Cor Unum Abbey

Of the sounds that arrest our attention in this life, one that has passed into the mists of time is that of the armored knight, dressed for battle, with his fellows, mounting up (that could not have been an easy maneuver) and heading out to battle.

I should think that the king would have been concerned about the damage to the royal parquet.

Perhaps as close as we can come to understanding that head-to-toe armor is to consider the astronaut: everything protected, helmeted and fit for battle against zero gravity. Quiet, too!

Our armor makes both of those look cartoon-esque. We are arrayed in the armor of light. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! We are resplendent in light!

Our armor must be maintained in truth, which is the fabric and link of which it is made: the light of truth and the warmth of love and the brilliance of the righteousness of God, and for sword, the very Word of God!

When we don our habits this morning, even if they happen to be jeans and a t-shirt, let us be reminded that in Cor Unum, we have put on the armor of Christ-likeness. We are brilliant and beautiful in humility and humanity, when Jesus Christ shines in us and is evidenced in the truth of our Gospel lives. The more we fight the good fight of faith, the more darkness is banished to the dungeons from whence it came.

Lykaestria, Wikipedia, by permission
The SUn

The times are measured by the awakening Church! The town crier lifts up his voice: “It is high time to awake out of sleep! (Romans 13:11) Salvation is nearer than it was before! The night is far spent, and the day is at hand!”

What a funny thing to say! “ . . . our salvation is nearer than when we first believed!” Why, yes, of course!

Yet, we do not always seem to hear the ticking of the clock.

A few very weighty instructions are coming up . . . and they all have to do with getting “dressed” in Jesus Christ. When we arise each day, we are donning our habits of faith and faithfulness, of love and devotion to God and love and devotion to His people.

Perhaps . . . what do you think? . . . perhaps we could jostle a few sleeping virgins and point out the sparcity of oil . . . oh, the danger! What if the Bridegroom returns while they go to make purchases? For Jesus’ sake let us “Look to him and be radiant,” in this hour. (Psalm 34:5)

If we have been asleep too long, we need not despair if only we will have light in ourselves, as we are meant to do, and so that our faces won’t be ashamed! But there is no time to lose . . . the day comes when there are no more deeds of righteousness to do! Jesus wouldn’t let demons tell who He is, because it is for men to know Him by faith. What a thought! The day will come when there are no more kindnesses to be shown on earth and no more prisoners to visit and no more opportunities to build up rather than destroy. The day approaches when no one may know the Lord by faith any longer: every eye will see Him. Today is the day of salvation for everyone we meet!   (Hebrews 4:1-10)

Early Taschenuhr … pocket watch!

Wikipedia, Pirkheimer, by permission

         After a nun has spent a few years in the monastery, there is not much left but to love.   For some of the Sisters, that truth breaks through quickly and love becomes a life project.

Certainly, there are a few who find something else to do, even there, but the love the sisters share, especially when the Abbess knows how to promote devotion and prosper love, is strong and full.

Postulants must leave their other debts paid when they come into the enclosure, and that is liberating in itself. It would appear that it does not take long “inside” to realize that, having come for the love of God, debts of love toward one another are land mines on the path of devotion to Him, and the “rule” of the house knows how to disarm them.

Shall we all pay a debt of love today? We will come away enriched.

Andreas Cruz photography

         It may surprise us to think that . . . the Abbey has to pay its bills! It has to write a check to the power company, the water works, and there may, in some countries, be certain taxes to pay as well. (In Cor Unum, we are not tax exempt!)

How LOVELY the way our Father explains these things through His servant, Paul:

Romans 13: 6 and 7 . . . For because of this [submission to rightful authority, set in place by God . . . and by faith to do us good] you also pay taxes, for they are God’s ministers attending continually to this very thing. Render therefore to all their due: taxes to whom taxes are due, customs to whom customs, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor.

Taxes, custom (tribute), fear and honor! That’s beautiful!

By this accounting, there is scarcely anyone in our lives to whom we do not owe something! Oh my!

Reverence to husbands; honor to wives. Nurture and admonition to children, and friendship to friends. Honor to masters and to parents. It looks, in fact, like the development of honoring dispositions and hearts could take us a long way.

Even taxes, paid honorably, aren’t so much taxes anymore as beneficence and investment in our communities. Remember that admonition to be transformed by the renewing of our minds? Opportunities abound!

Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. (Romans 1:19)

Sometimes it seemeth that the heart of our Lord goeth out to us the more upon the field where we lieth the most bloody. Considering the field upon which His blood dropped down, it makes sense!

How MUCH He did not avenge! Insults, day after day, and even as He hung upon a cross, dying a death on falsified charges, as His accusers knew right well.

Intrigues, rejection . . . when we take an historical look at the vengeance earthly kings have often exacted, the idea that the King of all kings, the King before whom all kings will bow the knee, the King by Whom kings reign and who can depose them from on high, the idea that He should be rejected in the smallest degree is nearly ludicrous . . . treason, not to mention the arrest and beheading of His friend and kinsman, all of these and more might have stirred vengeance in His breast, Son of God, Son of Man.

The Divine Comfort does not tell us to “just forget it,” or “get over it,” we have His assurance that the one Who calls us His “beloved” WILL AVENGE.

We do well when we come to terms with His reality: His vengeance for others will so often be toward them what it was for us, that He will send after the offender the hounds of heaven, to track them down as they did us, until they cry out for mercy. Will they not think that heaven has turned its vengeance upon them until Divine Vengeance leads them home? And for this cause, my beloved, we must not interfere in any attempt to exact our own vengeance. When we know, at last, “what spirit we are of,” we will be able to say with every fiber of our being, “Arrest them, Lord! For the sake of Your glory, find them and bind them to the truth of Your mercy and their great need – just as You did for us!”

photo courtesy of Wikipedia

Epee Joyeuse

Charlemayne’s Sword

Siren-Com

         The verse now open for our consideration is one we seldom hear sermonized, perhaps because the language is obscure. In the King James version it reads:

Provide things honest in the sight of all men. (KJV)

Have regard for good things in the sight of all men. (NKJV)

Do things in such a way that everyone can see you are honorable. (TLB)

         Let’s try to discover what this means in “daily speak” . . . what it means to us in Cor Unum. An illustration might help.

         When a child spends the night with a friend, and the hosting parents put a horror movie on and make popcorn and invite the children in to watch with them, the “Romans 12:17” child might have to say, “I’m not allowed to watch ‘Nightmare on Elm Street.’” Don’t you wish this were a purely hypothetical illustration?

         In the sight of our own children, when we see a $20.00 bill lying on the lawn in front of our neighbor’s house, we go to the door and inquire. Of course we know beforehand that they may say, “Yes, I did lose some money? How much did you find?” but that is no concern of ours.  It is always possible that honorable people live inside! Some parents will leave the money where it was found, with children saying, “But someone else is going to pick it up!” and right they may be, but what concern is that to us? “The money isn’t ours,” says the father.

         How many opportunities might we find this very day in Cor Unum to do things in such a way that everyone knows we are honorable?

Andreas Cruz photography

        
         “Do not repay anyone evil for evil” is today’s word from the twelfth chapter of Romans.

         We never would! From our mothers’ knee we were taught better.

         Mother did not always tell us that a little bitterness, a little rejection, a little slander is coin in that dark and dangerous realm where payback is power.

         There is . . . not to argue with Mother! . . . there is a repayment for evil that Scripture promotes. It is engraved over the doors of many hearts . . . we repay evil with good! (Thessalonians 5:15)

         When our enemies are hungry or thirsty, we feed them, and give them something to drink. (Psalm 25:21.) It’s “house rules,” here in Cor Unum.

Andreas Cruz photography                                   

         In all the “nun” books that make their way into the Abbey, “nun” have been found to indicate that a new postulants usually take to the devoted life like a duck to water.

This makes quite good sense, really. If one enters the monastery in order to grow nearer to the Lord, to develop a style of life beyond the everyday, this is an indication that some lack or distance has been evidenced!  If one enters in order to find Christlikeness in community, the fullness of Christlikeness must not yet have been attained. The same is true for us if a life of undiluted worship and prayer is the vision; we don’t press in to have what we have already obtained.

We in Cor Unum aspire to unbroken fellowship with God and “perfect” love both in heaven and on earth. “Be thou perfect, even as my Father in heaven is perfect!” is worth the climb, but it is a climb!

We are not wise in our own conceits when we live lives of pressing on!   The very trudge up the hill is an ever-present reminder that we are not arrived, but here in the Abbey we guard against the old adages that say we will never make it.

Let us never, let us not ever, boast the hill! Rather, we sing with the saints of old, of the ages, really, “We’re marching to Zion . . . beautiful, beautiful Zion! We’re marching upward to Zion, the beautiful City of God.”   What is attainable, we will have in the name of the Lord our King.

Andreas Cruz photography

         Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. (Romans 12:16.)

         Here we are, still exercising the privilege of judging ourselves, so that we will not come into judgment. We are heeding the admonishment to:

Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you – unless, of course, you fail the test? (Francis Frangipane suggests paying special heed to the parts of the Gospels that we HAVE NOT underlined, the parts we have either ignored or not particularly … liked! This could be one of those!)

         In the Abbey, the nuns would say, “We ARE the people of low position!” The difficulty in this sometimes convoluted world, is balancing self-respect and proper self image with the truth of humility.

         The truth of humility for us in Cor Unum is this: our own beloved Father sits, even now and eternally, upon a throne of brilliance and glory that can only be described with word pictures : “like” gemstones and rainbows, heavenly acclaim “like” the rushing of mighty waters . . . words failed the chronicler of heaven. Nevertheless, he found humility in life.

         The apostle “whom Jesus loved” was secure in life and comforted in exile. His face had leant upon Jesus’ chest; the mother of his Lord had become his mother; he had run to see the empty tomb. John was to be cut off from the other apostles, lowness was his destiny, but he, like Paul, saw things that the eyes of men are not privileged to gaze upon. How is it that pride never overtook either of these brothers?

         Simply, it was because of the one surpassing knowledge that they both possessed.

         They knew they were loved.

Andreas Cruz photography