A 5-year old little boy is playing in the field with his friends. He is cut on his mouth. Just rough housing. An infection from a degenerative bacteria. Within a few days, his parents are preparing for his funeral. A last ditch effort is made to save his life with a relic of St. Kateri Tekakwitha. A sister brought the relic to the sick room. He is cured. He lives. That is the power of the saints Sharon Smith had a bad reaction to an anti-rejection drug she was on for a kidney transplant. She developed pancreatitis with severe complications. Tissue throughout her abdomen was being ravaged by infection. Operation after operation proved unsuccessful, until a hospital worker placed a relic of St. Marianne Cope on the patient. She was healed. She lived. That is the power of the saints. A woman in the Philippines suffered a setback during surgery. She was dead for two hours. There was nothing left to do but prepare for her funeral. Then her doctor uttered a seemingly useless prayer pleading the intercession of Pedro Calug-sod. Within hours the woman was fully restored to health. It was a miracle. She was cured. She lives. That is the power of the saints. Obscure people in obscure places whose lives have miraculously, and really, almost accidently, or so it seems, intersected with the saints of God. The saints of God demonstrate their power around the world. They show themselves, not for who they are but for who God has made them. and the lives of the saints intersect our lives in skewed ways. Today Our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI has canonized seven men and women to the dignity of the altar. Canonization does not MAKE a person a saint, rather it recognizes what always was, always is. The saints are men and women, boys and girls whose lives go on, even after the physical aspect has been extinguished. They go on not in ways that are productive for themselves, but rather in many and varied ways are productive for the Church militant. That is what they teach us. That is the power of the saints. Today in the Gospel Jesus admonishes the ambition of the disciples saying: Whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. He calls us to the same thing. The same thing as the saints. He calls us to service To be his servants now and in the age to come. What is a saint? Look to the first reading: If he gives his life as an offering for sin, he shall see his descendants in a long life, and the will of the LORD shall be accomplished through him. What are we called to? We are called to realize our only reason for living is that the will of the Lord might be accomplished through us. We are not called to make it on our own, to suffer life for our own accomplishment We are not called to the radical individualism that is sometimes so vociferously preached to us We are not called to be our own masters, to guide our own destinies. We are not called to heroism in the conventional sense We are called to be saints. God’s friends, God’s vessels, God’s instruments. In obscure ways, in skewed ways. As priests we are called to the altar to minster day after day to those who come beleaguered and struggling searching for answers to life’s perplexing puzzles. That is the power of the saints We are called to the nursing home to dry the tears of the forgotten and the lonely, the confused and the abandoned. That is the power of the saints We are called to the funeral home to heal the struggles of those who remain, to heal old wounds, old grudges, old debts. That is the power of the saints We are called to the school to the bullied little boy or the bashful little girl to show them in the morass of grade school politics that their little voices matter, that their little lives are important too. That is the power of the saints We are called to the apartment of the shut in, to listen to old stories for the hundredth time, to review old images and take on old pains in the midst of loneliness and despair. That is the power of the saints We are called to the chapel to see and know the seminarian struggling with vocation, to right wrongs and fight for justice when there seems to be so little in the world. That is the power of the saints We are called to the confessional to announce God’s healing for little sins, built up over time, little sins that weigh upon a soul so vulnerable. That is the power of the saints. We are called to the seminary, a skewed place to live with men too rough or way too sensitive, too bullying or too faint of heart, too, well. too, to be anything but good. Because you are good, even when you think you’re not, God finds you good. He finds you good and he loves you in obscure ways, in skewed ways that we learn, in time, in long time to read as grace. We are called to be saints in skewed places, in obscure places, in hidden places We are called to be saints in secret. That is the power of the saints A little boy is playing in a field A woman has a drug reaction A woman in the Philippines suffers a heart attack and dies. St. Kateri, St. Marianne, St. Pedro. And perhaps even more, the sister who helped the little boy, the hospital worker who prayed for the woman, the doctor whose heart was touched in the Philippines. The saints are living among us. They are here The saints are here because God is here. The saints are here because a people who believes is here, a people who struggle is here. We are here. We are. God is here because God cares, He cares for us when we like the disciples are selfish, self-seeking, self-aggrandizing He cares for us when we are stupid and silly and too sensitive He cares enough to give us the Body and Blood of His Son as food for the perilous journey we call life. No one said that anything on this journey would be easy. It is not easy. But it is worth it because here today, everyday, we witness miracles, the greatest of which is the transformation of simple things into divinity. That is the power of the saints.

What God has joined together, let no one divide. Our readings today are filled with various images of relationships: Man and woman created from the dust of the ground Husband and wife joined together in a primordial bond Brother and sister, commonly invoked in the message of salvation God and us, present as partners throughout the ages Of course, our lives are also filled with various images of relationships Many of them are wonderful A father bounces a year-old child on his knees amid peals of laughter A mother comforts her daughter in the devastating loss of first love A sister gives assistance to her cantankerous older brother A brother assures his sister of his great affection, albeit in secret ways A husband miraculously remembers Valentine’s Day and shows up with way too many flowers and too much candy for any credibility A wife smiles and nods and assures her stupid husband that the flowers and candy are just wonderful A child looks with admiration on his parents, full of hope, full of need, full of gratitude. Our lives are filled with joyful moments, suspended snapshots in human encounter Our lives are also filled with relationships that are more troubling A couple estranged by infidelity, failing to speak to each other after twenty years of marriage A minister struggling to find some fidelity in the midst of scandal and confusion A brother needing someone to turn to as the frightful spiral of drug abuse takes its final toll A sister looking for some brotherly support in the final days of life A parent longing to help a lost child Sometimes even our relationship with God can be troubled We live in a world of between, trying desperately to find our way to heaven while still striving through the thorns of earth We live lives sometime thwarted by sin, by habitual sins that we cannot seem to conquer, by tiny sins that weigh so heavily upon us in their cumulative effect. I think, however, that the message of the Gospel today is less about this or that and more about God’s plan, God’s ideal, God’s intention. What God has joined together, let no one divide. Like a good Father, God wants to see the best in us, the brightest in us, the most perfect in us God wishes to see our tears wiped away, or at least to see our tears water a garden of plentitude in the human emotional landscape God hopes for what will come rather than what has been, what is God plans for triumph, God anticipates greatness, and arete God achieves miracles in the face of disaster, goodness in the face of ill will, beauty in the face of adversity God sincerely desires us to be not who we often end up being, but who we are meant to be, created to be, dreamed to be. And this is the wonder we call life Life is messy, life is confusing, life is troubling, life is joyful, life is miraculous, life is awesome, life is inspiring, life is puzzling, life is unifying. It guides us into the great web of being that folds over the universe and joins us into one. What God has joined together, let no one divide. Today we celebrate respect life Sunday. It is about the lack of respect certainly The way in which we in sin Cut short Cut off Cut out Cut away But it is more than that. It is, very hopeful, very meaningfully about what we are called to be, a celebration of God’s gift for us, the gift of breath and life. It is a reminder that God intends with every action to show us how the great matrix of life, the interweaving of relationships is drawn together in a vast web that unites: Father and mother Husband and wife Parents and children Brothers and sister Friends and friends. In triumph and in tragedy We might be led to believe that these readings today are not about us, but they are Faithfulness is universal God calls us to something today and everyday He calls us to realize What God has joined together, let no one divide. God has joined us together. He has found the vehicle for uniting us through the suffering and sacrifice of His Son. The sacrifice of Jesus has changed the face of human relationship for ever. The sacrifice of Jesus has shown us what it means to live for others The sacrifice of Jesus is the touchstone of who we truly are, who we are called to be, who we must be. We gather at this altar to celebrate life, the living sacrament, the sacrament living in us. Christ living in us. What God has joined together, let no one divide.

Yesterday, I was finishing up Dr. Hogan’s book, The Six Deadly Sins of Preaching. As in any good examination of conscience, I found myself guilty of all of them. In-authenticity, self-absorption, greediness, trendiness, exploitation, self-righteousness, you name it; I do it. Well, maybe not. I thought what Dr. Hogan had to say was very fine, but it didn’t help me with the presenting problem: What can I preach about today? The first thing I thought of naturally was my holy patron St. Denis. It would have been a wonderful homily on his many virtues, his saintly preaching and mostly, his heroic and slightly unusual death. After being beheaded on Montmartre, an area of Paris where many today would not be caught dead, he picked up his severed head (with the miter still on it) and walked to St. Denis, where he dropped and where, of course they built a magnificent church in his honor. I thought about telling you the story of St. Denis but, then I thought, Dr. Hogan would not approve. The next thing I thought about was, of course, Blessed John Henry Newman, whose feast we celebrate today. What was interesting was that Newman was my second thought since, as most know, he is usually my first. Now there is so much I could say about Newman, about his heroic virtues, his conversion, the illative sense, but I won’t. I will save that for later today and, besides, Dr. Hogan would not approve. Under the ever-censorious eye of Dr. Hogan, or at least with the cover of The Six Deadly Sins of Preaching staring me in the face so boldly, I decided to do what a good preacher ought to do and turn to the readings, but Oh Paul. St. Paul is in the testy mood. The Galatians are difficult to deal with and St. Paul is trying to prove himself to them as an apostle. As to what I am writing to you, behold, before God, I am not lying. Of course, we never thought he was. St. Paul is in the proving mode however, establishing his connection with, at least a few, of the apostles, but mostly claiming his heroic virtues through his willingness to suffer trials, persecution, misunderstanding and finally beheading. Then I thought, good, I will put him together with St. Denis, but the headless forms of these two saints wagged their fingers at me and spoke to me in Dr. Hogan’s soothing voice: Don’t even try it buddy. What’s next? I thought, I could try the psalm. Deacon Mullek was very successful preaching on the psalm a while back. Yes, the psalm: Guide me Lord along the everlasting way. Very good, very good. But then, almost immediately I could hear the ugly roar of the crowd: He copied from Mullek. Or, the psalm seriously? And then I thought of the song, Lead Me, Guide Me No psalm and then, I realized I’m in a homiletic spiral and frankly, Ain’t nobody got time for that. So to the Gospel I went and found there the hectic Martha O Martha, Martha, you are anxious about many things. And of course she was. And of course we are. And of course, I am. Anxious about school and home and dioceses, and monasteries, and visitations and dedications and money and happines and weather, and leaky pipes and whether the bushes will grow and what color that little pond is going to end up being and what color the lounge will be this week and what flavor frozen stuff they will have in the coffee shop and how I can possibly write 5 pages on the Canterbury Tales, and where the dish cart is today, and why this napkin will just not go into the ring thingy and Well, yes. It goes on and on. We are anxious about many things. One thing only is needed. Sit at the feet of the Master. Learn from Him Listen to Him Care with Him Cry with Him Laugh with Him, particularly at ourselves Suffer with Him Rise with Him Be transfigured with Him Be with Him. Mary has chosen the better portion. The better portion, indeed. The subtitle of Dr. Hogan’s book is “becoming responsible for the faith we proclaim”. I think that’s right. That’s what Mary did. That’s what we need to do today and every day. Become responsible for what we proclaim and realize, always realize that the best seat in the house is at the feet of Jesus.

Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. Today God has given us a tremendous gift in our ability to gather on this wonderful day for Saint Meinrad. It is tempting to spend the little time I have been given today speaking about our newly renovated buildings, the beauty and functionality of new spaces and new opportunities. It is tempting to praise those who have so valiantly worked planning and constructing and re-planning and reconstructing in recent years. It is tempting to honor our development office for the diligent labor they have given not only for this weekend but for so many projects of Saint Meinrad that go unseen and unheard. It is tempting to praise and acknowledge the monastic community for its historic and present vision, its mission of serving the Church now for over 150 years with dignity and holiness in the amalgamation of prayer and work. It is tempting to draw together the threads of praise in the Church, to see in our common labors and common concerns the pressing forward of common goals and common ends. I say it is tempting, but I don’t want to talk about what is happening with the brick and mortar of the buildings. It is tempting to take a tour, but that can come later in the day. I have something else in mind today. I have in mind the passage we have just heard proclaimed from the Gospel of St. Matthew: Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. There is power in these words; it is the power of connection between us and God. A power not unknown, not unfelt. A power that hovered over the vast abyss at the very dawn of time, in the calling forth of sun and moon and stars, in the stirring of the mighty waters and the raising of hills and mountains, the furrowing out of rivers and streams. A power that stirred in the bosom of old Abram and his old wife Sara, a power that moved nations to migration, that pulled generations from the loins of decrepitude. A power that issued forth from a dying couple to raise a nation, a people of the Word. A power that flickered in the heart of Moses, emanating from the heat of a burning bush, a talking, burning bush, compelling him to serve a mission of liberation. Tell Pharaoh to let my people go. And on he went fortified by the manna of vocation, the food of angels. A prophetic power that kindled itself in the hearts of Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, a power to speak words of praise and words of conviction, the power to speak God’s words, which we receive in the fullness of time, in the readiness to serve enkindled also in our hearts. A power that insinuated itself into a little room in a little house, in a little town, in a little country, among a little people. A power pouring out in the life of a virgin named Mary and in her pimple-faced husband, a poor carpenter named Joseph. Brothers and sisters --- It is the power of the Word itself, the eternal Word, the Incarnate word Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. These words of Jesus in the Gospel today show us something essential, the force of hospitality in the new dispensation. In the force of hospitality, we find a theology, a salient connection between the guest and God. How can that not give us a better perspective on what we celebrate today? We see buildings but we cannot, perhaps need not see the stories that are lived out in those spaces, have been lived out in those spaces over time, lived out in the spirit of divine hospitality. We hear, we see, we experience … The stories of monks, faithful and stalwart, building in brick and stone an edifice of divine purpose, a school of the Lord’s service, monks who have devoted their lives to building up the Kingdom one brick at a time. The stories of workers converted hammer blow by hammer blow as stories and stories rise from the dust of the earth to an edifice for God’s people. The stories of teachers, drilling, cajoling, testing, understanding, repeating, dissecting, analyzing, encouraging, conjugating. Amo, Amas, Amat The stories of students. boys with short hair running red-faced in cassocks, playing basketball, football in black skirts, smart alecky, smoking behind the building, getting up and pulling on their surplices to serve the too-early masses, and then, long haired, smart-alecky, arguing, fighting, and then, short haired and long haired and arguing and praying, and praying, and loving, and studying, and conjugating. Amo, Amas, Amat I love, you love, he loves … He really does. The stories of young people trying their vocations or learning what God wants of them, listening to the rhythm of God’s voice in the intoxication of chant and tunes pounded on a piano and plucked from the obscurity of a guitar’s depth, singing loud and strong. The stories of guests, weary and wary men and women, searching for some semblance of meaning in lives so often filled with heartache, pain, indifference, even violence, hatred, but also love, also emotion, also loss, also affection. Confused lives made easier for a moment by the invitation to rest a moment, rest here a moment. The stories of strangers who are not strangers any longer, friends who are more than friends, benefactors who receive more than they give, overseers who are overseen by the mighty eye of the Almighty, gazing lovingly, admiringly at all through the fall leaves, across a hillside vantage point in Southern Indiana. The stories of men and women whose lives for a day, a year, a lifetime have been caught up in the mystery of Saint Meinrad. And Saint Meinrad is a mystery It is unfolding, different today than yesterday, different yet somehow, beautifully the same. Unfolding daily in plans and schemes by old rectors and new to make something vibrant out of old stones and staid processes. In those who teach and learn In all who make their way to this place of peace dedicated to the martyr of hospitality Saint Meinrad is a mystery that goes beyond walls and rooms, corridors and places. Brothers and sisters, today we dedicate the new-old buildings but Saint Meinrad is not about the buildings. It is about names and faces, some now far away, some just peeking out of composite pictures of classes long dead, some still here, radiant with the dawning of each new day. Saint Meinrad is a mystery. It is a mystery that goes to the heart of the Gospel and to the heart of each one, each one gathered here today. Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. Saint Meinrad is the realization that our God is close He is close as the consoling hand of a brother or sister in time of need He is close, as close as the healing touch of father or mother in time of hurt He is close as close as a trusted friend in time of doubt and confusion He is here. Now he unfolds himself for us, in words and proclaimers of words, in anxious faces, in the bread and wine transformed as we are transformed. Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me. Happy are we to be called here, to this place, to this supper of the Lamb.

I remember vividly a day almost thirty years ago, praying in a Church in Memphis before a statue of St. Therese of Liseux. In my heart, I heard a voice asking me a question, a question for a soul that was tormented with the idea and ideals of vocation and priesthood. It was a simple question: How far are you willing to go? What will you give up? Of course, it is a question that each of us, at least at some level has had to ask. How far? How much? It is a question, as I learned, that can take years, perhaps even a lifetime to answer. It is a question that can perhaps never be fully answered this side of the beatific vision. How far are you willing to go? What will you give up? We think that this place is about building on strengths. It isn’t It’s about weakness. It’s about vulnerability. It’s about the power of Christ. The power of Christ is weakness The power of Christ is hurt and pain The power of Christ is the cross The power of Christ is my ability to connect to that which I despise, reject, disdain. most especially in myself. St. Therese knew this She knew what power was, though she had none She knew what influence was though she exercised none She knew what reputation was though she lived a cloistered life She knew what strength was though she was enveloped in the weakness of the body. She knew that power and influence and reputation and strength were only meaningful if the power of Christ was in you, if the influence of God was your influence, if the reputation of Christ was your reputation, if the strength that comes through suffering and weakness were all yours, all you had. Brothers and sisters, who here is willing to give up everything to serve the Divine Master? Who here is really willing to give up everything? My attitude My ideal about what should and should not be My plan of formation that supersedes what the decades of experience here wish to offer My realities about the Church and its members My conception of power and its products My future My past Who here is willing to come to this altar like a child, to come with the brokenness of Job? Who here is willing to starve near to death on the world’s rich fare so as to be fed at this table? If you are, then happy are you, blessed are you. But we must beware, beware of being little boys who think they are little men, when real men are those whose lives are transformed into those of boys, full of discovery, full of wonder, full of insight. Are we willing to become as children? If you are not then the parking lot is near to hand. I can assure you that the Church no longer has need for narcissists, and power mongers, and ideologues, and know it alls, and stupid priests. But if you are ready to accept the call and become as children for the sake of the kingdom, blessed are you. Blessed are you indeed to be called as his little ones, his little flowers, to the supper of the Lamb.