kansas monks
Dear Friends,
We’ve had a busy start to the summer, with Confirmations, retreats, and graduations. With so many different decisions, tasks, and events, it can be easy to have feelings of alienation, confusion, and failure. When you are constantly moving from one complex task to the next, it can be hard to maintain your bearings, which can lead to fear and frustration.
Amidst all the many activities of these last two months, I’ve been struck by the wisdom of St. Benedict. Like the hermits and monks before him, St. Benedict emphasized the need for a rule of life. No one could be a member of one of his communities without vowing to abide by his Rule. St. Benedict knew that the life of discipleship is full of temptations, trials, and tedium. Accordingly, he put in place an order of life that kept moored the monk to Christ.
Central to the Rule of St. Benedict is a routine of daily prayer. The very first line of his Rule is a call to listen: “Listen carefully…and incline the ear of your heart.” St. Benedict knew well that Jesus Christ is the Word of God. We must first listen to Him. And to do that, we needed above all to hear Christ in the Psalms, which are the substance of the different hours of prayer that structure the monastic day.
A structured prayer life allows one to keep calling out to Christ when the storms of life arise. Christ becomes the constant of one’s daily life. Regular prayer keeps us looking to Him for hope and help, rather than to circumstances, careers, or community.
July 2024
Summer often brings a different rhythm. My encouragement to you is to follow the wisdom of St. Benedict and keep in place, as a non-negotiable, a steady life of prayer. Let your routine of prayer be the fountain of all that you do rather than allow the daily tasks to influence your time of prayer.
In Christ.
Abbot James R. Albers, O.S.B.
IN THIS ISSUE
The Man Carrying Water
By Br. Jean- Marie Hogan, O.S.B.
To the man carrying the water jar:
First of all, may I be so bold as to ask what exactly you were doing carrying a water jar? Men don’t normally do that, you know. Was this some sort of prearranged signal? To be clear, I’m not saying you did anything morally wrong; I’m just remarking on the fact that it’s culturally unusual.
Pardon me, for I see I have neglected the conventions of letter-writing. Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Gamaliel. I am a rabbi and a member of the Sanhedrin. In case you were wondering, I did manage to convince the council not to have that fellow Peter and his companions put to death. It took a good deal of arguing, as they were ready to stone those men for disturbing the peace.
I suppose what I really want to say to you is: Do you realize what just happened? Those two men you led to the upper room—did you know who they were, and who their Teacher was? The meal they prepared in that room was no ordinary Passover. That night, Jesus took bread and gave it to his disciples saying, “This is my body, which will be given up for you.” He also took the cup and distributed it to them with the words, “This is my blood of the new covenant.” And they all ate and drank.
Assuming that you are an observer of the Law, this will probably shock you. I imagine what’s going through your head right now is, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?” But this is actually what was foretold in the words of the Psalm: “Mere men ate the bread of angels; he sent them abundance of food.” Of course, none of us were expecting that the
bread in question would be himself, but who are we to put limits on what the Almighty can do?
If you follow the news at all, you probably know that this Jesus of Nazareth was crucified the following day. (For the record, I did not go along with this plan.) But there’s more to the story. That man was raised from the dead on the third day, and they saw him—those men you led to the upper room. And don’t go believing any stories about the disciples stealing the body. Most men I know would rather admit a lie than suffer a good scourging.
This event was also announced beforehand: “You will not abandon my soul to the netherworld, nor will you suffer your holy one to see corruption.” Obviously, these words do not apply literally to the patriarch David, since he died and was buried, and his tomb is in our midst to the present day. But since he was a prophet, he foresaw the resurrection of the Messiah, who was not abandoned to the netherworld, nor did his flesh undergo corruption.
One final thing. If you would be so kind, please do say a prayer for one of my former students. His name is Saul. He had been sent to Damascus, but apparently something happened along the road. There are rumors that he has joined the followers of the Way. Last I heard, he was somewhere in Arabia, but that was a few months ago.
Shalom,
Rabbi Gamaliel
P.S. Please burn this letter after reading it. If my fellow members of the Sanhedrin got a hold of it, they would kick me out in a hurry.
Abortion Dehumanizes Leads to Less not More Love
By Fr. Matthew Habiger, O.S.B.
In April 2023, the Pew Research Center released a fact sheet that contains nine demographic and statistical facts about the Catholic population in the USA. One serious fact deals with Catholics and abortion.
About 6 in 10 U.S. Catholics say abortion should be legal, in contrast to the Church’s teachings. This includes 39% who say it should be legal in most cases and 22% who say it should be legal in all cases. A key factor, Pew says, is that Catholic opinion about abortion tend to align more with their political leanings than with the teachings of their Church. Among Catholic Democrats, 78% say abortion should be legal in most or all cases. Among Catholic Republicans, 43% say this.
How can this be? Catholics are to form their conscience with the moral truths taught by the Church. In the Vatican II document, Dignitatis Humanae 14, we find: “In forming their consciences the faithful must pay careful attention to the holy and certain teachings of the Church. For the Catholic Church is by the will of Christ the teacher of truth. It is its duty to proclaim and teach with authority the truth which is Christ and, at the same time, to declare and confirm by her authority the principles of the moral order which spring from human nature itself. … They should try, even if it involves shedding their blood, to spread the light of life with all confidence and apostolic courage.”
Poor catechesis and poor shepherding by priests and bishops certainly have a share in the blame. But many Catholics today have accepted wholesale modernity’s skeptical outlook toward religion and the Church, such that they will not submit themselves to the Church. They accordingly place greater trust in the secular culture around them and in their political party than in their Church. When we speak of secular culture, we do not mean simply the culture that exists outside of the Church, but the culture that is deliberately uninformed by religious values and the authority of the Church.
The prevailing secular attitude today is that the sexual revolution of the 1960s freed us from the shackles of modesty and unhealthy sexual repression. This view, rooted in an evolutionary and naturalistic view of humanity, tells us that sex is an animal instinct, just like hunger or thirst. A truly modern society, it is said, allows for an individual to fulfill his or her instincts freely, that is, how he or she wishes. Sexual moderation or abstinence is unhealthy because it stifles personal desire.
If pregnancy is one of the leading reasons why people would restrain their sexual passion, then contraception is needed for sexual freedom and full personal development. If contraception is faulty or if it in some way diminishes sexual spontaneity and pleasure, then abortion is needed as a failsafe.
It is extremely difficult to change the heart and mind of pro-abortion persons who have dogmatized this way of thinking about human nature and freedom. They are convinced that having orgasms is an absolute necessity to personal development, and that nothing can interfere with this “right,” not even an unwanted unborn child. They will use any argument to justify killing an unwanted baby.
I compare the pro-abortion person with the
Br. Karel Soukup, OSB, 2024, Infant Christ, oil on wood
pro-slavery person in the antebellum South. Those who advocated and defended slavery were convinced that slaves were not fully human. Because slaves were often abused, white racists assumed that the ignorance and backwardness of slaves was evidence of their inferiority. Since they weren’t fully human, they did not deserve human rights. Moreover, slavers argued that slaves were economically necessary if America was to compete with other world powers and southern families were to advance.
Are not these the same kind of arguments pro-abortionists use today? Do they not tell us that babies are not fully human, but are simply “fetuses” or, even, a “clump of cells” akin to cancer? Because they cannot do all the things born children can do they are therefore not as valuable. Do they not say that women will not be
fully economically equal unless they have the same kind of parental irresponsibility as men? Do they not claim that women’s economic liberation and advancement requires the abuse and capital punishment of babies?
Scandalously, many Catholics have come to accept this kind of reasoning. Instead of accepting the Church’s teaching on human dignity, sexuality, and family, they have given themselves over to secular arguments about sexual freedom and female liberation. Instead of accepting the Church’s teaching about the inviolable dignity of each person on account of their being made in the image of God, they have accepted arguments that because babies are not fully developed in the womb, they are not fully human. Instead of accepting the Church’s teaching about the goodness of creation, Catholics today have come under the sway of
William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1900, Regina Angelorum, oil on canvas
believing that creation is simply the product of mindless evolution, believing that if the evolutionary process is full of death and that species must adapt to survive, then aborting babies is just a technological application of the evolutionary process allowing women to adapt to and overcome their male-dominated culture.
If 60% of Catholics think that abortion should be legal, then the Church needs to challenge and criticize this secular worldview. It needs to propose full-heartedly the Catholic Faith. And it needs to take a stronger stand against those Catholics who advocate for or accept abortion.
Abortion is not a matter of opinion or preference. Abortion is a moral issue, and the Church’s teaching against it is definitive. From the very earliest decades of the Church to our current day under Pope Francis, the Church has denounced abortion as contrary to God’s law, intrinsically evil, and a mortal sin. Catholics are required to accept and practice this teaching in order to be in good standing. Abortion is a mortal sin. It must be confessed, never promoted.
Silence in the pulpits on serious issues are contributing to the problem. Clergy must address the issues of contraception and abortion more forthrightly. Humanae Vitae cannot be ignored. Bishops especially have a duty to clearly teach about the evils of contraception and abortion.
But alongside condemnation of abortion must be promotion of the goods of marriage, sexuality, and family. God created human persons as either male or female, sexual and fertile. He designed sex – it is His plan. Our sexuality naturally attracts us to other people, especially to the opposite sex. We want love, friendship and intimacy. But if we pursue these in a way that undermines the value of human persons, that is, if we pursue them for selfish pleasure and gain, then we ultimately will not attain them.
God’s plan for sex is for it to be the generation of family communion. Only when a husband and wife are absolutely committed to each other can they be safely vulnerable and naked before each other. This requires that they give all of themselves to each other, body and soul. In marriage, they are truly free. And it is this kind
of freedom that is open to children. Humans are not seen as threats or obstacles, but as divine gifts.
When sex is engaged merely for personal pleasure, one is not giving oneself over completely to the other, but is using the other for his or her satisfaction or power. It is this mentality that leads to contraception andabortion. If sex becomes merely about pleasure rather than self-gift and family communion, then spouses will not want more humans to give themselves to; they will not want babies.
When people use contraception, they are rejecting the goodness of their fertility. If we want to love a person, then we must love that person in their entirety, with their fertility, as God created them. Our fertility was designed by God to allow us to become co-creators with Him in bringing into existence a new and unrepeatable person. This person carries the image of God in that he/she is a person with all the gifts and faculties of a person. And a person will live forever.
Abortion cheapens life. If we can kill the totally innocent and fully human, unborn baby, then what prevents us from disposing of other unwanted, inconvenient persons? They too will lose their personhood in our estimation.
Abortion and contraception lead to a birth dearth. Young people are the greatest asset a nation has. People often speak about the economic advantages to having women freed from pregnancy. But there are economic costs of a decline in the birth rate, as we are beginning to see. If a contracepting and aborting nation turns against unborn babies, they are also turning against their own future, and asking for a senescent society with limited energy and development.
In short, contraception and abortion are not the great blessings and marks of a more humane society and greater personal freedom. Only when we follow God’s plan, revealed in the nature of human bodies and the teachings of the Church, can we truly flourish as human beings. We thank God for His great plan, His great design, for us. We ask for His grace and strength so that we may live our sexuality in a fully human way.
The Art of Living Pt II:
Faithfulness
By Br. David Bissen, O.S.B.
Last month, we began an overview of Dietrich von Hildebrand’s book on Christian ethics, The Art of Living, with a presentation of the first and most basic attitude we ought to cultivate in our moral lives: reverence. His second chapter, “Faithfulness,” builds on this. If reverence is our capacity to recognize what is good and respond in a fitting way, faithfulness allows us to do so with consistency. Reverence towards our neighbor’s wellbeing, honesty, and charity will prevent us from stealing from him. But what about when we are down on our luck? What if he stole from you first? Faithfulness towards moral truths will allow us to act with integrity in all situations, which colors our moral life with unity and integrity. This concept is surely old news to most – we learn it as children – but have we ever found ourselves bringing the same faults to Confession over and over? We have all been there. It is not as easy as it sounds to be faithful because our attention is so easily pulled away from one thing and diverted to another. Few events or ideas make such a lasting impression on us that we can hold true to them even when our attention drifts away. A couple’s wedding day is likely to be among these events. If a man is of faithful character, this day will leave a lasting impression on him that will remain present with him even when he is not thinking about the love that day represents or the promises he made. A man who forgets days like this is liable to contradict them. Someone who struggles with faithfulness lives entirely in the present moment.
Normally “living in the present” carries a positive connotation, meaning to not be in such agony about what happened in the past or how to control the future that we ignore people around us. But, if we do so at the expense of forgetting the past, we will find ourselves in hot water. Faithfulness does not make us absent from reality. The greater our ability to be faithful to past experiences that revealed what is good, true, and
beautiful, the deeper new experiences of this kind will sink into our souls. We get more out of reality when we are faithful to it. Extending our previous example, a faithful man will be more deeply moved and changed by the experience of having his first child than one who lacks the capacity to apply continuity to his life.
One popular but misguided view on morality claims our moral duty can change depending on the circumstances we find ourselves in. However, if we discard faithfulness to eternal truths in exchange for this more expedient outlook, we will make ourselves slaves to our first impressions of the world. Imagine walking through an art gallery, and noticing a woman who stops and looks at a painting for a few short seconds, before noticing out of the corner of her eye a bright and loud piece of art hanging a few feet away. Her attention is ripped away from the masterpiece in front of her, and it fades from her memory. If we take a similar attitude towards our moral lives, our character will remain shallow, and we will not be able to commit ourselves to much for very long. We will become gullible, unable to keep resolutions to change for the better, and overly concerned with our immediate wants. This is a recipe for superficiality.
If we desire to be more faithful to our relationship with Christ, we must strive to prefer our love of Him over the bright and loud opportunities to acquire the praise of others, various kinds of pleasure and gain that pull our attention from His presence and lead us away from Him. Christ, a man who lived two thousand years ago, is more relevant to our present moment than any of these flashy and gripping opportunities.
Questions for Reflection:
• What are the events in your life that merit lasting fidelity towards?
• What was true, good, and beautiful about those moments?
• What are the small ways in which we are unfaithful to them?
1870, The martyerdom of St. Thomas Moore, Etching
Living the Liturgy Commentary on the Liturgical Year
By Dr. James R. A. Merrick
7 JULY – 14TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
The great paradox of the Christian faith lies at the heart of the Collect for this Sunday: “O God, who in the abasement of your Son have raised up a fallen world…” This paradox is picked up in the second reading which is taken from St. Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians. It is the famous passage when St. Paul speaks about his “thorn in the flesh,” some kind of malady that hold him back. St. Paul explains that he begged God to deliver him from it, but the Lord responded: “power is made perfect in weakness.”
Why does God’s great glory and power come to us as abasement and weakness? There is of course the fact that divine power displayed amidst weakness and suffering seems all the greater. If God can work through defeat and seemingly hopeless situations, then His power is manifested to us as greater than the powers with which we are regularly familiar which a defeated through weakness. In short, one of the key reasons why God manifests His power in this way is to reveal to us his true omnipotence.
But the most significant reason has to do with conversion. If pride is the root of sin, then humility is the remedy. The essence of pride is self-aggrandizement and self-reliance. In order to convert our pride, the Lord holds up before us the ultimate act of humility – the crucifixion of our Lord Jesus Christ – and tells us that this is true glory, that this is salvation. Moreover, He often brings humiliating circumstances into our lives so that we must find His power amidst our weakness.
14 JULY – 15TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
One of the key themes of today’s Mass is the way in which proclaiming God’s truth often makes us unwelcome in this world. The first reading comes from Amos. Amos, who “was a shepherd and a dresser of sycamores,” was called by God to prophesy to the
people of Israel that they were about to be exiled. In the reading, Amaziah, the senior priest of Bethel, denounces Amos and tells him to leave Bethel for good. Amos is cast out because he prophesied the message the Lord gave to him.
In the Gospel, Jesus anticipates that His Apostles will be similarly treated. As He sends out the twelve, He includes the instruction: “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave. Whatever place does not welcome you or listen to you, leave there and shake the dust off your feet in testimony against them.”
What these texts call our attention to is what the Scriptures refer to as the obstinacy or hardness of the human heart. Sometimes we are tempted to think that people do not accept the teachings of the Church because they do not understand them or that they have not been winsomely proposed to them. This can be true. But it is also true that many reject them because their hearts are hardened and do not like the commands of God.
As the Collect has us pray that God will “give all who for the faith they profess are accounted Christians the grace to reject whatever is contrary to the name of Christ and to strive after all that does it honor,” we must be prepared for a rejection of the message. We must be careful, in our desire to convert others, that we don’t change the Gospel so as to make it acceptable to the hardhearted. In engagement with those who refuse to hear the Word of God, we do better to “dust off our feet” and let our steadfastness be a testimony against them.
21 JULY – 16TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
This Sunday picks up where the previous Sunday left off. Last Sunday, Jesus sent out the Apostles to proclaim the Gospel to the people of Israel. This Sunday, we see one of the primary reasons for their mission: bad shepherds.
The Liturgy of the Word opens with the Lord, through the mouth of the prophet Jeremiah, condemning the bad religious leaders: “Woe to the shepherds who mislead and scatter the flock of my pasture, says the LORD.” The Lord says that although these bad shepherds have neglected to care for His people, the Lord will not be negligent in punishing them: “I will take care to punish your evil deeds.”
The evil shepherds of Israel who deserve punishment are contrasted with the twelve Apostles in the Gospel. Having returned from their mission, about which we read last Sunday, the Lord tells them that they deserve rest: “Come away by yourselves to a deserted place and rest a while.”
It is important to understand the context of the first reading. The key problem with the bad shepherds rebuked by the Lord through the prophet Jeremiah is that they wanted to promote a religion that was more acceptable to the surrounding nations. Instead of being a light to the other nations, holding fast to the revealed truth of God, the religious leaders wanted to adapt the religion of Israel to the religions of their neighbors.
In addition to this, Jeremiah reveals that these religious leaders became “godless” and both tolerated evil,
especially adultery, and engaged in it themselves. They thus used their religious authority not to teach and instruct people in the ways of the Lord but to endorse sin and idolatry.
In contrast to this are the twelve Apostles. The Apostles deserve rest because they obeyed Christ. They stayed under His authority and they proclaimed the message and commands He taught them. They did not use their ministry for their own selfish gain but for the expansion of Christ’s Kingdom.
Significantly, because the Apostles were good shepherds, they unified the people of God. This unification of God’s people is in direct contrast to the scattering of God’s people by the false shepherds. A significant component of this unification was the restoration of lost sheep. Here we have to be careful. The restoration of the lost sheep wasn’t due to their waywardness being finally accommodated but due to their repentance. When they heard the preaching of the Gospel they turned away from their sins and toward Christ.
This is an important distinction between true and false shepherds. False shepherds, as the first reading reveals, offer accommodations of sin. They tolerated infidelity in marriage (adultery) and infidelity toward
God (idolatry). They revised the religion of Israel in order to accommodate these sins. True shepherds, however, know that love of neighbor cannot come at the expense of love of God. Indeed, love of neighbor is a consequence of and defined by genuine love for God. It is only in loving God, the creator of all people, that I can truly love my neighbor.
There are numerous warnings against false teachers. The earliest Church continuously had to identify and oust heretics. We might like to think that we have grown out of all that. But we have no reason to think that we have. Indeed, our Lord and the Apostles consistently warn about the threat of falsehood and false teachers.
Vigilance requires not skepticism or a rebellious spirit, but the formation of conscience. All Catholics, not just priests and religious, are called to the “lifelong task” of educating their consciences (CCC, 1784) where “the Word of God is the light for our path” (CCC, 1785). As today’s Mass reminds us of the need to be on our guard, let us recommit ourselves to this task.
28 JULY – 17TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
One of the recurring themes of Scripture is trusting God for provision, especially our daily sustenance. It is the main point of the creation narratives in the opening chapters in the book of Genesis. In the ancient context, where creation myths served to identify the
gods and how they should be worshipped so that they would continue to bring fertility and security to the land, Genesis 1-2 tells the Israelites that there is only one God who governs all aspects of the agricultural and climatological system that determines the food supply.
Of course, the primordial temptation to sin came through the consumption of food. The Devil tempted Eve to eat from the one tree that God had not given them. At the heart of this temptation is the notion that God does not truly care for us, that He has withheld something from us that we need, that if we are to live, we must take matters into our own hands rather than trust in and depend upon God.
When the Israelites are journeying to the Promised Land, they found themselves at the base of Mt. Sinai recognizing that it was time to plant crops. Although they had just agreed to worship the one God of Israel, they quickly made a fertility god – the golden calf –and worshipped it for the blessing of crop fertility. In punishment for this idolatry, God made them wander in the wilderness. During this time, they found themselves in need of food once more and had to depend upon the miraculous manna or bread from heaven.
In Jesus’ ministry, when He recapitulated Israel’s wilderness wander by being tempted in the desert, having fasted for forty days, He was tempted by the Accuser to turn stones into bread. He responded with
Michelangelo, 1509, The Fall and Expulsion from Garden of Eden, fresco
the passage from Scripture that said: “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every Word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” Jesus recognized in this temptation the primordial temptation of the Garden of Eden, to think that God will not provide for us in our time of need. The Devil provokes Christ to think of some impending calamity, that when He finishes His fast there will not be food for Him to eat.
Our Lord also routinely exhorts His apostles to be dependent upon God for food and in His most famous address – the Sermon on the Mount – He tells everyone not to worry about tomorrow, but to trust in the Father who sees to it that His children will eat. In the same address, He gives the audience the Lord’s Prayer, which includes the line: “Give us this day our daily bread…”
In the first reading for today’s Mass, we have the miraculous multiplication of the loaves by the prophet Elishah, a prototype of the multiplication of the loaves and the fishes performed by Christ in His ministry. Elisha instructs his servant to feed the multitude the twenty barley loaves, but his servant object that these were not
enough to feed the people: “How can I set this before a hundred people?” To this Elisha responds with the prophecy that “They shall eat and there shall be some left over.” This is paired nicely with the responsorial Psalm the refrain of which sees the people declare: “The hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs.”
This theme culminates in the miracle of the multiplication of the five loaves and two fishes. The faith of the young boy is exemplary. He gives all that he has to the Lord, and with it the Lord multiplies it into enough to feed five thousand people.
What is illustrated here for us is the spiritual principle that God will often ask us to offer to Him all that we have, which seems so inadequate to the task. He asks us, too, to trust that He will provide for even our basic needs when it appears that there is nothing. If we stay and listen to Him, if we remain with Him, He will see to it that all our needs are provided for. And of course His provision is often unexpected, unforeseen, miraculous.
Ivan Kramskoi, 1872, Christ in the Wilderness, oil on canvas
Josh
Domenico Fetti , Saint Benedict, oil on canvas