March 2024 Kansas Monks by kansasmonks

k ansas Dear Friends in Christ, Before Israel enjoyed the Promised Land of milk and honey, they endured generations in the wilderness. Before our Lord Jesus Christ began His ministry, He was compelled by the Spirit into the wilderness to endure temptation. What has struck me recently about our Lord’s temptation in the wilderness is that we don’t know anything about the voice of the Father during this time. Of course, this is a mystery, for Jesus is fully divine, always in perfect union with the Father. But in this moment of His human life, while He is deep in prayer, we do not hear about the Father’s voice. Instead, we find that the only one talking is the Devil, the Adversary. It is not until the end of His temptation that the angels of God minister to Him. In many ways what the Church tells us by giving us the season of Lent is that we too are called to enter into the wilderness with the Lord. Lent is the time when we participate in the mystery of temptation and trial with our Lord. We are not exempt from times when we must wrestle with the Father as the voice of the Adversary seems the loudest. We should not expect the life of faith to be always comforting and easy. We should expect times of trial and temptation. The purpose of Lent is not mere self-improvement of growth in self-discipline. These are good things, certainly. But Lent calls us to more. Lent calls us to experience the alienation from God caused by our sin and to face frankly just how alluring the temptations of the Devil are. It calls us

monks March 2024 to choose God for God’s own sake, not because of any benefit or consolation we have come to expect from Him. If we are to have a fruitful or holy Lent, we must grow in prayer. We must learn to trust in God’s promises even when all we hear is the seductive tongue of the ancient serpent. To simply give up some physical comfort, like candy or chocolate, while remaining stagnate in prayer is not enough. For Lent is the time when we learn to rely upon God’s strength and to listen to Him even when it appears He has abandoned us or left us to temptation. As we look toward the new life inaugurated by our Lord’s Resurrection, let us make sure we are faithful to the Lenten fast. Let us make sure that when Easter comes, we love the life God promises us more than the temporary comforts of life here and now. In Christ,

Abbot James R. Albers, O.S.B.

IN THIS ISSUE Shakespeare pt. 3

2-3

Life Giving Lent

4-6

Dropping Out and Converting

7-8

Living the Liturgy 9 -11

St Benedict’s Abbey, Atchison, KS

| 1

SHAKESPEARE PT. 3

Shakespeare Pt. 3 By Br. Jean-Marie Hogan, O.S.B.

“I’m all the daughters of my father’s House, / And all the brothers too; —and yet I know not. / Sir, shall I to this lady?” (Viola, Twelfth Night II.4)

n any conversation, there are different kinds of silence. Sometimes, there is silence because one person is at a loss for words. He or she does not know what to say and is trying to figure out what to say next. Silence can also be a way of ignoring someone, of acting as though the other person does not exist and is not worth addressing. Silence can also express anger: I am so angry that I do not know how to verbalize how deeply I have been hurt. There is also the silence of lovers, where their eyes convey more than they could ever put into words. In the liturgy, there are also different kinds of silence. The General Instruction of the Roman Missal indicates that a brief moment of silence should be observed after

2 | March 2024

KansasMonks.org

the priest says, “Let us pray,” and before the collect or opening prayer (45). This is so that everyone can recollect themselves and call to mind the intentions for which they wish to pray. Silence after the homily is ordered towards meditating on the Word of God that has just been proclaimed. Silence after Communion provides an opportunity to give thanks to God for the gift that has just been received in the Eucharist. In this scene, Viola (aka “Cesario,” dressed up as a male servant) addresses her master, Orsino, with whom she is secretly in love. Almost blowing her cover by admitting, “I’m all the daughters of my father’s House,” she quickly recovers by adding, “And all the brothers too,” implying that her only sister is now deceased. In a recent production of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night at Maur Hill – Mount Academy, where some of the monks teach and provide sacramental ministry, she paused after “I know not” and waited for Orsino to respond. The silence was noticeable enough that some audience members suspected a line had been dropped. This brief pause is charged with anticipation. Throughout their exchange, Viola has been dropping some pretty obvious hints about her affection for Orsino. When he fails once again to realize what she is trying to communicate, she returns to their previous topic of discussion: “Sir, shall I to this lady?” He proceeds to send her to declare his love for Olivia, the lady with whom he is in love. As the priest in this story, if I could say anything to Viola at this moment, I would say this: It sounds like you just want to be noticed. After hearing your “hints” to Orsino, I gather that your desire is to be pursued, to know that you have captivated his heart. There is nothing wrong with that desire. Do not let anyone tell you that you ‘aren’t worth it’ or that you ‘don’t deserve it,’ because you are, and you do. Those are lies of the Enemy—lies which, sadly, many women believe. Don’t buy into them. Again, if I could say anything to Orsino, I would say this: Hey, knucklehead! Pay attention! She’s trying to tell you something. You need to learn how to pick up on that. Don’t complain that it would be easier if she

BR.JEAN-MARIE HOGAN, O.S.B. Frederick Richard Pickersgill, 1850, Orsino and viola Oil on Canvas

just said what she meant. Part of the beauty of authentic communication is that there is a lot more to it than simply the words that are said. Tone of voice, body language, and even what is left unsaid all come into play here. Your task is to learn how to notice what is really being conveyed.

St Benedict’s Abbey, Atchison, KS

| 3

LIFE GIVING LENT

Life Giving Lent By Fr. Daniel P. McCarthy, O.S.B.

y experience of Lent changed radically when I served as pastor in the tri-parishes of Doniphan County, Kansas: the Parishes of St. Benedict in Bendena; St. Charles in Troy and St. Joseph in Wathena. Before I was called to serve in these parishes, Lent was a time for the usual penitential practices. I would make a Lenten resolution every year and abstain from meat on Fridays. The season was marked by more somber liturgies, no gloria, the color purple and especially repenting from sin. Lent had been for me a penitential season before Easter feasting. All of these practices continued when I was in the parishes, but with a major difference. When I came to the parishes, I sought out people who wanted to become Catholic. They were welcomed by a team of people, led by Margaret “Peggy” Stanton of Troy. We shared the story of our faith with them and elicited from them the stories of the beginnings of their faith.

EVENING PRAYER IN THE PARISH Throughout the year we would gather on Sundays at St. Charles Parish church in Troy to celebrate Evening Prayer. In the evening darkness we began by gathering in the light of the Easter candle and sang the acclamation “Christ our light” and its response “Thanks be to God”. We would next sing a hymn in praise to Christ our light, followed by the opening prayer for Evening Prayer. Each person was then invited to place a grain of incense on a burning ember as we all sang “Like incense let my prayer arise” and the rest of Psalm 141, which I set to the tune of “Amazing Grace”. Fr. Meinrad would remind me that I could also sing it to the tune of the theme song from the hit television show “Gilligan’s Island”, well known by people of a certain age. We may have sung another psalm arranged as a hymn, following the ancient cathedral or parish practice of celebrating the liturgy of the hours.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder, 1559, The Fight Between Carnival and Lent, Oil on Panel

4 | March 2024

KansasMonks.org

FR. DANIEL P. MCCARTHY, O.S.B.

After the psalmody we replaced the brief reading of a line or two of scripture with the proclamation of the Sunday gospel so that we heard the same Gospel proclaimed at mass on Sunday morning and again in the evening. I then asked a catechist to prepare a reflection on the gospel and living the Christian life. I as pastor was enriched by listening to the reflection of another during evening prayer. Next we took five minutes or so for people to form small groups of two or three and share how the gospel touched them and the effect the gospel had on their developing practice of the faith. We concluded by singing the Canticle of Mary followed by intercessions and the Lord’s prayer. The concluding prayer was the same as the opening prayer from mass. After Evening Prayer we would go into one of the classrooms for another session of sharing the faith based typically on the gospel of each Sunday. To my knowledge this is the only time evening prayer became a regular part of the liturgical life of any of the parishes served by priests from our abbey.

PREPARING FOR EASTER On the first Sunday of Lent we celebrated in the parish the rite of sending candidates to the rite of election celebrated by the Archbishop. Thereafter the candidates for baptism at Easter were called the elect. Towards the end of Lent we formally presented the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer to the elect. All of this follows the ancient Roman practice, which I have since come to study here in Rome from their seventh century sources. Finally on Holy Saturday night we celebrated the Easter vigil with Baptism, Confirmation and Holy Communion. The practice developed in the following way.

GOOD FRIDAY All three parishes celebrated Good Friday together at the Parish of St. Benedict in Bendena in part because they had commissioned a large wooden cross which held a relic of the true cross given to me by Fr. Robert Aaron, OMI, a frequent and beloved visitor to the parish. This cross was enthroned on the top step, in front of the old high altar. The massive backing of this altar filled the end of the church. In order to make the

cross stand out, we draped the entire altar in yards and yards of a see-through, two-toned purple cloth called organza. The draping provided such a beautiful backdrop to make the cross stand out, and the rite of venerating the relic of the true cross was so moving that the parishioners naturally volunteered to host this liturgy for the three parishes.

HOLY THURSDAY Although the Parish of St. Joseph in Wathena has the larger church building of the three and the residence of the priest is next door, parishioners did not look favorably on celebrating adult baptism in their parish for fear that an immersion baptismal font would harm the beauty of their church. So they offered to host the other two parishes for the Evening Celebration of the

St Benedict’s Abbey, Atchison, KS

| 5

LIFE GIVING LENT

As things developed in the parish, I would on occasion use the Second Eucharistic Prayer for Masses of Reconciliation, which at that time had a lovely line in it: “You gave [your Son] up to death so that we might turn again to you and find our way to one another”. I suggested that people use Lent as a time of reconciliation with their neighbour and that on Holy Thursday they wash one another’s feet. The line did not survive the new translation of the Mass nor did the practice develop any further.

EASTER VIGIL

Jacopo Tintoretto, 1592, The Last Supper, Oil on Canvas

Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday. John Karn of the parish pointed out to me that the round, stained-glass window high above the old high altar depicted the resurrected Jesus breaking bread with the disciples during the supper at Emmaus – all the more reason to celebrate the Lord’s Supper there. During this liturgy we washed the feet initially of 12 parishioners. Like many parishes in the Archdiocese at that time I washed the feet of both men and women, although this was technically against the rule. When Pope Francis began celebrating the papal liturgy on Holy Thursday with the inmates of the Queen of Heaven Prison in Rome, he knelt before women and men, Christian and Muslim alike and washed their feet. There is a video of Pope Francis kneeling before a mother holding her toddler on her lap. I imagine the longing the incarcerated woman has for her child as I watch the Holy Father washing the feet first of the woman and then of her toddler. The mother cries and I am so moved that I always cry when showing the video to others.

6 | March 2024

KansasMonks.org

I approached the council members of the Parish of St. Charles in Troy with a plan to spend $200 on a stock tank from Fleet Farm, and the farmers accepted the plan to construct a temporary baptismal font for baptizing adults all the way under. A parishioner taught woodworking in the local school so he made a wooden frame with eight sides and a cover with a large crossshaped opening to the waters. A metalworks teacher created metal steps for entering the deep pool. We set up the font in the parish hall in the basement of the church, where we celebrated Baptism and Confirmation and then processed upstairs to the church for the Eucharistic liturgy. We celebrated baptism by full immersion as the Romans did in the fourth-century baptistery still standing next to the Lateran Cathedral of Rome. But I had to learn from our neighbors. The local Baptist minister was happy to loan to us the water heater from their baptismal pool. Eventually we installed an in-line water heater and insulated the water from the cement floor, which produced a much more comfortable pool of water.

LIFE-GIVING LENT When baptism made such a splash, the focus of Lent changed radically from a primarily penitential season, when I was concerned about my own sin, to a parish process of welcoming and sharing our faith with people preparing to be born again in the waters of baptism. Lent has not been the same for me. Even from a distance I am able to add my Lenten prayers for the people preparing to be baptized during the Easter vigil. 

By Br. David Bissen

ecently, I realized that St. Benedict, Bill Gates and I all share something in common: we all dropped out of school. In one sense, both St. Benedict and Bill Gates took a radical, risky step to achieve what each thought was better. While Gates’ dropping out was effectively a shortcut to his path of attaining worldly success, St. Benedict dropped out in favor of an arduous path to attain God. Of the two, only Benedict experienced a conversion. St. Benedict converted his happiness, desire, and activity from worldly success to heavenly reward and life with God. He determined to leave behind a life that would lead only to temporal success for a life of eternal perfection. Authentic conversion involves prioritizing the eternal over the temporal. Sometimes we mistake conversion for self-improvement. We often think that moral growth means simply preferring some better temporal goods over lesser ones. For example, I may choose to sacrifice watching television to catch up on work, which means I do not have to finish everything at the last minute. I therefore experience more tranquility. This is a healthy choice for my life that God would want for me. However, reduced anxiety is not the same as heavenly rest. Motives are important, too. If my motivation for watching television is to relax, then cutting it out for the sake of reducing stress does not represent a change in values or goal, only an increase in clarity about how to meet my own needs. I have not experienced genuine conversion to eternal life; I have only improved my approach to life here and now. Because authentic conversion requires turning away from temporal satisfaction toward hope in heaven, many have feared conversion is self-destructive. On the face of it Bill Gates seems much more successful than St. Benedict. But rightly understood, conversion actually involves growth in self-knowledge and humility. St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) outlined different degrees of loving God which is a helpful path

BR. DAVID BISSEN

Dropping Out and Converting to the life of conversion. According to St. Bernard, conversion begins and ends with self-love, though self-love is converted from pride to humility. The first degree of loving God is “When man loves himself for his own sake”. We do not want to stay here, but if we find ourselves here, we are on the right track. To love ourselves for our own sake is an important step in loving God because we are created by God and we cannot love our neighbor as ourself if we do not love ourselves. As we recognize our reliance on God in everything, we arrive at the second degree of love: “When man loves God for man’s sake”. By experiencing God’s goodness and mercy in response to our needs, we learn to love Him. Through grace, we experience a conversion and take on loving God as our new goal in life. We begin to pursue holiness out of a desire for eternal life and fear of hell. We show gratitude to God for the ways he has freed us from sin and its damaging effects in our lives and strive to honor that gift by avoiding sin in the future. This is a great stage to be in; it is a stage full of growth. Although, we still act for our own sake. One stumbling block I often trip over is acting virtuously for my own sake. Careful not to put my ego at risk, I hide my faults from others. My motivations are mixed: I may earnestly desire holiness, but I am still just as self-concerned as I was before virtue was a priority. To advance in the love of God, we must “drop out” of self-interest. This is where the hard work begins. Bernard’s third stage is “When man loves God for God’s sake”. Forgetting how we benefit, we love God for who He is and nothing less. There is a deep reciprocity between God and the soul. At the prompting of grace, we love God and serve our neighbor free of any expectation of reward. It is the same unconditional love God shows us. It is the Holy Spirit in us. Looking back at the first and second stages, we can see how different a person in this stage will view themselves, their purpose, and

St Benedict’s Abbey, Atchison, KS

| 7

DROPPING OUT AND CONVERTING Photo by Anya Valladares

who God is. This is a mark of true conversion. Finally, a soul may reach the final stage of loving God, “When man loves himself for the sake of God” (and only for God’s sake), which is a topic best left for the spiritual masters to treat. Advancing in the love of God is not an abstract matter. It all happens within the context of Vocation. Vocation and conversion essentially describe the same phenomenon. Responding to God’s call and experiencing conversion are two sides of the same coin. This is why the first monks spoke about their “conversion to the monastic life”. Likewise, we can speak about a “conversion to marriage” or other Vocations. This does not mean that the early monks understood conversion as an event limited to their day of profession. In fact, they saw the daily commitment to their Vocation as more important than the day they promised their monastic vows. Today, we tend to place extravagant emphasis on the day of our profession or wedding and relatively little on the follow through, the part that involves the

8 | March 2024

KansasMonks.org

work of conversion. We will not be able to improvise conversion after reading and thinking about it for a few minutes. It takes time, and even more failure. This does not mean we will never have to make a leap of faith. In fact, every one of us will be presented with a leap of faith today. God only asked me to drop out of graduate school once, but he asks me to drop out of my pride every day. Guess which one is more difficult to do. If we refuse this daily proposal and give up, once in a lifetime commitments become meaningless. Here lies the difference between St. Benedict and Bill Gates. The risks we take can become filled with self, which does not satisfy nor save, if we are content with temporal goods. We must transcend those goods to the Eternal Good if we desire freedom. This is the real risk, betting everything on something outside myself. But we know who we place our hope in, and we know that He is faithful. He is faithful today, and if he is faithful today, then today is a good day to take a risk for God.

Commentary on the Liturgical Year By Dr. James R. A. Merrick

3RD SUNDAY OF LENT – 3 MARCH The readings for the second Sunday of Lent are instructive. The Old Testament lesson is taken from the second book of the Bible, the Book of Exodus. Specifically, it is the portion of Exodus that contains the Ten Commandments. In response, we say or sing Psalm 19, which puts on our lips the refrain: “Lord, you have the words of everlasting life.” Psalm 19 declares that “The Law of the Lord is perfect” and “the ordinances of the Lord are true.” By no means are the Ten Commandments to be seen as just one moral code among others. The Ten Commandments are to be revered not because they represent human genius but divine wisdom and truth. This sets up a scene of judgment in the Gospels. It is the famous instance when Jesus condemns and overturns the tables of the money changers in the Temple. It is a clear moment when we see what happens when we fail to observe the Law of God. The first commandment is to worship and obey God alone. It is no surprise, then, that when God comes and dwells among us in the flesh, He judges the religious leaders and institutions the harshest. Some have wrongly thought that Jesus’ sharp words toward the religious leaders of His day indicates His dislike for religion. Jesus, in other words, judges the religious leaders for focusing on religion rather than helping others. Rather, it is precisely because the worship of God is so important that Jesus judges the religious leaders first. When Jesus cleanses the Temple, He is not condemning religion. Rather, He is condemning the ways in which people have corrupted true religion. He condemns the money changers for turning the worship of God into a financial opportunity, for how they have turned the House of God from a house of prayer into a marketplace.

Lent is all about returning ourselves to God. It is not about self-improvement. It is not about an excuse to diet or give up things that are bad four our physical bodies. It is about repentance, that is, turning away from our sins and turning toward God. The Lenten practices of fasting, abstinence, and almsgiving ought to have a theocentric rather than anthropocentric focus. If our goal is simply to lose a little weight, become more self-disciplined, or give more to charity then we haven’t yet engaged in Lent as a liturgical practice. We are like the moneychangers, using religious activities for this-worldly gain.

4TH SUNDAY OF LENT – 10 MARCH

LIVING THE LITURGY TODAY

Living the Liturgy

The first reading for Laetare Sunday is taken from 2 Chronicles. It initially describes the time when the people of God, exiled to foreign lands, gradually assimilated and became unfaithful. It begins by lamenting that “in those days, all the princes of Judah, the priests, and the people added infidelity to infidelity, practicing all the abominations of the nations and polluting the LORD’s temple which he had consecrated in Jerusalem.” Once again we are confronted in Lent with the problem of defiling the place of worship through false or feigned piety. The reading goes on to describe how God allowed the Temple to be destroyed as a result of Israel’s corruption. However, the second half of the Old Testament lesson recounts how Cyrus, the King of Persia, allowed the Israelites to return to their land to rebuild the Temple. Lent is the time when we, like these Israelites of old, shake off pagan and worldly practices that corrupt our faith and journey back to the Promised Land. We are to go rebuild the Temple of God in our hearts. The focus of our Lenten penances must be upon the restoration of the honor of God in our hearts, families, and communities.

St Benedict’s Abbey, Atchison, KS

| 9

LIVING THE LITURGY TODAY

5TH SUNDAY OF LENT – 17 MARCH “The days are coming,” declares the first reading. It comes from a very important passage in Jeremiah chapter 31. It predicts a “new covenant” that God will initiate. Lots of work has been done to try to understand this ancient convention of “covenant.” Generally, the ancient world was filled with all sorts of treaties or pacts between rival tribes and nations. But a covenant stands out as a radical form of agreement. It is not just an agreement to share resources and not go to war against each other. A covenant is a means of making family out of two formerly hostile parties. This is why blood featured so prominently in the ceremony – the imagery is of the two parties sharing blood because they have become a family. A great example of this occurs in Exodus 24 which describes the covenant between God and the Israelites under Moses. Having just been delivered from slavery in Egypt by God, the Israelites are prepared to enter into a covenant. They recognize their debt to God and they are prepared to serve Him as their Lord and God. During the ceremony, Moses had bulls slaughtered in sacrifice. Exodus describes Moses as taking “half ” the blood and splashing it on the altar, which of course represents God. He then reads the covenant terms and the Law to the Israelites, and after they pledge their fidelity, Moses splashes the other half of the blood on the people. Thus, the blood represents this great communion and kinship the people now have with God. They are family. At the time the first reading was written, the Israelites are living under foreign control. They are, effectively, the people of another nation. And this, of course, was a divine punishment because of their failure to live up to the covenant. They had engaged in idolatry, worship of false and foreign gods. What Jeremiah foresees is a time when God will make a new covenant. Importantly, it is not until centuries later when Jesus, at the Last Supper, describes the new covenant in His Blood that this prophesy is recalled. Jesus understand Himself to be the expected new Moses-like figure who would lead people out of slavery, not simply from foreign control, but from the powers of sin and death. Moreover, he establishes the

10 | March 2024

KansasMonks.org

new Passover and the new covenant. But importantly, it will be a covenant sworn with His most precious Blood, not with the blood of bulls and goats. By receiving His Blood in the Mass, the communicant enters into the new covenant. But Christ’s Blood is not sheer blessing. To receive His Blood is to pledge oneself to the new covenant, and this means the communicant is expected to live up the demands. This means, of course, following Jesus’ teachings, including His own reiteration of the teachings of the Old Testament, but also being a faithful to the teachings of His Church, over which He reigns as Head. Receiving Christ’s Blood obliges us to follow Him. To simply receive without any resolve to be faithful is to risk the same kind of infidelity that we have been reading about throughout Lent, sacrilege.

PASSION SUNDAY – 24 MARCH One of the aspects of the life of Faith that contemporary preachers and ministers don’t often acknowledge or address is the difficulty that Passion Sunday sets before us. It is the problem of how people can so eagerly hail Jesus as king one weekend and then cry out for His crucifixion the next. Modern life and culture have put significant pressure on traditional religious life. The physical hardships, scarcity, and uncertainty of former times have been largely overcome. Now our enduring challenges are existential, mental, and emotional. Despite all this luxury, convenience, and abundance, we struggle to find purpose, satisfaction, and community. Many contemporary religious voices have sought to reframe faith in terms of existential, mental, and emotional encouragement. God is there to comfort us in our struggles and mental anguish. God is the one who knows what it is like to suffer and can therefore relate to us in our trials. What is seldom addressed, however, is the experience of divine abandonment and disappointment. We don’t often hear homilies or podcasts or retreats on what is described in the Psalm for Passion Sunday, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” It seems that one of the reasons why the people of Jerusalem moved so quickly from praising Christ as

Francesco Buoneri, called Cecco del Caravaggio, 1619, The Resurrection, Oil on Canvas

their King to calling for His crucifixion is because He was not who they thought He was. They felt that He had let them down or betrayed them. They did not like the fact that when He came to Jerusalem, He came with judgment. He came calling the people to repentance and newness of life. How often does our faith stall out or fall away because Jesus is not who we think He should be? Because God does not provide for us in the way we think He should? Because God wants us to reform our lives and be perfect as He is rather than simply enhance our current experience? This Passion Sunday, as we prepare for Easter, we can consider the ways in which we have, like those who originally hailed Jesus as He rode into Jerusalem, made our Lord in our own image.

EASTER SUNDAY- 31 MARCH “If then you were raised with Christ, seek what is above.” This is the first line of the second reading. Apart from the obvious connection between something

St Benedict’s Abbey, Atchison, KS

| 11

LIVING THE LITURGY TODAY

being “raised up” and being “above,” this statement is confusing. For Christ has been raised back to life in a human body. We might think that the resurrection of Jesus is a very strong reaffirmation of this life. But St. Paul tells us that the import of Christ’s resurrection is the life of heaven. As he explains, “Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth.” The implication is that while Christ has been raised from the dead, He does not simply resume His earthly life. Rather His body has been glorified and made fit for life in heaven. We who anticipate our own participation in Christ’s resurrection one day are to live here and now not merely with the hope of escaping death but of enjoying heavenly life. This is difficult to do since the concerns and benefits of this life are everywhere in front of us. As Brother David writes in his article for this issue, such a mindset can only come about through conversion. We have to come to appreciate eternal things over temporal gain. What are these “things above?” Chiefly, of course, is God Himself, whose presence defines heavenly reality. The “things above” are the qualities of God’s life. One passage that gives us insight into this is the so-called “fruits of the Spirit” passage from another of St. Paul’s letters, the letter to the Galatians. There St. Paul tells us that the fruits of the Spirit are “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23). This life of the Spirit is genuine Easter life. In many ways it transfigures our life on earth. Our natural ambition for future prosperity is converted into diligence for eternal reward. Our natural desire to protect and preserve what is sacred is converted into a love for the liturgy and worship of God. Our natural concern for justice is transformed into a concern for the impoverished and abused. While the resurrection of Christ is an affirmation of the goodness of creation and human life, it is not a bald affirmation of this life here and now. The resurrection of Christ opens up to us the life of heaven and allows us to participate here and now in the life of the future. We should always then live out our current lives with our eyes on the life of the world to come.

upcoming events Abbot’s Table XI April, 6 Overland Park, Kansas Join Abbot James R. Albers, OSB and the Monks of St. Benedict’s Abbey on April 6, 2024 for the eleventh Abbot’s Table. St. Benedict’s Abbey will be hosting events the event in Overland Park, Kansas City, with satellite events in Atchison, Denver, Dallas, and St. Louis. To learn more, scan the Qr code.

Kansas Monks EDITORIAL TEAM

With satellite events in Atchison, Denver, Dallas, and St. Louis

DONATE to support the ministry of St. Benedict’s Abbey

Editor-in-Chief - Abbot James Albers, O.S.B. Managing Editor - Dr. James R. A. Merrick Art Director - Philip J. Smaldone

Advisor - Fr. Matthew Habiger, O.S.B. Advisor - Seth Galemore

Advisor - Garrick Lambert

www.kansasmonks.org/donate

Advisor - Josh Harden Advisor - Dwight Stephenson