March 2024 News – Initial Profession of Br Aelred Edwin Kriel OHC

The highlight of the past month for us was certainly the Initial Profession of the Monastic Vow by Br Edwin, who has taken the religious name Br Aelred, by which he is now becoming known to us. The happy occasion took place during a noon Eucharist in the Volmoed chapel on Saturday 23 March. Having completed his novitiate, Br Aelred committed himself to live according to the threefold monastic vow of stability, conversion, and obedience, for an initial period of three years. Many of those from his family and friends in Worcester and other parts of the Anglican Diocese of False Bay, as well as from the Volmoed community, who had been present just over a year before to witness his Clothing as a Novice of the Order, were there to witness this joyful commitment. In addition to affirming his own sense of vocation to monastic life, and the fulfilment that comes from living into that vocation, Br Aelred has strengthened the life and witness of the monastic community, by adding his own presence to the variety of ways in which we pray and hope that God’s love will be made known through us. Br Scott preached the sermon at Br Aelred’s profession, the text of which can be found here.

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Sermon for the Initial Profession of Br Aelred 

The sermon, in my opinion, is really meant as a time to explore the Gospel. And we generally think of the Gospel as the books known as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Well, today I intend to talk only about the Gospel, the good news of Jesus, but I don’t intend to even mention Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John… 

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Sermon for the 5th Sunday of Lent – St Benedict’s Priory

Readings for the day

As Lent progresses we are called to turn our thinking from repentance, our work at the start of Lent, to focus on Jerusalem – specifically on Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem. Today’s scripture readings are clearly part of that shift.

The shift is not just a call to think literally about the city of Jerusalem and the pending crucifixion. Embedded within the shift is a call to change the way we think about God.

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Sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent

Scripture Readings

Today’s Gospel reading starts halfway through a conversation Jesus has been having with Nicodemus, the Pharisee who came to visit him at night. Nicodemus has been struggling with what Jesus has been saying about the need to be born again from above in order to enter the kingdom of God. Nicodemus knows that Jesus has come from God, and so he perseveres.

Whatever difficulty Nicodemus might have had with understanding Jesus, there was at least one thing that Jesus said that left an impression on him. Later, when a group of chief priests and Pharisees are trying to have Jesus arrested and have just cursed a crowd of people for believing in him, Nicodemus reminds them that their Law requires that they give everyone a hearing before judging them. Perhaps Nicodemus hoped that Jesus would have the same effect on them as he had on Nicodemus, if only they would listen to him.

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January/February 2024 News

The change from January to February brought with it a change in the monastic community. Br Edwin returned to us after 4 months at our Holy Cross Monastery in the USA. Br Luc accompanied him, and will be with our local community for almost 3 months. Br Josias departed on the plane that Brs Edwin and Luc had just arrived on.

Br Josias will be visiting the monastic community at Holy Cross Monastery for a little over 2 months, living as a member of the novitiate there during that period. While in the USA, he has recently been interviewed by our Order’s Council, which has approved his application to make his initial profession of the monastic vow, which will take place after he returns to us.

Since his return from the USA, Br Edwin has visited his family in Worcester for a week. He is to make his initial profession here at Volmoed on Saturday 23 March, taking the religious name Aelred. Please pray for him as he prepares to make this joyous commitment.

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Sermon for 5th Sunday after Epiphany

Readings for the day

Some passages in the Gospels all but preach themselves… today’s passage from Mark is not one of those passages… Some passages grab us with inspiring prose… and also, today’s passage is not one of those… I find this passage from Mark pedestrian at best. And as I looked around the internet at other people’s sermons for today, I discovered that I’m not alone. For many this Gospel passage seems to sit somewhere between dull and annoying.

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December 2023/January 2024 News

Having entered the monastic community on 15 July last year, Mpumelelo Khambule completed his six-month Postulancy and was clothed as a Novice in the habit of the Order on Saturday 20 January. The happy event was witnessed by numerous people from the residential and dispersed Volmoed community. John and Isobel de Gruchy also represented the Associates of the Order. Two members of the Community of Jesus’ Compassion (CJC) in KZN, Mo Yeki and Sr Ntombi, travelled to Volmoed for the occasion. CJC is the religious community with whom Br Mpumelelo lived for a time before joining our monastic community. They nurtured his initial discernment of a monastic vocation, and so it was wonderful that they could be with us as he entered the next stage of his initial monastic formation. Mati Mzamo, a friend of CJC who used to spend time at our former monastery outside Makhanda (Grahamstown) in the Eastern Cape, has relocated to the Western Cape and it was lovely that she could also attend Br Mpumelelo’s clothing ceremony.

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Thursdays at Volmoed – Sermon for the Conversion of St Paul the Apostle

Scripture Readings

Today in the Church calendar is the feast day of the Conversion of St Paul the Apostle. Last Thursday was the feast day of the Confession of St Peter the Apostle. What with one being designated the apostle to the Gentiles and the other the apostle to the Jews, the week in between has been dedicated to an intensification of prayer for Christian unity.

The story of Paul’s conversion is very prominent in the New Testament. The story itself is told three times in various ways in the Acts of the Apostles, the last of which telling we heard this morning. We also heard Paul allude to it in his letter to the Galatians, as he does in several of his other letters.

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Sermon for the First Sunday after Christmas

Scripture Readings

The Gospel of John has no shepherds directed by angels nor magi guided by a star. There is no baby born to bewildered parents. Instead, we are given what seems closer to a God’s eye view of the Christmas story. The eternal Word of God, the One through whom all things were made and by whom all things are sustained, came into the world, becoming flesh and blood and living among us, in the form of Jesus Christ. The details of how it all came about seem not to matter much to John the Evangelist, the mystic who seems more interested in what it all means.

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Feast of Holy Innocents – Volmoed 2023

Readings for the day

Today a few things come together that may not seem to have much in common. We are in the Octave of Christmas. And today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents, which is part of Matthew’s story of Jesus’ birth. It is also, as chance would have it, the twentieth anniversary of my Monastic Profession in the Order of the Holy Cross.  

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