Author: Sean
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Blessed Among Women (Annunciation)
The scene we just heard from Luke’s gospel is a familiar one to anyone who regularly prays the Angelus. For a time, I prayed it twice a day, six days a week while a brother with the SSJE. The community’s tower bell rings the Angelus daily at noon, three hundred and sixty three days a…
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Take Him At His Word
Easter has always captivated my imagination—even in my days as an angry atheist, convinced that such miraculous events are of course impossible. Yet, in this season of my life, marked as it is by bereavement, scarred by the awful and unanticipated absence of my late parents, Easter—with all its accompanying hope and joy—has been less…
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A Grace We Cannot Own
This evening’s lections highlight for us a very important dual reality about what we might call “the Religious world-view.” The passages from Zechariah and Psalm 87 remind us that the beauty and goodness of religion have real power to bring people into a relationship with the Divine. Here a context is disclosed where the abundance…
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Who Is Your Lord? Where Is Your Joy?
Enter into the joy of your master. This solitary phrase from twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew’s gospel has rung like a bell through my praying imagination this week. As he discloses what we commonly call “The Parable of the Talents,” this phrase rings twice from the lips of Matthew’s Jesus. Enter into the joy of your…
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A Love that Reckons Us Righteous (Lent 2A)
O Lord God, how am I to know?1 Does Abram’s prayer sound familiar to you? Do you ever find yourself saying or thinking these words? Do you sometimes feel embarrassed or ashamed even to ask them? O Lord God, how am I to know? For myself, I find these words of Abram often rise in…
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A Temple Built for All (Candlemas)
“When the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord.” Today, with St. Luke the Evangelist, the church recalls Jesus’ presentation in the temple at Jerusalem: the place where the presence of YHWH was understood to dwell, where heaven and…
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Providential Awkwardness
Friday after the AscensionPsalm 98:1–4John 19:20–23a This sermon was originally preached by Br. Sean Glenn [then, a novice of the ssje] on Friday, May 11, 2018 at the Conventual Church of St. Mary & St. John, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sing to the Lord a new song.2 The Psalmist exhorts us to sing a song we’ve never…
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Blessed Among Women (Annunciation)
The scene we just heard from Luke’s gospel is a familiar one to anyone who regularly prays the Angelus. For a time, I prayed it twice a day, six days a week while a brother with the SSJE. The community’s tower bell rings the Angelus daily at noon, three hundred and sixty three days a…
-
Take Him At His Word
Easter has always captivated my imagination—even in my days as an angry atheist, convinced that such miraculous events are of course impossible. Yet, in this season of my life, marked as it is by bereavement, scarred by the awful and unanticipated absence of my late parents, Easter—with all its accompanying hope and joy—has been less…
-
A Grace We Cannot Own
This evening’s lections highlight for us a very important dual reality about what we might call “the Religious world-view.” The passages from Zechariah and Psalm 87 remind us that the beauty and goodness of religion have real power to bring people into a relationship with the Divine. Here a context is disclosed where the abundance…
-
Who Is Your Lord? Where Is Your Joy?
Enter into the joy of your master. This solitary phrase from twenty-fifth chapter of Matthew’s gospel has rung like a bell through my praying imagination this week. As he discloses what we commonly call “The Parable of the Talents,” this phrase rings twice from the lips of Matthew’s Jesus. Enter into the joy of your…
-
A Love that Reckons Us Righteous (Lent 2A)
O Lord God, how am I to know?1 Does Abram’s prayer sound familiar to you? Do you ever find yourself saying or thinking these words? Do you sometimes feel embarrassed or ashamed even to ask them? O Lord God, how am I to know? For myself, I find these words of Abram often rise in…
-
A Temple Built for All (Candlemas)
“When the time came for their purification according to the Law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord.” Today, with St. Luke the Evangelist, the church recalls Jesus’ presentation in the temple at Jerusalem: the place where the presence of YHWH was understood to dwell, where heaven and…
-
Providential Awkwardness
Friday after the AscensionPsalm 98:1–4John 19:20–23a This sermon was originally preached by Br. Sean Glenn [then, a novice of the ssje] on Friday, May 11, 2018 at the Conventual Church of St. Mary & St. John, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Sing to the Lord a new song.2 The Psalmist exhorts us to sing a song we’ve never…