Sacred Stones, Sacred Stories

In today’s gospel (Luke 13: 1-9) Luke portrays Jesus as a righteous judge juxtaposed to other not-so-righteous judges who want to ascribe more guilt to those who die dishonorably.

His parable of the fig tree speaks of good resulting from nurturing, patience and guidance. Just as a fig tree bears fruit after it has been given the benefits of moisture, fertilizer and sunshine, so too, we can bear fruit given the growing graces of God.

A plant does not bear fruit quickly. It takes the proper amount of nutrients and time, time for the seed to sprout and grow and then the flower to form and take shape as a fruit. Only after it is grown and ripe can the fruit be picked and eaten.

Not all plants require the same amount of nutrients. Some plants and trees need more rain and some less; some grow best in warmer arid climates and others do well in tropical climates; some need pruning and others rarely require any assistance; some need lots of sun and others need just a minimal amount. To balance all these variables will produce much fruit.

Figs are an ancient desert fruit, and Jesus would know about them and what to expect from a fig tree. To not produce after three years would be most unusual. Perhaps the ground was not fit or perhaps the tree itself had a defect.

The story does not explain, but trees are really not what the lesson is about. It is about what we are feeding ourselves, how much care we are giving to being formed by the right manner of activities.

If we avail ourselves to being fed by the Spirit and nourished by the Word, then we will bear fruit. We have a master gardener ready and able to help us. He will give us what we need, and we will bear fruit in abundance, the fruit of justice and peace, mercy and charity. Our lives will be full of compassion, forgiveness and love.

These are the fruit Jesus desires from us. These are the fruit of true disciples. We will be fruitful and faithful.

May this Lent bear much fruit for our good and the good of the church.

“There is nothing in life which unites and cements so firmly as love. It unites one to the beloved, and more, it transforms the lover into the beloved one.” - Diego de Estrella

Today we observe a Sunday schedule, one in which we step away from our daily work tasks to commit ourselves to prayer and community.

Last Supper mosaic, Adoration Chapel – Clyde

Today St. Matthew shares his account of Jesus’s Last Supper with his followers.

In this pericope, the disciples approach Jesus and ask him where he wants them to prepare for the Passover meal (Mt 26: 17). Jesus instructs his disciples, and off they go to do as he has said.

When we are looking forward to some event, whether with joy and excitement or fear and sadness, we have to prepare. We have to plan. This comes naturally to some of us and not so naturally to others.

Whatever camp we fall into, preparing to enter into the Holy Triduum is more about interior preparations than external plans. We have been putting into order our heart and mind for these 40 days of Lent. We have been doing this through fasting, prayers and alms. We have been trying to align our consciences and our actions with our role model, Jesus Christ, keeping the commandments of loving God and neighbor as ourselves.

May we find ourselves at the banquet table of the Lord with hearts filled with truth and peace and love, knowing that we have been called and justified by grace to take a seat with the disciples.

This is God’s plan. This is Jesus’s labor. This is our instruction. Let us, as disciples, do as Jesus orders and prepare for the Paschal Meal of Love.

“I will sing of your salvation.”

The responsorial psalm for today is taken from Psalm 71. It is a fitting prayer for any day really but especially today as we ponder the first reading from Isaiah’s 49th chapter and John’s gospel account of Judas’s betrayal.

The psalmist is crying out to God for strength, wisdom and refuge. The depth of trust and faith in God comes through the passionate words. It is a love poem between the psalmist and a loving God whose relationship is tried and true.

God is an all-loving God and cannot be anything but loving. This is unsettling for us who tend to put boundaries around our love. Jesus’s love was boundless. He is the way, the truth and the life (Jn 14:6). He is the one we need to model our love after. He was capable of withstanding everything, including abandonment, persecution, mockery and a horrific death because he united himself to God and trusted in God’s refuge.

May all the faithful draw upon this the source of all strength, all love, all good and become united with Jesus Christ who is united with the Father and the Holy Spirit in endless and boundless love. Then we too can sing of salvation.

Today’s gospel reading portrays Jesus in the midst of many people. We focus on two – Mary, the sister to Lazarus, and Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus’s disciples.

Mary breaks open an expensive jar of aromatic spikenard (an aromatic plant) and pours it over the feet of Jesus. Its aroma fills the home. Judas becomes indignant over the “waste” because of what he sees as a way to fill the moneybags for the poor. In Mary’s poorness, her richness outshines Judas’s self-righteous and richness. These two characters’ deeds are the antithesis of the other.

We can offer Jesus our poorness, our inability to save ourselves, and in doing so, become rich in salvation. Or, we can become blind by greed, distrust or self-righteous piety and overlook the gift of eternal life that is ours only in our humble poorness. Whatever our choice, our actions will fill our homes with the sweet aroma of love or the stench of selfishness.

May our thoughts, words and deeds fill our homes and the world with the sweet smells of salvation that Jesus offers and delivers.

St. Andrew (St. Andreas) immortalized in stained glass, appearing in our Clyde Adoration Chapel

Today is the Feast of St. Andrew, the brother of Peter and a fisherman who was a follower of John the Baptist and later became the first disciple of Christ.

We do not know much about the life and times of St. Andrew, but we do know of his devotion to Jesus and his work to share the word of God and of Jesus’s life with others. It is believed he died in Greece, tied to a cross (thus the representation in our stained glass window).

Prayer to St. Andrew:

O glorious St. Andrew, you were the first to recognize and follow the Lamb of God. With your friend, St. John, you remained with Jesus for that first day, for your entire life, and now throughout eternity. As you led your brother, St. Peter, to Christ and many others after him, draw us also to Him. Teach us to lead others to Christ solely out of love for Him and dedication in His service. Help us to learn the lesson of the Cross and to carry our daily crosses without complaint so that they may carry us to Jesus. Amen.

(courtesy of www.saintandrew.us)

(above) The Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary is characterized in this beautiful mosaic, which appears in the nave of our Clyde Adoration Chapel.

Today we remember the visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary to her cousin, Elizabeth.  This visit is all about hospitality.  However, the story does not begin here, but with the Annunciation three months ago.

Mary gave hospitality to God, agreeing to bear Jesus in her womb for nine months and in her heart forever.  This inauguration of “God with us” allows us to bear witness to God and divine grace to others.  It also allows us to recognize the divine in ourselves and others.  As Elizabeth acclaimed of Mary, “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb.”  Mary’s reply, the Magnificat, draws our attention and gratefulness to God the Almighty, the source of our creaturehood.

Let us offer hospitality to God and allow the grace from this eternal visitation to embrace people of all places, races and creeds.  Let us ask “God with us” to help us be co-builders of the kingdom of God.

As we honor and celebrate our moms, living and deceased, let us take a moment and reflect on Mary, the Mother of God, of all the children of God, our mother.

Mary was a woman in love – in love with her husband, Joseph, but also in love with God. Her fiat was a choice she could not refuse because of her deep faith and love of the Almighty.

“Mary will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” (Mt 1:21)

She was willing to follow God’s grace wherever it would take her.  She became the Arc of the Covenant, giving flesh to the Incarnate Word.  Through her, Jesus took on human form and likeness.  Through Mary, Jesus became who God wanted and needed him to be, the Christ.  Through Mary, Our Savior became God with us.

What great love Mary bore for her only son and for humanity. She thwarted social and religious norms and practices in order to give herself totally to God.  The result was a joy she herself knew, and it was glorious yet mysterious.

But it was also heart-piercing.  Mary did not stand in the way of Jesus growing in wisdom and taking on his role, his purpose in life.  She allowed Jesus to go forth and take on the sins of humanity to save all humanity from the darkness of death.  What anguish she must have felt when he was not accepted.  What love she must have had for God to watch her beloved son from God be mocked, tortured and crucified.  Mary also knew the faith and love Jesus had for Almighty God and trusted in God’s fidelity.

When moms (and dads) welcome their children into the world, watch them grow into people with distinct personalities, likes and dislikes, send them off to learn about the world and their role in it, and guide them on the road to independence, they are following Mary’s example.  Mary did what all faithful moms do – she gave Jesus roots and wings.  May all mothers model their lives after Mary, the quintessential mother.

While Easter may be considered over for many, here in the monastery we’re in the middle of the Octave of Easter.

We still have much celebrating, praying and reflection to do. Here is the Easter message prioress general, Sister Pat, shared with us on Easter Sunday:

It was still dark when Mary of Magdala went to the tomb.

The depth of the darkness was not entirely due to the early pre-dawn hour but intensified by Mary’s heaviness of heart and loss of hope at the brutal and tragic death of her beloved Lord. She was there to anoint his body, the final act of love the living can offer the dead. She was there seeking solace in her devastation and trying to restore some dignity to the brutalized remains of the Master.

But there were no bodily remains to be found; only burial cloths left in a puzzling arrangement inside the tomb. The cloth that had covered Jesus’s head was not with the burial cloths but folded up and lying in a separate place. Curious as that might be to us, according to the Hebrew tradition of that day, the message of the folded napkin was clearly understood by a master and his servant.

The tradition demanded that when the servant set the dinner table for the master, he made sure it was set exactly as the master wanted it set. With the table perfectly furnished, the servant would wait, just out of sight, until the master had finished eating. The servant would not dare touch the table until the master was finished.

If the master was done eating, he would rise from the table, wipe his fingers and mouth, and then wad up the napkin and toss it onto the table. This let the servant know it was permissible to clear the table; the wadded napkin meant, “I am finished.”

But if the master got up from the table, folded his napkin, and laid it beside his plate, the servant would not touch the table because the folded napkin meant, “I am coming back.” When Peter and John saw the folded napkin, they knew it for the message it was.

That message, written in code, so to speak, is Jesus’s promise of more to come, of the eschaton that awaits fulfillment. Through our baptism and monastic profession, we are commissioned to collaborate with Him in bringing it closer to fruition. While we are held in the tension between the already-here and the not-yet-fully-realized we have a sense of what Mary, Peter and John experienced in those early hours of that first Easter.

In spite of all rational evidence to the contrary, they knew He was alive. In spite of the present reality of a world where war, inequality and injustice persist, we know He is alive. In spite of our individual realities where selfishness and egoism maintain their grip, we still know He is alive.

Our Risen Lord continues to speak in code to us at the Eucharistic table with each breaking of the bread. It is His assurance to us that He is alive. It is His confirmation to us that the fully realized eschaton we await draws ever nearer to completion. It is His invitation to us to be and to spread the Good News that He is indeed alive – filling us, guiding us, gracing us.

Our Sister Mary Jane Romero, OSB shares insight on the concept of Holy Saturday so others might more fully understand its meaning as we approach it later this week:

On Holy Thursday we are surrounded with rich and beautiful symbols and rituals: the washing of the feet, the breaking of bread, the sharing of one cup, singing, processions, the agape meal; on Good Friday the center of our attention is on the cross and what it means for us as Christians today when our world in many lands is suffering incredible brokenness, not unlike a crucifixion.

Good Friday allows us time to reflect and grapple with the mystery of suffering and death. Then comes Holy Saturday and there is emptiness, the tomb, the silence, the grief. Natures abhors a vacuum – an in-between time – and we hardly know what to do with it.

It is good to have that experience. It is one of incompleteness. Emptiness, with its inherent silence, can be a great teacher. It can also seem to be like a shallow and unproductive obstacle to doing or saying something that is worthwhile. After all, we are people of the WORD, people with a MISSION. How can a day that is so quiet and so strange be made a truly holy Saturday?

A passage from St. Paul speaks powerfully  to me about what this day teaches, giving meaning and also a symbol to hold on to in our time of waiting: “…we carry around in our bodies the dying of Jesus, so that the glory of Jesus may also be revealed in us….” (II Cor 4:10).

Each of us carries a burden within. Sometimes it feels like a sack of sand in our hearts or in our souls. Sometimes it is an unresolved problem with our past, with a friend, or with a decision. Whatever it is, it is heavy, and we long to be freed from its burden. It is at this point that we remember the dying of Jesus, the cross, the quiet tomb. We become that tomb where the dying of Jesus is real: it is now in us.

However, there is a reason we carry the dying of Jesus in our bodies and in our hearts and souls. The second part of Paul’s statement has a SO THAT: “…so that the glory of Jesus may also be revealed in us.”

What a consolation it is to know this! Any burden we hold, whether large or small, has a purpose. It is in and through our bearing the burdens of our lives that the glory of Jesus will be revealed.

If anyone reveals this truth, it is Mary, our Mother of Sorrows.

She truly bore the burden of the dying of Jesus in her body and in her heart and soul. The love she bore her Son in his life and in his death led her to be faithful.

It is her faith that brought her to know the glory of her Son would be revealed to her and to us. I believe that the resurrection of Jesus first happened in Mary’s heart, just as the incarnation happened in her body. Not being a theologian, I can speak only from intuition rather than from doctrinal teaching, but I know that Mary bore the burden of her Son’s dying with an undying belief in the glory to be revealed in him.

(first published in Spirit&Life magazine, March-April 2005)