Monastery of the Holy Cross

Articles tagged with Peter

Salvation Is Not From This World

[The following is the homily that I preached at the Solemn Profession of Br. Anthony Daum, OSB, on Sunday, January 17, 2021]

At the moment, in the midst of so much uncertainty, even turmoil, there would seem to be nothing more irrelevant than a solemn monastic profession in a small monastery. Of course, anyone who knew Abraham as he set off from the city of Ur [Genesis 12; first reading today] would have felt that his life was irrelevant to the fate of the superpowers of the day, Babylon and Egypt. For that matter, scarcely any first-century Roman of any importance would have seen a group of a dozen Jewish ex-fishermen being of any relevance to the future of the Roman Empire.

In the gospel of Luke, Jesus warns us not to judge events and persons by worldly standards: “What is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God [Luke 16: 15].”

So what might be the meaning of our Brother Anthony’s intention to abandon himself to God in the monastic life, and its relevance to us who are gathered here as witnesses?

God made us for Himself, and this means that we have a capacity for God, the capax Dei, as the Latin theologians would put it. This is an amazing, almost unbelievable reality. But it does correspond to our deepest longings. Saint Augustine says that because we are made for God, our hearts are restless until we rest in Him.

Our capacity for God means that our desire is potentially infinite. Any attempt to satisfy ourselves through material comfort, political power, or even good health will fail at some level. Not only that, but any finite thing or condition I obtain still leaves an infinite distance between my desire and its satisfaction.

The temptation for many of us today is to double down on our efforts to secure finite goods, or to fear their loss. This produces no small amount of anxiety; we encounter the interior abyss meant to be filled with divine life and try to fill it with perishing things. In our present world, we have no lack of perishable things dangled before us, promising a relief to our anxiety. And not only that; politicians promise safety, prosperity, and civility. Or, in our contemporary situation, it is perhaps just as likely that politicians warn us that we will lose safety, prosperity, and civility if we vote for the other side.

But whatever is promised to us as a salve for our infinite desire, this promise is ultimately vain. And so it is that our Lord, as well as His disciple Saint Paul, urge us to rethink, to reassess our priorities and desires, to be renewed in our minds and see as God sees.

Far from urging us to a safe and prosperous life, Jesus teaches us that we must lose our lives in order to gain them [Matthew 16: 24-27; today’s gospel]. Just before He gave this teaching, our Lord rebuked Saint Peter for clinging to a worldly mode of thought: “Get behind me, Satan!…you are not on the side of God, but of men [Matthew 16: 23].”

What had Peter done to deserve this rebuke? He expressed a sense of scandal in the idea that the Messiah must suffer many things from the authorities, and to be put to death. And are we not all tempted to think like Peter? We often don’t like to think about the renunciations that God asks of us. Sometimes they seem entirely too difficult.

And yet, from another perspective, is not this truly the gospel, a word of hope and renewal? After all, if we were to rely on our own efforts to solve our present political problems, would we not be on the brink of despair?

What the gospel proclaims is that our salvation, the fulfillment of our desires, comes entirely from outside the flailing pandemonium of our world. All that God asks of us is to live in accordance with the promises we made at baptism, that moment when God’s infinite life was poured into our hearts from outside the world. In today’s Collect, the opening prayer after the Gloria, the Church shows us that solemn monastic profession is a sign that the sanctifying grace of baptism has been and is flourishing mysteriously in the life of this man. His yes to God is a sign of God’s quiet power at work in the world, calling us out of the world.

We will symbolize this dramatically when Brother Anthony lies prostrate beneath a funeral pall as we sing together the litany, invoking the presence of God’s saints who have triumphed before us and are united with us as members of Christ’s Body.

But let me again quickly shift perspective, that this way to God through self-abandonment is only open because God first entered our world as one of us. God comes from outside of this world to reveal to us that our homeland, that yearned-for place of rest and peace, is not found in this world. And if we seek peace, we must turn our eyes again and again to Jesus Christ and His saints. And we must have men and women willing to leave everything behind to show us how this is done, and to lead the way.

Thus our celebration today will move each of us closer to this new and purified world, mysteriously replacing the old world that is passing away, that world to which we cling so desperately as to make life miserable! Freed from the compulsion to seek satisfaction in things of this world, we will be fortified against the temptations to sin that come from anxiety about the world, the temptation to skimp on justice, to give in to anger and sadness, to seek escape in pleasures of the flesh. And as we point others toward our true home, toward genuine rest and peace, may we learn to embrace the sufferings that come with being in this land of exile, that our faith may bring us joy and consolation, and may win many others to Christ.

A Tale of Two Cities, Violence and Mercy

One of the prominent and baffling themes in ancient mythology is the idea that famous cities were founded on fratricide. In the Bible Cain is the founder of the first city [Genesis 4: 17], and in the pagan world, the most famous example is that of Rome. Rome is named after Romulus, its traditional founder, who was also the murderer of his twin brother Remus.

Perhaps this mythology is less puzzling when we recall that the word politics is rooted in the Greek word polis or city. Most of us are aware that at some level politics seems to require violence, or at least the threat of violence. Rome went on to have a storied history, one in which violence was typically front and center. When God became man, He also became a victim of Rome’s savagery, as did today’s martyrs, Peter and Paul.

Relations between brothers in the Bible are frequently violent. Here Amnon is murdered by men sent by his half-brother Absalom. Both were sons of King David.

Peter and Paul form an interesting contrast with Romulus and Remus. But we shouldn’t be too quick to place the pairs on opposite sides of the problem of violence. After all, both Peter and Paul showed themselves capable of righteous brutality. Peter, according to tradition, drew the sword against the high priest’s slave, and Paul was attendant at the murder of Saint Stephen and bore letters of arrest against the Christians of Damascus. Furthermore, Peter acquiesced, as did the other disciples, with Rome’s violence inasmuch as he allowed Jesus to be dragged away without raising his voice in protest against this manifest injustice. Before the resurrection, he acted unthinkingly, but tellingly, as if the capacity for violence gave the city of Rome real authority.

What changed them both was the encounter with the mysterious and fathomless mercy of Jesus Christ the founder of the city of God, the heavenly city. The Apostles discovered that there is no place for a kind of purified violence in the service of God, that what they believed to be their righteousness, their willingness to fight other human beings for the sake of God was, in fact, a unwitting participation in the machinery that leads inexorably to the death of Jesus Christ. This is explicit in the life of Saint Paul, whom Jesus confronted directly with the question, “Why are you persecuting me?”

This encounter with God’s mercy in Jesus Christ convinced them both that there is no sacred calculus that pits the righteous against the unrighteous, and therefore gives permission to the righteous to flatter themselves by focusing on the sins of others. Or, to put it more bluntly, Peter and Paul discovered that we are all a part of the problem, and man’s anger does not work God’s justice [James 1: 20]. Or, as Saint Paul put it to the Romans, “God has consigned all men to disobedience.” Why? “That he may have mercy upon all. [Romans 11: 32]”

It is this mercy that bound Peter and Paul to Jesus and so to each other. And if we wish to have true peace, let us today with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we too may receive His mercy [cf. Hebrews 4: 16].

 

Just as it did for Peter and Paul, this encounter will require us to change, to renounce, in fact, the City of Man, founded as it is on division, exploitation, and violence. What the early monks discovered is that this renunciation of the world requires a renunciation of the passions, those distortions of desire that pit me against others, leading to their exploitation for my pleasure or ease. Again, Saint James: “What causes war and what causes fightings among you? It is not your passions [James 4: 1]?” In other words, we must seek to follow the examples of Peter and Paul, if not by literal martyrdom, then by death to ourselves in the form of ascetical self-denial. May this important work always be accompanied by and draw life from the peace and joy of knowing the surpassing love of Christ Jesus, Who loved us and gave Himself for us [cf. Galatians 2: 20].

[homily for the Solemnity of Ss. Peter and Paul, A.D. 2020]

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