Listening is a precious gift we can receive or give to others, something transformative for our world. Watch Father Simon’s latest reflection here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnfcX3KufCo
Listening is a precious gift we can receive or give to others, something transformative for our world. Watch Father Simon’s latest reflection here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnfcX3KufCo
Reading a book for Lent is a monastic practice laid down by Saint Benedict. Buy a book and receive a FREE copy of the Rule of Saint Benedict in our online store here: www.bit.ly/3b5vwsd 
We heard two startling and mysterious stories this morning… Two fathers… Two sons whom they loved… Two mountains… Two pledges of future glory. Abraham and the Almighty; Isaac and the Lord Jesus; Mount Moriah and Mount Tabor; the promise that the agèd and decrepit Abraham would have offspring ‘as numerous as the stars of heaven’; and the promise that the Son of Man would rise from the dead.
It is easy then to see why someone decided that these two Scripture passages were a good fit to be read at Mass on the same day. But while the parallels are notable, the differences are even more striking. The Transfiguration of the Lord is a glorious and awe-inspiring moment. I can’t even begin to imagine what it must have been like for Peter and James and John to see their friend and master’s outward appearance change to such an extent that he shone with divine glory and ‘his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them’. No wonder Peter lost the run of himself and began talking about building tents. He was excited.
But the other story we heard is much less luminous and exhilarating. It is downright disturbing. Why would God test someone so cruelly as to tell him to sacrifice his own son? One way of getting our heads around the story of Abraham and Isaac is to note the fact that the famous ‘sacrifice of Abraham, our father in faith’, that we mention in one of the Eucharistic Prayers, was a sacrifice without a victim. God did not demand blood. God does not demand blood….. The God of Abraham is no angry monster who needs to be placated with bloody sacrifices. As we say in the psalm that is most associated with this season of Lent, Psalm 50: ‘In sacrifice you take no delight, burnt offering from me you would refuse, my sacrifice, a contrite spirit, a humbled, contrite heart you will not spurn.’ And in the book of Hosea, the Lord announces: ‘I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt-offerings.’ That is our call at all times, but especially during Lent – to turn to the Lord God, not with grand gestures, but in simple humility and honesty, knowing our need for him and for his mercy, with hearts that desire to love him more deeply.
As we journey towards Easter, and our annual celebration in mystery of the Death and Resurrection of our Saviour, we can rejoice that as with Abraham and Isaac, God did not demand that humanity offer up a victim in order to be reconciled with him. For God offered himself up to save us. ‘In his willingness to take on the sin – to take on the prejudice and derision and animosity ordinarily heaped upon the outcasts and powerless – Jesus breaks the cycle of violence, for he chooses to pass it on to no one.’ [Ed Foley OFM Cap] In this extraordinary, burning, infinite love, the Law and the Prophets, represented on the mountain by Moses and Elijah, find their fulfilment.
The Love that dances at the heart of things
Shone out upon us from a human face
And to that light the light in us leaped up,
We felt it quicken somewhere deep within,
A sudden blaze of long-extinguished hope
Trembled and tingled through the tender skin. [Malcolm Guite]
The light of the Transfiguration is love – a love that burns with such intensity that humanity’s sin is taken away and we are reconciled with God. It is a love that prefigured the love poured out on the hill of Calvary.
The extraordinary experience of his Transfiguration occurred as Jesus and his disciples were journeying towards Jerusalem. Six days earlier, we read in Mark’s Gospel, he spoke to his disciples about the suffering, death and resurrection that was to come. Such a prospect was difficult for them to take in. And so he graced them with this extraordinary moment of illumination – in all senses of the word – in order, St Leo teaches us, ‘to prevent their faith being disturbed by the humiliation of his voluntary Passion by revealing to them the excellence of his hidden dignity’.
Moments like the Transfiguration, where the veil is drawn back and we experience insight and exhilaration are wonderful, and as they did for the apostles, can strengthen us for the future. Nothing will ever ‘eclipse that glimpse of how things really are’. [Malcolm Guite] But they are just that – moments and glimpses. And of course, not all so-called mountain-top experiences are enjoyable. ‘Moses may have spoken with God “face to face” on Mount Sinai, but his life mournfully ended on Mount Nebo, where he saw the land whose flowing milk and honey he would never taste. Elijah may have been triumphant on Mount Carmel, but soon afterward he was found scared and dejected on Mount Horeb, where God was not in the strong wind, the earthquake or the fire. …Jesus radiated in holy splendour on the Mount of Transfiguration, but he died naked and scorned on Calvary’s hill’. [Andrew Byers] Nevertheless, that moment of radiance and holy splendour on Tabor was precious. May we all be blessed with such moments during our lives, not to be smug or puffed up with pride, but so that we can perceive reality.
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it. I realize now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you. [R.S Thomas]
Fr Martin Browne OSB
Our second Lenten talk on the theme of Benedictine Listening with Fr. Columba McCann OSB is now available to watch again here: https://youtu.be/i_w2yk9cpBY
(🎙️ Audio-only: https://soundcloud.com/glenstalabbey/this-is-my-beloved-son-listen)
Saint Benedict wanted a fullness of life not provided by the culture of his day. Learn more about his Rule in this episode of the Mindful Monk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u90XcvPAhlY&t=244s
The time is fulfilled, Jesus says, and the kingdom of God is close at hand. The time is fulfilled! The universe has been waiting for this moment. Slowly evolving over billions of years. Instinctive life crawling out of the slime, human life over thousands years, then Noah, Abraham and Sarah, later Moses, king David, the prophets… and now finally, the moment has come, the definitive breakthrough of the divine presence into the world. Jesus is standing there saying: Now is the time. All that the world has longed for, has striven for, has dreamt of, is at our fingertips. The kingdom of God!
But there may be a problem. It’s hard to believe. We see corruption in every walk of life, we see crime, injustice, the break-up of families; even the Church seems to be just as broken as everything else; the pandemic. Where is the kingdom of God in all of that? It’s as if Jesus is describing the colour blue to people who are blind, or the sound of a trumpet to people who are deaf. It’s as if Jesus has another wavelength that our minds don’t seem able to tune into most of the time.
That’s why his next word is ‘repent’. The word repent may conjure up some form of grovelling and self-laceration, but that’s not what it means. What it really means is a change in our mind. Something has to change in how we perceive. We are looking for happiness, for peace, for joy, but we are somehow programmed to look for it in the wrong place, and when we don’t find it, we say, ‘there is no kingdom of God’ because God is not playing along with our illusions. Instead Jesus is telling us we need a fresh mind!
Love is standing at our door, but we don’t see it! Providence is there to mind us in every situation, but instead we fret every time we lose something which we think holds our happiness. We only half believe that God looks after us the way he looks after the birds of the air and the flowers of the field. Jesus says: get a new mind and start believing! He had the same difficulty with his inner circle of disciples; and he would have to say, ‘Can’t you see? Don’t you perceive?’ ‘Why are you slow to believe’ We are told that in his home town Jesus couldn’t work many wonders because they simply didn’t believe him. He was amazed at their lack of belief, which rendered him powerless. At the shallow end of a swimming pool a young child is learning how to paddle, and her father is holding her completely safe, but she splutters and thrashes as if she’s drowning. That’s us, some of the time!
One commentator has said that we are like people at the movies. If the film is really powerful, we forget that it’s only images on a screen, and sound from a loudspeaker. We lose sight of the human reality of ourselves and of people around us in the seats. We know at some level that it’s only a film but we get totally sucked into the drama which is, ultimately, imaginary. I suppose that, when we look out at the world, so often we project onto our mental screens lots of things that simply aren’t there, and we don’t notice what is actually there. We don’t notice that God is like a friend sitting there beside us all along, wanting to share his popcorn -the wedding banquet of the Lamb!.
So maybe Lent is a time for some spiritual therapy for our minds: get a new mind; believe and trust. How might Lent happen for us? Look at what happened for Jesus. We are told that Jesus was literally driven into the desert by the Holy Spirit. There is a loving energy there ready to get to work the minute we open the door even a crack. Maybe we don’t believe much, but even the little we believe is enough for the Spirit to start. Even if our belief is as small as a mustard seed, Jesus says that’s enough. Lent is mostly about what the Spirit will do, not so much about our special projects for self-improvement.
Jesus was with the wild beasts. The desert was not a safe place. Wild beasts can devour you. But the prophets had predicted a time when the violence in nature would come to and end, when you would be as safe with a snake and a lion as you would be with a kitten. Jesus was with the wild beasts but, seemingly, he was safe.
We have our own wild beasts, and the Holy Spirit puts us among them. Maybe lockdown is part of this. It’s a very real desert for many people. When we get into the cinema of our mind with the projector already turned on, we look around our family, our home, our workplace and we see what we think will bring us happiness and we also project what we think will be the cause of our unhappiness. If we find ourselves getting angry or upset it may be because we are looking for happiness in the wrong place. Jesus was put into a testing situation but was totally safe. This Lent maybe we will finally notice that, underneath us, are the everlasting arms of God. Now that would be a new mind. That would be the kingdom of God.
Even more than that: the angels looked after Jesus. And it happens elsewhere in the gospels too.
I think we can take it for granted that, if this Lent puts us among the wild beasts of our fears, our weaknesses, our inability to change for the better, or if our plans get battered, somewhere along the way we will also discover that God himself sends help, something much stronger and much deeper than anything we could muster up ourselves. If Jesus got help, we, in our weakness, are going to get far more. With Christ the time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is close, all around. Get a new mind, and believe the good news!
Fr Columba McCann OSB
Our first Lenten talk on the theme of Conversion and New Life with Fr. Luke Macnamara OSB is now available to watch again: https://youtu.be/fy6EgXUq6Go
Put aside some time and begin your Lenten journey in prayer with these oak Stations of the Cross carved by the late Brother Benedict Tutty OSB 🙏🏼✝️ The carvings were installed in the Church of the Resurrection in Belfast but their whereabouts are now unknown after the closure of this church ⛪🕯️ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUcyVriwx9k
We must carefully prepare for the night and for our sleep. Father Simon talks about the Biblical concept of night and day and shares his tips for a good night’s sleep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0R6UEnB6gs
In 1882 the Australian cricket team had its very first Test win on English soil at the Oval. The Sporting Times newspaper, in a satirical piece written as an obituary, commented that English cricket had died, “the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia”. Almost immediately people began to speak of regaining the ashes; the ashes of defeat. The following year, after England won two of the three Tests on their tour of Australia, a small urn containing the ashes of a cricket ball was presented to the England team and so what we now know as ‘the Ashes’ was born. That urn remains in the museum at Lords, while a Waterford Crystal representation of the Ashes urn (called the Ashes Trophy) is presented to the winners of each Test series.
The ashes we receive today could not be more different. Our ashes are not the ashes of defeat; they are the ashes of victory. The ashes with which we are signed, come from the burning of palm branches from Palm Sunday of last year. These branches were used to welcome Christ the Saviour into the Holy City of Jerusalem before his passion, death and resurrection. These are our ashes, the ashes of victory.
These same ashes are a wakeup call for the soul. They remind us that those things on which we have come to depend in life, possessions, wealth, security and so on, all eventually end in ashes. No matter how hard we work, we take nothing with us when we die. All of it will fade like dust in the wind.
During this Holy Season of Lent, we try to free ourselves from the illusion of chasing after this dust. We do so by prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Prayer frees us from the mundane, almsgiving places the focus on others and fasting invites us to look inside our own hearts. These treasures are the treasures that last. They are fire, not ashes!
When the heart is attached to what truly endures we rediscover ourselves and are set free, we also discover God and are fulfilled. We may be no more than a speck of dust in the enormity of the universe, but we are dust that is loved by God. The Lord gathered that dust in his hands at the dawn of creation and breathed life into it. This is not the dust of failure; this is the dust of life. We are the dust of the earth into which God has poured his love and his dreams.
Lent is not a time for long rambling discourses. Lent is a time to realise that the ashes of my being are loved by God and with his help I can change my life for the better. As these ashes are imposed on our heads today, let the fire of love be kindled in our hearts. Be reconciled to God, regain your ashes and let them become what they are, the ashes of victory.
Abbot Brendan Coffey OSB