Homilies

April 2, 2008
Wednesday of the 2nd Week of Easter
Acts 5:17-26; John 3:16-21
Fr. Justin Sheehan

Everyone who believes in God's Son is not lost, but has eternal life. And everything that happens to the believer is not lost, but has eternal life, because what the believer does is done in God, in whom there is no past, present or future. In God, because of the communion of saints every believing Christian becomes the sum total of his own experiences and those of his predecessors. We monks were all at Monte Cassino, and in the desert of Egypt before that. We all heard the apostles preaching in the Temple, and devoted ourselves to the common life and to the prayers. We were all in Clairvaux at the time of St Bernard. We were all in Gethsemani with Thomas Merton.

If I do not accept my patrimony in its totality, with its observances and passionate vows and calls to commitment, I will not be blessing the Lord at all times. If we look to Benedict and Bernard and de Rance, it is first to teach us the poetry inherent in a trinity of founders, but it is mainly to make us realize that we are the descendants of all three; Benedict's moderation, Bernard's zeal,and de Rance's taste for austerity - we accept all or none. Each of us bears in his soul the Psalms that other lips have chanted, the purity of the Rule, and the valley of Our Lady's smile.

All the generations of monks are linked to each other. And we are the present day link. The excesses of the refectory at Cluny, the absurd attempt to poison St Benedict, the demons that Anthony battled in the desert - to evoke them is to show their topicality as well as their timelessness. Everything that monks did in one era -the stories of the desert fathers, the clearing of the wilderness of Citeaux, the epic journey of de L'Estrange - all this is reformulated and rediscovered in every generation, so that it may be plainlv seen that what they did was done in God. Every age contains all ages. Every monk was seen and comprehended by the first desert father. Benedict and Cassian were responsible for one another: Cassian for Benedict's future; Benedict for Cassian's past. Each monk is thus responsible for all monks, for each monk resembles Anthony in his solitude and de Ranee in his austerity and Pachomius in his community life. Nothing that happened to them is lost; it has eternal life in us, as long as we live by the truth of our tradition.

All these characters are our contemporaries because we are all in Christ, who is risen from time and space. They witness our solemn professions, they join us in thanksgiving after Mass. Their struggles are our struggles. Their search for God contains ours. They show that the monk's road to God is lit up by the truth of our tradition. Our Suscipe. "Receive me, O Lord links us to a timeless God and to all those who have pronounced the same words in this world of time. Destroy these links, destroy this consciousness, and the monk himself is destroyed, and so is his vocation. For we are responsible for a vocation we have not invented, for glorifying the Lord as only monks can. Together with the monks of all times, let us praise his name and live by the splendor of truth, so that it may be plainly seen that what we do is done in God.