With Rafael

 

Saint Rafael Arnáiz Barón is a recently canonized saint of our Order, though, in truth, he had only a very brief experience as a Trappist monk. Rafael loved Christ most ardently and embodied the Cistercian ideal despite all the complexities and contradictions of his personal vocational journey. Forced to interrupt his novitiate because of severe illness, he finally was allowed to return to his monastery of San Isidro as an oblate living in the infirmary. Rafael's life was one of great simplicity and humility. Often described as "crazed by the love of God," he was only 27 years old when he died on 26 April 1938.

Christ guided Rafael through a series of bewildering contradictions - illness, war, the impossibility of ever pronouncing vows, and difficult community relations. Humiliations were constant, but Rafael learned to surrender himself in peace and joy.

Things often do not turn out as we had hoped or planned. And we soon learn that contradictions and dead ends are part of the journey. But what to do with them? Saint Rafael shows us a way. Despite all he had to endure, he refused ever to be selfish or self-absorbed. He simply loved - Christ, Our Lady, the Cross, his brothers. May we follow in his footsteps.

Saint Mark

  

Just before the risen Lord commands his disciples, Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to every creature, he rebukes them sharply for their lack of faith and hardness of heart (16:14). Now, the command to evangelize does not follow very logically from that rebuke, does it? Nevertheless, the text stands, and verse 15 follows irreversibly from verse 14. Yes, it is to these very flawed and fearful persons that Jesus, God’s eternal Wisdom, entrusts the salvation of the world. Jesus does not go off looking for perfect shining saints. Why? No doubt because he knows that the conversion of deeply flawed humanity can best be achieved through equally flawed yet converted individuals, and the Eleven lead the way of all the converted.

And what is the powerful marvel that converts hearts and minds so that they come to love and serve only the compassionate God of truth? The very first verse of St. Mark’s Gospel spells it out in seven resounding syllables. This marvel is not a thing but a person: Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Let us too, then, deeply flawed though we are, pledge our whole lives to Christ, trusting boundlessly in his presence and help. We are what we are: such he made us and as such does he love us. Let us never doubt God’s generosity and humor in choosing precisely us. And once he has grasped us in his strong hands, surely he will not let us drop!

Giorgio Vasari, Saint Mark, 1570-1571, oil on panel, 70 × 39 in.,National Gallery, Washington, DC. Reflection by Father Simeon.

Divine Mercy Sunday

Today, the Octave of Easter has been given the special designation Divine Mercy Sunday by Pope Saint John Paul II. The Gospel of John celebrates this theme magnificently. As it opens on a Sunday, Jesus has been killed by the authorities and has been in the tomb since Friday evening. The disciples have entombed themselves behind the locked doors of the Upper Room, unable to move, like dead men for fear of the Jews. It seems to them that all is lost. The man Jesus in whom they had placed all their hopes has been crucified. Suddenly, in the midst of these seemingly dead men, Jesus appears with a greeting and message of “Peace.” This is a message completely contradicting the chaos they feel caught up in. Peace is the tranquility of order: the divine order. When Jesus perceives the joy in their hearts at recognizing their Lord, he reiterates his greeting in a way that makes it not only a greeting but also a commission. “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” He then breathes into them not just life, but the new life. As God at the First Creation breathed life into Adam, so now at the New Creation the new Adam, the God-Man Jesus, breathes the new life into his disciples and so also into all of us who call on the name of Jesus. We all share in the new life of the Spirit, the breath of God, through the glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

For many of us, the experience of God's mercy in raising us up to the new life in the Spirit comes in a way that more resembles that of St. Thomas, the Apostle, who hadn't made it back to the Upper Room in time. At the Last Supper Thomas had asked Jesus about the way Jesus was going. Jesus replied that He himself is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Perhaps Thomas in his despair was lost in the thought that Jesus had turned out to be nothing but a dead end. His misery would eventually bring him back to his brothers' company, at least. St. Thomas and our father St. Bernard had much in common, especially the need for Divine Mercy. St. Bernard's doctrine of Divine Mercy Misericordia being attracted to our misery miseria was one that we tended to forget in later centuries of Jansenism. In a sermon to his monks, Bernard realistically describes himself as follows: “burdened with sins, enveloped in darkness, enslaved to pleasure, tormented with desires, dominated by passions, filled with delusions, always prone to evil, easily accessible to every vice, in a word, full of all shame and confusion.” We should not dismiss this as humble self-deprecation---this is what Bernard had discovered about himself in faithfulness to the admonition “know thyself.” The wonder of it all is that Bernard then discovered that in the light of God's grace, he could have mercy upon himself, as it were. This, in turn, inspired him to have mercy on all his brothers in their misery. And this opened him even more to a knowledge of the Father of Mercies. He discovered that Mercy's natural home is our misery. That is the destination to which it rushes like the wind, like the breath of God.

In the sixty-first sermon on the Song of Songs, Bernard parallels his own experience of God's mercy with that of the apostle, Thomas—Thomas who is told by Jesus, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” Bernard writes, “But as for me, whatever is lacking in my own resources I appropriate for myself from the heart of the Lord, which overflows with mercy. And there is no lack of clefts by which they are poured out. They pierced His hands and his feet; they gored his side with a lance. And through these fissures, I can suck honey from the rock... I can taste and see that the Lord is good. The nail that pierced him has become for me a key unlocking the sight of the Lord's will. Why should I not gaze through the cleft? The nail wound cries out that God is truly in Christ, reconciling the world to himself. The iron lance pierced his soul, and his heart has drawn near so that he is no longer one who cannot sympathize with my weaknesses. The secret of his heart is laid open...that mighty mystery of loving is laid open, laid open to the tender mercies of our God...Where more clearly than in your wounds does the evidence shine that you, Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love? No one shows greater mercy than he who lays down his life for those who are judged and condemned. My merit, therefore, is the mercy of the Lord.”

We now approach the Eucharist, the sacrament of the Lord's mercy poured out for us for the forgiveness of our sins. Having encountered Divine Mercy in the sacrament, may we have mercy on all we encounter in our ordinary, obscure, and laborious lives. I would like to close with the final words of St. John Paul II's homily at the canonization of Sr. Faustina. He writes, “the message of divine mercy is also a message about the value of every human being. Each person is precious in God's eyes; Christ gave his life for each one; to everyone the Father gives his Spirit and offers intimacy. This consoling message is addressed above all to those who, afflicted by a particularly harsh trial or crushed by the weight of the sins they committed, have lost all confidence in life and are tempted to give in to despair. To them the gentle face of Christ is offered; those rays from his heart touch them and shine upon them, warm them, show them the way and fill them with hope. How many souls have been consoled by the prayer, 'Jesus, I trust in you!'”

Photograph of the weeping cherry outside the Abbey reception room by Charles O'Connor. Today's homily by Father Luke.

At the Sea of Galilee

We could approach from many different angles this rich and mysterious gospel episode of the risen Lord’s apparition by the Sea of Galilee and the miraculous catch of fish that results. But let us focus on only one striking fact. The disciples’ initial effort to catch fish on their own initiative, lasting all through the night, proves fruitless, ironically so because they were skilled fishermen. Nevertheless, their apparent failure turns out in the end not to have been such a failure. At a deeper level, the emptiness of their net becomes a fruitful space calling out for communion with the risen Jesus. It is almost as if this very emptiness conjures the presence of the loving Master, for love can never resist rushing to the beloved’s needs.

With the rising of the sun, the disciples see Jesus standing on the shore. With his glorified person, he brings to them an abundance of life and light, and above all joyful companionship with himself and rich nourishment to strengthen them for the mission he entrusts to their care.

May all our own failures turn out to have been apparent in the end and enjoy the same magnificent transformation. We have only to open our gaping voids to receive the fullness of Christ’s creative Presence!

Homily by Father Simeon.

Risen!

 

Christ is risen! The Gospel of Easter Day, according to the Evangelist John, proclaims the experience of the Resurrection. The discovery of the empty tomb leads Mary Magdalen to break the news to Peter and the beloved disciple. The latter, upon entering the tomb, saw and believed. This is the first sprouting of Easter faith. From this first day of the week onwards, the Resurrection of Jesus also becomes a word event, an announcement; indeed, it becomes the word par excellence that the Church is called to announce and bear witness to.

However, if we listen carefully to our text this morning, we see that we do not yet have the full Easter proclamation here; on the contrary, what Mary Magdalen runs to tell the two disciples is: They have taken the Lord away from the tomb and we do not know where they have put him. She still sees her beloved Jesus as dead, and thus subject to the power of human beings. Prey to fear and discouragement, Mary assumes for certain that the body of Jesus has been stolen and her one concern is where the body has been hidden from her grasp. This Gospel episode shows us the development of Easter faith by presenting the first release of the spark that will soon become a conflagration.

The inner journey that will eventually lead to the joyful cry He is risen! must first pass through the painful evidence of death offered by the shroud that wrapped Jesus’ dead body and the tomb in which it was placed. Absence of faith in the Resurrection is already anticipated symbolically by the remark that it was still dark when Mary Magdalen went to the tomb. She herself and her love for Jesus still moved blindly, in the darkness. Her eyes had not yet been enlightened and enabled, by the word of Scripture, to see beyond material things. This is indeed the first day of the week, the day of a startling new creation; but the dawn has not yet broken, and the darkness is most intense just before daybreak.

In this context, the Evangelist presents the reactions of three disciples—Mary, Peter, and John—to the empty tomb. He stresses above all the faith being born in the beloved disciple who, seeing the bindings on the ground and entering the empty tomb, began to believe. This is why the Evangelist comments on this burgeoning faith by saying: They had not yet understood the Scripture that he should rise from the dead. Easter faith is not born from the mere observation of an empty tomb: this could also lead to the hypothesis that the body has been stolen, as we see with Mary Magdalen. The empirical facts must be seen in light of the words of Scripture, to be illuminated by these; only then will observed facts give life to our Easter faith.

The text suggests a serious ignorance on the part of Mary Magdalen (who says, we do not know where they have put him) and of the disciples (of whom the Evangelist says that they had not yet understood [the Scriptures]), and this ignorance is an important element of their journey towards understanding the event of the Resurrection. The Resurrection event is necessarily the Unheard-of, the Unthinkable, the utterly Disconcerting. It is the radically New Thing that God is creating in the world, the event that only God can create.

The disciples’ is not a culpable or rebellious ignorance but something unavoidable at this stage: the Resurrection is not a product of human reason or resourcefulness or wishful thinking but, wholly, the deed of God, originating wholly outside ourselves and all our powers of comprehension and imagination. Like ourselves, the disciples are totally unprepared for the event of the Resurrection and so they must struggle to access such a momentous revelation. At this moment, only the beloved disciple, precisely because of the hidden mystery of love that secretly binds him to Jesus, begins to intuit and make room in his own soul for this unprecedented newness accomplished by God.

In these first witnesses who come to the empty tomb, we see emerge the emotional aspect of the relationship with the Jesus, whom they recognized as their Lord and for whom they had abandoned everything. Mary Magdalen is overwhelmed before the stone rolled back from the tomb, and she runs, as if moved by the fear that something irreversible has happened. Mary fears not being able to see and touch the body of her Lord. She fears having lost every visible point of reference for her beloved, even the terminal one, namely the tombstone, a fixed point embedded in the earth where it is at least possible to recollect memories and affections. But Christ will not allow her love for him to turn into mere nostalgia.

In the present faith of these disciples, there is a radical incompleteness that calls for fullness and has to do with understanding Scripture. Only faith in the Word of the Lord and in his love for us allows us to begin to believe in the Resurrection in the midst of the countless signs of death that abound in our lives and in the world around us. Faith in the fact that we are loved by the Lord is the basis of faith in the Resurrection. We have to be convinced that God’s love for us does not end with our death. For, if that were so, then what would be the good of God’s love? How unconditional would it really be and how omnipotent God himself?

This faith, which interprets the emptiness of the tomb, can also come to our aid at the times when we experience the terror of love’s emptiness in our hearts and the fear of abandonment that causes us to dwell in the shadow of death. In this gospel scene, the beloved disciple represents every disciple of Jesus throughout history who is called to enter into faith in the God who loves him.

Peter and John’s act of entering the tomb has a symbolic value. In the course of our lives, we too must enter many places of death (bereavement, separation, abandonment, end of relationships and friendships, difficulties in communication). We also at times allow death to enter into us, and so we become a place of death for others (racial, ethnic, and religious prejudice, selfish closure, arrogance, abuse, violence, manipulation, indifference). Faith in the Resurrection, which is the very heart of our Christian faith, is not the same as a simple general trust in the goodness of life and the predictability of nature’s cycles of renewal. Christians are not happy-go-lucky optimists! Resurrection faith believes that new and unsurpassable life is born out of death through the power of Christ’s love. It allows us to enter into situations of death by looking beyond death and living the Resurrection, that is, by loving, or at least seeking to love, as Christ has loved us and, above all, by believing in his love for us.

I leave you with a wonderful saying of our Cistercian father Guerric of Igny, and I suggest it to you as a possible mantra for this Eastertide. He says: “It is enough for me if Jesus lives.” What depths of faith, trust, and love are contained in this statement, in which Blessed Guerric dares to turn away wholly from his own self in order to rejoice fully and exclusively in his one Beloved! So may it be for us this Easter morning as this same Beloved now hands himself over to us at this altar.

Icon written by Brother Terence. Homily by Father Simeon.

At Emmaus

 

One of the most significant messages of the Easter mystery is that vulnerability is not weakness. The weakness of Jesus gashed, broken, and crucified is the power of love poured out with exquisite, limitless abandon. Not wanting suffering and death ever to have the last word, God has lost himself in love for us.

Jesus’ wounding is our healing.

Today at an inn at Emmaus, his hands gouged by nails break bread. Broken hands, broken body, broken bread. Jesus’ presence becomes obvious.

Vulnerability is the key to recognition, connectedness, and relationship with Jesus, and with one another. Jesus’ woundedness, our woundedness make God visible.

Because sometimes we have forgotten, let us beg his mercy.

The Supper at Emmaus by Caravaggio.

The Tomb Is Empty

He died, but he’s not dead. That’s the great mystery, the paradox, of Easter. It’s the story we celebrate every year. On one level, it never changes. It always ends the same way. The stone has been rolled away and the tomb is empty. We can’t explain how it happened, yet we want to be told again and again that it did happen. As St. Paul insisted to the Corinthians, if Christ has not been raised from the dead, then our faith is empty, vain. “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are the most pitiable people of all” (I Cor. 15:19). Our faith, however consoling it might be in a desperate moment, is ultimately pointless if the tomb is not empty. Today’s Gospel matters!

Today, perhaps more than ever, we need to hear the Easter story one more time. So many around the world are still living through the agony, the darkness, and the yet unknown consequences of a pandemic for which there is no end in sight. Millions of Ukrainians and Russians are suffering today through unimaginable horror, terror, and brutality that threatens to grow only worse. There is a prisoner in Texas in his 40s who has already spent 27 years of a life sentence in solitary confinement, entombed in a space smaller than a compact car parking space with no human contact. But even for us in the abbey, who enjoy a peaceful and undisturbed life, by comparison, an “ordinary” day is not immune from loss, failure, or the shadow of death. For instance, we know:  that real relationships are fragile, and they are at the core of our life’s meaning; or that one day all seems well, but the next day everything can change with a medical diagnosis we were not expecting; or that we find ourselves unprepared for the gradual diminishment that seems so normal for our aging brethren all around us, but not for us (who are also ineluctably aging)—the memory is going, the plumbing no longer works so well, joints we didn’t even know we had ached, and suddenly something as simple as getting out of a chair can be a challenge.  Or we find ourselves worrying about someone in the community, or in our family, who carries enormous burdens that we barely understand, and we are at a loss as to how to help them. Or perhaps someone we have depended on is no longer there for us: we are estranged, or they leave, or they die. Even on a seemingly ridiculous level, it is certain that one day we will lose the job in the monastery that we have come to identify with, either because we are needed to do someone else’s job, or we simply can’t manage our own anymore. This is usually a disturbing loss . . . .

We all carry within us “stories” of change, fear, loss, and death—sometimes life-shaking, and other times merely life-wearying—but all of them demand a response from us on the level of faith. Specifically, faith in Jesus, crucified and risen. These are the stories we bring with us today to this Eucharist and are the reason we want, and always need, to hear the Easter story one more time. It was such a “story” that took Mary of Magdala to the tomb in this morning’s Gospel, to attend to her dead Lord, only to find his body gone . . . .

What I would like to suggest to you is that the empty tomb lies within each of our stories. Regardless of what happens next in our personal story, the meaning (or promise) of Easter is that the ending has already been written. Indeed the “stone” has been rolled away, and our inner tomb is empty—which is a way of saying that our life has been guaranteed by God. The stone has been rolled away, not so that Jesus could get out, but so that we can peer in, and believe that he lives right now, bringing us to new life, drawing us into his own life-giving light. Every day we are called to look again at our personal lives with Easter faith.

Concretely, what might that mean for us? It means we no longer have to look at the past and say, “If only.  It means we no longer have to look at the future and worry, “What if?”.  It means we can look right into the “tomb” of the present moment and find not a “corpse” but how blessed we are by the One who is now with us always and everywhere, within us and taking us into his embrace, giving us new life by pouring his Spirit into our hearts, and new hope by ever interceding for us at his Father’s right hand.

Yes, Easter means one vast, unimaginable blessing! And always close to home. Not ethereal or for pious moments. Not general, but as concrete as the one we heard about in the Refectory several years ago when we were listening to the book, Barking to the Choir, by the Jesuit Greg Boyle. After working three decades with gang members in Los Angeles, in and out of prison, Fr. Greg developed a profound sense and reverence for the “stories” each of us carries, within which the “empty tomb” lies.  

At Camp Paige, a young man named Efrain is about to make his First Communion. The volunteers rustled up a starched white shirt and a thin black tie for him to wear with his county-issue jeans. He was nervous as he waited for his Mom and brother to arrive, and so was I. Many a time a homie has waited for parents who have promised they’ll be there, only to plummet into disappointment, and I fear the same is about to happen to Efrain. It’ll be hard to wait much longer and delay the start of Mass, I think to myself, when his Mom suddenly arrives, holding the hand of a young man. It turns out this is Efrain’s older brother, who is clearly autistic and struggling to acquaint himself with this strange place. They get settled, Mass begins, and Efrain beams. We are not too long into the service, however, when his brother has a meltdown, the likes of which, really, no one has ever seen. It is so full force—screaming and kicking and the flailing of arms and legs—that it takes all of Efrain’s physical and emotional power to escort his brother outside. Through the gym doors, I could see his mother calmly sit down with him on a bench, waiting for the fit to pass, but the screaming continues, unabated. Efrain, granite-faced and solemn, makes his First Communion. His Mom and brother witness none of it.

     Afterward, when I approach Efrain to check in on him, I expected rage, a heaping of blame and frustration that his day had been ruined because of his brother. Instead, Efrain starts to gently sob as he points to his brother, who is methodically rocking back and forth on the bench.

     “He has never sinned,” he says, trying to gather himself so he can continue. “He is closer to God than any of us.”

     His mother, close by, hears him and adds in Spanish, “He is the blessing of our lives. We thank God for him every day.” Efrain nods in agreement.  (p. 61)

In so raw a moment, Efrain and his mother know that all their lives have been “guaranteed by God.” Truly, the Tomb lies empty within each of our stories as well—so let us be present, peer in, and accept the gift that Christ is risen from the dead and is at this very moment “the blessing of our lives.” 

Painting by Piero della Francesca. Easter homily by Father Dominic.