Showing posts with label St. Mary's Retreat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label St. Mary's Retreat. Show all posts

Friday, May 31, 2024

Abbey Awe | Blessed with Joy and Presence in Terce Psalms


Joy on the Soapstone Trail Near St. Mary's Monastery & St. Scholastica Priory

Cultivating joy
is an act of resistance
to any person, event, or system
that would have us believe
that death has the final word on our lives.

+ Willie James Jennings,

To close the month of May 2024, I had the honor to help host another St. Mary's Monastery & St. Scholastica's Priory retreat with people from Congregational, Baptistic, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, and Anglican backgrounds, for a special time at the monastery, even getting to see Br. Isidore again, as we focused on the Benedictine rhythms of prayer, infused with Psalms throughout.

Before we arrived, everyone was invited to read, meditate on, and memorize Psalm 63:1-5 to prepare for this sacred time together: 

Psalm 63

1 God, You are my God,
earnestly I seek You;
I thirst for You,
my whole being longs for You,
in a dry and parched land
where there is no water:

2 I have seen You in the sanctuary
and beheld Your power and Your glory.
3 Because Your love is better than life,
my lips will praise You.


4 I will praise You as long as I live,
and in Your name I will lift up my hands.

5 I will be fully satisfied
as with the richest of foods;
with singing lips my mouth will praise You.
 
St. Mary's Monastery and St. Scholastica Priory Sanctuary in Petersham, MA

 On previous retreats, the practices of reading and praying the Psalms, especially connected to compline and prayer in the night with the monasteries, have proven life-giving for me. But this time, it was the mid-morning prayer hour of terce immediately after the mass that blessed me the most. Below is some brief background related to the different prayer hours during the morning provided in Leighton Ford's The Attentive Life: Discerning God's Presence in All Things:

The “morning” journey(s) are
when our day starts and
where our life begins
with all its potential and challenges.

The “time before our own time”
Vigils
is the time for us to address
our Creator with thanks and openness.

Lauds
come just before dawn …
It is the hour that takes us
from darkness into light —
awakening to life, to God.

Terce
is the marker of midmorning.
It was at this “third hour”
on the day of Pentecost
that the Spirit came
to the early Christian community,
as the enabling Power of their witness.

In the monastery
Terce
is time to take a break from busy work,
time to receive a midmorning blessing
with a focus on the Spirit
and the aliveness of His presence.

Before I arrived at St. Mary's Monastery, a theme I thought God wanted me to focus on was joy in His presence and cultivating joy as an act of resistance throughout this yearAnd so when I lingered after the mass at 9:30 a.m. the first morning we were there, returning to the faint aroma of incense in the simple, yet beautiful sanctuary, I could only smile when these were the verses from the Psalms I was invited to meditate on in both Latin and English with the monks and the nuns serenading the day:

Psalms 8

LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is Your name
in all the earth!
You have set Your glory
in the heavens.


2 Through the praise of
children and infants
You have established
a stronghold against Your enemies,
to silence the foe and the avenger.

3 When I consider Your heavens,
the work of Your fingers,
the moon and the stars,
which You have set in place,
4 what is mankind
that You are mindful of them,
human beings that You care for them?

5 You have made them
a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honor.

6 You made them rulers
over the works of Your hands;
You put everything under their feet:
7 all flocks and herds,
and the animals of the wild,
8 the birds in the sky,
and the fish in the sea,
all that swim the paths of the seas.

9 LORD, our Lord,
how majestic is Your name
in all the earth!


Soapstone Trail near St. Mary's Monastery & St. Scholastica's Priory in Petersham, MA

The joy in Psalm 8 is not only present in its ancient and fresh praises throughout, but it also stirred in me the right response to the gorgeous view we got to see as a community of retreatants together after a steep hike later that day.

And the joy in the moment of Terce that also brought a smile to my face was personal because less than 24 hours earlier I was discussing this exact Psalm with my oldest daughter as we considered some of the psalms her and her boyfriend had been reading (1-11 as of last week). We watched the Bible Project video on Psalm 8 and enjoyed a quiet break after school together in the month of May-hem.

The next morning of Terce, I was awakened to joy again during a cool, calming, and serene rainfall with this Psalm:

Psalms 16

1 Preserve me, God,
I take refuge in You.

I say to the LORD: 
"You are my God.
My happiness lies
in 
You alone."

3 He has put into my heart
a marvelous love
for the faithful ones 
who dwell in His land.

4 Those who choose other gods
increase their sorrows.
Never will I offer 
their offerings of blood.
Never will I take their name
upon my lips.

5 O LORD, it is You
who are my portion and cup;
it is You Yourself
who are my prize.

6 The lot marked out for me
is my delight:
welcome indeed the heritage
that falls to me!

7 I will bless the LORD
who gives me counsel,
who even at night directs my heart.

8 I keep the LORD ever in my sight:
since He is at my right hand,
I shall stand firm.

9 And so my heart rejoices,
my soul is glad;
even my body shall rest in safety.

10 For you will not leave 
my soul among the dead,
nor let Your beloved know decay.

11 You will show me the path of life,
the fullness of joy in Your presence,
at Your right hand happiness forever.


Multiple people on the retreat mentioned how Psalm 16 had been special for them, too, during this hour of Terce. This time was not only good for my spirit with the Spirit, but good for many others during this hour when the Spirit came down at Pentecost. And while verse 11 had been one I have returned to again and again, I'm now looking forward to returning to the entire Psalm during 2024 to ask the Spirit to move in this way among my family and among Emmaus City Church so that we all can sing as part of Christ's body in Worcester:

8 I keep the LORD ever in my sight:
since He is at my right hand,
I shall stand firm.

9 And so my heart rejoices,
my soul is glad;
even my body shall rest in safety. ...

11 You will show me the path of life,
the fullness of joy in Your presence,
at Your right hand happiness forever.


St. Mary's Retreat Reflections:

The guest house was great
and the chapel so beautiful and welcoming.
The diverse people reflected the Body of Christ
and through the readings, sharing,
praying, eating, and singing

the Spirit quickly knit us together.
+ Brian M.

It really helped me return
to a grounding perspective
during a particularly busy season ...
When life gets worked up into a frenzy,
it was a great gift of God
to come back to a space
where I can remember that
things won't fall apart without me.

+ Kate K.

I want to do this again because
my soul often needs
this type of refreshment.

Many other “retreats”
offer a time away
but don’t refresh the soul. But
this retreat at St. Mary’s
was a huge refreshment.

+ Nate B.


The best way I can describe it
is like an oasis in a journey
across a desert land.

The pace of life as a parent,
ministry leader, and community activist
can feel overwhelming at times,
and the avalanche of the daily grind is real.
This retreat provides a respite
for a weary soul
or an opportunity to be more attentive
to God's omnipresence and the love of Jesus.
+ Ron W.

Go into it expecting rest
but getting so much more.

+ Marty H.

It was so refreshing and restful
for my body, mind, and soul!
It reoriented me to a place
of centeredness with God

and enabled me to feel renewed
in my calling and empowered to go back
to the fullness of life
with a sense of calm, focus, and joy.
I really appreciated the good mix
of solitude and fellowship
and the ways other participants' journeys
were an encouragement to mine.
+ Katie W.

I liked the whole thing.
+ Aaron K.

Bonus Video:



With presence and peace in Christ,

Rev. Mike “Sully” Sullivan

Email Pastor Mike | Website | Visit Us | Support Us | Facebook Us

Thursday, May 30, 2024

Abbey Awe | God Moves Thru Unlikely Saints Again (& Again)

 

St. Benedict of Nursia Block Print by Kreg Yingst

Let them first pray together
that so they may associate
in peace.

+ The Rule of St. Benedict

Look at the face of above. Not necessarily one that would be highlighted very often or looked to for joy and refreshment today. He seems a little too sober. A little too somber. And yet, God worked wonders of refreshment and innovation through this humble person who taught that, "The first degree of humility is prompt obedience."

This post is intended to provide a brief history of how God moved through St. Benedict and others who followed Jesus via discipleship along the lines of The Rule of St. Benedict not once, but twice in the past 2,000 years to bring renewal and healing to Jesus' Church during times when God's people were becoming corrupted by power, apathy, laziness, and greed.

As I've shared before, I have continued to be encouraged and awakened with awe and adoration by my times at Benedictine Abbeys, some of my favorite "thin spaces" these past 5+ years. During this year's spring retreat at St. Mary's Monastery, a community of Roman Catholic Benedictine monks living a contemplative monastic life in Petersham, Massachusetts, I read to participants from Congregational, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Anglican, Baptist, and Reformed backgrounds the stories below from Michael Frost's wonderful book, Mission is the Shape of Water: Learning from the Past to Inform Our Role in the World Today. We were encouraged together then and I hope you will be encouraged with us now as you consider how:

It is the paradox of history 
that each generation
is converted by the saint
who contradicts it most.

+ G. K. Chesterton


The Flame Ignites Again in 500 A.D.

After all the effectiveness of the Celtic mission, Europe could (still) fall back into darkness. The "spreading flame" F.F. Bruce spoke of had dwindled to a barely flickering light ...

(But then) The Benedictines emerged from the ministry of St. Benedict. He was the son of a Roman nobleman from Nursia in the Italian province of Perugia and was sent to study in Rome, possibly around 500. However, Benedict found the city a hotbed of licentiousness, drunkenness, and violence. A devout man of deep spirituality, he was disgusted by the breakdown of civil society and retreated to a cave beside the lake near the ruins of Nero's palace above Subiaco. There is no evidence he intended to establish a monastic order. He was effectively a hermit, living in his cave for three years, provided with food and robes by Romanus, a monk of one of the nearby monasteries.

These were frightening and confusing 
times for Christians. 
The papacy behaved more 
like a small state than Jesus' Church, 
offering little spiritual guidance to the people. 
Christians felt as though the world was ending. 
When news spread of a saintly, flame-bearing
hermit living in a cave about forty miles
east of Rome, people began making
pilgrimages to the site to learn from
and be blessed by Benedict.

Eventually, Benedict was persuaded
to become an abbot
of a more traditional monastery,
each with twelve monks ...
It seemed as though Benedict
was the only light in the midst
of the dark chaos caused by
the final fall of Rome.

Later still, Benedict traveled south, followed by a few disciples, to a pagan district about halfway between Rome and Naples. There, on a steep hill above Cassino, he preached the Gospel and saw many people converted. Eventually, this would become the site of the Benedictine motherhouse at Monte Cassino, where he would formalize the rhythm of life for his monastic communities: the Rule of St. Benedict.

The Rule specifies rhythms, principles, and practices of a Benedictine monastery. It contains a list of seventy-two spiritual tools, based on various biblical and traditional sources:

+ The Lord's Two Great Commandments
+ Ten Commandments
+ Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy
+ Golden Rule
+ Cardinal (Deadly) Sins
+ Theological Virtues

as well as other guiding principles, such as humility, suffering for the Kingdom, and loving one's enemy. It also outlines the day-to-day life of the community, including the Divine Office, prayer times, sleep times, meals and clothing.

Life in southern Italy
was so chaotic, so licentious, so immoral
that a rule like this was seen as a falme
that provided light, warmth, and guidance
in the midst of the darkness of the times.

Cistercians Rekindle the Flame in 1100 A.D.

The Benedictines would burst into flame again, taking back Western Europe and bringing revival and restoration to society. By the turn of the first millennium, corruption had found its way into Benedictine monasteries and was well advanced. In 1098, a Benedictine abbot, Robert of Molesme, could stand it no longer. His monastery in Burgundy had fallen into spiritual decline, with most monks abandoning the Benedictine Rule. Robert, along with about twenty supporters, left his monastery and moved to a plot of marshland just south of Dijon called Cîteaux, intending to establish a truly Benedictine community. Cîteaux means "reed" in Old French. Robert chose to use the Latin version of this term, cistercium, naming his new community the Cistercians.

Embracing a form of asceticism, these bearers of the flame sought to be purified and strengthened for a lifelong labor of prayer. They refused to accept any feudal revenues, believing them to be sullied by the church's collusion with the state ... they soon came to distinguish themselves from the monks of unreformed Benedictine communities by wearing white tunics instead of black. A white Benedictine or Cistercian was considered the holiest of all monks.

By 1111, the new abbot of the Cistercians, Stephen Harding (an extraordinary man in his own right), embarked on an expansion program to start Cistercian monasteries across Europe. That year, Harding commissioned a group of monks, led by Bernard de Fontaine  a nobleman who had taken holy orders at the age of twenty-two, just four years earlier — to start a new monastery in Clairvaux. A supremely eloquent and strong-willed mystic, Bernard of Clairvaux was to become the most admired churchman of his age. 

As with Benedict before him,
the flame of Bernard's passion
drew young people —  
particularly those who were seeking
a better way than the Church
was offering them at the time ...
Daughter houses and monasteries
were founded across France, 
into England and beyond.

The Cistercians under Bernard
took seriously Benedict's words
in the forty-eighth chapter of the Rule,
which states,
"For then are they monks in truth,

The work of their hands? Monks were meant to be known for being devoted to prayer and study, not work. Nonetheless, taking Benedict at his word, the Cistercians introduced manual labor for monks as a principal feature of their common life and the primary means of their financial support (since they refused to accept any filthy lucre from the state). They came to embody the Benedictine motto, ora et labora — "pray and work." For the Clairvaux community, the working part wasn't simply about funding the monastery; they worked in their fields for God! 

You might not think it, 
but this simple idea 
that a monk should express
piety through work 
would change European society
forever.

 For a zealous monk, prayer is an offering to the divine; the primary expression of devotion to God. Monks were taught to pray before dawn until after sunset. But now, the Cistercians added work as a true mark of godly devotion. And if they were to embrace manual labor as a way to express their love for God, they would inevitably work as devoutly as they prayed. And if work was part of religious vocation, then — also inevitably  they'd work extremely hard and for long hours.

The idea of manual labor as an act of consecration turned the Cistercians into lean, hardworking men. They worked as tirelessly as they prayed. A monk's life consisted of about three hours in church at the Divine Office; five hours devoted to manual labor; and two or three hours given over to biblical study. The exact number of hours changed according to the seasons of the year, both natural and liturgical, but the three-part rhythm of worship-work-study was maintained throughout the year.

The Cistercians reclaimed 
unwanted or marginal land 
and worked it constantly, 
turning fallow, useless dirt paddocks 
into productive fields.

In the process, they created a large, disciplined, unpaid labor force. And, as a monastic order, they were free from the tariffs and taxes imposed by feudal lords, so their business enterprises  whether wheat, wool, or beer  were remarkably profitable. They didn't pay conventional wages to their monks (workers), and they weren't taxed by the state. Nearly every cent they made was profit; and this in turn helped finance the founding of even more monasteries. With the proceeds from their agricultural ventures, and a steady stream of young men now signing up to the order, Bernard rolled out Cistercian monasteries across Europe. No other religious body had grown so large so quickly. By the time of his death in 1153, Bernard had directly founded sixty-eight monasteries and overseen the establishment of another 270 monasteries from Sweden to Portugal and from Scotland to the eastern Mediterranean.

The monks, often drawn from the educated families of Europe, began experimenting with new and innovative farming techniques, hydraulic engineering, and metallurgy. They developed the use of large waterwheels for power and an elaborate water circulation system for central heating. They instigated new approaches to transportation, fermentation, and harvesting crops. These techniques were adopted by other farmers in central Italy, southern France, Spain, and the Netherlands. As a result, all of Europe experienced a massive economic boom in the twelfth century. Some of these techniques are still in practice today.

Five hundred years after Benedict's death, 
and three hundred after 
the decline of his order,
the Cistercians had not only revitalize
Benedictine monastic life
but had also altered the world
as many Europeans experienced it.

They truly lit a flame
that spread into the far reaches
of the Western world,
bringing dramatic change to society.

+ pgs. 45-49, Chapter 3: Flame Bearing in

Bonus:

Why is St. Benedict often pictured
with a raven?

Saint Benedict is often depicted with a raven because of a story in The Life and Miracles of St. Benedict by Pope Gregory the Great. The story is about how Benedict, while living as a hermit in the wilderness, would feed a raven that lived in the forest near his monastery. One day, when Benedict was about to eat poisoned bread given to him by an envious priest, the raven swooped down and snatched it away. Benedict then called on the raven to take the bread somewhere safe so that no one would be harmed.

Bonus Benedictine Stories:


Abbey + Saint + Revival Posts:  
Awakening to New Wonder in Vigils
+ Finding God in a Thin Place
+ Facing Death w/ "Of Gods & Men"  
+ Saintly Swagger in Story of God   
+ Revival: Unfettered in Small Things
+ Presence & Prayer for Renewal  
+ In Our Time: Not Far from God
With presence and peace in Christ,

Rev. Mike “Sully” Sullivan

Email Pastor Mike | Website | Visit Us | Support Us | Facebook Us

Saturday, June 3, 2023

CN | Open & Unafraid Psalms in Which No Secrets Are Hidden

 

Psalm 126 by Anna Armstrong for Park Church, Denver

The psalms invite us to risk the love of God and neighbor and of the world that surrounds us with the reassurance that we do not venture this risk alone. We venture it together with an extraordinary company of fellow pilgrims across the ages. We would dare to tell our secrets to the community of God because we are confident, or, at the very least, we hold on to some shred of faith, that the steadfast love of God stands behind and before us, above and below us. + W. David O. Taylor, Open and Unafraid



This year I got to take a step of faith and obedience to orchestrate and facilitate a retreat in central Massachusetts for servant leaders across various Christian faith traditions. Sisters and brothers from Pentecostal, Baptist, Charismatic, Congregational, Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Reformed backgrounds joined together at St. Mary's Monastery and St. Scholastica's Priory in Petersham, Massachusetts to soak in some silence and solitude, readings, Psalms, Benedictine hours, prayers, and whatever God had in store for each of us, as well as all of us together. As I have experienced some "Abbey Awe" with God in previous retreats, I was praying that each of the participants would experience some of the same in their own way during this special time.

In preparation for our time together in this space, I recommended three books for each person to choose one from to read before the retreat:

+ David Taylor's Open & Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life
+ Leighton Ford's The Attentive Life: Discerning God's Presence, and
+ Tracy Balzer's Thin Places: A Journey into Celtic Christianity.

Excerpts we read during the retreat from The Attentive Life can be found in the post, 
Lanterns, Fireworks & Stars: "Only One Thing Is Needed", as well as at the end of the post, In the Holy Wild with the Lion Who Offers Us the Stream (see the story about the Masai Chief).

This post captures a reading from Open & Unafraid about the Psalms, all 150 of which are sung and prayed throughout one week at St. Mary's and St. Scholastica's as part of their Benedictine tradition in praying the seven hours each day. (Check out one Protestant church's incredible Christ in the Psalms Artwork along with recent books, Sheltering Mercy: Psalms 1-75 and Endless Grace: Psalms 76-150, for why the psalms are essential across various Christian faith traditions, too.) As to why praying through all the Psalms each week has been a centuries-old steadfast tradition of Benedictine monks and nuns, this excerpt from Taylor's work provides a glimpse.

Read the psalms, one after the other, and find yourself at home with God, from whom no secrets are hidden; each of us is standing alongside saints and sinners, walking with both the faithful and the faithless, open and unafraid, because we all have been marked by the steadfast love of God. 
 
+ David Taylor's Open & Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life

The psalms illuminate the mind for the purpose of enkindling the soul, indeed to put it to fire. It may need be said that the purpose of the Psalms is to turn the soul into a sort of burning bush. 
+ Stanley Jaki

 

We Would Dare to Let the Psalms Teach Us How to Pray

We trust that in the Psalms, we discover that Jesus Himself, the One who knows every grief and every joy of the human heart, both enables and embodies our own prayers.

In reading the poetry of the psalms, we would discover that it is through these musical, metaphor-rich words, which force us to slow down and pay attention, that we encounter God as both intimately familiar and strangely mysterious. 
In singing the psalms, we would discover that we are not alone. We are not the first to feel the sadness of loss, the anger of injustice, the confusion and disorientation of doubt, or the I'm-so-happy-I-could-pop joy of rescue and redemption. We would discover, likewise, a way for all things to be told in community, both those things that we would gladly announce from the hilltops and those things that we might prefer to keep secret, so that God might heal us and lead us "in the way everlasting" (Ps. 139:24). 
In praying the psalms, we would recognize the voice of others, in different circumstances than ours, perhaps, who cry out to God, "How long?" Here we would find permission to lay open before God our griefs and infirmities, which we might be ashamed to confess before others. 
We would find a way to pray angry prayers without being overcome by our anger, and how to curse in context, how to hate without sinning, how to cuss without cussing at all the damnably awful things that mark our broken world. 
We would also find a powerful desire to join the trees and the mountains in their shouts for joy. Like the birds of the air, we, too, would make merry; we, too, would clap our hands with the rivers. Like all of creation, we, too, would yearn with painful hope for the sweet fullness of joy to be made manifest. 
With a freedom that we never suspected was ours, we would choose to believe the words of the Psalter, which enjoin us to name our enemies and to expose them and to rebuke them and, in Jesus' name, to love them and to release them and to serve them. 
We would choose to do justice. We would not simply bemoan the tragic losses or the ungodly acts of injustice. We would also stand up for the poor, the needy, the widowed, the orphaned, the vulnerable, the alien, the stranger, and all who are oppressed—and bring them all before God in prayer, asking Him, in mercy, to be a Just Judge who makes all things right. 
We would pray these things with open eyes. We would pray these things knowing that many of our prayers might never be fulfilled in our lifetime, and that death, like a monstrously terrifying force, confronts us daily with our mortality, reminding us that we are but dust. And yet we would also pray that, though we may be like grass that withers, God would make us to be a life-giving tree, deeply rooted in the "fountain of life," in the God who is the Author of life that is truly life. 
We would pray and sing and read and recite and meditate on all these words of the psalms, but never as a purely solitary act. We would pray them with peoples from every tongue, tribe, and nation. We would pray them with the company of the faithful from every time in history and from all the cultures of the earth. And along with all sorts of peoples, in all kinds of circumstances, we would join the praise of creation—the praise of angels and archangels, of morning stars and fathomless ocean depths, of sea dragons and herds of cattle, of fire and hail, of apple orchards and cedar forests, of "robust men and women in their prime, and yes, graybeards and little children" (Ps. 148 THE MESSAGE). We would join creation's inarticulate praise, and we would offer up our own articulate praise of God, the Creator and Re-Creator of all things. How long would we join creation's praise? As the psalms see it, as long as we live and breathe and have our being, and as long as God lives, which is forever and ever, world without end. 
The Psalter opens with echoes of Genesis and it closes with a symphony of cosmic praise. In William Brown's words, "Psalm 1 begins the pilgrimage and anticipates the destination." To see the psalms in this way is to see ourselves on "the way." We do not, of course, walk this way alone. We walk alongside others who seek to remain faithful to God. 
We walk through these one hundred and fifty poems, Christ's own prayer book, in the hope that we will perceive the shape of faithful prayer, faithful witness, faithful living, faithful friendship, and faithful work. We walk this way, ultimately, with Jesus, for whom these psalms are his heart song. And like Jesus, we read and sing, and pray the psalms along "the way" out of love. 
The gospel of John tells us that Jesus does everything so the world will know that He loves His Father (John 14:31), who in turn loves the Son (John 15:9), and whose Spirit makes the love of God ours as well (Rom. 5:5). This being true, then, Jesus also prays the psalms for love's sake.  
 
"JESUS" BY BAS UTERWIJK | POST PHOTOGRAPHY
 
With Jesus and in Jesus' name, we, too, would pray the psalms, trusting that they will open up a space in our hearts to give and to receive the steadfast love of God, from whom no secrets are hidden. We, too, would pray with the psalmist that God's steadfast love will meet us in our hour of need (Ps. 59:10). We, too, would pray, "I love you, O LORD" (Ps. 18:1), with whatever faith we could muster. And we, too, would pray the words of Psalm 31:23-24 in the hearing of all creation: 
Love GOD, all your saints; 
GOD takes care of all who stay close to Him, 
But He pays back in full 
those arrogant enough to go it alone. 
Be brave. Be strong. Don't give up. 
Expect GOD to get here soon. 
(THE MESSAGE)

+ Excerpt above from the Conclusion of David Taylor's Open & Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life, pgs. 188-191


Here are links to other recent City Notes (CN) books:


Christ is all,

Rev. Mike “Sully” Sullivan

Email Pastor Mike | Website | Visit Us | Support Us | Facebook Us