ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

For God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to bring to light the knowledge of the glory of God on the face of Christ Jesus .   2 Corinthians 4:6 Late this morning our dear Father Edward entered eternal life. He had been a monk of Spencer for over sixty years, having come to the Abbey in 1951. A man of deep prayer and a lover of the brethren, he has served the community generously in numerous capacities and was permitted to live  as a hermit for some 44 years of his monastic life . We are grateful to now have him interceding on our behalf with Our Lord and Our Lady in paradise. We remember that year or so ago he told us, “I love serving  the monks and being with them. They are Christ among us.  I wish the whole world were attracted to the beauty of monasticism."  Requiescat in pace.

  Perhaps you remember hearing about Stephanie Decker, the woman from Indianapolis who in March of 2012 saved her two little children during a tornado. As the storm ripped through their home, Stephanie covered her kids with a big quilt and protected them with her own body. She was crushed under a cascade of debris. She lost parts of both her legs and suffered a punctured lung. But her eight-year-old son and five-year-old daughter both survived the storm unharmed because Stephanie put her great loving body on top of theirs, sheltering them and absorbing the impact of all that debris. How like Jesus is this loving mother.   As we try to grasp what Jesus does for us in his passion, death and resurrection, Stephanie’s deed can help us understand. Like Stephanie, Jesus absorbs all the shock and pain- the great tornado of sin throughout history- wars, holocausts, all the evil choices, large and small, all the resistances to God, all the proud refusals that have always been...

This morning we see Jesus sneak in to visit his frightened disciples even though the doors are locked. He returns without recriminations or regrets, no reproaches. Think of all the things he could have said: “You left me, you denied me. You feel asleep. How could you have done this?” But he’ll have none of it. He is utterly defenseless, wounded, disfigured forever by his passion. The scene is absolutely astounding in its simplicity. He is essentially silent, almost forlorn, coming through the locked doors as if on tiptoe. Jesus simply says, “Peace.” He offers them the gift of silent acceptance and unconditional love. Peace. He gladly shows the disciples his wounds, the holes that love has made in his heart, in his hands and feet. And here at last in silence He teaches us with his Body. He shows us his wounds and so reveals God’s forgiving love in and through his own disfigured humanity.* For on the cross he has given himself completely and so has made known God’s great love for ...

How to adequately celebrate the grandeur of the Resurrection of Our Lord? The Church gives us eight days, an octave. Eight is the number of extravagant fullness, overabundance. For seven is fullness- a whole week, a seemingly perfect combination of three and four; three the heavenly number for the Trinity plus four the number of things earthly- the seasons, the classical elements. But eight is one more, the number of beyondness , infinity, life in God. In one festive hymn we call the Day of Resurrection, "the first and eighth of days." Alleluia!

Love doesn’t forget; love remembers; and the memory of Jesus in us throbs with the power of his Word and the promise of his Resurrection. ‘Do not forget what I have done for you,’ Jesus says to us incessantly. When we are overwhelmed by sorrows of any kind, or are perhaps suffering the pangs of a devouring guilt that can tempt us to despair; when it seems that our life has reached a dead-end either through the treachery of others or through our own grave errors: then our only salvation is to believe with all our might in the power of Christ’s creative anticipation, that is, in the sovereign ability Christ demonstrated at the Last Supper and on the Cross to take an evil deed that will lead to his own crucifixion and providentially transform it into an event of Resurrection.   Christ’s unconditional handing-over of himself to us in advance of anything we might do ought to give us the certainty that no sin we commit can defeat the Mercy of God, and that...

  Up to now we have been comforted by the luminous aspects of the Paschal Mystery. But we must pursue our meditation into the dark side of the Redemption, because this is a darkness we all carry within us. We must glimpse into the abyss of suffering into which our Lord Jesus was plunged in the hours that led him into the desolation of abandonment by the Father and, ultimately, to a horrendous death.  In the days of his Passion, Jesus, obeying the will of the Father, willingly and even joyously (Heb 12:2) entered into what Paul calls “the mystery of iniquity” (2 Thes 2:7). Fully aware of what was involved, and with full consent of heart and will, Jesus handed himself over into the hands of sinners, to be treated by them as they pleased.    But who are these “sinners” into whose hands Jesus so willingly hands himself? Ourselves, of course. And yet Jesus sits at our table and eats with us, scandalizing the Pharisees. He surrenders himself into our sin...

     The most striking aspect of Jesus’ actions in the text of the Mass is what can be called Jesus’ creative anticipation of his death. Christ sacramentally institutes in the present an action that overtakes in time the destructive historical action of his murder that hasn’t yet occurred, while at the same time giving to it a startling redemptive meaning. Thus, the interior significance and effects of the future action of betrayal are radically changed by divine intervention before the betrayal occurs. The malice of man is overtaken by the goodness of God. Love swallows up hatred, even though the lover dies of its poisoning. A hate-filled enemy—including both his evil intentions and his murderous deed—is embraced as brother and friend.      In the Sacrament, Jesus’ death becomes the source of our life because the power of his love anticipates the mangling of his body and the shedding of his blood, and it transforms their vital meaning and effect: f...