Posts Tagged ‘Incarnation’
My soul doth magnify the Lord – Br. Geoffrey Tristram
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Br. Geoffrey Tristram
‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely from now on, all generations will call me blessed.’ The great song of praise which Mary poured forth to God, which we know as the Magnificat. Mary says all generations will call me blessed, and so today, on this last Sunday before Christmas, we too honor the Virgin Mary, and we call her blessed.
Four miles outside the city of Jerusalem, there is a small village called Ein Karem. Those of you who have made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land may know it. In the village, set high up above a lovely, wooded valley stands the ancient church which was built over the traditional site of the home of Zechariah and Elizabeth. And that is where Mary went as fast as she could, as our gospel reading tells us today, right after that extraordinary encounter she had with the Angel Gabriel. Gabriel came to with a message of good news; ‘Mary, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you will name him Jesus. He will be holy and will be called of God’. She must have been terrified and amazed. Can this be true? She needed to tell her older cousin about the angel’s message, the utterly stupendous news that she had been chosen to be the mother of God’s Son. So ‘She arose, and went with haste’, Luke tells us, and then we have one of the most beautiful and poignant passages in all of Scripture. After a long journey Mary arrives at Elizabeth’s house, and she greets Elizabeth. ‘And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary,’ Luke tells us, ‘the babe leapt in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb”.’ Read More
Embodying Jesus – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Br. Curtis Almquist
Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15
Psalm 78:23-29
John 6:24-35
Back when I was seven years old I had this wonderful opportunity to attend a symphony orchestra concert for my very first time. I was with my second-grade classmates from school, and we paraded into a vast orchestra hall and settled ourselves into seats that were way too big for any of us. By luck of the draw, I got to sit next to Mrs. Sievers, our teacher. At some point during the concert she leaned over to me and whispered in my ear, “Do you hear it?” Wide eyed, I whispered, “What?!” And she said, “Do you hear the oboe?” I shook my head. I didn’t know what an oboe was. And then, with her hand gently moving in the air, she began to trace the music line being played by a solo oboe. And I heard it for the first time. “Yes!” I whispered. I remember spying out the oboe section, locating the amazing sound coming from this solo oboist amidst a great company of musicians. I have no memory what music the orchestra was playing that day; however I will never forget my discovery: the mesmerizing, alluring sound of the oboe. What had initially been an orchestral company of sound was now identified and personified in this solo oboist, and that made all the difference.
So it is with manna. In our readings from the Book of Exodus and the Psalms, we hear of this food that came down from heaven during the forty years the Israelites wandered in the desert. Manna was described as a flaky bread, as fine as hoarfrost. We read it was like coriander seed, and the taste was like wafers made with honey or cakes baked with oil.[i] The popular etymology for the name “manna” comes from the Hebrew, “What is it?” Manna: “What is it?”: the question the Israelites are reported to have asked one another when they first found manna blanketing the ground.[ii] Read More
Whosoever Will Be Saved – Br. James Koester
Growing up in the Church, as I did, I often found myself, in those moments waiting for the service to begin, exploring the Prayer Book that I held in my hands. I would flip thought it, as perhaps you have done, and read the interesting bits. I liked to look at the The Calendar, and wonder who some of these people were: Bede, Dunstan, Dominic, Stephen. Over the years I have stopped wondering who they were, or even their place and role in history. I have come to know them as friends. As our Rule of Life says, in a somewhat different context: we remember that they are not dead figures from the past. Risen in Christ, they belong to the great cloud of witnesses who spur us on by their prayers to change and mature in response to the Holy Spirit who makes all things new.[1]
Or I would make my with through the Table of Kindred and Affinity, where I would read: A Man may not marry his Mother, his Sister, his Grandmother, his Aunt.[2] As I worked my way through the list, and picture the people I was not allowed to marry, I would wonder, not so much as why I may not marry them, but why on earth I would want to marry my mother, my sister, my grandmother, or my aunt, in the first place! Read More
Jesus’ Understanding for the Misunderstood – Br. Curtis Almquist
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Br. Curtis Almquist
The scene captured in this Gospel passage does not typically show up in beautiful stained glass windows in churches. This is a troubling scene. In the family system it is a rough day for Jesus, his siblings, and his mother, Mary.[i]
Here is the back story. Away on a mountaintop Jesus had just appointed his twelve apostles, and then he returned to Nazareth, which is the setting for this Gospel lesson.[ii] A considerable crowd has surrounded Jesus outside his family’s home as he teaches. There is very mixed energy in the crowd. Jesus’ mother and his brothers must have been inside their home, because the Gospel of Mark reports they then go outside and send word through the crowd for Jesus. Why? Is it so they can stand with Jesus and give their public assent to his teaching? No. Does his family want to protect Jesus? No. We read the family makes their appearance to restrain Jesus.[iii] The verb used here to describe their reaction to Jesus literally means “he is out of his mind” or “he has gone mad!”[iv] What we witness is an attempt at a family intervention.
The terse situation seems only to escalate when we hear Jesus’ reaction to the report that his family has appeared on the outskirts of the crowd. Jesus seems to respond rhetorically or dismissively: “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, Jesus says, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” Read More
An Irresistible and Radiant Humanity – Br. Keith Nelson
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Br. Keith Nelson
Merry Christmas. As is true of every holy feast of the church, each of us brings a different collection of needs, hungers, questions, and reasons to give thanks. You are here, probably, to listen – for the first or the five-thousandth time, to “hear the good news of the messenger who announces peace, who brings good news, who announces salvation,” in the words of Isaiah. But, probably, you are also drawn to see. To see and exclaim, even before hearing, even in the midst of many cares and sorrows: How beautiful. How beautiful: the messenger’s feet upon the mountains. How beautiful: the holy arm which the Lord has bared. My God, how beautiful: this Child we have sought with the eyes of our hearts for so long.
Christmas, for Christians in the West, is the foremost opportunity to re-embrace the Medieval impulse to look and to touch; to show things of great meaning first, then to tell as commentary on the showing. So for the next hour, and the next eleven days of Christmas after that: Look! Touch! Taste! Smell! Clap and point and jump up and down at every shiny, lovely thing. We need to engage these impulses in acts of worship. It is easy in this world to forget the path to this holy ecstasy, this self-spending in the pursuit of meaning rather than luxury and waste. Read More
Mary’s Brain – Br. Lain Wilson
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What if this story is all about Mary’s brain?
The beats of today’s Gospel reading are familiar to most of us. Here at the Monastery, we recount them in the Angelus, which we pray before Morning and Evening Prayer. “The angel of the Lord announced unto Mary . . .” pause, “and she conceived by the Holy Spirit.”
So much happens in that pause. And what if it’s all about Mary’s brain?
Of all the young women God could have chosen, God chose Mary. And what is the first thing we find out about her? That she hears the angel’s news, is perplexed, ponders over his words, and questions him. The first thing we find out about Mary is that she responds to God by using her own God-given faculties of reason and intelligence.
Byzantine writer Nicholas Mesarites provides a cognitive description of this episode: “The word comes to the hearing of the Virgin, and enters through it to the brain; the intelligence which is seated in the brain at once lays hold upon what comes to it, recognizes it by its perception, and then communicates to the heart itself what it had understood.”[1] This then leads Mary to question the angel to determine the truth of the angel’s words. Only after she verifies the truth does Mary gives her yes to the angel, and to God. Read More
The Witness of Flesh and Blood – Br. Lucas Hall
Br. Lucas Hall
Feast of St. Justin Martyr
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
When I was inquiring about a vocation here at SSJE, my favorite musician released a new song, entitled “John My Beloved.” Given the charism of this community, I paid attention. One of my favorite lines occurs toward the very beginning: “Beloved of John, I get it all wrong, I read you for some kind of poem.” I like this line, because it is a direct challenge to the impulse I often have, many of us have, of reducing Christ, this beloved of John, to the realm of abstraction and metaphor. To be clear, the poetic and the abstract have their place, including in the interpretation of scripture. But when we behold the one to whom the evangelists point, we’re beholding not a metaphor, but a man, clothed in the very flesh and blood you have brought with you today.
Today is the feast of Justin, an early martyr. Justin would have been at-home in Harvard Square. He was born to a pagan family in Palestine around the year 100, and he was well-educated in philosophy. More than literate, he was an eager student and writer. But also (not unlike a great many of our local students and writers today) he was frustrated by the philosophies he encountered. He wanted something more. And he found it upon discovering Christianity, and hearing about, not philosophers, but prophets, who “did not use demonstration in their treatises, seeing that they were witnesses to the truth above all demonstration, and worthy of belief.” Justin began to see Christianity as a means to this truth, the beholding of God. He still appreciated philosophy, though, and argued that earlier philosophers were expounders of truths more fully revealed by the prophets and the coming of Christ. Read More
Palm Sunday, a melodrama ignored… or not? – Br. Curtis Almquist
Br. Curtis Almquist
What’s in the news? What political calamity is happening? On the cusp of Palm Sunday, what garners the attention of the general public is not Jesus, but rather the reports from various sources about all the political machinations – who is in and who is not – and the endless conflicts between various camps. Meanwhile the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Truth be told, Palm Sunday hardly gets noticed by most people, including the Roman and Jewish authorities.
I’m talking here about the original Palm Sunday, two thousand years ago. What garners the attention of the general public is not Jesus, but rather the reports from various sources about all the political machinations – who is in and who is not – and the endless conflicts between various camps. Meanwhile the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Truth be told, Palm Sunday hardly gets noticed by most people, including the Roman and Jewish authorities. Read More
Sharing in the Divine Nature – Br. James Koester
Hilary of Poitiers
Several weeks ago, we celebrated the feast of St. Martin of Tours[1]. It was Martin, as we saw then, who introduced, even before Benedict, the monastic movement into the Western Church. From Martin, sprang monasteries all over Europe, which ultimately flowered under St. Benedict[2] over a century later. If Martin can be described as the Father of Western Monasticism, then Hilary, in a sense can be considered its grandfather, as it was Hilary who took the young Martin under his wing, and supported and encouraged him in his endeavours to establish the monastic movement into Europe.
Hilary was born about the year 315 and was baptized when he was about 30 years old. In 350 he was made a bishop. The church in the mid fourth century was not unlike ours. It was a time of controversy, division, and fragmentation. Then it was over the nature of God and the person of Jesus. The Arians believed that Jesus was subordinate, and not co-equal or co-eternal to the Father. The Catholics, of whom Hilary was a prime proponent, believed that the Son was both co-equal and co-eternal with the Father. For the Catholics, and for Hilary, the Arian view was problematic in that it denied the full divinity of Christ. But so what? What’s the big deal? Why is it important that the Son is both fully God and fully human, co-equal and co-eternal?
The big deal is what it says about us. For Hilary, salvation was about much more than liberation from sin. It was about sharing in the life of God. As 1 Peter puts it, through Christ we are participants in the divine nature of God.[3] As Athanasius,[4] who lived about a generation before Hilary said, God became human, so that humans might become God. We Brothers pick this same theme up in our Rule of Life when, in the chapter on The Mystery of Prayer we say a ceaseless interchange of mutual love unites the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Our prayer is not merely communication with God, it is coming to know God by participation in this divine life. In prayer we experience what it is to be made “participants in the divine nature” …[5] If in the incarnation the Son is not both fully God, and fully human, then it is not possible for us as humans to share in the life of God. This doctrine, known as theosis or divinization, is central to Catholic theology, and remains so today, because in it lies the Christian understanding of the dignity of all humanity. Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons? Will you respect the dignity of every human being? I will, with God’s help[6] we promise in the Baptismal Covenant. Humans possess dignity, not simply because we are creatures made in the image and likeness of God, but because through the mystery of the Incarnation it is possible for us to be participants in the divine nature of God.
That we can be participants in the divine nature of God is crucial to our self-understanding as humans. It is this understanding that is rooted in the teaching of Hilary, and others like him. He may have lived nearly 2000 years ago, but his teaching on the nature of God and the person of Jesus, is as significant for our understanding of what it means to be human today, as it was then. And for that, we give thanks.
[1] Martin of Tours, feast day 11 November
[2] Benedict of Nursia, feast day 11 July
[3] 2 Peter 1:4
[4] Athanasius of Alexandria, feast day 2 May
[5] SSJE, Rule of Life, The Mystery of Prayer, Chapter 21, page 42
[6] Episcopal Church, Book of Common Prayer 1979, page 305
The Blessed Virgin Mary, the Word, and the World – Br. Curtis Almquist
John 1:1-5
This icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary, so endearing. On her breast the medallion of the infant Christ. Mary’s arms extended in the orans position, the posture of a priest at the altar. Here Mary pre-figuring how she is carrying and offering the body and blood of Christ who comes from within her.
Mary carries Jesus, who is hidden. God’s taking on our human form, hidden for nine months in his mother’s womb. It will happen again to each of us: Christ’s hiddenness. How Christ who comes to live within us is sometimes so hidden, sometimes working out in the secrecy of our own hearts what cannot be seen. Not yet. Not by us; not by others.
This image of Christ, whom the Gospel of John calls “the Word.” Such a paradox, because the Word pictured in this icon cannot speak even one human word. The Word of God, alive and present in a completely silent way.
And then Mary, whose eyes are not on Jesus. Her eyes are on the world, which she sees and shares with Jesus from her heart. Since the meaning of Christ’s coming is to save the world, the Church’s primary mission must be worldly: the church, not radiating its holiness to a godless world, but giving itself to a world God so loves: people, skies, waterways, plants and trees, birds and creatures big and small. The Church’s primary mission must be worldly, offering God’s love and care to a world dying to be saved. Read More