Monasticism
Look with Love – Br. Luke Ditewig
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Br. Luke Ditewig
Scholastica
Young children often call out: “Look at me! See me play. See what I can do.” Adults don’t often yell it out so directly, yet we want to be seen. We receive love by being seen and known. This this core need can get distorted. A good desire to participate, help, and lead as well as to be seen can become overly focused on attention.
Eugene Peterson wrote: “Hypocrisy is slow-growing. In its early stages it is difficult to detect. And that is why no one is conscious of becoming a hypocrite. . . . Distraction from intended good ends up as hypocrisy.”[1] Distraction. Jesus says: The world is not a stage for you to show off good deeds. Beware of practicing your piety in order to be seen by others. Don’t announce your compassion. What you could receive can distract from the good you do. Doing good can distract from being. Read More
Living with Equanimity – Br. David Vryhof
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Br. David Vryhof
James 1:2-6
Psalm 131
Matthew 6:25-33
Many people, perhaps most people, imagine that monastics live quiet, fairly uneventful lives. They might assume that we don’t have to deal with the daily upheavals that life in a marriage or in a family with children can bring, or with the challenges of working to earn a living. They might imagine that we have hours of leisure to pray and to read and to contemplate the mysteries of life. Life goes along pretty smoothly in a monastery, they think, and it must be nice to live in a community of like-minded individuals who are committed to loving God and to loving and supporting one another. “How I wish I had your life,” they sometimes say.
But there can be plenty of upheaval in a monastic’s life. There can be times when the community is not in agreement and one has to accept a decision that he did not favor. There may be things a brother wants to do but is not given permission to do, or things he’d rather not do that he is asked to do. There are times when the community faces particular challenges around its buildings, its finances, its ministries, or its members. There can be sticky pastoral situations. Perhaps the most painful times are those when a brother leaves the community, for whatever reason. We may have grown to love that brother and now feel the pain of his absence in much the same way as when couples separate or divorce. Read More
The Communal Vision of St. Benedict – Br. Lucas Hall
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Br. Lucas Hall SSJE
Benedict of Nursia
Today is the feast of St. Benedict. He is one of the most influential people in Western history, certainly in the Church. Benedict, having learned from teachers in the Greek-speaking East, was one of a few sources in the West bringing forth the tradition of communal monasticism. He wasn’t the first, but he quickly became the most popular, setting the stage for a solid millennium of Benedictine monasticism being the primary form of Christian intentional community.
There is much to explore about Benedict, but I believe right now that his theology of community is possibly the most helpful. Read More
Risking All – Br. James Koester
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Profession of Jack Crowley SSJE in Life Vows
When you told me the other day Jack, that you wanted to use the same gospel reading for today’s profession, as you had for your initial profession three years ago, I thought, well that makes my life easy, I’ll just use the same sermon! After all I reasoned, some here today weren’t here in 2021, and so won’t have heard that sermon. Others will have forgotten it by now. For those few who do remember it, I could simply express shock at the very idea I would repeat myself. But as you know, life isn’t that simple. While I don’t disagree with anything I said back then, today is a different occasion. You and I are in different places. Different things resonate with me. And for the last year or so, as I have thought about this moment, and prayed for you, one word has been constantly present and that has changed how I am thinking about today. The word which resonates with me today is risk.
Having lived with us now for six years, you’ll be familiar with that word, both as we use it in the Rule, and live it day by day. It’s a word that appears in one form or another, 11 times in the Rule, most notably in the chapter on life profession. There we say, [the] life profession of a brother inspires us with awe as well as joy; we wonder at the risk of such an irrevocable choice … Only by depending on God for the grace of perseverance, fixing ourselves by faith in God’s unwavering commitment to us, can we risk taking vows which bind us forever.[1]
What you are doing today is a huge risk. You know it. We know it. Those who are here supporting you know it. And our Rule very clear, this life, and your free choice to cast in your lot with this community, for life, is a risky choice. It is perhaps the riskiest thing you have ever done, and I say this to you Jack, a man I know who is not afraid to take risks.
In that way, you are not unlike the disciples we heard about in this morning’s gospel, one that so obviously means an enormous amount to you.
After these things Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way. Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, ‘I am going fishing.’ They said to him, ‘We will go with you.’ They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing.[2]
We’re not here talking about a group of buddies piling into a motorboat, with a case of beer, and some fishing poles, out for a lark, more interested in the beer and having a good time, than in the fish. We’re talking about seasoned, weathered, fishermen, who knew the risks and challenges of earning a living, fishing the waters of the Sea of Galilee, a lake notorious for sudden storms. I am sure nothing was more terrifying and riskier for them than being caught out, at night, in a storm, on the Sea of Galilee. And the disciples would have known that. It had happened before.
As Matthew tells it, when [Jesus] got into the boat, his disciples followed him. A gale arose on the lake, so great that the boat was being swamped by the waves; but he was asleep. And they went and woke him up, saying, ‘Lord, save us! We are perishing!’[3]
The combination of the weather, the design of the flat bottom, shallow draft boats used at the time, making them easy to drag up on shore, but unstable on the water, with the weight of over 100 feet of fishing nets dragging through the water, and the need for some men to be in the water maneuvering the nets, meant that fishing was a dangerous, risky occupation. Like any band of fishermen who make a living by fishing, the disciples would have known any number of their friends who had drowned, after being tangled in the nets, fallen overboard, or when their boats had capsized in a storm. Fishing was, and is, a risky occupation. You could, and many did, lose their life. And the disciples knew this.
Curiously Jack, that is exactly what Jesus is asking of you today.
For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.[4]
The disciples in the boat that night knew something about risking their lives. They probably also knew more than they wanted about losing their lives. No doubt they had lost friends in these very waters. They had certainly lost a friend not many days before on that hill outside Jerusalem. Now it seemed they had even lost the ability to make a living doing what they thought they knew how to do, fish, for that night, they caught nothing.[5] But those were the risks they took when they first became fishermen. That was the risk they took when they first answered the call of the stranger to follow.
As [Jesus] walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the lake—for they were fishermen. And he said to them, ‘Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.’ Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.[6]
Responding to the call of God is a response to an invitation to risk all for Christ, who risked and gave all for us.[7]
To be a follower of Jesus is to live a life full of risk. Like him we must be willing to take the risk of speaking with those deemed unworthy, touching those considered untouchable, breaking bread with those who are despised by others, breaching the walls of respectability. As followers of Jesus, we must take the risk of encountering life where it is lived, and not where we are comfortable.
And that Jack, is what will happen as a life professed member of this community. You will take the risk of living life where it is lived, which will often be outside your comfort zone. Through the vow of poverty, you will discover the readiness of others to confide in us their own experiences of suffering, grief and loss. By opening ourselves to the pain and weakness in the lives of our brothers and sisters…they will find in our company a holy place of acceptance and understanding where they can wait for God to bring strength out of weakness and resurrection from death.[8] In the vow of celibacy you will learn to embrace[your] sexuality as a divine gift, and draw upon it as a source of energy and creativity, [and thus] bring hope and encouragement to many who meet [you].[9] By the vow of obedience you will lean to be resilient and prompt in responding to the Lord in the here and now.[10] Your example will be a sign [to] the Church of what it means to be a living branch of the true vine.[11]
In all this you will risk leaning to die, and in so dying, find life.
Week by week we are to accept every experience that requires us to let go as an opportunity for Christ to bring us through death into life. Hardships, renunciations, losses, bereavements, frustrations and risks are all ways in which death is at work in advance preparing us for the self-surrender of bodily death. Through them we practice the final letting go of dying, so that it will be less strange and terrifying to us.[12]
That night long ago Jack, those disciples risked their lives as they got into the boat. But by doing so they were able to see again the stranger on the shore, and knew this time, that it was the Lord.[13] Today Jack you are risking your life by getting into the boat of this community. My prayer for you is that in the days and months and years ahead, you too will see, not a stranger on the shore, but the Lord calling to you, Come, and have breakfast,[14] and in joining him there by that fire, sharing a simple meal of bread and wine find the abundant life he promises to all who follow him.[15]
[1] SSJE, Rule of Life, Life Profession, chapter 39, page 79
[2] John 21: 1 – 3
[3] Matthew 8: 23 – 25
[4] Matthew 16: 25
[5] John 21: 3
[6] Matthew 4: 18 – 22
[7] See Rule, The Spirit of Poverty, chapter 6, page 13
[8] Ibid, Engaging with Poverty, chapter 8, page 17
[9] Ibid, The Witness of Celibacy, chapter 11, page 22
[10] Ibid, The Spirit of Obedience, chapter 12, page 25
[11] Ibid, Obedience in Practice, chapter13, page 27
[12] Ibid, Holy Death, chapter 48, page 97
[13] John 21: 7
[14] John 21: 12
[15] John 10:10
And We Are Glad Indeed – Br. James Koester
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Initial Profession of Lain Wilson SSJE
Ruth 1: 16 – 18
Psalm 126
1 Peter 1: 3 – 9
John 20: 11- 18
I think it’s safe to say Lain, you are the only person I have ever heard describe themselves as a palimpsest. Now I must confess I have only ever used this word two or three times in my entire life, and the first time I did, was while reading aloud in the refectory. After the meal someone very kindly, but definitively, corrected my pronunciation. It’s not a word used very often in casual conversation. I’ve never heard it spoken at the dinner table, so when you spoke of yourself as a palimpsest at the end of our community retreat, my ears perked up, and I took note of what you were saying.
Now lest any of you are getting yourself into a flutter, worried that Lain has a bad case of pimples, or that he has an unspeakable medical condition, I’ll enlighten you. A palimpsest is a technical, scholarly term describing a piece of parchment or tablet that has been used on more than one occasion, the surface having been scraped bare between each use, in the same way we would use an eraser. The thing is, just as we can sometimes see what has been erased from a page, scholars are often able to determine what lies under the surface writing, and discover a whole new document, hidden in plain sight below the surface text.
From the academic and scholarly, we can shift to the human. What I heard Lain, was the expression of your own awareness of the multiplicity and diversity of the various layers and aspects of your person which makes you, you. You are Lain, because of all the different layers and aspects that make up your personality. Many of those aspects are complimentary. Some no doubt are contradictory. Several are obvious to the observer. Some only you will know. Others will be hidden, hidden to you, but observable to us; some hidden to us, but known by you, and some hidden to you, and to us alike.
Whether hidden or known, from you or to you, from us or to us, all these layers are part of the wonderful mix that makes you the person who stands before us today, offering your life to God through the vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience as a professed member of this community. As the psalmist says, I will thank you because I am marvelously made; your works are wonderful, and I know it well.[1] While this is true for all of us, it has particular relevance today for you Lain, because in making your profession of vows, you are acknowledging the wonderful gift that God has given you in your life, that is full of a multiplicity of layers and a diversity of aspects like, well, like a palimpsest.
I hope it doesn’t come as a surprise to you, it certainly won’t to those who love and know you what some of those layers are. For those who don’t know, before Lain came to the community he was a Byzantinist, whose specialty was lead seals of Byzantine military officials from the Seventh through the Twelfth Centuries. There is one layer: scholar. Some will know that Lain was an avid rower, relaxes by running marathons, cycling long distances, and is in the process of walking the Appalachian Trail. There is another layer: athlete. Those who have listened to Lain over the last few years, will know that he is a gifted preacher, so we add another layer to our palimpsest: communicator. To these I can add loyal friend, devoted son, brother and caring companion.
Now Lain’s head is going to be swollen enough by the end of the day, after all this attention, so I’ll stop here. But you get the point. Lain, in fact all of us, are wonderfully and marvelously made mysteries of which we only know a part, until the day we fully know ourselves as we are fully known.[2] All of us are made up of a diversity of layers and aspects. All of us are parchments, which over time new texts are added, as old ones scraped away.
This scraping, those sometimes painful, is necessary, making space, making room, making the possibility of something new to be written on the parchment of our lives. We see that today as the One who says ‘See, I am making all things new,’ [3] is at work adding new layers to the already rich variety of layers and diversity of aspects that make up Lain.
So, what is the text that God is writing on your life today?
You have already told us.
The story of God being written on your life with this profession is a story of joy. It is a story of hope. It is a story of trust. It is a story of abiding. With fresh ink, overlaying what is already there, God is writing something new.
The parchment of your life Lain is a text filled with joy. Yes, it is a joy for us as a community who rejoice when a new brother is ready to make the vows of poverty celibacy and obedience.[4] More importantly, it is a story of joy for God who has shouldered like a sheaf of grain and carried home into God’s Sacred heart, to abide there in thankfulness and joy. There in God’s holy heart, your mouth is filled with laughter and … tongue with shouts of joy.[5] Psalm 126 is bursting with joy and gladness as God’s people are restored, not simply to their homes, but to their land of promise, fulfillment, and hope. You have found in this community Lain, your land of promise in the heart of God and you are glad indeed.[6] So Lain on the parchment of your life, allow God with new and fresh ink to write joy over all that has been before.
As the parchment of your life Lain is a story of joy, it is also a story of hope. The word hope has become much debased in our culture of wishful thinking. We hope for all manner of things: a sunny day; to win the lottery; to recover from an illness. Hope has become kind thoughts and wishful thinking, much like the thoughts and prayers of so many politicians. But there is nothing kind or wishful about Christian hope. For the followers of Jesus, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.[7] By your profession of the vows of poverty, celibacy and obedience Lain, you are staking your life on things that you cannot see but know with certainty to be true. With Peter, by this act of self-offering, you are boldly proclaiming, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given [me] a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for [me], who [is] being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.[8] What you are doing today Lain is not wishful thinking for a happy future, but a bold proclamation about something you cannot see, or perhaps even express in words, but know to be true. Today you are staking your life in the hope that through your faith in Jesus, you are even now receiving the salvation of your soul.[9] For some Lain, that is wishful thinking. For you, it is the gift of hope being written upon the parchment of your life.
As you make these vows today, and allow God to write a new story upon the parchment of your life, you do so for only three years in order to give time for the community and [you] to make certain that God is calling [you] to the life of our Society. You do so with the aim towards a life commitment.[10] This aim towards a life commitment is a sign of your desire to abide, not simply in this place, among these men, but in the place God has called, and we believe, is calling you to abide.
By abiding, and not simply living in this place, and among these men, you follow the example of Ruth, who, not simply out of devotion and loyalty to her mother-in-law Naomi, declared these famous words: ‘Do not press me to leave you or to turn back from following you! Where you go, I will go; where you lodge, I will lodge; your people shall be my people, and your God my God.
Where you die, I will die—there will I be buried. May the Lord do thus and so to me, and more as well, if even death parts me from you!’[11] Like Ruth, Lain, in your promise to abide you are declaring you hope and trust, not in this community, but in God who has called you here. Ruth’s declaration of hope and trust resounds through the ages, and echoes off these walls as you say, before the whole company of heaven…I…give myself to Almighty God. What a declaration of trust, what a sign of hope, what a conviction in things unseen. On the parchment of your life, God is adding a new text, full not only of joy and hope, but of confident trust that in this place of abiding you will hear the Risen Lord speaking your name. And that of course is what this all points toward.
To abide in a life where God is adding new layers of joy and hope and trust, to the multiplicity and diversity of layers that already exist on the parchment of your life, is a thing full of wonder and awe. It is in that place Lain, the place of wonder and awe, that you will see the Lord Jesus in all his risen glory. That is what God is promising you today, a vision of Christ’s risen glory so that as you abide in this place, filled with the gifts of joy, hope and trust, you will be able to say, I have seen the Lord![12]
Making a commitment, any commitment, but especially this commitment, is a thing full of wonder, especially now. That you are doing so, fills us with awe. That you are desiring to abide here, in the heart of God, brimming with joy, filled with hope, and trusting in the goodness and mercy of the Risen Lord, is truly a sign that God is doing great things for us, and we are glad indeed.[13]
1] Psalm 139: 13
[2] See 1 Corinthians 13: 12
[3] Revelation 21: 4
[4] Op cit., Initial Profession, chapter 38, page 76
[5] Psalm 126: 2
[6] Ibid., v4b
[7] Hebrews 11:1
[8] 1 Peter 1: 3 – 5
[9] I Peter 1: 9
[10] SSJE, Rule, Initial Profession, page 76
[11] Ruth 1: 16 – 17
[12] John 20: 18
[13] Psalm 126: 4b
The Courage We Need Now – Br. Lain Wilson
2 Corinthians 6:1–10
John 13:12–17
I don’t often think of Jesus’s courage, but that’s what has come to mind during my prayer with today’s Gospel passage. Knowing that his end was near, Jesus shows his closest friends how unlike their world his kingdom will be. The Teacher and Lord humbles himself and performs the work of a servant or slave, overturning all expectations and proprieties.
This act takes courage—courage that we can look to; courage, no doubt, that our departed Brother David Campbell looked to in his challenges of leadership. Facing an English Congregation that was ageing and declining in numbers, Father Campbell managed the withdrawal from the longstanding missions in India and South Africa, closed the Mission House in Oxford, and dispersed the remaining Brothers to continue the Society’s ministries as long as possible. His actions took courage, as did the humility to accept that the Society in England’s end might be coming. Read More
Clothe Yourself with Christ – Br. James Koester
Br. James Koester,
Superior
It is perhaps no accident that I have been thinking a lot about clothing in the last few days. Yesterday at Evening Prayer we had the wonderful occasion to clothe our brother Lain in the habit of the Society. Some of you were here for that, and others perhaps joined us remotely.
As I have said before, a clothing ceremony is probably the most dramatic of all the rites of passage that a Brother of the Society undergoes in his time in the community, except perhaps for the last rite of passage, his funeral. Unlike a profession, we actually see a man change, literally, before our very eyes.
Having put on, and taken off my own habit, thousands of times, over the last 30 years, it is this putting on of the habit for the first time, that I find so moving. It is especially moving watching him as he fumbles and searches the fabric for various hidden buttons, and snaps, and tries to wind and knot the cord with as much dignity as possible. Getting dressed, in a strange outfit, in public, with everyone watching, is actually much more difficult than you might think! In that moment, it is just an awkward and cumbersome suit of clothes. But the habit is much more than a suit of clothes. As we say in our Rule, [the habit] is dense with meaning, [and] a source of joy.[1]
As many of you saw, at one point in the service another Brother gives the habit to the postulant saying let the habit remind you of the baptismal gift of your union with Christ. You have put him on; he clothes you with his own self.[2] Read More
Basil of Caesarea: Zealous Man of the Spirit – Br. Keith Nelson
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Br. Keith Nelson
Basil of Caesarea, Bishop & Theologian
1 Corinthians 2:6-13
Luke 10:21-24
By the mid-fourth century, a distinct Christian vocation had developed in the ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern church that was both strange and increasingly common. Its adherents were known by many names: the servants of God, the single ones, the true philosophers, the ascetics, the zealous. Their ways of living, even at this early stage, were astonishingly diverse. They included men and women, peasants and the educated. Following in the footsteps of the holy virgins and widows of the apostolic age; galvanized by the committed sacrifice of the martyrs, they sought singleness of heart and the “peace which the world cannot give.” The core motivation that united them was a sense of urgent longing to cross over a frontier from nominal belonging onto a path of transformational belonging within the body of Christ. Today, we who are called monks represent one branch of this zealous family: as ordinary Christians who follow an ordered rule of life and prayer, under vows, in community. One of the first to follow this particular pattern was named Basil of Caesarea, whom we remember today. Read More
Steadfast, Enduring, Abiding: The Initial Profession of Todd Blackham – Br. James Koester
Br. James Koester,
Superior
Your novitiate Todd, will, I think, go down as one of the longest in the history of the Society. Sure, Father Arthur Hall[1] spent 8 years as a novice, but I am pretty sure yours was longer. At least it felt that way. Father Edwyn Gardner[2] was a novice for 15 years. But I think yours was longer. At least it felt that way. Brother William Buckingham[3] spent 23 years as a novice, but yours was definitely longer than that! At least it felt that way.
When you arrived in September 2019, no one foresaw what the future held in terms of pandemic, lockdown, and the closing of the guesthouse and chapel two years ago this week. We had never heard of COVID-19, worn masks (except perhaps at Hallowe’en), or imagined that millions of people around the world, including people we knew and loved, would become sick, and die in a matter of months. No one dreamed that in the matter of just a couple of days, 11 of us would test positive for the virus, and I would spend several sleepless nights wondering if this in fact was the way the Society would end. None of us, least of all the Luddite[4] that I am, could have fathomed that cameras or livestreaming would become a welcome fact of life here in the chapel.
No, none of that was foreseen, imagined, dreamt, or fathomed. But except for a few glorious weeks this summer when we were able to reopen the chapel, all of that has been a fact of life for us, and especially for you, and it has shaped and marked your time as a novice. No wonder then your novitiate has lasted an eternity! Brother William and Father Gardner or Father Hall have nothing on you! Read More
It is the Lord – Br. James Koester
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On the Profession of Jack Crowley in Initial Vows
It’s not difficult for me to imagine this scene. I have stood on a beach on the shore of the Sea of Galilee four or five times. It may not be THE beach where our gospel scene took place, but it is certainly A beach, and that’s all I need for my imagination to go to work.
With memories of standing in bare feet, ankle deep in the water, gazing out across the lake at the surrounding hills, I can easily imagine this scene: the inky black water revealing nothing below the surface in the predawn darkness; the first inkling of dawn as the eastern sky begins to brighten with the rising sun; the calling back and forth from shore to boat and back, one voice strong and confident, the other voices tired, perhaps frustrated, certainly sad and grief stricken; the uncertainty of who, or maybe even what this stranger on the shore is, raising caution, perhaps even fear, among the men in the boat.
Some of what I see is right there in text. Some is what my imagination fills in. It’s those details, the ones I see and hear in my imagination, which fascinate me today.
For several years, I lived at Emery House. In the nice weather I would sleep with my windows open, and the blinds up, so I could see the night sky and hear the night noises. There was a moment in the night, that I absolutely loved. In the summer comes around 4:30 AM, just as I was waking up. On a moonless night the sky would be black as pitch. Often, I could see nothing out the window. It would also be completely silent. If I lay quietly in my bed, I could eventually hear, somewhere out my window, the very first bird begin to sing. Over the next few moments others would join in. Soon there would be a whole chorus of birds singing, chirping, and tweeting. Only then would the sky begin to brighten, as the sun slowly rose. Somehow in those predawn minutes, the birds knew what was about to happen. That 5 or 10 minutes between night and day became my favourite part of the day. In many ways it was no longer night, yet nor was it, in that moment day. It seemed to be both, and neither at the same time. Read More