Monastery of the Holy Cross

Articles tagged with saints

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]

The Virgin Martyrs

The feast days of the four Virgin Martyrs of the early Roman church frame the celebration of Christmas. St. Cecilia starts us off on November 22, and she is followed by the feast of St. Lucy (December 13), St. Agnes (January 21), and St. Agatha (February 5). On each of these feast, the hymn at the morning office of Lauds uses this text for the fourth verse:

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On the Nativity of Mary

The Church celebrates the birthdays of only three individuals, preferring, in most circumstances, to celebrate instead the entrance of the saints into everlasting life. The three exceptions appear in the monastery’s Deisis, the triptych of icons above the high altar. On either side of Christ Jesus, the Incarnate Word of God, are the two esteemed forerunners of His gospel. On our right is John the Baptist, the greatest prophet and exemplar of the Old Testament or Torah. On the left, the Holy Mother of God, the Queen of Heaven, whose birth was the dawn of salvation. Parallel to John the Baptist, she is frequently named as the greatest disciple of her Son and the exemplar of the new life of grace.

Today’s celebration marks nine months from the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception. The Catholic Church has formulated the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. The large window in the south transept of our church shows Pope Pius IX declaring the dogma infallibly, surrounded by a variety of Church Doctors whose teachings had clarified Mary’s role in salvation history. The pope’s decision to define this dogma has occasioned some controversy and some tension—hopefully creative tension—with the churches of the East, where Our Lady’s sinlessness has been understood in differing ways.

This range of interpretations makes today’s feast all the more significant doctrinally and historically. The first celebrations of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary take place in the East, probably in Syria. This is a clear indication that the devotion of the faithful to the Mother of God included an awareness that her birth was extraordinary.

In fact, the roots of this awareness go back even further, to the remarkable second-century document known to us today as the Protoevangelium of James. Calling this book “apocryphal” is something of a slight, even if it was not ultimately accepted as Holy Scripture. In it, we find the story of Joachim and Anne, an annunciation of the birth of the Virgin (again, parallel to the annunciations by the Archangel Gabriel of the births of John the Baptist and Christ Himself), and the early consecration of the child Mary to service in the temple.

Recent scholarship has made this temple service more plausible. It seems that groups of virgins were designated to weave the curtain that separated the main body of the temple from the Holy of Holies, the same curtain that was torn at the death of Christ. In iconographic depictions of the Annunciation, the Blessed Virgin Mary is shown either reading Scripture, or, in the Eastern fashion, weaving. Whereas the curtain separated the sacred from the profane, Our Lady would, from that moment on, knit together the body of the Savior, Who weds heaven and earth, drawing all things to Himself in a supreme act of reconciliation.

As Solomon’s temple had been understood to be God’s residence on earth, the womb of the Blessed Virgin became the new tabernacle, the tent in which sojourned God the Son before the time of His birth. As the temple was to be kept pure, Mary’s body was understood to be free of the stain of Adam and Eve’s transgression. Quietly, in an obscure home in Nazareth, God prepared a dwelling for Himself and began, with the consent of the Virgin Mary, the restoration of the cosmos.

With this momentous event now widely known and celebrated, the Church hearkens back to an even quieter and more obscure commencement, the entry into the world of the one person chosen to be the Mother of God and the Mother of all the living. And here is the last distinguishing feature I would like to highlight. In ancient patriarchies, the birth of a son was widely anticipated and celebrated. Here is a new occurrence. We celebrate the birth of the great “daughter of Jerusalem,” and it is precisely Mary as woman that we honor. In the Blessed Mother of God we glimpse the full and unique dignity of women. Rightly let us sing together, “Today is the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary whose splendid life illuminates the whole Church!”

[Please come and pray Solemn Vespers with us tonight–Friday–at 7:00 p.m.]

St. John Vianney

In this era of late vocations, it is worthwhile meditating on the extraordinary life of St. John Vianney, who was not ordained until he was nearly thirty, having his studies delayed by his own difficulties with learning Latin, and by the Napoleonic Wars. His prospects were so unpromising that he was given his first assignment at the country town of Ars, population 230. St. John, a farmboy, got lost on his way there.

Yet he would go on to be such a renowned confessor that the French government constructed a special railroad line to accommodate the 20,000 pilgrims who visited this gentle soul every year. It is tempting to think that his bishop and formators were mistaken in making St. John wait for ordination and giving him an unimportant assignment.

Or perhaps is was St. John’s knowledge of his own weakness and insignificance that was his great secret. Going to confession is a humbling act, a beautiful one to be sure, but not always easy. It can be especially difficult when the confessor is critical, or, oddly enough, too lenient and dismissive of one’s heartfelt sorrow for sin. What drew people to the Cure of Ars? Was it his own ability to be humble with the humble, weak with the weak, one with his penitents in their need for forgiveness and gratitude for redemption?