Monastic Spirituality 1986

Today I ran across a piece I wrote for a series of articles on monastic spirituality for the OHC (more or less) quarterly publication in the Autumn 1986 issue.  It joined articles by Bernard Van Waes, Robert Hale and Bede Thomas Mudge.  I didn't seem to have a word processing document of the original , and the OCR function on my older Canon scanner wasn't up to the job of transcription, so I typed it again.  I think it is accurate.

It is a product of my early fervent monastic self -  I was 39 at the time, 12 years in OHC, 7 in life vows, Prior of Mount Calvary since 1981.  In other words - lots of water still to flow under my bridge, but the product of a self that now seems to me to be energetic, idealistic and ready for life's adventures.     

The Voice of God is a Living Voice
Adam D. McCoy, OHC
1986

    Solitude, silence, scripture, sacrament, celebration, community: these and the Vows of Conversion of Life, Obedience, Poverty and Celibate Chastity, are primary components of monastic spirituality.  They are disciplines, ways to train the soul to achieve the monastic desire: to give all one has and to follow the Lord.  The monk is a person who takes the Gospel call literally, and gives his life as totally to God as he is capable.  These disciplines have evolved over centuries and are full of the wisdom of thousands of lives given to God in the monastic way, and therefore they are a well-worn path for any who follow the Lord in the monastic way.
    The monk is most of all a person who listens for the voice of God: in scripture, in tradition, and also in truth, wherever found, in study, in science, and in the wisdom of human experience as well as through religion.  The voice of God is a living voice, and so the monk who listens to that voice must be a very contemporary person.  The monk is also a person who, after he has heard that voice, acts.  Both action and contemplation are part of monastic spirituality.  Often the uncomprehending world, and sometimes the uncomprehending Church, endorses an apparently passive contemplation.  But when the monastic life issues in action, often evangelically radical action, it may be disapproved.
    There is power and danger in monastic, indeed any real Christian, spirituality.  There is power because the person comes to know himself in reality, loved, redeemed, able to act not as a fantasy self but as he really is: a Bernard, a Mother Teresa (both Avila and Calcutta). And that self, acting together with God’s intention, sets the world afire.  There is danger because God is not satisfied with the world as it is, and truly evangelical action frequently upsets entrenched power, whether it is economic or political power, or the power of entrenched but alienated selves.
    The Gospel call is not unique to monastics, nor is the action issuing from it.  But the monastic path is unique.  Monastic spirituality is for those who are called to abandon themselves to the love of God as completely as they are capable, to listen to his voice of truth, and to make their lives instruments of truth.  Monastic vows create the existential condition for this abandonment, and the disciplines of monastic spirituality train one to hear the voice of God.  But in the end, only the living fire of love and desire for God creates the monk, the one who is monos, one, single, whole, completely, uniquely attached to the Lord.

Thomas Curtiss, Jr. RIP - St. Mark's Church, Glendale CA

Tom was a dear friend of many years. I presided at his marriage to Charles Neeley nine years ago.  It was my privilege to preach this homily at Tom's funeral.  Thanks to Fr. Mark Weitzel, the Rector of St. Mark's, for a lovely service.

Thomas Curtiss, Jr.  RIP
4 November 1941 - 23 December 2023
Wisdom 3:1-5, 9; Psalm 100; Revelation 21:2-7; John 14:1-6
St. Mark’s Church, Glendale CA: March 9, 2024
The Rev’d. Dr. Adam D. McCoy, OHC    

      Thank you, Tom and Sandy, for those lovely words about Tom.  As you did, I have been thinking about who Tom was.  Each one of us here will have our own ways of remembering him.  For me, Tom was a person of loyalties.  Loyal to his family and its heritage.  Loyal to his education, especially to his beloved Yale.  Loyal to the Marine Corps Reserve, and to the men he led and served in the Vietnam War, though he rarely talked about the war or about them.  Loyal to the Law, both in its ideal forms and in its actual practice, and loyal to the many families he helped in the arrangement of their affairs.  Loyal to the Episcopal Church, in its faith and practice, and in his many roles in it both at the parish level and for the Diocese.  For his service to the Church he was made a Lay Canon of the Cathedral.  Charles tells me that Tom reclaimed his faith as an adult Christian in the Episcopal tradition right here at St. Mark’s, so many years ago.  How fitting that we are back here with him again today.
      And loyal to himself as a gay man.  I first came to know Tom when we both served on a diocesan committee in the mid 1980s.  The committee was considering the qualifications of a young man who wanted to be ordained, and who was openly and unapologetically gay.  Tom and I discovered we both were appalled by the bigoted opposition to him and worked together - successfully - to approve his vocation.     
      I’m sure Tom had his doubts and uncertainties, as we all do, but he was, to me at least, a man who was secure, proud, loyal to and happy in the many ways he had been called to be.
      In listening to the scriptural lessons just read, it may have occurred to some of us that the people we’re hearing about are holy people, saints even.  “The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God” from Wisdom.  The heavenly courts filled with the redeemed in the new Jerusalem assembled before the throne of God.  Those for whom dwelling places in the Father’s house have been prepared. [I do prefer the older translation of that passage: “In my Father’s house are many mansions”.  There seems to have been some downsizing going on, from mansions to dwelling places.]  And we may have wondered - are we making a saint out of Tom?  Because he was, like all of us, not quite perfect.  We can all think of our favorite Tom stories.
      These same readings are included in the Prayer Book service for all whom the Church celebrates at the end of their lives.  Not just for the perfect.  Not just for the holy.  But for all of us.  Those readings are not descriptions of who we are.  They are aspirations of who we might be.  They are hopes of who we might become.  
      They are anticipations of the mercy of God, looking down on us, knowing everything about us, every little bit of us, every circumstance of our lives, each and every choice we’ve made and all their many  consequences, as well as all the possibilities foreclosed by those choices.  God sees and knows what we want to be and who we present ourselves as, and also who we actually are, whether we know who we really are or not.  God sees it all.
      And the wonder is that, seeing it all, God loves us.  God knows every smallest movement in our lives toward what is good: every smallest act fulfilling our duties to our families, to those who educate and mentor us, when we serve our wider communities, when we serve others in the work we are called to do.  And in every one of these acts it is our faith that we are called to cooperate with God in building up a better world.  God sees not only our faults and mistakes and sins and crimes but also all the steps we take toward what is good and wholesome and right and just.  God sees it all and I want to think God puts his finger on the positive side of our judgment scale.  

     God is love.  God wants us to live in love, love both imagined and felt but also acted: Love made real through what we do.    And this love is more than duty.  It is also in our joy.  In my experience of him, I know Tom took joy in his dogs, in his cats, in his fish.  He took joy in his friends.  He took joy in reading about military history.  And Tom loved a good fight.  He took joy in work well done, especially in a complex legal situation he had brought into fruitful order.  He took joy in the traditional worship of the Episcopal Church.  He was a fervent Anglophile, loving the ways of that actual and, perhaps, somewhat imagined, heritage.  But he also took joy in the growth of the Church among Hispanic people who did not share that heritage.  He took joy in his house as  a lovely expression of a traditional style of life.  He took joy in good food and good drink.  He took joy in his lifelong relationship with the wonderful man he married.
      God loves us for our duties, but also for our joys.  How much love each of us can bring into the world through our joys!  Our joys are infectious. They can light up the rooms of our lives and warm the hearts of those around us.  They can fill our spaces with light and hope and possibilities.  God loved Tom for his joys as well as for his loyalties, his duty done and done well and the joy and delight that filled Tom’s life.  A welcome awaits all of us into the fellowship of the righteous, among the throngs before the Throne, among the inhabitants of the mansions prepared for us, with duty well done and with joy, if we will but enter in.  
      And what of us?  What loyalties are we called to?  What duties have we done.  What duties still await us?  Perhaps we can still refresh and renew and do well what calls to us.  And what joys do we enter into?  What seizes us with pleasure, with happiness, even with ecstasy?  Can we share them with each other?  Do they show forth our integrity, our confidence in the life God has given us?  Can we live with light and warmth and affection and humor and delight?
      Let us build something good out of our lives, as Tom built good out of his.  That is God’s call to us as we remember this lovely man today. 

Sermon - Epiphany 2B - Grace and St. Peter's, Baltimore

Epiphany 2B
Grace and St. Peter’s Church, Baltimore
14 January 2024
Adam D. McCoy, OHC

    “Samuel! Samuel!” ...  “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.”
    At some level in our lives we all want to be like the child Samuel: We all want to hear the voice of the Lord call us, really call us, call us by name.  We all want the Divine Word to come to us, to tell us who we are and what our life is for, to set us on the path of God’s intention for us.  The story of the child Samuel is not just the story of the historical prophet who will transform the history of his nation, but it is also a pattern for all of us.  We all deep down hope that our parents have yearned for us to be conceived and born so that through us good may come into the world, good in their lives, good through our lives, and good for the world we live in.  We yearn for the Word to anoint us and set us on the path God sees for us.  But where and how can that happen?
    It seems to me that our lessons this morning provide three templates, three models, for the inbreaking Word in our lives.
    The first is a temple.  The temple at Shiloh, where Eli was the priest, was the place where the Tabernacle, the movable tent home of Yahweh, the original Holy of Holies, came to rest after the conquest of Canaan by the Israelites.  It was Israel’s most sacred place before the great Temple of Solomon was built in Jerusalem.  A place you came to to find the presence of God.  In fact, in the way of all temples of antiquity, it was literally the house of God, the place where God was known to come and stay when God was with his people.  A holy place which in time was built up, elaborated, made beautiful, designed by the most talented architects and craftsmen that could be found, the best artists known using the best possible wood and stone and metal.  The best musical instruments that could be had - and in time restored.  A place where the finest liturgists and musicians in the land could lead the people who came to it in worship.  In fact, a place very much like Grace and St. Peter’s today.  A place that draws us to it by its evocation of the beauty, harmony and grace of God.  A place where, if anywhere, we might come and worship and pray and then be quiet and hear the Divine Word speak to us.   A place whose beauty and spiritual power is necessary in our world and necessary for our lives.
    The Gospel lesson today speaks of a second template for the inbreaking of the Divine Word.  Nathanael meets Jesus, who anoints him as “an Israelite in whom there is no deceit”.  Nathanael asks Jesus how he knows him and Jesus says, “I saw you under the fig tree.”  The Word of God came looking for Nathanael before Nathanael went looking for the Word.  Under the fig tree.  Not in a great temple, not in the Tabernacle, but under a tree, a tree which in time may bear fruit.  Nathanael, without deceit, pure of heart, is surprised and blurts out his recognition of Jesus: “Rabbi, you are the Son of God!   You are the King of Israel!”  And Jesus predicts for Nathanael the blessing of Jacob, received as Jacob slept on a stone pillow out in the middle of nowhere: “You will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”
    The inbreaking of the Divine can happen anywhere.  In a temple or out in the middle of nowhere.  On a stone pillow.  Under a tree.  Anywhere in fact.  You can be walking along with your friends and the Word of God can just walk up to you, tell you that you’ve been seen and noticed and found worthy and speak to you and the heavens can open and the angels can ascend and descend in a perfect interchange of heaven and earth, of divine and human.  It can happen right before your very eyes.  And it can visit when we least expect it.  Wherever we are.  In a rocky field.  Under a tree.  When It chooses us.  
    But we have to be ready.  Like little Samuel, we need to wait patiently and both listen and respond.  Like Nathanael, we need to be receptive, uncluttered, focused, without deceit.
    And so, St. Paul.  As the old joke goes, Moses comes down from the mountain with the tablets.  I have good news and bad news, he says.   The good news is that there are only 10.  The bad news is that adultery stays in.  This passage is one of the not-fun parts of St. Paul.  Not that consorting professionally with sex workers is something everyone wants to do, but here St. Paul seems anti-physical, anti-sex, anti-body.  Severe.  Judgmental.  Grim.  
    In fact, however, St. Paul is being just the opposite.  Temples are holy places, places where the Divine comes to dwell.  God’s presence and Word can break into the lives of ordinary people when they are without deceit, when they are ready, any time, any where at all.  And so St. Paul tells us that our bodies - not just our minds and thoughts and ideas and intentions but our whole selves, including our actual physical bodies - our bodies are temples of God.  They are earthly places in earthly time and earthly space where God can come and find us and tell us who we are and what we can do with out lives and open our eyes and ears to see God’s energies enter the world and our energies be drawn into God’s holy of holies.  We need to be ready to hear when God speaks to us and we need to be ready to answer.  
    Our bodies can be holy temples, ready for the presence of God even in the stoniest, the seemingly hardest and driest parts of our lives.  They can be like Jacob’s pillow.  They can be like Nathanael’s fig tree.  St. Paul is not talking about not having fun.  He is talking about the transfiguration of our lives.  He is talking about the worth and beauty and dignity of our actual, physical nature, which begins with our bodies.
    I don’t know about you, but I have never been entirely confident in my body.  And the older I get the less confident I am about it.  I think I used to be stronger and more graceful than I am now.  But in truth, back then I was already a bit neurotic about my body.  And I am not entirely proud of everrything I have done, either.  I suspect the same is true of us all.   I sense that most of us don’t always feel that our physical lives are likely places where transcendent divine energies may be encountered.  Perhaps in a beautiful church.  Perhaps in the desert or in a garden.  But not perhaps in the totalized physical, mental, emotional, conscious selves we carry about with us.  
    But that is precisely what St. Paul is telling us.  The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.   One of us.  In all our weakness, One of us.  The Word is looking for a place to live and hoping that our life will be that place.  The Word has seen us and loved us and is coming to meet us as we are, where we are and how we are, hoping that we will put away our deceit and be ready to meet with an honest and ready heart.  Our lives can be His temple.  Our lives can be the rock on which the ladder of the angels can be firmly planted so they can ascend and descend upon the Son of Man.  
    We are called to be free of deceit and as beautiful as we can be made to be.  Ready for the Word to speak.  And ready to say, Speak Lord, for your servant is listening.