ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

‘God built humanity so that humanity might build for him’: churches, yes, but also societies, culture, the visible or invisible networks which sustain a ‘Eucharistic’ relationship between human beings and the earth. God comes near to us unendingly in the bread of life, the food of resurrection. Everything has to be built up around this seed of fire. OLIVIER CLÉMENT The Roots of Christian Mysticism

When we began our Palm Sunday procession, we heard this passage from the gospel of Matthew: “And when (Jesus) entered Jerusalem, the whole city was shaken and asked, “Who is this?” Who is Jesus? This is the most important question for us this Holy Week. Everything revolves around it: “Who is this?” We will hear many answers to this question during Holy Week. What answer will we give? God is waiting. The crowd following Jesus into Jerusalem gave this answer: “This is Jesus the prophet, from Nazareth in Galilee.” Why would they refer to Jesus as a prophet. The prophet Isaiah just gave us a list of the most prominent characteristics of a prophet. He speaks on behalf of God and interprets what God wants. He suffers for his prophetic mission, but he will not be deterred. This is what many saw in Jesus. He spoke with a well-trained tongue to rouse us from our torpor. He did not turn back or rebel against divine providence, even under persecution. Jesus’ determination is like a rock when it...

The will of God often appears repulsive, but faith enables us to see it as it really is. If we live by faith we shall judge things very differently from the way people do who rely only on the evidence of their senses and so remain unaware of the priceless treasure hidden under appearances. JEAN-PIERRE DE CAUSSADE Abandonment to Divine Providence

God's Fatherly love flows over a man as God created him. That is to say over a man that God created free, because for Him only a love freely given possesses worth. But because he is free, man is also fragile. It is this man that the Father in His love leads gradually across the scheme of time toward complete fulfillment. This is the whole mystery of divine teaching, of the progressive education of humanity. This man, that God created in order to heap him with His gifts, has closed himself to God in his thirst for independence. That is why he needs to be saved—that is, to be restored to his integrity. JEAN DANIELOU God’s Life In Us  

There are souls who seek solitude merely in order to find themselves: there are others who seek it so that they may give themselves. Still, it remains to be lived! Happy those who know how to put their whole soul into all they do. Because they are giving themselves, they will be able to bear much suffering, but their happiness will exceed their suffering, since the gift of self is the source and condition of life, and therefore of spiritual growth and joy. Go on, then, giving yourself: go on suffering… seek your joy in that precious suffering that the gift of self entails. God who became man new no more excellent way than this when he was on earth. AN ANONYMOUS CARTHUSIAN They Speak by Silences

If God at times seems to be slow in responding, it is because he is preparing a better gift. He will not deny us. We well know that the long-awaited gift is all the more precious for the delay in it's being granted… Ask, seek, insist. Through this asking and seeking you will be better prepared to receive God's gift when it comes. God withholds what you are not yet ready for. He wants you to have a lively desire for his greatest gifts. All of which is to say, pray always and do not lose heart. ST. AUGUSTINE

When I see people very anxious to know what sort of prayer they practice, covering their faces and afraid to move or think, unless they should lose any slight tenderness and devotion they feel, I know how little they understand how to attain union with God, since they think it consists in such things as these. No. Our Lord expects works from us! If you see someone sick whom you can relieve, never fear losing your devotion; have compassion on her; if she is in pain, feel it as if it were your own, and when there is need, fast so that she may eat, not so much for her sake as because you know your Lord asks it of you. This is the true union of our will with the will of God. If you possess fraternal charity, I assure you that you will attain the union I have described. ST. TERESA OF JESUS

Have a great love for those who contradict and fail to love you, for in this way love is begotten in a heart that has no love. God so acts with us, for he loves us that we might love by means of the very love he bears toward us. ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS The Collected Works of St. John of the Cross

God remains in history the beggar who waits at each person's gate with infinite patience, begging for love. His silence, with which we sometimes reproach him, only shows his consideration for us. The cross and the resurrection coexist. ‘Christ will be in agony to the very end of the world’, he will suffer, according to Origen, until all humanity has entered the Kingdom. OLIVIER CLÉMENT The Roots of Christian Mysticism

God has given to the earth the breath which feeds it. It is his breath that gives life to all things. And if he were to hold his breath, everything would be annihilated. His breath vibrates in yours, in your voice. It is the breath of God that you breathe—and you are unaware of it. THEOPHILUS OF ANTIOCH Three Books to Autolycus

Someone, I was told, at the sight of a very beautiful woman, felt impelled to glorify the Creator. The sight of her increased his love for God to the point of tears. Anyone who entertains such feelings in such circumstances is already risen…before the general resurrection. JOHN CLIMACUS The Ladder of Divine Ascent, 15th Step  

THE ABANDONED JUG 8 March 2026 (Ex 17:3-7; Rom 5:1-2,5-8; Jn 4:5-42) The wonderful encounter on this Third Sunday of Lent   between the Lord Jesus and the Samaritan woman is surely one of the towering masterpieces of biblical narrative. In the most palpable way possible, it represents nothing less than the face-to-face encounter between the Incarnate Word and sinful humanity, so desperately in need of salvation. Jesus of Nazareth, who walks on the land of Israel with his feet of flesh and bone received from his blessed Mother, and who is himself thirsty and hungry after trudging all these miles from Jerusalem to Sychar— this same Jesus is the eternal Logos in whom and for whom everything was created in the beginning. And this remarkable woman of Samaria embodies the whole of humanity, the men and women of every historical moment and every geographical location. The passionate dialogue that follows between Jesus and the woman impacts us as a summary of the entire history of salvati...

The whole progress of the world points to there being a creator whose purpose is to bring about, by means of his creative powers, a free response from his creatures below, so that they may move toward him and finally be united with him in a marriage of love. HANS URS VON BALTHASAR The Moment of Christian Witness, 76

Two men who wanted to see the sunrise would be very foolish to argue about the place where it will appear and their means of looking at it, then to let their argument degenerate into a quarrel, from that to come to blows and in the heat of the conflict to gouge out each other's eyes. There would no longer be any question then of contemplating the dawn…   Let us who wish to contemplate God purify our hearts by faith and heal them by means of peace; for the effort we make to love one another is already a gift from him to whom we raise our eyes. ST. AUGUSTINE OF HIPPO Sermons 23,18

Purify yourself and you will see heaven in yourself. In yourself you will see angels and their brightness, and you will see their Master with them and in them… The spiritual homeland of the person whose soul has been purified is within. The sun that shines there is the light of the Trinity. The air breathed by the entering thoughts is the Holy Spirit the Comforter.   ISAAC OF NINEVEH Ascetic Treatises, 24

And he was transfigured before them; his face shone like the sun and his clothes became white as light. Last week, as we began to undertake our Lenten discipline the Church presented us with the mystery of the temptation of Jesus in the desert. Although, as God, he is without sin and unable to sin, he still humbled himself to undergo baptism, purification by fasting, and battled with the temptations of Satan in the desert.   This Sunday, we have the mystery of the Transfiguration. On one level, the Church places the Gospel of the Transfiguration here in the opening weeks of Lent to give us encouragement and consolation. Our process of purification and participation in the Cross is to be seen in the light of the victory of Christ in the Resurrection. At a deeper level, because the Transfiguration belongs to the pedagogy of Christ himself, who uses the transfiguration to instruct his disciples about the nature of God and therefore their own and their discipleship. In all three synopt...