The Monastic Preacher

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Location: Chicago, Illinois, United States

The Roman Catholic Monastery of the Holy Cross was founded in 1989 and became a Benedictine house of the Subiaco Congregation in 2000. We follow a traditional contemplative life, chanting Psalms seven times a day and singing Gregorian chant at the Eucharist. We do this in a distinctive way by living our monastic life on the South Side of Chicago. Prior Peter, the author of this blog, was appointed Prior in August of 2004.

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
For some time, I was in charge of reading the prayer requests we receive over the Internet. Commonly, a person will ask the monks to ‘agree’ with him in prayer. The idea, of course, is that our prayers have a better chance of being answered if two persons agree on them.

At the same time, I think that we can all agree that this needs some interpretation. After all, I am sure that millions of people are in agreement that we would like God to intervene in the lives of those devastated by Hurricane Katrina. I’m sure that all of us have had the experience of praying hard with family and friends for the recovery of a loved one who went on to die.
A common refuge from this dilemma is simply to say that our agreement wasn’t strong enough, that we lacked faith even the size of a mustard seed. For even this mite of faith can move mountains, as Our Lord has taught.

This word translated as ‘agree’ is an interesting one in Greek: symphonēsosin. We must be in ‘symphony’ with one another, literally speaking with one voice. Plato and Aristotle used this word in their teachings on music. In Plato, all of creation performs a kind of symphony, with a glorious music being generated by the harmonious motions of the planets.

What is of interest to me in this model is that the planets and the stars, like the instruments in an orchestra, ‘symphonize’ not by having everyone play the same thing. In fact, a symphony is accomplished by many persons each playing his own part in service of the whole.
This is worth remembering when we interpret the first reading as well as the first part of the gospel. We have a duty to correct our fellow Christians when their actions are producing discord. I need not dwell on the fact; there is plenty of correction to go around these days. At times, I fear that the American Church is overrun by vigilantes. But the question that we should ask ourselves before we assume the duty to correct is this: is the discord produced by my brother’s action? Or is the discord in fact inside me because I want my brother to play exactly the same tune as I am?

Is the discord in my brother? Or is it in me? If we examine our feelings objectively, I suspect that often enough, the discord is simply my own anger or self-righteousness, not the supposed wrong of the other.

Now I know that as I speak, there are those of us here that are already saying, "He doesn’t mean me. After all my complaint is legitimate, as opposed to the people he’s talking about."
The problem with being too quick to correct, complain, or even at times exhort is that it can alienate a brother whose ways are different from mine. We can make the problem worse so that my brother now perceives that I have sinned and he needs to correct me. And so we get into a showdown: who will back down first?

Then, following the teaching of the Lord, as we believe that we are doing, we find various arguments that are on our side and start firing away. When our brother remains stubborn, we go to the priest or to the bishop. When the priest or bishop will not listen, we label him as a bad priest or bishop and say that we need not obey him any more: we will just obey Rome or just mourn the demise of the Church.

What the Lord leaves unsaid is the possibility that if we find truly impartial witnesses, they might not agree with our assessment of the situation.

All of us have gripes and see things that strike us as wrong. All of us, indeed, live amidst countless wrongs that happen every day. In what way is it our duty to be watchmen for the Church? All of us share in the prophetic office of Jesus Christ by virtue of our baptisms. But how many of us are ready to really take up the mantle? How many of us are ready first to let the Word of God pierce between our own bone and sinew, take us apart, discipline us and refashion us anew? If we are not willing to allow God to work us over a bit, we will be like a violin that has not been played in twenty years. God might play the tune on us, but it will not appeal to anyone.
Sometimes, it is not our point of view that causes discord, but the fact that we are unable to present it to others in a compelling way. Too often, our own lives conflict with the message God has given us. Too often, we are so certain of our cause that we do not take the time to phrase it in a way that is understandable to others. To extend the musical metaphor, we give the trombone a flute part to play and then get angry that it sounds too heavy. We might even fail to give others the benefit of the doubt for their point of view. And if that person is a baptized Christian, we ignore their opinion at our own peril, for they share with us the office of the prophet.

We can always trot out our supporters, but then again, surely thieves and murderers can find people who agree with them. Does this mean that God is obliged to listen? Or must our agreement before the God who searches the heart really reach a completely new level? Is that faith that moves mountains a feeling of comfort and trust that we generate in ourselves, or is it a profound respect for our common baptism and the sometimes scandalous choices of God? For my part, I am thankful to God that He is more merciful with me than I am with others.

So when is it my responsibility to correct fraternally? I think that we can ask a few questions: do I possess authority over the person? If yes, then can I do it with love and not out of anger or self-righteousness? If the person is not under my authority, then we really must restrain ourselves unless it is a question of a sin directly against our person. And again, I don’t mean that someone simply did something that I disagree with. Did the person lie to me, steal from me or otherwise injure me? And again, can I offer the correction in love and respect, not out of anger or resentment? Would I really be willing to turn the case over to an impartial judge? Am I willing to abide by an impartial judgement and not nurse a grudge if it doesn’t go my way? Do I possess that kind of faith in God’s supremacy over events?

If I can come to this point, of truly fulfilling the law in loving my neighbor as God and subjecting myself to the Church for the love of Jesus Christ, then I might begin to glimpse what it might mean to agree with my fellow Christians. I might be freed from my own narrow perceptions and open to the counter-melodies emanating from the lives of those around me. Perhaps I will even start to listen to the symphony of God’s truth in a way that allows me to fit my part in more harmoniously than before.

Every orchestral player knows that he will ruin the piece by only paying attention to his own part. But he also needs the conductor to help him hear the whole. Let us turn our lives over to the master artist Jesus Christ and together with our brothers and sisters in the Church be transformed into something humble and beautiful, an agreeable song of praise soaring up to the throne of God, to whom be power and dominion forever and ever. Amen.

20th Sunday in Ordinary Time

August 14, 2005
Twentieth Sunday in Ordinary Time
If their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? The language of acceptance and rejection is the language of human decision and organization. The two terms ‘accept’ and ‘reject’ derive from Latin words that suggest ‘taking’ and ‘throwing back’. Deciding what to keep and what to dispose of is also known as discernment. In monastic spirituality, we speak of the discernment of thoughts, which is to say, our aim is to learn to recognize the thoughts going through our minds and then to learn how to accept or reject them. By the choices that we make, we determine the type of character we shall have.
In the context of a nation or a people, the issue of discernment determines what sort of person should be in and what sort of person should be rejected. Western nations, in the wake of the London and Madrid bombings and wage depression caused by unauthorized immigration, are waking up to the fact that any society must provide rules by which everyone must live, if that society is to have any measure of security and coherence. A negative way to state the same dilemma is this: not everyone has your best interests at heart; choose your friends and your compatriots carefully. Test them. Conversely, if we want to be a part of a particular society, then we must be willing to be tested, to demonstrate our good will toward the others within it.
What sort of society should the Church be, based on today’s Liturgy of the Word?
In today’s gospel, Jesus puts the Canaanite woman to the trial, and it is a discomforting one for those who think of Jesus’ gospel as merely the preaching of love and acceptance. If this woman is going to win Jesus’ acceptance and avoid his rejection, she has to do some pretty quick thinking and acting. She didn’t have the luxury of a year-long catechumenate: her daughter was ill and needed help immediately. Why did Jesus resort to this odd standoffish behavior?
The Fathers of the Church pointed out that Jesus, knowing the hearts of those He met, knew that this woman had the requisite faith and good will and was genuinely seeking not merely the health of her daughter, but in return, the glory of Christ. Jesus knows that testing her faith would lead to edification for His disciples; indeed, I hope to demonstrate that He had even more in mind. We should bear this story and this trial in mind at prayer when we, like the Canaanite woman, do not receive an immediate answer. This is not necessarily a sign that we lack sufficient faith; indeed, it might be a sign that God knows our faith is strong as has special plans for this gift in us.
It is worth noting that in the silence that follows, she does not immediately speak. The disciples interrupt and make their own suggestion to Jesus, to send her away. I would again liken these to the demons whom we encounter in prayer when things don’t seem to be going well, those nagging thoughts that we have displeased God in some way, that He doesn’t want to listen, that our prayer is rejected and not accepted.
The disciples’ rejection is poignant when placed in the larger story of Matthew’s gospel. In the previous chapter, Jesus had fed the multitudes with five loaves of bread with 12 baskets of scraps left over. This was a clear sign of God’s appearance at the end of time to redeem Israel. Despite this sign, when Jesus returned to the towns, the Pharisees were waiting for him, ready to pick fights with him regarding purity laws. In their minds, if God was going to come to Israel, it would be because the people were steadfastly rejecting anyone who sullied the observance of the law. They were not willing to accept Jesus and His disciples because despite the signs that Jesus worked, He didn’t seem to have Israel’s interests at heart. He was not a strict observer of the Law. I make this observation, of course, withholding judgment on whether the Pharisees knew what was good for them.
After the disciples had suffered rejection by the Pharisees because they were not sufficiently acceptable to Israel, it is somewhat painful to hear them dismiss the Canaanite woman on essentially the same grounds. Jesus will touch upon this when he compares the pagans to dogs, who were impure creatures.
When He does make the comparison, the words He chooses are quite intriguing, and are somewhat weakened in translation. Let me paraphrase a bit to give you an idea of the impact of Jesus’ words: "It is not right to accept the bread of the children and throw it away to the dogs." As in many languages, the Greek word for food, artos, literally means ‘bread’, even ‘loaves’.
The woman’s reply to this reinforces the suggestion that Jesus had some particular goal in testing the Canaanite woman. Why did He mention bread, why taking and throwing away? I wonder if she had heard about the miraculous feeding and all of the extra bread. What happened to the twelve baskets full of bread, anyway? On a figurative level, I would like to suggest that the superabundance of bread was an invitation to the Gentiles to seek after the true bread from heaven, Jesus Christ. The faith of the Canaanite woman and her persistence in prayer to Jesus made manifest the new plan of God breaking into the world, a new plan for human society.
No longer would the defining characteristic of the People of God be the purity laws of the Torah, good as they were. The new characteristic is faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of David, the Son of God.
Twenty centuries later, we must press ourselves in asking: how do we make judgments about who is in and who is out? Do we adopt the rule of faith as did the Canaanite woman? Or am I on the lookout for the signs of non-conformity in others as an excuse not to include them? When I encounter someone new, or someone who irks me, seems importunate or uses words that seem problematic, do I try to send that person away, or do I remain open to embracing him, after carefully testing of the spirits?
Many people are asking today, "What kind of Church should we be?" Should we be about radical inclusion? The high adventure of orthodoxy? Retrenchment in preconciliar models of liturgy and authority in the wake of postconciliar abuses? Principled advocacy of the marginalized? The model we choose will be related to the persons whom we are willing to embrace, to test, to love. We should first of all readily admit that while the superabundance of grace offered to the world in Jesus Christ is extended to everyone, that everyone is invited, to enter requires that we be tested and demonstrate our faith. Likewise, we should be forewarned that neither the great religious men of the day, the Pharisees, nor the simple unlearned disciples got it right. We must always stand ready to have our own ideas of what the Church ought to look life challenged. This is because all of us alike are emerging not from some remote pristine location where we’ve been able to obey God with complete purity of heart, but we emerge into Kingdom from sinful lives and sinful choices. This is truly Good News. The extent to which we exempt ourselves from Paul’s dictum that all have been delivered to disobedience, the less likely we are to understand the radically inclusive offer of God’s love to all men and women.
Let us prepare ourselves now to be that People of God. Let us probe our own thoughts and actions and find those that are not in keeping with the requirements of citizenship, renounce them and come forward seeking reconciliation with Jesus Christ and therefore with each other in Holy Communion. May Christ be praised for ever and ever. Amen.