Self-knowledge

When a house is shut up, the sun's ray's do not enter, and so we don't see how much dust is found therein. But when the sun's rays penetrate, we soon realize how full of dust the house is. Self-knowledge is just such a ray...

ST. ANTHONY OF PADUA

The Holy Eucharist

Let us learn the wonder of this sacrament, the purpose of its institution, the effects it produces. We become a single body, according to Scripture, members of his flesh and bone of his bones. This is what is brought about by the food that he gives us. He blends himself with us so that we may all become one single entity in the way the body is joined to the head.

JOHN CHRYSOSTOM Homily on John, 46

Homily — Cistercian Disciples

Pentecost happened four weeks ago, and Ordinary Time started the next day, but today is the first Sunday in Ordinary Time on which we are not celebrating a particular solemnity of the Church Year. It’s the first truly ordinary Sunday in Ordinary Time this year. I remember how Father Eddy used to breathe a sigh of relief around this time and exclaim with a big smile: “Thank God for Ordinary Time!” Beyond no longer needing to worry about special Easter texts and rubrics, he understood that Ordinary Time has a special character of its own. It isn’t a blank liturgical period. Though he never said so explicitly, I would guess that what Father Eddy had in mind was that, after we have delved deeply over many months into the mysteries of our salvation as lived by the Lord Jesus, now comes the moment when we are invited to hunker down personally and live these mysteries ourselves, in our “ordinary, obscure and laborious” Cistercian existence. Ordinary Time urges us to make the Paschal Mystery permeate our concrete, ordinary circumstances. Despite the mostly nose-to-the-grind exterior of our life, it is only here that our mystical transformation into other Christs can take place.  

Today’s reading from the Gospel of Luke gives us the perfect theme to explore the actualization of the Paschal Mystery in our lives: namely, Christian discipleship, the existence of those Jesus first calls to himself as disciples and then sends out as apostles after making them into “a new creation in the Spirit”. For us monks, discipleship means specifically Cistercian discipleship, a topic of great relevance as we enter our yearly retreat today as a community and ponder our specific charism. 

Christ Jesus himself is, in a real sense, the one and only Apostle, the One sent forth from the Father as bearer of the world’s salvation. And yet he has chosen to share his redemptive mission with us through our active participation in it. No one, least of all we monks, can honestly bear the name of Christian without becoming a disciple through intimacy with the Lord and then sharing, as apostle, in Christ’s mission to save the world.

Today’s gospel contains a rich teaching concerning the particulars of Christian mission. The disciples are explicitly sent out to prepare the way for the coming of Jesus into people’s lives. Our mission, whether visible or hidden, is always a clearing of the way for the person of Jesus so that he will come to mean to others what he already means to us. The Lord is himself the greatest treasure we possess, the Peace that inhabits our hearts; and the quality of our love for both Jesus and others is shown by the intensity of our desire to share that treasure with everyone. The disciples are sent out two by two because our fraternal communion with one another as disciples is already in itself a manner of proclaiming the nearness of the Kingdom. In this Kingdom, interpersonal communion and joyful unity reign supreme as the visible realities that best reflect God’s Trinitarian nature as continual circulation of love. The very heart of Jesus’ Gospel is love, and this truth can best be witnessed to not primarily through words but through lived relationships by persons who help and support one another, who find the meaning of their individual lives within a God-established network of relationships. In our lives as Christians, we are called to become the visibility of Jesus as the loving Heart of God’s Kingdom. Such should be the witness borne by the monastery as an ecclesiola or “small local church”.

Those whom Jesus sends out are very few indeed, considering the enormity of the harvest, and they are not given many provisions and even fewer certainties. The disciples are poor, a tiny minority hidden in a huge mass of people, and their existence is precarious. All of this, in and of itself, is obviously quite negative; and yet Luke presents these facts not at all as regrettable obstacles impeding the mission but, paradoxically, as the very conditions that Jesus himself imposes on the mission! The poverty of those sent, it seems, is meant to underscore the fact that the Christian mission has to be enacted by the whole of a person, with nothing held back, and relying on none of the gimmicks (like colorful appeal and guarantees of success) that the world considers essential. The apostles are, after all, proclaiming the Word made flesh, and so it isn’t enough for them to lack sufficient means: they must be poor in actual fact. Nor is it enough for them to proclaim the Kingdom of God with words: they must actually be men of God. And it isn’t enough for them to proclaim peace: they must actually be peace-makers. 

All the requirements made of the disciples by Jesus are, thus, at the level of personal identity and existence. At bottom, the many necessary actions and words of Jesus’ followers have to flow forth from their unique personhood as Christians, that is, from their joyful and vital symbiosis with the Lord Jesus. Their ministry does not at heart have to do with pre-set official functions performed exteriorly, or with precisely worded formulas and definitions, divorced from personal experience. Their highly personal identification with Christ—the fruit of grace, prayer and intense struggle—is what enables the disciples to truly become lambs who follow the Lamb of God himself wherever he goes, and who therefore offer themselves as an oblation in union with Christ. 

When you are poor in fact and not only in theory, then, as an evangelist, you have only yourself to give away, as conformed with the Word of God living in you. “Mission” has meaning only if it is but a single thing with the following of Christ. This truth has particular significance for us Cistercian monks that we are. Our special contemplative mission in the Church has nothing to do with going out physically from the monastery into the world, but everything to do with our actually becoming conformed with Christ in our inner being. The brunt of our monastic missionary effort consists in concentrating all the energies of our heart on intimate union with Christ, so that the Lord may then take the substance of our surrendered being and do with it as he wishes throughout the body of humanity and the cosmos.

And yet, we monks are very ordinary human beings, living physically in this world for the time being and, thus, coming into contact more or less directly with all sorts of people. In faith we believe that Jesus is subtly “sending us out” to every person we encounter in whatever manner. In every case, the personal poverty and vulnerability we have deliberately embraced by our vows can become the space where God’s Spirit is manifested. Radical poverty, both material and spiritual, freely embraced, brings with it extraordinary power: Lord, even the demons are subject to us because of your Name. The disciples have renounced all earthly power and personal influence, and therefore the power of God is free to work the most splendid things through them. And the disciples’ necessarily self-effacing attitude makes their mission to be a non-threatening invitation to those who welcome them. They, therefore, inspire trust. Through their smallness as individuals, they open up a space for the miracle of conversion to Jesus. The witness of their own harmony of hearts, furthermore, shows clearly that authentically lived Christian faith drives out all fear, distrust and mutual recrimination. Where faith dwells, a truly Edenic condition flourishes which all rational beings yearn for. Isaiah embodies this condition of pure, universal joy in a glorious vision of Jerusalem as mother of all nations, where God will spread prosperity like a river and all may suck fully of the milk of her abundant breasts, a vision made real at this Eucharist.

Jesus does not send out missionaries who carry food, clothing or money to the needy. Rather, he sends persons without any money or provisions. The only thing they take with them is the all-sufficient Word of the Kingdom, which proclaims the necessity of conversion. This conversion has such urgency that the disciples musn’t waste any time along the way, greeting people and engaging in idle chatter. The radical Jesus excludes everything non-essential from the disciples’ words and actions, and this gives their mission a very ascetical, almost monastic flavor. Those Jesus sends are bearers of nothing but the living and naked Word, a Word they are called to embody in their existence as other Christs. This requires of them that, like St Paul, they never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Being Jesus’ intimate companion on the redemptive cross is both the form and the means of the Cistercian monk’s apostolate, which as such never requires that he leave the enclosure. Welcome, at last, to Ordinary Time! 

The Last Judgment

The Last Judgment will come when Christ returns in glory. Only the Father knows the day and the hour; only he determines the moment of its coming. Then through his Son Jesus Christ he will pronounce the final word on all history. We shall know the ultimate meaning of the whole work of creation and of the entire economy of salvation and understand the marvelous ways by which his Providence led everything towards its final end. The Last Judgment will reveal that God's justice triumphs overall the injustices committed by his creatures and that God's love is stronger than death.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1040

A Holy Calling

Do not be afraid to set your sights higher, to allow yourself to be loved and liberated by God. Do not be afraid to let yourself be guided by the Holy Spirit. Holiness does not make you less human, since it is an encounter between your weakness and the power of God's grace. For in the words of Leon Bloy, when all is said and done, "the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.”

POPE FRANCIS Gaudete et Exultate

Homily — Saints Peter & Paul

Today’s solemnity honors two conversions that underpin the entire foundation of the Church. Two saints who were converted, literally turned around, by their discovery of mercy, better still by their discovery that they were discovered by Mercy in the person of Christ Jesus the innocent victim, who though he has suffered and died for his people’s sinfulness comes back from the dead without recrimination as forgiving victim. In fact he absolutely refuses not to forgive. This continues to astound and unnerve us just as it did Peter and Paul. Because if God will not punish us, we often try to figure out ways to punish ourselves because of our guilt. But God in Christ will have none of that. None of it. He returns from the dead full of wounds and speaks only, “Peace.” It does not mean nothing happened, too much has happened; sin has made a horrendous mess of his body, but forgiveness is more powerful. This is the confusing grace and ridiculous truth that both Peter and Paul experience in Christ. And we are invited as Church to find ourselves as they did, within the overwhelming reality of a wounded, resurrected and forgiving God. 

Peter says he is ready to die with Jesus; then betrays him in a heartbeat to save his skin. “Wait a minute; you’re one of that Galilean’s followers,” says the maid in the high priest’s courtyard. “I’d know that accent anywhere.” “Get out of here,” Peter mutters. “I don't know who you’re talking about.” Meanwhile, Jesus is next door being slapped, ridiculed and roughed up by soldiers. Regret over this will break Peter’s heart. But the risen Jesus will appear to him first of all the disciples, without any hint of blaming. And later he will forgive Peter over breakfast at another charcoal fire on a beach, as he gratefully receives Peter’s confession, “Lord, you know well that I love you.” Peter’s heart has been transformed.

And Paul. Well, as an expert in the Law, he knows that Jesus the blasphemer has been rightly executed for leading the people astray. So he has been ruthlessly tracking down Jesus' followers, dragging them from their homes to prison and persecution, and most recently cheering on those who stone the deacon Stephen. But soon during a journey northeast to Damascus, in a blinding light the resurrected Jesus will introduce himself to him with a heartbreaking question, “Saul, why do you persecute me?” The God who is purely and unambiguously love has raised this Jesus from the dead; the Law has been fulfilled and radically eclipsed in the person of Jesus the forgiving victim. Paul the angry persecutor becomes Paul the messenger of grace.

Peter and Paul have hurtled headlong into divine Mercy. And so they must revise their whole lives; for a deeply affective personal love for Christ now grounds their entire existence. They have fallen in love. Their encounter and ongoing relationship with Jesus have transformed, reformed them. And it is this radical reprioritization that gives such power and authenticity to their preaching and ultimately leads them most willingly, even joyfully to suffer the loss of all things even their very lives for Christ’s sake. Paul will say it best, “All I want to know is Christ Jesus and him crucified and the power flowing from his resurrection.” Surely Peter would agree. 

Today we celebrate with joy what mercy can accomplish in hearts emptied, made available to Christ because of bitter self-knowledge. Neither Peter nor Paul have anything to boast about but their dependence on Christ. For Peter and Paul, as for each of us, the resurrected Innocent Victim will always be “made present to us as forgiveness.” Willing at last to admit that we have reached the limits of our own prowess and possibilities, we no longer need to “fortify ourselves against” our own shabby embarrassing truth. Perhaps then with our hearts broken open, we will be ready to surrender like Peter and Paul, finally able to make ample space for the incomprehensibility of grace, because we realize that we like them have nothing to boast about except our dependence on Christ Jesus.

Finally, Jesus’ question to Peter and to each of us in this morning’s Gospel, situates us with him, poised to listen to our Master as he whispers this most compelling question, “Who do you say that I am? Who am I for you? What is your experience of me in your life, in your history?” What will each of us answer? Perhaps when we come to understand ourselves as sinners desperately beloved by God in Christ and found by his mercy incessantly, then with Peter we can say, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” For as forgiving victim, Jesus, ever marked by his wounds, has radically reinterpreted and expanded the meaning of Messiah. 

He, who is our Lord and Master, invites us once again to feast on his Body and Blood.

Mystical Prayer

Lifestyle and prayer grow or diminish together. If people today or in any age lack mystical prayer, it is not because it has been tried and found lacking. It is the Gospel that has not been tried.

THOMAS DUBAY, S.M. Fire Within

Talking to Mary

Talking to Mary is very simple. She will tell you about her Son who took upon himself your pain and mine, your sin and my sin. She will tell you about the fantastic obedience to his Father that her Son had…. She will speak in a low voice about her own fiat which simply means “yes" to God…. Mary is as powerful as an army ready for battle. The Holy Trinity fills her and she is a help to everyone who has recourse to her…. She is the most powerful enemy of Satan, next to the cross of Christ, next to the Holy Trinity itself….

CATHERINE DE HUECK DOHERTY

Homily — Corpus Christi

The Church draws her life from the Eucharist. This is the theme of Pope St. John Paul’s encyclical, Ecclesia de Eucharistia. Something similar could be said about our community: Our community draws its life from the Eucharist. Without it we might as well pack up and go home. Today’s feast is our opportunity to affirm this and adore Our Lord Jesus present in the Blessed Sacrament.

It is good to remember that Our Lord had our community in his heart on the night he was handed over. “Father, I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one…” That we may all be one. We have difficulty with this. It means setting aside our own wills, being on time for meals and prayers and lectio divina. But that is precisely what Jesus did for our sake. He was always on time. And when the ultimate hour arrived, he was there with his community of disciples, and he “…took bread, and after he had given thanks, broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you.’” He would go so far as to hand over his body and blood to make our community possible.

St. Paul understood this. He had received a share in our Lord’s mission to gather communities. When we read the Letter to the Corinthians, we can see how difficult a task this was. Paul emphasizes that it is Jesus who made the community at Corinth, not Paul, not Apollos, not Cephas. He says: “I received from the Lord what I also handed on to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night he was handed over…” Paul was referring to the handing-over that took place on the cross. It was not Paul who was crucified for the Corinthians but Jesus. He goes further and warns them not to receive the gift of God in vain: “…whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily will have to answer for the body and blood of the Lord…For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body, eats and drinks judgment on himself.” We must discern daily how our very life and the life of our community depends on the Eucharist. Any goodness we have flows from the body and blood of Christ. 

Finally, it is not only Paul who has received the mission to build up a Christian community. This mission has been entrusted to us also. Community flows first and foremost from Jesus, but we are responsible to draw from this source and to imitate him. Jesus made this clear in today’s gospel when his disciples urged him to send the people away to get food. He said very simply, “Give them some food yourselves.” We need to gather what bread and wine we have, even the hidden portions, and bring them to Jesus. A response like “Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well,” will not do. We must be ready to help others with the necessities of life. We must give ourselves as Jesus did in order to sustain our community. 

The Eucharist makes our community possible, because it makes present the Lord Jesus, to quote, “I have given you a model to follow, so that as I have done for you, you should also do…If you understand this, blessed are you if you do it.” Let us begin anew today and eat this bread and drink this cup worthily that we may proclaim the gift of Jesus’ life and death until he comes. 

Making It In Life

No one makes it in life unless he possesses a deep, exclusive love. By "makes it in life" I do not mean simply surviving. Anyone can survive without love. By "makes it in life" I mean reaching a fullness-of-person beauty and happiness. By "deep, exclusive love" I do not refer to any merely human love, not even love found in an ideal marriage. No merely natural relationship is the ultimate answer to the human puzzle. By "deep, exclusive love" I refer to a love that is given to one alone and with no reservations whatsoever. That kind of love can be had for God only.

THOMAS DUBAY, S.M. …And You Are Christ’s

 

Who is a Saint?

The saint is the person who is so fascinated by the beauty of God and by his perfect truth as to be progressively transformed by it.

POPE BENEDICT XVI

An Infinite Love

From his human heart, the Son of God prays to the Father in these words: "I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” Let us listen with amazement to these words. Jesus is telling us that God loves us as he loves himself. The Father does not love us any less then he loves his only begotten Son. In other words, with an infinite love. God does not love less, because he loves first, from the very beginning! Christ himself bears witness to this when he says to the Father: "You loved me before the foundation of the world.” And so it is: in his mercy, God has always desired to draw all people to himself. It is his life, bestowed upon us in Christ, that makes us one, uniting us with one another.

POPE LEO XIV Homily, June 1, 2025

The Presence of God

In truth God is hidden everywhere, but He reveals Himself only to the heart which is capable of discovering Him and converting itself. For the presence of God is coextensive with the totality of beings. There is nothing His gaze does not penetrate. There is nothing in which His action is not felt. Thus we should strive to rediscover ourselves as being immersed in the life and the light of the Trinity. We should realize—and this is already a form of contemplation—that all things at all times emanate from the Father of light through the Son and through the Spirit; we should therefore dwell in their presence and their radiance.

JEAN DANIELOU God’s Life In Us

Creation Out of Love

The reason for creation lies entirely in the unfathomable mystery of God, who is self-originating and self-communicating love. While the world is the gracious result of divine freedom, God's freedom means necessarily being who and what God is. From this standpoint the world is not created ex nihilo but ex amore, ex condilectio, that is, out of divine love.

CATHERINE MOWRY LACUGNA God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life

Progress

Therefore my advice to you, friends, is to turn aside from troubled and anxious reflection on your own progress, and escape to the easier paths of remembering the good things, which God has done; in this way instead of becoming upset by thinking about yourself, you will find relief by turning your attention to God… Sorrow for sin is, indeed, a necessary thing, but it should not prevail all the time. It is necessary, rather, that happier recollections of God's generosity should counterbalance it, lest the heart should become hardened by too much sadness and so perish through despair.

ST. BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX Sermons on the Song of Songs

Homily — Pentecost

The mystery of Pentecost is sometimes referred to as God’s way of reversing the Tower of Babel story in the Book of Genesis. It is a movement from disunity to unity. The sacred author describes how the people had a common language and were able to cooperate and plan with a common purpose. But what was their plan? To make a name for themselves, to build a tower above everyone else lest they be scattered abroad. But God, in his inestimable wisdom and mercy, would not allow our human race to mount up a tower of pride from which they could look down on others and insulate themselves from others. So, the Lord scattered them over all the earth and made it difficult for them to communicate with one another, the very opposite of Pentecost. 

The inability to communicate leads to all kinds of fear and mistrust. We see this in the world today even among ourselves who speak the same English language. The desire to make a name for ourselves makes communication more like the babel of many tongues. But on this great feast of Pentecost, we have the Holy Spirit creating a bond of unity. People from every corner of the known world could understand the disciples as they proclaimed the mighty acts of God!

I like to connect this scene with Jesus’ last discourse in chapter 17 of John’s gospel which we have been listening to this past week. Jesus prays earnestly to his Father that his disciples may be one. This is his constant refrain: “That they may be one”—not scattered, not trying to build a name for themselves but focusing on the one thing necessary: the mighty acts of God. For what acts are greater than what Our Lord Jesus Christ has done for us. Though he was rich, he became poor for our sakes. He always took the last place. Not only did he give us his body and blood as our spiritual food, but he gave us his very breath that we might live, he in us and we in him.

The Holy Spirit is this breath, the life-giving breath that Jesus breathed out from the cross and likewise on the evening of the first day of the week. On that evening Jesus said to his disciples, “Peace be with you…And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” It is the Holy Spirit that fulfills Jesus’ prayer “that they may be one.” He makes it possible for our community, our families, our Church to be united—not isolated, not fearful. If we try to go it alone and try to make a name for ourselves, the Spirit will mercifully humble us somehow—and don’t underestimate his ability to do so! We have to come down from any towers we have built and allow the Spirit to pour into our hearts the miracle of hope, for “We have all be given to drink of the one Spirit.” Let us drink deeply, then, of this breath of God and unite our voices in prayer, “O Lord, send forth your Spirit, and renew the face of the earth!”

God’s Embrace

If we keep talking to God, we come to experience something utterly unexpected (at least, the first time that it happens): we feel his hand, as it were, gently raising our downcast and tearstained face to look into his face. And what do we discover in his face? Not fury, not disappointment, not rejection. We see compassion for the pain we are suffering, we see appreciation for the efforts that we are making out of the desire to please him, and above all we see loving acceptance—pardon that is more than pardon, pardon that is an embrace.

BERNARD BONOWITZ, OCSO Truly Seeking God

Homily — Visitation

When considering the feast of Our Lady’s Visitation to Elizabeth, we are apt to be a little too hasty in applying its “meaning” to ourselves. We are likely, that is, to generalize and conclude at once that we are all naturally bearers of a mystery we ought to share with others, the mystery of who we are. True enough… But what exactly is the mystery we bear? Simply the mystery of our own existence, of our own goodness and good will? I wonder whether this is enough to save the world… To view things only in this way appears to me as deflating, because such moralism excludes from the Christian experience the sense of radical wonderment. It forgets God’s unaccountable desire, attested everywhere in Scripture, to dwell with us and use us as instruments of salvation. 

We should pay close attention to Elizabeth’s chief sentiment: How does this happen to me, that the Mother of my Lord should come to me?  These simple words contain the whole range of marveling Christian jubilation, triggered by God’s free initiative and its result in a historical event. The Visitation is Elizabeth’s personal way of experiencing the foundational mystery of the Word’s Incarnation. This question of Elizabeth’s, spoken in amazement and awe, ought to motivate our whole life of faith, too. The mystery of the Visitation is above all the revelation of God’s initiative, of God’s design to come to us through the cooperation of the Immaculate One, in order to make his home with us, accompany us in all our life’s trials, and transform our lives by his active presence. 

Only as a result of God coming to us in Jesus through Mary can we receive the eternal Word of salvation into our lives and allow him to become in us the source and energy of our service of love. Only as graced participants in a mystery greater than ourselves—the primal Mystery of the Incarnation—can we, in turn, become bearers of the same saving mystery for others. We do not share ourselves; we share Christ in us. And let us not forget, either, that baby John leapt for joy in his mother’s womb as a response to his divine cousin’s approach in Mary’s womb! Christian faith is not mainly about affirming conceptual truths or celebrating our own intrinsic human goodness, but above all about rejoicing ecstatically, about dancing for joy in our spirit in grateful reaction to an overwhelming Presence and Event: the coming of God to us in the human flesh of his Son.

Indeed, through a life steeped in prayer and the sacraments we must continually welcome the approach of the Word to us through the mediation of his and our human Mother. Only by so participating in the mystery of salvation as conceived by God’s Wisdom will we be able to live a life of fruitful charity. We do not bear ourselves; our whole bliss ought to be to become for others bearers of the one divine mystery of love with which we have first been graced.

Emptying Ourselves

We must empty ourselves, not only before God but also before our neighbor. In doing this we will be loving God and our neighbors for their own sake and not for our own sake. Our neighbor is nothing else but the presence of God among us.

CHARLES NICOLET, SJ 

Homily — The Ascension

As he blessed them, he parted from them and was taken up to heaven. They did him homage and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple praising God. 

This great joy that the disciples experienced is ours also. For with today’s Feast Jesus returns definitively to the Father. As Paul explained to the Ephesians he is now seated at the Father’s right hand, far above every principality, authority, power and dominion. All things have been put under his feet. From now on, Jesus reigns with the Father in perfect sovereignty and freedom over the whole of creation. He is not bound by any created thing and gives his love in perfect freedom. What’s more, in Christ our human nature has been lifted up with him, while he waits for us, his body, to join him. 

Jesus’ last instruction to the disciples was that they were to return to Jerusalem and to stay there “until you are clothed with power from on high.” Like the disciples we are called to use this period before Pentecost in prayer and joyful expectation. 

Before he departed from them at the Last Supper Jesus told his disciples. “…Whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. if you ask anything in my name, I will do it. (Jn 14:13)  The Father will send the Spirit in Jesus’ name (14:26). In this time we are to pray in his name, for it is only in his name that we will have a share in his glory. 

To pray in his name is to put on the mind of Christ. For Jesus, the path of ascent is the path of descent, the way of exaltation is the way of self-emptying. As St. Paul says in the Philippians hymn: “…though he was in the form of God, [Jesus] did not regard equality with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave… he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him…” 

In his prayer at the end of the Last Supper in John’s Gospel Jesus prays, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son many glorify you...” (Jn 17:1) The path of glorification is again the path of descent and the glorification of the Father. Elsewhere he insists: “I do not seek my own glory” (Jn 8:50). In his whole existence he seeks only the glory of the Father, in total identification of the execution of his mission. 

Von Balthasar highlights a threefold renunciation on Jesus’ part.

First, the renunciation of his own will: “I do not seek my own will but the will of the one who sent me.^u (Jn 5:30) and “I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me (Jn 6:38). Second, the renunciation of the acting in his own power, “Amen, amen, I say to you, a son cannot do anything on his own, but only what he sees his father doing…” (5:19) and “when you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me (8:28). Third, the renunciation of speaking and proclaiming on his own authority: “…I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and speak (12:49) 

Although the descent of Jesus is unique and incomparable, for as he says to Nicodemus, ‘No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man.” (Jn 3:13), we can prepare ourselves to be lifted up with him by imitating him in his humility, poverty and obedience. This attitude of Christ’s is foundational for a life of prayer. 

In the resurrection appearance and ascension narrative in Luke we can find more essential teachings on prayer. In Luke, the events of Easter are foreshortened so that today’s passage on the Lord’s ascension follows immediately upon his first appearance to the eleven gathered in Jerusalem. I would like to conclude with a focus on these passages. 

When the risen Christ first appeared to the eleven, he says “Peace to you”. Given that the eleven represent the Church, the first lesson is that the visit of Jesus has this ecclesial character, it happens in his body the Church. It also has this character of surprise, it could not have been anticipated, predicted or compelled. It is always a free gift.

Jesus comes to us with a word of peace- a word of forgiveness and reconciliation, which was the purpose of his coming. His peace, however, is not our peace. But his desire is to bring us into his peace. 

Our response, therefore, is inevitably that we are unsettled. 

Luke tells us that the initial response to the Lord’s coming was that the eleven were “startled and frightened” and to suppose that they had seen a spirit. 

When the Lord visits us in the events of our lives or through the Scriptures or personal prayer, we too can find ourselves “startled and frightened”, that is, whenever a long-accustomed way of seeing and interpreting reality has been unsettled, we seem to lose the ground under our feet, and we find we are unable to discern the Lord in it, or hear his word of peace. In these moments, he calls us to go deeper, to look, remain, wait, trust more, so that, as our guide, he may lead us through our incomprehension into a more penetrating grasp of his mystery. If we remain and are attentive, we will hear him speak a word of encouragement to our hearts such as the next words that he speaks to the eleven, “Why are you troubled, and why do questionings arise in your hearts?”

As they come to see that it really is Jesus and not a spirit, Luke tells us in this wonderful phrase, they “disbelieved for joy and wondered”. The mystery of his presence still lies beyond what they are able to take in. They remain overwhelmed. Their faith is still in a process of being radically reconfigured, but they perceive enough that the confusion, sorrow, sense of loss and purpose, pain, anguish, loneliness and sense of abandonment are gone and an ecstatic joy and wonderment have taken their place. 

In this new space they have been made ready to see and hear him anew as he opens up the   scriptures to them, which brings us to the opening of today’s Gospel, “that the Messiah would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day” “and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem”.  But to be able to penetrate these mysteries more deeply along with the nature of their mission, they must wait in patience and prayer for the gift of the Spirit. 

Lastly, the comprehension of the eleven has grown to the point that when the Lord does depart definitively, we are told that they “They did him homage and then returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and they were continually in the temple praising God.

The Lord has laid down his life for us his friends so that we may life, a full life, through the gifts of the Spirit. As the Lord may visit us at any time and in any situation, whether accompanied by a powerful sense of his presence or at a depth that remains hidden to our conscious experience, so do the gifts of the Spirit. In whatever way he comes, he calls us to be ready and attentive, and, most of all, full of joy in the knowledge of what he has accomplished for our sake. For this disposition that is the most receptive to his gifts. For he has much that he wants to give us. So let us give thanks and never let go of this joy in our hearts as we resolve to use this time well.  

The Asceticism of Dying to Self

The aim of all ascetic effort is to make oneself nothing, after the example of Jesus Christ, described by St. Paul in his letter to the Philippians: "Divine nature was his from the first, but he did not think to snatch at equality with God; but made himself nothing, assuming the nature of a slave" (Ph. 2:6). This nothingness is the closest we can come to God. It is a dying to self so as to be fully open to God. Our selfishness is the obstacle to God's life and the action of his Spirit within us.

ANDRÉ LOUF The Cistercian Way

Homily — Sixth Sunday of Easter

The Trinity: A Burning Peace

Today we hear the Lord Jesus assure us yet again: Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Such is the untiring promise of the risen Christ. He has to repeat it over and over again to us, his disciples, because we have thick skulls and embattled hearts, and it takes a while for such an enormous promise to penetrate our capacity to believe. The simple fact appears to be that, through his beloved Son, whose love has triumphed over death and therefore over all distress and sadness, God wants to make us partakers of the serene and undefeatable joy in which consists the Blessed Trinity’s eternal life. Let us not forget that the Paschal Mystery is not some far-off, impersonal, vaguely cosmic proposition! Christ became incarnate of the Virgin Mary and entered chaotic human history for us; Christ died on a bloody cross for us; Christ descended into hell and rose from the dead for us. If we pay attention we will see that there is nothing more intimately personal than these dynamic events, which therefore ought to concern us vitally. 

But will we have the capacity to receive Christ’s peace even as he extends it to us? Peace, by its nature, is not something that can be simply handed over like any material gift, a bouquet of flowers, say, or a blank check that passes from its giver’s ownership into ours. Lovely as the promise sounds, what does it actually mean, we may still ask, for the Lord Jesus to give us his peace? How is such a gift even possible? Lasting peace, shalom Adonai, the peace that only God can give, is probably the deepest desire of the human heart, and so this question is an urgent one indeed.

Even God cannot simply “transfer” either his peace or his love from his heart to ours. By their nature these divine gifts cannot be imposed or given in the manner of a transaction. They require that the person who receives them enter actively into a free, interpersonal relationship with their Giver. For this relationship is the gift! Christ’s peace and love are essential aspects of his Person, the intimate spiritual treasures of his own Being. We can come to enjoy them as our own only by allowing Christ to share them with us, and he can share them with us only by means of the astounding event that the gospel describes in this way: Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling within him. 

This tells us that the peace of Christ, the very peace Christ wants to give us, is inseparable from his own nature as eternal Son of the Father. As such, Christ’s peace cannot be conceived of apart from his love for and obedience to the Father. Christ’s own peace is an overflow, as it were, of his filial obedience to the Father, a fruition of his faithful and ceaseless love for the Father. We may say that the peace we speak of is like the very Breathing of the Persons of the Trinity, the atmosphere that sustains their eternally circulating love. Such peace is not a state of mere temporary placidity; it is a dynamic happening and can only exist within a relationship founded on the unending and reciprocal self-giving of Persons. In Augustinian language it may be called pax ardens, “a burning peace”, a unitive conflagration of love seeking to enkindle anyone it touches with the divine charity that generates it.

The Father exists only because he continually generates the Son, and the Son exists only because he receives his being continually from the Father, and the Holy Spirit exists only as the vibrant relationship of love between them. In other words, deep, life-giving peace can only be the fruit of the surrender of self, even within the Trinity, and never the result of the imposition of one’s own will in order to manipulate others through the acquisition of power. That would be the dreadful peace of a cemetery! The power of love is always other-oriented, always intent on the good of the other, always desirous to contribute one’s own substance in order that the beloved may flourish. 

In the Blessed Trinity there are three Lovers who are simultaneously also three Beloveds, and as such the Trinity is the grounding principle of all human community. Genuine peace can only flow from infinitely faithful love. By making us the promise of his peace, Jesus is in fact saying that he ardently desires to share his divine Trinitarian life with us, his disciples. This is why he says: If you love me you will keep my word, and my Father will love you, and we will come to you and make our dwelling within you. Jesus knows that the human heart withers if it lacks lasting love and peace. He also knows that we, radically limited creatures that we are, could not ever possibly discover on our own the Sphere of Everlasting Joy that is the life of God. Therefore, he must bring down that Blessed Sphere to us, saying: My Father will love you, and we will come to you and make our dwelling within you. 

Christ’s love for us transforms us from cowering and whimpering creatures into the dwelling places of the Blessed Trinity, exquisite abodes of love where the fullness of divine Life can exist and thrive. To define the magnificent event of this divine indwelling within us we have not only the very intimate language of the Gospel of John but also the rather outlandish, visionary language of the Book of Revelation, where we just heard this: The angel … showed me the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God. It gleamed with the splendor of God. This exterior, ecclesial language complements the intimate, personal language of the divine indwelling, and together the two modes attempt to describe one single reality: that God takes delight in making his dwelling among us and with us in order to share with us all the treasures of his own immortal life and peace. In both cases we have a rather shocking affirmation that subverts all of our neat categories: the Higher rejoices in coming to the lower, the Greater to the lesser, the Eternal to the mortal, and not for a while only but with a finality that faithfully corresponds to the abiding permanence of true love. This is a love that delights in filling with light, joy and everlasting peace a void where previously there had been only doubt, darkness and distress.

Yet notice the opening of the extravagant promise of divine indwelling made to us: If you love me you will keep my word… The fulfillment of Christ’s promise crucially depends, not only on divine fidelity but also on us, as chosen hosts of Trinitarian presence and life. It depends on our hearing and keeping “the word”—that is, the teachings—of Jesus in fidelity to his person. Only by receiving and internalizing the Word of the Savior can we come into possession of the divine Life. Only the power of our response in the form of a generous and active faith can throw wide open the doors and windows of our soul to welcome Jesus, his Father and their Spirit as our Guests and constant source of life. I repeat: embracing and fostering the growth of Jesus’ word within our hearts is the habitual spiritual action that continually says yes, yes, yes, to welcome the divine indwelling within us. 

Now, what it means “to keep Jesus’ word”, as we well know, has been summed up by Jesus himself magisterially in the one all-containing commandment: Love one another as I have loved you. God will not violently knock down our locked doors, or demolish our resistance to obeying this commandment. This opening can only occur through our freedom responding to grace. The only condition to being nourished by him is that we open wide our mouths: he will not pry them open by force; and we cannot receive his love without giving his love to others, which is the proof of actually having received it. These are the various inseparable elements of the one act of divine love. If the almighty and eternal God could not keep his love for himself, how could we dare attempt to restrict it to ourselves? Such is the essential foundation of genuine Christian living, and not any kind of circumcision or uncircumcision, dogmatism, kosher laws or partisan ideological allegiances. 

When we receive the Body and Blood of Christ, we welcome into our persons and our lives far more than only the risen Christ. Christ can never be isolated from the total mystery of the Blessed Trinity, can never be degraded as our personal commodity. Where Christ is, there necessarily are also the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory and Majesty of God. Along with the whole person of the Lord Jesus—body, soul, humanity and divinity—in this Eucharist we receive as well his Father and their Spirit, along with the eternal Life that is the essence of Their triune relationship. 

The Divine Indwelling within us is no mere edifying metaphor, the elusive product of dreamy wishful thinking. The energetic life of the Blessed Trinity within us is as real, concrete and momentous as the holy, sanctified Food we are about to receive from this altar, and as fraught with ethical consequences. We cannot receive Holy Communion and remain indifferent to the starving children of Gaza. We do not receive the Presence of God into ourselves with impunity! This Trinitarian Presence is the condition that alone can make the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, the precious and costly peace to which we are being called in one body (cf Col 3:15). 

Being Ourselves

The fruit of humility is… naturalness. Being at home with ourselves. Being ourselves. Grace extroverts itself. It begins suddenly in the depths of our spirits but in the course of a lifetime evangelizes all levels of our being until it becomes outward, visible, communicable. It can never reach that point if we are in the habit of hiding behind a façade so that our true self is always concealed.

MICHAEL CASEY A Guide to Living in the Truth: St. Benedict’s Teaching on Humility 

Submission to God’s Will

Make a particular effort to practice sweetness and submission to the will of God, not only in extraordinary matters, but even in the little things that occur daily. Make these acts not only in the morning, but also during the day and in the evening, with a tranquil and joyful spirit. And if you should fail in this, humble yourself, make a new proposition, get up and continue on your way.

PADRE PIO

God’s Love

When God loves, he wishes for nothing more than to be loved in return. He loves for no other purpose than to be loved, knowing that those who love him will be made happy by their very experience of such love.

ST. BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX 

Homily—5th Sunday of Easter

Today’s very brief gospel passage from St John concerns the so-called glorification of the Son of Man, and God’s glorification in him. “Glorification” is the event that shows forth dazzlingly, for all to see, the depths of God’s splendor and nature as love. And God’s glorification is an event because it is not like the automatic activity of the sun simply shining on and on in the sky before our eyes. Glorification involves deliberate acts of the will, the deliberate assuming of a stance as witness, regardless of the dangerous consequences. It happens when someone in the world speaks words and performs actions that manifest irrefutably that God’s power to create and to redeem is taking very precise form here and now, and is having the effect of transforming reality into something wholly new, wonderful and unforeseen. 

The Lord Jesus clearly, everywhere in the Gospel, is the locus and the agent of God’s glorification in our world. His every word, gesture and action point to the infinite depths of God’s nature as unconditional love. Simply by being with us and interacting with us as the Son of God, Jesus is all the time making the unfathomable treasure of God’s goodness and light burst forth in our sight into the world and transform our hearts and lives. In this manifestation, we are struck with love by the arrow of God’s beauty.

But the reference to Judas at the very beginning of this gospel passage adds a new poignancy to the meaning of the Father’s “glorification” in and by the Son.  Judas’ choices and destiny do not let us forget how the supreme glorification of the Father in the Son was achieved. Jesus our Lord glorified his Father supremely by pouring out the blood of his love into an abyss of gloom and treachery, as if wanting to fill to overflowing—with the substance of his being—the immense void of betrayal and refusal of love carved out by human malice. At the very moment Judas exits the room of the Last Supper, after Jesus had given them all his Body and Blood in the Eucharist and washed their feet with a servant’s humility, at that very moment Jesus exclaims: Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. In other words, the mechanism of betrayal which Judas is about to set in motion, and which will culminate in Jesus’ death on the cross, is the divinely appointed means for the full revelation of God’s glory to the world and all ages. Now, in this betrayal, does the event of God’s glorification begin to take place. The seed of Resurrection is already sown in the heart of betrayal by the love of Christ’s self-oblation.

Judas’ betrayal sets the scene for the last act in the drama of the world’s redemption, because it is in the excruciating defeat and immobility of the cross that Jesus will manifest the depths of God’s love for humanity. Jesus’ intense desire to make the Father’s love known through his own suffering and death is the power that drives the redemption of the world. The glory of the God of Jesus Christ consists in his loving infinitely and unconditionally those who least deserve this boundless love. This is a truly and purely divine glory because it so incredibly transcends any human and worldly conception of “glory”, always based on the glitz and glamor of possessions, reputation, brute power, violence, and self-centered achievements. 

By contrast, the glory of the Lord is all about the power of endless self-giving, all about the very substance of God’s Being being made by God himself to flow forth from his Heart through the Person and Mission of the eternal and incarnate Son, until it reaches the depths of our own being. By allowing the cross, by sending his Son to offer himself as a sacrifice for the salvation of all, the Father demonstrates the unimaginable, the truth on which all our hopes and longings depend: namely, that God has not loved us, individually or collectively, any less than he has loved the eternal Son of his divine Heart since before the foundation of the world. It is a truth that must be believed precisely because it is so unbelievable! Who could have invented that proposition?

And we should not be surprised if this very brief but densely packed gospel passage then concludes with these words of Jesus: My children…, I give you a new commandment: love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. In this context, the expressions my children and my disciples here used by Jesus signify far more than mere familiarity and affection: they are an intrinsic part of Jesus’ new commandment because they are nothing less than a forceful declaration of our divine pedigree. If Baptism and the Eucharist do indeed, through a lively faith, make us true children of God, true disciples of the eternal Son, then the divine blood coursing through our veins as a result of our divine regeneration will not allow us to live lives that have any vital principle other than the unconditional love of God himself. Communion in the Paschal Mystery of Christ connects us intimately to the Heart of God. 

Henceforth we will not only draw all of our own life from this divine Heart, but, receiving life from the very Font of all life, we must in turn become fountains of life and salvation for others. Here is where the crucial element of choice and commitment on our part enters in. We must actively choose to love as we have been loved, which is unconditionally. This is what it means that we should love one another as Christ has loved us, and in this consists the novelty of this “new” commandment. Jesus did not invent love. In various manners, all profound religions and ethical systems point to the centrality of love as the core of both human and divine existence. But only the God of Jesus Christ so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life (Jn 3:16). 

To be a child and a disciple of Jesus means becoming here and now for one another what he has first been for us. In fact, our love for one another and for every suffering member of the human race is not only possible but absolutely necessary, because it is through us—his beloved Bride, the Church—that Christ chooses to be and act in the world and in history ever since his Resurrection and Ascension. We are a new creation in the Spirit, because the One who sat on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” Therefore, if we are to be sharers in the divine glory, we too must glorify God in and with the Lord Jesus in this world by engaging in deep prayer and by speaking life-giving words and by performing actions that manifest irrefutably the power of God’s love to create and to redeem. None of this is our doing. As with Paul and Barnabas, this is what God has done with us.