Monastery of the Holy Cross

Et Incarnatus Est – The Prior’s Blog

Scholia on Genesis: Genesis 4:9

hashomer achi anochi?

“Am I my brother’s keeper?”

The Hebrew word order places a square emphasis on the word ‘I’.  The sense then is, “Is my brother’s keeper supposed to be me?”—with the possible additional implication that God should have prevented the murder of Abel, since He knows everything.  It can’t be stressed enough that the use of questions by God in the early chapters of Genesis should not be understood in a ‘folk’ sense of an anthropomorphized ‘god’ who doesn’t know what is happening and so needs to inquire.  Rather, these question need to be seen as a pedagogical tool that God is using to educate the first human beings.

Cain’s counter-accusation suggests a kind of bitterness.  It is as if Cain were saying, “Abel is Your favorite, after all.  You accepted his sacrifice and not mine.  If You cared about him so much, why didn’t You find a way to protect him from me?”

Indeed, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai makes just this observation: “When God asked Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ Cain answered “Am I my brother’s keeper?  You are God.  You have created man.  It is Your task to watch him, not mine.  If I ought not to have done what I did, You could have prevented me from doing it.”  This reads like the victim mentality so prevalent in our world today.

Incarnational Meditations on the Rosary: The Agony in the Garden

The Sorrowful Mysteries are, in many ways, the easiest to pray ‘incarnationally’.  The humanity of Jesus is on full display, and our own experience of suffering typically provokes us to prayer more readily than does joy.  What we find in the pairing of the Sorrowful and Glorious Mysteries parallels the traditional stages of the interior life, the active or ascetical followed by the contemplative.  We put to death the desires of the flesh in order to rise in a spiritual manner and follow Christ to the Father.

How do we recapitulate the Agony in the Garden?  Clearly, we do this when we are faced with a situation that brings with it fear, an indication that we may anticipate pain of some kind in our future.  So when duty requires us to say difficult things to someone, or to begin a new job outside of our present competence, we are confronted with our human nature wishing that there were some way around these unpleasant experiences.

These situations can be somewhat abnormal, however.  Our Lord’s agony can also be a spur for the small, quotidian sacrifices that discipleship requires.  Not looking with lust or not harboring anger in my heart might not immediately cause me great suffering, in the sense that we think of suffering.  But it does require me to expend effort in a negative way that doesn’t seem to produce much fruit.  It is an inconvenience to be borne, and this bearing of irritations and uncongenial actions is at the heart of the quintessential monastic virtue of patience.  The Latin patior means both ‘to suffer’ and ‘to allow’.  When I take Christ’s instruction to heart literally, I must suffer or allow all kinds of minor discomforts.  Each morning, we should join Christ in the garden seeking that the Father’s will be done in us.  In our small, hidden sufferings, by which we uproot any affection for even venial sin, we will give glory to the Father, and Christ will be more clearly present in us.

Scholia on Genesis: Genesis 4:5

“So Cain was very angry (vayyichar l’qayin m’od), and his countenance fell.”

More literally, this reads, “Great wrath was to Cain”; or “Cain had great wrath.”  Anger here undergoes a kind of substantiation; it appears as something real and substantial.  The serpent has gone underground and no longer appears directly to human beings, but instead influences at the periphery of consciousness.  God warns Cain about this:  “Sin is couching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.” [4: 7]  That is to say, we must learn to guard the door of our thoughts and not allow in sinful suggestions.  If we are not vigilant, these thoughts become a part of us and seem insurmountable.  But this is an illusion based on past negligences.

Homily for the Solemnity of Saint Benedict

Put on the armor of God. 

This is the language of battle, even of war.  Saint Paul writes about spiritual armor and spiritual warfare in several of his letters.  But here, in today’s second reading from Ephesians, he is referring to the “panoply,” the full armor of a professional soldier.  He explains why this is necessary:  we must be ready to ward off attacks by principalities, powers, world rulers of this present darkness, evil spirits in the heavens.

If you were to read the accounts of the early monks, you would see that this language was common among the fathers of Christian monasticism.  The biography of Saint Antony the Great, who, together with Saint Benedict, is depicted in the deesis above our altar, is filled with all kinds of spiritual battles between Antony and a host of demons.  Saint Benedict, writing almost two hundred years later, alludes to the great hermits like Antony in the first chapter of his Rule, where he says that hermits fight hand-to-hand with the Devil.  Saint Benedict’s own biography, written by Saint Gregory the Great, also has several stories of Benedict going toe-to-toe with the Devil and his underlings.  He shows that the power of Jesus Christ in his saints is far greater than the power of evil.

But the Lord still wants us to fight, to enter the lists of this spiritual warfare.  Over the course of the centuries, the common teaching drifted away from a realistic depiction of demons as having visible bodies and doing physical harm to monks.  Writers came to the realization—or perhaps just preferred to believe—that spiritual warfare happens primarily in the realm of the mind.  Demons test us by means of thoughts.  The principal thoughts include lust, gluttony, avarice, anger, sadness, vainglory and pride.

You might recognize this list as being very similar to the more contemporary list of the seven capital sins.  That represents the latest development in the tradition, bringing us up to the present day.  Perhaps on the feast of Saint Benedict we can take stock of what has been lost amidst these changes.  Perhaps we can ask whether monks and nuns might not have a significant contribution to make to today’s Church in recalling the dynamic of spiritual warfare.

When we talk about battling against vices, I suspect that we tend to think that we are battling ourselves.  But all human action begins with thought.  Often, we simply are not aware of the thought that precedes the action, because we aren’t attentive to our thoughts.  They can seem to have a persuasive force from habit, from social custom, and so on.

In fact, once we start paying attention to thoughts, we might start wondering where they come from.  Do they come from us or from somewhere else, or both?  So it is that monks and nuns, especially of the contemplative orders, have a special role to play in this spiritual battle.

In the best-case scenario, such monks and nuns are on the front lines.  We withdraw from the world and practice self-silencing to clarify what is going on in our minds:  to notice the fact that actions follow thoughts, and to catch thoughts before they become actions.  Then we can ask the question:  does this thought come from God? Or does it come from the Devil, from Principalities, from powers, or from other lower-ranking demons?

Saint Benedict is the patron of Western Europe, which is probably the last distinction he would have anticipated.  Like ourselves, he lived at a time of complete political upheaval.  Ten years before his birth, the last of the Western Roman Emperors abdicated.  This was followed by the terrible Gothic Wars, as the Eastern Byzantine Emperor Justinian tried to take back the Italian peninsula and reunite it with what was left of the old Roman world.  The end result was widespread destruction all around Benedict’s monastery of Monte Cassino and the beginning of a period of cultural hibernation.

Saint Benedict did not seek a political solution to the grave disorders of his day.  Rather he sought, in all simplicity, a life of solitude where he could focus on his own fidelity to the witness of Jesus Christ.  Where he could meditate day and night on God’s word and put it into practice in the most radical way possible.  Where he could watch his thoughts, purify his actions, and enter into real spiritual struggle by saying “no” to all kinds of temptation.

The first result was that others noticed his holiness and wanted to imitate him.  This led him to write his Rule for monks, but also to take up the work of caring for others, of bringing Christ to the world.  Eventually his way of life became so popular, and his Rule so widely recognized for its practical wisdom and fidelity to the gospel, that by the year 1100, all of Europe was dotted with Benedictine monasteries.

Under their influence, the European Middle Ages as we now know them came to be.  There arose new gospel institutions like the Truce of God, chivalry—which is the knightly warrior code civilized into service of the poor and weak—devotion to our Lady, and prayers for the dead.  All these practices, pervaded by the spirit and rhythms of the liturgy, flourished under the influence of Saint Benedict and his decision to arm himself and do battle for the one True King.

By withdrawing from the world, Saint Benedict and his disciples were able to replace the founding assumption of the previous world, the old Roman world founded in paganism and a drive for power, with a new vision of life under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

May God help us to be worthy disciples of this great man.  And may his example light a fire in the hearts of many young men and women, who might choose to fight the ills of this age not by becoming internet influencers or political operatives, but by humbly submitting all thoughts to Jesus Christ.

Scholia on Genesis: Genesis 3:14

“The Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this…”

God does not ask the serpent why he did what he did, as God asked Adam and Eve in turn.  This is an indication that the serpent cannot be taught.  God does not adopt a pedagogical tone toward the serpent as He does toward Adam and Eve.  This is another hint of the ‘proto-evangelion’: God is against the serpent but for humankind.

 

Incarnational Meditations on the Rosary: The Institution of the Eucharist

In what sense can we recapitulate the institution of the Holy Eucharist, unless it is by accepting daily the death of Christ in our bodies?  There is only one Eucharistic sacrifice:  we do not sacrifice Christ again and again, but our approach to the altar is always to the same Christ, the same Supper.  We experience it differently because we change through time.  For this reason, we must institute the sacrifice each day in our own lives, taking up the cross daily and following Christ to Calvary to offer ourselves in union with Him for the salvation of the world.  When we do this, we receive our resurrected lives back again, at least in promise, in preparation for the full effects of resurrection in the world to come.  But for now, when we re-institute the Eucharistic sacrifice in our lives, we offer to the world a promise greater than any other gift that we might offer.  Indeed, all of our good works in some way must point back to this reality:  we embrace dying in Christ in order to embrace True Life in Christ.  We do not offer simple human camaraderie in our works of mercy.  We must offer our very selves, and in such a way as to offer Christ.

Scholia on Genesis: Genesis 3:12

“The woman that You gave me.”

It is remarkable how passive Adam turns out to be.  The one who boldly named all of the animals now finds himself, or at least portrays himself, as a hapless victim:  “You gave me…she gave me…and…I ate.”  Already toil, thorns, and thistles have entered!  “The sluggard says, ‘There is a lion in the road!  There is a lion in the streets!’ (Proverbs 26: 13)  Poor me!

Incarnational Meditations on the Rosary: The Transfiguration

In the Transfigured Lord, we see a glimpse of our own future, in glorified bodies, radiant like the sun.  The illumination we received in baptism, as the counter to the darkening that our minds underwent because of sin, eventually suffuses even the veil of the body itself.  Evagrius writes of seeing the light of one’s own soul, and this imagery is very much alive in Orthodox spirituality.

Such a transformation takes place only after long effort under the influence of grace, the doing of many good works in charity.  But it also presupposes prayer and the renewal of one’s mind.  The whole of the soul must be refashioned according to the model of Christ.  When we put on the mind of Christ and, over all the virtues, put on love, we become transparent bearers of the uncreated light of the indwelling Holy Trinity.

Will we ever strive for such a beautiful gift—such a gift to the world, which longs for beauty and transcendence—if no one ever meditates on our calling to live transfigured lives?  Will we follow Christ to a place to be alone with Him, to be transformed by the light of His face and the sound of His voice?

Scholia on Genesis: Genesis 3:11

“Who told you that you were naked?”

We perhaps hear God speaking in an angry tone, which is unfortunate, since the text indicates no such thing.  The fact that no one answers the question should be taken, not as an indication of God’s ‘impatience’, but as representing fearful silence on the part of Adam and Eve.

Who told them that they were naked?  No one, of course; they simply became aware of this terrible fact.  They needed no one to tell them; nor does God need to find out.  Again, I suspect that we tend to hear His following question (“Have you eaten…?”) as God piecing together the crime, but this is clearly absurd.  Why, then, does God ask this?

God does all things for the purpose of teaching and forming His creatures toward fullness of life and understanding.  Adam and Eve, pondering this question, would have to answer as we did above:  “No one told us that we were naked.  We discovered it after eating the fruit.”  It is true: they now know good and evil for themselves.

Incarnational Meditations on the Rosary: The Preaching of the Kingdom of God

We certainly need apostles in today’s Church, but what is the Lord Himself actually doing while the Twelve are out preaching?  We are not directly told.  However, in a passage from John’s gospel with many parallels (chh. 15-17), Jesus prays that the Holy Spirit may keep the Apostles in truth.  Rejoicing in the Spirit, He gives thanks to the Father for the mission.  Finally, He prays that all may be one, as He and the Father are one [17: 22].  For this purpose He consecrates Himself by His death, that the Apostles may also be consecrated.

Now, that Jesus may have been praying very much in this vein during the pre-Resurrection mission (surely the model for the post-Pentecost mission!) is confirmed by the following verses in Luke’s gospel.  Upon the return of the seventy, He “rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, ‘I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth…” [10: 21].  This paragraph is known by Biblical scholars as a ‘Johannine logion’, meaning a saying of the Lord’s that sounds like it was transplanted from John’s gospel.  So there is clearly overlap here.

In any case, if we wish to meditate on this mystery in an Incarnational way, we must learn to recapitulate in our own lives the life of Christ.  We must allow for the possibility that our contribution to the Church’s mission might entail the self-immolation that is a life of ceaseless prayer, perhaps even with aspects of the cloister.  Christ is ‘hidden’ during this mission, like St. Thérèse of Lisieux, in order to strengthen the Apostles in a mystical fashion.  We do this when we rejoice in the Holy Spirit, give thanks to the Father, and pray that our leaders in the faith may all be one.

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