Benedictine Sisters of FL

Holy Name Monastery
Founded 1889

Holy Name Monastery

Be Patient! It’s a Waiting Game.

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Mark’s Gospel is the shortest of the four Gospels.  It is full of parables, stories told by Jesus, the best of Storytellers. With some of His stories, Jesus uses elaborate details, making it easy to understand His point. Today’s “riddle” sounds like heaven is a “field of dreams.”  This is a field where a man one day casts seeds with abandon, unmindful of whether they fall on soil that is good or not-so-good.  That night he sleeps unaware that something mysterious is happening in the soil.  Violá!  Overnight the earth has sprung forth blade, and ear and then the fruit!  Jesus queries exactly what our curious minds may be wondering: “To what shall we liken the kingdom of God?”   Jesus floats another riddle for our consideration.  The kingdom can be compared to the smallest of seeds that when nurtured grows into the largest of trees.  Literally, the word parable means “a riddle.”  Jesus told more than 40 riddles or parables during his ministry.  Usually when a person tells you a riddle, they eventually tell you the answer.  But Jesus only explained one parable to the crowds – the parable of the Sower and the Seed.  Mark says Jesus explained everything to his disciples in private and they did not share for future generations the meaning of all the parables. Then, Jesus ascended into heaven and took the answers with him!   So that left the later disciples, and us, with a lot of figuring out to do.

Let’s start with one of the most amazing seeds in the world:  Chinese bamboo.  The seedling lies buried in the soil for five long years before any sprout appears above ground.  It seems dormant, or at least stunted.  But don’t be deceived into thinking it’s a lost cause.  The seedling requires constant cultivation during gestation, needing watering and fertilization on a regular basis. Then it requires much patience!  Wait, wait, wait.  It will make up for lost time.  When the bamboo seedling finally emerges from the ground, it grows at an astonishing rate, ninety feet into the air in just six weeks.  That’s fifteen feet a week, more than two feet a day, two inches every hour.  Once it finally gets going, you can almost watch it grow before your very eyes!  Why does it take so long to emerge, and grow so fast once it does?  Plant experts say that during its first five years, the seed is busy building an elaborate root system underground.  This is what enables it to grow ninety feet in six weeks.

Think of yourself as a “Chinese bamboo”.  Growth in us within God’s Kingdom is in a similar pattern.  We take a long time to emerge.  Sometimes it takes so long we wonder, “Did the seed of God’s kingdom planted in me at Baptism ever take root?  Maybe it fell on a rock in my heart and died.  Maybe it got choked by the thorns of my sins.”  More often than not the seed of God’s Kingdom is building an elaborate root system.

This means that we need to trust God who in the first place planted the seed of the Kingdom in us. God understands what’s happening inside us because he sees into the heart, even if we can’t.  We also need to be patient with ourselves and overly generous with mercy and compassionate with others.  Even though the Kingdom may not seem to have taken root in you, and you don’t seem to be getting any holier, there’s no need to be discouraged.  Growth may not be visible for a long time, but eventually something wonderful, beautiful and multi-faceted will emerge.

 

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB

 

 

 

 

First Reading:   Ezekiel 17:22-24         Second Reading:  2 Corinthians 5:6-10
Gospel:   Mark 4:26-34
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Your family is outside asking for you

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A crowd that has gathered is so large that Jesus and his disciples are not even able to eat their bread in peace and quiet. Jesus’ family comes to take him away because they think he is “beside himself”, speaking out of His head.  This would be a good opportunity for Jesus to point out that family for him is not based on results from a search on Ancestry.com or an interview with Henry Louis Gates on Finding Your Roots.

The evangelist tells us that some people were quite alarmed by Jesus’ behavior.  His family was certainly alarmed.  Mark reports that when his family and friends heard about his preaching and behavior, they went out to seize him: for they said, “He is insane.”

In his youth, his family probably thought of Jesus as a normal boy.  His cousins and friends would have accepted him as one of the neighborhood kids, just one of them.

I suspect he might have tried to keep their nonsense under control and lead them down the right path.  So, they were not overly surprised when he began street preaching.  But now he had gone overboard.  He was so often in the public eye that things were getting a little out of control and they urged him to quit.

In the instance reported in this Gospel reading, several of the group had come ready to distract Jesus and get him away from the crowd.  But their attempt at an intervention wasn’t working.  They tried sending him a message that his family was waiting to talk to him.  He left them standing on the outside.  He seemed to “dummy up”.  He threw the messengers a zinger with the question: “Who are my mother and my brothers?”

Is his family frustrated with him? Or just plain worried about him? They hear that Jesus is drawing crowds again, and they go to rescue him because people are talking about “our boy”.  Some of the people think he’s loony.  His family is embarrassed and worried of what might become of him.  But Jesus doesn’t seem to mind at all. After all, he knows how badly it could all turn out.  He tells the crowd, and us, mine is an extended family where each and every one is welcome.  I embrace anyone and everyone.  These people may look like a group of misfits, but they’re family.

So, I wonder: who might be at our door for a look around and to speak to us?   Do they want to be a part of our extended family, preserve our reputation and tell the world what a great place we have here and what a pleasant group of people we are?

Our oblates come immediately to mind.   You probably realize this: there are more Benedictine Oblates in the U.S. than the combined number of professed Benedictine men and women living in communities.  Worldwide there are currently 25,000 oblates compared to 21,000 Benedictine monks and sisters.   Here at home, on our Oblate mailing list we have upwards to 40 Oblates.  That’s almost 4 times the size of our vowed community members.  Our oblates are faithful persons who are reaching out into the greater community, telling our story often better than we do.  These are persons who are immersed in “the world,” living out the values and mission of our Benedictine community.  It’s true that they come to us to get refueled, to learn more about the Benedictine charism, but it’s equally true, as Joan Chittister says, “Oblates are the hope in this century that the llfe and values of the Benedictine vision can be born … again and anew.”  So, when we hear the summons, “Your family is outside asking for you,” how shall we respond, what shall we do?

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB

 

Kindly remember our Sisters in your prayer this week …  we will be on retreat beginning Sunday evening and close after mass on Friday with a sumptuous brunch and our halos shining.  God’s blessing with each of you!

 

 

First Reading:   Genesis 3:9-15         Second Reading:  2 Corinthisans 4:13-5:1
Gospel:   Mark 3:20-35

 

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Corpus Christi Sunday

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Here’s a little history about this day.  It was originally celebrated on the Thursday 10 days after Pentecost and referred to by a Latin name “Corpus Christi”.  In the 13th century, a Belgian nun named Juliana had a recurring dream of a brilliant full moon coming down to earth.  The moon however had a black spot on it. Christ interpreted the dream for her. The moon represented the calendar year of the church with all of its wonderful festivals, but the black spot showed that there was something missing. That something missing was an occasion to remember the institution by Christ at the Lord’s Supper, the institution of the Eucharist. As fortune would have it, she had a friend in the Bishop of Liege.  He believed her vision and he subsequently became Pope Urban IV. As a result, the feast of Corpus Christi was first celebrated in 1264 with hymns and prayers written by Thomas Aquinas.  Such an awesome gift deserves its own feast!

In 2018, Bishop Parkes chose this feast to disseminate Courageously Living the Gospel,  the long-awaited Vision for the Diocese of St. Petersburg.   Bishop Parkes has said: “I will always speak of the vision or our vision, not my vision.  I may be the messenger, but the vision represents what the people of our diocese believe is best for the church.”

Bishop Parkes continued: “This mutually-shared vision is an opportunity to renew our faith as we go forth to boldly proclaim the good News of Jesus Christ.”  He pointed out that the Diocese of St. Petersburg includes all the people who reside in the five counties that geographically make up the diocese, not just those who identify themselves as Catholic.  The entire  Tampa Bay area this is our “mission territory.”

The nine goals in the vision are bold initiatives that challenge our parish communities to think outside the box for opportunities of evangelization. We are to look not only inward but outward.  We are also called to allow the Holy Spirit to speak to the youth and keep them connected to their church.   Bishop Parkes urges all of us to “think big when dreaming about what the future could look like.”   “We want a vision”, he says “that is bold and goals that are high impact and even a stretch for us to achieve.”

I believe our challenge (here at Holy Name) is to remember that we are part of the diocese.   Sometimes I think that because we are an autonomous Benedictine community we forget that we are at the same time an integral entity of the diocese …  neither an island in its midst nor on its fringes.

Some of us of a certain generation can remember huge Corpus Christi processions which brought the body of Christ into the streets around our parishes. The body of Christ is still in our streets because we are there.  Today, everyday Jesus asks each of us “have you reserved a guest room in your heart for Me where I may rest, where I may eat a meal with you?   Our Corporate Commitment continues to challenge us to “respond with the compassion of Christ to the hungers of the people of God.”

We challenge ourselves to support initiatives in the diocesan vision.  Are we providing an inviting environment to the greater community? Do we encourage an increased understanding of what it means to be “Catholic”?  Of course, it goes without saying, that we pray for God’s blessing on our Bishop Gregory Parkes and the diocesan efforts to bring to reality the diocesan vision: Courageously Living the Gospel.

 

~Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB

 

First Reading: Exodus 24:3-8                    Second Reading: Hebrews 9:11-15
Gospel Reading: Mark 14:12-16, 22-26
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Trinity Sunday

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On this, the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity, we celebrate the Church’s understanding of who God is: three unique, equal, divine persons in one God.  It is a celebration of our lived faith experience that we attempt to put into words.  We turn to the Scripture writers for a fuller understanding of this experience and for the ability to share the experience of God in our own lives.  I like Bishop Barron’s description, “The love that God the Father and the Son breathe back and forth is the Holy Spirit, the life of the church.”

But, nowhere in Scripture will you find a specific teaching of the Trinity.  However, we do find many places where the biblical experience of God is so rich that it cannot be encapsulated in a single word.  Jesus is the visible icon (as it were) of the invisible God, making the mystery of God tangible to us.  It is important that we believers have a welcoming attitude to the triune presence of God, so we are ready whenever, and through whomever, God chooses to continue to be revealed.  In this way we will be ready to listen to  and become involved in that dialogue.  Without the continued experience of Father, Son, and Spirit (or some may choose to say: Creator, Savior and Spirit) the doctrine ceases to be a lived experience.  But, if we expect today’s readings to give a clear presentation of the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, that simply will not be the case.  Ours is a God so generous… who loves us so much, that this whole world was created for us and continues to gift to us the gift of Self through the appearance of bread and wine.  Here is a God, generosity personified, who loves us beyond our wildest imaginings.

God wants us to discover this Love and celebrate it.  The fact is: God wants to be found and is constantly calling out to us – but not necessarily with words. He gives us so many opportunities – so many times when we travel through even the darkest tunnels of our lives and then come out the other side to encounter, unexpectedly, something surprisingly, great beauty and holiness.  As I came through the connector this past week, I found myself surprised and confounded by a glimpse of an awesome glorious dawn!  The words of Sirach spring to mind: “As the rising sun is clear to all!  How beautiful are all God’s works!  Even to the spark of a fleeting vision.”

As long as we have our feet planted on “this side of the grass” it makes sense that we might not be able to completely understand how something can be “one” and “three” at the same time.  We need symbols to help us delve deeper and deeper into the mystery of the Trinity e.g. St. Patrick’s shamrock or three-leafed clover … three leaves, one stem.  Or consider the egg you might have for breakfast: yolk, white and shell – three parts, one egg.  Or we might’ve heard the Trinity compared to an Apple….  ONE apple, three different parts: skin, flesh, and seed.

This is a feast, a solemnity beyond words.  The Holy Trinity is a privilege and not merely a commemoration of a doctrine.  Through the celebration the Trinity we enter into a communion of Persons who has loved us into being and continues to call us each day to a fuller experience, a deeper lived knowledge, of our Triune God.

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB

 

 

 

First Reading: Deuteronomy 4:32-34. 30-40             Second Reading: Roman 8:14-17
Gospel:  Matthew 28:16-20
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Pentecost Sunday – A Tale of Journeys

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The Scriptural selections we’ve heard this Easter season are an annual reminder of Jesus’ “journey” stories.  We recall His appearance to Mary in the garden, His “beaming up” into and vanishing from the upper room where his mother Mary and the disciples had gathered, the meeting on the road to Emmaus, Jesus’ “here again, gone again, come again” ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit.

In this, our 135th community anniversary of our founders’ journey from Pennsylvania to Florida, I invite you to join me in taking a long backward look at the “journey history” of our community.  The reflection is longer than usual but remember, it covers 135 years.    It is evident that we and our Florida Benedictine ancestors have made many and varied journeys.  We’ll start with Benedict and Scholastica who skipped happily along the hilltop path from their home in Norcia, Italy. Perhaps they stopped in to visit with the hermits who lived in hillside caves along the path on their trip to their grandparents’ summer house on the outskirts of town.  When still a young boy Benedict journeyed to Rome for classical studies.  Before long, he journeyed into the hills for a little sanity.   A few years later, Benedict’s followers – and Scholastica’s too – traveled from Italy to Germany, England, France, Switzerland, and Austria – and from there in 1852 to the United States.  You probably know the story of the monk shouting at Abbot Wimmer that his “wagon load of trouble” (the Benedictine Sisters arriving from Eichstätt, Germany) had been spotted on the horizon approaching the abbey in Latrobe.  Like spotty fires that can’t be contained, Benedictine women’s houses sprang up across the continent.

Our own history brings a “wagon load” of five Sisters from Pennsylvania to San Antonio, Florida. It wasn’t long before the Sisters were operating schools in their own home, in the local parish and three miles down the road in St. Joseph.   Over the years, our Sisters would journey each school year to/from places as far away as Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana.  They also they made a mark for our community in Miami, Miami Beach, Jacksonville Beach, Ocala, Sarasota, Venice, Lakeland, Apopka, Dade City, Zephyrhills, and San Antonio, New Port Richey, St. Joseph and right here in St. Leo. For many years every June the Sisters brought all their worldly possessions back to Holy Name Convent.  They never knew for sure where they’d be “missioned” the next school year.  Before it was in vogue, this practice was a built-in system of “spring cleaning” and downsizing.

During the summers, the Sisters continued on their journeys to complete, or extend, their educations.  To name a few places I know about, they traveled to Cullman, AL, Notre Dame, St. John’s in Minnesota, Belmont College, New York, Louisville, Yankton, South Dakota, Barry College in Miami, the Mount Saint Scholastica in Atchison, Kansas, Wisconsin and St. Louis.  Sometimes they packed up a few necessities along with two habits and headed up the road to Good Counsel Camp where they squeezed in 2-week sessions of religious education for children that did not have the advantage of parochial schools.

In addition to staffing parish schools, Sisters packed into cars – sometimes with volunteer drivers – to teach weekend catechism classes in Floral City, Brooksville, New Port Richey, Eustis, Arlington, Ponte Vedra, Masaryktown, Belleview, Reddick, West Ocala, Fruitland Park, Gainesville, Clermont, Dade City, Zephyrhills and the Girls’ Reformatory in Ocala.   I’ve never checked out the veracity of this story but I’ve heard that there was one Sister who used to travel to weekly college classes with her typewriter on her lap finishing up an assignments.

All this journeying from home to classrooms to college to camp to parish halls were mini-versions of the grand moves, the memorable journeys, that immersed travel in our Florida Benedictine genes.  The move from Pennsylvania to the mission territory started with five valiant women.  There followed in the years to come the move of the monastery building from the San Antonio plaza to the top of the hill overlooking Lake Jovita.  In 1959, we saw the demolition of the wood-frame convent and the rise of a structure made of concrete and steel.  And, then there were the years of discernment that concluded with our decision to move body and soul in 2014 across the highway to the structure we now call home.

And, you’ll recall we’ve moved not only our persons – we’ve moved buildings to our property. This included the barracks buildings delivered for a boys’ school, a canteen for the academy girls, cabin for Camp Jovita, and building for the day care.  We can point to where these buildings used to be: the kindergarten and coif room, the laundry at the lake, Scholastica Hall, barns, the home economics house, the bus shelter, a hitching post on Hwy 52 and basketball courts where we hosted chicken dinners and danced around the May Pole.

Journeys are not a new phenomena for Florida Benedictines. For some of us a journey is an adventure; for some it is a dreadful thought.  For all of us it can be a great risk, a scary thought, or a step into a future that unfolds as we walk the path God holds out to us.  When we took our first journey from womb to the light of day, we were completely naked, vulnerable, squalling and fighting the loss of the comfort of 24-hour warmth, unending nourishment, periods of activity and times of quiet floating.  Journeys are nothing new for any of us!

In conclusion, for today, I suggest you think about some of the journeys you’ve taken – moves when you were a child, the move to join our community and the journey that our Sisters of happy memory have traveled to their eternal home.   May they rest in peace!  Recall Gregory Norbert’s hymn, “Journey Ended, Journeys Begun” that we sang during our good-bye procession through Marmion-Snyder halls down to the cafeteria for our final meal there.  We pray: O God of the journey, show us the path to life.  Angels of God, lead us along our path.  Amen.  Alleluia!

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB

 

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“I must be personally present in my gift.”

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When is the last time you sought a big rock to dash your unruly thoughts against?  Uttered something in a language you never studied?  Or, like what happened to St. Benedict, had a goblet crack down rim to stem and spill out its poisoned contents?  After all we live at HOLY NAME monastery and the evangelist Mark quotes Jesus telling us these will be our signs if we are baptized and believe in the Holy Name!  And, on top of that we have the command to: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature.”

A little overwhelming, isn’t it?  But we had best take the message to heart all the while assured by the words in the Gospel: Jesus took his seat at the right hand of God but they (meaning we) went forth and preached EVERY-WHERE, while the Lord worked with them.”

Praise God the full brunt of the message does not fall on us alone.  But we must take seriously our commitment to shoulder our share of the burden to spread the Good News to all with whom we come into contact. We write a new page of the gospel each day through all that we do and by whatever we say.  Others read what we express with our lives.  We express what we believe in a variety of ways in multiple community documents:  in our PHILOSOPY statement, our MISSION statement, our VISION statement, our CORPORATE COMMITMENT and our CORE VALUES.  We recognize and acknowledge our responsibility to harken to Jesus’ call personally and to contribute to its fulfillment in the context of our Benedictine vocation.

There is an ancient beautiful story about the ascension of Jesus into heaven. When the grand welcome ceremony was over, the angel Gabriel quietly approached Jesus and shared some doubts.  “I know that only very few in Palestine are aware of the great work of human salvation you have accomplished through your suffering, death and resurrection. But the whole world should know and appreciate it and become your disciples, acknowledging you as their Lord and Savior. What is your plan of action?”  Jesus answered, “I have told all my apostles to tell other people about me and preach my message through their lives. That’s all.” “Suppose they don’t do that,” Gabriel responded. “What’s your Plan B?” Jesus replied, “I have no other plan; I am counting on them.” That fanciful story reminds us that Jesus is counting on each one of us to make Him known, loved and accepted by others around us.

Our mission is both easy and hard: easy to understand but hard to carry out.  Words of Pope Benedict XV express well the attitude and the necessity of self-giving: “My deep personal sharing in the needs and sufferings of others becomes a sharing of my very self with them….  I must give to others not only something that is my own, but my very self. I must be personally present in my gift.”

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB

 

Congratulations Graduates, one and all. 

Happy Mother’s Day, ALL who “mother” us in a variety of roles – thank YOU!

 

 

First Reading:   Acts of the Apostles 1:1-11         Second Reading:  Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-13
Gospel:   Mark 16:15-20
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