Homily for the Exaltation of the Cross and the Profession of Monastic Vows
One of the fads of our time is the "makeover."
The idea is that one can put oneself into the hands
of the expert stylist,
who will give a new hairdo,
or a new set of clothes,
a totally new look, a fresh, vital persona.
And that somehow this will be transformative.
It depends on the belief
that others can see parts of ourselves that we are unaware of,
or can see us in a new way.
Somehow out of all of this
a new person will emerge.
And of course, because we are an impatient culture
this will be done in a matter of hours.
All you need is a good credit card.
Saint Benedict would cast a pretty cold eye on this kind of process
and the assumptions that underlie it.
You can put a habit on in a few minutes
but it takes a lifetime to become a monk.
I think he would argue that deep change ultimately has to come from the inside out,
that while others can truly see things in us that are grace-filled,
or can help us see our shadow side more clearly,
that we need to appropriate those insights and make them our own.
This is done over the long haul, over a lifetime.
And it will involve conversion,
letting the "false self" die,
so that the true self can emerge.
By "false self' I mean the agendas
that become part of our being at an early age.
This agenda surely includes understandings of what it means to be happy
and where happiness can be found;
the role of our sexuality in being whole and happy;
what success is and the desire for success, or our fear of failure;
the desire for control, power, and fame.
From a Christian point of view,
whether we are in or out of the monastery
we will have to let this false self die
in order to let the true self emerge,
the self that God has in mind for each one of us.
This letting go of false self is usually a sequence of many small deaths,
that follow the pattern of Jesus in the Philippians hymn.
The heart of this hymn is the experience of the cross,
the kenosis, the self-emptying of God's Son.
The shadowy figure who stands behind the hymn is Adam,
an Adam created in the image and likeness of God,
who misunderstood his position,
who thought that divinity was something that had to be "grasped."
As the serpent said so dishonestly,
"O no, you're not gonna die!
No, no, no, God knows well that the moment you eat of it,
you will be like gods
who know what is good and what is bad.
Because you are so talented, God is already nervous...."
In trying to seize divinity, Adam lost it.
Christ, the true Adam, understood that divinity was already his
by virtue of his relationship with God.
Nevertheless, Jesus empties himself.
Christ becomes the last Adam,
the Adam that gives life.
As the new Adam,
Jesus reveals God's compassionate love.
The verb keno means "to empty," to "make void, of no effect."
It is a graphic description of the completeness
of Christ's self-renunciation.
It could be translated "he made himself powerless."
As the hymn puts it, he took the form of a slave, a doulos,
one who has no rights or privileges,
who does not own even his or her own body.
There is no greater distance than that between kyrios and doulos.
Theologian Louis-Marie Chauvet notes
that "the cross was not a temporary setback."
It was and remains a real erasure,
a crossing out,
"an eclipse in which the true humanity of the divine God
is revealed to us."
"We sometimes forget in the joy of the resurrection,
that on the Cross,
Christ dies in bad company.
He is co-crucified among criminals,
tormented, rejected, expelled, eclipsed, expunged, erased,
crossed out and double-crossed,
sacrificed, reduced to a 'less than human' icon of pain and derision."
And yes, this ruined, ravished humanity of ours
belongs to the very divinity of a God
whose name is kenosis,
voluntary abasement, emptiness, nullification, pouring out, making void.
In this emptying,
Jesus empties himself of anything
that would smack of success, power, or control
as measured by human standards.
In his emptied state he is completely of God.
That is why Jesus jumps all over Peter
when Peter says to him,
"Lord, stop talking about this dying on a cross —
you are a healer — you've got the power."
I emphasize the emptying because it makes clearer
why the disciples have such a hard time
with Jesus the Crucified One being the Messiah.
Nothing in their tradition or experience prepared them
for a Messiah who dies such a cruel and shameful death.
And despite their bad behavior, they loved this Jesus.
By contrast, our age does not know what to do with the resurrection.
We know a lot about violence, abasement, humiliation, loss, and suffering.
All we have to do is look around our world — it is everywhere.
But we have a hard time imagining genuine transformation.
Without a clear sense of resurrection and transformation
Jesus is just another good, innocent man who was beaten to death.
Tragic but not redemptive.
In the Incarnation we celebrate that God,
who already gives of self in the creation,
and who in Jesus becomes small, becomes human, becomes touchable.
In the resurrection Jesus becomes Christ;
he becomes once again the Cosmic Christ.
He is once again the Lord
to whom every knee bows,
in heaven, on earth, and under the earth.
This is who this Jesus truly is — it is his true self.
By following on this path of dying and rising,
of letting of the false self,
that agenda for success, happiness, power, and control,
we discover our true selves.
Who God made us to be in the first place,
emerges as the true, new self.
Saint Benedict would argue that this is the real make-over,
and while it does take longer than a few hours,
the path is surer
and no credit card is needed.
Abbot John Klassen, OSB
September 14, 2005
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