Holy Cross Monastery Sermons (West Park)

"Jesus as the one executed absorbs the violence inflicted on him – takes it in to his very flesh, thereby exposing once and for all the illegitimacy of the belief that violence can ever be the best or final or even a good response to evil without the violent one becoming the thing being destroyed. The cross is the world’s sign of future hope, the event of love and victory that prefigures the...

" She knew the rules. She had been warned. Yet . . ."

"Peter says: “You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” Where did Peter and the other eleven get their faith? What makes them different from all those who gave up on Jesus and went away? It is clear from all four gospels that the twelve were also plagued by doubt and fear. They suffered at times from an over abundance of pride or a...

"The last thing to do after such an event is to attempt to systematize it, classify it, or analyze it. The living reality of transfiguration unveils its mystery in its own way, continues to reverberate and build courage and faithfulness. Kneeling is a posture which can seem like weakness or passivity, and if misunderstood can become just another pious mask of avoidance. Yet in the presence of...

"Last week we prayed almost every day a collect that dug deeper within me with each repetition. It got to a point where I was mouthing the words along with Roy and with some of my brothers. We prayed, “Have compassion on our weakness, and mercifully give those things which for our unworthiness we dare not and for our blindness, we cannot ask.” This week’s Gospel passage responds well to this...

"The Benedictine call then, is to be a people willing to be passionately caring; a people willing to be a challenge and example to our society as a whole; a people willing to be in the world, but not of the world; a people willing to stand at the margins of society so that we can see what really is; a people willing to meet the pain and inner death that comes with seeing the real. We do it tr...

"We may not think of Benedict as particularly revolutionary, but think what it would mean if the world as it is now were transformed into the community Benedict has in mind... Benedict, through his holy and inspired rule, has given us a plan for conversion of our ways of life to the monastic way – that is a plan not for safety, not for comfort, but for the revolutionary act of building God&ap...

"God loves us, engages with us and with our prayers. Often, it looks nothing like we asked. Will we move on disgruntled and ungrateful? Or will grace open our eyes to the even better gifts we have received? Those gifts that the Spirit, searching our hearts and the heart of God, knew we needed above all? Have faith. And love the Lord of Life and Creation.". . .

"They met at least once, these two, but because they were so different, probably did not like each other. They realized that they had distinct callings and went in different directions! Yet there are common threads in their stories. Each had been called by Jesus but also questioned by him. Peter with Jesus on the beach, after the resurrection - "Do you love me? Paul in a vision of the gl...

. . . "At God's insistence Job must confront what he fears most. He faces the chaos and the cosmos, his immediate situation and the larger picture. As he does, his blinders fall off. He says, "I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you" (42:5). His narrow moral framework gives way to a cosmic vision of the Divine. His question is never answered. He is...

"Beware of the watermelons!"

"How often have we allowed our fear of the losses of aging and financial insufficiency to lead us to the safe choice rather than the prophetic one? How often have we really turned down the volume of our certainty that we have the right answer or the right way forward to listen to the deeper stirrings of the Spirit within our own or another’s heart? Is our first question always “what new work...

"I wonder what Jesus must have said to the disciples after the encounter with the Pharisees at the grainfields? I’m thinking it may have been something like: “thanks a lot for getting me in trouble with the darn Pharisees.” ". . . .

"The nourishment of God brings peace and a restless longing for more. The life of which Jesus speaks is an end of the journey, the filling of desire, only to send us at the same moment onward to new searching and hollows our spiritual bellies to create anew the very appetite he himself feeds. ". . .

"The comingling of gift and self-offering, of fullness and emptiness, is the flow at the heart of divine love. It is how God first created all that is—by pouring out her substance into matter—“the prodigal, squandering herself” to paraphrase Karl Rahner. It is how Jesus redeemed the world, first being given the gift of himself at his baptism, and then consenting to the pouring out of his life...

" It strikes me that for most of my life I have thought of Pentecost as a day for speaking. But the story from Acts is as much about listening as speaking... about drawing breath – spirit...". . .

" Imagine that: a universe in the truest sense of the term...cosmic unity in diversity, complexity interrelated and codependent...created and connected and nurtured and sustained: in love, by love, for love.". . .

. . . "We are called to let go and not cling to our old ways of knowing Jesus Christ so that we can recognize him anew in our lives today—here and now.". . .

" Jesus made his choice. His choice becomes explicit by his life journey to Golgotha on the Cross. He travelled this road with a singular will more fierce than any will or desire that greed, violence and hatred can possibly tame. Jesus’ other choice is God, and in many ways, Jesus’ heart is restless until he rests in God.". . .

"Life is difficult!"

"In 1968 the Kerner Commission established by Lyndon Johnson to examine the causes of the racial riots of the previous few summers released its report which rendered the failings of institutions and social forces that had delivered the country to that moment of racial reckoning, beginning in the Colonial era and continuing through the formation of what were then called ghettos. The report sta...

When you walk down the road. Heavy burden, heavy load. I will rise and I will walk with you. Walk with you. Until the sun don't even shine. Walk with you. Every time. -----Touched By An Angel: Theme Song.

" We tend to do things wrong before we even know what right feels like. But mistakes do not seem to be a problem for God; they are only a problem for our ego that wants to be pure spirit. Living solely out of our ego splits us off from our body. God is an expert at working with mistakes and failure. It is no different for us than it was for Mary. In some ways it may seem simpler to obey arbit...

"What does resurrection look like in the face of this flood of loss? How do we proclaim the good news of God in Jesus Christ as the darkness grows deeper, not lighter, and as the light seems further away than ever ?" . . .

"Let us enter these days as if it were the first time of having our foot washed, with all its tender and awkward associations. Or keeping night vigil, or hearing the Passion narrative sung, or seeing the Easter fire or hearing the Exsultet. Let it be as if we had no idea what to expect next, yet being fully present with eyes and ears and hearts wide open. Let the sharing in the Body and Blood...