Portsmouth Abbey

2020 Jan Reflections

- homilies and reflections
  
  January 1-11
  
  The Current provides another window into the weekly spiritual journey of our community by offering summaries of the homilies from our daily conventual Masses, as well as additional reflections from the monastic community.
  
  gregory of nyssa
  
  Father Edward Mazuski
  
  (Homily of January 10)
  
  Eight days ago, we celebrated the memorials of St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory Nazianzen: two important doctors of the Church from the area known as Cappadocia, in modern-day Turkey. Today, we celebrate the feast of St. Basil’s brother, St. Gregory of Nyssa, the third saint who makes up the group known as the Cappadocian Fathers. They lived during one of the most Theologically chaotic, as well as Theologically vibrant periods in the history of the Church: the late fourth century. Even though Arianism had been condemned at the council of Nicea in 325, there continued to be many Arians and Semi-Arians who denied Christ’s divinity. In addition, there was a group known as the Pneumatomachi, which means combators against the Spirit, who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Further, there were those who followed Apollinaris of Laodicea, who denied the full humanity of Christ. In short, regarding Christology and the Trinity, just about every heresy possible was being taught. Although he had a reputation for being more softly-spoken than his brother, St. Gregory joined him in arguing for the Orthodox faith, using both the rhetorical skills and learning he had developed in pagan schools, as well as a deep life of prayer that gave him insight into the mysteries of God. As St. John tells us that Jesus Christ is testified to by the water, the Blood and the Spirit, so St. Gregory was able to increase in knowledge of the mysteries of Jesus Christ through pagan philosophical knowledge, theological knowledge studied through the Scripture, and enlightenment through prayer. The Orthodox teaching this lead him and the other Cappadocian Fathers to about Christology and the Trinity is cemented in the Nicene Creed we proclaim every Sunday: a Creed that was mostly finalized at the Council of Constantinople in 381, which St. Gregory attended. So, it is fitting that we celebrate all three of the Cappadocian Fathers during the season of Christmas, as we celebrate the revelation to us of the Holy Trinity: three persons, and one God, and the central mystery of Christology: the incarnation of Christ, the God-man.
  
  divine love, human love
  
  Father Gregory Havill
  
  (Homily of January 9, 2020)
  
  We learn to love by being loved. The first words of the letter that is our reading today (1 John 4:19-5:4), that we love God because He loved us first, are a theological fact. There is a quite direct psychological fact that we learn to love only by being loved. The two powers of the soul, the will and the intellect, are quite different. The fundamental power of the intellect is human perception. The fundamental power of the will is human love. We do not learn to think by being thought about. We don’t learn to perceive by being perceived. This shows a profound difference between these two powers of the soul. Of the many things that we can think about – a human level of mercy and a divine level of mercy, a human level of justice and a divine level of justice, a human level of hope and a divine level of hope – all of these reflect different expressions of the same thing. Human mercy always has to do with feeding someone, in some way or some form; divine mercy always has to do with the forgiveness of sin, in some form or some way. These are rather different but the same. In the case of love, they are absolutely parallel. We love God because He loved us first. We learn to love by being loved. They are absolutely parallel, I think, which very much points out that while faith, hope, and love are the virtues, love is the one that will last. We have already experienced this when we love, even for selfish reasons. It really doesn’t behoove us, as John says in the last sentences of our first reading to not love others – if we cannot love our brother we cannot say that we love God. In order to make this text show us how to love we need to purge ourselves and our human love of those little bits of selfishness that have affected all of our lives, each day just a little bit more.
  
  the prayer of our lord
  
  Father Paschal Scotti
  
  (Homily of January 8)
  
  There is something quite striking in today’s Gospel. Not the cowardice and cluelessness of the apostles - that’s a given. It is the fact that Jesus went off into the mountain to pray. He, who is the son of God made man, who has been anointed in the power of the Spirit, goes off to pray, to be with his father. That’s a good thing for us to be aware of. You never lose time, you never miss out in giving time to prayer. The more you pray, the more insight, the more joy, the more energy, the more profundity of experiences. You waste a lot less time: you learn what’s important and what’s not important. For our Lord Jesus Christ it was important for him to go off to the mountain to pray. It is not the only time he does this. It is an indication that we too should give serious time, significant time, to prayer, and gain the same power, insight, and energy, the communion with the father, as he did.
  
  the multiplication
  
  Abbot Matthew Stark
  
  (Homily of January 7)
  
  The multiplication of the loaves and fishes is a foretelling as it were of the mystery of the Eucharist, of the presence of our Lord multiplied throughout the world, so to speak. This is what Saint John Chrysostom the great father of the church says: “We must reverence God everywhere; we must not contradict him even if what he says seems contrary to our reason and intelligence. This ought to be our behavior at the Eucharistic mysteries too. We must not confine our attention to what the senses can experience but hold fast to his word, for his word [“This is my Body; this is the cup of My blood”] cannot deceive.” Pope Saint Leo XIII says somewhere: “There I no doubt that in the mystery of the Eucharist alone all supernatural reality is contained in a unique way.” May we ourselves be open to that reality today, and throughout our lives.
  
  following christ: elizabeth ann seton
  
  Father Edward Mazuski
  
  (Homily of January 4, 2020)
  
  Our gospel (John 1:35-42) today tells us a story from early on in Jesus’ ministry, when John the Baptist points him out to his disciples and says, “Behold the Lamb of God,” and they follow him. From his early followers we see Andrew and Peter. And so what does it mean for them to follow Christ? Well, that’s answered from the first reading (1 John 3:7-10): to act in righteousness, just as God is righteous, because as Saint John tells us, whoever sins belongs to the devil, because the devil has sinned from the beginning. So our life must be spent in being begotten by God, and being begotten by Him who cannot commit sin. A model of this life of following Christ in true faith, with burning zeal and living in righteousness, is Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, who we celebrate today. She is the first truly American Saint, born in the United States of America. She had a burning zeal for Christ. After she became a widow, she converted to Catholicism, despite the hardships that that involved, and founded the first religious order in the United States, the Sisters of Charity, and founded the first American Catholic school in Maryland. So let us follow her model and inspiration.
  
  the truth of forgiveness
  
  Father Gregory Havill
  
  (Homily of January 3, 2020)
  
  Among the things that John the Baptist says in our reading (John 1:29-34) is that Jesus takes away sins. I think that is a much more vast mystery and more joyful thing then we can possibly imagine. It bears thinking about how the forgiveness of sins isn’t just God saying: well it really wasn’t all that bad – it was that bad. Well, it really wasn’t your fault – well it was my fault. It is not about turning and looking the other way from our sins. It is not God covering our sins over as if they really didn’t happen. It literally means the taking away of our sins, the removal of our sins. We are re-created in the sacrament of penance, in baptism, in the forgiveness of sins. We are re-created anew, completely. Many theologians, from the church fathers down to the moderns have said that the forgiveness of sins is the re-creation of our souls. It is in fact a greater mystery than the original creation from nothing. It is a much more mysterious and profound thing then we can possibly imagine. I think it bears great witness during the season that we take advantage of the sacrament of confession and take that opportunity for the grace of forgiveness.
- grievance and grace
  
  Abbot Christopher Jamison
  January 11
  
  Abbot Christopher Jamison, Abbot President of the English Benedictine Congregation, recently completed his quadrennial Visitation to the monastery. He offered this homily at conventual Mass on Saturday morning, January 11.
  
  He must increase, I must decrease. What is there about the Lord that must increase? What is there about me that must decrease? The desert fathers were clear about what must decrease in monks: negative thoughts must decrease, because negative thoughts lead to negative actions. There are different lists of these thoughts, from different desert fathers. I would like to add one of my own to the list. Grievance.A sense of grievance can become a common feature of conversation in any society, be at lay or monastic. It is worth checking how much of my thinking and speaking is given over to grievances - about neighbors, about society, about the government. Grievance can easily become the standard currency of conversation in a monastic community, or a faculty common room, or a faculty canteen. This currency of grievance is corrosive of Christian living. That call, “I must decrease,” includes, “I must decrease grievance.” He must increase. The Christian tradition here of what must increase is grace. What is the sign of grace? The sign of grace is gratitude, the opposite of grievance. Gratitude has the fundamental element of conversation, of that which fills my thoughts, morning, noon, and night. Gratitude drives out grievance. Yet, how will I deal with meeting an injustice? An injustice means that I need grace to overcome it, not opportunities to express a grievance. Injustice is when a person’s well-being is threatened, even their own life at risk. This is not the same as a personal grievance, although sometimes grievance can be dressed up as injustice, to mask what it is – a personal slight or a disagreement. So, we ask that the Lord‘s grace might increase, to enable us to be filled with gratitude, to know when we are see an injustice and to act to challenge it. Grace is needed to make that discernment. But sometimes we need to recognize that in fact the grace is to turn personal upset into an opportunity for conversion. More often than not, grievance is about my being slighted, ignored, undervalued. Pride and vanity are the two deadliest of the thoughts in the desert tradition. Are they the deadly sin of today’s first reading? Perhaps. So we pray that we might be saved from pride or vanity, and ask that they may be replaced by a deep sense of gratitude for the grace that the Lord gives us day in and day out. I must decrease grievance, he must increase grace. Every day our monastic prayer begins, “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall declare your praise.“ Let us in this give thanks for the grace of faith, and the grace of monastic vocation, and ask that our mouths may always be filled with praise and gratitude to the Lord. That way, the Lord will surely increase and I will surely decrease.
  
  conversions
  
  Father Michael Brunner
  
  On Friday, January 17, Fr. Michael spoke to the School about his religious journey. Being asked to speak of "his conversion ," Fr. Michael offered the following recounting of a spiritual path frequently encountering moments of conversion, in fact dedicated through the vows of a Benedictine to a life of conversion.
  
  1. Good morning. What I will speak about this morning are events from my life. I experienced them, so naturally I find them somewhat interesting. There is no guarantee you will, so I have provided pictures to accompany my story, so you can look at them if you get bored.
  
  2. Before I say anything else, I want to say this. Whatever else has happened or I have thought or done, I have always believed in God, And God has made his presence known to me in many ways. I have been acutely aware that God believes in me. God has a plan for us. We can fit into it or not, as we choose. If we choose not, God always keeps the door open. He never stops inviting.
  
  3. I have been asked to speak today about my conversion. They certainly had in mind my conversion to Islam and back to Christianity. But I have had many conversions, not just one definitive turning in a new direction. And then others have asked me why I became a monk. That was a conversion too.
  
  4. It’s interesting that the most comprehensive of the three vows Benedictines take is about conversion. But it’s ongoing conversion, conversion every day, an unending conversation with God that changes you. So it’s appropriate that I ended up a Benedictine monk, vowed to this kind of conversion.
  
  5. My whole life has been a conversation with God, from as early as I can remember until now.
  
  6. This conversation has led to my many conversions becoming an upward rising spiral rather than simply turning around in circles.
  
  7. It began in 1950. I was born in Davenport Iowa, the only person in my extended family not born in or around Rochester NY. My sister says the family was not that religious until I came along. Maybe they started praying for protection then. My first turning in a new direction was the family returning to Rochester NY before I was two years old. We were a very close family. It was an unbreakable rule to have dinner together every night and converse about all kinds of things, usually cultural, political, national and international news. I learned a lot very quickly from this.
  
  8. My family was and is very German. So I grew up not being overly fond of France. From a very young age I was very affected by the news films of the very bloody Algerian War of Independence, and the conversations it engendered in my family. There were a lot of atrocities committed by the French against the civilian population. Then there was the French involvement in the Suez war of 1956, when I first became aware of the Palestinian refugees. I very much wanted to hurry and grow up so I could go to Algeria and fight the French. Injustice, especially against the poor or marginalized, has always angered me.
  
  9. I had a Catholic education, as did my brothers and sister, from kindergarten through high school. I graduated from high school in 1968. But while in high school I had a conversion.
  
  10. In April and May, 1963 there was a major campaign for civil rights and an end to segregation in Birmingham Alabama. Violence directed against the Black demonstrators, particularly against teenagers and children, was horrific. This made a big impression on me. Later in August of 1963, my family drove through Virginia to visit my brother in the Navy. There I saw segregation first hand, and how African Americans were confined to separate but unequal substandard facilities. We were in Washington, D.C. one week before MLK’s historic March on Washington. The TV was full of warnings to stay away from the Mall because violence was expected. Of course the march was peaceful, and I was inspired by MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
  
  11. In 1964, Rochester was one of the cities in the Northeast that experienced riots in the inner city in response to police brutality. This was hard for me to understand at the time. The only Black people I saw in Rochester were the cleaning women who came into the neighborhood during the day and the maintenance man at the parish school. At any rate, I was pretty sure things were better in Rochester than in the south.
  
  12. So it was a revelation to me when I began working at a day camp in the inner city in 1965. I was outraged at the conditions in which people lived, even in burned out houses. I was outraged at the injustice and prejudice directed against them. I was outraged at the racism that existed in my city, in many of my neighbors and friends, some of whom refused to have anything more to do with me because I was associating with and advocating for African Americans. But I was pretty sure Jesus would be on the side of the poor and people who were being put down. Bishop Sheen, a TV celebrity, arrived in 1966 and turned my high school into a school to develop Christian leaders. We had innovative teachers. Douglas Hyde, a former communist leader in the UK who became a Catholic activist; there was a psychologist, and an Anglican priest scripture scholar. I began tutoring at an inner city parish. I worked all summer at an enrichment program at another parish. I established a Big Brother program at that parish school with my high school classmates. I began working with civil rights organizations, notably MLK’s Poor People’s March on Washington
  
  13. The year I graduated from high school was a turbulent year, called the year that changed history. I was shaken by MLK’s assassination, but devastated by RFK’s, who was looking like he could be president. He lingered for a day before he died. I prayed then offering God an exchange of my life if RFK would live. My offer was not accepted. These deaths made me more angry and more eager to be active and to make a difference.
  
  14. I joined the Josephite Fathers and Brothers, a religious order founded after the civil war to care for African Americans because white priests then refused to. Phillip Berrigan, brother of Jesuit Daniel Berrigan, was a Josephite – active in the anti-war movement as well as in civil rights. After two years of college I went through their novitiate in Delaware.
  
  15. I was professed and sent to Howard University in Washington D.C., a center of Black activism and social theory and political thought. My major was sociology. I studied Philosophy at Catholic University. A close conservative friend of mine said of a picture of me that I looked like a young Karl Marx.
  
  16. There was certainly an awareness of Islam in the movement for civil rights. On campus and everywhere in the Black community were well dressed young men selling the “Muhammad Speaks” paper. There was the legacy of Malcolm X, the current examples of Muhammad Ali and Kareem Abdul Jabbar. Although I met Muhammad Ali once, most impressive were the Muslims I met whose lives had been changed by Islam.
  
  17. The turbulent times continued in America. The Vietnam War and the anti-war movement were taking attention away from civil rights and the anti-poverty movement. And George Wallace ran for President in 1972 on a racist platform. He was shot at a rally in suburban Washington, but survived, paralyzed.
  
  18. And then I had a crisis of faith. I had always been a high performing student. I learned all the stuff I was supposed to. Six years of Latin, many years of theology. I memorized and retained information; I could recite answers to questions and solve problems logically. But I came to want to understand the answers, the concepts. I was rational and wanted rational answers to divine questions.
  
  19. The Church back then was not good at answering my kind of questions. How could a Trinity be one? How could Jesus Christ the man be God? How could the Eucharist possibly be God? Shouldn’t you at least get a buzz from touching God? The Bible as God’s word? Such an incongruous collection of works by a committee of writers. Were we committed enough to civil rights and eradication of poverty? You just must believe it, said my spiritual director. In effect, the Church said: take it or leave it. Then there were my own struggles with celibacy, and the realization that some priests and religious were sexually active. I could not, would not be so hypocritical, whatever other sins I was guilty of. So I left the seminary and drifted away from the church. I had no intention or idea at that time that I would become a Muslim. I was working 48 hours a week, taking 18 hours of classes a week.
  
  20. I replaced Church with discos. And I wanted to party every night. I loved the music and the energy. It was addictive and provided opportunities for other addictions. Later in life I had my own DJ business for a while, doing private parties.
  
  21. But I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life. I wanted to be an agent of change. So at the beginning of my senior year, after ruling out grad school for linguistics, I applied to the Peace Corps and was accepted, and was assigned to go to Morocco after graduation.
  
  22. But then right at the beginning of the spring semester, the owners offered me the job of General Manager of the hotel where I was working, in the embassy area of D.C. Was that a sign from God, whom I still was friends with and prayed to? The money was good, and it was a career path, something I would have to find anyway after I left the Peace Corps.
  
  23. So I had to choose. Either choice would take my life in a very different direction than the other. I chose the hotel career. So much for being an agent of change.
  
  24. It was shortly after this that I became a Muslim. I was somewhat preconditioned to have favorable opinions about Islam from my genius brother and my mother. My mother, who wrote letters to President Kennedy, George Wallace, Chairman Mao, Khruschev, Charles DeGaulle, Nasser, King Faisal, Anwar Sadat: she was especially fond of things Arab and Muslim, even the music. We had some good family friends who were Lebanese, to whom we were close.
  
  25. One of the clients of my hotel was the Islamic Center of the United States. One of the guests they placed in my hotel was a famous Hafiz Khalil Hossary. Islam was often in the press, thanks to King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, a devout Muslim, and thanks to the oil embargo. This all led me to want to learn more. I was missing God, and a community of believers.
  
  26. I became convinced of Islam for many reasons, It was familiar: a universal kind of Judaism, but also it had answers to many of my problems with Catholicism. The prayer was impressive; five times a day, like the Catholic Divine Office. Its revelation respected the Bible but was single stream and coherent, through one prophetic voice; its doctrine respected Jesus. The Muslims I met were impressive in holiness; and I was very impressed by their sense of community, in their way of calling and treating each other as brother and sister. The religion has a solid commitment to Racial Justice and Equality. The process of becoming a Muslim is simple: you recite the short creed in front of a witness. “There is no God but God, and Muhammad is his prophet.” I began taking classes with other American converts, called reverts in Islam, which believes every person is born a Muslim. So if you become a Muslim, you are reverting, coming back to what you were originally.
  
  27. At the time it seemed to me Catholic and Christian theology was something like a house of cards, complicated and fragile. Islam seemed simple, elegant and pure.
  
  28. I took a new name, which I changed legally. This was my name until 2004, all through my twenty-five years in the hotel industry and my first seven years in the monastery.
  
  29. I went to Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in D.C. to study Arabic “Dhahabat lidirasat al-lughat al-arabiya.”
  
  30. I studied at the Islamic Center and also volunteered there, giving tours and explanations of Islam. Islamic theology and philosophy are wonderful things. A few times, I led the prayers there. I was smart. I learned fast and well. Strangers would come up to me and compliment me on how well I prayed (Muslim liturgical prayer is very choreographed and physical). They called me “Shaikh Abdullah.”
  
  31. After I moved to New York City, I received a phone call to expect an important visitor. Seif Ul islam, son of the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, came to visit me. He offered me a full scholarship to Al Azhar University in Cairo, the oldest, most authoritative and prestigious university in the Muslim world. In exchange, he would expect me to do some writing for the Brotherhood. I accepted and planned to go in February, 1979.
  
  32. Once Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt made peace with Israel in the fall of 1978, I knew the Brotherhood would oppose him vigorously. I did not want to give up my career in hotels, go to Egypt and only to be arrested or deported without finishing my studies, when the Brotherhood was repressed, as I was sure it would be. So I regretfully declined the scholarship. Instead I moved to Miami Beach. I was unfortunately correct in my prediction about the Brotherhood.
  
  33. In 1979, there was a revolution in Iran, an Islamic revolution, which gave great hope for the future of predominantly Muslim countries. It created a government that was supposed to be guided by Islamic principles.
  
  34. But it went wrong very quickly, by taking the employees of the U.S. Embassy hostage and by adopting totalitarian practices that were categorically against the teachings of Muhammad. This made me very disillusioned with the possibilities of Islam, which recognizes no separation between church and state, to manage a modern society. It certainly demonstrated to me that people in Islam were just as liable to be hypocrites and sinners as Christians were. And it made me realize I was more of a hypocrite and sinner than I thought.
  
  35. At this same time I came into the contact with the ideas of Joseph Campbell, a scholar of mythology and world religions. I began examining the teachings of other religions, also motivated by my brother’s conversion to Buddhism. I discovered there was a great deal of unity on the level of mysticism. I began to immerse myself in the mysticism and mystics of Islam, the Sufis, not least because they used music in their practice, something I loved but something that was frowned upon in mainstream Islam.
  
  36. I read and studied a lot the masterpieces of Sufi literature and teaching, seeking a confluence of its wisdom with the teachings of Sunni Islam, the practice of Muhammad. Sufism is heart centered, Sunni Islam is head centered. But I began noticing a confluence of its teachings with Christianity.
  
  37. What especially captured me was the work of Jalal ud-din Rumi, a Persian scholar-poet-sufi mystic, who lived 1207-1273. Even today, he is the best-selling poet in the US, in the translations of his works. Rumi’s work spoke to me, and still does, more than anything else I have read. Particularly fascinating to me was his understanding and portrayal of Jesus as the essence of Divine Love made visible.
  
  38. During this same time my career in hotels was flourishing. I left Hilton Hotels Corp in 1983 and joined a management company based in Washington D.C. run largely by Muslims. There I gained a lot of experience in construction and property acquisition. I came to be operations director for the state of Maryland, where we had six hotels. But I was feeling unsettled with working hard making money for others and with some of the unethical things expected of me.
  
  39. Hotels in Washington empty out over Christmas. So I would take that time to visit my family in Rochester. I would drive there, into Pennsylvania, through the Susquehanna Valley, then up into the Mountains into Southern New York State and the Finger Lakes District, to Rochester. It is a beautiful drive and peaceful, especially at Christmas time. There was always snow and the small towns looked like something from a Christmas card. So there I was driving through this landscape listening to Handel’s Messiah, which was a Christmas tradition at home with my family, and other Christmas music. Suddenly a voice spoke to me in my head. “What do YOU think about Jesus Christ?” I tried to ignore the voice but it was insistent and persistent. This was a critical issue. I had grown up and studied theology, assuming Jesus Christ was God. Then I came to doubt that, looking for explanation or proof. Finding none, I stopped believing. But I really didn’t disbelieve. Islam seemed to explain everything; to provide a plausible answer when it came to Jesus. My mind could accept that he wasn’t God. But my heart couldn’t. So as I explained it to myself when I became a Muslim, I put Jesus on a shelf, and would come back and revisit the issue…sometime. So Jesus got tired of waiting on the shelf and demanded to know, that very moment, on the road to Rochester: “Who do you say I am?” So at that moment I had to admit that I believed He was God.
  
  40. So, that was what is called a religious experience. Why did it happen then? A lot of things led up to it, things that took time.
  - Developing maturity and humility; I was somewhat arrogant and thought I knew more than I did.
  - Having the experience of falling in Love. God is love, so you understand God a lot better if you’ve been in love. Love is an anvil against which you are pounded into a new shape
  - Accepting that life does have gray areas.
  - Understanding that God works through and not on top of humanity
  - Accepting of human weakness and the limitations of human knowledge
  - Letting God be God, not expecting him to follow my rules.
  
  One other reason was a bit of doubt I had in one Islamic teaching about Jesus, that he had not been crucified. I was pretty sure He had been.
  
  41. Time brought about a change in me, a change from knowing facts about somebody named Jesus and learning what he said to actually knowing and experiencing the person in life and listening to what he was saying.
  
  42. The same with the Bible. I learned to approach it not as an object of study, but as letters written to me by God. Those of you who do lectio approach it that way too.
  
  43. Once I admitted I was a Christian, I did not think I would return to the Catholic Church. But God had other plans. Man plans; God plans, and God is the best at planning. At a New Year’s Eve Party that year, I met a former religious brother who had been in the Carmelite order with a high school classmate and good friend of mine. He was Youth Minister/DRE at a parish three blocks away from my new house. So I figured I’d go to Church there, where I knew somebody, plus I was familiar with the structure of the Church They pulled me in, step by step. First it was: “Please help us take up the collection.”
  
  44. Then they needed help at Bingo, so I became the cook in the kitchen for refreshments. Then lector; then the youth minister asked me to help. When he left, I became coordinator of religious education for the English language program. Then I became Director of the whole program and youth minister. And somehow I became Deputy Grand Knight when they started a Knights of Columbus chapter.
  
  45. Prayer was always important to me. It was one of the attractions of Islam. You can’t have a real relationship with God without conversation, without prayer. That can take many forms. God speaks to our individual uniqueness. There is a form of prayer right for you. I hope you find it. All those hours of disco and trance music helped me find and focus on what brought me to converse with God. Prayer was and is the rock solid foundation on which my monastic vocation is built.
  
  46. My Carmelite friend was transferred back to Washington, so I invited him over to my house. He had been in Kenya for several years. Some days after he left, I found a book he had slipped under my couch, the works of St John of the Cross, one of my favorite Christian mystics and a poet. The idea of a vocation had been nagging at me, so I thought I’d talk to him about it and he’d tell me I was crazy. But he didn’t. He told me he thought it was the right thing for me. In short I was religious, I liked to work and serve others, the marriage and falling in love thing wasn’t happening and didn’t seem all that attractive any more. The love I wanted to experience and share was transcendental.
  
  47. I knew I needed to be in a religious community, so I began inquiring. I started with Franciscans. Everybody likes St Francis. I was rejected immediately. Then I tried Augustinians; they were less than enthusiastic. Then Benedictine monasteries. Likewise rejection. Most places had an upper age limit of 40, and I was over that. And probably they didn’t think someone named Abdullah Abdur-Rashid was a good risk.
  
  48. Rejection, of course, is a way God leads us to the destination He has in mind for us.
  
  49. Saint Louis Abbey was not daunted by the risk taking. They were welcoming and enthusiastic. The Abbot was most impressive. But, my whole understanding of the Church and ministry was to be of service to the poor and disadvantaged. The school and parish in Saint Louis served the affluent and advantaged. I went and talked about this to an African American priest I knew well, and he said “Well, someone has to serve them.” However, I was an East Coast person and wasn’t thrilled by the prospect of living in what I thought was the middle of nowhere. But I had asked God in prayer to lead me where he wanted me, so I figured St Louis must be it. So I applied and they accepted me.
  
  50. And then, what I called “The Waldorf Effect.” I’ll explain. Back when I went to New York City, I really wanted to work at the Waldorf Astoria, then the finest hotel in the country. But I was placed in the New York Hilton instead. And then, in the New York Statler Hilton. After five years, I was sick of New York City; it was turning me into a kind of person I didn’t want to be. And I was offered a great position in Miami Beach, which I accepted. And only then did the Waldorf Astoria ask for me. It was tempting, but too late. So, just as I was getting ready to enter Saint Louis Abbey, a woman whom I had been very interested in but had never been interested in me, suddenly became VERY interested in me. That was tempting too, but I had made up my mind.
  
  51. So I entered Saint Louis Abbey: three times. Twice I went back to Washington to straighten out different property and financial problems that I had left unresolved. Each time I went back to D.C., I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t get sucked back into my previous life and not return to Saint Louis. The second time I left, all the teens of the youth group of the parish gathered in a circle around me and laid their hands on my head and prayed over me. That was one of the most powerful spiritual experiences I have ever had, during which the Holy Spirit assured me I would come back.
  
  52. So I did return, and it finally stuck. There is a saying of one of the Desert Fathers; he was asked, “What do you do in the monastery all day?” He answered: “We fall down and we get up, we fall down and we get up.” There were challenges for sure, like going back to school and studying philosophy with nineteen year old college sophomores. There were many others, which I won’t mention. Whatever road you travel, there are challenges. Life without challenge is dangerous.
  
  53. One of my favorite prayers is by one of my favorite monks, Thomas Merton. You can find this on-line and I recommend it to you: “My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”
  
  54. One thing for sure in your spiritual journey, wherever it takes you and by whatever road, is that you cannot make it alone, not by yourself. The prophet Muhammad said something that is very true: whoever separates him or herself from the community by so much as the width of a hand is lost. Your happiness lies in others, especially the one who is most other, God, who is closer to you than your jugular vein.
  
  55. So, if I have any words of wisdom from my journey thus far that I can pass on to you, they are these. Strive to be better than you were yesterday. Always be honest with yourself, which is not easy. That requires and builds courage. But only then you will be able to be honest with others. That will open the doors of happiness for your life. Then you will find what you were meant to seek. God does have great things in store for you.
  
  56. My last words are not mine. As I have often identified with Robert Frost’s poem about the fork in the road, I have identified more with this one.
  
  He is no fugitive– escaped, escaping.
  No one has seen him stumble looking back.
  His fear is not behind him but beside him
  On either hand to make his course perhaps
  A crooked straightness yet no less a straightness.
  He runs face forward. He is a pursuer.
  He is a seeker who in his turn seeks
  Another still, lost far into the distance.
  Any who seek him seek in him the seeker.
  His life is a pursuit of a pursuit forever.
  It is the future that creates his present.
  All is an interminable chain of longing.
  
  (“Escapist– Never,” by Robert Frost)
  
  57. Every story has an end, like this one; but in life every end is just a new beginning. So you start now. (The End.)
- HILARY OF POITIERS
  
  Abbot Matthew Stark
  
  (Homily of January 13)
  
  Today is the feast of Saint Hilary of Poitiers, who was born in what we now call France. He belonged to a well off pagan family. He was a highly cultivated man, and he, of course, became a Christian. At the age of about 35, with his wife being still living, he was elected bishop of his native city of Poitiers. Hilary was an outstanding opponent of Arianism in the West. Arianism was the heresy that the second person of the Trinity did not share in the Father’s substance, that he, Christ, was a creature, through whom all other creatures were created. Though coming to the controversy only in his middle ages, Hilary pursued it with an unswerving vigor. In 356, he was banished to Phrygia by the Arian emperor Constantius II, but he continued his studies, making a deep study of Greek theological thought, And in 360, the Arians sent him back to Gaul as a mischief maker who was a nuisance to them in the east. The victory of orthodoxy over Arianism had become the bishop’s one goal in life, and he fought for it as long as he lived. He was the Athanasius of the West. He wrote a famous treatise on the Trinity, other works as well, and he wrote hymns like Saint Ambrose in order to teach Christian doctrine to the people. Though he dealt with things that were controversial, he seemed to have been a sympathetic and friendly man. Among those who came under his influence was Saint Martin of Tours. Saint Hilary was proclaimed a Doctor of Church in 1851.
  
  Maurus and Placid: Models of Obedience
  
  Abbot Matthew Stark
  
  (Homily of January 15, 2020)
  
  Maurus and Placid were young boys offered to the monastery of Saint Benedict, offered as oblates, to live in the monastery, to be educated, and probably to stay there for the rest of their lives, which they did. They are examples of obedience. So, the story of the young Placid, walking down to the river and drowning, and Maurus is told by Saint Benedict to go save him. Maurus does this with exemplary obedience, walking on the water to save the boy, and Benedict praises him for his obedience. Saint Benedict makes obedience one of the duties, one of the virtues, of the monastic life. His argument is that Jesus, our Lord, was obedient throughout his life to the will of the Father. This is summed up particularly when he cries out, “Not my will but yours be done!” to his Father. And today’s gospel (Mark 1:29-39) is an example of obedience, where everyone with Simon wants Jesus to do something, but Jesus must do something else because it is the reason why he has come, i.e., to bring the Father’s will into the world. Samuel (in today’s reading; 1 Samuel 3) also is an example of obedience. He is called, and thinking it is his boss, Eli the priest, he goes to him, as his immediate reaction is obedience. But it is God who is calling him. An interesting little fact is that the rabbis say that in the Old Testament, when God really loves someone especially, he calls them by their name twice, as in “Abraham, Abraham.” In this case, “Samuel, Samuel.” “Isaac, Isaac.” But it is interesting to note that Jesus has the same habit. “Simon, Simon,” “Martha, Martha,” “Saul, Saul.” Let us pray that we may obey God, because our Lord tells us that to keep the commandments is to love God.
  
  St Antony of Egypt
  
  Father Paschal Scotti
  
  ( Homily of January 17)
  
  A young man, around 18 or 20, in third century Egypt, in the countryside along the Nile, enters a church. He has many thoughts, and many troubles. His parents have died recently, he has inherited a big chunk of land, a very large family farm, many worries many thoughts, many concerns. And the Gospel of the day that he hears when he enters is the Gospel we have heard this morning (Mt 19): “What should I do to gain eternal life?” This young man asks, “What should I do to gain eternal life?” You have heard the Lord’s reply. He takes that passage that we have heard in the Gospel as his own personal message, and he does exactly that. He sells all of his property and gives it away to the poor, he puts his younger sister into the hands of (others)... He goes into the great desert he fight demons and he conquers inner demons, And he becomes the Anthony the Great, a wonderworker, a prophet , a spiritual guide, a spiritual messenger. He would have died a local figure, a local hero, a local saint, but for a book. How sometimes a book can change world history! Athanasius of Alexandria, the great patron of Nicea writes a biography of Anthony. And this book is a sensation, a best seller, and we see the influence of this book when we read the Confessions of Saint Augustine, and the power of this book as an example for his life, and in the lives of many many others who were baptized. It was a sensation. It has been described more like Raiders of the Lost Ark than your standard biography. There is a great deal of truth to that... You’d be surprised at what can happen in the spiritual life when you work at it. That message received that day by Anthony – What should I do to gain eternal life? – was also received by Augustine, and it so impressed him, it so tormented him: that illiterate peasants were storming heaven, while educated, sophisticated people like him were stuck, stuck in their sins. What should I do to gain eternal life? That question is our question today, especially for each of us: what should each of us do, this day and every day, to gain eternal life?
  
  mother maria skobtsova
  
  Abbot Matthew Stark
  
  (Homily of January 18)
  
  A recent Eastern Orthodox Saint, Mother Maria Skobtsova, lived in Paris, among the refugees from Russia. She ran a kind of house of hospitality for the poor and downtrodden. Because she helped Jews during the Nazi occupation of France, she was eventually sent to a Nazi concentration camp, where she died [in the gas chamber, on Holy Saturday, 1945] This is what she says in one place about Our Lady: “First and foremost, we see Christ’s humanity, the Church of Christ, the Body of Christ, of which the Mother of God is also the Mother. And this expression is not merely a sort of pious lyricism; it corresponds precisely to the understanding of the Church as the Body of Christ. And if so, then what she felt in relation to her son is as eternally alive in relation to the Church. As the Mother of the Godmanhood – the church – she is pierced even now by the suffering of this Body of Christ, the suffering of each member of this Body. In other words, the countless crosses that mankind takes on its shoulders to follow Christ also become countless swords eternally piercing her maternal heart. She continues to co-participate, co-feel, co-suffer with each human soul, as then on Golgatha. That is for most. And in this sense she always walks with us on our way of the cross, she is always there beside us, each of our crosses is a sword for her.” May Holy Mary, Mother of the Church, intercede for us.
- he Law and our Salvation
  
  Father Gregory Havill
  
  (Homily of January 21)
  
  Fr. Gregory spoke of how, in the Gospel (Mk 2:23-28), with the story of the disciples simply wanting to eat the heads of the grain, we find a situation that would be laughable: where religious experts are telling God about the Law. “How on earth did it come to this? When the Lord made his covenant with Abraham, his descendants were meant to live in a covenantal relationship with God. But by the time of the end of their experience in Egypt, the people of God had become opposed to God. They simply had no relationship with God if they could possibly help it. In the wilderness, God’s attitude towards them had not changed one little bit. He was trying to lead these people to salvation – so he renewed the covenant, not as it had been, but within the Law. He gave them the Law to re-enter into that relationship and to find salvation. The requirements of the Law were given on Mount Sinai. …Over the centuries, endless commentaries on the Law were produced, whereby the Law eventually permeated every detail of life. If you did not abide by all those rules you were cursed. How people like Mary and Joseph kept their sanity in such a situation is hard to imagine.” The situation became a “time of deep and great perversion, where obedience to the Law was seen as equal to salvation. God had meant for the Law to be the way for his people to return to him so that he might take possession of them. What happened was they took possession of the Law, and turned it into something with rules of life and demands and rites and things like that… This is exactly what Jesus is talking about today when he is saying to the Pharisees, ‘The Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath’ (Mk 2:28): they have turned the thing completely around. Of course, they did not understand that. This is the attitude of Jesus in today’s gospel, and in many other instances in the gospels. The problem would be laughable if it were not so hideous. This reversal has become such a fixed thing in people’s minds. “We run into it every day. We see it in our own culture and in our own thoughts. We tell God what is going to be the Law. We don’t listen to God. We must be careful as children of the new covenant not to become in trapped again in these illusions of the children of the old covenant.”
  
  protection of the unborn
  
  Abbot Matthew Stark
  
  ( Homily of January 22)
  
  On Wednesday, January 22, the conventual Mass was offered in conjunction with the national Day of Prayer for the Legal Protection of Unborn Children. Abbot Matthew’s homily noted three quotations from Mother Teresa of Calcutta, on the subject of life and abortion:
  
  “The life of every human being is sacred as the creation of God, and is of infinite value because He created each person including the
  unborn child… The image of God is on that unborn child…
  
  “For me… life is the most beautiful gift of God to mankind, therefore people and nations who destroy life by abortion and euthanasia are the poorest – for they have not got food for one more child, home for one old person. So they must add one more cruel murder into this world…
  
  “It is very painful to accept what is happening in Western countries: a child is destroyed by the fear of having too many children and having to feed it or educate it. I think they are the poorest people in the world, who do an act like that. A child is a gift of God.” (Mother Teresa)
  
  focusing on jesus of nazareth
  
  Father Gregory Havill
  
  (Homily of January 24)
  
  In today’s gospel (Mk 3:13-19), we hear the account of Jesus choosing his twelve apostles, the disciples that would follow him. Traditionally we see the church as one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Apostolic means that it is a church grounded on the twelve apostles, who were privileged to be in Jesus’ most intimate company. The apostles were those who stayed with Jesus, heard how he spoke, saw how he reacted, and took in (his teaching). Christianity is not a philosophy and it’s not a universal mysticism. It is a relationship first and foremost with Jesus of Nazareth. That is why it is important to look into the faith of those apostles who knew him best and (learned) his ways. As John says in his gospel somewhere, “The Word of God… we have touched with our own hands and seen with our own eyes.” I think that we, in (our practice) in the Catholic church, we can feed the hungry, we can clothe the naked, we can do all of these things, but if our hearts are not enflamed, truly filled with an ardent love for Jesus Christ, then we are basically not following the example of the apostles, not seeing Christ in our fellow man, not personally, and fundamentally wasting our time. If this is a fact in our life, it is something worth praying for constantly, that our hearts be lifted to Jesus Christ first and foremost in our spiritual life.
- following christ
  Father Michael Brunner O.S.B.
  
  January 26, 2019
  Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
  School Evening Mass
  
  In today’s Gospel we hear about Jesus just beginning his public ministry. Not to give anything away, but this Gospel is a set up for next week’s, when Jesus will begin his Sermon on the Mount with the Beatitudes. But that is next week.
  
  In the Gospel today, Jesus hears that Herod has arrested John the Baptist, The voice in the desert calling people to “Prepare the way of the Lord.” Although Herod has silenced John, by locking him away in a prison cell now it is Jesus’ voice that proclaims, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Jesus, once a student and follower of John, has come into his own. The Evangelist Matthew quotes Isaiah, “The people who sit in darkness have seen a great light.”
  
  Although John might be in prison, you can’t imprison the Word of God which brings light to the “land of gloom.” Even though Jesus is now in great danger from Herod, He doesn’t run and hide. He takes his message right to Galilee, which was ruled by Herod. Galilee, in Jesus time, was an obscure place for the Jews. It was the way I used to feel about West Virginia when I lived in New York City, a place where people spoke with an accent that grated on you, where people seemed less than civilized; fishermen like Peter and John were definitely less than civilized. A lot of Greeks and Gentiles – pagans – lived in Galilee, and their presence rubbed off on the Jews there. The only place worse than Galilee was Samaria, which was right next door. The real center of things, the New York City of the day, was in Jerusalem, so Jesus was going nowhere when he went there. But Jesus did make it big in Galilee. He preached the same message as John, which was as we would put it: Change the way you are living; God is beginning to take charge of the world.
  
  But Jesus did more than talk and warn people of what was coming. Jesus acted, and showed what things were like with God in charge. Jesus healed the sick, he forgave sins…and he still does. But as Jesus begins his public ministry to his people, he needs helpers and, as we would say, he needs a succession plan. So Jesus, a carpenter from the hills, calls four fishermen to follow him. Peter and Andrew were in the process of fishing, and the Gospel says they dropped what they were doing and immediately followed Jesus. We know from other places in scripture that Peter had a mother-in-law, which meant that he also had a wife. How did she feel when Peter up and left with Jesus? The other two, James and John were with their father repairing their nets. They too dropped what they were doing, abandoned their father, and followed Jesus. How did Zebedee feel when his sons without any warning left him alone in the boat with his nets still torn? We have heard Jesus’ invitation before: “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men, of people.” We might even think to ourselves, “This doesn’t apply to me, I’m already a Christian and one of Jesus’ followers.” But it does indeed apply to each of us, just as does that message of John the Baptist: Change the way you are living; God is beginning to take charge of the world.
  
  Jesus did not call Saints to follow him. There aren’t very many of those anyway. He called very flawed sinners, who took a good while to develop, and they never did become perfect. Jesus’ call is to us because we are sinners. Following him is not a once-for-all decision. It has to be renewed at each stage of our lives. Even daily: we may choose today to cheat a little at work or tell a lie to cover ourselves. We may ignore the neighbor in need; close our ears to someone asking for help; not speak or act out of our commitment to Jesus etc. Jesus’ call is not an echo from the past, from 2000 years ago, rather it is very much for today. We must repent from what is delaying our response to get up and follow Jesus again and again. The choice before us again today is to put aside the past and its attachments, to leave our workshop, our boats and nets and follow Jesus. Or…to stay stuck where we are, with no growth and our lives going in circles as our energy ebbs away.
  
  Now Jesus learned his trade as a carpenter at home. Undoubtedly Peter, Andrew, James and John learned their fishing skills at home in their village. We also know from the scriptures that when Jesus left the carpenter business and became a homeless, itinerant preacher Mary and Jesus’ relatives were also not too happy. The fact is human beings eventually come into their own and go out into the world on their own and make for themselves decisions about their future. It is a serious matter. Every adult here has made such decisions. Every child here will. Whatever direction we go in life, we take with us what our families have taught us, what we have learned in our past. It is part of who we are.
  
  Although they chose to follow Jesus, Peter, Andrew, James and John went back to fishing more than a few times. And after Jesus’ resurrection they apparently went back to their boats on the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus met them again right where he first called them. They went back to fishing but they could not escape their destiny by returning permanently to their old way of living. And so with us, whatever we do, as men and women, our fathers are there beside us and inside us. Whatever we do, as women, our mothers are there beside us and inside us. It was even so with Jesus and his Divine Father. Struggle as we might, and we do struggle, we turn out much like our parents. This has never impressed me more than since my father’s death.
  
  So the fundamental values and things we learn from our families are the most important. One of these things is faith. We are all here because our parents or some spiritual parent had faith and handed that on to us, all the way back to Peter, Andrew, James and John who first handed on the faith to others. We live in an age that is somewhat embarrassed by faith. People don’t like to talk of it or display it for others to see. But it is faith that gets you through life, because you have to have faith in order to love selflessly. To be a father is to love selflessly; to be a mother is to love selflessly; to be a good fisherman is to love selflessly; to be a really good human being is to love selflessly.
  
  I thank God every day that when God called me out of my fishing boat and away from my family and friends and hotels that he gave me the Portsmouth Abbey family. So if we love as Jesus taught us, as this week of prayer for Christian Unity ends, we must take Saint Paul very seriously when he says: that all of us agree in what we say, and that there be no divisions among us, but that we be united in the same mind and in the same purpose. In this way we may all be one, as Jesus prayed for us to be. And in this way God may be all in all, which is why He created the universe.
  
  timothy and titus
  
  Abbot Matthew Stark O.S.B.
  
  ( Homily of January 27)
  
  Saints Timothy and Titus were disciples, and assistants of the apostle Paul. Timothy came to have a charge of the church at Ephesus, and Titus of the church at Crete. The letters written to them are called the “Pastoral Epistles,” for they contain excellent admonitions for the instruction of both pastors and the laity. The letter of Titus appears every year in the second mass of Christmas day, the Aurora mass. The extract from that letter, written by Saint Paul, is this way: “ When the kindness and generous love of God our savior appeared, not because of any righteous deeds we had done but because of his mercy, He saved us through the bath of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life.” (Titus 3:4-7) May Saints Timothy and Titus pray for us, that we may be true followers of Christ and of the teachings of Saint Paul.

2020 Jan Reflections

timothy and titus