September 27, 2015

Union and Communion

Mother Rebecca

                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                                        September 27, 2015


Num 11:25-29; Mk 9:38-48
There is a little problem with today’s gospel.  We hear Jesus tell us to amputate our own hands and feet – and whatever else causes us to sin!  I think Jesus is being a bit overly dramatic in an attempt to emphasis the severity and seriousness of sin.  In a culture that no longer talks much about sin, this may be a much needed gospel for our times.  But wasn’t it just a few weeks ago Jesus was telling us that nothing on the outside makes us unclean, but what causes sin comes only from within?!  The battle we are called to fight is inside of us - with our thoughts and disordered passions – with the mind and heart.  So if we put these two teachings together, this amputation would not leave us handless and footless, but rather every one of us would be left “mindless”!!  In reality, it is our conflicting thoughts and passions that need to be cut off, not our hands and feet.  So Jesus speaks quite vividly today of the practice of nepsis.  It is about reaching apatheia - about detachment to things that are not of God.   Cassian calls this apatheia ‘purity of heart’ and explained that this detachment leads us to contemplation - union with God and unity within our self.
It sounds ironic:  detachment to create union; to ‘cut off’ to form communion.  Yet these two opposite themes run together in the readings.  The first theme is about dissection while the second is about connection.  In the Book of Numbers, Joshua tells Moses to stop Eldad and Medad from prophesizing because they were not among their group.  Joshua wanted to cut off those outside their camp even though their words were good.  Next we have John telling Jesus to stop people doing good works in His name because they too did not follow their cluster.  Yet both Moses and Jesus say do not prevent them:  “Who is not against us is with us.”  Jesus said we can tell a tree by its fruit.  So a question we might ask our self is:  What fruit do I bear?  And what needs pruning? 
But we can take this analogy further, not as individuals but as a community.  We are one body striving towards one goal, which is Christ.  Is there anyone in community I exclude because they do not live the monastic life the way I think they should?  Can I relate to each and every member or do I cut one or two off because they cause irritations?  I am not called to exclude others but to look inward and remove thoughts and feelings that exclude me from others.  Any community not in communion is broken for when we cut off a limb we are all wounded.  Yet looking at it on the other side, when I exclude myself from the common life am I not exposing myself to potential sin and greater temptations?  This calls us to examine our relationships in community and as community.  Again, there is an interior battle that needs to be waged with our thoughts and hearts.  This is a challenge – detachments within are needed to bring unity without.
But let us widen the analogy even further, from our physical body, to that of the Mystical Body.  St Paul speaks of all humanity as members of the one body in Christ.  He said, “The body does not consist of one member but of many.” (1Cor12)  “Suppose the foot was to say ‘because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body’.  It belongs to the body nonetheless… God appointed each limb and organ to its own place in the body as He chose.  If the whole were a single organ, there would not be a body at all.”  Paul concludes saying, “You are Christ’s body and each of you a limb or organ of it.”   When we start excluding groups who are not like us are we not cutting off the limbs of the Mystical Body?  To amputate others is to lose our self as well as our true identity.  Any community not in union with the Mystical body is broken for when we cut off a limb we are all wounded.  As St Paul said, “When one member suffers we all suffer together with it.  If one member is honored, all rejoice together.”  We are all born from the same womb and so we are all brothers and sisters in the One Body of Christ.  Thomas Merton said that we as monks “go into the desert (or cloister) not to escape the world but in order to find them in God.”  Is our prayer bringing us to greater compassion and unity?  Is our prayer moving us to reach out in love or to cut off in self-preservation?
But there is still another analogy to this detachment that leads to union.  Pope Francis in his latest encyclical said that our connection with our diverse world is found by detaching from all corruption that harms our world and the cosmos.  When we treat our planet as the gift it is, we will be responsible in our actions and share these gifts with all people.  We cannot divorce ourselves from the living environment that sustains our existence.  Pope Francis says the only way we could ignore the intimate connection between ourselves and the ecosphere is to objectify it and see it only for my use…and thus, abuse.
So let us take seriously the sin that separates us from our true self, from our community, from the Mystical Body, and from all of creation.  There needs to be detachment to find union, things’ to cut off’ to form communion, dissection so as to have connection.  Unity is found when we amputate all those thoughts, passions, and actions that are not of God.  As Merton said, “In my soul and in your soul I find the same Christ who is our life. This life is love and together we all find Paradise which is the sharing of His love.”  This is the love we strive for:  a love that unites, a love that brings fullness, and a love that will “bring us all together to everlasting life”.  (RB 72:11)

September 2, 2015

Candy Season



Mother Rebecca



Mk 7:1-8,14-15,21-23 & James 1:17-18,21-22,27

Here we are opening our candy season this week and our gospel message today is telling us that unwashed hands are really not that important!!  This seems to be very poor timing!  The teaching of Christ in this gospel seems pretty simple to grasp…but is it?   Even the disciples had to ask Jesus for further explanation.  So this gospel requires pondering and self-examination.  It cannot be read quickly and the disciples understood this as they probed deeper.  Jesus is always calling us to move to the interior where real things in life matter. 
Food scientists tell us that unclean hands and unsanitized dishes can cause bacteria, disease, illness, and even death.  There is the parallel with an unclean heart, clouded motives, or negative emotions that can cause spiritual disease, illness, and even spiritual death.  In my lectio, two places in Scripture came to mind.  The first is Pontus Pilate who washed his hands in the hopes of cleansing himself of responsibility for his actions.  He was left with clean hands but not a pure heart.  Pilate shows us that we can’t cleanse the inside by washing the outside.  Nor can responsibility for our actions be simply wiped away.
The second Scripture passage that came to mind is the story of Jesus’ multiplication of bread and fish.   Five thousand people were organized into groups of 50 on the grass.  Can you imagine all 5,000 people breaking up from their groups to run down to the lake and wash their hands before eating?  Staring out at the water they would have missed the miracle behind them.  They would have fulfilled the outer ritual… but missed Jesus doing miracles in their midst.
Jesus called the Pharisees hypocrites.  The opposite of this is integrity.  Whether we have integrity or hypocrisy depends exactly on how well we integrate our interior life with our exterior actions and speech.  When both are one and the same, we are one with our self, we are one with others, and we are one with God.  This happens to be the definition of a monk, monos.  So we see today’s gospel holds an essential message for us as monks – one to be probed deeply.  Both goodness and sin originate in the interior and can create either unity or alienation from God, others, and our self.   So our focus should begin with the interior – one’s motives, conscience, and heart.  We all know how easy it can be to justify our actions yet be far from the truth.  We also know how we can follow all the rules yet still be without obedience.  These come from the interior and exterior being out of cinque.   St James puts it in different words:  “Humbly welcome the word planted inside you”…but be not only hearers of the word but be doers of the word.  St James is saying, as Christians, the interior word within us is the source of our exterior behavior.  It is being integrated - living with integrity.
Thomas Merton said, “Action and contemplation grow together into one life and one unity.  They become two aspects of the same thing.  Action (or work) is charity looking outward to others, and contemplation is charity drawn inward to its own divine source.  Work is the stream, and contemplation is the spring.” (No Man is an Island)  In other words, unless a person continuously renews her intimacy w/ Christ and is receptive to God’s love in prayer, one cannot effectively give that love to others in her work.  The two need each other. If the spring dries up, so does the stream! (“Merton’s Theology of Prayer”)
Jesus goes on to say, quoting Isaiah:  if “people honor me with their lips but their hearts are far away from me, in vain do they worship me”.  In other words we cannot worship and honor God just in speech but it must come from our hearts.  These are challenging words since we enter into the Liturgy seven times a day to worship and praise God.  Is it all in vain if we don’t also love all those around us?!  This should wake us up – this should make us want to run back constantly to the living spring! 
In the sacraments and in our Cistercian rituals the exterior gestures and symbols bring to mind the invisible power of the divine presence.  What moves us and brings us grace is interior…if we only focus on the exterior rubrics we can miss the grace - cleansing our hands but not our hearts.  The Rule of St Benedict quotes Ps 24 saying “the one who ascends the mountain of the Lord and stands in His holy place” is “the one who has clean hands and a pure heart” (vs4)   What better way to gain a pure, clean heart than to drink of the purest cup that will ever be offered:  The chalice of Christ Blood.   What finer wheat than on the paten that holds the Body of Christ.  The Lord is inviting us to his table - are we prepared for the feast?
Or we can also look at the sacrament of Baptism.  Water itself doesn’t cleanse – pigs roll in it and cruel people bathe in it but remain unclean.  What cleanses us is the living water of God’s Spirit that springs up from within.  Like Merton said, prayer and receiving God’s love is the spring, and from that, a stream of loving actions flow out of our lives.
So we can see what this gospel is asking of us this candy season:  to remain in Jesus’ Heart, Love, and Presence through prayer, good spiritual reading, and the liturgy - so that we may be loving and generous in the work asked of us and to people around us.  It begins inside the vessel and overflows into outer action. 
St Bernard speaks of 7 steps to an unclean heart.  I won’t go into all of them but they are all worth pondering.  The first is negligence.  We want to give our self totally and freely to the work asked of us, not grumbling or being discontent.  Wanting to be somewhere else, or do something else, erodes God’s presence in the moment.  He says the second step is curiosity.  It brings us out of our self in order to watch others.  Bernard says when we catch this happening beware of our own soul's state for we are in more danger than the one we watch!  Energy is wasted when we are thinking about anything other than what is or who is before us.  We all want to join in the common work bringing Jesus with us - remembering that “whatever we do we do it for God”.  Focusing on Christ, and not our own expectations and desires will lead us to a pure heart full of charity and gratitude. 
So this candy season, yes clean hands are important, but the real challenge for us this season is to work with a pure heart.  To spread joy, peace, and charity in our work – this comes from a heart full of God and full of love.   From this streams an exterior of gentleness, smiles, kind words, and graciousness.   This is what makes our work a form of worship.  This is what makes our candy work sweet!

…So as we make our caramels this season let us experience this “sweetness of the Lord” with “clean hands and a pure heart”.