Cultivation Blog

Today we celebrate the Feast of St. Joseph, one of my absolute favorite saints.

Although not biologically Jesus’ father, St. Joseph nevertheless lived an authentic vocation of fatherhood as the head of the Holy Family, loving and protecting his wife and Son through danger, poverty, and the anxieties of daily life. Jesus was fully human – as well as fully divine – and He needed a human father to model what it meant to be a man, to work and serve and sacrifice in the ways that men are called to do. When God the Father entrusted His Son to St. Joseph, this was a call to embrace authentic fatherhood.

Though he never speaks a word in the Gospel, St. Joseph – like that other Joseph of Old Testament tradition – hears the messages of God in dreams and responds to them with trust and alacrity. He takes Mary into his home. He flees with his wife and Son to Egypt. Attentive to the word of God, he ultimately embraces and protects the Word Himself, contemplating in Christ – as a child and as a man – the Incarnate God.

In considering St. Joseph’s contemplative vision this week, I found myself thinking about the Seven Joys and Sorrows of St. Joseph, a popular devotion I came to know through Belmont Abbey. And what struck me most forcefully was the way these joys and sorrows embrace the same seven events. Often the cause of sorrow and the cause of joy are intimately tied, even when each arises in response to a different element within the experience. In the birth of Christ, for example, St. Joseph found unparalleled joy; in having no more than a manger to give Him, however, he encountered true sorrow. Likewise, hearing Simeon’s prophecy brought to light both the sorrow of Mary and Jesus’ suffering and the joyful glory of Christ’s mission. Throughout his life, St. Joseph held joy and sorrow together in his heart, embracing both and entrusting himself to God with trust and patience.

There are so many reasons to love St. Joseph: the strong, quiet, and humbly steadfast father who willingly supports us without even our recognition. As members of the Body of Christ, and as brothers and sisters in Him, we have not only a spiritual mother but also a spiritual father within the Holy Family – and St. Joseph has never stopped working for the good of his children.

But of all the reasons to love Papa Joseph, the one for which I’m most grateful today is his capacity to embrace both suffering and joy, to acknowledge and receive both with complete trust and generosity. St. Joseph teaches us to contemplate the way God speaks in our lives, the Word He speaks. St. Joseph’s sorrows don’t preclude his joys, nor joys his sorrows. Together they model a wisdom that the Season of Lent can help us to practice and appreciate, always leaving patient space for mystery.

Through the intercession of St. Joseph, may God continue to bless your Lenten journeys!

It’s hard to believe that Lent begins next week… It feels like the year is barely underway, and already it’s time to consider how best to approach our time in the penitential desert.

I have to admit, usually my preparation revolves almost exclusively around the question: “What am I giving up this year?” It’s an important practical question, certainly, and I do plan to devote some discernment time to answering it this weekend, but sometimes I think I start to view Lent as little more than a period of compartmentalized self-discipline.

So this year, in addition to the traditional sacrifices, I wanted to invite you to join me in taking a page out of the Benedictine rulebook. This year, let’s open up our Lenten journeys to the hallmark of community.

Of course, each one of us makes an individual journey through Lenten death to Easter resurrection, but we also walk together as the Body of Christ. We participate in Christ’s own life and death, part of which means helping our loved ones to carry their crosses, whether through our sacrifice and service or simply by being present to them in their need. Part of this also means accompanying each other in prayer, praying with as well as praying for one another.

Whatever form this takes in your life and your Lent – making time for a struggling friend, joining a family member in a particular devotion, praying together for a shared intention, or even gathering with a group to walk the Stations of the Cross each Friday – I hope you find a way to invite the graces of community into your Lent.

As a step toward this, each Friday during Lent I look forward to sharing with you two Stations of the Cross video reflections from the monks of Belmont Abbey. After all, taking a few minutes to join Abbot Placid, Fr. Elias, Br. Chrysostom, or Br. Leo in contemplation gives us the chance to journey with the monks and the whole Abbey community during this holy season.

As we prepare for the beginning of Lent in a few, short days, may Christ guide our footsteps and give us good companions along the way.

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!