It is not speaking that breaks our silence, but the anxiety to be heard. The words of the proud man impose silence on all others, so that he alone may be heard. The humble man speaks only in order to be spoken to. The humble man asks nothing but an alms, then weights and listens.
THOMAS MERTON Thoughts in Solitude
God has loved man. This is the sublime truth which alone provides an explanation for the mystery of the Christian life, and which gives to the faithful the courage necessary to carry on here on earth in all the obscurity, monotony, and difficulty of life. We must have faith in this love, and, believing in it, we must put our trust in God, whatever may be the difficulties of the road we have to travel. It is always easier to travel on through the night when we know that there is someone waiting for us, that there is someone who loves us.
DO IDESBALD RYELANDT, O.S.B. Union With Christ
This morning’s Gospel begins dark and melancholy, as two brokenhearted disciples walk along despondently. “We thought he was the One who would redeem Israel, our only Hope, but we saw him mocked, scourged and crucified.” Soon Jesus walks along with them, just another Stranger on his way out of Jerusalem. They’re so dejected they cannot even recognize him. Jesus listens, interested in what’s weighing on their hearts. “Why are you so sad? What are you two discussing?” “What are we discussing?” Cleopas asks in exasperation. “Are you the only one who doesn’t know what happened in Jerusalem?” “Gee, no. What?” says Jesus. This is probably one of the most tragicomic moments in all of Scripture, as the risen Lord Jesus, his body riddled with the deep wounds and scars of his passion, plays dumb. My brothers and sisters, he knows the story alright; it’s written all over his body, even into the depths of his newly pierced heart.
Then they explain - the empty tomb, the message of angels; but no one knows where Jesus’ body is. And then this Stranger tells them frankly, that they’re fools, not thinking straight. You know your Scripture; the Christ had to suffer all these things and so enter into his glory. It’s all right there; it was supposed to be like this. And then he interprets for them “what referred to him in all the Scripture.” Imagine listening to Jesus the Word telling his life with all these sacred words and allusions; all the hopes, the inklings of ancestors, all the prophecies fulfilled in the beautiful, wounded body of a crucified Lord who is truly risen and now really right beside them though unrecognized.
Their hearts too slow to understand are suddenly quickened; now hearts on fire with faith and joy in his presence. And they don’t want this Stranger to leave them. They beg him, “Please stay with us.” And so there is a supper at a small inn. They sit at table with this shadowy Stranger, the lamps are lit, and then they see – it is Jesus their Master, the One they long for, feeding them, breaking bread with hands gashed with deep holes. He breaks the bread; he himself is the Broken Bread. Brokenness signals resurrection. Jesus the Stranger is finally recognized in this ritual gesture of a community meal. Then he disappears. But they know they have seen him. This “drastic physicality” of the wounded, risen Jesus is undeniable. They leave the inn and rush back to Jerusalem, now the place of hope beyond hope.
All through his Gospel, Luke has been tracing the history of salvation. And if, in the Garden of Eden the eyes of Eve and Adam were opened as they ate the forbidden fruit and they suddenly knew their nakedness; now here at a supper in Emmaus, Cleopas and his companion, most probably his wife, have their eyes opened with an absolutely unprecedented and “deeply welcome knowledge.” They see and recognize the risen Lord Jesus as he breaks the bread for them. Their once broken hearts have been broken open by the vision of a beautiful, broken Messiah breaking bread. It is the banquet in the Kingdom. Redemption is at hand; humanity’s long exile is over. The new creation has begun; and paradise regained.
Truth be told, the disciples never really understood what Jesus was in for, no matter how often he had tried to explain to them. And we may smugly assess their foolishness, thinking we’d know better. But how often we too are fools, too slow to understand as our lives in the cloister unfold, very often like a continuous repetition of that trek to Emmaus. Disappointed, our best hopes dashed; we plod glumly along. We feel like impostors; our best hopes for progress in love and kindness, progress in prayer and holiness cannot be achieved. Plus it seems the world is falling apart. So sad and self-absorbed, we forget that Jesus is right beside us. Then he explains, it’s supposed to be like this, and he shows us his wounded risen body.
All will be well; and all manner of things will be well, for in his own body Jesus has reversed everything, and brought us home to the Father. The “horizon of God’s reign is immeasurable,” it eliminates death and leads to eternal life. And it begins here and now, if we will open our eyes and our hearts to see. From “the very beginning, God's intention was nothing other than this world, the world in which we live now - perfected, healed and sanctified.”
Finally, my sisters and brothers let us be clear. In all the resurrection accounts we’ve been listening to these days, the Lord Jesus is not playing games, a kind of continual hide and seek: now you see me now you don’t; catch me if you can. No. The message, the sacred reality we are called to embrace is that the risen Lord Jesus is always and ever present, whether we perceive him or not. He always walks with us, speaks to us words of truth and peace and life and wants to feed us with his own wounded body and blood. This is what we gather in this church, his house, to celebrate and share over and over again.
We have been ransomed from our futile conduct, with the precious blood of the wounded Christ. But how slow we are to understand that confusion is grace, how reluctant to trust that God wants to turn things over and show us beautiful opportunities for his grace in our mess. Jesus is incessantly accompanying us, though most often hidden - in a thousand places and faces. And if we desperately want hearts on fire, at the end of each day, even better perhaps a million times a day, we must notice and reflect. Notice and reflect. Where, when have I seen you? How have you been using anything at all to get my attention? When have you spoken to me?
We are indeed foolish, O Lord, please stay with us; shows that it is OK to travel along in confusion, even sometimes to suffer, if we are with you. Give us faith. Stay with us in our foolishness. Teach us your divine foolishness, the mad folly of your love for us. Give us the broken bread that you are and help us to see you there, to consume you and so more and more be consumed with love for you.
Includes insights from:
Luke Timothy Johnson, Gerhard Lohfink and NT Wright in The Resurrection of the Son of God.
Today we greet St Benedict-Joseph Labre, the 18th-century vagrant whom we celebrate as the first saint of this Paschal season. After trying out both the Trappist and the Carthusian way of life, he was led by an extreme sacrificial grace to squander his life with and for Christ on the roads of France and Italy. He appears as the very embodiment of St Paul’s affirmation that the folly of God is wiser than [the wisdom of] men (1 Cor 1:25).
Now, if Benedict-Joseph could joyfully become a “fool for Christ” this was only because of his conviction that, for our sake, Christ had first become a “fool for God”. It is Christ who sets for all time the redeeming pattern of divine madness through his life of freely embraced humiliation, suffering, and an ignominious death. It takes a faith like St Paul’s to recognize in this disruptive pattern the uttermost revelation of God’s folly of love for humankind.
Benedict-Joseph’s life of freely chosen poverty and itinerancy witnessed to Jesus’ own self-emptying in order to give us new and everlasting life. The Christian must give all in order to gain all, both for himself and for the world. Like the Son of Man, Benedict-Joseph “had nowhere to lay his head” in this world (Mt 8:20) because his head’s only destination was the blissful lap of the Father, and he would accept no substitutes.
This puzzling saint upsets all our categories of classification, by which we normally seek to make rational sense even out of the deepest mysteries of faith. It is not surprising that he is the patron saint of both the homeless and the mentally challenged. He subverts all our categories of “normalcy”, not intentionally but by his mere existence in uncompromising conformity with Christ. No ready formulary for his feast exists in the present Roman Missal, and one must scramble around for what prayers to use from the Common of the Saints. For us monks he is a supreme reminder and warning that all our monastic regularity and minute observances ought never to become their own end. They will surely become obstacles to our union with Christ if we allow a well-ordered monastic routine to extinguish the unruly fire of the Spirit’s divine folly within us.
Let us, then, now repent of all our attempts to domesticate God and his creative foolishness in our lives, as we strive to allow God’s grace to have its unpredictable way with us.
One day I saw three monks insulted and humiliated in the same way at the same moment. The first felt he had been cruelly hurt; he was distressed but managed not to say anything. The second was happy for himself but grieved for the one who had insulted him. The third fought only of the harm suffered by his neighbor, And wept with the most ardent compassion. The first was prompted by fear; the second was urged on by the hope of reward; the third was moved by love.
JOHN CLIMACUS The Ladder of Divine Perfection, 8th step
One can distinguish five reasons why God allows the devils to attack us: first, so that from attack and counter attack attack we may become practiced in discerning good from evil; second, so that our virtue may be maintained in the heat of the struggle and so be confirmed in an impregnable position; third, So that as we advanced in virtue we may avoid presumption and learn humility; fourth, to inspire in us in unreserved hatred for evil through the experience with us have of it; fifth, and above all, that we may attain inner freedom and remain convinced both of our own weakness and of the strength of him who has come to our aid.
MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR Centuries on Charity
Jesus aligns himself with those who do simple, anonymous acts of love. Who can know precisely where in the wide world all the many such acts of self-giving take place? Where someone gives greater weight to his neighbor than to his own importance? Such things remain in the mystery of God.
HANS URS VON BALTHASAR Who is a Christian?
Once more this Easter season, we meet the man born crippled who is brought to the Beautiful Gate in all his weakness to beg for alms. And the Lord Jesus comes to meet him in the representatives of his newborn Church, Peter and John. These two have neither silver nor gold, but what they do have, they give to the cripple: faith in the Name of Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of the Lord poured out at Pentecost. This is a marvelous exchange: weakness and need, faith and anointing.
We, too, are witnessing a marvelous exchange. For our brothers are here with weakness of body or spirit or both, and they, too, have expectations. They are ready to receive the healing that Jesus will give. The rest of us, also, are weak in many ways; but like Peter and John, we give what we have, namely, our community prayer and the sacramental signs of the laying on of hands and anointing with holy oil.
Who would think that such simple things as a human touch and a little oil could banish the pains of this world, and especially the one who has the power of death. We are a little like David against Goliath. With five smooth stones taken from the wadi and slipped into his shepherd’s pouch, David struck down the giant in the name of the Lord of hosts, and freed his people from their foe. We are doing something similar with this holy oil, striking the foe of the human race and restoring health and inner tranquility to our brothers.
When Peter healed the cripple, he said to the crowds, “Why should anyone be amazed at this as if this man were healed by our own power or piety? The same goes for us. The power is from Jesus. After he rose from the dead, he first received the Holy Spirit from his Father and then poured it out on us and on these holy oils. Exactly what type of healing will occur today is up to the Lord, but we know that a holy exchange is taking place today, each party bringing neither silver nor gold, only what they have: weakness, prayer, and trust in the name of Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God who has blessed this holy oil.
I desire your progress, but it strikes me that enough has already been said and written for the attainment of everything you need. If anything is lacking it is not writing or speaking (for generally there is a surfeit of these anyway), but silence and work. Speaking distracts, whereas silence and work collect the powers and make us inwardly strong. When a person has understood any helpful advice that has been given him, he does not need to hear or say more, but rather to put it into practice with silence and care, in loving humility and self-contempt. He should not go seeking after new things which can only satisfy the desires in a superficial manner (and even here cannot satisfy fully) while leaving the spirit week and empty, without deep inner virtue.
ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS Letter VI
All our past sins, you see, which have been pressing on us, as it were, from behind, he has drowned and obliterated in Baptism. These dark things of ours were being ridden by unclean spirits as their mounts, and like horsemen they were riding them wherever they liked; and that's why the Apostle call them “rulers… of this present darkness” (Eph 6:12). We have been rid of all this through Baptism, as through the Red Sea, so-called because sanctified by the blood of the crucified Lord; let us not turn back to Egypt in our hearts, but with him as our protector and guide let us wend our way through the other trials and temptations of the desert toward the kingdom.
ST. AUGUSTINE Sermon
THESIS: The witness of the women in the gospel is an inspiration for us, even as monks, to announce the good news of the resurrection in our hidden life of prayer, our common life and our desire to be with Jesus.
I have been thinking about a very simple, one line summary, of all we have been celebrating this night. It is given to us by the Church as both an exhortation and a mission. It is the dismissal, “Go and announce the gospel of the Lord.” All that we have heard and seen tonight is a foundation for that mission – Lumen Christi; “O happy fault”; passing through the Red Sea and the cloud; renewal with water and the Spirit; the angel’s word, “…He has been raised from the dead.” So many mysteries have been placed before us, we might be tempted to ask, “Who would believe what we have heard? To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” Well, the answer is, to us. To our community. To our friends and family. To the Church, and through her to all people. The mighty arm of the Lord has raised our crucified Lord from the dead. “He died for our sins, and has been raised up for our justification.” Let us turn to the holy women who first heard the gospel to learn more about how to welcome and announce this good news.
First, I am sure you notice who it is that keeps vigil beside the tomb of Jesus; who it is that works into the night preparing the perfumed ointments; who rises early to go to the tomb – it is the women. Even more, consider their boldness. While all the other disciples had stayed behind locked doors, they go out at dawn to care for the body of Jesus. Whatever fear they feel is overcome by their love and gratitude. Notice is was only when the women brought back their message of the resurrection that Peter and the Beloved Disciple ran to the tomb. They were the catalyst. They may not have had the strength to remove the stone before the tomb, but their witness to what they had seen and heard had its own authority. Even the fear they experienced in the presence of the angel God turned to their benefit. It led them directly into the path of Jesus, who told them not to be afraid. And they responded with a fully feminine response; “…they approached, embraced his feet, and did him homage.”
We have to marvel at the zeal of these women. As monks our vocation urges us to make haste with “with all dignity and decorum” to arrive at vigils. When sleepiness slows us down, at least we can make up for it by heeding the example of others who are already there, like the holy women. We have to convey the good news of Jesus’ resurrection with a message similar to that given by Martha to her sister Mary: “The Lord is asking for you.” Better to be with a community that seeks the Lord day and night. That is our charism. The holy women help us to choose the better part which staying close to our risen Lord.
Brothers and sisters, let us immerse ourselves in this holy night. From the depths of the Most Holy Trinity, we are called to announce the gospel of the Lord, each of us according to our vocation. This is what the holy women did, because they loved much.
On this Good Friday of the Lord’s Passion, it is good to face, insofar as we are able, the inexpressible horror of Jesus’ passion. Not only the pain, the utter desolation, and the shattering of all expectations, but the tragedy of human sin. But at the same time, we want to turn our faces to the immeasurable mercy of God. The holy women standing at a distance from Jesus’ cross felt helpless in the face of the reality, bewildered perhaps, and maybe even stupefied at what had happened. This was the inexpressible horror that was difficult to face. On the other hand, we have the scene of Jesus’ mother and the beloved disciple at the cross. Even greater sorrow, but with Our Lady, an absolute acceptance of God’s will. I mention this because of one consolation that God gives to us in the face of all this: the prayers of the psalms, the divinely chosen prayers that enable us to pass through even the valley of darkness which is the Passion of Jesus.
The psalms feature prominently in our Holy Week Liturgies. Divinely inspired songs, they are – laments, thanksgivings, praises, curses – you name it, the whole gamut of human responses to the realities of our world, are summed up in the psalms, especially those used in the liturgy. They accompany us as we watch the mission of Jesus unfold. At each point in the liturgy, the Church sets before us psalms that correspond to the inner heart of Jesus.
Here are some examples. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” This was the psalmist’s cry taken up by Jesus when he could not shield his face from buffets and spitting which he endured out of love for us unto death. Or again, from the Holy Thursday liturgy, “I will take up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord,” which was literally fulfilled when Jesus took up the cup of Passover wine and changed it into the cup of his blood in the institution of the Eucharist. Or today, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit,” that is, the moment when Jesus experienced the ultimate abandonment by his Father and yet embraced the mystery of the Father’s will. There are many other examples we could bring forward, examples from our daily rounds of psalmody that carry us throughout our days as monks. How else could we carry out our mission of intercession for the world without the psalms? How else could we bear the alternation of joys and sorrows which are our lot in this life. The psalms give us hope that the last word will be God’s as Jesus showed us with his cry, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.”
The psalms give us hope that we can express the inexpressible – both the absolute horror of the cross and the evil that our human race is capable of, and the absolute love that God showed in raising Jesus from the dead and us from the death of sin. The psalms, especially as we hear them on the lips of Jesus, are the healing balm that the Father gives us in these holy days. Let us sing them in union with Jesus who alone is capable of expressing the inexpressible in his sufferings and his joys.
The “greater,” more Christian person is the person who serves more deeply; like Jesus, who serves at the eucharistic table and washes the feet of his enemy, Judas.
HANS ERS VON BALTHASAR New Elucidations
Because God has become man, man can become God. He rises by divine steps corresponding to those by which God humbled himself out of love for men, taking on himself without any change in himself the worst of our condition.
MAXIMUS THE CONFESSOR Theological and Economic Chapters