Benedictine Sisters of FL

Holy Name Monastery
Founded 1889

Gospel

The Kingdom of God is Open to Everyone

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Have you ever watched a make-over program on TV?  I’ve watched a few on house make-overs.  But recently when I was channel surfing, I was attracted by a young lady’s plea to get her boyfriend to dress appropriately for a wedding. This was one of those make-over shows where a person gets their entire wardrobe revamped.  As these shows go, they took him – he seemed to go without protest – to an up-scale clothing store for a new wardrobe that would make him acceptable at the wedding – at least in the eyes of his girlfriend.  He watched helplessly as his favorite clothes were thrown in a heap and replaced with more “fashionable items.”

The party in today’s Gospel would have been a highlight in many people’s lives. free food, hobnobbing with people whose names they’d only heard in passing.  Why would they not jump at the chance to be a guest at such a fantastic occasion?  But you just throw a party yourself and you will quickly figure out that some who say “yes” won’t show up and a goodly number will figure you knew they’d come so they did not really need to RSVP.

The people to whom Jesus was telling this parable understood the absurdity of the situation. They knew that Jesus was not simply telling them a strange story but that he was telling them something about their own lives.  He was in essence telling them that they were the invited guests and that they had refused the invitation. They understood that Jesus was telling them that the kingdom of God is open to everyone: to the outcasts and the sinners and to them.

But Jesus doesn’t stop his parable with that. He goes on to say that once the street-people had been invited into the banquet, the king spotted someone who wasn’t properly dressed.  When asked why, the man was speechless. The king demanded that he be handcuffed and thrown into the outer darkness. How are we to understand this part of the parable?  Why was lack of a certain type of garment such a big deal?

Some may say the king invited everyone so people should come just as they happen to be when they decided to join the banquet.  Others argue it means we should be given a special robe at the door of the church to wear during the service.  Of course, these answers miss the point. This is a story that has a deeper meaning. Yes, it is a story, but remember parables are earthly stories with heavenly ­meanings.

I find it intriguing that while the last group brought into the wedding came from the hedgerows and by-ways, the main character was still expected to be wearing a wedding garment.  This lets us know, doesn’t it, that we better be ready at all times to come to the wedding.  The point, of course, is not what type of clothing covers our nakedness. At some stage in life we’ve all learned that although not the most important thing in life, fashion is not something to be totally ignored either.   Just ask anyone who is getting married, or celebrating a jubilee or going to a funeral, if what people wear isn’t of some significance.  At one end of the spectrum, there are folks who believe brand name labels are the key to admittance into their coveted social circle. But for others, fashion is just not a big deal at all.  They may not even own a full-length mirror.

The wedding garment Jesus was talking about was like a choir cloak that was provided at the door.  To the listeners, this guest was one who snubbed social rules, the significance of the occasion and the prestige of being included on the guest list.

Even though everyone is invited into the banquet of the kingdom of heaven, there will be some who simply don’t send back their RSVP card. There will be those who show up but do so without the proper spiritual clothing and are sent away. The reading leaves us with that same probing question we first heard in our mother’s voice: “You’re wearing that?!”  We quickly recognized it was not really a question but an order.

Maybe a good place to start re-doing our spiritual wardrobes would be to heed St. Paul’s admonition to the Colossians (3:13):  “As God’s chosen people …  clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience.”  Just be sure you’re wearing the proper attire when Jesus says: “Come in, Friend, I’ve saved a seat with your name on it.“

~ Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB

 

Pray for peace in the world and people’s safety; for justice and access to health services; and protection from all forms of violence. 

 

First Reading: Isaiah 25:6-10a     Second Reading:  Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20
Gospel:   Matthew 22:1-14
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Go Into My Vineyard

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“Go into my vineyard and I will give you what is just.”

 

It strikes me that this Gospel must be a source of reassurance to those that some describe as “late-in-life or delayed vocations”.    When the 5 o’clock whistle blew the persons in the parable figured they’d been overlooked AGAIN.  “I don’t I look strong enough?  What will I say to my wife and children?”  The parable describes these hopefuls as “standing around.” But if you have ever seen day-laborers gathered, hopefully waiting for a grove owner’s bus, you’ve seen people weary and discouraged before the day begins.   They sit on a bench or crouched on their haunches.  Some perk up when the bus pulls in. Hope rises, then falls, as the boss chooses a handful of workers for that day.  Experience warns the overlooked once again that there’s no room for them on the bus.

But they don’t completely give up. They live in hope.  They wait well into the day.  Until 5 o’clock, the parable says.  Staring into space, once again picturing their children with hunger in their eyes.  But wait!  Maybe (just maybe) they could pick up a few hours work before dark.  Their ears pricked up when they hear the voice of the landowner, the Master, speaking to them: “Why are you still here?  You, too, go into my vineyard.”  They labor until the whistle blows marking the end of the day in the fields.

Those who came late have worked only a small ratio of the day compared to those who were on the first bus. What a surprise when they discreetly peeked into their pay envelopes.  They’d been thinking, “This owner’s usually generous.  Wonder how much I got? Will it put supper on the table?  Whoa!  Look again.  It’s not possible that’s a full day’s wages.”   But it is!

The whole Gospel story harkens back to a line in the First Reading from the Prophet Isaiah: (God speaks) “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.  The Master continues emphasizing how far apart God’s thoughts are from ours. “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts.”  With that consideration in mind, (that God’s thoughts are a far cry from our earth-bound thoughts) make the jump to the last line in the Gospel parable: “Am I not free to do as I wish with my own riches?  Are you envious because I am generous?”  Has God ever had to asked you that question: Are you envious because I am generous?

We shouldn’t be found sitting idly on the bench we call life.  Or worse, grumbling over “poor me”.  Nor can we stand around idle waiting to be hired.  The Rule of Benedict offers us a good personal check list:

Benedict exhorts us: Honor all persons with respect.   Accommodate a diversity of personality styles.  Do not hold your Sisters hostage with any form of tyranny or tardiness nor weigh down the group with grumbling.  No favoritism will be awarded due to rank or status, between rich and poor.  Any favoritism should be afforded to the weak and the sick.  Follow what you consider better for others.   Respect all equally!

In regard to respect for individual pathways to holiness, Benedict says in RB 73: there is always more you can do. Those who can do more, should do so.  “As observant and obedient monk, we blush for shame at being so slothful, so unobservant, so negligent.  Are you hastening toward your heavenly home?   Then, with Christ’s help, keep this little rule.  After that, you can set out for the loftier summits of teaching and the virtues, and under God’s protection you will reach them.”

Can you hear the landowner asking you: “Why are you standing here idle all day?  Go into my vineyard and I will give you what is just.”

 

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB

 

 

Welcome to Fall 2023…  cooler weather and

beautiful change of season

 

 

 

 

Readings:  Isaiah 55:6-9    Philippians 1:20-24, 27a
Gospel:   Matthew 20:1-16a

 

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My yoke is easy and my burden is light

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This Gospel is the same as that proclaimed a few weeks ago on the feast of the Sacred Heart.  Jesus offers us again: “Come to me – and I will give you rest – my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Let me ask you: Have you ever owned a woolen turtle-neck sweater?  And, you’re wearing it for the first time?  You soon discover that when you turn your head the collar scratches your neck?  Wear it too long and you may develop itchy red welts.  It looks so warm and cozy in the catalog and now there’s nothing you can do.  Your work day is just beginning; you have an important meeting and you don’t have a change of tops with you.  You get some relief if you sit perfectly still, for you see, it’s only when we wrestle with a “yoke” that it chaffs your neck.

Too often our first impulse is to complain about all I don’t have or what isn’t going my way.  How wonderful life would be if only she would shape up.  Have you ever tried to run a three-legged race?  Then you know the give and take it requires to match strides.  But until you do, you can wind up rolling on the ground and struggling more than once to get up without each pulling the other down.

The burden of ungratefulness weighs heavy on our hearts.  When I focus on what irks me about situations or about people and, sadly, forget all the gifts the flow into my life, the chaffing of the rope tied to the gunny sack I’ve loaded on my back will choke me.  How quickly it lifts when I consider all that I DO have.  When we ease up and take God’s view, the tussle eases.  Remember, the yoke “chaffs” until we give up the control we don’t really have anyway.

Jesus saw examples of this everywhere he went.  We marvel at Jesus’ powers of observation!  How many times must he have gazed out on a field watching a pair of yoked oxen dragging along a heavy cart or trudging to keep pace with a farmer sowing the next crop?  He saw the tussle and the back and forth between the pair, only hurting themselves with the push and pull of the yoke until a smooth rhythm was set.  It behooves us to listen attentively to Jesus’ words.  To hear His invitation, ‘Come to me’ is always an open invitation.  At any time, but maybe especially at times like now, when we and our country really need the peace, rest, protection of God’s love.  We ask Jesus to come into our hearts and fill our lives with gifts that only God can give us.  Remind yourself, especially when life is challenging, that by declaring that “My yoke is easy” Jesus means that whatever God offers us is custom-made to perfectly and personally fit us at this time in our lives.

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB

 

 

Tuesday, July 11, we will celebrate the summer feast of St. Benedict in a special way.  Following the 10 a.m. Mass at the Abbey church, the Saint Leo University Student Affairs dept. are hosting the Sisters and Monks at a festive indoor BBQ lunch to mark the day. 

 

First Reading:  Zachariah 9:9-10         Second Reading:  Romans 8:9, 11-13
Gospel:   Matthew 11:25-30
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Sheep in the Midst of Wolves

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In this Gospel passage, we rejoin Jesus during the first year of His public ministry.  Jesus directs the disciples to keep their focus on God.  He reminds them that those who can harm the body do not have ultimate power; God does. Persecution and suffering may not be avoidable or prevented but Jesus’ reassures us that God is always and forever at our call to care for us and protect us.  He is using here a rabbinic argument technique which compares a light matter to a heavy one.  His idea here is to overcome fear and encourage the disciples, and us, to trust God.

We see in the gospels, how on the one hand, Jesus grants the disciples remarkable powers to heal the sick, exorcise demons, cleanse people with leprosy, even raise from the dead.  But at the same time, Jesus he warns the disciples they are to undertake their mission in complete vulnerability and dependence on God with an awareness that they go as “sheep in the midst of wolves.”

From the moment we are born, we know fear – we squall at the change in our environment.  The startle reflex is tested in a baby’s first well-baby check-up.   Separation anxiety develops by 6 months and may raise its ugly head later in life feelings of abandonment.  Over time we may grow to fear even those who are closest to us.

Jesus recognizes that fear may cause failure on our part.  Jesus’ disciples, and we, courageously leave the security of home and family to follow a dream.  Jesus is starkly realistic about the threats we will face and at the same time he builds the case for why we should not let fear win out or hinder our ministry.

Jesus offers us a life-time coverage insurance policy and he share with us how it will work.  “Everyone who acknowledges me before others, I will put in a good word for you with my heavenly Father.  But woe to you who deny me before others; I will shake my had and tell my Father: I do not know this one.” (paraphrased)

The parting words of the Gospel selection leave us hanging with the feeling of the very fear Jesus seeks to dispel.  But with confidence we can pray the sentiments of the Responsorial Psalm (Ps 69): “I pray to you, O Lord, for the time of your favor. In your great kindness answer me with your constant help.  In your great mercy turn toward me.  See, and be glad; you who seek God, may your hearts be ever merry!”

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB

 

May you be safe from violent weather and blistering heat… stay hydrated… on fluid as well as the Word of God.

 

First Reading:  Jeremiah 20:10-13         Second Reading:  Romans 5:12-15
Gospel:   Matthew 10:26-33
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The Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand

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“The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few.”  I had a flash back memory when I began Lectio with this Gospel story.  The summer that I entered our community, the shoreline in Lake Jovita was slowing receding and leaving a stretch of sandy beach in its wake.  St. Augustine grass was quick to see a rich opportunity to spread its runners.  In contrast, S. Rosaria, our directress, was determined that the grass was not going to win conquerors’ rights.  Believe me, the harvest was ABUNDANT!  Guess who the few laborers would be!  It was summertime and as novices our schedules included, yes, a refreshing hour at the lake to look forward to.  We who were being introduced to the convent practice of silence could laugh aloud, splash each other with glee, and even swim far from the dock … of course, in pairs.  But you’ll remember this reverie started because Jesus is talking about laborers and S. Rosaria had in her charge a handful of young, able-bodied, noisy laborers.  You guessed it!  We were instructed to spend 15 minutes of our precious recreation hour pulling up the “mile-long” runners of root-bound St. Augustine grass.  It certainly has earned its nickname “buffalo grass.”

Jesus had a knack, didn’t He, for immersing His hearers right into their surroundings?  He uses examples that are staring them right in the face and in many cases that are familiar to us.  Reading this Gospel we can imagine row upon row of Florida strawberries, fields as far as the eye can see of native wildflowers. See, the farmers and immigrant fieldhands are up before the sun to do back-bending labor until sundown.  Greenhouses across the landscape give evidence to the growing appeal and popularity of aquaponic and hydroponic farming.  The citrus industry has been driven south of us and replaced with peach orchards and Christmas tree farms as well as development.  We pray for the same intentions of our decades-ago ancestors: send us rain at the right season for a rich harvest, keep plant-eating critters away from our share of the food crops, give us health and strong backs to cultivate our gardens and laden our tables with Your bounty.  And, those children trailing the adults and the big kids; bending low to the ground to drop in seeds one-by-one?  Bless them, O God, with the delightful experience of fostering fledging plants to full bloom, and the sense of pride in adding to the array on the dinner table.  And comfort them, we pray, when tears fall on their plates of fried pet chicken.

Then I recalled hearing, probably in 5th grade, the story of the Alabama farmer George Washington Carver, known as the “Father of the Peanut Industry.”  He developed more than 300 uses for peanuts from chili sauce to shampoo; shaving cream to glue and helped save agriculture in the South.  But with all the effort to cultivate an alternative valuable crop, the farmers lost sight of what this was doing to the soil’s contents.  Now they had to deal with the same problem, soil depletion, that had caused them to switch from cotton to peanuts.  Observing the agricultural practice of rotation of crops can teach us the production benefit of increased yields, improving the organic matter in the soil, thus disrupting the lifecycle of field pests and reducing the use of chemical pesticides.

So, how in creation is this applicable to the Gospel lesson?  Jesus says, “Go into the territory of the lost sheep….”  Cure drooping arms and dragging legs, raise from the dead, cleanse the diseased, drive out demons (crop pests).  And make an announcement: “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

Do you think Jesus might have read farmers’ thoughts and observed their actions at the beginning of each growing season as they were gathering with all the farmhands, standing arms akimbo, eyeing the message that the sheep were sending with the evidence of their grazing patterns?  See how they self-select richer pasture land as the available harvest is depleted.  They follow a rotation of availability of crops moving from once fertile field on to one with the promise of richer pasture.

Again, how is this applicable today?  I think there is a timely vocation lesson tucked into the last sentence.  “Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.”  Our life is our message.  A spirit of hospitality costs nothing but goodwill.  It starts in the home, the community, between each other and spreads like water seeping into cracks, binding us to one another.  Contemplate what Jesus said: “Without cost you have received; without cost you are to give.”  Listen to what is being sought in the dreams of others.  Where can you fill the gaps?  That’s how we “Cure the sick, pray for the dead and comfort mourners; drive out ill-will; raise drooping spirits and spread Jesus’ announcement: ‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand!’ ”

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB

 

Please pray for calm weather and for peaceful recovery for the many people striving to recover from violent weather.

 

First Reading:   Exodus 19:2-6a         Second Reading:  Romans 5:6-11
Gospel:   Matthew 9:36-10:8

 

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Feast of Corpus Christi

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Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ – at one time called Corpus Christi and originally celebrated on the Thursday, 10 days after Pentecost.  Some of us of a certain generation may remember huge Corpus Christi processions which brought the body of Christ into the streets around our parishes.  Many of the faithful would pay visits to three different churches to attend Benediction services.  Today we still bring the body of Christ into our streets because we are there.

A little history about the feast:  In the 13th century, a Belgian nun named Juliana had a recurring dream of a brilliant full moon coming down to earth but with a black spot on it. Christ interpreted it for her in that 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, 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!

This crowd that Jesus is speaking to in the Gospel had made a pilgrimage to see him instead of going to Jerusalem for the celebration of Passover.   It would have been easier to go to the nearby city, but something was drawing them to the great teacher.  Walking was their mode of transportation, and the distances were often across rough terrain or long detours around lakes.  Jesus and his apostles may have rowed across the lake but not all his followers found a ferry.  And in case you’re intrigued with numbers, someone has calculated that Jesus in his 3-year public ministry could have walked over 900 miles.

Meanwhile, the crowd wanted to take Jesus by force and make him their king.  In other words, Jesus is speaking to a crowd that has felt the pangs of deep longing for something much more than physical hunger.  They had glimpsed the possibilities of true satisfaction in Jesus. But they have misplaced the object of their yearning on “king,” when Jesus wants them to see that their true longing is for “living bread”. Today, our Gospel writer, John, wants us to see that our real longing is not for things that pass away but for things that endure, for an imperishable Light.  But, remember when Jesus is speaking it is before the Last Supper, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.   Not even His closest apostles could have realized the full significance of His words.   Abbot Primate Notker Wolf has written “In times of individualism we need new ways to build a modern consciousness of community which revolves around the Eucharist as the central celebration of faith.”

The bottom line is that people are scrambling like crazy to find a diet that is right for them. And there is a such diet we hear too little about.  It’s the diet presented in today’s gospel.  Jesus says, “I am the bread of life.” And He gives us His word that people on His program “will never hunger or thirst again!” This is an extravagant claim!  But Jesus can deliver on what he promises!

~Sister Roberta Basiley, OSB

 

First Reading: Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14-16    Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 10:16-18
Gospel Reading: John 6:51-58
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