Br. David Vryhof

Ignatius of Loyola

Genesis 32:22-31

We have before us today three examples of what I would call “committed, determined, all-in discipleship.”

The first is the image of Jacob wrestling with “a man” along the River Jabbok.  Jacob is on his way to meet Esau, his elder brother, the same brother he deceived by stealing his birthright. He is afraid, justifiably. Jacob helps his family to cross the river, then returns alone to the other side to pray and prepare for his encounter with Esau. There he confronts a mysterious stranger and the two engage in a wrestling match. The man bestows on Jacob a new name – “Israel” – signifying a new role and purpose in his life, but he refuses to reveal his own name. Jacob refuses to give up, wrestling with the stranger through the night, insisting on receiving a blessing from him. Finally, as day breaks, the man relents and grants Jacob’s request.

The man reveals to Jacob that he has, in fact, been wrestling with God and Jacob expresses wonder that he has been able to see God and live. The story raises a number of questions: Who was this man and what prompts him to fight with Jacob? Who actually prevails in the struggle? What is the blessing that Jacob so desperately wants from the man? Why does the man leave Jacob with a hip injury?

Regardless of the unknowns, the image of Jacob engaged in an all-night, all-out struggle with God is a powerful one. We admire his determination, his commitment, his clinging to God until he receives the blessing he is seeking. The image of whole-hearted engagement in the struggle can be a powerful inspiration for us.

A second example comes from our Gospel text, where Jesus encounters three would-be disciples, all of whom are eager to proclaim their devotion to him but none of whom follow through and actually follow him. Each has an excuse for turning away, and they are not unreasonable excuses, but they fall short of what Jesus expects of them.

As is often the case, Jesus is using hyperbole to exaggerate his point. The story makes clear that he is seeking disciples who will devote themselves whole-heartedly to the life and work of the Kingdom, without considering the cost to themselves. Whole-hearted discipleship is costly.

The third example comes from St. Ignatius of Loyola, whom we remember today. Ignatius was a soldier – proud, vain and totally consumed with himself – when he met Jesus. That encounter changed his life and led him to devote himself whole-heartedly to the cause of Christ. His utter devotion is captured in the prayer you have in your hands. It is called the “Suscipe” – from the Latin word meaning “receive” – and invites us to likewise consider offering God our all.

Let’s pray it together:

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding and my entire will; all that I have and call my own. You have given it all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. Everything is yours; do with it what you will. Give me only your love and your grace; that is enough for me. Amen.

Retreatants, brothers, friends: Take Ignatius’ prayer to heart. Learn it, ponder it, embrace it. Allow it to challenge and inspire you. Let it be for you a summons to whole-hearted devotion and commitment, which is what Jesus asks of each of us.

Br. Jack Crowley

Matthew 13:36-43

One challenge of modern-day life is knowing when to be serious. There is the challenge of knowing when to be serious, the challenge of how serious you should be, and the challenge of communicating how serious you are about something.

There is also the challenge of how to be serious with God. The challenge of knowing how we should speak to God when we really need to know something. How do we approach God in such a forward manner while still being respectful? How do we break through our day-to-day pleasantries with God and boldly ask for the truth?

In our Gospel tonight, we heard the wonderful story of the Disciples approaching Jesus directly. The context here is important. Jesus had just left a crowd of people after teaching them through a series of parables. Jesus is finally alone and inside a home after being surrounded by people.

I think we all know that feeling of coming home after a long event full of people. There’s that mixture of lingering excitement with fatigue setting in. There’s also this feeling of intimacy now that everyone has gone home. So the Disciples approach Jesus in this very specific context and ask very directly what he meant by his parable. They want the truth, the real deal, or maybe even they think there is something extra Jesus will tell them alone.

Like the Disciples, we must find the time and the mood to approach Jesus with a mix or urgency and intimacy. That serious desire for knowing must bubble up from deep within us and lead us to seek out Jesus wherever we can. We must also have a mixture of humility and boldness as we approach Jesus. We can be humble in our attitude towards the Son of Man but also be bold and authentic in our desire to know more through him and with him.

The point I’m trying to make is it is ok to get real Jesus. Not only is it ok, but maybe Jesus is also eager to meet you at that level of seriousness. What if Jesus is already there? Even after a long day, what if Jesus is waiting for you to approach him with your whole authentic being?

Try speaking to Jesus face-to-face in your own way with your own words. If you feel embarrassed to do so, ask yourself what do you have to lose? Amen.

Genesis 18:20-32

At about 1 AM the pager for the on-call hospital chaplain pierced the silence. I was the on-call hospital chaplain that night – or at least, I was the next best thing: the chaplain intern whose turn it was to carry the pager. The nurse picked up my call quickly and asked, “Are you in the hospital now? We have a stroke patient who is dying.” I explained that on-call chaplains drive in from home, but that I thought I could be there in twenty minutes.

As I sped through the darkness on the way to the hospital, I reviewed the evening so far. I had gone to bed at 10, having already driven back to the hospital once that evening to sit with a patient whom my supervisor had asked me to visit. This patient was also dying – but not imminently, and his end of life experience was bringing out some of the worst in him, especially in the evenings. All of his feelings – anger, resentment, fear – manifested as needs and demands and ultimatums to everyone who came near him. I knew he had been a regular churchgoer, so faith was also there somewhere. Beneath all the bluster, it seemed that he was bargaining for something he desperately needed, whimpering one moment then growling the next. I prayed God would help him find it. After two hours, I helped the nurses bring him all the spare pillows on the unit, then went home.

When I arrived at the hospital the second time, the new patient lay motionless in the bed: an elderly African-American man. The nurse explained that he had died just moments ago. His wife sat calmly beside him, and an elderly white couple sat against the wall, neighbors who had driven the couple to the hospital. I turned my attention toward the wife of the patient, said I was aware that she was a person of faith, and that I was there to be helpful in any way I could. She thanked me, and asked me to pray. I do not remember anything of what I said, but I invited her to add her own prayer. For the next fifteen minutes, she offered up one prayer after another, dense with quotations from scripture, in a voice that was direct, dignified, and as unselfconscious as it was authoritative: prayers for her neighbors, for me, for the doctors, for her departed husband, for their family. It was the prayer of a person who was used to talking to God without holding anything back. When she finished, I thought: If I were God, I’d sit up straight, pay attention, and get to work.

In today’s gospel passage from Luke, Jesus tells the parable of two friends in the middle of the night, to enjoin upon his disciples a particular quality in their prayer.

‘Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, “Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.” And he answers from within, “Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.” I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his ________ he will get up and give him whatever he needs.’

Our English translation uses the word “persistence,” but a more literal translation would be “shamelessness.”

The fear of social embarrassment or ridicule was a major incentive to moral behavior for the cultured Gentile audience that Luke often writes for. Jesus here slyly commends the opposite in our relationship with God. Instead of carefully sifting and choosing your words, Jesus seems to say: Go ahead and say anything, at any time, and in any place. Ask for everything that you need, however unreasonable or ridiculous. This “shamelessness” is a lack of restraint; even a lack of that internal filter we have learned to develop in polite, adult conversation.

In my experience, there are situations when we are brought to our limits or our defenses are down when most of us are able to simply say exactly what’s in our minds or on our hearts. When we are brought close to death, or at the death of a loved one – as with those two hospital patients. When we are awakened in the middle of the night – before waking consciousness asserts its boundaries.

But there are also relationships that help us practice this totally unselfconscious quality.

Imagine the person that knows you most intimately – and the ways you are able to communicate. In developing an intimately personal relationship with God in prayer, we begin with the kind of intimacy we have known (or have glimpsed, and want to know better).

That is how Jesus teaches – he dives right into the middle of everyday life. Prayer, as Jesus teaches prayer, begins with human reality. In his parables, this is often a springboard for teaching about divine realities. “If you then, who are evil (relatively evil – in relation to the limitless goodness of God) know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

For Jesus, God was most like a very attentive and loving parent. This is not the only human relationship Jesus uses as a springboard to illustrate divine realities, but it does seem to be the one he appropriated most personally. What that means for Jesus’ self-identity is that he is a child. Yes, is the Son, the Heir of all the belongs to the Father, which is very grand and awesome. But at heart, Jesus of Nazareth is the little boy with the totally unselfconscious lack of filter or embarrassment who just names aloud every little thing he needs or wants. This cycle of asking and receiving transforms both the child and the parent by creating a deep bond of trust for the child, and for the parent, the witnessing of an unfolding miracle: a baby slowly becoming the person they were created to be.

As disciples of Jesus, when we pray we are standing in the place of Jesus before God. As his Body, our prayers come forth through his mouth. God wants and anticipates that those prayers, over time, will sound and feel more and more like the prayers of his own only-begotten child. Through them, we become more like the person God created us to be.

So what’s stopping us?

Maybe some of the following thoughts will sound familiar to you:

What if I ask, and my request is denied – or even worse, met with a deafening silence? What if I search and I come up empty-handed, exhausted and looking like an idiot for investing myself in such a lost cause? What if I knock until my knuckles bleed and the door doesn’t budge? Then where will I be?

These are supremely reasonable responses if we take our vulnerable human experiences of denied requests, fruitless searches, and closed doors and project them onto our life with God – particularly our life of prayer. These “what ifs” might even cause us to forsake prayer. Or we might prefer always to pray for the needs of others. Or we might prefer to rest in a form of pseudo-contemplation that says, “Whatever you want, God” rather than actively stay put in the excruciatingly particular vulnerability of our needs.

In the opposite direction, we might discover that we are asking, searching, and knocking for what we perceive to be our needs with an insistent and frenzied energy. On the surface, this might look like exactly what Jesus is commending to us in today’s gospel reading. But our petitions might just be so closely shingled that they block out the sunlight of self-awareness, or as reactive as the appetites of children. The spaces, silences, or even pauses that God might use to breathe in us, to disclose to us our deeper needs, will be filled up with our persistent requests. We may even lose precious opportunities to examine what God has given, has revealed or has opened while we have been so busy asking.

God always responds to prayer. But sometimes the response is to gently lead us into a thick patch of ambiguity and uncertainty rather than a breezy clearing of clarity and certainty. In one of the chapters from our Rule commenting on our vow of poverty, we read, “By our vow of poverty we recognize that in our own spiritual lives there will be seasons of shadow, experiences of dryness, waiting, obscurity, or the seeming absence of God. In the light of the gospel we know these are necessary, and that some of them yield more blessings than times when we are filled with devotion and confidence.” And in a chapter entitled “The Mystery of Prayer,” we read: “Our love must be purified and tested by many times of darkness, loss, and waiting.” Like a wise parent, God gives us the Holy Spirit – who often arrives in forms we did not ask for, not only to satisfy or console, but to lead us into all truth.

Let us pray:

Jesus – You shed all shame before your Father to take away the burden of our shame.

Jesus – We stand in your place now and pray with your voice.

Jesus – Teach us to pray by starting with reality as it is, letting our need to dress it up or get it right fall by the wayside that, like you, we may never cease to be children and receive your Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Monthly Requiem

Psalm 116:1-8

Today we remember the Brothers of the Society of St. John the Evangelist who have died in the month of July since we were founded in 1866, our Monthly Requiem. The word “requiem” comes from the Latin, “to repose, to sleep, to rest.”[i]  At the time of someone’s death we pray:

“Depart, O Christian soul, out of this world…

May your rest be this day in peace.”[ii]

This practice of celebrating a Requiem is important to us Brothers. It may also be a helpful practice for you, personally, to intentionally remember people who have figured importantly into your own life, and who have died.

We pray for rest in peace for the departed one. Most people depart this life quite broken: their body, enfeebled; their mind, diminished; their relationships, torn. At least some relationships quite torn. So we pray for them, for healing in death, “where God will be with them [and] will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more…” These are words from The Book of Revelation.[iii] This is the last word of the Bible, the promise of eternal rest, and healing, and peace.

In the Requiem, we also pray for ourselves who have been formed by departed people: formed or deformed by significant people who have died. Though they have departed this life, they may still be very much alive in our memory and in how we navigate our life. We pray our gratitude. We may need to pray for inner liberation or healing – ours or another’s – in any relationship that was imprisoning or wounding. We may also need to pray for forgiveness.

And we pray for our own agency. Jesus said a very mysterious thing: “…Whatever [we] loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”[iv] What does that mean? Over the centuries, biblical scholars have never agreed: “Whatever [we] loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.” Jesus is our intermediary. If there is a residue or bondage in our relationship with someone departed, we implore Jesus “to set the captive free,” whether the captive be we ourselves or someone departed.[v] We take Jesus at his word, that he is the Savior of the world, always with us and with the departed, until the end.[vi] How long would we pray such a prayer of healing and liberation? Long enough.

[i] Requiem from the Latin: “rest (after labor), repose.”

[ii] A phrase found in a Prayer at the Time of Death, and in a Commendatory Prayer, and at the Vigil where we pray  that the departed “rest in peace”: The Book of Common Prayer (1979), pp. 464-465.

[iii] Revelation 21:3-4.

[iv] Matthew 18:18.

[v] Jesus is here quoted in Luke 4:18-21 where Jesus claims to be the fulfillment of the Prophecy of Isaiah 61:1-3ff.

[vi] Matthew 28:20.

Br. Jack Crowley

The Nativity of St. John the Baptist

Luke 1:57-80

So much happens before we are even born. I know that’s quite an understatement, but it’s true. So much happens before we are even born.

No one is born into a blank story. We are born into ongoing stories that are well under way by the time we take our first breath. These are the stories of our parents, the stories of our ancestors, and the stories of the age we live in. We are born into a story already filled with characters.  We are born into a story so full of meaning that it takes a lifetime to understand it.

Tonight we celebrate the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist. To put it simply, the story of his nativity is awesome. John was born of a couple seemingly too old to conceive. By his birth alone, John the Baptist shows us the amazing power of God to make life happen when it feels impossible. Out of seemingly nothing came not only something, but something awesome.

My favorite part of this story is about John’s father Zechariah. Zechariah  is struck mute by the angel Gabriel shortly before conceiving John. As a result, Zechariah  cannot speak for the entirety of his wife’s pregnancy. Just think about that for a moment, that’s nine months, three whole seasons, of not speaking. Imagine if walking home tonight you were struck mute by an angel and couldn’t speak until next March. I’m guessing a lot would build up in your head during that time.

Finally, Zechariah ’s tongue is loosened shortly after John’s birth and he is filled by the Holy Spirit and delivers an epic prophecy about the life of his son. This prophecy describes the story that Saint John the Baptist was entering into. This was a story of God. A story full of mercy and forgiveness. A story of how John would lead the way for the author of our salvation.

The story of John’s life is not an easy one, but it is an awesome one. John helped out so many people and got the world ready for what was to come. The end of the story of John’s life on earth is brutal and violent. His end came with his head on a platter, but that is not the end of the story of our salvation.

We all know we work out the story of our salvation with fear and trembling. Every day of our lives we add a new chapter to that story. Every morning, when that dreaded alarm clock goes off, we start telling ourselves that story. Pay attention to that story. Is it a story full of stress and anxiety? Is it a story of healing and hope?

We may long to escape the story we are in. We may long to turn the page or skip a few chapters. We may wish for a new author or even a new protagonist, yet inevitably we end up right here again in the middle of it all.

No matter what your story is, keep turning back to God. Repent, rearrange, reorient, reintroduce, review, renew, re-whatever yourself back to God. Saint John the Baptist was emphatic about this: we must keep turning back to God.

We must do our best with God’s help to stay present, centered, and engaged with the God-given stories of our God-given lives. Of course this is easier to do when things are going well. The challenge, the cauldron of our faith, is when our stories stop making sense.

If your life and the world around you seems to be full of chaotic stories that don’t make sense, you are not alone. We are all struggling in this time to find a coherent meaning to what’s going on around us. In such times of chaos, it can be hard to find the thread, that awesome thread of the Holy Spirit that links all this insanity around us into something that makes sense. It’s that holy clue that leads us out of this maze of darkness and into the light.

If right now you don’t have a clue what you are doing, keep searching. Pray hard and pray often. Keep examining your life with brutal honesty and always be on the lookout for God. Find that thread and follow it with everything you have.

Br. Luke Ditewig

Psalm 139

Today is our monthly requiem in which we remember the dead, the dying, and our mortality.

Psalm 139 says: “Lord, you have searched me out and known me.” Jesus knows everything about us, both what we don’t mind sharing and what we try to hide. Jesus knows our sitting down and rising up, our thoughts, our ways. Jesus knows all the places we’ve gone, all the journeys we’ve taken and where we’ve stopped to rest. God knows all.

But we try to hide. We often shy away from God by denying death, pretending God can’t see or that we don’t need to speak. We like to think “the darkness will cover [us],” but as the psalmist says: “darkness is not dark to you [O God]; the night is as bright as the day; darkness and light to you are both alike.”

God sees all and invites us to risk praying it. What is dark and terrifying for you today? Perhaps it’s the grief of death, someone or something you have lost. Perhaps it’s the grief of dying, someone or something changing, being taken away. Perhaps it’s the grief of mortality, knowing what you hold today will have to be let go. Remember, too, our non-human neighbors who have died and are dying, for those endangered and hurting by our human greed.

Nothing is too heavy or difficult for Jesus. Risk expressing, praying your grief. Nothing is out of God’s sight or reach, certainly not you! Jesus is here with us. Let yourself feel and be seen. Let yourself be shaken and trust yourself to be held. Pray the hard with words such as writing freeform or your writing own psalm. Pray with silence such as coloring, collage, or gazing as light and shadows move. Pray with movement such as literally shaking and clenching, then releasing to stillness. Lean against a wall or lie down feeling your yourself supported and held.

As you pray in the dark, facing death, see the Light. Look to Jesus, the Sun of Righteousness, who has, who is and who will keep rising in triumph, raising us and all of creation to life.

Isaiah 40:1-11

I was blessed in the second year of my novitiate to work with a spiritual director who was a Trappist monk. Once a month, he patiently listened to the many words I would summon as I circled around my inmost experience of prayer. With a verbal precision sifted by silence, and great love, he would wait. And at the right moment, which would always come, he would name the heart of the matter. Suddenly, words would feel small and superfluous, and the way forward obvious, in the presence of a God whose one desire was simply to be with me.

He shared with me an adage I still remember:

Filled with ardent desire

The words capture the essential invitation in swift, clean strokes. We let our thirst for God rise up from within. We refrain from any agenda of our own contriving, any attachment to this or that experience. And we wait. As we wait, it may happen that God rests – and we rest in God, drawn by this harmonious alignment of wills.

In this light, the Advent exhortations to wait are inviting: a refreshing antidote to the demands of a world filled not with desire but craving, and constantly pressing its point. God waits with us: “The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.”

But these exhortations are accompanied by words like “prepare” and “purify.”

“See, I send my messenger – my angel – before your face.

When the broadest path forward is winding and bent, this is hard work.

When the conditions for God’s life to flourish seem absent, we are asked to be angels – messengers – forerunners – first responders.

In the Collect for the Fourth Sunday of Advent, we will hear:

The words of the prophets, like those of John to the people gathered at the Jordan, scour the heart clean and demand a response. “Forsaking our sins,” which often will not forsake us so easily, is hard work.

So, which kind of waiting is Advent waiting – resting in God, or really hard work?

It is possible that preparing and purifying – or the anxious imperative to do so – may so fill up our Advent waiting that there is no empty space left on the calendar, much less at the center of our hearts, where the Lord may rest. Sometimes, preparing and purifying can slowly mix with planning and perfecting, until the thought of waiting for anything outside our own agency – even God – is unbearable. That is a hard place to live life, because most things fall outside our own agency.

John’s message was clearly irresistible, even consoling, to those who needed the relief of a clear change and a fresh start. Is there a posture toward preparation and purification that honors the seriousness of that work, but also flows from the recognition that Christ’s coming has changed our essential posture toward saving ourselves?

In some seasons of our spirit, preparation for Jesus purged of our own will looks like trusting that all is prepared, enough has been done, and now is the time to entrust the work to God.

In some seasons of our spirit, purification to meet the coming Christ looks like allowing God to distill every desire to its essence, and let all that is not essential fall away.

The occasions that draw forth the image of God in us usually require this kind of trust, and this kind of distillation, refined over time. We dream, we pray, we imagine; we set to work, and the work becomes part of us; and one day, the work bears fruit. Sometimes the fruit is very much what we had hoped for, or even more. Sometimes, the fruit is not at all what we had hoped for, or comes in a different form than we expected.

Allow me to speak from the heart of my personal experience.

In nine days’ time, God willing, I will be ordained as a priest in this monastery chapel. As many of you know better than I, a priest is not made over night. For three years I have been preparing, studying, fulfilling requirements, learning from many wise and holy people near and far about what it means to accept this calling. The day is now near enough that it is intensely real: I am not dreaming, the time has come. I am filled with wonder and gratitude.

So … am I prepared?

Yes, I cannot imagine what further preparation is necessary; I trust that all is prepared, enough has been done, and now is the time to entrust my preparation to God. The time of my formation has borne the fruit I hoped for, and far more.

AND:

No, of course I’m not prepared! I have so much more to learn; the journey has only begun. I cannot predict how God will use me as a priest, what it will require of me, or exactly how becoming a priest will shape my journey as a member of this community and a follower of Jesus. As with any vow made before God and God’s people, crossing that threshold, with you, will make me ready for all that is to come by distilling my desire and joining it to God’s desire for me. Or so I am told.

I ask you: For what have you been preparing – perhaps for a long time – that you can now entrust entirely to God, confident that God is doing more for you than you can ask or imagine?

On a much different note: Just twelve days ago, Brother Jack and I moved back to the monastery from Emery House, the land in West Newbury entrusted to our care. The community has discerned the genuine need to place a pause on our residential ministry and vision for that place. I am in wholehearted agreement with that decision. It is not the right time. At the same time, accepting this reality and its implications has been, for me, a time of spiritual trial. Life and ministry alongside the web of God’s creation in that place has asked great love and great labor, of me and of us. I am left asking God many questions: Were the last ten months merely a dream? If not, what fruit have they borne? What was your plan and your purpose in sending us there? I am listening.

I have returned again and again to a line in our Rule that speaks hard truth, the kind of hard truth John the Baptist knew from the inside: “Our love must be purified and tested by many times of darkness, loss, and waiting.” Longsuffering love emerges from these seasons in a distilled form – stronger and more available to God’s will. I trust that will be so, in the mystery of time.

I ask you: What labor of love has God asked of you, only to bear fruit far different than expected or imagined? How has your desire been distilled in response?

Trust, allow, distill. This is how God prepares and purifies our desire, beginning with our most modest hopes and needs and gradually enlarging our hearts to encompass more and more of the world’s suffering and joy. Until one day, we awake to find we desire nothing less than the Day of the Lord.

The prophet Amos interrogates this desire: “Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord! Why do you want the day of the Lord? It is darkness, not light; as if someone fled from a lion, and was met by a bear.” (Amos 3. 18-20)

In a quite different register, the author of 2 Peter asks, “What sort of persons ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and eagerly desiring the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire?”

Both of these writers envision suffering: the suffering of inescapable confrontation with our conscience; the suffering of a cosmos distilled to its final essence. But it would seem that the subtle difference is this: for the author of 2 Peter, it is our longsuffering desire rather than our goodness that is drawing the far horizon of God’s eternity closer, nearer to this present moment. Our waiting is what prepares and purifies us. In the process we are given the capacity to desire God in the way God desires us.

Until one day, a Savior appears, though in a form far different than we expected or imagined.

In the words of Julian of Norwich, let us pray:

God, of your goodness, give us yourself. For you are enough for us.

Year B, Second Sunday of Advent

Matthew 6:7-15

One of Father Benson’s less well-known books is a small volume entitled The Divine Rule of Prayer or Considerations upon the Lord’s Prayer. It was published in 1866, the same year he, Father Grafton, and Father O’Neill made their professions as the first members of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist.

What is fascinating, in part, about this book, is that in two short chapters, both about 2500 words long, he lays before the reader his understanding of the nature and purpose of prayer. He does this by constantly rooting himself in Lord’s Prayer, of which he says as prayer is the great work of life, so the Lord’s Prayer is the great form and model of [all] prayer.[1]

Many of the themes which Father Benson introduces to his audience in this book, he picks up repeatedly over the course of his life, in his other writings. Reading things published many years after The Divine Rule we hear echoes of what he says within it, perhaps reminding us that most, including it would seem Father Benson, have only one or two things worth saying, and we spend the rest of our lives saying them in different ways.

However, no matter the context, Father Benson’s insight into prayer, and specifically the Lord’s Prayer, is well worth mulling over, so that we can savour its nourishment, and find life in its words. And what words! Quoting from Tertullian,[2] Father Benson begins by reminding us that in the compass of a few words, how many utterances of prophets, evangelists, apostles; how many discourses of Christ, how many parables, examples, precepts, are all indicated! How many duties are effected at once – honour paid to God by the appellation of Father, the authority of faith corroborated by His Name, the offering of obedience in the submission of will, the avowal of hope in the desire of the kingdom, the prayer for life in the mention of bread, the confessions of sins in the deprecation of punishment, the avoidance of temptation in the request for guardianship! God alone could teach us that He desired for us to pray to Him, and the prayer enjoined upon us from Him, and by His Spirit proceeding out of the Divine mouth, rises to heaven, quickened with its own special power, commending to the Father what the Son has taught.[3]

How often do we, how often do I, move to autopilot the moment I hear the words Our Father? How often is my mind miles away, when I hear in the gospels the words, pray then in this way?[4] How often do I ask myself if we have said the Lord Prayer yet, when we have just finished it and said Amen.How often is this prayer just empty words, at least to me? And into this lethargy, Father Benson is like a cold shower. How can we tire of saying the Lord’s Prayer? he asks… the voice of Christ speaks within us when we say the Lord’s Prayer?[5]

He returned to this same theme thirty years later when he wrote:

We pray as being really exalted to the throne of God along with Jesus, the source of our sonship, whose members we are. We are not, then, to think that we need Christ’s supplication on our behalf as an external Intercessor. He intercedes for us by communicating to us the glory of His own exalted life. He does not intercede as one separate from those for whom he intercedes, but they are, as it were, so many mouths to Himself; and as they pray for themselves, His voice fills their utterance with the authority and claim belonging to Himself.[6]

All prayer, but the Lord’s Prayer in particular then, is not an individual activity where we pray for our own needs, and those of the world, as we see it. It is not, in Father Benson’s words, a mere accumulation of individual prayers, but the utterance of a Divine breath, speaking through every member of the Body of Christ by the dictation of the one Divine Heart, which communicates its holy impulses to all, in one harmonious effort.[7] As such we are taught to pray as with one voice.[8] As we pray, it is the voice of Christ, not simply speaking in us, but through us, binding us one to another, and all to Christ who [binds] us all together in the contemplation of things Divine…and who binds us all together in our yearnings after the Divine life. It is the Lord’s Prayer, Father Benson tells us, that in a particular way, binds us to one another, and all to Christ, as members all of one Body, and all quickened by unity under one Head. Amidst all peculiarities of individual temperament and specialty of inner experiences,[9] we come together before the throne of grace as sisters and brothers, children of the same Lord. There before the throne of grace, the words which He Himself dictated to us are uttered by our lips, and He Who intercedes for us upon the throne of God calls us to take part in His intercession, putting the words into our mouth by which we may best be heard. This is the prayer given to us by Him Who is our only Mediator, our Divine Intercessor, in Whose strength alone we can pray so as to be heard.[10]

Bound together, and praying with one voice, we discover anew the outward expression of our union… and know that we have life individually only as being collectively one.[11] Only when we know ourselves thus bound, do we have the courage to pray Our Father … give us … forgive us … save us … deliver us.

Knowing who is praying within us, and the power of that prayer, not simply to bind us to others, but to bind us to Christ, whose body we are, we come before the throne of God clothed with all the virtue of Christ, and with the claim of Divine identification,[12] as we say, Our Father.

Those words, uttered by saints, and given to us by Christ himself, should not thoughtlessly slip from our tongues. We should tremble as we speak them. We should cover our mouths, lest we profane them. We should take off our shoes, for we stand on holy ground. Yet we should speak them boldly. We should say them confidently. We should proclaim them assuredly. For these are words we can speak with a perfect … confidence. They are good. They comprise all good. They bring our minds into harmony with the Divine will. They bring the will of God into operation towards ourselves in the integrity of its manifold goodness for the sanctification to us of all things temporal and our attainment of everlasting glory. [13]

This is the prayer that Jesus taught us; whose words by it have been put into our mouths; whose strength we know when we say it; whose life we share when we speak it; and whose love we proclaim when we recite it. This prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, is His prayer in us; and ours in Him, and when we say it, we reign with Him in glory. So let us pray, not simply as our Saviour taught us, but as our Saviour who speaks within and through us, each time we say, Our Father in heaven….

[1] Benson, Richard Meux, The Divine Rule of Prayer, London, Bell and Daldy, 1866, Page 1

[2] c. 155 AD – c. 220 AD) was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. He was the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of Latin Christian literature. He was an early Christian apologist and a polemicist against heresy, including contemporary Christian Gnosticism. Tertullian has been called “the father of Latin Christianity” and “the founder of Western theology”.

[3] Tertullian, Letter on Prayer, chapter 9

[4] Matthew 6: 9

[5] Page 5

[6] Benson, Richard Meux, The Final Passover, volume II, part II, London, Longmans, Green, and Co., page 307

[7] Benson, Divine Rule, Page 5

[8] Ibid., Page 4

[9] Ibid., Page 3 and 4

[10] Ibid., page 3

[11] Ibid., page 5

[12] See The Final Passover, volume II, part II, page 308

[13] Divine Rule, page 13 and 14

Br. Curtis Almquist

John 1:29-42

We could infer from this Gospel account that John and Jesus had met for the very first time the day before, when John baptized Jesus. John had said, “I myself did not know him.” Not so. They did know one another. They were cousins. They would have known each other since their births, their impossible-to-believe births, which had been predicted by angels. Angels, no less! Jesus, born to an unmarried mother who insisted she had not had a sexual union; John born to a mother who was old enough to be his great grandmother.

If it was important enough for Mary, while she was pregnant, to travel the 90 miles from Nazareth to the Judean hills to see her pregnant Aunt Elizabeth, John’s mother, it is unimaginable that they would not have visited each other after the births of their miraculous sons.[i] Visited many times. No one in the world could understand one another like these two couples could: Mary and Joseph, and Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Zechariah. These two boys, Jesus and John, had to have known one another, and probably looked to each other, befriended each other, confided in each other, shared the burden of their imposed identities with one another. Both of them loved going into the desert. Maybe they camped together? They were cousins, virtually the same age, the only child of their parents. Neither son had married; neither had pursued a profession that was identified; neither, it seems, had found their voice to fulfill the “angelic predictions” until rather late in life. Both of them, at the time of this Gospel account, were about age 30. They had to have known one another. And known each other very well.

But we have to take John at his word. John says, “I myself did not know him.” John had never known Jesus like this! John had clearly experienced something new and stunningly powerful in his cousin, Jesus with his baptism. John, who had initially been resistant to Jesus’ request to be baptized, was undeniably overcome by something that had happened in Jesus’ baptism. John now says for the first time, “I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.”[ii] What John had now seen and heard absolutely convinced him that the destinies that both he and Jesus had carried all their lives was coming into being. John’s cousin, Jesus, was the Messiah after all!

The next day following his baptism, Jesus walks by John, who is talking with two of his own followers, one named Andrew.[iii] Andrew, and we can assume his companion, were fishermen by trade. Fishermen were a distinct class. They were savvy, but were not known to be literate. Their work was strenuous; they stank; they were typically crude in manner, with rough hands, and rough speech, and rough in their treatment of others.[iv] Except that these two Jewish fishermen – and a host of other people – were on a very earnest spiritual quest anticipating the coming of the Messiah. Which is why John was baptizing people, preparing them for the coming Messiah. So Jesus walks by, the day after his baptism. This is John’s cousin… but he has become much more than just a cousin. John points out Jesus to these two fishermen, naming Jesus, “the Lamb of God.” This would have been a very arresting thing to say to fellow Jews accustomed to the sacrifice of lambs in the Temple: Jesus as “the Lamb of God.” Andrew and his companion set off to track Jesus.

When Jesus notices them, he asks them one of the best questions in the entire Bible, one of the best questions in life: “What are you looking for?” This was at a time when there were many smart but acrimonious factions within Judaism – the Pharisees, the Scribes, the Zealots, the Essenes, and others – who were erudite. But probably not these two fishermen. Jesus asks them, “What are you looking for?” And their answer to Jesus is so disarming, so endearing, and so down-to-earth. Jesus asks, “What are you looking for?” And they respond, “Uhh…” they say, “Uhh… where are you staying?” And Jesus meets them on their terms. He says, “Come and see.” And they spend the rest of the day with Jesus.

We don’t know what they did together, nor what they discussed. I think these two fishermen simply needed to know whether Jesus was real. They had heard from John and so many others the lofty predictions of what the Messiah was to be. They needed to know if he was real. The real deal. Otherwise all this spiritual talk about the coming Messiah – King of Kings, Mighty God, Prince of Peace, Lord of Lords – was way beyond their reach, beyond their interest, beyond their need. They were fishermen, looking for healing, and help, and hope. They needed to know if Jesus, whom John identified as the Messiah, was real and could meet them on their level.

The clinical psychologist and spiritual guide James Finley tells of his first encounter with Thomas Merton.[v] Finley, at age 19, after graduating from high school and surviving an alcoholic and abusive father, entered Gethsemane Abbey, the Trappist monastery in Kentucky. He was assigned to Thomas Merton as his spiritual director. In their first meeting Finley was so intimidated, literally stuttering in Merton’s presence. Merton asked him, “What’s wrong?” Finley screamed at him, “You’re Thomas Merton! What do you think?” So Merton gave Finley an assignment. In addition to his daily round of prayer and worship, of study and silence, Finley was given the work of tending to the abbey’s pigs. A swineherd. Finley tells how Thomas Merton leaned into him and said: “Under my authority, you must meet me each day… and tell me one story that happened that day with the pigs.” Finley thought, “I can do that.” And this began Finley’s long journey to healing from his horrific trauma by talking every day… about pigs.

We have no idea what these two curious, perhaps desperate fishermen talked about with Jesus for the rest of the day, wherever it was he was staying. I assume the conversation included fish talk because that’s what their life was all about. Jesus’ question to them is a good question for us: “What are you looking for?” It’s a profoundly simple question which has successive levels of depth. Plumb the depths. Let that question form your prayer to Jesus. He asks you, “What are you looking for?” And you respond. And then he asks you, “Why?” And you respond. And then he asks you again, “Why?” Keep plumbing the depths in your response, and you’ll eventually get down to what is real, real about you and real about Jesus.  It’s what we call “the real presence,” the two of you, really being present to one another.

Lectionary Year and Proper: A – The Second Sunday after Epiphany

[i] John was born to Elizabeth and Zachariah in Ein Karem, Hebrew for “Spring of the Vineyard,” about 5 miles southwest of Jerusalem in the peaceful Judean Hills. Mary and Joseph raised Jesus in Nazareth of Galilee, about 90 miles north of Ein Karem.

[ii] John 1:33-34.

[iii] John 1:40.

[iv] Many of Jesus’ 12 disciples were fishermen (Matthew 4:18-22; Mark 1:16,17; Luke 5:1-11; John 1:43-44).

[v] Dr. James Finley is a prolific author, among whose books are Breathing Under Water: Spirituality and the Twelve Steps; The Healing Path; A Memoir and an Invitation; Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God.

Br. Keith Nelson

Matthew 7:7-12

Ask… and it will be given. Search…and you will find. Knock…and the door will be opened for you.

What prevents you from asking, searching, or knocking?

It might be a literal lack of clarity. Who should I ask? Where should I search? Is this the right door, or is it that one?

It might be an emotion on the fear continuum: anxiety; suspicion; pessimism; insecurity; loneliness. What if I hear “No” in reply? What if I spend all that energy searching but find nothing helpful, nothing worthwhile? What if I knock and that door remains shut tight, with not a light to be seen behind the dark window panes as night falls?

It might be a well-intentioned desire for independence or self-sufficiency; or the desire to appear competent or smart. What if I can just figure this out by myself? That way, I won’t have to be a burden or impose my question or need on someone else…

It might even be fear of the very gift, opportunity, or invitation we long for.  What if I hear “yes” in reply? Am I ready to walk through that door if it does open? What would I do or say next?

Jesus knows that it can be so hard for us to take all of these risks – so hard that we might even prefer to subsist on a diet of stones and snakes because we think it’s easier; because we feel we’re not worth anything better; because we cannot imagine a God that generous or a universe that simple.

As a foundational stance toward our relationship with God, ask-search-knock calls forth from us an initiative and a willingness to expose our hearts. This is as true in our relationships with human companions as it is with God. But on our part, the process of asking, searching, and knocking changes us, just as it changed Jesus.

At his baptism, Jesus heard a voice from heaven speak directly to him: “This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” Emerging from the spiritual sifting of his wilderness fast, Jesus began to embody his role as a Teacher grounded in a foundational stance: I am God’s child.

Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone?

It was a rhetorical question. Who would do that? In the generous and simple laws that govern a home, it is the child’s nature to ask for what she needs – first, with loud, inarticulate wailing, then eventually in simple words, directed by the body’s instincts: I’m hungry. I’m thirsty. I’m cold. Pick me up. Put me down. And then, one fateful day: I want to do it my own self.

Do we have the courage – the resilience – the trust – to name the need aloud? To return in spirit – as did Jesus – to the felt knowledge that we are beloved children of a God that generous, in a kingdom that simple? Ask, search, knock…and become the child you are in God’s eyes.