Author: Fr. John

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Locals were burying a man near a river when a monk came along. The monk inquired as to how the man died and was told that he had been attacked by a creature and dragged under the waters. Later, a companion of the monk was swimming in the same river when a large creature approached him. The monk seeing this, made the sign of the cross over the creature and cried out, “Go no further. Do not touch the man. Go back at once.” The creature obeyed. We know the monk as St. Columba (b.521), the river as Loch Ness, and the creature… yep… the Loch Ness monster. This was the first written account of someone spotting the now legendary creature. True or false? I’ll let you decide.

Columba is highly revered, although I’m guessing that he may have been difficult to live with, especially in his early years. One of his biographers writes, “Of all qualities, gentleness was precisely the one in which Columba failed the most.” He was responsible for a battle that cost 3,000 lives, he got into a legal battle over the copyrighting of the Psalms, and he was required to go into exile. However, that exile landed him and twelve companions on the shores of small island, Iona, which would become one of the most powerful monasteries in existence. Given his growing reputation (dramatically improving by this point), Columba would not only be the Abbot over the monks of the monastery, but he also had authority over the Bishops of Scotland, even though he was only a priest.

There is much to learn about Columba and the monastery at Iona, but as I was reading on him this week, I just kept coming back to the legends, which—whether true or not—probably speak a great deal about the real Columba, so… one more.

In the year 597, Columba was seventy-seven years old. During the Easter season of that year, he felt that he was near death, but did not want to die during Easter so as to grieve his fellow monks during such a festive time. Later that year, when he knew his time was imminent, he went to say goodbye to some who worked in the fields, but because he was so tired, he was unable to walk and was therefore carried in a cart.

He spent time with the monks and blessed them and after awhile began the journey home, but he became so weary that he was required to stop along the way. It was then that his favorite horse, a white one, came galloping up to Columba and placed his head on Columba’s chest and shedding tears, as if aware of his friends nearing death. Columba’s companion tried to shew the horse along, but Columba said to him, “Allow this lover of mine to shed his tears on my chest. For this horse, being an animal, understood instinctively that I was going to be with my Lord, yet you as a man could not foretell this.”

Columba returned to the monastery that day, but died in the chapel, shortly before the night prayers began.

When the seventy disciples retuned, Jesus said to them, “Do not rejoice… that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” Columba was not without his faults—the same holds true for all of us—but we can give thanks that his name was written in heaven and that he kept the faith alive and assisted in it prospering in Scotland, which in turn, helped restore Christianity following the Dark Ages.

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A story by Leo Tolstoy tells of an older sister from the city coming to visit her younger sister in the country. The older sister talks of how much better city life is, but the younger maintains that it is country life that is best and that her husband is a good man and that because they lived in the country and had a simpler life, there was no way her husband, Pahom, could be tempted by the devil. Pahom says that the only problem country farmers have is that they don’t have enough land, but agrees that he could not be tempted. Unfortunately, the devil, who had been lurking in the kitchen, hears this and devises a scheme to trap Pahom, and it comes in the form of a unique offer from a large landowner: for 1000 rubles, Pahom can buy all the land he could walk around in a single day. Only catch: he had to be back at his starting point by sundown. At sunrise the next day, Pahom starts walking.

By noon, he had covered a great deal of ground, but not until late in the afternoon did he realize that he had perhaps gone too far in order to get back by sundown, so he picks up his pace even more. When the sun begins to sink, Pahom begins to run, but just as the sun begins to dip below the horizon, Pahom sees the place where he began, so with everything he had left, he sprinted as fast as he could, and just seconds before the sun disappeared below the horizon, Pahom staggered across the finish line. He then collapsed and died on the spot.

His few servants dug him a grave: a bit over six feet long, three feet wide and six feet deep. The title of Tolstoy’s story: How Much Land Does a Man Need? Turns out, not very much.

I suppose most of us really do have fairly simple needs. There are the basics: food, shelter, etc. And although we may each have a different understanding of how we’ll go about meeting those needs, they are for the most part within reason. However, when those basic needs are met, then our eyes and minds begin to look further and instead of seeking to fulfill our needs, we look to satisfy our wants. Those are OK as well, as long as they are within reason, do not deny others of their basic needs, and don’t consume us in our pursuits of them. It is when we go outside those types of parameters that our wants can lead us to greed, coveting, and then to other more grievous sin. We’ve talked about that in the past: that state of mind when we are never satisfied and can never have enough, no matter how much we have. However, this corrupt appetite for more is not limited to land or things or money, it can also play itself out in relationships, stimulation, thrills, physical perfection, achievements, all sorts of ways. It is as though our minds get bored, and like Pahom in his quest for more land, we will pursue the fulfillment of the appetite regardless of the cost. When we reach such a state, we will never be satisfied. It… fill in the blank for yourself… will never be enough. Hold that thought…

These past couple of weeks, during Morning Prayer, we have been reading from the first chapters of the Book of Deuteronomy. In chapter four, we begin to hear the teachings forbidding idolatry and the Lord comes right out and says why: “Take care, lest you forget the covenant of the Lord your God, which he made with you, and make a carved image, the form of anything that the Lord your God has forbidden you.  For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.” And anyone that has been following along with us in Morning Prayer can tell you, that in the next few chapters, God says, “If you do this, I will blow you up.” But, that was not a deterrent. There was Baal and Asherah and all the other gods of the lands they entered into and the people began to worship them as well. Why? Because they believed that these gods would offer them additional benefits. These were fertility gods, thought to bring rain and crops and all sorts of other benefits. They were the gods of the people in the lands they came into, so they wanted to get along. The Israelites did not cast out the One True God, Yahweh, aside however, Yahweh, did not see it this way. He saw it is a complete rejection of Himself, because in their hearts and in their minds, the people were saying, “The One True God… is not enough.” He is not enough, so we have to have all these others in addition to Yahweh, a bit like an insurance policy, in case Yahweh doesn’t come through.

Throughout the biblical history, this attitude of God not being enough and needing to be supplemented to fulfill both needs and wants has been a problem. God wasn’t enough for Adam and Eve, they wanted more, so they ate the fruit. God wasn’t enough following the Exodus, so they made for themselves the Golden Calf. As we just said, God wasn’t enough while they were in the land, so they worshiped the foreign gods. God wasn’t enough to lead them, so they called for the anointing of a king so that they could be like everyone else. There was Yahweh and there were all the rest and Jesus says, “If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand.” When God’s people decide in their hearts and in their minds that God is not enough, then their house is divided, and it cannot stand.

For us today, I do not believe that we intentionally or even consciously declare that God is not enough, but through our actions or inaction towards God, we are saying it. By placing our wants ahead of those things that God desires of us, we say that God is not enough for me to have fulfillment in my life. By not making time for the worship of God, we are saying that God is not enough for me to make a sacrifice of parts of my life for Him. By not making time for prayer, we say that God is not enough for me to commune with. Whenever God and our obligations to Him are pushed to the side in favor of anything else, we are saying that God is not enough and our house is divided. It is not that God does not want us to truly live—he wants us to have life and have it abundantly!—he desires that we have joy and enrichment and fulfillment, but we must take care that the pursuit of those things does not relegate God to a secondary concern in our lives that will divide our house. “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness—do not be divided—and all these things will be added to you.”

Let us pray: God, our Father, may we love You in all things and above all things. May we reach the joy which You have prepared for us in Heaven. Nothing is good that is against Your Will, and all that is good comes from Your Hand. Place in our hearts a desire to please You and fill our minds with thoughts of Your Love, so that we may grow in Your Wisdom and enjoy Your Peace. Amen.

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The Church Year is something that liturgical churches are very aware of. In it we have the various seasons: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Pentecost, and the season after Pentecost. We also know that contained within those seasons are various other feast days and celebrations, for example, this past Sunday was Trinity Sunday. We also know that within Holy Week, there are other significant days: Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, etc. and it is on Maundy Thursday that we celebrate the giving of the Holy Eucharist, because it was on the Thursday before his crucifixion that Jesus celebrated the Eucharist for the first time with his disciples in the upper room. With that in mind…

In the year 1192, a young girl, Juliana, was born in Belgium, and she later had a younger sister Agnes; however, their parents died and the two were left orphans, so they were taken to an Augustinian monastery to be raised. Later, Agnes died leaving Juliana alone with the Augustinian sisters. At the age of 16, Juliana began to have the same vision over and over, both during the day and at night: she saw a bright moon with a dark spot on it, but she did not understand its meaning until Jesus explained it to her.

Jesus said that the moon represented the Church Year and that the dark spot was a missing feast day that he wanted to see instituted: a feast day in celebration of the Holy Eucharist. As there was already Maundy Thursday, Juliana asked why another was needed and was told that people would soon begin to forget or disbelieve the Real Presence of Jesus in the Sacrament and that there was also to be a joyous celebration—not something that could take place during Holy Week—of the sacrament. Hearing this, Juliana went on a mission to establish the feast, but the idea was not popular and she only saw it celebrated once in her lifetime. But, if God wills it… as it turns out, one of Juliana’s friends whom she consulted about the entire matter before her death was Jacques Pantaléon, who would later be known as Pope Urban IV. It is good to have friends elevated to such high positions and Pope Urban would eventually establish the Feast of Corpus Christi across the Church and it would continue in the Church of England, even after the split from Rome.

There are few Protestants who believe in the Real Presence and there are many within the catholic tradition who simply believe that the bread and wine remain bread and wine, but… they are wrong. From St. Justin Martyr’s First Apology (FYI: his feast day was yesterday): “We call this food Eucharist, and no one else is permitted to partake of it, except one who believes our teaching to be true and who has been washed in the washing which is for the remission of sins and for regeneration [i.e., has received baptism] and is thereby living as Christ enjoined. For not as common bread nor common drink do we receive these; but since Jesus Christ our Savior was made incarnate by the word of God and had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so too, as we have been taught, the food which has been made into the Eucharist by the Eucharistic prayer set down by him, and by the change of which our blood and flesh is nurtured, is both the flesh and the blood of that incarnated Jesus.” And Jesus could not have been any more clear: “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.  For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.  Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.” (John 6:54-56) In the past, Christians were put to death as cannibals for believing and saying such, but we as God’s people know that the Real Presence of our Savior is truly present, hidden within the bread and the wine; therefore, let us always approach this most wonderful sacrament with joy and awe and wonder and fear, for it is Jesus himself that is being given to us.

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A young mom brought her two boys to church. The boys were old enough to know that they needed to sit quietly during the service and young enough to not quite be able to pull it off. As the sermon began, the fidgets set in. About half way through, the boys were about to enter into full on youngsters, so mom leaned over and quietly spoke to them. Next thing you know, the two boys were sitting quietly, with their hands in their laps. Following the service, another mom, who had witnessed the exchange, but who had not been as successful came up to the mom of the two boys, with admiration in her voice, asked what she had said to settle the boys down so quickly. “I just reminded them,” she said, “that if they weren’t quiet, Fr. John would lose his place and have to start all over again.”

Listening to someone talk can at times be completely engaging and at other times… bring on the fidgets. I always thought it would be nice to have Professor Slughorn’s hourglass to judge these things by.

For those who don’t know Professor Slughorn, he was Harry Potter’s potions professor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and in his office he had a most peculiar hourglass. It is not in the books, only the movie, but the professor describes it to Harry by saying, “A most intriguing object, the sand runs in accordance with the quality of the conversation. If it is stimulating the sand runs slowly, if it is not….” Well, he doesn’t finish the sentence and I won’t spoil the movie, but you get the idea. At the end of that scene, the sand isn’t running at all. I suppose that would be a useful tool in preaching.

As I think on such an hourglass and consider some of the conversations I’ve had, I can see the sand flowing freely with some and at other times, not even a whisper of movement. What’s interesting though, is the time of day when most of those conversations occur. Have you ever noticed? Early in the morning, I don’t even talk to the cat. In the middle of the day, I can be a bit keyed up. I try to slow down when I’m with folks, but there’s always that invisible hand on my back, pushing me just a bit to get to the next thing. That’s probably true for most, but at night, when we’ve met our responsibilities and filled our duties for the day, then it seems we can get down to the real business of actually living and having those deep, intimate conversations where the sand in the hourglass slows perceptibly, because the world and our minds are just a bit more hushed.

Think of those conversations you’ve had with one you love. You can stay up all night talking and feel more rested in the morning than if you’d had eight hours of sleep. Later at night is the time when we speak most intimately to one another and I believe that it is also the time when we speak most intimately with God.

I am not suggesting that you start laying in bed at night to pray, because 9.9 times out of ten, you’ll just fall asleep, but in the evening, when the day is done, it really is a good time to settle in with God to have one of those intimate conversations. Those conversations with God, at that time of the day, even have a name: the Nicodemus Hour. (Source: Behold, God’s Son, Christoph Cardinal Schönborn, p.165)

“There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, ‘Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.’”

There is so much to learn from the words of Jesus that follow. He expresses the deepness, even unto death, of God’s love for us, but today, instead of looking at the words, I want us to look at the setting and the event.

Christoph Cardinal Schönborn says that Nicodemus came at night for one of two reasons: he was afraid of being found out or because he understood that this was the time of day when individuals can finally sit together, mostly uninterrupted and have those intimate conversations. Perhaps he came for one reason or the other or both, but it is the intensity of the conversation, the revelation of God’s truths, the exploration and explaining of the mysteries of God that are the most important, and it demonstrates to us that if we hope to even to begin to understand those mysteries ourselves, then we too need those Nicodemus Hours with Jesus.

Take for example today: this is Trinity Sunday. I’ll never forget Melba Marshall. She lived in Deer Lodge, Montana and I met her my first year out of seminary. In the midst of a very pleasant conversation, she casually said, “Explain to me the Holy Trinity.” My answer today is probably no better than it was sixteen years ago, and it wasn’t very good then. Why? Because the Holy Trinity is not something you explain. The Holy Trinity is only something you know and you only know It because you’ve spent a Nicodemus Hour, that intimate time with Jesus. Billy Graham said, “Can you see God? You haven’t seen him? I’ve never seen the wind. I see the effects of the wind, but I’ve never seen the wind. There’s a mystery to it.” It is in that intimate time with Jesus that the mysteries of God take on flesh and blood, so that we can at least ‘feel’ them, get a sense of them and perhaps for a moment or two, know them.

Today, I encourage you: spend a Nicodemus Hour with one another. Get to know each other outside of the busyness of the day, so that you might be more intimately bound together as the Body of Christ. But I also encourage you to spend that Nicodemus Hour with Jesus, for it is there that you may truly encounter God. Perhaps you will spend the night talking or maybe you’ll spend time, hunkered down in the stillness of the night, just being together, for the pure joy of each other’s company, but one thing is certain… the sand in the hourglass will stop flowing.

Let us pray:
Glory be to the Father,
Who by His almighty power and love created me,
making me in the image and likeness of God.

Glory be to the Son,
Who by His Precious Blood delivered me from hell,
and opened for me the gates of heaven.

Glory be to the Holy Spirit,
Who has sanctified me in the sacrament of Baptism,
and continues to sanctify me
by the graces I receive daily from His bounty.

Glory be to the Three adorable Persons of the Holy Trinity,
now and forever.

Amen.