The Catholic Anglican

Homily offered by Father Matthew C. Dallman, Obl.S.B., for the Parish of Tazewell County on the Sunday after the Ascension, 2021. We are taught today by Saint John the Evangelist (also known Saint John the Theologian) that God hath given us eternal life. And, he adds, this life is in His Son. This is to what Saint Paul is referring when he spoke of seeing God face to face. This is also what was described in the three synoptic Gospel accounts (Matthew, Mark, Luke) in the Transfiguration of Jesus: the three disciples on the mountain with Jesus saw Him transfigured, which is a heavenly vision of His true reality and identity (both fully man, and fully God; or put another way, completely within our conditions of time and space, and at the same time completely beyond and outside time and space conditions). Jesus in Saint John's gospel account so often spoke of Himself using the phrase “I am”—I am the vine; I am the good shepherd; I am way, the truth and the life; I am the bread of life, and so on; in Scripture God also is recorded to have spoken this way, such as when Moses learned that God's name is “I am whom I am.” The gift of eternal life through Christ, the goal of which is to behold God face to face, transfigured along with Him, our own being within God's transfigured self: the vision of God is a participation in His I Am-ness, a participation that begins really and actually in this life through the Sacraments liturgically celebrated, and continues into the next, whereby we are invited to continually grow in God's love and service. Each eucharist we celebrate is like another rung up the ladder to our goal, the divine reality in community with the triune God. Each Eucharist we receive allows us to become what we receive more and more, that we say with Saint Paul, “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live.” “Yet,” he adds, “not I, but Christ liveth in me.” This is the mystery that the Upper Room church of 120 souls began to live into as they prayed with one accord in the sacred space Jesus appointed them to after His glorious Ascension. We are told that they prayed together with one accord—meaning, with one heart, with one central purpose, with one liturgy—and we are told that they were full of joy, indeed full of grace, for they had all taken on the heart of Mary, and begun to make her heart their heart, her heart becoming the heart of the Church: for Our Lady, Blessed Mary was with the Church in the Upper Room. And as the other 119 began to share together with Mary in the joyful recognition that Jesus is their light, Jesus is their salvation, and that the I Am-ness of Jesus is with them in the Upper Room, with them wherever two or three are gathered, with them in their heart whenever they call upon His most holy Name for mercy, with them in Holy Communion, with them through Scripture and the preaching of their brother and sister apostles (preeminently in the preaching of the Twelve)—as they began to share together in the joyful knowledge that Jesus is the Way, is the Truth, is the Life, every word of Mary (the bearer of God, or in Greek: the Theotokos) that she shared about her Son, especially the profoundly mysterious moments early in the life (the Annunciation, her Visitation with Elizabeth, the Nativity, the Presentation, and the losing and then finding of Jesus in Temple) had transfiguring power—Christ speaking through Mary—because the disciples in the Upper Room had experienced His blessed Passion and precious Death, His mighty Resurrection and glorious Ascension. The key for them to eternal life is the key for us: having in daily remembrance of the Paschal Mystery of Christ, and ordering our lives—ordering our every day—around Jesus and His most holy Name, for this is how the Church renders unto Jesus most hearty thanks for the innumerably benefits procured unto us by Him. This unfathomable recognition, indeed the true Mystery of Christ, is summarized by Our Lord's words in our Gospel account today: “For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.” For us, Christ showed Himself holy, that we might become holy through Him. All of what He revealed to the world during his three or four decades of human life was, and is, for our sakes—that we might be transformed, our hearts illumined and on fire, with true knowledge of Christ's presence everywhere and in all places that, as Saint Paul taught the Church in Thessalonica, we may rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing, and in every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning us.

With the major exception of none other than Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, Who is the Eternal Word of God, and Whose Name—Jesus—is the Name above all other names, can there be any doubt that the most significant words ever spoken by a human being in the history of human existence have come from the utterance of Our Lady, Blessed Mary Ever-Virgin? Most blessed Mary is the Queen of Heaven, the Mother of the Church, and Our Lady of the Upper Room—her words, although some may say we have so few of them recorded by the Evangelists, drip with greatness, with sanctity, with humility, with wisdom. She herself who is the beginning in time of Our Lord's works, was brought forth before mountains were settled, before the hills were made, even when Christ prepared the heavens, she was there—blessed Mary, Our Lady, is the soul of every Christian. Mary is the soul of every Christian because her greatness consists in her absolute selfless devotion to Jesus her Son and Lord. To her cousin Saint Elizabeth at the Visitation, after her greeting (which made John Baptist in utero leap for joy, along with the heart of his mother, Elizabeth), Mary sang: “My soul doth magnify the Lord.” She was wholly devoted to the Lord. To the place of poverty she willingly went at Our Lord's Nativity; to the place of shame she willingly went at our Lord's Crucifixion and death; and to the place of promise in the Upper Room she willing went as one of the 120 disciples in the first Christian parish for the Coming of the Holy Spirit of her Son and Lord. Mary is the soul of every Christian because unto a seemingly impossible vocation, she said “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word.” Facing the incomprehensible, she said Yes, according to thy will; facing the utterly paradoxical, she said Yes, according to thy will; facing the most tremendous mystery (the mystery of reality Himself), she said, “Be it unto me according to thy word.” To the opportunity to be given to the Temple at age three, as her parents Anna and Joachim had promised God, she danced (which is a Yes if there ever was a Yes); to the prospect of leaving the Temple (in which she grew up into her teenage years) into marriage to Joseph the carpenter, she said “Yes.” As she heard announced to her by Simeon at Our Lord's Presentation “And a sword shall pierce through your own soul also,” in wonderment and courage, she said “Yes.” And to the final words of her Son on the Cross, Jesus telling her to behold her Son—words she heard from her Son, words now about her Son in a radically new way—she said “Be it unto me according to thy word,” and behold in the beloved disciple John not a resemblance to her Son, not a mere likeness to her Son, not a kinship to her Son: indeed, in John, Mary behold Jesus, her Son. Should it surprise us at all that Mary is the soul of every Christian when within her heart from the first was her Son's Name; within her heart from the first was the Name Jesus, the Name above all names, the Name which is a fortified tower to which the righteous run and are safe; the Name we will walk in for ever and ever; the Name which saves everyone who calls on it? Just as among the first things known to Blessed Joseph about Mary's Son was His Name, so was it for Mary: the Angel Gabriel giving both Joseph and Mary not merely knowledge of the Son of God, but the true knowledge of Him which is His Name. Can we doubt that Mary would say His most Holy Name all the days following her most holy Annunciation? Can we doubt that each time she said His holy Name Jesus, her heart pondered the Mystery of all Mysteries, and was filled with the awe from which comes true wisdom? Can we doubt the joy she shared with Blessed Joseph, her most chaste spouse, in the Name of their Son—a joy in His Name they knew was not only theirs, but the whole of creation? Brothers and sisters, let us be strengthened by the Name of Jesus like Mary and Joseph; let us be emboldened by the Name of Jesus like Mary and Joseph; and let us be obedient and humble to the Name of Jesus, like Mary and Joseph—that with them, we might learn to ponder and watch and keep long silences, thinking of the deep, tender things of Jesus.

Homily offered by Father Matthew C. Dallman, Obl.S.B., for the Parish of Tazewell County on Ash Wednesday, 2020. The story of Jonah is one we all know so well that thinking of it as food for our Lenten journey might be difficult. The story begins by telling us that “the word of the Lord came to Jonah the son of Amit′tai, saying, ‘Arise, go to Nin′eveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness has come up before me.'” But instead of the obedience of Our Lady, Blessed Mary, who despite having questions about how to cooperate with God, nonetheless answered God, “Let it be unto me according to Thy Word,” Jonah fled. He fled not to Christ, as we are always to do when faced with temptation. Rather, Jonah fled not to, but from, the Lord. Confronted by the Light of God's guidance, by His Word as a lantern under our feet, and a light unto our paths, Jonah chose instead to turn to his shadows and dwell in them. He chose to pretend his conscience did not hear God's call. He pretended to forget God's law. Jonah fled by boat, and while on the boat, the great wind of the demons made for a mighty tempest on the sea. His conscience began to gnaw at him, and he offered himself up, to be thrown off the boat. Better to become suicidal than to simply say yes to God, Jonah evidently concluded. God saw all this, for His eyes are always upon those who fear Him—and, deep down, Jonah did fear the Lord, deep down, Jonah was in awe of God's majesty and power, despite his attempts at avoidance—and taking control of the great fish, God's working of love and protection kept Jonah in the belly of the great fish three days and three nights. And during these three days and three night, Jonah prayed to God—when left to his own devices and free-will, Jonah filled with pride and chose his own will not God's will; but put into a three-day, three-night time-out by God, Jonah remembered that he was a creature, and God creator of all. His prayer while in the belly of the whale deserves to be heard this day: “I called to the Lord, out of my distress, and he answered me; out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and thou didst hear my voice. For thou didst cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood was round about me; all thy waves and thy billows passed over me. Then I said, ‘I am cast out from thy presence; how shall I again look upon thy holy temple?' The waters closed in over me, the deep was round about me; weeds were wrapped about my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me for ever; yet thou didst bring up my life from the Pit, O Lord my God. When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord; and my prayer came to thee, into thy holy temple. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their true loyalty. But I with the voice of thanksgiving will sacrifice to thee; what I have vowed I will pay. Deliverance belongs to the Lord!” Indeed, deliverance does belong to the Lord. And this refrain is taken up into the third Psalm, which reads, “Deliverance belongs to the Lord, thy blessing be upon thy people!” And after this glorious prayer by Jonah, upon being vomited out of the fish upon the dry land—and vomiting is indeed a rich metaphor for what it means to purge our sinful ways—Jonah again heard the word of the Lord; and this time, he began to imitate Our Lady's “Let it be.” He arose and went to Ninevah, according to the Word of the Lord. And in the city, he cried, “Yet forty days, and Ninevah shall be overthrown!” And in a great surprise to Jonah, the people of Ninevah believed him, and began to repent of their sinful ways. And because they were honest about themselves—because they were reality-based, which is another word for “humility”—God did not destroy the city, but continued to keep it afloat in the ocean of His grace. And yet, instead of rejoicing, Jonah was exceedingly displeased, and he was angry. His prayer to God takes a remarkable turn: “I knew that Thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and repentest of evil.” But then, “Therefore now, O Lord, take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” Again, suicidal! And to prove his petulance, out of the city he went and sat under a plant God made for him out of His love to provide shade. Then to prove again His power, the plant withered the next day from a God-appointed worm. Again in anger Jonah asked for suicide. Brothers and sisters, it is fair to say that Jonah was a hot mess. He knew God's will, He knew God's love, He knew God's power, and was constantly fighting it, then embracing it in odd ways, and the fighting, embracing, back and forth. Now we might find the story of Jonah comical as to be a farce. And yet, brothers and sisters, how far away from Jonah are we really, in our lives? Are not we closer to Jonah than we might care to admit? Saint Paul wrote these words to the Romans: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Is this not us? Are not we, too, a hot mess? The appropriate response to recognizing this difficult truth, revealed to us by God's grace through the shining light of His Son Jesus on the Cross, is the response of the tax collector, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” The Church turned the words of the tax collector in a prayer that is now ancient, called the “Jesus Prayer”: Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. There is nothing more that needs to be said this Lent than that; no need to make it more complicated or qualified than those simple words. For if we make it more complicated and qualified, our prayer is not the prayer of the tax collector, but of the Pharisee. Let us this Lent, held up by God's love in the ocean of His grace, not even lift up our eyes to heaven, but beat our breast, and say, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

Homily offered by Father Matthew C. Dallman, Obl.S.B., for the Parish of Tazewell County on the Feast of All Saints, 2019. If the Saints were not central to the Christian faith, and if active and living communion with them not obligatory upon all Christians, then we would not, in the baptismal creed of the Church called the “Apostles' Creed,” proclaim a belief in the Communion of the Saints. But the fact of the matter is that we do proclaim our belief in the Communion of the Saints at our baptism. And the Church professes her belief in the Communion of the Saints every morning in Matins and every evening in Evensong. Any feast day that shows up in the creeds of the Church, or can be found by thinking about the creeds, is by definition a major feast. In the creeds, for example, we can easily find Christmas, Holy Week and Easter, Ascension, Christ the King, Pentecost—and in the Apostles' Creed we find All Saints. This should not be surprising, because it was through a communion of Saints that the Church of Jesus Christ was born. One hundred and twenty Saints were gathered in the Upper Room, told to go there by Jesus Christ to await the promise of the Father, the Coming of the Holy Ghost. This was the first Church. Gathered in the Upper Room for nine days were Blessed Mary, whom the Church quickly saw as Mother of the Church, along with other holy women, Mary Magdalene, her sister Martha, Mary the wife of Cleopas, perhaps Peter's mother-in-law; along of course with the Eleven men singled out by Jesus for a particular task, soon joined by Matthias taking over for Judas. It was from and through this communion of Saints, this gathering of Saints, this fellowship of Saints—all of whom were apostles because “apostle” means someone sent and each Saint in the Upper Room was sent there by Christ to wait for the Holy Ghost, and in a more general sense sent by Christ to proclaim to the nations the Truth that can only be found in Him; it was through this all-star communion of Saints: their daily prayer, their breaking of bread, and their fellowship and teaching, that the Church came to be by God's action through them. God acts through His Saints. God reveals Himself through His Saints. God brings about that which is new through His Saints. God transforms the world through His Saints. How does this happen? It happens because the Saints are those people who, in the words of Saint Paul, have the eyes of their hearts enlightened by God. “The eyes of their hearts enlightened”—Paul teaches—so that persons who receive such grace know what is the hope to which God has called us, according to His great might which He accomplished in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and made Him sit at His Right Hand in the heavenly places. It starts with the enlightenment of the eyes of the heart. God accomplishes His mission through those whose heart has enlightened eyes. Not eyes that do not see God in the world, but rather eyes that see God in the world through all things good, beautiful, and true. Not eyes that are impatient with the world, but eyes of patience and humility that look for Him even when He might be hard to find. Not eyes that do nothing but judge others for their sins and inadequacies, but eyes that see Jesus in the face of every person they meet. Not eyes of suspicious, but eyes of love—indeed, enlightened eyes of the heart means the eyes of Jesus, the eyes of His sacred humanity. Eyes of compassion and mercy, eyes that forgive—eyes through which grace in its fullness can be found, because such eyes of the heart is Christ in us. Brothers and sisters, all of this is biblical Christianity, and this is why churches such as ours who seek to participate in historic, sacramental Christianity usually take a Saint as a patron of the parish—in our case, Saint Paul, and in our sister congregation, all the Saints. And, likewise, this is why God has led our Parish to see Saint Teresa of Calcutta as our patron of our Mission in Tazewell County. She is a powerful example for us of how to embody the Gospel as we encounter others in our day to day lives. “We are to be Christ to the world, and to every person we meet,” she teaches us. “The greatest disease in the West today is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for,” she teaches us. “Help one person at a time and always start with the person nearest you,” she teaches us. That teaching is the Gospel. Through that teaching, Christ acts. Through that teaching by this Saint, God reveals Himself. Through that teaching God brings about that which is new. And through that teaching by this Saint, who in her words captures what's fundamental about Christ's teaching to His Church, through that teaching God transforms the world. Let us be led, brothers and sisters, by this teaching—led in our mission in Tazewell County. Icon by the hand of Aidan Hart.

Father Matthew C. Dallman, Obl.S.B. preaching on the Tenth Sunday after Trinity for the Parish of Tazewell County. The homily focuses on the meaning of "Strive to enter by the narrow door" (Lk 13. 24) and its significance for discipleship. As Our Lord Jesus is on the way to Jerusalem, wherever He goes He is teaching. The true Faith has to be learned, and we learn the Faith by knowing Jesus—knowing His words, knowing His actions, knowing how He reacted to situations, knowing how He overcame the challenges the world put before Him. And again in the Scriptures we see the importance of asking questions about the Faith. For some one said to Him, “Lord will those who are saved be few?” And so irrespective of the content of the question, let us see that Saint Luke and the other three Evangelists regularly demonstrate that not only is it permissible to ask questions of the Faith, but it is something the People of God did from the beginning. And what's more, ask them directly to Jesus in prayer. Talk to our Lord, let us bring Him our hard questions, our secret confusions. Mystery is woven into the Christian reality, and so if Christians are not asking questions, we can be rightly alarmed that the true Faith is not coming across. “Lord will those who are saved be few?” was the question. Another translation, more literal to the Greek, is “Lord, are those who are being saved few in number?” We look around our towns and around the United States, and that is a question that seems oddly topical to ask. Churches are emptier than they once were, in the not too distant past. The public sphere often seems not only absent of Christianity, but can be actively antagonistic towards our religion, antagonistic towards public displays of loving Jesus. We rightly proclaim along with David, “The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our stronghold” because God, and not society, is our rock, our refuge and strength. But it very much seems that those who are being saved are few in number. So what are we to do about this? Let us hear Our Lord's answer to the question posed to Him. Our Savior says, “Strive to enter by the narrow door.” What is the narrow door but prayer and sorrow for our sins? Our Lord always opens the door who seek Him having thrown themselves at His feet, and who present themselves wholly to Him in body and soul as a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice—like Saint Mary Magdalene who gave her most valuable treasure freely to Jesus and did so, even wiping the feet of Jesus with her tears. And see antagonistic public reaction to love of Jesus is nothing new: “Why was the ointment thus wasted?” was the reproach of certain disciples towards the public display of love for Jesus offered by Mary Magdalene. But her self-offering was prayer in action, and the narrow door is always opened to the pure in heart, those constant in religion, unceasing in prayer. And we must be ever reminded that antagonism towards public displays of love for Jesus is nothing new. It happened from the beginning, in the earliest days of the Church; it happened even during the life of Jesus. That it is happening today therefore is not an aberration when the whole scope of the history is considered; rather it is the norm—while there are certain periods of peace between the Church and society, far more in number are periods where the Church is persecuted, derided, mocked and must live and breath more in the shadows and periphery of society—living and breathing through prayer and sorrow for sins; living and breathing through the knowledge that Jesus Christ offered Himself on the Cross and died for the sins of the whole world; living and breathing in the confidence that the Lord of hosts (the Lord of angels, that is) is with us. The narrow door, brothers and sisters, is this: “Be still, then, and know that I am God.”

Father Matthew C. Dallman, Obl.S.B. preaching on the Feast of Saint Mary the Virgin and Mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ (Assumption/Dormition) for the Parish of Tazewell County. “Most highly favored, Lady,” is how we shared in the praise of Mary at the beginning of Mass. We did so, in the words of the hymn, as "Christian folk through the world will ever say." These words refer to the angelic greeting of the archangel Gabriel to Mary, “Hail, Mary, full of grace.” Biblical experts have struggled for centuries as to how to properly translate the original Greek of the angelic greeting in a way that captures the its fullness and nuance. And so perhaps it is necessary to underscore this point: this greeting is far more than a “hey, how's your golf game, Mary?” or “Mary, wonderful quiche last week!” These are words from God delivered by an angel, because that is what angels are: messengers of the heavenly word of Our Lord. And because it is in this moment of the Annunciation that we first encounter Mary, how she is described at the first is how to properly understand the entirely of her place in the economy of grace, her place in God's plan of salvation. The word for “Hail” in Greek is “chaire.” This word directly means “rejoice,” and as biblical scholars point out, it is a gesture of greeting that would have been highly unbecoming within Jewish rabbical culture addressed to anordinarwoman. It is a very reverent and courteous greeting as a queen would receive, and in custom it corresponds as well to the Hebrew greeting of shalom, which means peace. A fuller sense of “Hail” would be something like, “Be at peace my queen!” Andthis is fitting because there is no one else in the Bible who is addressed in the same way as Mary is addressed: never a man, and never a woman save one: Mary. This in itself confers a theological dignity upon Mary, and by extension all women, simply as human persons, independent of the roles of wife or mother. It is also worth noting that the word “chaire” is the root of the English words chair and throne, and cathedral, itself based on the word “cathedra” which means throne upon which the bishop sits. Already we have a sense of the high honor and dignity of the angelic greeting, and a sense of who Mary is: someone the highest angels deeply respect. After this, Gabriel addresses Mary as “kecharitomene,” or “full of grace.” I say addresses because biblical scholars point out that the way Gabriel speaks is as one would say a person's name. In other words, it is not a quality of Mary that Gabriel utters—a quality or attribute such as beautiful, friendly, or intelligent. The Church has certainly seen Mary in all those ways, but Gabriel does something different in his greeting: he names her. Mary is “she who is the fullness of grace.” Mary is “she who is completely, perfectly, enduringly and has always been endowed with grace.” The word is a past perfect participle, which indicates that Mary has not been transformed by the angelic greeting and presence from lesser grace to full grace. Rather, it indicates Mary has always been the fullness of grace, and was created in that way by God. Completely, perfectly, enduringly endowed with grace is Mary's identity, and she has never been less than that, even in her mother's womb, even her conception. I want to stress this is simply the meaning of the biblical words “chaire kecharitomene,”—“Hail, full of grace,” or in the longer, clumsier rendering, “Be at peace, my queen, you who are completely, perfectly, and enduringly endowed with grace.” It is clumsier, but richer and accurate, and therefore necessary to understand Mary in the biblical sense. Almost. There remains one word in the English translation to unpack, and that is the word, “grace” which in Greek is charis, and within both “kecharitomene” in the angelic greeting, as well as the word “eucharist.” The beginning of the definition of “grace” is that it is God's favor towards us, and that is part of the reason our hymn addresses Mary as “most highly favored lady.” But “God's favor” is only the beginning. To fill it out we recognize that God's favor is always His gift. And so Mary is the fullness of God's favor, the fullness of God's gift. And yet we know that God's gift is Himself offered on the Cross and that His gift of Himself on the Cross passes into the Sacred Humanity of the sacramental life which we receive through the Seven Sacraments. And we also know that God's gift of Himself is love, for His nature is love; and His gift is true peace, the heavenly peace which passes all understanding made aware to the apostles in the Upper Room on the first Easter Sunday evening and through them to us. Ultimately, grace is the source of Christian life and is participation in the divine life. Grace is the heavenly reality, and Mary is full of grace, so she is full of the heavenly reality, and has been from her conception: the heavenly reality of grace, of peace, of love, of eucharist. This is why Christians can praise Mary without reservation—because of her name as seen in the biblical account by Saint Luke. Anglicans traditionally and rightly have placed a high value on tracing all doctrines of the Faith to the Bible. Yet we can rest assured that not only a mere devotion to Mary, but in fact a high devotion to her, is biblically based, even from the first words spoken to her we know of: the fullness of heavenly reality of grace, of peace, of love, of eucharist is who she is, entirely by the initiative of God, who made this wonderful creature gloriously, mysteriously, and joyfully. Her whole life was lived to be an example to others of how to love God, how to love her Son, Jesus and follow He Who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life—that her way of being would be able to be imitated by others through humility, through obedience which is listening with an open heart, and after understanding arises, to say Yes to God. Because when we say Yes to God, we proclaim with Mary the greatness of the Lord. Holy Mary, Mother of God. Pray for us. Icon of the hand of Monica Thornton

Father Matthew C. Dallman, Obl.S.B. preaching on Fourth Sunday after Trinity (Proper 10) at Saint Paul's Church in Pekin, Illinois in the Parish of Tazewell County. His prepared text: As I have said many times before, the Christian life is a life on mission. Our life as Christians is a mission of love. Now from the practical perspective, what is meant by "mission of love" is seen through five dimensions of total mission: firstly through the daily Liturgy of the Church, then through catechesis (faith formation), and then pastoral care of our parishioners, as well as pastoral care through our outreach, and finally with the evangelizing harmony of presence we find with and within the wider locality (for us, Tazewell County). And these five dimensions of mission are but a continuance and extension of the sacred life and sacred humanity of Jesus of Nazareth. He came to save the world by teaching the right way to love—that was His mission. And through the Cross, He emptied Himself of His Sacred Humanity, giving it all us to—that we would receive the gift of His Sacred Humanity, that through receiving, embracing, and embodying His Sacred Humanity, we learn to love the creatures of the world as He loved them: so much so that our loving of the creatures of the world is Jesus loving through us. This is one significance of Jesus first appearing to Saint Mary Magdalene as a gardener—that as we grow in the life of the spirit, our disposition toward the world is that of a gardener: to be loving, watchful stewards of God's holy Spirit growing in the world, growing in the hearts of people. The message of Moses to the people of Israel is that despite the appearances that loving God is impossible, and something we cannot do, in fact we can do this. We can obey the voice of the Lord our God; we can keep His commandments at statutes. We now know how: through Jesus, Who has made the Kingdom of God known to the world, and for those called, He has opened up His Sacred Humanity for us to enter in and embody, our lives transformed into His. As Christians, we need not concern ourselves with being successful, but rather, as Saint Teresa of Calcutta reminds us, with being faithful. We need not worry about accomplishing some outrageous feat, such as climbing up into heaven ourselves or going beyond the sea and coming back. These are the stuff of heroism as might be depicted in science fiction films or comic books. Our heroism is first and foremost a domestic heroism, an everyday heroism of turning to God every day with all our heart and our soul, to obey the voice of the Lord our God. The lawyer asked the pertinent question: “And who is my neighbor?” This is the question for us to ask, as well. And the reason to ask it is because we have been seeking to understand how God is present in our lives. And it is true that He is present through all that is good and true and beautiful in the world; furthermore it is true that He is present in our peak, mountaintop moments as well as our low, valley moments. He is present through the generosity people show to one another. Yet the question, “Who is my neighbor?” invites perhaps the most adventurous way to discover God's presence in the world: adventurous, and difficult. Before it means anything else, “Loving our neighbor” means that God is as present in our neighbor as it is present in a Saint (and is likewise as present in our great enemies as He is in a Saint). This is the deepest interpretation of the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Yes, we are to not ignore people suffering; we are not to ignore those who need help; we are not to ignore those who are lonely and feel abandoned. But why? It is because in the suffering, in those that need help, in those lonely: it is Jesus suffering, Jesus needing help, Jesus lonely. Our relationship with our neighbors is our surest test of our Faith in Christ. As Saint Catherine of Siena wrote, “You test the virtue of patience in yourself when your neighbors insult you. Your humility is tested by the proud, your faith by the unfaithful, your hope by the person who has no hope. Your justice is tried by the unjust, your compassion by the cruel, and your gentleness and kindness by the wrathful. Your neighbors are the channel through which all your virtues are tested and come to birth, just as the evil give birth to all their vices through their neighbors." Brothers and sisters, let us admit with the children of Israel that we all sometimes feel that truly loving our God Who is beyond time and space does seem impossible, and yet, as Catherine of Siena taught, this is why God has put us among our neighbors: so that we can do for them what we cannot do for Him—that is, love them without any concern for thanks and without looking for any profit for yourself. And the teaching of Jesus is that whatever we do for them He will consider done for Him. Our mission is always a mission of love.

Father Matthew C. Dallman, Obl.S.B. preaching on the Memorial of Saint Romuald (2019) in the Lady Chapel of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on the campus of the University of Notre Dame during solemn Evensong, a service he was also asked to plan. Romuald is a true saint for the domestic church. He was a Benedictine monk who fell asleep on this day in the year AD 1027. In Dante's Divine Comedy, we find at one point Saint Benedict himself indicating to the pilgrim the presence of contemplatives, who are named “fires,” and these included Macarius (a desert father) and Romuald. His devotion to Christ was fueled by his many mystical experiences of God's presence in solitude while praying the Psalms. So much so that he felt driven out of a strictly coenobitic life in Benedictine community and rather devoutly experiment with the eremitic life, so as that between the life of community and the life of a hermit in solitude and what he saw as inherent tension between the two, there might be forged a new kind of harmony. His biography was written by none other than Saint Peter Damien, holy doctor of the Church, he is the founder of the Camaldolese Order (an outgrowth of the Order of Saint Benedict), and Romuald left us a Brief Rule that I think might be seen as a “How to Get Started” chapter in as yet unwritten, but probably never to be written, “Operations Manual” for the domestic church. But to explain that, I first need to back up. http://akensideinstitute.org/images/romuald_preaching.jpgIt was at last summer liturgy conferences that Dr O'Malley asked me to put together a plainsong Evensong in the Anglican tradition for this year's conference. It had become known (because I use social media more than the average person) that I had been conducting an experiment in my home, based in plainsong and the daily Offices (the Anglican equivalent to the Liturgy of the Hours) – that my family (my wife and our then four daughters whom we were homeschooling) might be ready to make the leap from the short, ten-minute form of daily chant developed from my study of Anglican pastoral theologian and priest Martin Thornton that we had used for four years, into chanting Matins and Evensong (Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer) everyday. Sufficed to say, the experiment has taken. Two years in, and it has become the anchors of our family's life, both in terms of routine but more importantly, in terms of our devotion to the Most Holy Trinity, it has spread within our parish, where we have daily Matins and Evensong in our chapel and have formed a plainsong choir in our parish (now 14 people strong) that has had three solemn Evensong services within the liturgical calendar (Eve of Michaelmas, Eve of Presentation, and Eve of Pentecost), and, we are here. Let me report that it is mind-blowingly wild that the waves of a homeschooling experiment in Pekin, Illinois might come to shore in the Lady Chapel of the Basilica of the Sacred Heart. The Providence of God is real and active, and grace has been bestowed in two ways: one, to hear His invitation to give this experiment in domestic church a try, and two, to be steady during the ups and downs of its implementation which were adventurous as most things in a family often are. I arrived at this prayer of thanksgiving, not to boast in anything I have done, but to boast in what our loving Lord has done; and my gratitude was clarified by our two lessons of sacred scripture, as well as the example of Saint Romuald – all three of which present to the question of the domestic church the Light of Christ. The account of Samuel's encounter with the Lord draws our attention to the domestic environment, the unique culture of our homes. We want the environment, the ecology, of our homes to be such wherein the space of our home, and the pattern of our life in it, is one where God can be heard: like Samuel heard God, even where God calls our name, like he called Samuel's name. Also, our passage helps us t o dispense with the need for our home life to be a perfect haven of pure devotion by all members of the family. God called Samuel despite the word of the Lord being rare in those days and no frequent vision. The only concrete description was that Samuel was sleeping in relative proximity to the Ark of God, which for us is a prefigurement of Our Lady. In his introduction to Redemptoris Mater, Joseph Ratzinger wrote that Mary's faith means trust in God and obedience, even when one walks in darkness. Perhaps in terms of concrete practice, devotion to Our Lady within the domestic church, even one that may seem far from a space that realizes the sacred, is a sure foundation for an environment to emerge and grow in the home in which we can hear God, and is the way to begin to develop one, that our response to God's call of us is not slothfully ignored but rather that of Samuel, “Here I am!” It is to the characteristic of adventure in prayer that Saint Luke's account of the parents of Jesus finding Him in the Temple when He was twelve years old draws us towards. Let us assume that the domestic church life of the Holy Family was the ideal model of sanctity, fellowship, prayer – and really, the type of the eucharistic life realized in the home. All the more reason for us to be encouraged in our family lives by the fact that even for Mary and Joseph, whose intimacy and closeness with Jesus are a permanent and inexhaustible catechesis for the Church, even for them there were moments when Jesus felt far away. This is all part of the ebb and flow of the Christian life – between consolation and desolation, between presence and absence, between real communion and desire for communion. This is the Christian adventure, and it demands heroism on the part often of parents, who are uniquely empowered by God by the grace of their marriage to help the whole family find Jesus again; and it demands native heroism on the part of children, who through their curiosity and wonder show new ways to find Jesus, to echo Samuel's “Here I am.” http://akensideinstitute.org/images/romuald_ladychapel2.jpgAll of this would be “Saint Romuald approved,” and here I circle back to my assertion that Romuald is a true saint for the domestic church, with particular emphasis on the helpfulness of something he wrote, called his Brief Rule. First of all let us recognize that the patterns of day to day life today compared with 150 years ago are dramatically different, a primary reason for which is the technology of the automobile dramatically transforming cities, so much so that life for many of us in our homes is more like the life of Christian hermits than we might be comfortable admitting. Although we gather in social spaces of our cities and towns (I don't think Bowling Alone is quite right as whenever I bowl, the lanes are filled with large groups of people) and of course although we gather in our parish churches, we often do not know our neighbors, or many of them, or see our fellow parishioner but once a week, if not less often. Home life, even with large families, is often analogous to the hermit's cell – we are not divorced from wider society, but we often encounter them in in strikingly anti-incarnational ways on social media and even the telephone, and families often “do their own thing.” And so the first sentence of Romuald's Brief Rule is topical. It reads, “Sit in your cell as in paradise.” We would translate, “Be in your home as in paradise,” not because we falsely think our homes are the Church Triumphant itself in microcosm, but rather “paradise” as Jesus described it to the confessing thief next to Him on the cross, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” Our homes are this kind of paradise: where we work by grace through the process of everyday purification and purgation knowing that Jesus is very close with us, and has chosen to come close to us and walk with us. And that process of everyday purification – the home as paradise – is the arranging of our lives in and through the pattern of home life so as to be like Samuel, sleeping by the Ark of God, or for us, with a daily family devotion to Our Lady in the home, thereby able to hear God calling his name. That parents and children can hear God calling to them and guiding them. Later in his Brief Rule, Romuald teaches us to “take every opportunity you can to sing the Psalms in your heart and to understand them with your mind.” He continues, “And, if your mind wanders as you read, do not give up; hurry back and apply your mind to the words once more.” So yet, let us pray the Psalms in our homes. Yet there is another insight here: Just as if our mind wanders, hurry and apply it to the words again, if we lose our sense of the presence of Christ amid the ebb and flow of religious life like Mary and Joseph lost track of Jesus, let us not beat ourselves up, but go immediately and passionately to find Him. In doing so, we let ourselves be found by Him. Mary and Joseph passionately sought Jesus; let us persevere to find Him in the Psalms, or even as he taught one Psalm, because as he taught, “It is better to pray one psalm with devotion and compunction than a hundred with distraction.” Romuald finishes his Brief Rule with these words: “Realize above all that you are in God's presence, and stand there with the attitude of one who stands before the emperor. Empty yourself completely and sit waiting, content with the grace of God, like the chick who tastes nothing and eats nothing but what his mother brings him.” Mary brings us Jesus, and so in that sense, the traditional image of the mama pelican who pecks at her breast to feel her children is also an image of Our Lady, whose own soul was also pierced with a sword, the sword of the Spirit, that her sorrow and eucharistic glory at the foot of the Cross might guide us and feed us. Blessed Mary, Mother of God, and Saint Romuald, pray for us.

Father Dallman preaches at Saint Paul's Church in Pekin, Illinois during their service for the First Evensong of Pentecost. He seeks to explain the experience of the early Church as one of "mystagogy," that is, "being led into the mystery of our participation in Christ." The Eastertide mystagogy of "How is Jesus alive?" has after the Ascension of Jesus shifted to a mystagogy of ecclesiology: "How are we the Church?" And this mystery was encountered in its fullness in the Upper Room during the nine days the 120 members of the first parish church "with one accord devoted themselves to prayer": the Eleven then Twelve along with "the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brethren" (Acts 1:14). This sermon, then, is a presentation of what Father Dallman has come to call "Upper Room Mystagogy."