Homily of Fr. Theodore Trinko (IVE) during Holy Mass of the Fifth Anniversary of the Dedication of Saint Sharbel's Shrine, October 15, 2022
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As the Universal Church is celebrating Saint Teresa of Avila today, we gather here to commemorate the dedication of this shrine to Saint Sharbel. And the two of these Saints have a good deal in common: on the one hand they're both extremely popular.
Most of us have heard of Saint Teresa of Avila, she's very famous in the West - her writings, and the Carmelite Order she founded. But more and more Saint Sharbel, who is universally known in the East, is becoming known in the West as well. We get news or information, or we talk to people from all over this country and from South America as well, who know and love Saint Sharbel, and can testify to the power of his intercession. It's kind of ironic that both of these Saints fled from the world into their monasteries to be obscure, to be unknown, to be hidden. And after their death, the world flocks to them, the world talks about them, the world pays them more [...] than it does to most other important persons from their day and age. |
Fr. Theodore Trinko (IVE)
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Something else they have in common: both of them were great mystics; both of them were gifted with the experience of some truly extraordinary supernatural phenomena. Saint Sharbel, for his part, is somebody that we all know and love for the miracles that he worked. There's talk that he might have more miracles attributed to him than any other saint after his death; but also in his life he performed many miracles. God communicated to him on certain occasions a kind of authority or power over animals - like Saint Francis of Assisi - so that he, one time, just told the snake that was threatening his fellow monks to go away, and the snake slithered away at his bidding; or again he healed the sick, he interceded for a woman to conceive, he exercised demons, and he was instrumental in the spiritual conversion of many others. Saint Teresa of Avila as well was gifted with many extraordinary phenomena. Hers were of a more personal sort; they took place more in her time of prayer. She's somebody who would fall into ecstasy on a semi-regular basis. She experienced all kinds of different visions; she was a woman who went through the most sublime levels of prayer.
Another thing they have in common is that they were both contemplatives. Now, contemplative is not the same thing as a monk. A monk is somebody who's in a monastery; a contemplative is not the same thing as a cloistered nun living in her monastery behind the grill. A contemplative is someone who embraces a way of life which is conducive to contemplative prayer by removing the obstacles to it. The contemplative is somebody who embraces a particular way of life which is conducive, which leads to, which facilitates contemplative prayer by removing obstacles to it, in other words by saying that they were contemplative we're saying that they're individuals who dedicate themselves to prayer. And Saint Sharbel's life of prayer was truly extraordinary: the first thing he did when he woke up was he went to the chapel for five hours straight. When the other monks couldn't find him, they would look for him in the church.
One time, a monk, the sacristan, went to the Chapel to check on the sanctuary light, that we always have burning here, to see if it was still lit in the monastery, and he stumbled over Saint Sharbel who was praying at midnight in the Chapel. It wasn't uncommon to find him in complete ecstasy or sighing out loud during these times of mental prayer. Saint John Paul II was said to growl during his times of prayer. Saint Sharbel was sighing. He would be on his knees until his legs went numb, and he would also participate in communal prayer. So he spent a lot of his time in personal [...] spent time praying with the other monks, especially the breviary. And it was actually said that he would spend three hours of his day with these vocal prayers, just like all the other monks. But when he was alone he would say them out loud. He did that more when he was a hermit, and part of his monastic life required him to wake up at midnight and say some of these prayers, and he was always faithful to that.
He achieved that kind of prayer that Saint Teresa of Avila calls ‘recollection’. He was recollected, he was somebody who had that continual practice of the presence of God, he was always living with the awareness that God is there with him, he was somebody who didn't waste his time thinking about worldly distractions, or affairs or business. He was a man of God in what he did, what he said, and the way he lived. He was somebody who just talked about spiritual things because that's what's always on his mind. What comes out of your mouth is first in your head, and what comes out of your mouth usually represents what's in your head.
And so the more spiritual you are, the more you think about God, the more you talk about God. And so it's easy for somebody like Saint Sharbel to just always be talking about the Lord. For us, their example could be intimidating; five hours in the chapel on a daily basis is not something that many of us do, but it shouldn't be intimidating. There's a misconception where we think, ‘well I can't do everything the exact same way they did, so I can't do anything the way they did’, and that's not true. You are not supposed to do everything the exact same way they did things, but you are supposed to imitate those virtues that they practice in a heroic fashion. Those good habits that they had should be present in our lives as well. You know, nobody watches a professional football game and then goes into a depression because they're never going to make the NFL! and quite the opposite, on Thanksgiving when you watch football, you go out and you play football because you're inspired by these individuals whose level you will never reach.
And so when you see these individuals with these powerful prayer lives, you don't want to think, ‘oh I can't do it so why try?’, but rather, ‘okay let's do what we can, let us make that effort to become as much like Saint Sharbel and Saint Teresa of Avila as we can.’ Don't imitate their lives, but yes, imitate their virtues. What can you change in your life? What are some of the hindrances? What are the problems you have? What are the reasons for which you don't pray in a more contemplative fashion? Why is it that you're always distracted when you go to prayer? We want to get rid of the hindrances.
You can't go to the cloister, you can't live on the top of a mountain in Lebanon like Saint Sharbel - not everybody here has that luxury - but there are things that will make your life more prayerful. For example, are you always comfortable?
Do you try to alleviate any and all pain that you experience as soon as possible? Suffering can be very helpful for prayer, that's why the monks do it - they don't do it because they get a kick out of it, they do it to help them.
Media; how many hours a day do you spend on your phone? Do you get those weekly screen time reports? Because he might have spent five hours in the chapel. Now the question is: how many hours do we spend on our phones a day? Cutting that down is important.
News; how much time do you want to spend watching the news?
Sin - sin is going to kill your prayer life. Never make a peace treaty with sin. If you have sin in your life, that doesn't mean you can't pray. So long as you're resisting the sin, you are walking the right path. So long as you're fighting those temptations, so long as you pick yourself up after you fall down. It's the consensual, venial sins that kill prayer. So get rid of the bad things and put more good things into your life.
For example, a prayer routine, some regular practices; I pray in this way, in this place. Spiritual reading; what are you going to talk to the Lord about? When you show up to prayer, if you spend 23 hours of your day doing worldly things and then you show up for an hour of prayer, you're probably not going to be thinking about divine things. You're going to be thinking about what you did for the last 23 hours. So bring the Lord into your day by spiritual reading.
Practice silence every now and then and receive the sacraments as much as possible.
Let us ask that Our Lady of Lebanon might intercede for us, that we might imitate the virtue of prayer that Saint Sharbel and Saint Teresa of Avila practiced to such a heroic degree.
Another thing they have in common is that they were both contemplatives. Now, contemplative is not the same thing as a monk. A monk is somebody who's in a monastery; a contemplative is not the same thing as a cloistered nun living in her monastery behind the grill. A contemplative is someone who embraces a way of life which is conducive to contemplative prayer by removing the obstacles to it. The contemplative is somebody who embraces a particular way of life which is conducive, which leads to, which facilitates contemplative prayer by removing obstacles to it, in other words by saying that they were contemplative we're saying that they're individuals who dedicate themselves to prayer. And Saint Sharbel's life of prayer was truly extraordinary: the first thing he did when he woke up was he went to the chapel for five hours straight. When the other monks couldn't find him, they would look for him in the church.
One time, a monk, the sacristan, went to the Chapel to check on the sanctuary light, that we always have burning here, to see if it was still lit in the monastery, and he stumbled over Saint Sharbel who was praying at midnight in the Chapel. It wasn't uncommon to find him in complete ecstasy or sighing out loud during these times of mental prayer. Saint John Paul II was said to growl during his times of prayer. Saint Sharbel was sighing. He would be on his knees until his legs went numb, and he would also participate in communal prayer. So he spent a lot of his time in personal [...] spent time praying with the other monks, especially the breviary. And it was actually said that he would spend three hours of his day with these vocal prayers, just like all the other monks. But when he was alone he would say them out loud. He did that more when he was a hermit, and part of his monastic life required him to wake up at midnight and say some of these prayers, and he was always faithful to that.
He achieved that kind of prayer that Saint Teresa of Avila calls ‘recollection’. He was recollected, he was somebody who had that continual practice of the presence of God, he was always living with the awareness that God is there with him, he was somebody who didn't waste his time thinking about worldly distractions, or affairs or business. He was a man of God in what he did, what he said, and the way he lived. He was somebody who just talked about spiritual things because that's what's always on his mind. What comes out of your mouth is first in your head, and what comes out of your mouth usually represents what's in your head.
And so the more spiritual you are, the more you think about God, the more you talk about God. And so it's easy for somebody like Saint Sharbel to just always be talking about the Lord. For us, their example could be intimidating; five hours in the chapel on a daily basis is not something that many of us do, but it shouldn't be intimidating. There's a misconception where we think, ‘well I can't do everything the exact same way they did, so I can't do anything the way they did’, and that's not true. You are not supposed to do everything the exact same way they did things, but you are supposed to imitate those virtues that they practice in a heroic fashion. Those good habits that they had should be present in our lives as well. You know, nobody watches a professional football game and then goes into a depression because they're never going to make the NFL! and quite the opposite, on Thanksgiving when you watch football, you go out and you play football because you're inspired by these individuals whose level you will never reach.
And so when you see these individuals with these powerful prayer lives, you don't want to think, ‘oh I can't do it so why try?’, but rather, ‘okay let's do what we can, let us make that effort to become as much like Saint Sharbel and Saint Teresa of Avila as we can.’ Don't imitate their lives, but yes, imitate their virtues. What can you change in your life? What are some of the hindrances? What are the problems you have? What are the reasons for which you don't pray in a more contemplative fashion? Why is it that you're always distracted when you go to prayer? We want to get rid of the hindrances.
You can't go to the cloister, you can't live on the top of a mountain in Lebanon like Saint Sharbel - not everybody here has that luxury - but there are things that will make your life more prayerful. For example, are you always comfortable?
Do you try to alleviate any and all pain that you experience as soon as possible? Suffering can be very helpful for prayer, that's why the monks do it - they don't do it because they get a kick out of it, they do it to help them.
Media; how many hours a day do you spend on your phone? Do you get those weekly screen time reports? Because he might have spent five hours in the chapel. Now the question is: how many hours do we spend on our phones a day? Cutting that down is important.
News; how much time do you want to spend watching the news?
Sin - sin is going to kill your prayer life. Never make a peace treaty with sin. If you have sin in your life, that doesn't mean you can't pray. So long as you're resisting the sin, you are walking the right path. So long as you're fighting those temptations, so long as you pick yourself up after you fall down. It's the consensual, venial sins that kill prayer. So get rid of the bad things and put more good things into your life.
For example, a prayer routine, some regular practices; I pray in this way, in this place. Spiritual reading; what are you going to talk to the Lord about? When you show up to prayer, if you spend 23 hours of your day doing worldly things and then you show up for an hour of prayer, you're probably not going to be thinking about divine things. You're going to be thinking about what you did for the last 23 hours. So bring the Lord into your day by spiritual reading.
Practice silence every now and then and receive the sacraments as much as possible.
Let us ask that Our Lady of Lebanon might intercede for us, that we might imitate the virtue of prayer that Saint Sharbel and Saint Teresa of Avila practiced to such a heroic degree.
