Holy Week brought the blessing of the Holy Triduum, with its powerful array of liturgies. The monastic and extended communities of Portsmouth were grateful to be able to fully participate in these sacred moments. Added to the liturgical life were various devotions as well as a Good Friday conference for the School. To give a sense of the evangelical teaching of these high holy days, we provide here excerpts from reflections and homilies of the week, with links to the complete versions of each.

 

 

Palm Sunday

Abbot Michael Brunner, Tenebrae Meditation (excerpt)

“They placed Jesus in a tomb. We think of this scene tonight knowing what will happen at dawn Sunday morning. But they did not know…Mary, John, Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, the other women. And the apostles hiding in the darkness, in fear, they certainly didn’t know. God became matter when Jesus became a human being. Jesus was placed in the earth, like other human material bodies are. Matter is neither created nor destroyed, not by death. Matter is sacred because it houses souls; Matter goes into the earth and becomes the earth. Our bodies are made of matter, matter that was once other bodies and housed other souls. Our planet is made of this matter, so it is sacred; as God created it, it is good… Tov, complete not broken. That is why Pope Francis has told us we must cherish and care for our earth, all its life forms and all its life-giving systems. This tomb of Jesus represents every grave I stand before… My family, my friends, my former students, my brother monks…  every grave I stand before with a primal fear, in seeming defeat, struggling to believe it could ever be empty.” (You can find the entire meditation and others here)

 

 

Reading of the Passion of Our Lord

Brother Sixtus Roslevich: Good Friday Reflection (excerpts)

“After I became a monk many years later, I still considered it an honor and a privilege to carry the cross in processions, much like Simon the Cyrene who is mentioned in the 5^th Station as being asked to help Jesus. Cyrene is in North Africa and Simon was probably just another Jewish tourist in Jerusalem for the Passover that year. Fast forward even many more years later to 2008 and 2016, two years during which I lived and worked in southern Africa, not the country of South Africa, but in Zimbabwe, their next-door-neighbor. The monks I lived with had nailed up simple pictures of the Stations to the trees near our vegetable and fruit gardens, at eye level, for everyone to see and meditate upon.,,

“…My most memorable experience of carrying a cross occurred while I was living in Rome in 2008. I was in residence at the Monastery of Sant’ Anselmo on the top of the Aventine Hill. Every Ash Wednesday, the pope arrives in the late afternoon at Sant’ Anselmo. It is where he gets vested in the sacristy for the procession through the narrow streets to celebrate the Ash Wednesday Mass inside the Church of Santa Sabina, which is the stational church of Rome for that day. I was humbled to be the crucifero, or the cross-bearer that year for Pope Benedict XVI and his entire entourage of Cardinals and clerics and monks. It is the crucifero who leads the procession through the streets. I was very much aware of the significance of carrying a cross through those narrow streets in much the same way that Simon of Cyrene did when he was asked to carry the heavy cross for Jesus.” (You can find the entire reflection and others here)

 

 

The High Altar Stripped for Good Friday

Abbot Michael Brunner, OSB: Homily for the Easter Vigil (excerpt)

“We can learn a lot from these three very imperfect, flawed first witnesses to the Resurrection. They are a lot like us. First, we learn that for us to experience that same resurrection that Jesus did we don’t have to be perfect. We don’t have to have led a perfectly saintly life and we don’t have to be rich and powerful and influential. We just have to have love…love for God in Jesus Christ, love for our neighbor, because God is love. That quick teenager St John tells us that…God is love, and whoever lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him or her. Second, we learn that we don’t have to be fast. God is not in a hurry. It is you and I who make mistakes because we are in a hurry, like the prodigal son who wanted his inheritance now. God always waits for us, like the father in the story of the Prodigal son. He watches and waits for us, and will make everything right when we arrive, or when he intervenes in our lives. Third, we don’t have to understand everything right now. Peter, John and Mary Magdalene went home confused. They had seen the evidence of the Resurrection with their own eyes, but did not understand. Later that day the Risen Jesus came to them to explain to them. God is so much bigger than us, so much better, that it is impossible for us to understand all of how he works and why he does what he does. There’s an old Baptist hymn that tells us: We will understand it better by and by. (You can find the entire reflection and others here)

 

 

Emmaus (Stillman Dining Hall Roundel)

Abbot Michael Brunner, OSB: Homily for Easter Sunday (excerpt)

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the great Colombian writer, wrote in his greatest novel, “human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.” We are still in this world giving birth and there is still confusion, because like us, the world is being created a little bit more every day, God is revealing himself a little bit more every day, His Kingdom is being built a little more every day. This is unsettling to us; we like to achieve something, be done with it and put it behind us. We like to be in control. We like to know when we are on a journey what the route is; are there any detours or construction delays; where are the gas stations and rest stops; what the sights are along the way, how long it is expected to take, and certainly we want to know where we are going to end up. In life, we don’t know any of this except that last point. If we have faith and trust in God like a child does his parents we know where we will end up. That is what the Resurrection clearly shows us. We celebrate Jesus’ Resurrection because it is really about our Resurrection. Gabriel Garcia Marquez also said, “The only regret I will have in dying is if it is not for love.” Jesus lived and died for love of us. Our only regret at the end of our lives, when we get where we’re going, will be if we did not live for love, because God is love. Easter is all about the triumph of love; because love conquers all things, even death. And as St. Peter says in his First Letter: Love covers a multitude of sins.”  (You can find the entire reflection and others here)