When, Lord, Will You Be Done with Me? In the liturgies of Easter we do a quick read-through of the Acts of the Apostles. It’s a great story, in which the disciples confidently charged forward in the business of building a church. But to conclude that the disciples of Jesus knew exactly what to do in every situation would be a big mistake. In fact, there were more than enough moments of agony and indecision. Jesus did not leave the disciples a handbook with all the answers. Rather, he left them the Holy Spirit, and that Spirit guided them through one challenge after another. It was tough going ..read more

One Season at a Time, Please! Lent has been over for eight days now, and it’s time to share a secret. I like Lent. I always have. But I’ve always wondered this: if you really like something, can it still count as penance? One reason I love Lent has to do with childhood memories. Lent was the only time of the year when our family went to church on both a Wednesday and on an evening. Like most people in our parish, we drove in the darkness of a winter’s night to crowd into the church. There we prayed the stations of the cross, sang hymns and meditated on short passages from the scriptures. It w ..read more

Palm Sunday: Christ Rides Among Us I met my first Palmesel on a trip to the Cloisters Museum in New York when I was in college. This particular palm donkey was a 15th-century creation, and in towns and villages throughout southern Germany these figures held places of honor in Palm Sunday processions. They made tangible the story of Palm Sunday. That day I realized that not all Palm Sunday processions are created equal. This Palm Sunday one particular verse from the Passion narrative struck me as never before. As Jesus hung on the cross, witnesses taunted him with one bit of sarcasm: “…come do ..read more

Lent is no Stand-Alone Experience I’ve given many retreats on the theme of Lent, so a recent day of reflection should have been no special challenge. Not so this time, however, because I’d spoken on Lent to this group many times before. Either I had to come up with something new, or pray that no one could recall what I’d said before. That’s why I opened with Cyril of Jerusalem. There’s no reason that anyone in the room should know about Cyril of Jerusalem. But for liturgical historians he’s a big deal. A 4th-century pilgrim named Egeria happened to be in Jerusalem to witness the Holy Week and ..read more

Does Jesus Stir Within Us? A recurring theme in the gospels deals with those who thought they knew Jesus but really didn’t. Because they knew where he came from and who Mary and Joseph were, they could not imagine any potential in Jesus. And so, whenever Jesus met such people, he could work no wonders among them. Sometimes we are those people. We are the people who typecast Jesus, perhaps because of our long familiarity with him. We may think we know him, but like the neighbors of Jesus we sometimes cannot bring ourselves to let him work among us. That can be true even for us monks, despite o ..read more

What to do for Lent? For much of my life Lent has been a puzzle. From childhood I have vivid memories of solemn Ash Wednesday services and simple penances like giving up candy. Much of this was confirmed in the monastery, where Saint Benedict urges us monks to make our lives a Lenten observance. He also encourages us to embrace some sort of self-denial, though he tempers that with the need to secure the abbot’s permission. In fact he discourages us from being too blatant about it, lest we transform ourselves into paragons of virtue. That warning was my first hint that Lent in the monastery mi ..read more

Go and Sin No More! For many years my confrere Fr. Thomas had a snippet of a scripture passage done in fine calligraphy, framed, and hanging on the wall of his office. It was a stately piece of work, and I always found it personally inspiring. Short and sweet, it read simply: “SIN! [John 8: 11]” That wall hanging evidenced Thomas’ wry sense of humor as a scripture scholar. It also showed how insightful he was as a confessor. He knew how easy it is to take words of scripture out of context and make them say nearly anything we want. In this case the word “SIN” is embedded in the command Jesus g ..read more

The Blessing of the Abbot The blessing of an abbot is an important occasion in the life of any monastery. So it was that the blessing of Abbot Douglas on January 28th marked a milestone for us at Saint John’s Abbey. It was an event laced with all sorts of symbolism, intended to convey a great deal of meaning. The presence of our bishop, Patrick Neary CSC, was only the most obvious of them. As the bishop of St. Cloud, Bishop Patrick conferred the blessing, and that action recognizes the relationship between the monastery and the diocese in which we live. Saint Benedict in his Rule made clear t ..read more

Jonah and the Cost of Forgiveness Sometimes less is more, but in the case of Jonah 3: 1-5 and 10, less is definitely less. That excerpt from the Book of Jonah relates an abbreviated version of the reluctant prophet whom God sent to preach repentance to the people of Nineveh. In this shortened form, which was the first reading for the 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, many of the bits that make the story so engaging failed to make the cut. What we’re left with is a spare version that leaves us a lot less to mull over. What’s excised is what gives the tale such color. Jonah, like most of the Israeli ..read more

At Last, We’ve Had an Election The election of an abbot should be prime grist for the mill of any monastic chronicler. That certainly was the case for medieval chroniclers, but not so for me. In fact, in the nearly eleven years of this blog the subject of an abbatial election has never come up, and that’s easy to explain. Our last abbatial election at Saint John’s Abbey took place twenty-three years ago, and I’ve had to rely on all sorts of filler as I’ve waited patiently for an election to come along. Finally it has happened. On January 9th we monks elected our confrere Father Douglas to be ..read more