It was the very edge of civilization, this village, this well. The white hot dust of anonymity swirls, specter-like, a host of ghosts, dancing through noon-heat ravaged places. She comes in the heat of the day to be alone at the well, with her thoughts, with her past, with her doubts. She hopes to find no one there. But he is there. The stranger is there. The Jewish man, the foreigner, the threat.
Their conversation sounds like idle banter, echoing off the stone walls of the well and then -- She tells a lie about herself. And he tells her the truth about herself.
Now she must tell what she knows:
Here is a man who told me everything I ever did.
Here is a man who tells us everything we ever did.
How does God know us?
He knew us before we were born. Before our first gasping, our first mewing, his designing finger traced providence in the sand of our souls. He saw the grasping babe and pronounced it very good. He schemed. He planned. He envisioned.
He knew us in our toddling years. We struggled to stand as if we could ever stand on our own. He placed his omnipotent hand in the small of our infant backs. He looked with the Father’s love on us, a big brother’s pride. He prodded, pushed, he plied. He let go and fretted. He watched us walk, run, walk away, run away. We guarded our childhood games as we dressed up in the rags of independence. We tried to hide, and he pretended to seek, but only pretended, because he knew us.
He knew us as we learned to sin, experimented with the little league vices of bullying, petty theft, the lie, and then, more. Accusation, ridicule, derisive laughter, the easy target, then we’re the target. We learned to inflict pain in the most painful places, twisting the blade of self-image in to the hilt.
He knew us in our confusion as we struggled with relationships, with vocation, family.
He knows us in our doubt in those moments of shear panic when we can hardly remember where we have been, hardly recognize ourselves in the mirror, and believe without utterance that God is dead.
He knows us in our selfishness, our grasping, our groping through the treasure troves of self-promotion, gripping tightly to the handles of a golden cup called ego.
He knows us in our compulsiveness, our complacentness, our neediness, our laziness, our restlessness. our carelessness
Here is a man who told me everything I ever did. He knows us more ingloriously than we know ourselves. He knows what lies hidden in the secret recesses of our hearts, our imaginations, our histories. He knows us. How can he who formed the heavens from nothing and placed the water in the well, and stirred the white dust through those noon-hot perilous streets not know us? Can he whose gaze penetrated the cosmos not see through our lies?
And still the words come: Drink and live!
Drink, drink injured soul from the source of healing itself, feel your wounds tightening as you learn from me, listen to me. Feel the open skin of your injuries, your self-inflicted injuries close around the balm of providence.
Slake your thirst, your insatiable thirst for truth, for faith, for love, for authenticity, for respect by speaking the truth, living the faith, loving the unloved, being authentic and respecting your fellow men and women.
Satiate yourself at this well with the liquor of the intellect, the pure draught of spiritual renewal, the cordial of conversion, the living water of service and sacrifice. Imbibe, drink, drown yourselves in the flood of baptismal water that flows from the pierced side of Jesus.
Drink and live!
Live into the mystery of salvation that is the unfettered, love of God, that bottomless well of grace, mercy, forgiveness,
Live and find real meaning in your life, meaning that commandeers the quixotic wanderings of pleasure, happiness, liberty, freedom.
Brothers and sisters, today we discover ourselves at the very edge of civilization, this village, this well, this place called Saint Meinrad.
We might like to view this village in all of its pristine, Potemkin perfection, but we know its dark recesses, we know the secret places where uncertainty lurks. We know its sharp corners where we are likely to careen into each other. We know the hazards of turning down the dark unfamiliar alleys of new knowledge, of formation, of chance taking, of authentic prayer.
This community is a community of real people, of flesh and blood people, of striving people, of fallen people, of hopeful people, of desperate people, of hiding people, of shame-filled people and of difficult people, proud people, set-in-their-ways people, docile people, belligerent people.
But this is also a community that longs for something more, something greater.
Why have you come here? To learn a little something, to take a little drink, to get a little wet?
Or to be transformed, converted, changed forever?
That change which we want will never come without some growing pains, some setting aside of opinions, some listening, some benefiting of the doubting.
Today and every day we are called to raise our gaze and see that shimmering ray of light, the light of revelation, the light of authentic humanity, the light of the Word made flesh that pierces the white hot dust of anonymity and shines, beams on this well, the well of divine offer, the well of suppliance, the well of the formation, the opportunities we experience here.
Here is that well and in this place we find out the truth about ourselves in our common life, our academic pursuit, our prayer and our celebration of the source and summit of our reality, the Eucharist.
In this Eucharist is the source of life where the words of the Gospel are proclaimed without compromise, words that speak peace in a world torn apart by war, words that utter calm in a landscape quaked by natural disaster, words that give solace. The words of Christ.
In this Eucharist is the source of all being in which the First Cause insinuates himself into the tight form of bread and wine, the bread of angels, the wine of the new and eternal covenant.
In this Eucharist that well, that fountain of mercy pours out over us, comforting and sustaining. We need it so desperately not only for ourselves but that others may drink and live. Take that drink to them. Give back to them what you have received at this well, this font of grace.
Give to the hungry. Give to the naked. Give to the desperate. Give to the outcast. Give to the ones who wander aimlessly through towns and villages, not trodding the path of salvation but bound on other journeys, journeys of thirst, journeys whose name we can only speak with shame. Bring that living water of faith and love to your tired brothers and sisters here. The good news is not only what we have received from the Jesus who knows us, but the gift we have of giving that back to others so that this well of salvation, flowing down from the Father of Lights, cascading, careening, gaining momentum becomes a tsunami of salvation, flooding the dark places of our collective landscape, filling in the furrows wrought by our sins, bubbling up with the promise of the future even in the midst of remembrances of things past. Do this in memory of me. Here is the Lamb of God. Lord I am not worthy to have you come under my roof, in this village, at this well, but only say the word and I shall be healed.

Last evening, 29 of our brothers professed their ordination promises. Here is the homily:


Deacon and Priesthood Promises – 2011
St. Thomas Aquinas Chapel

Tonight we celebrate with our brothers their public acknowledgement of the promises they will make in their ordination. For our Third Year men, this is a new beginning. For our deacons, it is a continuation toward that goal to which the Lord has been leading time for years.

There are so many things that could be said tonight, that might be explained.

This evening, we could meditate on the declaration of freedom, waxing philosophically about the meaning of freedom, the quidity of freedom, the very possibility of freedom in a world enthralled by a bastardized notion of liberty. We know all too well how personal freedom is compromised by cultural bias, individual flaws, and original sin.

We could speak lofty words tonight about the oath of fidelity. Keeping a promise for life is a rare commodity in our world today. Every day we witness, many of us first-hand, the ephemeral nature of families, marriages, communities and religious vocations. We see the struggles our brothers and sisters around us make in keeping commitments. We all know something of both the statistics and the real human toll those statistics take. Trusting an authority is equally precarious. We have a great suspicion of institutions, a suspicion that sometimes confounds our ability to be faithful.

We could offer high sounding phrases about the profession of faith, but we know the value of our creed, we know the blood that stains each word of this holy testament, we know how its syllables connect us to all of those men and women, those saints of God who have professed it while endless ages have rolled. We know how these prophetic words have struck and stung the scorpions of human pride. We know how their utterance has confounded heresy and the tyranny of human ambitions. We know how they draw us back to the waters of our baptism, where we rejected one world and promised to live for another, a kingdom of this world, and a kingdom of the world to come.

We could go on about all of that, but let’s not. Neither these men nor we need to be reminded of the serious nature of the obligations that are voicing tonight or the kind of promises they are soon to profess. Instead, I would like to do something quite novel this evening, that is, stand back and look at the Gospel.

Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be open to you.

Let’s begin by going back a bit, back to the beginning, back to the days when these men first experienced the call that has brought them here tonight?

How did it all begin?

Perhaps in childhood, playing mass with Ritz crackers and Kool-aid. In the dulcet tones of childhood, the utterance of God insinuated itself into the mind of the boy: “Be mine. Live for me and my Church. Ask and receive.”

Perhaps in adolescence, in a sensitivity which often alludes that season of life, in an unusual caring for others, a kindness in the face of ridicule, and the voice of God speaks: “Follow me rather than the crowd. Take your chances with me rather than the dangerous path of self-fulfillment. Listen to me and not the clamor of commerce. Seek and you will find.”

Perhaps that call came in the fervor of conversion, in sickness over a life lived apart from God, apart from his Church. Perhaps it came in the light of an early morning, in a searing revelation that there is more to life than pleasure, more than the grind of personal pursuit. There is suffering in the world that is more than my suffering, heartache in the world more than my natural disasters.

Perhaps it came in influences, a parent, a grandparent whose aching knees and gnarled beaded hands implored the Master of the Harvest. Send my son. Or perhaps a priest whose life was not showy or remarkable but who prayed his office, visited the sick, said Mass, buried the dead, and said to a lost young man, “Have you ever thought of …?” knock and the door will be opened.

Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be open to you.

God asked, He sought, He knocked upon the door of our hearts and we answered, tentatively at first, seeking outlandish signs, sweating mightily in the heat of discernment that was nothing more than self-deception, doubting, affirming, doubting again, then gaining confidence as the symphony of formation tuned, rehearsed and then performed its mounting song.

All of us hear have heard something of that call, something of that symphonic music echoing against the walls of cynicism and fear and doubt. The words of the Lord have been clear to us all: “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men”, and here we are, standing here, not only these brothers but all of us, gathered here tonight, standing on the promises of God.

Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be open to you.

Brothers and sisters as we gather here tonight, we are able to gather here tonight because God is true to His word.

My brothers you gather tonight to make your promises to God, and that is truly wonderful. More wonderful however is the promise that God intends to make to you tonight.

Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be open to you.

Ask God for the grace to help you persevere in your vocation.

Ask and you will receive the endless of support of as yet faceless men and women and children, the ragged Church who will desire to support your vocation in a thousand as yet un-named, unimagined ways. You will experience this support in the pressing of calloused hands, the tremor of feeble lips, the whisper of encouraging words, the card, the cash, the hotdish, the wave, the bow of the head. Father you are loved. We need you. We will overlook your little quirks and flaws, even though we probably should not. We will give you everything because you have given us one thing: the overwhelming love of God.

Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be open to you.


Seek the grace to live a celibate life because that is what many of you fear.
Seek and you will find the love of all because you want to love. Love in the name of Christ, love in the name of His holy Church. Love in the eyes of the old and the dying seized with mortal anguish at the threshold of the awesomeness of eternity, love in the sparkle of the newlyweds, love in the embrace of little ones, in the handholding of the housebound, the trembling grasp of the grieving. Love without compromise and without cost. Love the unlovable, the outcast, the beggar, the difficult parishioner. Love with all your hearts and you will never be lonely, never lacking in friends. His love, as you give it away, will be sufficient for you. Love with the conviction that God alone will turn our mourning into gladness and our sorrows into wholeness.
Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be open to you.

Knock upon the door of faith in your dark hours, with your back to the wall.

Knock and the door of faith will be opened to you by a myriad of faith-filled men and women running the marathon of life, running with blinders on toward the heavenly Jerusalem. Ask for faith and the Lord will give you examples of simple faith in old ladies and young fathers that will put your sophisticated faith to shame. They gather quietly each day, opening the Church, putting out the vessels, praying the rosary too fast and too loud, catching a moment of prayer between soccer games and ballet lessons, confessing simple sins over and over, asking hard questions for which there are not catachismic, canonical answers, seeking the Truth in a swirling whirlwind of lies, knocking upon the door of the Church, assured of a ready answer or a ready harbor.

Brothers and sisters the miracle of the promises made here tonight is not only that our brothers are making them, but that God is making them. And that is true for us all.

We ask and God answers. We seek and God provides. We knock and the opportunity for service, for vocation, for living truly authentic lives is opened to us. I hope that is what we represent in this community of faith.

For some of you, your time spent at Saint Meinrad is coming to a close. In a few months you deacons will leave this Hill for the last time. You will no longer have the daily support of seminary life to keep you faithful to the promises you make. You will have to be sustained by humility, the humility to ask, to seek, to knock. God will be true to His word. He will give you the strength to be true to yours. Yes brothers in a little while you will be going away, but we will remain, this community of faith, striving to do what we have always done. If you need Saint Meinrad in the coming months or years you need only ask, seek, knock upon our door and you will find us ready to answer and open the door to invite you in, just as the Lord Jesus opens the door of his Body and Blood to us in this Eucharist. We sustain ourselves by that promise.

Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be open to you.

Now do not be afraid. The promise is guaranteed.

Ladies and gentlemen, please direct your attention to the front of the room where the rector will point out some of the safety features of this seminary chapel.

A safety information card may be found in the seat pockets beside you, please take a few moments to review the information in this card.

There are seven emergency exits located in this seminary chapel, one at the front of the chapel, one at the rear and five on the side.
Please take a moment to locate the exit nearest you, remembering that the nearest exit may be behind you.
In the event of an emergency, one of our flight attendants will direct you to the nearest exit.
To fasten your seatbelt …
In the unlikely event of a water landing …
In the unlikely event of a change in chapel pressure …
This is a non smoking chapel …

Perhaps I have been flying too much lately.
I often feel a little sorry for the poor flight attendants who go through the motions on every flight. No one ever reviews the safety information cards, people will not power off their portable electronic devices. Seat backs remain in their forlorn reclining positions. There seems to be a pervasive attitude among airline customers that, none of the rules of flying really apply to me.

I often think of Ash Wednesday as a kind of airplane safety announcement. Every time we begin our flight on the friendly Lenten skies, we get the admonition: Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.
We hear the words of the prophet:
Even now, says the LORD,
return to me with your whole heart,
with fasting, and weeping, and mourning;
Rend your hearts, not your garments,
and return to the LORD, your God.

We get the lecture from Jesus in St. Matthew's Gospel:
Pray, give alms, fast.
Do not let you left hand know what your right is doing.

We have heard all of this before. We have been here before. We have experienced this before and like a spiritual déjà vu we shake it off, deciding instead to pursue the Sky Mall magazine which we feel free to take with us as we deplane because you never know when you are going to have a hankering for a set of pet stairs or an inflatable palm tree.

What is Lent in the popular imagination? I propose that it is an unheeded season.
What you are giving up for Lent?
OK how can I get out of that?
What are the laws that govern these practices?
Liver sales drop precipitously, candy stock is depleted on Wall Street, fifteen varieties of Iranian beer are consigned to a refrigerated nether world.

Trumpets are blows, faces are besmirched with the dirt of resentment, room doors are flung open to display the flagrant acts of asceticism taking place within.
We commit ourselves to our good works
We submit our robust flesh to the whiplash of PX 39
We strive to be the biggest losers

And in all of this unheard of sacrifice and heroic neglect of self, what happens?
Nothing of course
And all of this is accompanied by the rhetoric and cadences of a spiritual Jansenism, let us weep, let us fall, let us mourn, let us wail.

Was it always so with Lent?

In the early Church, Lent was the season of the catechumenate. It was an adult season, a season of discovery and wonder that led the catechumens out of the Egypt of sin into the bright promise of a heavenly Jerusalem. It was a season of conversion and it still is for those men and women bouncing toward beatitude in the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults.
What if we could join the journey of our lives and our attitudes toward Lent with theirs?

I wonder what it would be like if we all received the creed anew each year, if we all received the Lord’s prayer with fresh eyes and voices, if we all underwent the scrutinies, if we could all approach the Table of the Lord with hearts aflame with the awe of new beginnings, seeing at this altar the very throne of God.

Where is Lent leading us?
What do we want to BE on the other side of Lent?
What destination are we aiming for in this annual flight of discipleship?

What if we could give alms and feel the pinch a little rather than scraping the bottom of the baggage of life for loose change to fling in the general direction of the unspecified poor.

What if we gave the alms of time, real time to help a brother in need, or listen to his sorrows?
Then we might gain alms for ourselves, the alms of a life lived in service, the alms of compassion, the alms of fulfilled necessity.

What if we could pray without constantly worrying about getting things done? What if we could learn to adore without watches? What if we gave God the time he deserves? What if the inner rooms of our hearts could be opened and the doors of our mouths could be closed? What if we talked more to our neighbors about the joy of prayer and less about the misery of seminary life?

Then we might find ourselves gaining softness in those open hearts Then we might find ourselves able to reveal our struggles and pains. Then we might learn to love with an unfeigned love.

What if we could fast without ostentation, deny ourselves a little, purify ourselves a little, learn to control our desires a little more? What if we fasted from something meaningful and by our fasting created new habits and eradicated that which is useless from our lives?

Then we might find the purity of mind to discover what Lent truly is: a season of opportunity, a season of promise, a season of pure joy for the grace that God has given us to really look at ourselves.

Do we expect to rise on Easter as different people or do we expect to just go back to eating liver, snarfing candy and drinking those Iranian brewskies?

Well, enough. It’s time to go. The wheels have gone down.

Ladies and gentlemen, the rector has illuminated the fasten seatbelt sign indicating our initial approach into Lent. Please insure your seatbacks and kneelers are in their fully upright and locked positions. Flight attendants prepare for landing.