Celtic spirituality has long cultivated the belief in so-called “thin places” where the veil separating heaven and earth, time and eternity, is thin and where the experience of the sacred and the divine is heightened. Places of Christian pilgrimage and shrines are among the more commonly recognized “thin places.” Monasteries and their immediate environs are […]
Fr. James’ Homily for All Saints
With a predictable regularity guests at our Retreat House ask me whether we are living in the end times. Although I realize this has been a perennial preoccupation and fear in every era, I am in no position to know. I always repeat what Jesus himself said: only the Father knows. Even without […]
Abbot Joseph’s Homily for the 29th Sunday
Increasing numbers of people are avoiding so-called “organized religion” and labeling themselves “spiritual” rather than “religious.” In doing so, they seriously challenge traditional approaches to the divine, in general, and Christ, in particular. In times past this has sometimes been integral to mystical movements within the church in which God’s grace reaching the mystic in […]
Fr. James’ Homily for the 28th Sunday
Today’s Gospel occupies an interesting place in Luke’s Gospel. It’s preceded by this self-effacing admission of good servants: We are unprofitable servants; we have done what we are obliged to do. And it is followed the realization: Behold the Kingdom of God is among you. I believe that this healing of ten lepers both illustrates […]
Abbot Joseph’s Homily for the 26th Sunday
Masochism is that mental and psychological aberration according to which a person voluntarily seeks out pain and suffering and actually derives pleasure and satisfaction thereby. I mention this because today’s parable of Lazarus speaks of the great chasm separating the place of torment from the peaceful and joyous repose with Abraham. The latter explains that […]
Fr. James’ Homily for the 25th Sunday
Jesus had a reputation for keeping bad company—inevitable in a ministry as oriented to the conversion of sinners, as to announcing the Kingdom of God. He probably knew characters like today’s dishonest steward. Is Jesus trying to expose the naiveté of his well-intentioned followers with this outrageous parable? Or is he just taping into the […]
Fr. James’ Homily for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross
The cross on which Christ died may not have looked exactly like our familiar crucifixes. It did indeed have a vertical support and each of the condemned carried his horizontal beam to the place of execution—so the basic configuration we know is an appropriate approximation. But no one who had witnessed that torturous form of […]
Fr. James’ Homily for the 23rd Sunday of the Year
Do you perhaps remember, as you were growing up and setting out on your own path, how threatened your parents felt by some of your choices? Perhaps as a parent of adult children, you today feel challenged or criticized when they do not replicate your own conduct. On a purely mundane level that happens in […]
Abbot Joseph’s Homily for the 21st Sunday
Our faith in the humanity and divinity of Jesus can sometimes run up against vexing questions. An example is Jesus’ foretelling of the end of the world that he concludes by stating: But of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Surely, if […]
Fr. James’ Homily for the 20th Sunday of the Year
Twentieth Sunday, Year C, 18 August, 2019: Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10; Hebrews 12:1-4; Luke 12:49-53 Don’t we know from experience that if we honestly attempt to live the Gospel, we find ourselves at odds with conventional values, expectations and even our own desires? An alternative is flight from my inner conflicts, creating scapegoats and villains, […]