Br. Chrysostom Sica (17') was professed a Benedictine monk on January 15th, 2025, at the Basilica of Our Lady Help of Christians in Belmont, NC. May God continue to bless him as he walks the path of this sacred vocation!
(From Belmont Abbey College)
| " On January 15, 2025, Br. Chrysostom Sica professed his Final Vows as a monk of Belmont Abbey. And hearing him pronounce this commitment, those of us gathered in the basilica recognized a pervasive solemnity. A sacredness that set this moment meaningfully apart in time. We knew it to be significant in the true sense of the word: as a sign that must anchor and define both what preceded it and what will follow after. At least since the time of the Old Testament patriarchs, we tend to see covenant as belonging to Christ alone. But this Mass of Solemn Profession evoked a moving and convicting reality: that God renews His holy covenant with Christ in us. That the final vow of a vocation takes this irrevocably up and chooses to abandon the self to a terrible and transformative beauty. On Wednesday evening we encountered the outward signs of this covenant as Josh Sica embraced with wholehearted permanence a kind of death to self, bowing his head for the cowl and assuming his blessed vocation as Br. Chrysostom. Josh was first and essentially a son and brother, a friend, cousin, grandson, and nephew. But Br. Chrysostom has laid down, in a vital sense, this former life - leaving family and all attachments - for Christ in the life of this community. By his sacrificing all other things - good and wonderful things - for Christ, these very goods take on a sacrificial resonance that does not, in fact, leave Br. Chrysostom but wreathes his sacred vow and the life springing from it. Just as his parents, his family, his loved ones helped to form him in his journey, now they also participate in the richness of grace with which he offers himself to God anew. Br. Chrysostom’s vocation reached a transfiguring milestone on Wednesday, beyond which nothing can ever really be the same, transformed beyond what we can see or understand. But by the mystery of God’s working, this vocation is also something grown in a seamless continuity with the love given and shared from the beginning of his life - and a flowering forth of all the circumstances of his earthly experience and personal history. Now, in a formal and essential way, Br. Chrysostom has invited Christ to be incarnate in him, to enter his personal history as He entered human history, and for the same reason. To be a sacrifice of Love for the salvation of the world. As Br. Chrysostom continues the journey of his vocation on a road forever changed, let us keep him and the whole of the Abbey community in our prayers. May God bring to fruition in them, and in us, all that He has promised." |