As Preached by Sister Cecelia
Holy Wisdom Chapel
May 27,2018
Just as the great and precious promise of the Hebrew testament was the Messiah, so the great promise of the New Testament is the Holy Spirit. Through these tongues of fire, we are one with God. To participate in the Divine Nature means we share a portion of God’s nature. Jesus promised us that anyone who followed him would have the light of life. This light of life would be the Spirit of God that came upon all his followers on this Hebrew festival of Pentecost.
We (all) are aware of the effects of the Spirit this day on his followers. No more hiding away in fear but valiant preaching and actions causing many others to believe. This life of faith called them and us to pray in the Spirit.
Often Jesus, during his earthly sojourn, went off somewhere to pray. I have often wondered what Jesus’ prayer was since He was God. Surely, he prayed for those around him whatever their needs were. But surely also, His prayer was what we call contemplative prayer. While not everyone is called to be “a contemplative”, what matters is the contemplative orientation of the whole life of our prayer. If we pray “in the Spirit”, we are not running away from life, negating visible reality in order to “see God”.
Prayer does not blind us to the world but transforms our vision and makes us see the world, all humankind and the history of all creation in the light of God. Prayer “in spirit and truth” enables us to enter into contact with infinite love, that inscrutable freedom which is at work behind the complexities and the intricacies of human existence. This does not mean fabricating for ourselves pious rationalizations to explain everything that happens. Nor does it involve stealthy manipulation of the hard truths of life.
Our prayer does not necessarily give us privileged insights into the meaning of isolated events. These can remain as much of an agonizing mystery as they are for anyone else. Through our prayer these mysteries contain a presence and a meaning which we perceive without fully understanding them.
Our prayer is an act of faith in humility. It is an acceptance of the work and sacrifice demanded by our tasks at hand, even if we do not quite see where they are going.
Religion tends to lose its inner consistency and its truth when it lacks the fervor of contemplation. It is the silent, “empty” and apparently useless element in the life of prayer which makes it truly transformed. We can and must use the prayer of petition which is quite compatible with the spirit of contemplation. Prayer must penetrate and enliven every area of our life, including what is most temporal and transient. All things, even the seemingly lowest aspects of our temporal existence have a divine orientation or can have.
Without contemplation, even liturgy can be merely a pious show and plain babbling. Unless worship-the adoration and love for God above all, - is based on Christ’s love and carried out in the power of the Pneuma- the Spirit, it will not nourish a really Christian apostolate. The most important need of our world today is an inner truth nourished by a Spirit of contemplation: the praise and love for God, the thirst for the manifestation of God’s glory, truth and justice, for God’s kingdom to come as we pray daily in the Our Father.
These are all characteristically “contemplative” and eschatological aspirations of a human heart. They are the very essence of monastic prayer. Without these aspirations guiding us, our apostolate is more for our own glory than for the glory of God.
Jesus said: ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink….Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.” That water is the Spirit.
Christ is in our midst.!
Tuesday, May 29, 2018
Monday, May 21, 2018
Sermon 156; Is2:1-5; Ac 1:1-12; Lk24:36-53: We have lift off!
As preached by Brother Luke
Holy Wisdom Chapel
When I was a kid space travel was a new and exciting thing. When we knew that a launch from Cape Canaveral was scheduled, it would be broadcast on TV and everyone would gather around the TV to watch the launch. News broadcasters would be giving blow by blow accounts of every detail leading up to the launch. The camera would keep showing the rocket sitting in place as the preparations continued for the big moment. Then the announcement came and the engines would be started and massive flames would shoot out from under the rocket as the supports fell away and the announcer would finally say: “we have lift off.” As the rocket sped away we would watch the TV screen to follow the rocket until it was so small we could not longer see it. It was a magical moment.
It is easy to forget all the mission control staff who were busy throughout the flight monitoring all that was going on. Reports at the end of the mission leading to the return of the space craft were also big news, but what really remained in one’s memory was the launch.
The Ascension we celebrate today is a lift off without a spacecraft. And its most important message is about what is to happen on earth, not so much what might be happening in heaven. The church reminds us that the Ascension of Christ is more about the commissioning of the disciples rather than the disappearance of Jesus into the clouds. When we look at the many different versions of the Ascension icon, Christ is depicted above in the mandorial, opening the gateway to heaven for all, while the crowd below looks up but remains firmly on the ground. Jesus’s departure was necessary in order to set the stage for the ultimate second coming. You need a “going” before you can have a “second coming.” Hard to come back if you haven’t left. He goes to prepare the way for us.
This is not a time of sadness over Jesus’s ascent to the Father, even though our liturgical texts beg Jesus not to leave us here a orphans, but rather it is a time of anticipation and joy. A time when we, as in the opening line of the poem by James Weldon Johnson that became through the NAACP the Black National Anthem: “Lift every voice and sing.” If you have ever been in a crowd singing that song you would know what a powerful experience it can be. That song does not mean everything now is perfect, but rather it is a stirring song of hope. It is similar to what this feast calls us to do:
Lift our voices in praise of the one who rose from the dead for our salvation
Lift our spirits buoyed by hope in a brighter future for all
Lift the burdens of others where we are able to
Lift the veil of fear that covers the lives of so many among and around us
Lift up our souls, our minds and our emotions to appreciate the gifts and graces that we receive every day
Lift up those in need, those suffering, forgotten, disinherited, disenfranchised, discontented, or depressed
St James reminds us in his letter to the whole Christian world, as we heard again a few days ago: “faith without works is dead.” [James 2:17] The message for us is the same as for the disciples. We too are being commissioned by this feast to carry the Good News out to the world and to do this by how we live. We are in mission control, but our mission is about what is going on on earth not above the earth. It is a mission of joy as expressed in the Jerusalem Troparion of the feast.
Today, we declare the word of joy to all the world, for the Lord has delivered his people and ascended in glory, granting humankind his great mercy.
Holy Wisdom Chapel
When I was a kid space travel was a new and exciting thing. When we knew that a launch from Cape Canaveral was scheduled, it would be broadcast on TV and everyone would gather around the TV to watch the launch. News broadcasters would be giving blow by blow accounts of every detail leading up to the launch. The camera would keep showing the rocket sitting in place as the preparations continued for the big moment. Then the announcement came and the engines would be started and massive flames would shoot out from under the rocket as the supports fell away and the announcer would finally say: “we have lift off.” As the rocket sped away we would watch the TV screen to follow the rocket until it was so small we could not longer see it. It was a magical moment.
It is easy to forget all the mission control staff who were busy throughout the flight monitoring all that was going on. Reports at the end of the mission leading to the return of the space craft were also big news, but what really remained in one’s memory was the launch.
The Ascension we celebrate today is a lift off without a spacecraft. And its most important message is about what is to happen on earth, not so much what might be happening in heaven. The church reminds us that the Ascension of Christ is more about the commissioning of the disciples rather than the disappearance of Jesus into the clouds. When we look at the many different versions of the Ascension icon, Christ is depicted above in the mandorial, opening the gateway to heaven for all, while the crowd below looks up but remains firmly on the ground. Jesus’s departure was necessary in order to set the stage for the ultimate second coming. You need a “going” before you can have a “second coming.” Hard to come back if you haven’t left. He goes to prepare the way for us.
This is not a time of sadness over Jesus’s ascent to the Father, even though our liturgical texts beg Jesus not to leave us here a orphans, but rather it is a time of anticipation and joy. A time when we, as in the opening line of the poem by James Weldon Johnson that became through the NAACP the Black National Anthem: “Lift every voice and sing.” If you have ever been in a crowd singing that song you would know what a powerful experience it can be. That song does not mean everything now is perfect, but rather it is a stirring song of hope. It is similar to what this feast calls us to do:
Lift our voices in praise of the one who rose from the dead for our salvation
Lift our spirits buoyed by hope in a brighter future for all
Lift the burdens of others where we are able to
Lift the veil of fear that covers the lives of so many among and around us
Lift up our souls, our minds and our emotions to appreciate the gifts and graces that we receive every day
Lift up those in need, those suffering, forgotten, disinherited, disenfranchised, discontented, or depressed
St James reminds us in his letter to the whole Christian world, as we heard again a few days ago: “faith without works is dead.” [James 2:17] The message for us is the same as for the disciples. We too are being commissioned by this feast to carry the Good News out to the world and to do this by how we live. We are in mission control, but our mission is about what is going on on earth not above the earth. It is a mission of joy as expressed in the Jerusalem Troparion of the feast.
Today, we declare the word of joy to all the world, for the Lord has delivered his people and ascended in glory, granting humankind his great mercy.
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