Homilies

March 19, 2008
Wednesday of Holy Week
Isaiah 50:4-9; Matthew 26:14-25
Fr. Justin Sheehan

When St Benedict writes about the good zeal of monks, he says that "they should each try to be the first to show respect to the other, supporting with the greatest patience one another's weaknesses of body or behavior". This is something like what St Paul says, "Bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ", but Benedict adds the important word patientissime, with the greatest patience, which in Latin comes from the same root as passio. passion. The law of Christ is to share in his passion and monks fulfill it by most patiently bearing one another's burdens. They are to bear the burdens and weaknesses of their brother, but also, and this is the most important part, they must go on doing so because this law was fulfilled through the passion and death of Christ.

It is striking how often the verb "to bear occurs in scripture. In the first reading on Good Friday, this one word sums up the whole work done by Jesus: "Ours were the sufferings he bore, ours the sorrows he carried". That is why St Benedict thinks of the whole life of a monk as a continuous Lent, a continuous bearing of the cross of Christ. In that way we become tht community of Christ's body, a community in which we are aware of, and bear, one another's burdens. Without this we are not a community of Benedictine monks, and we deny the law of Christ.

What constitutes the burden of a monk is in the first place our brother's freedom. This freedom runs counter to our own tendency to dominate others, and we have to face up to this like the disciple in the first reading: "For my part, I made no resistance, neither did I turn away. I offered my back to those who struck me, my cheeks to those who tore at my beard; I did not cover my face agaSnst insult". It would be easy to offer resistance, to turn away and avoid this burden: we have only to violate our brother's freedom by trying to make him in our own image. But we have to let God fashion him in his image. We respect the freedom of God's creatures by bearing the burden which this freedom lays upon us. Christ himself respected the freedom of Judas by bearing; the burden of betrayal which that freedom laid upon him, and monks like all Christians are expected to follow the example of Christ.

By the freedom of our brother we mean all that constitutes his deep nature, his talents and character traits, including all those weaknesses that so sorely try our patience, as well as all the frictions and antagonisms that may come up between us. Bearing our brother's burdens means bearing with his creaturely reality, accepting it, and even coming to rejoice in him, just as Christ, because of the joy that lay ahead of him, patiently accepted the denial by St Peter and crucifixion by sinners. Those who patiently share in his passion will also share in his resurrection, "and God-seeking hearts will revive; for the Lord listens to the needy, and does not spurn his servants in their chains".