Good Friday • Isaiah 52:13–53:12 • John 19:16–30 • 3/29/24 Standing near the cross, you feel the magnitude of what has happened. You have felt something like this at other deaths, other endings. Yet this time, there is something more, a strange sense of waiting. Tonight and tomorrow are pregnant with something. Speaking in the voice of one of the Magi, T. S. Eliot writes, “I had seen birth and death, / But had thought they were different; this Birth was / Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.” Now, at the other end of the story, …
Falling into Grace
During Lent we often consider what discipline we want to practice to bring us closer to God, our neighbor and ourselves. I have found that life tends to give me the practice to follow each Lent. Over the past couple of years, I’ve been reflecting on and seeking to cooperate with a kind of transformation that wants to happen in me. This Lent, my life has been calling me to give up an old identity as victim and take on a new identity in God. Thomas Merton used the phrase, “a hidden wholeness” to describe the identity in God that …
Holy Wisdom Monastery to Become Net Zero Energy Campus by the end of 2024 Celebrates with Inaugural Spring Solar Tilt Event
March 28, 2024, Middleton, WI – Holy Wisdom Monastery is on track to produce 100% of its energy needs onsite from renewable resources by the end of 2024. Solar Spring Tilt 90 volunteers are needed to help tilt the new ground-mounted solar panels at Holy Wisdom Monastery. Join the Benedictine sisters, who are known for their radical hospitality, ecumenical monastery and care for the earth efforts, to celebrate their net zero journey with the inaugural Spring Solar Tilt event on April 17 from 1:15-2:15 pm, followed by an optional tour of the land from 2:15-3:45 pm. The new solar array …
New books in the library—April 2024
Enrich your mind and spirit—visit the monastery library! April 2024 The monastery library added the following books to its collection: Armstrong, Karen. Sacred Nature. New York: Alfred Knopf, 2022. Delio, Illia. The Not-Yet God. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2023. O’Murchu, Diarmuid. Ecological Spirituality. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2024. Punsalan-Manlimos, Catherine. “Why We Can’t Wait.” Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2023. Torvend, Samuel. Monastic Ecological Wisdom. Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2023.
April phenology
By Sylvia Marek Phenology is a science focused on observing and recording biological events from year to year and their relationships to the change of seasons and climate. These are the “normal” phenology events we expect to see here and in the Madison area this month. We would love to hear about what you are seeing on the grounds of Holy Wisdom Monastery. Please comment on this post with what you are observing, where at Holy Wisdom and the date you observed the event. No month ends or begins overnight. Events can be a few weeks early or late. “For …
Colleen Hartung’s Homily from Palm Sunday, March 24, 2024
Palm Sunday, March 24, 2024 Bearing Witness: What is left for us to do Colleen D. Hartung Palm Sunday at HWM is high ritual framed by a bountiful proclamation of the Word. We expect it. It is part of our ritual pattern. But I realized for the first time as I was researching and sorting through this abundance for today’s homily that our tradition of juxtaposing the readings of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem with the reading of the Passion is not a universal practice across Christian denominations. After figuring this out, I did a quick survey of my neighborhood …
Open yourself up to new experiences at Holy Wisdom Monastery
Our mission is to weave prayer, hospitality, justice and care for the earth into a shared way of life. Here are some of the ways we invite you to live our mission with us. Prayer Holy Wisdom Monastery offers opportunity for spiritual growth every day of the week. Offerings include engaging in communal prayer, spending time in nature, attending a program or joining one of our spiritual communities, Oblates of Holy Wisdom Monastery, Center for Clergy Renewal or Sunday Assembly. Hospitality Our Benedictine tradition of hospitality means that all people are welcomed here as Christ. We invite you to experience this …
Patti LaCross’s Homily from March 17, 2024
Six months of remotely watching the bombing, displacing, and starving of Palestinians in Gaza has been exhausting: How much more can they survive? How can the whole world watch this horror and not stop it? And when it ends, how can life, and eventually hope, be restored? It’s an unfathomable challenge. Yet people of all faiths and cultures throughout millenia learn that hope is necessary for life to continue. In the aftermath of the Babylonian conquest and destruction of Jerusalem, Jeremiah witnessed the terror he had warned of: the kingdom of Judah and Jerusalem destroyed, the Israelites crushed and removed …
Jim Penczykowski’s Homily from March 10, 2024
Liturgical tradition gives this Sunday the title of “laetare” or “rejoice” Sunday based on its midpoint in the season of Lent and the opening word of the entrance antiphon. Alas, the scripture passages in this cycle of Lent do not come anywhere near rejoicing, at least at first blush. But good news awaits. Psychotherapists frequently ask, “How do you feel about that?” Persons undergoing psychotherapy frequently have difficulty identifying and naming feelings or emotions. One psychotherapist of my acquaintance banned only one response to her prompt about feelings. She banned her patients from saying, “I feel confused.,” because she contended …
David McKee’s Homily from March 3, 2024
Third Sunday of Lent March 3, 2024 Exodus 20:1-17 1 Corinthian 1:18-25 John 2:13-22 Well, it’s been a difficult few weeks trying to come up with something meaningful to say this morning about our readings. It’s one of those times when there doesn’t seem to be any common thread that ties the texts together; or at least I couldn’t find one. Faced with that fact, I found myself attracted to the passage from Paul’s letter to the Christ-followers in Corinth. Still, after reading a bunch of commentaries on the text, and pondering and taking notes distractedly for many hours, I …