled locally and built by Fr. Edward and Br. Peter.  While we saved the framing, the hermitage now has a new roof, new windows, an electrical and plumbing upgrade, plus new insulation, siding, dry wall and flooring.  Happily we were able to save Fr. Edward’s original rough cut pine altar.  

The interior is a combination of original pine paneling, with some replacement pine.  The larger room is the “Work of God” space for prayer, meditation, Mass, lectio divina, reading and also houses the wood-burning stove. The smaller room has the sleeping space and a kitchenette space.  Additionally there is a compact bathroom with sink, toilet and shower.  It’s adequate, minimalist and everything a hermit needs for a life of prayer, outdoor manual labor, and not too much extra.

Thank you for your generosity with your gifts of prayer, labor, materials, supplies, money and your belief in our community’s mission of prayer.  Always be assured you are included in our daily prayer and Holy Mass.  

A blessed Advent to all.

Fr Isaac 

P.S.  God willing, I hope to get back to you next year with an update on life in the hermitage.

Continually Before the Face of God

Be mindful of God, so that in every moment he may be mindful of you. If he is mindful of you, he will give you salvation. Do not forget him, letting yourselves be seduced by vain distractions. Do you want him to forget you in your times of temptation? Stay near him and obey him in the days of your prosperity. You will be able to rely on his word in difficult days. Because prayer will keep you safe in his continuous presence you may constantly be before his face.Think of him, remember him in your heart. Otherwise, if you only meet him from time to time, you risk losing your close friendship with him.

ISAAC OF NINEVEH Philocalia

Denial of Desire

In general, the reason why many souls have no love or inclination towards virtue is that they harbor affections and desires which are neither innocent nor directed wholly towards God. He therefore who loves anything beside God renders his soul incapable of the divine union and transformation into God.

ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS The Ascent of Mount Carmel

God is Love

Believe more and more intensely in God's love. Or, better, that God is Love: that, for Him, to be and to love are one and the same thing. Remember what Saint Augustine wrote on the text: "I am, Who am". Change the word being for loving and you will still be far from reaching the limits of that truth which is Love. Despite all the penetration of his genius Saint Augustine never reached those limits. No one ever will— there are no limits! The Love of God is boundless Light.

A CARTHUSIAN They Speak by Silences

Homily – Christ the King 34th Sunday in O.T.-C

Back in the late 1950s, in my early teenage years, just before Castro’s Revolution and his accession to mock-messianic power, I attended an all-boys’ school in provincial Cuba run by the Marist Brothers. First Fridays of the month were rigorously consecrated to devotion to the Sacred Heart, a focus of Catholic piety that at that time was inseparable from the veneration of Christ the King. On First Fridays the whole student body of about 200 would gather in the garth first thing in the morning, and we would rededicate ourselves to the enthralling mystery of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. During the almost 70 years of living I’ve done since then, one phrase from the consecration prayer that we all recited in schoolboy unison—like the multiplication tables—has stuck firmly in my memory and gently haunted me: Tuyos somos y tuyos queremos ser: “Yours we are and yours do we want to be.” My mind stored away this formulation as a memorable puzzle, and its singsong rhythm and mystery have never loosened their grip on my heart.

In recent years I think I’ve begun to understand the deeper import of this generous public confession we made corporately, Yours we are and yours do we want to be, which at first may seem but typical religious rhetoric. However, all on its own it has gradually filtered down into my consciousness, to become the guiding light of my spiritual journey, a sort of standard against which to measure my movement. When you delve into it, you can see that the phrase actually conveys the invitation to a complete and profound spirituality because it puts on our lips two essential things: first, faith’s proclamation of God’s most sublime deed in creating us, and, second, our personal affirmation of that deed of God’s. To consecrate ourselves to the Sacred Heart of Jesus the King, I’ve come to see, means to embrace with every fiber of our being the magnificent truth that Jesus has already made us his own. As a matter of fact and not of vague imagining, we do belong by rights only to Jesus and not to ourselves or to the world or to anything or anyone in it! They sang a new hymn: Worthy are you to receive the scroll and to break open its seals, for you were slain and with your blood you purchased for God those from every tribe and tongue, people and nation. You made them a kingdom and priests for our God, and they will reign on earth (Rev 5:9-10, NAB).

However, now comes the all-important practical question: Is this factual reality, this condition of gloriously belonging to Another, to our Creator and Redeemer who has given his all for us as expressed by the wound in his Heart—is this belonging what we really want? And do we, consequently, dedicate the bulk of our thoughts and time and energy to cultivating this central and unique reality of our lives? The fool-proof test that reveals the actual and central love-interest of our lives is the answer to two further questions: To what is it that I spontaneously dedicate the greater part of my waking hours? And toward what object do my thoughts and desires instinctually gravitate? One major practical reason for giving ourselves to contemplative prayer is to discover where exactly the deepest love of our heart really lies. 

In the article in the Catechism titled “The Battle of Prayer” in Part IV, we read these helpful words: “A distraction reveals to us what we are attached to, and this humble awareness before the Lord should awaken our preferential love for him and lead us resolutely to offer him our heart to be purified. Therein lies the battle, the choice of which master to serve” (no. 2729). There you have it: the choice of which master to serve. That crucial choice is what the kingship of Jesus is all about. As Bob Dylan used to sing with his gritty twang, “you gotta serve somebody. Now, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody”. It would be pure delusion for any of us to think that we are not in thrall to some “king” or other. Why not, then, deliberately choose the King of Love and Truth with all our hearts, to serve whom is synonymous with eternal freedom?

The reality of our already belonging objectively to God in Christ takes the form of a solemn hymn of praise in our second reading from Colossians today: All things were created through Christ and for Christ. Christ is before all things, and in Christ all things hold together. Whether we are aware of it or not, each of us, by being included in this all things, has already been swept up from the beginning of our existence into the spiraling process of divine transformation and glorification that constitutes the ongoing cosmic drama of redemption, which is also the true drama of our lives and the only one that ultimately matters. Yet, vast and all-inclusive though it is, such a universal drama is not at all abstract or impersonal because it is, in fact, the careful and love-guided joint work of the heavenly Father and his only-begotten Son, steered at each step in the process by the goodness and wisdom of their Holy Spirit. 

St Paul continues: The Father delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the Kingdom of his beloved Son. This is the Kingdom of Light and Life where Jesus alone is King, he in whom all the Fullness [of divinity] was pleased to dwell, through Christ to reconcile all things for God, making peace by the blood of his Cross. Jesus is no merely hereditary or man-made monarch. Here is a King who has earned his kingship over creation literally by the Blood of his brow and Heart, out of sheer love for his Father and for the creatures they co-created and co-redeemed with one generous accord. For us to dwell joyfully and permanently in this Kingdom of peace and love is what Jesus has gained for us by the shedding of his Precious Blood. This is our unassailable birthright as God’s children. 

And yet, as that childhood formula also ingrained in me, not only must we affirm Yours we are, but at the same time also and yours do we want to be. The thing we have first been made to be by the immense work of God’s mercy and generosity, that very thing we also need to embrace for ourselves and make our own through the ardent desire by our willing heart and the way we live our daily lives. God’s act of creating and redeeming us, to become complete and vital, has to be reciprocated by our act of desire, assent and conversion of life. Obviously I could not yet understand this in the 1950s when I was 10 and 11 years old, as every month we piously recited our act of consecration. But we human beings do actually possess at every moment the power of becoming forever something unsurpassably magnificent: the Children of the Light, the Children of the Living God in Christ. We must not remain indifferent to this invitation. The crucial thing for each of us in our Christian adulthood, as grace continues to mature us, is to embrace with all our heart and in our concrete lives what we have already been made to be at our creation through Christ, the eternal Word, and again at our redemption through Christ, the crucified and risen Savior. 

This urgency to make a radical decision and choose for ourselves what God has first chosen for us is dramatized in today’s Gospel text, from St Luke’s account of Jesus’ Passion and Death. Luke’s first message to the reader concerns the division that arises between the people and the leaders in the face of the crucified Jesus, over whose head was nailed an inscription that read This is the King of the Jews. People and leaders each chose to have a different reaction to the Jesus phenomenon. The people stood by and watched, while the leaders mocked Jesus. The attitude of the people is positive. Luke says that they “stood there”, that is, “they abided”, “stood with perseverance”. These are not people who, passing by, stopped out of mere morbid curiosity. Their being and standing there expresses a decision, a will, an interest, we might even say an involvement. The other aspect of the people’s attitude is expressed by the verb theoreîn, which here should be translated as “to observe reflectively” and not simply as “to see”. When an event is observed attentively, this is reflected inwardly on the observer and it will bring about a transformation. It is in fact from this careful observation, from this contemplation of the “spectacle” of a mocked and humiliated Messiah, that the repentance of the crowds in the face of the crucified Christ will arise. 

On the cross Jesus the King is so stripped of himself that he does not respond to insults but remains silent, with only his nakedness as royal robes of state. I would be tempted to say that he responds with silence; but I wonder if his inner freedom and his being now with the Father in the depths of his heart (vv. 34, 46) do not take him even deeper than that, take him to where he no longer even hears the insults, taunts, and provocations, but listens only to the words of truth and humility of the “other criminal”, to whom he spontaneously promises communion with himself that very day in his Kingdom. At the beginning of his public ministry Jesus responded, as any good rabbi would, with words from Scripture to the temptations of Satan, the Divider (Lk 4:1-13), thus expressing his closeness to the Father and oneness with him. Now on the cross Jesus dwells in silence, and this silence is the seal of his intimacy with the Father. Jesus’ silence of compassion and self-surrender is itself the throne of selfless love and peace from where Christ rules as King of all the universe and of all ages. In brief, King Jesus will renew his surrender of himself to us at this very altar. 

Finding God

We should find God in what we know, not in what we don't; not in outstanding problems but in those we have already solved…. We must not wait until we are at the end of our tether: he must be found at the center of life and not only in death; in health and vigor, and not only in suffering; in activity, and not only in sin.

DIETRICH BONHEOFFER Prison Letters

Eucharist

The “bodily” union of humanity with God made present to it has been, in a manner beyond all comprehension, presented to us in terms of eros, as the fulfillment of what the Song of Songs had celebrated long before: existence as a bridal state.

HANS URS VON BALTHASAR A Theology of History 

Divine Love

The principal labor of the Christian is to believe that divine love is the breadth and length and height and depth, and that there is simply nothing above, below or beyond it. It is our home; it enfolds us and is our utmost security both in this life and in death and beyond.

RUTH BURROWS, OCD Essence of Prayer

Prayer and Duties

He prays unceasingly who combines prayer with necessary duties and duties with prayer. Only in this way can we find it practicable to fulfill the commandment to pray always. It consists in regarding the whole of Christian existence as a single great prayer. What we are accustomed to call prayer is only a part of it.

ORIGEN On Prayer, 12

God's Providence and Mercy.

As is a grain of sand weighed against a large amount of gold, so, in God, is the demand for equitable judgment weighed against his compassion. As a handful of sand in the boundless ocean, so are the sins of the flesh in comparison with God's providence and mercy. As a copious spring could not be stopped up with a handful of dust, so the Creator’s compassion cannot be conquered by the wickedness of creatures.

ISAAC OF NINEVEH Ascetic Treatises

Thinking and Contemplation

To progress in thinking about creatures is painful and worrisome. The contemplation of the Holy Trinity is ineffable peace and silence.

EVAGRIUS OF PONTUS Centuries, I,65

Homily — Dedication of the Church of Saint John Lateran

In the Gospel of John we always stand contemplatively before the figure of Jesus. We have seen him enter the Jerusalem the holy city riding on a donkey’s foal to begin his reign as humble king. And this morning we watch as he comes into the Temple. And when he discovers the confusion of buying and selling in this sacred place, he is outraged. “Take these out of here,” he says. “Stop making my Father’s house into a market.” These words and actions recall the prophecy of Zechariah who foretold what would happen when the Lord entered the holy city of Jerusalem: “On that day…there shall no longer be a trader in the house of the Lord.” And amidst the chaos of upturned tables, coins scattered and lambs and oxen scrambling, his disciples recall the words of Scripture, “Zeal for your house is eating me up.” 

“What right has he to do such a thing?” As king Jesus has “ultimate authority over the Temple,” and as such he is its “reformer and rebuilder.” His right is the “right of Truth to name flagrant infidelity and to demand righteousness.” “Destroy this temple,” he says. “And in three days I will raise it up.” We can imagine the indignation that this interruption of the temple business and its cult along with his talk of destruction engendered. Small wonder that the scene in today’s Gospel is viewed by most scholars as the act which precipitates the decision of the authorities to kill him. But Jesus does not “condemn the temple cult; he intervenes because he truly understands and loves it” and demands more for God. His action is directed against everything that does not correspond to the holiness of this Temple. 

Jesus predicts the destruction which will befall the Temple and the institution within a generation as God’s judgment on religious leaders who have corrupted Israel’s sacred traditions. They have made the Temple a political symbol of resistance to Rome, believing that scrupulously preserving cult and tradition will safeguard their identity vis-à-vis their Roman oppressors. And so the sacred place where the Most High comes to meet his people has been profaned. 

Religious leaders have lost sight of the mystery of the temple in all its gracious demands; and worst of all they have refused to acknowledge the living presence of this mystery in the person of Jesus - this is tragic blindness to the nearness of all Israel had longed for. Jesus embodies the love, grace and mercy of the God of Israel, at a time when these ideas have become particularly unpopular among the Jews. He proclaims the coming reign of God, a place he calls the kingdom, a place where no one gets excluded. They are threatened by his brand of compassion. Make no mistake, they are right to be concerned, Jesus is dangerous. The breadth of God’s compassion has been breaking through in all his signs and healings. He brings good news to the poor, sets free those oppressed and heavily burdened, and he is teaching the people how to hope again. Indeed it is in the person of Christ Jesus that the new Temple is being rebuilt, a Temple “gleaming with holiness, the Temple promised and longed for by the prophets.” 

Finally we hear this most beautiful phrase, whispered to us by the evangelist, “He was speaking of the temple of His Body.” The temple of His Body. It is in the Hour of his passion that Jesus will become most truly Temple. For it is most of all in that hour of great anguish and self-emptying love that he will truly become the place where we can encounter the most tender, self-emptying love of the Father for all creation. There on the cross Jesus’ body broken open, destroyed by the horror of his passion will become the leaky life-giving temple of Ezekiel’s vision, the temple from which living, life-giving waters flow out. Jesus’ crucified flesh is the Temple; all our grace, our hope, our life gush out of the sanctuary of his most sacred, pierced heart to recreate paradise in our midst. 

The Temple that will be destroyed and raised up is not the temple of stone but the temple of Jesus’ own body. Jesus is the new gift of God that replaces the former. Jesus is himself now and forever the meeting place between God and his people. “With Jesus’s Passover – with His body destroyed and restored to life – the new cult, the cult of love will begin in a new Temple – Jesus himself. Jesus’ resurrection is the key that will allow the disciples to finally understand.” 

My brothers and sisters, the Temple is no longer a place but a relationship with Christ Jesus our Lord.  Jesus makes his own “the least movements and deepest wounds of our humanity and even now fill(s) them with the life of his Father.” He makes us his growing living body, and so we participate in his life-giving power. It is he who leads us beyond ourselves, to cross and tomb and resurrected life and makes us Temple – a living, life-giving sacrament that we are becoming together when we dare to forgive over and over and allow our hearts to be stretched open in compassion. 

As we gaze contemplatively on the person of Jesus, we see who are meant to be and who we are becoming, his wounded body. And like those who fall in love, we become more and more like the beloved. And it is here at this table most of all that we become who we are; we become what we eat- Temple, Church, true Body of Christ, wounded, risen, present. 

God First Loves Us

If we are capable of loving, it is because we are responding to God's love: God first loves us. Love becomes incarnate and comes to us in Jesus. The Holy Spirit is this love that is poured out in our hearts. Thus we are loving God by means of God; the Spirit enables us to share in the love with which the Father loves the Son and the Son the Father. Love casts us into the Trinitarian realms; the Trinitarian realms are those of love.

OLIVIER CLÉMENT The Roots of Christian Mysticism

One Who Truly Loves

The love for a person which results from a valid act of choice is concentrated on the value of the person as such and makes us feel emotional love for the person as he or she really is, not for the person of our imagination… The strength of such a love emerges most clearly when the beloved person stumbles, when his or her weaknesses or even sins come into the open. One who truly loves does not then withdraw his love, but loves all the more, loves in full consciousness of the others shortcomings and faults…. For the person as such never loses it's essential value.

ST. POPE JOHN PAUL II Love and Responsibility

Himself For Our Self

For God does not give us just something: he gives us himself, his heart, his word, his mind. And what he requires from us, in response, is not just something but the entire investment of our selves, our binding word, our heart.

HANS URS VON BALTHASAR You Crown the Year With Your Goodness, 229

Homily – All souls Day

We just concluded our procession to the cemetery to pray for our deceased monks, family, friends, and benefactors. Now we offer on their behalf the expiatory sacrifice of the Most Holy Eucharist. This is a very excellent and noble thing to do. It is similar to what we heard in today’s first reading: “Judas made atonement for the dead that they might be absolved from their sin.” The Scriptures justify his actions by adding, “…inasmuch as (Judas) had the resurrection in mind; for if he were not expecting the fallen to rise again, it would have been superfluous and foolish to pray for the dead.” 

In our world today there are many who do not believe in the resurrection of the dead. Some would call us fools for thinking we can do anything to help the dead. They are incredulous at the simplicity of our faith that believes what the Church has handed down: that God raises the dead and hears our prayers on their behalf, which is precisely what we are doing today. They are like the Athenians in St. Paul’s day when, at his mention of the resurrection of Jesus, they scoffed and said, “We should like to hear you on this some other time.”

But we hold fast to our message: Death is not the final word. Those who belong to Christ, even if they need further purification after death, the Father will raise up with Jesus. We believe this, and we can help by our prayers. Our faith in the resurrection from the dead is the cause of our hope. We belong to Christ, and he will give us his own life which is indestructible and eternal. May our brothers, families, friends and benefactors who have died enjoy this life with us. We are truly doing a noble and excellent thing today.