SERMON SUNDAY NOVEMBER 17, 2024 -75TH ANNIVERSARY MEPKIN ABBEY

Dear brothers and sisters,

I wanted to start this sermon with a quotation of Thomas Merton but yesterday evening I read in the book on the history of Mepkin that was offered to me yesterday that Merton was very opposed to the idea of having a foundation here at Mepkin. He even said: ‘The very thought of that place on the Cooper River gives me the creeps.” He voted therefore against the foundation! So maybe it was a wrong idea of me to start this festive sermon with a quote of Thomas Merton but every saint has some difficult sides and later on he changed his mind! So, may he be forgiven!

In the year 1949, the year of the foundation of Mepkin, Merton was struggling with the meaning of his contemplative life. On 20 April 1949 he wrote: ‘The only reason for our existence is: to love.’ A few days after 21 monks from the community of Gethsemane left for South Carolina, on 17 November 1949, he wrote: ‘there is nothing to live for but God..’. The foundation happened without much fuss but it got Merton thinking about the meaning of a contemplative monastery. Let us do the same today! The only reason for the existence of a contemplative monastery is: to love!

When you arrive here at Mepkin you have an experience of being welcomed. Even before

you have seen or spoken to anyone, it is the beauty of the nature of this place that welcomes you. The beauty of nature brings you to the realization that you too, as part of God’s creation, may be there as He created, wanted and loved you. However, it is the beauty of creation that also brings you immediately to the truth. The truth about yourself but also the truth about the sad history of this place. Amidst the beauty, many tears of misery and injustice have flowed in this place. Tears that fell into the ground like drops of blood, crying out for recognition and reconciliation. The brothers of this abbey have heard that cry and that is why this place has also become a place of goodness.

Beauty, truth and goodness these are the elements that ensure that the monastery as a school of love becomes a place where the only reason for existence is: to love. The Irish

monks, the Celtic monks, of the 5th and 6th centuries called such places of beauty, truth and goodness ‘thin places’. The air in those places – according to their experience – was so thin that heaven and earth easily touched. Brothers and sisters, Mepkin Abbey is such a thin place where there seems to be no barrier between heaven and earth.

It brings me to that wonderful first reading of today. Jacob has fled from the wrath of his brother Esau. But as a stranger in a distant land, he discovered the beauty of his wife and children, the beauty of his possessions. But in that school of love, he discovered that the truth concerning his deceit and his bad relationship with his brother gnawed at him. He longed for reconciliation and with it the goodness of the other. A longing that will bring him into battle with God, himself and the other. A fight symbolized in the fight with the angel. A fight that will mark him forever. In that school of love, thanks to beauty, truth and goodness, he discovers: this is the place, the thin place, where God is present.

In the gospel, Jesus goes a step further. The thin place, where God and man meet, is not so much a physical place as it is every person. In the Cistercian community we want to live that: my brother, my sister – whether he/she lives inside or outside the community: he/she is the place of encounter between heaven and earth. He/she is the sacrament of God’s encounter. In living together, in the encounter, we may discover beauty, truth and goodness and thus the affirmation of Merton’s words: the only reason for our existence is: to love.

Dear brothers of Mepkin, thank you for your witness! Thanks to you but also to all those brothers who have lived and struggled in this place before you to make withGod’s help this place a thin place, a school of love where beauty, truth and goodness make it possible to discover the only reason for our existence: to love. I hope and pray you will continue to love in the school of charity! The world, the church, the Order needs you!