ST JOSEPH'S ABBEY, SPENCER MA

We mourn the passing of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. We were touched by these words of tribute by Pope Francis: And speaking of kindness, our thoughts go spontaneously to our most beloved Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, who left us this morning.  With emotion, we recall him — so noble, so kind. And we feel so much gratitude in our hearts: Gratitude to God for having given him to the Church and to the world, gratitude to him, for all the good he has done, and above all for his testimony of faith and prayer, especially in these last years of his life in recollection. Only God knows the value and power of his intercession, of his sacrifices offered for the good of the Church.

It takes work to get back to the peace of knowing yourself completely loved. And perhaps we never fully get there while we’re here. But the desire is set deep inside us, that incompleteness, the ache for the surprise of love to find us. Perhaps some of us follow certain old scripts handed on to us by our own histories, stories filled with fear and failure. The script often reads- don’t trust, don’t hope. Jesus, God’s tender Word comes to us and offers us a new script, new words to rewrite our story and reimagine the old hopelessness as possibility and opportunity for grace; even allowing ourselves to believe that we are rejoiced over. Jesus invites us back to this place where we can learn to receive life and love as undeserved and unexpected blessings. We may sense the near impossibility of opening our hearts to make a space for love and hope, a place inside us where God’s rejoicing can sprout and blossom from the hard, unpromising stump of our tired old fear and loneliness. And so eac...

We imagine that all the Gospels answer a question posed by the second generation of Christ’s followers, perhaps the children and grandchildren of the apostles and disciples. “What was Jesus like? What was it like to know him? What was it like to be with him?"  How extraordinarily attractive Jesus must have been. “The kingdom of heaven is at hand,” he says. And so perfectly does he express this good news of God’s reign, in his healing, in his preaching, in who he was, that he says, “Come away with me,” and  at once  the first disciples leave everything behind.  Was it just so clear? Why else would they have left everything without hesitation?   There is a rather bizarre medieval legend that John the Beloved Disciple, whom we celebrate today, was actually the bridegroom of the marriage feast at  Cana . The story goes that, having witnessed the power and beauty of Jesus as he transformed gallons and gallons of water into wine, the groom abandoned his bride the...

After centuries of fiery prophecy and heightened expectation, generations of longing, suffering, and hope, that first Christmas night the Messiah, the long-awaited Savior, finally comes to inaugurate the Kingdom of God—which He in fact is. But how small and gentle is his coming, as we just heard in St. Luke’s Infancy Narrative! It is paradoxical that the Word who was “from the beginning and was with God and was God” came into the world to make his dwelling among us, but without a sound, hidden from almost everyone, and remained for many years unnoticed. St. John Chrysostom, the 4th century Doctor of the Church who preached God as the “friend of humankind,” as the one who in Christ became the brother of the poor, marveled at this in a homily: Christ did not come with a crash of thunder amid a great upheaval, earthquakes, flashes of lightning, and disturbance in the heavens. He did not come with an escort of angels, tearing the heavens apart to descend upon the clouds. No, he came withou...

  This evening at Vespers we chant: O King of the Gentiles and the Desired of all, you are the cornerstone that binds two into one.  Come, and save man whom you fashioned out of clay.  King may be a title we need to remind us of the place we want Jesus to have in our lives, in our hearts. But it is simply not a title Jesus chooses for himself. He has come to serve, not to be served. And so he tells us:  "Whatever you did to one of these least brothers of mine, you did to me."  He, the highest, speaking from his throne of glory, thus declares himself to have wholly passed over, in his actual existence on earth, into “the least”, and these, the lowest, he also claims as his own brothers and sisters. Christ’s eternal origin in his heavenly Father, dynamically mediated through the Incarnation, creates a new brotherhood among all human beings. This is not a natural brotherhood, existing by the mere fact that we are all human beings.  This is a supernatural kinsh...

  In the tender compassion of our God, the Dawn from on high shall break upon us, to shine on those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death and to guide our feet into the way of peace. This evening we call, out to the Lord Jesus: O Rising Dawn, Radiance of the Light eternal and Sun of Justice: come and enlighten those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. Faith is light. In John’s Gospel, Christ says of himself: “I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.”  John 12:46   “We therefore are not the origin of this light but it is the great gift of Jesus as light of the world. As Jesus exclaims to Peter after his confession, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.’ ” The consequence of this supernatural gift is that “Those who believe, see; they see with a light that illumines their entire journey, for it comes the risen Christ, the mornin...

  This evening we call out to Jesus as "Key of David." Keys open doors. Jesus is  the  key to our freedom from all that would frighten, cripple or close us in on ourselves.  He offers us the small, fragile hand of God beckoning us not to be afraid. Whatever our fears, and our sins, Jesus notices and offers us accompaniment and a way out. He assures us that we are more than all that. He has come to save us from all that would paralyze and hurt us.  Now in Him, we have the power to forgive, not because “It’s alright. It’s nothing.” No, the opposite is true- very much has happened. We’ve been hurt, ignored, and tragically we have sometimes inflicted these same ills on others. But now in Christ, we are empowered to be compassionate - we can absorb the hurt and forgive and beg forgiveness, all because we trust in Christ Jesus who is at our side, even within us, assuring us that pain and fear, and suffering are powerless to define who we truly are. We belong to him. H...