Monastery of the Holy Cross

Et Incarnatus Est – The Prior’s Blog

Temptation, Transfiguration, and the goal of Lenten discipline

The first two Sundays of Lent each year give us two significant events in the life of Jesus. Why these two? Can we say something about the relationship between the temptation of Christ in the desert and the Transfiguration of Christ on the mountain? And what might these tell us about the holy season of Lent?

This year, we are reading Luke’s versions of these events, and it is noteworthy that for Luke, they both look forward. To what do they look forward? Let’s look at each one. On the First Sunday of Lent, the temptation of Christ ended with an ominous note: “When the devil had finished every temptation, he departed from him…for a time.” What is Luke getting at here? The temptations aren’t over, is what he is saying. When we aren’t experiencing temptations, that doesn’t mean that they are over and done. The Tempter has just departed for a time. Temptations will return, and our job is to be vigilant.

But I think that Luke also had something more specific in mind. How about this: the great war between Jesus and the Devil, between the Son of Man and the ruler of this world, isn’t over when Jesus wins this opening battle. The war won’t be decided until the Crucifixion. At that time, Jesus’s human nature will again be tempted to use His divine power in opposition to the will of His Father. The Father’s mysterious will is to send His Son into the world as a man, to save us by sharing in our mortality, our weakness and suffering. When we arrive at Holy Week, and we recall all of Jesus’s suffering—the betrayals, the mockery, the scourgings, and finally Crucifixion—this is the Devil throwing every he has at the Son of God, Who conquers Him by a quiet obedience and faith.

The Resurrection marks the definitive destruction of the power of hell. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. We need to see how the Transfiguration also looks forward to Holy Week and Easter. In this case, it is quite direct. When Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus, what are they discussing with each other? Here is what Luke says: “Moses and Elijah…appeared in glory and spoke of his exodus that he was going to accomplish in Jerusalem.” Jesus is going to accomplish an “exodus.” Isn’t this interesting? So much could be said about what this means, since the Exodus is, in some ways, the theme of the entire Torah. Let’s focus on one important aspect of the Exodus, to see a deeper connection with Moses and Elijah.

What do these two have in common? Both of them spoke to God on Mount Sinai. When God first spoke to Moses on Sinai, He commissioned him to go to Egypt to bring the Israelites out, right? But when Moses went to Pharaoh and demanded that he let the people go, it was not his immediate aim to lead them to the Promised Land. Rather, his goal was to worship God on Mount Sinai. It was to make a new covenant with God—in a certain sense, a renewal of the covenant between God and Abraham. On Mount Sinai, the terms of the covenant are sharpened: God will adopt Israel as His beloved people, and the people, for their part, will obey God’s law.

But why did Elijah go to Mount Sinai, or Horeb, as it was called in his time? As a matter of fact, God asks Elijah that very question, “Elijah, why are you here?” And what does he respond? “Because your people have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars…” and so on. Note that God does not renew the covenant at this time; He simply sends Elijah back with reassurance that a remnant of the people had remained faithful. From that point on the prophets will have the job of reminding the people of the covenant and calling them back to it.

Alright, back to the Transfiguration. Jesus, we said, was going to accomplish His Exodus. Where is He leaving and where is He going? He is leaving this world, the fallen world, and going to the new creation, what we might call heaven, the right hand of the Father. Along the way, just like Moses at Mount Sinai, He is going to ratify a new covenant, in His own Blood. He will give us the new law—this is why the Father says, “Listen to Him!”

Now I’ve downplayed something crucial here: for Jesus to leave this world and pass over into the new world, He must die. And with that observation, we are brought back, finally, to Lent. Lent is a time to battle temptations after the model of Jesus, and it is also a time to practice mortification. For us, this mortification of fasting, almsgiving and prayer, involves a frank acknowledgement of our sin. The goal isn’t to make us feel guilty and therefore punish ourselves the more, even if contrition and reparation are part of the process. What is the goal? In the gospel, the Apostles see it before their eyes: glory. The glory of God and, dare we say, the deification of humankind in Jesus Christ. Every time we accept mortification, we are stepping tentatively out of this world and into the next, with the hope of glory. When we see the brilliant light of the Transfiguration, shining through the body of Jesus, we are seeing a foreshadowing of our own transfiguration. Saint Paul says that Jesus “will change our lowly body to conform with his glorified body.”

So the goal of our Lenten discipline and the goal of Christ’s Exodus is the regeneration of creation and the reinstitution of all of the children of Adam and Eve as His beloved sons and daughters. Lent is not, therefore, a time in which we try to “make ourselves” better by increments. It is a time to participate in the death of Jesus so that we may also share in His bodily Resurrection from the dead.

Homily for the Annunciation: Twenty-five years of saying “Yes” to God

What makes Our Lady such a powerful intercessor when we are in need? All the saints agree that we can do no better than to turn to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

In the beautiful prayer called the Memorare, we address her in this way: “Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help, or sought your intercession, was left unaided.”

Now, Mary does not grant our requests directly. Rather, she takes them to her Son, Jesus Christ. And He seems very willing to grant her requests, even when they happen to be, let’s say, “tangential” to God’s own plan.

What I mean by this is illustrated in the story of the wedding at Cana. Mary goes to Jesus to inform Him that the host has run out of wine. She clearly hopes that He will remedy the situation, even if He must perform a miracle to do so. In response, Jesus indicates that her request requires a bit of an adjustment to the schedule of His ministry. He says, “My time has not yet come.” Notice that He doesn’t yet say whether He is going to give a favorable response to Mary’s request.

But even before He agrees to do anything, she tells the servants to do whatever He tells them. She fully expects that her Son will grant her what she is asking. From where comes this confidence?

The answer is simple: Mary knows that she can ask her Son anything, because He knows that God can ask Mary anything.

When the angel Gabriel announces that Mary will bear God’s Son, she surely has some foreboding of what the cost of agreeing might be. But she says, “Let it be done to me.” In this way, she provides the perfect complement to Jesus, Who says, “not my will but thine be done.” Both are willing to do whatever the Father asks, practicing perfect, trusting obedience even unto death, as we will hear many times during Holy Week.

Today, we commemorate that mysterious day when God sought out the young Virgin and, with a ready heart, she said, “Yes,” to Him. She could not have known what this would eventually entail. She knew from the examples of Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Rachel, Moses, Jeremiah and Jonah that God’s call may well involve great sorrows along the way. But in faith, she also believed that one day God’s victory would bring great joy.

Now, just as Mary was invited to become the Mother of God and carried the life of God’s Son within her, so each of us, in our baptisms, was invited to say “yes” to God and bear the life of Christ within us. We now have the charge of nurturing this divine life and becoming part of the mystery of the Incarnation, as members of Christ’s Body. Our baptismal vocation requires us to listen each day for God’s invitation to enter more deeply into the mystery by our ready obedience to whatever He asks of us.

How ready am I to say “yes”? How much do I trust that God’s glorious plan will be worked out in me, especially when it involves walking through many trials on the way?

Now as it happens, today is a very significant day in the history of our community. On March 25th, 2000 our founders said their definitive “yes” to God’s invitation to follow Him in the Benedictine way of life.  And so today, we celebrate the 25th anniversary of our community’s entrance into the Benedictine Confederation.

Our founders did not know what the ensuing twenty-five years would look like.  I’ve been around for all of them, so I can say that this time has brought both joy and great hardship, including moments when it appeared that the community could not survive. But God has been faithful through it all, and He continues to invite us to follow His plan, no matter what.

We have also known, first-hand, the power of Our Lady’s intercession. This is why, at the top of the icons above the altar, we have placed Our Lady of the Protecting Veil. When I was a newly-arrived monk, we encountered one serious crisis that had us considering a move away from Chicago. We decided first to make a pilgrimage to the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and ask for her help.

Shortly afterward, a man came to stay at our bed and breakfast. His professional expertise happened to be exactly what we needed to solve the problem that had been plaguing us.

This is only one of many such instances. After all, it was probably the Mother of God who brought us here in the first place to reopen this church dedicated to her Immaculate Conception. Today, as we renew the covenant in Christ’s Blood, let us renew our desire to say “yes” to whatever God asks of us, and to seek Our Lady’s help whenever we are in need, knowing that her generous “yes” was and is the beginning of our salvation.

Lent and Transfiguration

In the Church’s first three centuries, we have very little overt information about the liturgical calendar. Since the sacraments, the heart of the liturgy are ‘mysteries’, the early Christians were often circumspect in describing them in writing, where they might fall into the hands of the unbaptized. A certain amount of catechesis was required to prepare for initiation into baptism, confirmation (or ‘chrismation’) and the Holy Eucharist. Add to this the fact that the Church was largely underground, and it is understandable why the earliest layer of liturgical development is obscure.

Once we do have good documents, especially from the seventh century onward, we find more or less the fully-formed liturgical year, with a period of fasting preceding the great Paschal Mystery. Already, in this early period, we see the gospel of the temptation of Christ in the desert on the first Sunday, and the Transfiguration proclaimed on the second Sunday. Lent was still understood primarily as a preparation for baptism: the disciplines of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving, along with a new set of behaviors made the catechumen a fit receptacle for the divine life given at the Easter Vigil.

It was quite common in the early Church to refer to baptism as ‘enlightenment’ or ‘illumination’. With the gift of the Holy Spirit, the newly baptized began to see the world and his own life as if for the first time in the daylight. Obscure prophecies were explained as foreshadowing the Incarnation and Crucifixion; evil was revealed as a kind of parasite, destined for destruction at the end of time. In addition, the baptized were robed in white, a clear reference to the shining garments of Christ on Mount Tabor. The divine nature begins to shine through human nature after the pattern of the Son of God.

Changing behavior is laborious and demanding. Most of us are accustomed to regular setbacks in our Lenten discipline, and where we manage to hold the line, we are sorely tempted to ease up on the fast, to skimp on prayer. We tangle with the inner darkness that stubbornly resists cooperation with grace. By proclaiming to us the gospel of the Transfiguration on the second Sunday of this season, the Church reminds us that “the light shines in the darkness [John 1: 5],” and that in Christ, it is we whom the Father addresses as ‘well-pleasing’ and ‘chosen’.

In his apostolic exhortation Vita Consecrata, Pope Saint John Paul II makes use of the Transfiguration to explain the particular contours of self-denial in the acceptance of the evangelical counsels (poverty, chastity, and obedience). This way of life in close discipleship with Christ is a way of transformation “from glory to glory.” “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness [cf. 2 Corinthians 3: 18].”

Interestingly, Saint Benedict, the great Lawgiver in the Western tradition of monasticism, and hence of much of subsequent religious life, tells us that the whole of a monk’s life should be like Lent. So the Holy Father’s connection of the Transfiguration with the renunciations of religious life is exactly parallel with the liturgy’s use of the Transfiguration to help us make sense of the self-denial asked of all the baptized during this holy season. The glorified body of Jesus Christ is a reminder of the goal of transformation that we are seeking via our Lenten discipline.

Let me add one more detail from the story of this mystery. Jesus chooses His three closest disciplines, Peter, James, and John, to witness the irruption of His divine glory. These same three will later be with Him in the Garden of Gethsemane. Once again, they will be sleepy! Indeed, they will flee when Christ refuses to manifest His divinity before the arresting soldiers.

After the resurrection, Christ appears to them once again under the appearance of His human nature, but His divinity is now known, and His glory recalled from this mysterious anticipatory moment in His ministry. Peter, James, and John chose to record this event for us who would come after the resurrection. We are urged to see Christ in our neighbor, in the poor, in the sick and the imprisoned, under the appearance of His human nature. Let us not forget the hidden glory that lurks potentially in each of us, veiled by the perishing flesh. When service of our neighbor becomes a burden, let us seek, by meditation, to see Christ in glory whenever He presents Himself in ‘distressing disguise.’ And may this Lent see us grow in love for God and neighbor, ready to celebrate with renewed joy and peace the mysteries of our salvation.

St. Benedict’s Lenten fare

Here in the monastery, our Lenten observance is relatively austere. We abstain from meat and fish, dairy products, olive oil, eggs, and alcohol, with a few exceptions. We also undertake individual mortifications. In spite of this, I can say with some certainty that the brothers look forward to Lent. In some ways, it is when we are most ourselves as monks. Saint Benedict says that every day for a monk is meant to be Lent. Moreover, he mentions joy twice in his short chapter on Lent, which gives a good insight into the meaning of mortification. It is done in the expectation of the glory of Easter and a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ, Who leads us by way of the Cross.

Another aspect of Lent for Benedictine monks is special reading. In his Lenten schedule, Saint Benedict allots an extra hour each day for reading. He instructs the superior to assign to each monk a book which is to be read straight through. In his day, reading would have meant primarily Scripture and some Church Fathers. In our day, I assign books from more contemporary writers, but the intent is the same: that we apply ourselves to a six-week dialogue with a master who will challenge us with new insights into the gospel that we wouldn’t have arrived at ourselves.

Homily for Ash Wednesday

During Lent, the Church urges us to pay attention to what we eat. Let’s focus our attention today on a significant fact about food. Almost all of what we eat was either once alive or comes from an animal that is or was alive. We eat plant products, like fruits, vegetables and legumes. We eat animal products like eggs, milk and cheese. And then we also consume animals themselves: fish, cows, pigs, chickens, and so on. We sometimes speak of a food chain, the top of which is inhabited by predators, whether it be lions or humans.

What this reveals to us is that our life is borrowed, in some sense, from other living things. This is true of all animals; plants receive their life from sun and water, but then other animals make use of the life that is in these plants to obtain necessary nutrients and complex molecules necessary for more complex life. While we might see ourselves as the top of the food chain, this reflection also reveals our total dependency on other living things for our own life. We can’t survive without plants and animals reproducing, growing, and, most significantly, dying so that we may sustain our own life.

The Lenten fast should spur us to reflect on the primal need for eating, and the significance that our life is not self-generated. We are dependent on other living things, and ultimately, our life comes from God Himself. We do not generate our lives; we receive them from God, and God sustains our life through His gifts of sun, water, plants and animals. We, of course, are meant to participate in this sharing of life by cultivating the garden of this world. But the sustaining and handing on of life has become toilsome, painful, and in the case of childbirth, where a child’s life is fully sustained by the life of its mother, even dangerous. This toil and pain is a result of sin. Work has become labor, laborious, difficult, refractory.

In the gospel of John, Jesus repeatedly teaches us about food and about work. He does this, though, in order to bring new life and a new notion of work into the world. He has come into the world to share His own life with us. He becomes our food, laying down His life for us on the Cross as the Lamb of God, inviting to His Supper. Unless you eat of the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, you have no life in you. In point of fact, Jesus’s own life is not even His own; he receives from the Father. “As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me.” This is quite an astonishing statement. As the Son of God receives life from the very Father, we are being invited at the Eucharistic to receive this same life from God through the sacrifice of His Son Jesus Christ.

Elsewhere, Jesus says, “Do not work for perishable food, but for the food which endures for eternal life [John 6: 27].” And again, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me, and to accomplish His work [John 4: 34].” This work is the harvest of souls, the return of humanity to its rightful Father and God. But idea that the food that sustains Jesus is the doing of the Father’s will is significant for us today on Ash Wednesday. Let me begin to tie up all of these ideas.

As we undertake the fast today, and as we practice various kinds of fasts and abstinence from meat during Lent, let us be conscious of the fact that we are dependent on God. As we experience hunger, let us recognize that this hunger is meant to be a hunger for the true Bread of Life, the Holy Eucharist, in which we receive true and abiding life. To receive this new life fully, we must consent to die to ourselves, to take up our Crosses daily in imitation of Jesus. This is to share in His work, and so, paradoxically, to be fed by the will of the Father. The ashes that we will receive in a moment are a sign of our consenting to die to sin and the old life. Let us remember especially the catechumens and candidates who will receive the Holy Eucharist for the first time at the Easter Vigil, and who are striving to do the will of God and change their lives throughout this holy time.

And then, as we see around us birds returning, plants gradually coming back to life, let us turn our thoughts to the glorious Resurrection of Jesus from the dead, in which we hope to share. And with these thoughts, let us lay aside every weight and sin that clings to us, and run with a lighter step the race that God has set before us, looking always to Jesus who has opened to us the way to eternal blessedness. May He be praised forever. Amen.

Vocation and Expertise: Homily on Luke 5:1-11

All four gospels tell us the story of the calling of the first apostles. In Matthew and Mark, Jesus walks along the shore and calls, first Peter and Andrew, and then James and John. They immediately leave their nets and follow him. In these cases, we see Jesus, the Son of God, commanding, and others simply dropping everything and following Him, as is proper for One Who is God. Even so, already in the early Church, there were concerns that this seemed unrealistic. Perhaps John and Luke were aware of those concerns, since they fill in quite a few details.

In Luke’s gospel, we’ve already met Simon by the time of the calling of the apostles. After Jesus is rejected by the people of Nazareth, he goes to Capernaum, the city where Simon and Andrew live. He stays for a time at Simon’s house, curing his mother-in-law. Simon has already seen Him work a sign. So it’s interesting that, when Jesus goes to the seashore to preach, He ends up asking Simon for the use of his boat. That morning’s fishing was finished, and the results hadn’t been good. When Jesus tells Simon to put out into the deep and let down the nets, Simon’s first reaction is perhaps typical of an expert whose expertise is being challenged a bit. Aren’t you a carpenter? We’re the fishermen, and we’ve already been out there! No fish, I assure you. But…if you say so!

It’s a bit impudent on Simon’s part. He’s already seen Jesus work a sign of healing on his mother-in-law, but he doesn’t seem to believe that Jesus can just as easily work a miracle in the sea.

So here we have a lesson. It’s often in the places of our own comfort where we are most apt to lose sight of Jesus. Where we are the experts, we don’t see the need for God to interfere and upend our predictions and forecasts. Even when our own efforts produce no fish! We are only fruitful in what matters most when we are obedient to Jesus’s commands and seeking to do His will. The fruits of our labors may be quite unexpected. So while we can be a bit critical of Simon for his resistance, we should ask ourselves, where am I resistant to Jesus’s commands? In what area of my life do I think, “Well, I’ve already tried that, and nothing came of it; so even though I know it’s what God is asking me, I don’t see the point”?

Now Simon’s reaction is quite telling. When he witnesses the sign, he’s completely overcome with a sense of shame and guilt. He sees in a moment just how worldly his thoughts are, how limited is his sense of what is possible with God. So he falls to his knees and asks Jesus to depart. Jesus will have none of it: this sign is about Simon’s true vocation, not to be a fisherman catching fish, but to catch men and women in the nets of the gospel!

And from this vantage point, I want to enter the story and say to Simon, “Hey, stand up! This isn’t about you! Stop focusing on yourself, and listen to what Jesus is saying!”

In relating the call of the first apostles, the gospels give us the pattern of all vocation in the Church. Every one of the baptized has a vocation. This was one of the great teachings of Vatican II that we haven’t internalized enough. The laity have an indispensable vocation to spread the gospel in the workplace. We need this more than ever as work gets more and more specialized. We need the expertise of the various professions to understand what is compatible with the gospel and what needs purification. The priests and religious are partners in this work, needed to help work through some of the more challenging situations of the modern world, but the vocation of the laity is surely of grave importance.

So watching Simon Peter being called today, let’s review what this story tells us about vocation. The first point is that we may already feel like we know the Lord: He’s been to our house, He preached from our boat. But then we may sense that He is asking something a little more difficult, something that perhaps calls into question our expertise. Will we at least go along with it, simply out of obedience, as Simon did, or will we delay, resisting because of the threat to our comfort and know-how?

When we, or even more, the Church, comes to the conclusion that we are being asked to put out to the deep, to rely on God alone, will we focus on ourselves? “Oh, I could never do that. I’m too weak, I have no training, and maybe, at heart, I’m just afraid.” Well, our vocation is not about us; it’s about Jesus Christ and His mission. And if He is calling us, He knows best why and how it’s going to work. Our job is fidelity and trust. As Saint Paul reminded us in the second reading, “Not I, but the grace of God that is with me.” Let us call to mind all that God has done for us, and seek to go deeper in our personal vocations.

The faith of a child

Many years ago, when I was a young adult and attending a family event at my grandparents’, I had an amusing “discussion” with my four- or five-year-old cousin. He had just discovered the word “why” and was asking me an endless stream of questions. “The sky is blue. Why?” When I gave whatever answer seemed suitable for his age, he repeated what I said, and then added, “Why?” I found the exchange rather enjoyable, at least for awhile. I can’t quite remember, but I expect that the conversation ended at the point that I decided to say, “Just because,”…and that was good enough for him. An adult said so.

Faith is the virtue of allowing God to propose to us ideas and plans of action for which the question, “Why?” is more or less irrelevant, at least for the moment. To a child, what I understand about the color of the sky (electromagnetic waves of a certain frequency causing corresponding events in the cones of my eye and brain) is well beyond his cognitive ability at that age. Imagine how much more God knows—He Who knows everything that ever was or will be—than even the most intelligent human. It is clear that sometimes when we ask God, “Why?” He can only respond, “Just because; trust me!”

“Unless you become like a child, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven!” May we have that serene and childlike trust in our heavenly Father that Jesus did.

The Feast of the Presentation

“Is a lamp brought in to be put under a bushel, or under a bed, and not on a stand? For there is nothing hid, except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret, except to come to light.” [Mark 4: 21-22]

When the Son of God, the light of the world, was sent by God into this world, He arrived in a surprising, even hidden, way. Rather than manifesting power, He embraced smallness and dependency, becoming an infant, a child of the Virgin Mary. This unspectacular entrance upon the world scene meant that, without jubilant angels singing before shepherds and miraculous stars drawing astronomers from the East, the presence of the Redeemer among us would have gone almost entirely unnoticed. Today’s celebration is the capstone on what used to be called “Epiphanytide,” that period of time after January 6 in which the Church meditates on the various ways in which Jesus Christ’s divinity was revealed in the flesh.

This points to an important reality about the Gospel, and in fact, the entire created cosmos: it is a revelation of things previously hidden. The inner meaning of the human person is only fully understood in the discovery that we are meant to share life with God, just as food and drink, bread and wine, find their full meaning in the Holy Eucharist, God feeding us with His own life.

In theory, God could have saved us without our knowing. There is something potentially mischievous, even manipulative, in that idea. What we see, rather, is that God invites us to be His coworkers in bringing mercy and healing to the world. For this to happen, we need to recognize His presence, how to read “the signs of the times.” The “ true light which enlightens every man” has entered the world, and now illuminates all of God’s creatures from within. The Word of God, through Whom all things were made, is revealed to be the life within all things, making them holy and lovable.

When the aged and devout prophet Simeon takes the infant in his arms, he not only proclaims Him to be the long-awaited salvation of Israel, but “a light for revelation to the Gentiles [Luke 2: 32].” Salvation and reconciliation with the great Creator of the cosmos is being offered to all, though it is Israel’s special “glory” to be the nation that prepared the way and who calls Jesus a son of the tribe of Judah.

Let’s turn to another aspect of today’s mystery. When the Babylonians captured Jerusalem in 587 B.C., the ark of the covenant, the sign of God’s presence, was removed from the temple. What happened to it remains an unsolved riddle–Indiana Jones’s adventures notwithstanding. When the temple was rebuilt, the ark was no longer in the Holy of Holies (when the Roman general Pompey entered the Holy of Holies after taking Jerusalem in 63 B.C., he was puzzled to find it empty of any idols or statues). God was not entirely absent; nor yet had He fully returned after His dramatic departure narrated at the beginning of Ezekiel’s prophecy, dating from the Babylonian captivity. The prophet Malachi, writing perhaps in the fifth century B.C., indicated the God would suddenly appear in the temple. In the arrival of the Virgin Mary and the boy Jesus, the early Church saw the return of the true Ark of the Covenant (the Mother of God, whose womb was God’s resting place for nine months), and the long-awaited sudden arrival of God in His temple. The long exile of the chosen people was finally ended, that moment for which holy Simeon and Anna had kept vigil with such love for God.

In the second antiphon from First Vespers of today’s feast, this arrival is seen as the consummation of the marriage covenant into which God had entered with Israel: “Adorn your bridal chamber, O Zion, and receive Christ the king; him whom the Virgin conceived, the Virgin has brought forth; after giving birth, the Virgin adores him whom she bore.” Now, if we remember back to the Exodus, and God’s claim on all first-born sons, we see that this espousal is intimately connected with Christ’s self-offering on the Cross. He returns to claim His bride, at the cost of His own blood. There is indeed a certain sorrow to this, but it is that of those who sow in tears, only to reap in joy. In the Presentation is encapsulated the whole of the story of salvation. God the Father, in receiving back the Son of Mary, liberates not only Israel, but through her, all humanity—and not from political slavery in Egypt, but from spiritual slavery to sin. It is significant that, at today’s Mass, we bear candles in procession, just as we will at the Easter Vigil. It is one and the same Passover that we celebrate, from differing perspectives. As such, today’s feast marks the perfect nodal point between the Incarnation and Christmas, and the Paschal Triduum that looms in the future.

 

Scholia on Genesis: Genesis 12:16

“For [Sarai’s] sake, [Pharaoh] dealt well with Abram.”

Abram uses the curious ruse of claiming that Sarai is his sister in order to avoid death at the hands of Pharaoh. This ruse could only work because they were childless. The Apostle writes that “women will be saved through bearing children” [1 Tim 2: 15]. Yet Abram and Sarai are clearly saved here because Sarai had not borne children, in terms of the flesh. We must therefore allow for a spiritual meaning in the Apostle’s words. In fact, he gives us the key in the following phrase: “…if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty.”* These are true “fruits of the Spirit” [Gal 5: 22], and they ought to console those who fear that Sarai may have been unchaste when in Pharaoh’s household. But clearly the bearing of children in this sense means an increase of faith and love, which Sarai demonstrated in her holiness and modesty toward Pharaoh. When Pharaoh sent Abram and Sarai away, he gave them “sheep, oxen, he-asses, menservants, maidservants, she-asses, and camels” [Gen 12: 16].  This accords with the Lord’s own teaching, which He gave to those disciples who were anxious over what to eat and what to drink. “Seek first the kingdom of God”—that is, bear the spiritual fruits of chastity, faith and love—“and all these things will be given you as well.”

*The RSV gives, “If she continues…” Obviously the translators were trying to make sense of the flow of thought on the level of the literal sense. This is our modern method, but I am increasingly suspect of this need to smooth out the text handed on to us. In this sudden turn to the third person plural rather than the expected feminine second person singular, the Fathers would see an invitation to a spiritual reading, which is what we have attempted to provide.

Thoughts, prayers, and actions

Shortly after I entered the Monastery, a man approached me after Mass one day. He invited me to join him to sit in protest, praying outside an abortion clinic. Since I was not allowed to leave the cloister without permission, I explained to him that I was not able to join him, but that I would pray for him. He was clearly disappointed. I suspect that he thought I was offering an excuse and simply didn’t care to go.

Episodes like this raise the entire question of the efficacy of prayer. One commonly sees Christians called out in the media for offering “thoughts and prayers” at a time of tragedy. Indeed, it’s painless to post such sentiments on social media, and so it’s perhaps good that Christians are challenged to demonstrate meaningful actions that back up such words. Offering “thoughts” really does open one to criticism. My thoughts accomplish little as long as they remain inside my head.

Prayer, on the other hand, always involves an Other—God. The truth is that prayer is an action. Praying well, with real faith and devotion, is not always easy. By inviting God into a situation, we bring the potential of new types of insights.  And these, in turn, can lead to new types of actions.

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