The Communities of New Skete

Scripture Reading: Jn 1:1-18; 1Pt 1:3-4,2:4-9;Ac 1:1-8

Reflections from a Monk

I have always been overwhelmed by the enormity of creation. Not only the beauty and magnificence of the earth and all that it contains, but all the stars and planets and galaxies in the heavens above. As a youngster, I would go outside and gaze into the sky at night and wonder about all that was out there. I realized how small I was in comparison to the vastness of the created cosmos. I also loved history. When I encountered the concept of light years and realized that the light we see from the stars above is really only showing us something that happened many light years ago, I began to link my love of history with this tidbit from astronomy and fantasize about being light years out in outer space and somehow seeing past events on earth as they were happening. Think what it would be like, hovering over the battlefield at Gettysburg, seeing Constantinople in all its glory, observing dinosaurs walking on earth, or, witnessing the resurrection of Jesus! A fantasy very much in tune with the ethos of the modern age.

We want all the facts firmly in place, undisturbed by any mystery. How do we understand history? How do we understand current events? We want visible proof. And we constantly strive to get it. And yet how much do we really understand about current events even with all our modern news coverage? We have satellites, listening devices, night vision goggles, all manner of recording and filming equipment, indeed our entire world and existence is simply one enormous forensic laboratory! And still, we miss the deeper meaning of events, not to mention the facts surrounding events. Who really shot JFK anyway? Do we have the indisputable facts? Does it matter? And what of the resurrection of Jesus Christ? The New Testament offers no eyewitnesses to the resurrection, only the cross and the empty tomb. How unsatisfying to modern minds!

Our tradition speaks of the resurrection, as the first day of the new creation. In the early church this was called the eight day. A day beyond our normal seven day week, beyond the our finite calculations of time, hence, beyond our understanding. A lot of oratory and spilled ink surround this issue, but the Easter sermon of St John Chrysostom remains one of the best to capture the essence of the New Creation. It has seldom been surpassed. He tells us in just a few paragraphs what this New Creation is all about. In part he says:

“Is there anyone who is devout and a lover of God?
Come, and receive this bright, this beautiful feast of feasts! …
Is there anyone who has labored from the first hour?
Accept today your fair wages! …
Is there anyone who came up only at the eleventh hour?
Do not be afraid because of your lateness– …

For the honor and generosity of the Master is unsurpassed. …

Therefore, enter all of you into the joy of your Lord!
Both first and last, receive the reward;
rich and poor, dance and sing together;
continent and dissolute, honor this day;
fasters and nonfasters, enjoy a feast today.
The table is filled, and everyone should share in the luxury;
the calf is fatted, and no one must go away hungry.

Come, one and all, and receive the banquet of faith!
Come, one and all, and receive the riches of loving-kindness!
No one must lament his poverty,
for a kingdom belonging to all has appeared;
no one must despair over his failings,
for forgiveness has sprung up from the grave;
no one must fear death,
for the death of the Savior has set us all free. …

O death, where is your sting?
O Hades, where is your victory?
Christ is risen, and you are laid low; …
Christ is risen, and life is more abundant and free; …”¹

The New Creation has been given to us, now what do we do with it? How do we live our lives differently? We shout “Christ is Risen!” But we could also shout “Happy New Year!” And really mean Happy New Life! A new way of living life. We just spent the 40 days of Great Lent examining our lives, checking our thoughts, trying to come to grips with our passions, compulsions, addictions, our petty grips, our pains, our indifferences, our loneliness, our slights of others, our neuroses – all those things that obsess us and keep us away from God, that insulate us from the life we are being called to live. Now we are called to shift the paradigm. And isn’t that what St John Chrysostom is telling us? He is telling us anew that all are welcome into the great feast of this new creation. Don’t hesitate, come; forget all those things that we as human beings fear and use as barriers between ourselves and the life God has promised us! Even the fear of death. For what is offered to us is New Life that stretches from now to eternity.

During this year’s Lenten journey, at our evening meal, we have been listening to selected programs from the radio series: Speaking of Faith. One of the programs we heard featured Jean Vanier founder L’Arche, a worldwide community, or rather series of communities, where people with serious physical and mental handicaps are cared for in a Christian community context. He spoke about what comes after this life, as he sees it, and how he conveys this to members of his community. He tells people that the next life will be beautiful beyond our imagining. That the place God has prepared for us is so infused with love and light and caring that we will simply be overwhelmed.

Even today I still look up into the night sky to ponder the wonder of it all. Here in the country, we can see much more since the surrounding lights are fewer. So, envisioning the New Creation really is like that childhood fantasy of seeing into the deeper past, all the way back to the genesis of creation. Seeing all the way back to that initial impulse that ultimately led God to create human life to be eternally in God’s presence. And when we are in God’s presence, we are in that place where St John Chrysostom says the generosity of the Master is unsurpassed. In other words, resurrection is about life more abundant. The New Creation that we welcome today is to live not just in anticipation of that future eternal life, but to live that future, however imperfectly, here and now. Everyone is invited. All that holds us bound to earthly cares is vanquished. For Christ is risen!

1. Veselin Kesich, The First Day of the New Creation: the Resurrection and the Christian Faith, Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1982, pp. 183-5. [↩]

Scripture Reading: Zech. 9:9-12; Phil. 3:10-4:1; Lk. 12:1-19; Mt. 21:28-32

Reflections from a Monk

Christ is in our midst!

How well we really know ourselves! In tonight’s Gospel we hear a parable about choices that we might make consciously and unconsciously, and how these choices show what we are really made of. Just like the two sons, one regrets his agreement, the other regrets his disagreement. In either case they had a change of mind, one for the better, and the other for the worse.

Then, just before the intense and terrible events of Holy Week, we hear the intriguing gospel story of Christ on the way to Jerusalem. He has been making the journey in order to celebrate the upcoming great Sabbath, when thousands of pilgrims from all over the country and in fact from all over the Mediterranean world, come together in Jerusalem to visit the Holy and magnificent Jewish Temple there. Jesus himself is now actually an outlaw, despised and targeted by the highest ruling Jewish authorities during the Roman occupation of their country. So he is not only prepared to preach but also to confront the establishment itself.

Since the city is so crowded for the feast, his friends invited Jesus and his disciples to stay nearby in the town of Bethany. The miracle Jesus had earlier performed on Lazarus was the talk of the town, of course. We also hear that Mary, who was most likely one of the daughters of Simon, in whose house they were dining, was deeply affected by Jesus for raising her brother Lazarus from the dead. So Mary brought in some really fine and expensive ointment perfumed with essential oils and sat down at the feet of Jesus with devotion and gratitude. There in front of everyone she anointed his feet, which were calloused and dusty from his long journey.

Mary was not at all embarrassed that Jesus was becoming the whole focus of her life. She tenderly used her long hair to smooth out the excess oils, and then she lovingly kissed his feet. What she was doing now, as Jesus would soon point out, more than made up for her father’s previous neglect. He had not performed the usual washing and drying of his guests’ feet after they had removed their sandals, and he had not even greeted them with a welcoming embrace and kiss. What was her father’s problem: was he resentful his family was running after this itinerant preacher who was obviously headed for serious trouble? He had grudgingly opened his doors to Christ and the whole motley crowd of disciples, probably at the insistence of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus himself, but he really wasn’t being hospitable.

Judas was taking it all in like the others—but he could not remain silent. Judas was a practical man of the world, who made business and politics his agenda. So he griped and complained about her wastefulness: at least they, meaning he, could have used the cost of her perfume to fund those poor underdogs determined to overthrow the Romans and who had only words and indignation to work with. Was he embarrassed or envious or just plain cynical?

What extremes these two people represent—what strong and opposite feelings they provoke, of anger and distress, or of pity and caring! And which one would we really identify with? Which one touches and inspires our hearts, since each of us might somehow be a mix of both? Maybe I am uncomfortable thinking about either of them!

This episode comes at the end of all the Sundays of the pre-Lenten and Lenten Season, and seems to me it also strongly illustrates the most basic Lenten message. Mary and Judas are like the Publican, shedding tears of devotion, and the Pharisee, analyzing and judgmental. They are similar to the Good Samaritan, along with the caring innkeeper of course, contrasted with the priest and the Levite locked into their own agendas and who ignored the poor victim lying at the side of the road. They are very much like the Prodigal Son, who finally broke out of his proud ego, and his older brother, who whined about not having ever gotten the same attention from their father, who was unlike Simon the father of Lazarus, so overcome and generous when his lost son returned.

And finally now we also hear that in Bethany some people were still skeptical and unmoved or felt threatened and challenged by the amazing feat of raising of Lazarus from death, while Mary was totally moved. Even before this she told Jesus she was able to accept and trust in the coming resurrection of all, and based the power of Jesus’ words and his message of hope and desire they evoked in her, believed he could raise her brother. She saw him show by his presence there how he brought into their lives the compassion of God his Father and, as he said, of “our Father in heaven.”
And now, his friends were alarmed that Jesus knowingly was walking into a deathtrap.

This was also the issue with Judas—how can I get Jesus to avoid this? If only I can convince the Council of Pharisees to listen to him and hear his message! So Judas must have been somewhat relieved along with the others when he saw Jesus greeted by ecstatic and expectant crowds instead of hostility on the way into Jerusalem. Jesus rode in, not on a powerful stallion, not on the shoulders of the crowd, but just on a donkey! In those ancient cultures as even today in many places, this was a lowly but valued and protected animal prized as the ordinary means of work and transportation! Throughout the Bible, this was the way great leaders often entered their cities, to show that they walk humbly before God, and that they identify with the ordinary people. “Listen,” this says “I am also one of you in your dream of justice and peace.”

In this case Christ, the Prince of Peace, knew that the popular way of political liberation by confronting Rome would be a disaster, as it eventually turned out to be. And so the noisy and triumphal moment quickly evaporated. It was based on a misunderstanding of Jesus’ true mission. But the dramatic theme of Mary on one hand and Judas on the other is brought up over and over in our prayers and hymns during the entire Passion and Paschal season.

Again and again our services will emphasize the hidden tension and struggle in our own lives. They highlight Jesus’ absolute and fearless dedication to what is right and true, but not at the expense of God’s healing and compassionate touch that he brings us, and his loving embrace of our human hearts.

Christ is in our midst!

Have you ever wondered what it is like to live the life of a monastic? In these turbulent times, New Skete is offering a unique opportunity for individuals interested in the monastic life to spend a week with us living according to the rhythms of our contemplative life. Guests will have ample opportunity for solitude and prayer, join us in choir for services, spend a certain period of time each day in common work, share meals with us, and have several spiritual conferences throughout the week on the monastic vocation. The dates for this retreat experience are June 1-7, and no fee is expected. If you are interested, please contact the monastery at 518-677-3928 or the vocation director at br_christopher@hotmail.com.