Benedictine Sisters of FL

Holy Name Monastery
Founded 1889

Holy One

“Go into Your Heart…”

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The hard moments of life come when we feel ourselves overwhelmed by a sense of uselessness. We see people around us doing important things, public things, impressive things. Our lives, on the other hand, have been exercises in the ordinary. We know ourselves to be ordinary: ordinary secretaries, lawyers, nurses, teachers, office workers, and, yes, ordinary families. These are the moments when we look back down the years and begin to wonder if we’ve ever done anything that was worthwhile. Those are the days when we look ahead and see nothing but grey. Those are the “What’s-it-all-about, Alfie?” days.

They are painful periods in life, but they are not unusual periods, at all. Every culture carries within itself stories of quest. Seekers everywhere search for enlightenment about finding a direction in life, about making choices in life, about giving meaning to life beyond the daily and the humdrum. Every young person floats from thing to thing for a while trying to find a fit between talent and heart, between ability and commitment. Every middle-aged person comes to a point of decision about staying where they are or changing direction before it’s too late. Every old man and woman in the world looks back and wonders about what might have been. The questions bay at our heels day and night for whole periods in life: Am I doing the right thing? What am I really meant to be doing with my life? Is what I am doing worth anything?

The ancients tell of a Holy One who said to a businessman, “As the fish perishes on dry land, so you perish when you get entangled in the world. The fish must return to the water and you must return to the spiritual. The businessman was aghast. “Are you saying,” he cried, “that I must give up my business and go into a monastery?” And the Holy One said, “Oh no, no, never. I am saying, hold on to your business but go into your heart.”

Clearly, it is not so much what we do but the spirit with which we do it that counts. The only thing worth spending my life on is something that makes life richer, warmer, fuller, happier where I am.

We are each given only one life. The spirit we bring to it, the heart we put into it is the measure of its value. It isn’t difficult to be good at what we do. What is difficult is to be great about the way we do it. The purpose of my life is to spend myself in ways that bring holiness to the mundane. The problem is that only I can do it. How I am, the environment around me will be: full of arsenic or full of the warmth of the Spirit.

—from ­The Monastic Way (2002) by Joan Chittister

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Advent is Upon Us

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Advent is Upon Us!

Today, this year, Advent has already dawned, the sun is up in the east.  It arrived in a world in the midst of a pandemic in a way that reminds me of Carl Sandburg’s poem “Fog.”

Here, in our country, it seems, more so than usual, that Advent is being eclipsed to begin celebrating Christmas…. TV ads, house and yard light displays, Christmas music (What happened to the plaintive Advent songs?).  Others are experiencing anticipatory dread of a holiday separated from loved ones.  Thousands of heavy hearts daily grieve the loss of family members, neighbors and friends.  Circumstances have left many without work, no dependable source of income or the means of providing food and life’s necessities.  A pale of depression and loneliness hangs over people aching for a human touch, a phone call …  any sign that someone is aware of their pain.

Every Advent we have to delve into the Scriptures in order to feel the sense of the messages of hope, peace, love, and joy.  Our nighttime darkness will continue to lengthen until December 21 and the winter solstice moving us ever closer towards the celebration of Jesus’ birth.  The advent hymns we’ll sing – and the antiphons used at Morning and Evening Praise – keep impressing upon us the need to pray for “comfort for those who sit in darkness” and those whose “hearts yearn for the light of Christ.”  We must announce to a “world that waits in silence” that “our souls in stillness wait.”  We believe the words of the prophet Habakkuk:  The message I give you waits for the time I have appointed. It speaks about what is going to happen.  And all of it will come true.  It might take a while.  But wait for it.  You can be sure it will come.  It will happen when I want it to.

While Advent is certainly a time of waiting it is also a time of anticipation and celebration in its own rite.  It is the between-time that Karl Barth speaks of: “Unfulfilled and fulfilled promises are related to each other, as are dawn and sunrise.  Both are promise and in fact the same promise.  If anywhere at all, then it is precisely in the light of the coming of Christ that faith has become Advent faith, the expectation of future revelation.  But faith knows for whom and for what it is waiting.  It is fulfilled faith because it lays hold on the fulfilled promise.  This is the essence of Advent.”

We’ve all had experiences of waiting … that’s part of all our lives.  The season of Advent reminds us that waiting is often the cost of love.  In waiting for someone, our own everyday business becomes almost meaningless as we anticipate, worry, and prepare for a loved one’s return, or an estranged family member or the unknown visitor who becomes the friend we had just never before met and now recognize as Christ personified.  In waiting, we realize our own powerlessness; we realize our deepest hopes, and needs and yearnings.  People and events we didn’t know we missed until we encounter them.

More than ever, this year, in the midst of the pandemic, I suspect the spirit of Advent will pale in the face of the hurry to put up decorations and play some Christmas music.  People can’t wait for Christmas to come with the promised vaccine.

May our waiting for the coming of the Holy One this Christmas help us understand and carry on the mystery of compassionate and generous waiting.  Don’t expect a dramatic vision but do try to become more conscious of the Christ coming through our doors, in one another as each   enters our community room or are seated to “break bread” at mealtime.  In our corporate commitment we pledge to be the embodiment of the compassion of Christ.  And it is obvious from our visitors’ comments that this is one of our signature ministries.  Our guests, and we who live here, know that our companions care for us …  the question at times may be: “do we care about each other?”  One litmus test: “Until you know what hurts me, you cannot truly love me.”

In his 2020 Advent letter, Pope Francis reminds us: “Advent, a time of grace, tells us that it is not enough to believe in God: it is necessary to purify our faith every day.”  We pray: “O Holy Spirit, fill our hearts with Advent hope so that we may learn to cope with the delays and disappointments we encounter with patience and wisdom.  May a spirit of gratitude and humility guide us on our journey to your dwelling place, enabling us to endure, with joy, the costs of waiting for love, reconciliation, and peace.”

Ask yourself as you turn off the light each night…

+ To whom did I offer a word of hope, affirmation or comfort today?
+ How was I a ray of light to someone who felt the darkness of loneliness?
+ Tomorrow, how will I prepare for Christ to be born anew in my heart?

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB, Prioress

 

First Reading  Isaiah 63:16b-17,19b;64:2-7                Second Reading 1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Gospel Mark 13:33-37

 

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Until you know what hurts me…

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Scholars believe that Mark’s Gospel was written 30-40 years after Jesus’ death. His audience would have been Christians who were living in a difficult social and political time, a time of conflict.  They were likely to be facing persecution because they were followers of Jesus.  These early Christians took courage in Jesus’ warning to remain alert and watchful.  It strengthened them to persevere through the sufferings they encountered.

By the 6th century, Advent was tied to the coming of Christ.  But the “coming” they had in mind was not Christ’s first coming in the manger in Bethlehem, but his second coming in the clouds as the judge of the world.  It was not until the Middle Ages that the Advent season was explicitly linked to Christ’s first coming at Christmas.  In our contemporary church year Advent begins at the Vigil of the Sunday nearest the Feast of St. Andrew – sometime between November 27 and December 3rd.  We stretched it to the max this year.

Like the disciples and the faithful in Mark’s community, we must also stay alert and watchful.  Our faithfulness to God, and our experience of God’s faithful to us, through the good times as well as the difficult times, keeps us in a state of readiness for the coming of God in our daily lives and for Christ’s second coming.  It is special time when we strive to counterbalance the challenges in our environment: noise, speed and busyness.  Advent is a sacramental moment – an extended moment spanning 4 weeks.  It is a time for increased prayer, observances of the beauty and the needs in our everyday environment, and a honing of the discipline to respond to what God places in our paths.  It’s not a time to curl into ourselves, look at the pretty Christmas lights and dream of a “white Christmas with every Christmas card we write.”

Advent is certainly a time of waiting and of celebration and anticipation of Christ’s birth.  And it’s more than that.  It is only in the shadow of Advent that the miracle of Christmas can be fully understood and appreciated.  It is only in the light of Christmas that the Christian life makes any sense.  It is the between-time that Karl Barth speaks of when he writes: “Unfulfilled and fulfilled promises are related to each other, as are dawn and sunrise.  Both are promise and in fact the same promise.  If anywhere at all, then it is precisely in the light of the coming of Christ that faith has become Advent faith, the expectation of future revelation.  But faith knows for whom and for what it is waiting.  It is fulfilled faith because it lays hold on the fulfilled promise.  This,” says Barth, “is the essence of Advent.”

The Christmas story reminds us that it was in the midst of the busy stop-over city of Bethlehem that God slipped visibly into our world: a squalling infant to a humble, unpretentious couple.  In those days, Bethlehem was a place where business was conducted quickly, camels were exchanged, horses were watered, travelers would stop to have a meal and maybe spend a night.  Sheep grazed on the hillsides, shepherds kept watch for hungry wolves and marauders on the take.  Bethlehem’s fame was based on a has-been history … it was King David’s hometown.

It was here that the Christmas miracle happened … a God-moment that proves for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear that even a smelly cave can be heaven on earth – a sacred place – God’s house.

We have all had experiences of waiting … that’s part of all our lives.  This season of Advent reminds us that waiting is often the cost of love: in waiting for someone, our own everyday business becomes almost meaningless as we anticipate, worry, and prepare for our loved one’s return.  In waiting, we realize our own powerlessness; we realize our deepest hopes and needs; we realize the gift of the person we are awaiting is to us.

While it is difficult to keep the spirit of Advent in mind in the midst of holiday celebrations, shopping, lights and decorations, and joyful carols, Advent is intended to be a season of fasting, but not the penitential fasting we associate with Lent.  You’ll notice the liturgical color is lavender, not the deep purple of Lent.  Advent is anticipatory fasting of waiting, waiting for the glorious miracle of Christmas.  This is fasting when you’re too excited to do anything else, except sit-on-the-the-edge of the your seat, listen for the sound of approaching footsteps, stare at the door knob so you’ll be the first to see it turn and you keep asking: “Is it time yet?  Is He here?”

May our waiting for the coming of the Holy One this Christmas help us understand and carry on the mystery of compassionate and generous waiting.  Don’t expect a dramatic vision but do try to become more conscious of the Christ coming through our doors, in the ones who enter our community room, our retreat space and share a meal with us.  In our corporate commitment we pledge to be the embodiment of the compassion of Christ.  And it is obvious from our visitors’ comments that this is one of our signature ministries.  Our guests, and we who live here, know that our companions care for us …  the question may be do we care about each other.  One litmus test: until you know what hurts me, you cannot truly love me.“

We pray: fill our hearts with Advent hope so that we may learn to cope with the delays and disappointments we encounter with patience and wisdom.   May a spirit of gratitude and humility guide us on our journey to your dwelling place, enabling us to endure, with joy, the costs of waiting for love, reconciliation, and peace.

What has been your most difficult experience of waiting?  In the end how was your long vigil rewarded?

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB, Prioress

 

First Reading  Isaiah 63:16b-17,  19b;64:2-7               Second Reading 1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Gospel Mark 13:33-37
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