Dear Friends,
Christmas greetings from the monastery “e-news room,” known here in the monastery as the archives room. I am trying to keep pace with the recent Advent season and now Christmastime. I am a bit behind. This week (hopefully sooner than later), you will be receiving several monastery e-news with recent homilies:
• Midnight Mass homily by Abbot Francis Michael
• Christmas Day Mass homily by Fr. Ed
• Feast of the Holy Family homily by Fr. Methodius
For now, I am sending along three chapter talks given by our abbot. I have added some notes of interest at the end of two of the talks. Through his chapter talks, the abbot encourages us monks in our monastic life of prayer, work, and community living. I hope you will be encouraged by the talks as well.
Finally, let us join in praying for world peace and for the victims of the recent natural disaster.
Peace in the Lord,
Br. Chaminade
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To Love One Another as God Loves Us
Chapter talk given by
Abbot Francis Michael Stiteler, OCSO
Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery
Conyers, Georgia
Sunday, November 21, 2004 (Feast of Jesus Christ the King)
Audio (8.91 MB / 5:00 minutes / mp3 format)
Here we are on the Feast of Christ the King. We still have the image of a king and, of course, for Saint Benedict it was an image that he used when he wrote his Rule for monks. The most well-known passage in which Saint Benedict makes reference to Christ as King is verse three in the prologue of the Rule:
This message of mine is for you, then, if you are ready to give up your own will, once and for all, and armed with the strong and noble weapons of obedience to do battle for the true King, Christ the Lord.
The other interesting text in which he mentions it is in chapter 61, “How Visiting Monks Are To Be Received.” There’s just a little sentence in there that talks about receiving monks from other places:
If he is not the kind that deserves expulsion, his petition to join the community should not only be accepted but he should even be urged to remain so that others can learn from his example.
And then the pertinent text, verse 10: “For we are everywhere slaves of the same Lord and soldiers of the same King.”
Jesus has many titles: King, Lord, Master, and others. It doesn’t matter which title we use, but the important thing is that, unlike the Israelites, we are not left to do it on our own, to figure out our own way. We have a Lord, a Master, and a King.
We call ourselves disciples (which nowadays might be translated as “students”). If we are disciples, we must be disciples of somebody, and we should be studying what that person is teaching us. That person, of course, is Jesus.
I think it is good that we keep in mind that we do have a teacher. We do have somebody that is there to guide us. As I have said over and over again, and will continue to say over and over again, his plan is simple. Jesus left one commandment: we are to love one another as he has loved us (cf. Jn 13:35). Sometimes I think we forget the second half: to love one another as Jesus has loved us. We just blow it off because we think that it is beyond us.
It’s not just a matter that we are supposed to love one another. There are lots of people in the world trying to love one another. The love that they are trying to use is not a bad love, but it breaks down often enough—even with good people. We know that even within the Catholic population, there are people who vow to love one another but end up divorced five years later or whatever. These are not bad people, but people like us—weak, broken, and sinners. The love that they are following, I would say, is the love of the world. It’s not a bad love in and of itself, but it is not enough.
Jesus wants us to love as God loves. Jesus tells us in the Last Supper discourse: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you” (Jn 15:9). Jesus loved us as the Father loved him. And then he tells us, “You must love one another as I have loved you” (Jn 15:12). This means that we have to love one another as the Father loved Jesus. That’s pretty big stuff to look towards and try to move towards. I believe that’s what it is about, what our choices are about.
Jesus can’t command the impossible. So if he has commanded us to love as He loves, then it is something that we have to strive after and give ourselves to. I am not saying that we are not doing it now, but I encourage us to remember when the days are hard, or the decisions are tough, that we are not, as sometimes we may think, floating here by ourselves.
“What can I do?” someone may ask. “I am just a human person. What can I do?”
Well, what we can do is try to love as God loves us. And that’s a stance of hope and faith. It requires both faith and hope to even believe that we can respond to Jesus’ command, to even hope that we can move in that direction, that we can even give ourselves to that kind of loving which God calls us to.
The Coming of God Into Our Lives
Chapter talk given by
Abbot Francis Michael Stiteler, OCSO
Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery
Conyers, Georgia
Sunday, December 5, 2004 (Second Sunday of Advent)
Audio (4.98 MB / 3:06 minutes / mp3 format)
Advent, of course, means “to come.” We know that when we speak of the coming of the Lord, there are traditionally lots of ways of talking about that. We speak of three comings. Jesus came in the flesh; he took on human nature. Then we talk of Jesus coming to us in the Eucharist. And then we talk about the final coming. Certainly, Advent is about all of those things.
The more I ponder and think about it, God is always coming to us. That might be another name for God—“the One who comes.” The One who is always coming to us. In very powerful ways we believe that he came to us in Jesus, in the incarnation. And, of course, we believe that he will come again in the Second Coming. But if you prayerfully think about it, God is always coming to us. God is coming to us in every breath that we take. We’re completely sustained by God at every moment.
Perhaps Advent is the season when we can be reminded of that—God is coming to us all of the time. We just came from Eucharist and, of course, we believe that God came to us there in the Bread and Wine. We, as Catholics, believe that this is the Body and Blood of Jesus—Divinity coming to us, to feed us.
It seems to me that much of the time we miss God’s coming to us. God’s coming to us right now in this talk, poor as it may be, yet God is coming to us in it. God comes to us all day long through the exchanges that happen to us—through every contact that we have with another human person. Through our prayer. Through our work.
Many great writers have written about this. I am sure theologians have as well. Tolstoy wrote a classic tale about it [1]. It is short work of somebody being promised that Christ was going to come to him and the guy waited all day. At the end of the day, he didn’t think it had happened. And then he was shown that Christ had, in fact, come to him at three different times in three different people, but he was not able to see it.
God comes to us in ways that we do not expect God to come to us, and so we miss it. So we say, “You know, it’s just another talk by the abbot. Hopefully, I won’t completely fall asleep.”
If you go out for a walk in the woods, God comes to us in nature. I’ve quoted before from the book, which became a movie, titled The Color Purple (by Alice Walker, 1982) [2]. Two black women are talking about God. One of them says to the other, “What do you think God looks like? Who do you think God is?” As they talked, the other woman said, “You know, God isn’t some old white man with a white beard. God’s bigger than that. God’s the kind of person who probably gets angry if you walk through the field and don’t see the color purple.” That this beautiful color purple, to see it and go, “Wow! Look at this flower and how incredible it is!”
My hope for Advent—for myself, anyway—is that Advent is a time to remember how God comes into my life at every moment. Perhaps I can pray in the morning: “God, I know that you are coming to me. Help me to recognize you today. Help me to see you. Help me to believe that you are coming to me. Help me to believe that you are intimately intertwined in my life.”
I think of Dom Bernard who frequently said that there was no order of Ascensionists in the Church. But is there an order called the Adventists? For this particular mystery of Advent, it might be a worthy order to start. An order that preaches how God is always coming. “Wake up! God is coming into your life! Guaranteed. God will come into your life today. Be alert. Be attentive. Wake up. Trust. Believe. Learn to recognize God’s disguises.”
NOTES
1. The story by Leo Tolstoy was written in 1885 and is titled “Where Love Is, There Is God Also.” Several on-line sites reprint the story. Two of those sites are:
• Emerald Ink Publishing (http://www.emeraldink.com/where.htm)
• Bruderhof Communites (http://www.bruderhof.com/articles/WhereloveisGodis.htm)
2. In The Color Purple, Celie is a poor, uneducated African American woman living in the American South in the early 1900s. Her life is difficult, and she has become disillusioned with God whom she envisions as a old white man with a gray beard and blue-gray eyes in a long white robe. In one scene her friend, Shug Avery, shares her view of God with Celie. Shug thinks that it’s a sin not to be happy and appreciate beauty—and, furthermore, she thinks that a person should look for beauty.
Here’s the thing, says Shug, the thing I believe. God is inside you and inside everybody else. …God ain’t a he or a she, but an It.… It ain’t something you can look at apart from anytying else, including yourself. I believe God is everything.… My first step from the old white man was trees. Then air. Then birds.… [B]ut one day when I was sitting quiet… it come to me; that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all.… God loves everything.… I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it. (pp. 202-203)
Source: Cliff Notes on-line (http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/id-56,pageNum-36.html).
Sharing in the Birth of Jesus Christ
Chapter talk given by
Abbot Francis Michael Stiteler, OCSO
Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Monastery
Conyers, Georgia
Sunday, December 19, 2004 (Fourth Sunday of Advent)
Audio (14.4 MB / 9:01 minutes / mp3 format)
I still continue to ponder, the best I can, this feast of Christmas. I think it is a great treasure that we only have begun to understand and only begun to accept its implications. We had a reading at vigils from St. Irenaeus. It is a famous quote from Irenaeus that “man, living man, is the glory of God” [1, 2]. It is a shocking statement.
Last week, I spoke about God coming to us. I continue to think about that—God coming to us in many ways. The beautiful Tolstoy story of a Russian shoemaker who, pondering the gospels, falls asleep and hears the Lord say, “Tomorrow I will come to you” [3]. And then the beautiful story of how that day unfolds. In the end, Jesus came again and showed the man how he had come to him in simple people—in the poor, in the needy.
One of the Christmas cards I received this week—it must have been one of the Spanish monasteries—had a quote from Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was murdered, or martyred, in El Salvador [March 24, 1980]. He said that only the poor can receive Jesus, meaning that only those in need can receive Jesus [4].
We know the stories in the gospels of Mary and Joseph coming and finding no room in the inn (cf. Lk 2:7). And it is true for us as well. God continues to come to us, but often we have no space for God. No room.
God comes in such strange ways. Just look at some of the gospel stories. He comes to Mary and asks to be born in her (cf. Lk 1:26-38). He asks to be born in each of us—not physical of course, but spiritually, which is even perhaps more difficult and more powerful. Yet, how many of us are ready to say, “Be it done unto me according to your word” (cf. Lk 1:38)? How many of us are willing to bring forth God in our own lives? To be humble enough to say “yes” to that? To be faithful enough? To put aside our fear and let God be born in us? It’s awesome.
Look at Saint Joseph. He had to deal with the wrestling of the fact that his betrothed was with child (cf. Mt 1:20-21). And the child was not his. God came to Joseph in a very unusual way. Joseph, faithful and true man that he was, had to struggle with that, had to come to some kind of understanding that God was coming to him in the child of his betrothed, and that he would be the guardian of that child who was God.
Interestedly, one of the few people who recognized what was going on—Elizabeth. Of course, she said it was because it was the child she bore in her womb (Lk 1:39-45). But Elizabeth… who told her? Mary arrives at her doorstep, and Elizabeth knows that Mary is the mother who is carrying God. “The mother of my Lord” (cf. Lk 1:43). Where did that insight come from?
Sometimes I think it is hardest—and I know it is hardest in my own life—to recognize God in those who are closest to it. It doesn’t just work in monasteries; it works in families as well. When I am giving a talk in the retreat house about that gospel, I like to use the passage of the last judgment:
For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. (Mt 25:35-36).
When people hear this gospel, they often think of Mother Theresa and the Missionaries of Charity, and others who take care of the poor. How astounding people will be when Jesus says those words, and the woman says, “Gave you food to drink? Gave you water to drink? When did I ever do that?” And Jesus says, “When you did it for your children. When you got up everyday to go to work to a job that you didn’t want to go to because you had a wife and children to support.” Are they any least of the poorest of the poor? Are they any less Jesus? Any less Christ?
And so it is true in our own midst. God is coming to us in one another. Make no doubt about it, brothers. Can we, for instance, like Joseph, foster—bring forth—in the other, this gift of God? Can we believe that in our brother Jesus is coming to birth and can’t come to birth without our acceptance, without our help, without our care?
It’s mysterious stuff but very real. And it’s happening everyday, not just at Christmas. Christmas just gives us the occasion to think about it. It’s an incredible mystery, an incredibly beautiful mystery.
Recently, I was talking to someone who is in a position of authority. He was saying that at some point in prayer he had gotten an unusual insight. The insight was as if God was saying to him: “You see this work that you have. This job. This thing that you think of as a job. That you think of as a ministry. That you think of as a burden, a cross, having to minister to these people. This to which I have called you is my life, who I am as God. And I have invited you to share in that.”
He said he was struck by the mutuality of it. God saying, “And I give you a share in this. That you can love like I love. That you can know what love is about: the service, the pouring out of oneself for another.”
One doesn’t have to be a superior for that. All of us are in that position—each one of us. God, day by day, is giving us multitudes of opportunities to love, to give ourselves, to make Christmas, in a sense, present. The incarnation—to make God present in us and one another—is a great kind of dance. At least that’s how I see it. The giving and receiving between each other is an incredible mystery that we as creatures have been invited into. Yes, creatures we remain, but we are creatures with choice, with the ability to choose, with the ability to love—even when we don’t understand and think, “What can this saying mean?” Or, Saint Joseph, “Do not fear to take Mary to be your bride” (cf. Mt 1:20).
Even in the midst of all the brokenness, we can still choose to love. We can still choose to allow God to be born in us, and like a midwife, to bring God forth in one another.
NOTES
1. The quote from St. Irenaeus comes from a treatise in five books titled Adversus Haereses, abbreviated as “Adv. Haer.” These treatises are concerned with “Detection and Overthrow of the False Knowledge.” Source: New Advent Catholic encyclopedia on-line (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08130b.htm).
2. The quote is from Adv. Haer. IV, 20, 7: “Living man is the glory of God, but the vision of God is man’s life.” The Holy Father Pope John Paul II has made several references to this quote.
• Man Is Created in the Image of God,” General Audience, April 9, 1986
(http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/audiences/alpha/data/aud19860409en.html).
• Evangelium Vitae, Encyclical Letter on the value and inviolability of human life, March 25, 1995
(http://www.saint-mike.org/Library/Papal_Library/John_PaulII/Encyclicals/Evangelium_Vitae.html).
3. “Where Love Is, There Is God Also,” by Leo Tolstoy, written in 1885.
4. The quote from the late Archbishop Romero is from his homily given on Christmas Eve, 1978:
No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need even of God—for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Without poverty of spirit there can be no abundance of God.
Source: Marquette University, Office of Mission and Identity (http://www.marquette.edu/umi/reflections/mr122203.shtml).
