Benedictine Sisters of FL

Holy Name Monastery
Founded 1889

Spirit

“I AM the BREAD of LIFE”

by Leave a Comment

Kindly remember our community in your prayers this week as we engage in prayer and participation in our annual community planning days.

Our 2021-2027 directional goals (here summarized) will guide us:

We will:

  • be an authentic contemporary Benedictine community attentive to relationships within community and beyond.
  • will work to increase awareness of our community and invite others to share in our vision and mission.
  • will use the Restructuring Process we designed to discern how viable our future is as a community.
  • we will intentionally work to insure our economic and environmental sustainability.

 

“I AM the BREAD of LIFE”

 

I think we probably could all agree that the Gospel of John can be difficult to understand.  So we can’t blame Jesus’ critics who are confused and ask for a sign when he says, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.”

This incident happened the day after the feeding of the 5000.  The crowd followed Jesus to a new location and were joined by many more curiosity seekers.  Remember, when John speaks of “the Jews” he is referring to a class of people: the religious authorities, the religious insiders of the day.  It is to this mixed group of people Jesus begins to explain the loaves and fish.

He gets pretty direct with them: “I am the bread of life.”  This makes the Jews – the religious insiders – angry.  Now, Benedict would tell them, “Don’t murmur.”  Their mothers might say “Stop your whining!”  Jesus lays it on the line, “Do not complain among yourselves.”  But, do they go directly to Jesus with their questions?  (Do you go directly to the source with your questions?)  No, they do what is fairly common (even in our house).  They go to one another and begin complaining, grumbling, and murmuring.  “Can you believe what he said?  Who does she think she is?  Where does she come up with that stuff?  Who gave her the right to change the schedule?”  And, the assignment of motivation for the person’s actions – well, all you can do is chuckle when you overhear another’s explanation about why you did something.  “You know why she did or said that?”  Like the Jews who were sure Jesus was the son of Joseph, so how could he be the Son of God?

The people were partially right – they did know Jesus.  But they only knew him through historical facts.  Now, we need to know the facts but too often the facts, the other’s history – and we are so sure we know all the pieces – about Jesus, about other persons, even ourselves.  But what little we know can be used to limit possibilities.  You can almost hear the Jews saying, (sometimes it’s our refrain, too) “We’ve never done it like this before.”  It is both amazing and sad that it is the Jews, the religious insiders, who do this.  They go to the synagogue, say their prayers, keep the fasts and dietary laws and try to live faithfully.  And yet they have a habit of accepting only historical knowledge.  Doing this limits not just our understanding – it also narrows our world, closing us to wonderful possibilities, great opportunities and enriching relationships.

The Spirit calls to us “A feast of life has been prepared for you.  The table is full, ready and waiting.  God is drawing, pulling, wooing, and loving you to the table.”  This sentiment is expressed in many of our Communion hymns such as: “We Come to Your Feast,” “Remember Me,” “Table of Plenty,” “One Communion of Love.”

Sometimes the history of our fears, regrets, pain, and losses become so established we are deceived into believing that we are not even hungry for new relationships, for the Bread of Life.  Maybe it’s a history of things done or left undone – or words said or affirmations left unsaid.  Perhaps we have a history of a particular way of thinking, believing, seeing the world, each other or ourselves.  You know the saying: Insanity is when you keep doing the same thing, the same way and expect a different result.

Jesus teaches us how to focus on the heart of the issue. He says, “No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me …”  Here Jesus reminds us that it is an act of God that in the first place brought us to the table and continues to gift us with the power to risk entering into the Christian life, into monastic life.  The God-image, PAPA, in THE SHACK movie – says to Mack: “Faith does not grow in the house of certainty – faith is a risk.  The good news is that God is willing to be present and teach us.”

So, let us be a people who dare the risk, and enjoy the daily privilege to respond to and consume the Bread of Life.  Remember, faith is a verb, not a noun … it is a way of life.  It’s not a once and forever thing – it needs to be nourished at the Table.  Let us share in the joys and challenges of being the Body of Christ for a hungry world, and drink for those who thirst for justice, peace, fullness of life, and even eternal life.

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB, Prioress

 

First Reading:   1 Kings 19:4-8           Second Reading:   Ephesians 4:30—5:2
Gospel:   John 6:41-51
Continue Reading

“Go into Your Heart…”

by Leave a Comment

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

Continue Reading

“What’s mine is yours; what’s yours is mine.”

by Leave a Comment

FEAST of the ASCENSION of our LORD

“What’s mine is yours; what’s yours is mine.”

 

This week our prayer intention is the 2021 Graduates.  The Gospel is about the Commencement story for Jesus’ Apostles.  It’s the same message (not the same exact words) that graduates across our country will be hearing: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the fruits of your education!  Signs will accompany those who are influenced by you and your words.  Be true to the ethics, the values, the attitudes that have been modeled for you.  Drive out demons by refusing to be any less than you are called to be.  Be sensitive to the voices that call out to you from the trenches.  Lay your hands on the sick, the sorrowing, the poor; the victims of racism, inequity of services and opportunity.”  Each year, we return to this story of Jesus’ ascension, we celebrate the event, and try to make meaning for our own lives.  That’s what our graduates are charged with doing.

Jesus impressed upon his Apostles the same message that 2000 years later we know we can depend on.  He tells us: “apart from me you can do nothing” and “I will be with you always.”  He may have disappeared from sight, but he has not abandoned us.  He kept assuring the Apostles that they had not imagined it – it was not a borrowed memory from someone else’s story: Jesus really had been among them and at least on two occasions he had something to eat with them.  Remember, when he appeared in the upper room and asked: “Do you have anything here to eat?”  And, again, on the seashore when he had breakfast already cooking for them when they hauled in that net-breaking catch of fish.  This was a beautiful and very human thing to do; something that the disciples, and we, could completely relate to.

Among Jesus’ last words on this earth, is a powerful lesson in mutual sharing.  It sounds a bit like ‘What’s mine is yours; what’s yours is mine.’  We hear Jesus say: “Everything that the Father has, is mine.  When the Spirit comes, he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.”  And, what is declared?  “Peace I give you; my peace I leave with you.”  Jesus wanted his disciples, He wants us, to understand, for all time, that the purpose of his life on earth, why he had to suffer and die the way he did – was all part of God’s plan.  Jesus wants to impress upon us, that there is a lot of work to be done and not to worry if things aren’t always easy.

He has commissioned us, all his followers, to a life of service.  In Jesus we are we empowered to do what He himself did.  He sends us out to preach, to heal, and to drive out unclean spirits.  Jesus continues to help us as we try to live as his followers – to call on our reserves of resiliency, holy dependence, and firm trust.

We recall that when Jesus was buried it was women who solemnly formed a funeral procession to the newly hewn grave.  They anointed Jesus’ body with the customary herbs and spices that filled the walk-in tomb, and the surrounding air, with a pungent perfume that lingers on, even to this day’s atmosphere.  You know that sensation you get in the chapel or our community room or a public elevator.  Someone walks in and almost immediately thinks or remarks that someone must have Vicks cough drops.  Or looks around wondering who’s been in the company of a smoker.  Or asks who has on scented hand lotion.  Or wrinkles her nose in puzzlement trying to figure out just what is that scent?  For now, we turn in all directions to detect and track the aroma of the One who continues to guide us; leading us forward into unknown places, ministries, services.  It’s that familiar fragrance we follow that leads us to Jesus.  One day it will lead us to our eternal home with Him.  Even before we’re fully aware we’re in his presence, we’ll have found Him.  Like Mary Magdalene on Jesus’ resurrection morn, we’ll hear Him speak our name.

[“Perfume” imagery borrowed from article on GlobalSisters.org]

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB

 

 Jesus promised: I will be with you always!

First Reading   Acts of the Apostles 1:1-11   Second Reading Ephesians 1:17-23
Gospel Reading  Mark 16:15-20         Intention: 2021 Graduates
Continue Reading

Solemnity of the Trinity 2020

by Leave a Comment

With this weekend’s Scripture readings the Church seems to be saying “Wait a minute – put the brakes on your return to Ordinary time.  There’s another idea to explore.  Let’s celebrate our Triune God.”  But we know the idea of one God in three persons remains a mystery, so what can I say???  Sometimes it is better to believe than to be able to explain.  You know that about many things: can you explain how you put a printed page in a FAX machine that reads it and spits out a printed copy miles away?  Most of us could not explain how electricity works or the WiFi we trust will connect us to the world?  We just believe it’ll work at our command …  and feel disappointment and frustration when it fails us.  We stand strong in our belief of a Triune God though words fail us.

The Gospel of Matthew (read today) and the writings of St. Paul shed light on the concept of Trinity that the early Christians held.  We just heard Jesus say: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”  Somewhere along the line we studied Trinitarian theology: the Didache, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Origen, Gregory, Patrick with his shamrock imagery, and Augustine with his story of the child trying to empty the sea into a tiny hole in the sand.

But, if we expect these writers and the Scriptures to give a clear presentation of the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity – that simply is not the case.  We may lack an understanding of the how of the Trinity, but it is important to understand the why.  The concept gives us a more personal, more dynamic experience of God.  We are made in the image of God, and, therefore, the more we understand God the more we can understand ourselves.  The mystery of the Blessed Trinity tells us about the kind of God we worship and about the kind of people we should be.

We were created to live in relationship, in unity – giving of ourselves to one another as God exists in relationship.  But, look around today: the sit-ins and the marches are recurring evidence that divisions continue.  We are divided along all kinds of lines: national, religion and racial, gender and sexual orientation, socio-economics and politics, the insured and the uninsured, the “haves” and the “have-nots.”  People identify themselves primarily by what distinguishes and separates them from the rest of God’s people.

We sing “God is Love.”  What exactly does that mean?

Here is a God that is so generous… who loves us so much, He cannot contain Himself.  Here is our God who wants to be discovered and celebrated.  The fact is: God wants us  – waits day and night – to be found.  Here is a God who is constantly calling out to us – but not necessarily with words.  Here is a God who surprises us with gifts like one morning coming into the connector or dining room and being surprised and confounded by an awesome glorious sunrise.  Or a double rainbow after a Florida rain.

Remember the analogy of the three-legged stool?  As individuals in community we need God and others …  the stool becomes lopsided or falls if any one leg is shortened or missing.  Community takes all of us, all the “legs”: God, me and all our members.  Sometimes we may feel it really doesn’t matter if I miss an activity – that the meals, card games, choral prayer will still go on whether I am present or not.  And, it will – and even in your name.  But, never ever feel that your presence doesn’t count or is not important and significant.

This celebration of the Trinity reminds us of the limitless possibilities of God – one God who cannot be contained, but must co-exist as three persons.  Let us seek God out in all His creativity, in varied manifestations – as Father, as Brother, as Counselor, as Companion and Friend – is waiting for us.  Ours is a God who wants to be found.

~Reflection by Sister Roberta Bailey, OSB, Prioress

 

First Reading Deuteronomy 4:32-34;39-40       Second Reading Romans 8:14-17
Gospel Matthew 28:16-20                                     Intention Health Care Workers
Continue Reading