The Abbot’s Notebook for March 28, 2018

My sisters and brothers in Christ,

Blessings to you!  Thumper the Dog ended up in the hospital again and perhaps he has primary heart disease.  The other possibility is that he suffered some trauma when he was out and running.  He is always adventurous and leads the other dogs astray on long outings!  He is back home now and not supposed to jump or play with the other dogs.

Dogs are very similar to humans in lots of ways.  We don’t always pay attention to the results of our actions.  Of course, dogs can’t think and so don’t have the same kind of responsibility for not paying attention to their actions.  Sometimes I reflect on monks who don’t want to pray or monks who never learn to be still and quiet.  I have struggle with both of those challenges in my own life but know that if I want to be a monk, I must keep struggling.

We humans are prone to seek pleasure and delight and in the process ignore the results of our actions.  Many of us have grown accustomed to moral codes, ways of thinking that instruct us that some actions, although pleasurable and delightful, will bring results not so pleasurable or delightful.  Because we can think, we can consider such consequences.  Often we still want to try things for ourselves—suspecting that the results might not be so awful.

One of the aspects of our faith is coming to believe in the word of someone else.  Our faith is passed on to us through the testimony of others.  We see that in a particularly strong way in this Holy Week.  The lessons from both the Old and the New Testaments speak about Jesus in ways that presume that we followers of Christ come from a living tradition in which we accept the words of our ancestors in the faith.

In particular the whole of the New Testament is a collection of writings by various people, giving their witness to their experience of Jesus or the witness of others that they have transcribed for us.  Perhaps too often we think of the New Testament as one book instead of what it is, a collection of testimonies about Jesus Christ.  There were other testimonies written as well, but in time the authority of the believing community excluded the other writings as not being faithful to the testimony of Jesus, even if there may have been various anecdotes in some of them that perhaps were true.

The testimony that was accepted points to the existence of Jesus as Son of Mary and foster-son of Joseph, to the reality that His followers came to believe that He was the Messiah, to the reality that He worked miracles and taught with authority about God, that He was condemned to death, that He died and finally, that He was raised from the dead.  These testimonies, when read objectively, show that Jesus actually does claim to have a special relationship with God, that He claims to be God and that His Resurrection finally convinces His followers completely of what He had preached and said in His lifetime.

Jesus is not just “a good man and a good moral teacher.”  If He is not God, then He is a liar and a deceiver.  All of this comes to us through believing in the word of His early followers and their testimony of their experience of Jesus.

When I began my journey in faith, I knew practically none of this.  I believed in God for various reasons and in some vague sort of way believed that Jesus was the Son of God.  Only through many years of struggle with faith and with reason did I slowly come to accept all that I have said above.  In addition to what I have said above, I also came to believe that the Roman Catholic Church and the Churches in communion with the Roman Catholic Church are the one, true Church in a way that no other ecclesial community can claim.  I never accepted that all non-Catholics go to hell because most of my family was non-Catholic and so many of them were truly good women and men, seeking to serve God in their various ways.

I offer this testimony in Holy Week of 2018 because it seems important today that we learn how to express our faith in ways that reflect God’s love and mercy and also reflect our own journeys of faith.  Over the years I have met so many people who simply cannot go on this same journey of faith—and yet are people who are seeking truth and meaning in their lives.

My own journey continues, year after year.  Always I am challenged to learn more and to love more and to serve more.  At this point in my life I am not dead but still slowly coming to life and to faith.  My service will change in many ways on December 12, 2018.  I have asked that on that date, the celebration of the Virgin of Guadalupe, my service as abbot of the community will end.  We expect to have an election of the new abbot that same day.  This will be a challenge for our community and surely also for me.  Please pray for me and for our community as we prepare for this change in our community.

As always I promise my prayers for you and for your needs and intentions.  I will celebrate Holy Mass for you and for your intentions.  Let us walk in faith each day, trusting that all that happens is a gift of the Lord when we have faith.  I send you my love and prayers.

Your brother in the Lord,

Abbot Philip