Cultivation Blog

Today we enjoy the last of the three feasts traditionally associated with Epiphany. Having celebrated the Adoration of the Magi on Epiphany proper and the Baptism in the Jordan shortly thereafter, now we come to Candlemas: the Feast of the Presentation in the Temple. 

Each of these days commemorates some kind of revelation, when God unveiled something about His Son – either directly or through human participation. And today is no different. When Mary and Joseph presented Jesus in the temple, Simeon cried out in recognition at the “salvation which [God had] prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to [God’s] people Israel” (Luke 2:30-32)…

But what strikes me most powerfully about this particular encounter is not Simeon’s admittedly rich epiphany and prophetic words but the personal context from which these words issued. For we learn in Luke’s gospel that God had promised Simeon that he would see the Christ within his lifetime. 

We don’t know how long Simeon waited, but we do know he was an old man at the time of the Presentation. And we know that his attentive patience immediately recognized the promised Christ, even in the fragile and unassuming presence of a child. God had made His promise to Israel a personal promise to Simeon also, creating in him a sign of how tenderly and individually He invites us to participate in His plan of salvation. And He makes a similar promise to each of us: to reveal His Son to all who await Him.

Today let’s remind ourselves that God always keeps His promises – and that His timing is always true, merciful, and rich in the fruit of epiphany. 

Happy Feast of the Presentation!

With tens of thousands of people gathering on the National Mall for today’s March for Life, the topic of life – and of life-affirming or life-threatening policies and legislation – will take center stage in the national discussion.

Even if the March doesn’t receive prime time coverage, each marcher is standing as a witness to one another and to those who run the most powerful country in the world, of the inalienable truth written on our hearts that life is sacred.

Life isn’t just another cause. Without it, everything – every other right and freedom we value –  becomes purely academic. This is why threats to human life require such urgently pragmatic responses, campaigns, and strategies that point us toward the character of life itself: the vivid, inescapable immediacy of human life as the site of our encounter with God.

At Belmont Abbey College we have a visible reminder of the intimacy of life through MiraVia, a residence for pregnant college students that supports them as they complete their education. Young women and their babies receive loving assistance that doesn’t end at birth, or even with the child’s first eighteen months. They grow and thrive for themselves, for each other, and as members of the Belmont Abbey community.

MiraVia reminds us that taking up the cause of life ultimately means embracing something beautiful in itself. It means rejoicing in our shared and individual lives: in the mother who completes her education and prepares for a future rich with possibility, in the child for whom everything is new, and in their inexpressibly vibrant participation in each other’s lives.

This is also why the March for Life remains the largest human rights demonstration in the world. It isn’t just a protest. There’s a contagious joy in the gathering, an exuberance that finds outlet in song, in prayer, in friendly reunions. It embodies the shared hope and miraculous responsibility of life, of being alive, each and all. The March for Life is full of what it wishes to safeguard; it’s a demonstration in the truest sense of the word.

Whether you are able to travel to Washington, D.C. today or not, I hope you’ll join me in praying for those gathered there for the love of human life. And if you get the chance today, consider taking a moment to reach out to someone who’s participated in the beauty of your own life. Just for the joy of it.

Lately I’ve been thinking about the way the new year raises questions of identity. January always seems to ask us to consider who we are, which is another way of asking: what is it we love?

In one sense, there’s a clear unity in the answer we give – and aspire to give – as Christians. We love God; we love our neighbor. We may not always live up to this love, but the root of it remains alive in our will, and we trust that the One who is Love, Himself, will bring it to fruition. 

But like so much of the Christian life, this unity also embraces experiential variety and encourages us to ask again: what is it we love? Because arguably, the what, why, and how of this question forms the essential fabric of our lives, both individually and in community. 

We love our families, our friends. We all understand this, even if the statements remain alive and experientially complex. But what does it mean to say that we love our country? The face of a person invites contemplation, but the face of a country exists at a more impersonal scale. “The United States of America” is something huge and abstract that includes – but isn’t reducible to – history, geography, culture, politics, economics, and so much more. 

In his Four Loves, C.S. Lewis addresses related challenges when he suggests that unexamined or reductive forms of patriotism can slip into idolatry or farce – when we canonize, wholesale, a national past, for example, or make our love dependent on policies and practices we can support. Love isn’t blind, but neither is it conditional. 

Ultimately, Lewis believes that the healthiest and most natural love of country springs from our local loves, as much (or more) from the familiar flavors of daily life as from the ideals and the symbols of our national identity. As with love in so many of its forms, the possibility of loving an entire population is essentially dependent – and only makes sense in light of – our love for the small and the particular, for our neighbor in the concrete immediacy of local place. 

This is something the Benedictine tradition has long understood. With its emphasis on stewardship, community, and hospitality, the Benedictine Rule embraces the good of our brothers and sisters by inviting us to be present to them in this particular time and place. There’s a humble stability in welcoming those whom God brings into our lives and our neighborhoods. Even in teaching us that all men and women are our neighbors, Christ relates a parable about a specific Samaritan helping another man in his real and immediate need.

For those of us living in the U.S., 2024 is an election year, which promises not only a storm of competing rhetoric but also the opportunity to consider what our love of country is and means. The ballot box is an important part of responsible citizenship – and therefore of my active love of country – but I hope to remind myself throughout the year that patriotic love, too, is a rich and personal encounter, and that willing the good of my country begins with the reality of my home, my community, and my next door neighbor.

Wishing you all a fruitful January, wherever you call home!

I’m particularly grateful that New Year’s Day always falls at the end of the Christmas Octave. What with the pressure of ambitious resolutions and the anticipated drag of post-holiday doldrums, it can be tempting to brace for a new year as if it were a marathon, a protracted test of endurance. Of course, there’s a certain truth to this, and I’m sure 2024 will require plenty of prayerful effort, but ultimately, meeting the new year from the vantage of Christmas reminds me to take a step back from harried determination… and begin with the light.

Within the frame of our human experience, we all recognize the sunrise as a symbol of new beginnings: of hope, freshness, and rebirth. Even our biblical vision of creation – of God’s vivid, articulating love bringing the world into being – begins with an evocative “Let there be light.” 

By beginning with the light, we’re embracing the opportunity to wake up in a freshly illuminated world and to see with new vision. 

New light offers discovery and revelation, and until it dawns at the full, we can’t entirely anticipate exactly what it might reveal in the spaces around us, in our lives, and even in ourselves. The excitement we feel on December 31 is, at least in part, because we allow ourselves to sense the possibilities still hidden in the undiscovered terrain of a new year. 

Thus, with whatever the new year brings to each and all of us, I hope you join me today in a quick prayer of gratitude, hope, and trust, remembering that new light arrives to surprise and humble us, and that part of the joyful courage of a new year lies in waiting to see what God may invite us to discover. Happy New Year, and God bless you!

Thanks to the monks and their beautiful morning prayer, I’ve started learning some of the psalms a bit better over the past couple of months. I’ve even found myself looking forward to certain lines and images that recur between Lauds and Vigils. 

One of my new favorites – and a verse profoundly appropriate to our Advent journeys – comes from Psalm 24: “Oh gates, lift high your heads. Grow higher, ancient doors. Let him enter, the king of glory.” 

At first, the images struck me as particularly strange. Instructing gates to lift their heads felt like such an odd, stubborn use of personification, and following this with an injunction to “grow higher” only compounded the oddness by commanding something impossible to effect at will, even for a living creature.

But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve come to love the way these verses invite a jubilant hope in the face of earthly limitations. Ultimately, even “ancient doors” require a miraculous intervention in order to embrace the divine. Our longest-standing and most impressive structures – those ancient doors that protect or admit, that stand as symbols of identity and culture – can’t begin to accommodate the King of Glory until He, himself, intervenes with what is otherwise impossible: “Grow higher, ancient doors. Let him enter, the king of glory.” 

These verses resonate with an incarnational joy particularly appropriate to Advent, as we await the coming of our God and King at Christmas. We’re used to talking about God’s profound nearness to each of us, but this reality should be so staggering that it buckles the limits of rhetoric and unassisted reason. Precisely because the best that we can build or become is nevertheless too narrow and too limited to allow Him entrance, we learn how tenderly God loves us – for He adopts and transforms our very humanness, giving us access to His divine life. He intervenes to give us, within ourselves and our communities, the miraculous capacity to embrace our Creator himself.  

When I hear the monks pray these lines, I’m reminded of the Benedictine motto inscribed in the Belmont Abbey College seal by the first letter of each Latin word: Ut In Omnibus, Glorificetur Deus, That in all things God may be glorified. In a way this, too, is a prayer of audacious hope, that everything we make and do – and everything we are – may invite God’s radiant presence more deeply into the world, participating in the impossible song of praise that transforms us beyond our comprehension. 

As we approach Gaudete Sunday and the third week of Advent, together let’s rejoice in the Truth that exceeds human possibility: The King of Glory comes. Emmanuel, God with us.