Category Archive

Homily for the Feast of the Holy Trinity, June 4, 2023, Holy Wisdom Monastery, Middleton, WI Beginning today we now navigate a long season of the church year after Pentecost which gets dubbed ingloriously as “ordinary time.” This nearly full half year of the calendar begins and ends with two days whose origins do not arise from actual events like Christmas or Easter but are based upon abstract concepts, ideas, or more likely on later doctrine developed by the church. Ordinary Time closes on the Sunday just before Advent begins as the Reign of Christ, celebrating a cosmic Christ, the …

In last week’s reading from Acts, Jesus commissions his followers to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth and  promises to send the Spirit upon them to empower them for this mission. In  today’s reading from Acts this promise is fulfilled. The Jesus community is has a mystical experience that awakens in us an awareness of the presence and power of God within us. This awareness gives the community courage and confidence to share Jesus’ message of the coming Reign of God with a hostile world.             We see the beginning of this witness in the second scene …

Ascension Sunday 5/21/23 Holy Wisdom Monastery Sunday Assembly – Nancy R Enderle, Homilist Psalm 47    Acts 1:1-11 Ephesians1:15-23    Matthew 28:16-20 As I reflected on the beautiful passages shared for this, the last Sunday of Eastertide and the Celebration of Christ’s Ascension, I was reminded of something Ram Das, an inter-faith spirituality teacher said in one of his dharma talks which was recorded for the podcast Here and Now. (Podcast #68) The talk, which had been recorded years ago on a Saturday following Good Friday, included reflections about the painful loss and limbo those first followers of Jesus were experiencing, and …

 5th Sunday in Easter • Acts 7:55–60 • 1 Peter 2:2–10 • John 14:1–14 • May 7, 2023 • Pluralism Sunday There’s a tree in the woods near me that I call the many-hearted tree. Since she has many forks about shoulder height, no matter what direction you approach from, you have the impression of a pair of arms raised in welcome, ready to enfold you where a heart would be. I was just passing by her the other day when I noticed the echo of today’s Gospel: “In my Abba-God’s house there are many dwelling places.” The word for …

Homily for the Third Sunday of EasterApr 23, 2023 Road to Emmaus-Sandra Dugruid There have been crucifixions, too, in our town–innocents gunned down in their doorways or in school halls; or radiations black outlines, three crosses marked a sisters chest: no wonder we walk in quiet rage, musing And who, on this road, will join us, seeming unaware of the worst news in the neighborhood, but spelling out the history of the prophets and a future: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory? Could our hearts still burn within us? Will we ask …

Happy Second week of Easter to each of you!  I hope you still cherish the reverberations of our worship last week. I was grateful that this week, when I felt troubled, my concerns were somehow reframed for me by echoes of the Exultet we sang in Saturday’s vigil. I’m grateful, too, for the wisdom of the early church, which set apart these days bridging Easter to Pentecost as Mystagogy:  Sacred time, to immerse ourselves in the mystery into which we were baptized. These 2 final pages of John’s Gospel hold both the Resurrection of Jesus and Pentecost’s outpouring of the …

Homily preached on Easter Sunday, April 9, 2023, at Holy Wisdom Monastery, Middleton, WI One of the characters in John Irving’s masterful novel A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY calls Easter “the main event” for Christians. He explains that any fool can feel like a Christian at Christmas, but that one who does not believe in the resurrection is not really a believer. To take this even further, Biblical scholars Borg & Crossan in their powerfully written overview of Jesus’ final days in Jerusalem (THE LAST WEEK) add this: “Without Easter, we wouldn’t know about Jesus” Ok, let that soak in …

EASTER VIGIL April 8, 2023 So, my friends, here we are at last…and here we are again.  At last we have come to the end of our 40-day journey through the desert of Lent; through the spiritual agony of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane; through the physical agony of his torture, crucifixion, and death; through the silence of the last 24 hours, waiting, not knowing.  And now, at last, we are here.  We are here, singing “Alleluia!”…the word that we gave up for Lent.  We are here, at last, rejoicing in the New Light, the New Life that is …

Good Friday Reflection – Holy Wisdom Monastery, April 7, 2023 Nancy Enderle John 19:16-30 We pause on this sacred day to stand together at the foot of the cross. For some, this day is etched deeply into our memories as we recall attending services across the years and across the many stages of our lives.  Others of us arrived from a less traveled path, and come to this sacred day in this holy place to establish a new rhythm of listening to and honoring the passion of Christ. What each of us brings to this Good Friday is impacted by …

March 26, 2023 Reflecting on this gospel after the death of her husband 5 years ago, Jan Richardson wrote: When we suffer an agonizing loss, something of us goes into the grave. As we wrestle with our grief, we will be visited by questions about what new life waits for us. We will find ourselves faced with a choice: will we gather the graveclothes more tightly around ourselves, or will we respond to the voice of Christ, who stands at the threshold and calls us to come out? The choosing is not to be rushed. We need to give the …