ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

I believe in the sun, even when it isn't shining I believe in love, even when I feel it not I believe in God, even when He is silent AN ANONYMOUS PRISONER Written on a Nazi concentration camp wall

It is enough to be, in an ordinary human mode, with one's hunger and sleep, one's cold and warmth, rising and going to bed. Putting on blankets and taking them off, making coffee and then drinking it. Defrosting the refrigerator, reading, meditating, working, praying, I live as my fathers have lived on this earth, until eventually I die. Amen. There is no need to make an assertion of my life, especially so about it as mine, though doubtless it is not somebody else's. I must learn gradually to forget program and artifice. THOMAS MERTON  

The Intimate Shepherd Christ is risen! On this Fourth Sunday of Easter, the Church invites us to contemplate the Risen Lord through the image of the Good Shepherd. But today we hear only the first third of Jesus’ long discourse on this theme in the Gospel of John. Our text ends just before Jesus’ declaration: I am the good shepherd. Instead, what we hear is: I am the gate for the sheep. Before speaking of the close relationship he wishes to create between himself and his sheep, Jesus presents himself as the gate through which every sheep must enter; that is, he wishes to establish the conditions that must be accepted by us so that he, Jesus, may become the very source of life for us, who aspire to be his faithful disciples.   This gospel evokes, with vivid realism, the presence of impostors all around us, who claim to be shepherds but are not. These impostors have only their own interests at heart, and Jesus calls them “thieves and robbers”. No doubt he is literally thinking o...

As the heart wounded by a poisoned arrow cannot be easy and at rest but seeks relief from all sides, so the soul pierced by the arrow of love never ceases seeking to relieve its pains. He who is in love is said to have lost his heart or to have had it stolen by the object of his love. His heart is not his own, but the property of the person he loves. This consideration will enable the soul to discover whether it loves God simply or not. If it loves him it will have no heart for itself, nor for its own pleasure or profit, but for the honor, glory and pleasure of God; because the more the heart is occupied with itself, the less it is occupied with God. The soul can test itself by these signs: is it anxiously seeking God? Has it no pleasure in anything but him? It is clear that the soul which loves God seeks no other reward for its services other than to love God perfectly. ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS The Spiritual Canticle  

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...

Today we greet St Benedict-Joseph Labre, the 18 th -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 ...

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 pain...

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...

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 We...

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