1. Mass of Thanksgiving, Rev. Adam Carrico
    Fourth Sunday of Advent
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
    December 20, 2015

    Behold, I come to do your will, O God
    Recently when I was at my mother’s home for Thanksgiving, I decided that I would rescue an old friend. The old friend was a picture of me when I was about three years old. It was a handsome picture, if I do say so myself. I had a sharp little crew cut, a brown striped suit (and who doesn’t look great in a brown striped suit?) and a large bow tie. It is a beautiful picture, the formal kind they used to take back in the day, but unfortunately the photograph was badly damaged when our family home was flooded during Hurricane Agnes which struck the east coast of the US in 1972. For years, the picture hung in my mother’s various houses, water-damaged, browned, bruised and bent. She loved the picture though, who wouldn’t?

    So, during my Thanksgiving visit, I asked her if I could have the picture to take home and have restored. She was a bit hesitant, but then agreed. I brought the picture back to Saint Meinrad and thanks to our wonderful development office, the picture was fully restored and I had some prints made. I framed one of the prints and sent it to my mother and I heard nothing. No enthusiastic thank you call, no gushing words for how wonderful a son I was. Nothing. Nothing.

    So, I called her and after some hemming and hawing I pulled it out of her. She did not like the picture, in fact she hated it. Well, not quite, the frame was OK but she hated the picture quite a lot. After some talk I finally got to the bottom of the thing. Here is what she said:
    The photo looks fine, as it is. I mean your folks did a nice job, but my old picture, well, my old picture had something the new one did not. It had history.
    I knew what she meant. That tattered old photo reminded her of many things. It reminded her of that flood and all our family endured in those scary days.

    It reminded her of my father who was taken from us just eight years later.

    It reminded her of that little me, her only child, her only son, and his whole history, triumphant and tragic.

    That photo bore something that the new, pristine one could never bear. It bore scars.

    Don’t we all?

    I was thinking about the story we have tonight from St. Luke’s Gospel. Of course, it is a famous one, a great one. Two cousins, both with child meet and their children greet one another in the womb. The story has been depicted for us countless times, in art, in film, in many homilies through the ages. Mary and Elizabeth’s greeting, the visitation is an image that has such deep theological ramifications that we could teach an entire course on it.

    But when it boils down to it, it really is just a story of two cousins meeting. What must that meeting have meant, not just for the future, but as a memory of the past, the past of these two women, of their lives, their struggles? Elizabeth must have suffered a lifetime of disappointment in not being able to bear a child. Was Mary the one who comforted her?

    Mary must have suffered already the confusion of an unmarried woman, pregnant in ways that no one, perhaps not even St. Joseph, could fully grasp. Was Elizabeth the one who understood?
    And what if we dug deeper?

    What hardships did these women endure as women in a time completely circumscribed by men?
    What troubles did they endure as members of a conquered people in the Roman Empire, as women from an outcast nation, from a rural place, poor and unknown?

    The story of the visitation is a beautiful one, but it comes with scars if we listen to its echoes down the corridors of time.

    What memories were there?

    What led these women to that fateful moment when both of them could say:
    Behold, I come to do your will, O God
    And of course their story, their scarred story, stretches back doesn’t it, to old places unknown in history, before history began, to homes in caves and cast on the sides of hills, to stories of husbands and wives set at odds over the fruit of a tree, to brothers locked in mortal combat, to the babel of the world, to sin and atonement for sin in the Law?

    And it stretches back to nameless faces of people turning their eyes heavenward and calling on the name of the Lord:
    Behold, I come to do your will, O God
    This is the legacy of St. Luke’s Gospel, a Judaism old and lost. Zachariah the ancient priest, Elizabeth, his barren wife, Simeon the doddering old man, Anna the widow. They were losing, but they were holding on, hoping that the light extinguished so long ago by their own folly might be restored to them.

    They were a scarred people who haunted the temple, that monument of Herod’s victory and his down fall, they wandered its cold precincts filling their old lungs with the daily stench of burning animals, fractured dreams and hopelessness.

    They were a scarred people felt their ways along the walls of its time’s precincts, its wailing walls hoping to pick up some gossip, some shred of good news.

    They were a scarred people who knew the darkness, knew it intimately in their ancient bones, felt it keen as wind winding across the desert at night, understood it like the loss that had already defined in so many ways their withering lives.

    And yet, in that wind of desperation there whispered something, a hope:
    Behold, I come to do your will, O God.
    And what of the world in which we live?

    What of the scarred places and scarred people?

    What of the woman in Aleppo cradling in her arms the lifeless body of her infant son torn from her by the bombs of ideological warfare, of human conceit?

    What of the women spending the holidays in shelters finally safe from the physical abuse that has crushed them at the hands of their own family members, safe but fearful?

    What of the children who alone and freighted make their way across the arbitrary borders of nations, bereft of family and friends, not knowing when or where their scarred legs will collapse and among whom?

    But we don’t have to draw the map so large do we?

    For time itself, the history of places and families is written over with pain and suffering. Who here tonight has not suffered?

    What floods have crowded out the happiness of lives gathered in this place tonight, this place parked beside the railroad of life?

    Families have been torn apart, by money, by politics, none of the important things.

    Children have been lost and found or lost and never found
    Husbands have betrayed their wives.
    Wives have betrayed their husbands.
    Countless disappointments have been registered.

    The long story has been told over and over, its familiar passages repeated often, like a bedtime story. We have heard its strains, strains as familiar to us as the meeting of relatives, pregnant with possibility.

    From sadness, from desperation, from illness, from alienations a voice croaks out, cries out:
    Behold, I come to do your will, O God
    Now that scarred pendulum of time swings in our direction.

    Now it is time for Fr. Adam to make his mark on this long story.

    Tonight a man comes to us fresh from his ordination. He comes to us by the side of the railroad track in a place impossibly named PeeWee Valley. He comes to us with a history, a past. He comes to us with so much promise. He comes to us as a man of compassion and concern. He comes to us as a man who knows many things, can teach us many things, can draw from his font of knowledge many things. And that is important, but more important is that …

    He also comes to us as a man who has suffered. He has known, intimately and full well the scourge of life’s indignation. He has felt the keen pain of loss. He has understood in his bones the fragility of the human condition. He has suffered.

    Yet, like the history of the man whom he represents for us today, the man Jesus Christ, that suffering has not been in vain. Whatever Fr. Adam has suffered in his life is now turned to one purpose, to announce the Gospel of the wounded man of Galilee, to proclaim Good News to those who have suffered on the trail of life’s compromises.

    Adam comes to us as one who knows our flaws and our faults and yet is willing to announce forgiveness in the name of the Lord God.

    He comes to us a scarred man for a scarred people and he says to us: Let me heal you.

    How can that healing come to us tonight?

    It comes in the words of an old story. It comes to us in a promise written down from eternity but made real in the passing of days.

    It comes to us through Fr. Adam as in the years ahead he prays for us, he makes God present for us in the sacraments, as he anoints us and announces the words of reconciliation, as his scars bless us.
    It comes to us in a piece of bread and a cup of wine that carries within its confines the power of the Most High.

    It comes to us in gestures as simple as handholding, as complex as sighs.

    It comes to us in the form of a message and …

    This is the message: Behold, I come to do your will, O God

    This is the invitation that Fr. Adam has answered on our behalf and when we pause to ponder it we know it.

    As familiar as an old photograph

    As common as the chill in the December air

    As proverbial as the greeting of two cousins, pregnant with hope ready to announce to the world, as light as angels wings shivering in the night breeze as a distant train whistle is heard riding the wind, sounding forever like a voice calling out to a frenzied population:
    Peace on Earth, Good will to all of the scarred people of this ancient world. 

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  2. Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception
    Celebration of the Opening of the Extraordinary Jubilee Year of Mercy
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
    December 8, 2015


    God chose us in him, before the foundation of the world,
    to be holy and without blemish before him
    The whole history of humanity begins with an intense need for one thing, a need for mercy.

    First, there was the smallest movement of the will, of the mind, of the hand stretched out to a tree and there was a need for mercy

    How could a single piece of fruit upset the balance of the universe? 

    There was a need for mercy

    A legacy of hatred, division, suspicion, pain implies a need for mercy

    Man and Woman are locked in mortal combat and there is the need for mercy

    A man murders his own brother out of jealousy and there is the necessity of mercy

    The simple language of faithfulness disintegrates into interminable Babel

    Cities and countries are aflame with the heat of battle

    Hatred is enkindled, impressed upon the killing fields

    The disharmony of greed, lust, violence, and hatred disrupts the melodic counterpoint of generosity, respect, peace, love in single action

    With a simple gesture the cacophony of sorrows descends upon the world, cascading its citizens headlong into chaotic future, writing on their burned skins a single word; mercy. 

    Naked, humanity became imprisoned in the desperate chains of its own fashioning and there was need for mercy

    We learned to despise the Law for embarrassing us in our weakness and there is the necessity of mercy

    We studied new ways to persecute and kill the sinners, the soul savers, the saints

    We enchanted ourselves with our own seductive capabilities, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

    We looked deeply into the mirrors of our imaginings and saw staring back at us nothing but our own faces and we called those faces: gods

    And we cursed, cursed the fruit, cursed the snake, cursed the earth, the mother and father, the fate, the selves that continued to raise the curtain day after day on the unrelenting drama, the tragedy of the human condition, the tragic, incessant desire for one thing, one thing to cool the blistered brow of our condition, one remedy to the infirmity of our kind, one eradicating knife to cut from us the choking remnant of that fruit. 

    We cursed the God who said: Be fruitful and multiply

    Multiply your woes, your wounds, your wayward wantonness. 

    And tangled, jumbled, reprobate in a horrible pile, we lost all hope, believing the fate of Eden to be a universal and lasting “No” 

    But even in the midst of this chaos, this Babel, this Hell on earth, God held His breath and waited until he remembered that he chose us in him, before the foundation of the world,
    to be holy and without blemish in his sight. He brought us even in our forlorn lostness to the brink of mercy

    And then it came, suddenly, obscurely, unexpectedly. Mercy came

    God brought us to a day in the life of a forgotten place, among a forgotten people

    He brought us to a couple, old and barren in themselves but open to the promise of God

    He brought us to a young girl, alone yet prepared to face the cosmos

    She was nothing in the eyes of the world, a child, a female, a commodity,

    And then …

    The frenzy of violent wings, of dirt flung up …

    A rage of light, stark lightening lighting so fiercely it revealed nothing …

    The angel called out to the carrion of the broken earth’s expectations, the slave of men’s expectations
    Hail full of grace
    Mother of mercy
    Lo, how a rose ere blooming
    Mary
    God knew her name and then he whispered in her ear the secret she had been prepared to hear from the first stirring in her own mother’s womb.

    Can you in your goodness have mercy on this tired world?

    Will you in your innocence have mercy on the history of your people? 

    Can you in your charity provide those footsteps in which humanity might follow?

    Yes, of course, this is why I was brought into the world. It is mercy.

    Yes of course, this is God’s plan and it is mercy.

    Yes, of course, this is the endpoint of my whole being, my suffering in this place and that is mercy. And God sighed and the breath of that sigh completed the Virgin’s yes and that yes was mercy.

    The breath of that sigh, held so long throughout the time of our collective wretchedness breathed forth full and welcome, it was mercy.

    It poured forth like water to a scorched earth, like breeze in the barren desert. 

    Jesus is that breath united to Mary’s yes, a sigh of mercy

    Jesus, the man of sorrows who from takes from us our sorrows, it is an act of mercy

    Jesus, the man of journeys who becomes our resting place, a place of mercy

    Jesus, the man of common hunger and thirst, who becomes our bread and wine, the bread of angels, the intoxicating wine of compassion, the food of mercy

    Jesus, the contradiction of human expectations, the crucified savior, the murdered God, the God of mercy who experienced no mercy in this life

    Jesus that daily reminder to us that in flesh, in spirit that …
    God chose us in him, before the foundation of the world,
    to be holy and without blemish before him
    And so we can be brothers and sisters, so we can be who we were made to be in his mercy.

    This promise stands before us today as a threat and an opportunity

    A threat to all our intense intellectual jockeying and an opportunity to say yes to the call, the difficult but beautiful call he has summoned us to, we know he has summoned us to it, the call of mercy, a call that arches over the troubled littered places of our confined and confining imaginations.

    That promise is a threat to our wretched individualism, our selfishness and the opportunity to live into the mystery of God in the vital, breathing triumphs and sorrows, joys and hopes of our brothers and sisters, hopes wrapped in the vibrant wrapping of mercy. 

    That promise is a threat to our woundedness and the opportunity for healing in lives torn open by broken relationships, grudges, hurts, dismay, shunning, racism, shattered dreams

    In this celebration, in this cosmic, immaculate feast of God’s promise of one thing, of mercy

    We, a people taught to look down at the merciless feet of our own inebriated self-gratification raise our heads and behold, perhaps for the first time, our true destinies written in the skies, written in the characters of mercy

    Inscribed in the glory of steel clouds offering a gift of hard rain or snow

    Written beautifully in the highest aspirations of humanity, to perceive the truth, to love without counting the cost, to be crucified by beauty

    Embedded in a new promise, a future-oriented history of service, compassion, tenderness, kindness, fidelity for …
    God chose us in him, before the foundation of the world,
    to be holy and without blemish before him
    We are not children of the Fall and darkness, for we are called to be sons and daughters of light., children of mercy in an everlasting Garden

    Brothers and sisters it can be accomplished in us as it was accomplished in Mary, we can, we must become immaculate if not for the first time, then, by God’s mercy, at least … again. 

    God whispers this promise to us today. Let us say yes and moving forward from this place so that we can rewrite the sad history of Man into the pure poetry of love inscribed in our hearts, though for a time hidden from view, before the foundation of the world, a message of mercy. 


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  3. Second Sunday of Advent
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
    December 6, 2015

    This is my prayer:
    that your love may increase ever more and more
    in knowledge and every kind of perception,
    to discern what is of value,
    so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.
    Saint Paul’s words seem quite prescient this morning as we gather here to celebrate the Second Sunday of Advent.

    Advent is a time for every kind of perception, of images that pop out in the landscape of the world.
    I was thinking the last couple of mornings about the fog and how it layered the landscape, wrapping everything in its misty shroud.

    I was thinking about how the trees appear like ghosts, with a kind of life of their own but a muted life.

    I was thinking about driving down a road where you can barely see in front of you and that headlights were the only announcement of something oncoming.

    I was thinking about those headlights like voices calling out from the wilderness of bewilderment as John’s voice stood out in the deserted places of the human landscape in Israel a long time ago and today.

    I was thinking about the stone buildings of this seminary rising up out of the earth like waking giants perceiving an alarm in a cool haze

    On these cloudy mornings you can only see what is right in front of you. It makes you dependent until you realize:
    God is leading Israel in joy
    by the light of his glory,
    with his mercy and justice for company
    And this is my prayer:
    that your love may increase ever more and more
    in knowledge and every kind of perception,
    to discern what is of value,
    so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.
    In these advent days I have been contemplating something I never contemplate, a picture of myself. You may have already seen it since it is surreptitiously making the rounds.

    It is a picture of me as a three year old, in my tiny incarnation, wearing a brown striped suit, a bow tie and a slightly ironic smile.

    Perhaps it is the time of year to contemplate smallness. Perhaps I am just getting old but as I look at that picture which I lifted from my mother’s attic I wonder:
    What did he know? I ask it in the third person because “he” seems so far away from me now.
    What did the boy in the striped suit know that gave him such ironic confidence?

    He could scarcely have known what the man would later know. He could hardly have known how he would grow, what his joys would be, what his sorrows would bring. He could hardly know of the sins he would commit. He could hardly know what burdens he would have the privilege of bearing for others.

    In that way, the innocent boy could not have known what was truly of value, what knowledge and perceptions would make him a man, a fallen man, a broken man, but a man whose anticipation of the coming of God among us would make him strong, would raise him up.
    This is my prayer:
    that your love may increase ever more and more
    in knowledge and every kind of perception,
    to discern what is of value,
    so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.
    In these days of advent, we are starting the ordination season. Many of us traveled through the fog yesterday morning to see our brother Ambrose raised to the dignity of diaconal service. It was a beautiful ordination. The church was packed. The homily inspired. Ambrose was, quite literally,  inspired. There were many priests and deacons present including so many of Ambrose’ classmates. It was an important day for the Diocese of Evansville because for the first time they brought into their number in a permanent way a man from a distant country.

    I was thinking about that during the ordination. I was thinking about Ambrose’ family who could not come from Kenya to be there. I was thinking about his adopted family though, hundreds of people who filled the small church, who wished him well.

    I thought about Our Lord and how he came to us from a distant country. He came as one small and vulnerable. He placed himself in our hands.

    Think about how many of our people do that. How they allow themselves to be vulnerable with us because they recognize God in us, recognize his love in us, his mercy in us, his kindness in us. I hope they do. I hope they see in our love, increasing more and more the advent of the pure and blameless, the day of Christ.

    I hope that all of those people from strange places, from unpronounceable places can look here and see in us the welcome of Christ. I hope that they can hear in us the voice crying in the wilderness of sin and confusion, the sin and confusion of the world in which we strive, the sin and confusion of our own hearts.

    I hope that we can cry out for those who have no voices, no power, no discernment, for those lost in the fog of intemperance, of bigotry. I hope that we can become voices for those whose wilderness seems unfathomable.

    Because …
    This is my prayer:
    that your love may increase ever more and more
    in knowledge and every kind of perception,
    to discern what is of value,
    so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.
    This is my prayer

    Last night, our brother Ramses feasted us once again with the joys of La Purisima and our most pure lady descended upon Saint Meinrad once again in song, in music, in readings, in rosaries, in images. Our Lady came for a visit last night and that would be a wonderful thing in itself.

    Even more wonderful, however, is that she brought her friends, men and women and children from the communities of Jasper and Dale, folks who have come from even farther places than Jasper and Dale. La Purissima gave us a gift last night, she gave us a great vision of the Church and of course there is more. As our holy father, Saint Benedict says, no monastery is ever without guests.

    Today we will welcome many, folks coming for our conference this week. Our friends from Alabama, many others, many, many others. How will they be received?

    Our Lord came among us, unwelcome in the inn of Bethlehem. Our Lord came as a refugee, a stranger. Was he perceived as a terrorist? He probably should have been. What if we had built a wall to keep Jesus away from the earth. Our Lady welcomed him as she welcomed our guests last night. Is our welcome pure? Is our love for the other unfeigned?

    Do we truly discern what is of value?
    This is my prayer:
    that your love may increase ever more and more
    in knowledge and every kind of perception,
    to discern what is of value,
    so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.
    A little boy has been haunting me for a few days now. I mean a real little boy not my shadow self in the brown striped suit.

    His name is Dominic Schemenaur or at least I think it is Dominic. I saw him at Ambrose’ ordination yesterday but I first met him at the Saint Nicolas banquet last week. He is small, around four years old. He wears glasses, very big ones affixed to his little face. I happened to come across him standing in line at the reception. He was waiting to get some candied bacon and mushrooms, I guess.

    I stood there next to him towering over him and he did the strangest thing: he reached up and took my hand. He put his little hand in mine. We had never met. I am a big black enshrouded object. But, he took my hand. He trusted me.

    It reminded me of something important, something I can at times forget in this hectic world in which we live. It reminded me of what advent is about, and it is simply this:
    We place our hand in God’s hands but more than that He places His hand in ours.

    Isn't that what this season is about?

    Holding hands with God?

    God reaches out to us with his tiny fingers which look for the world like the chubby hands of a newborn baby lying in a manger.

    And that tiny grasp is enough to acknowledge what is here, through the fog and the fog is lifted to see ourselves standing on the shores of glory

    It is enough to move us toward the future, a future bright with the glow of knowing smiles
    It is enough to fill our hearts with love, a love for all, a love for myself in spite of the discouragement of sin and pain and death
    It is enough to recapture the innocence of our lost selves
    It is enough to open our arms to the needs of others
    It is enough
    This is my prayer:
    that your love may increase ever more and more
    in knowledge and every kind of perception,
    to discern what is of value,
    so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ.
    This is my prayer … today.

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  4. Rector's Conference
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
    December 1, 2015

    There was a story in the news yesterday about two ladies who were taking a walk over the weekend in Los Angeles. They heard a faint noise which sounded like a cat but one of the women insisted it was a baby crying. They investigated. Soon they found a hole covered with asphalt and garbage. In the hole was a newborn baby, maybe one day old. It was a little girl. Her parents left her there. Earlier this week, a man in Kansas City was charged with murdering his seven year old son and attempting to feed his little body to the pigs he kept. For years the little boy had been suffering abuse at the man’s hands. What can we say about a world in which these things happen? What can we say about a world, an advanced, civilized world in which people abort their babies? Around one million infants lost their lives in this country this year because of abortion. What are we to say about a society where studies indicate that ten percent of our elderly people are subject to physical abuse at the hands of their so-called caretakers? What can we say about a world in which seemingly normal people walk into restaurants and blow themselves up in order to kill others in the name of God?  What can we say about a people who are twittering their lives away, posting pictures of their thanksgiving dinner or their Black Friday bargains while such things are going on?

    We stand today, just over the threshold of a new liturgical year. We are once again in the aliveness of the advent season, a season of bracing chill and of future promise. In many ways, for those in the Church it is the true “new year”.  And what do we do in the new year? We reevaluate our lives. Such must be the case. We are called as Christian men and women to continually reevaluate our lives. Who are we? What are we doing here? Why do we engage the mission we engage? These are important questions but they are not the only questions. Reevaluation means that we also must ask ourselves these questions: What is the best way for us to engage the world? What is the condition of the world in which this mission of Christ finds itself? I would say that this continual emanation of the relationship between my discipleship and the condition of the world is the very essence of following Christ today. As such we must always realize that we are standing continually on a new threshold. Every day is new. Each day should be new. Each day is a kind of advent.

    Yet, the world is crying out. For example, we witness daily the problem of racism in this country, the question of whether men and women can respect one another when they are of different ethnic backgrounds. We see the problem at so many levels, but in actuality, it is the level of the spiritual that is the most problematic. We can talk all we want about the social and cultural roots of racism, but ultimately it is a spiritual question of whether we have the ability within ourselves to respect our brothers and sisters. I am thinking about the words of our Holy Father earlier this week: Together, we must say no to hatred, to revenge and to violence, particularly that violence which is perpetrated in the name of a religion or of God himself. And yet that still exists doesn’t it. We see it also in our growing distrust of Islam, a religion built on the foundations of love and peace like our own and yet often distorted by some minority of its own advocates to messages of hatred and distrust. We know that and yet what can we say about our own co-religionists who use the name of Christ to hate and discriminate against their brothers and sisters. What can we say about those within our own Church who despise others because of their particular beliefs whether those beliefs are so-called traditional or liberal?

    The world is crying out, crying out also against a kind of misguided nationalism that seeks to further our alienation with the rest of the world, to close our borders to the needs of others. I think of the poem of Georgiana Schuyler which was composed for a bronze plaque found today on the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor:
    Give me your tired, your poor,
    Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
    The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
    Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
    I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
    Are we ready to meet the homeless, the refugee, the tempest tossed? I hope so. I hope that is our creed as well and that we are encouraging our social order to establish itself on Christian principals. We are rightly fearful of terrorism. Terrorism is an awful evil, but it is my hope that in preventing terrorist ideas from spreading in this country, and we must prevent it, that we not evolve into a kind of terrorism that doesn’t consider the needs of the other as persons, but only as fodder that represents something else, an ideology. There is such a thing as terrorism of the spirit, terrorism of the mind. Racism is a kind of terrorism as well as nationalism.

    The world is crying out. Look around and see what we see. Every day 30 people die by handgun violence in the US. Please note I am not advocating for gun control. I follow the argument that if we outlaw guns only outlaws would have guns. That is true. What I am asking is why we live in a society that turns to violence and indeed killing to solve its problems. We can take away guns but if we have not solved the question of our DESIRE to hurt and destroy we have accomplished nothing. We need to look toward the deeper problem. Why do people turn to violence? Why are we so alienated from one another that we see physical destruction as the norm. Is the statistic like the one I just cited not also a kind of terrorism? Domestic terrorism is the condition of a place that day by day is confronted with both ultimate privilege and ultimate depravity. It forces us to ask the question as to whether or not our complete preoccupation with pleasure, entertainment, wealth, leisure as not led us down a path of violence. How much of the violence in our country do we experience because of greed and the desire for something else. How can we live in a place that casually watches as a nine year old boy is shot in gang violence as a particular victim in Chicago? Is that a sign of a culturally and morally upright nation? The death of Tyshon Lee at the hands of Corey Morgan is horrendous. The gang member shot the little boy in the head.

    Now, in the face of all of this, all of this unfolding for us as another advent makes its presence known, Jesus stands today on the shore of a sea. As we heard in yesterday’s Gospel he is calling to us: Follow me. Who is he calling? He is calling his disciples. Who were they? Men who were nothing in the eyes of the world. Yesterday we heard the call of St. Andrew a fisherman taken from among his people to serve a new cause, the cause of a new vision. Those disciples were called from their place in the world to serve a new vision, the vision of Christ, a vision of peace, a vision of justice, a vision of life, a vision of dreaming, and a vision of truth. They were called away from what was familiar to them, what was comfortable for them and they offered all. They gave everything. They held nothing back. They were not concerned about their comfort. They died for the message of Jesus.

    Here is the challenge for us today. Do you think that in coming to the seminary, that being a deacon, that being a priest or religious that you have given everything? Ask the question again. What have you given? Or perhaps you may ask a more pertinent question: what are you holding back. As we stand at the threshold Jesus asks: what have you given, what are you giving, what are you willing to give? If we are honest, really very little. Have we truly suffered any hardship being here? Do we think that our little acts of self-denial, such as living a celibate life, are the reason that we should cloak ourselves in the useless pursuits which eat up so much of our time? Do we say to ourselves: Look at how I have sacrificed being here. I deserve X or Y. When we realize that not only do we deserve nothing for the petty sacrifices we have already offered, but realize instead that God requires something else, he requires our life poured out in service even to the point of death. When we realize that, we have gained a starting place to discipleship. When we realize that we are mere sojourners in this world, that this world is not our destination, that world politics are as passing fancies, that the values that the world affords are as dust in the wind, then we have gained a starting place for discipleship.

    Jesus stands today in the shores of our future and he says: Follow me. What does that call mean? How far are we willing to go?

    I am thinking again of the pope’s visit to Africa last week...
    What was his message? Here is what he had to say in one of his many talks:
    One of the essential characteristics of this vocation to perfection is the love of our enemies, which protects us from the temptation to seek revenge and from the spiral of endless retaliation. Jesus placed special emphasis on this aspect of the Christian testimony. Those who evangelize must therefore be first and foremost practitioners of forgiveness, specialists in reconciliation, experts in mercy
    It was a message of mercy. Is that not a message we need to hear today? We know of the things I was speaking of earlier. We know about racism and nationalism, terrorism and crime. We know about it but, brothers and sisters, we cannot let those things consume us. As Christian men and women we are called to a life of mercy, and if we lay down our lives for that message, so be it. I am no kind of Christian if I cannot say today with full confidence that I am willing to die for the message of the Gospel. I am willing to die, but I can assure you of this as well. I am not willing to die on the altar of political posturing, or the pursuit of personal power. I am not willing to die for Clinton or Trump. I am not willing to die for anything other than the pureness of the Gospel message and the thing is, often it is my own failings or faults that must be cleansed if the pureness of that message is not to be made manifest.

    I can tell you something you already know, some of you know it very well. I am not perfect. I am a sinner. I can be judgmental. I can be hasty in my decision making. I can be impatient. I know this about myself. But I can tell you this as well. I don’t want to be that way. I want to serve God and Him alone and in that service to pour out my life for the Church and for you, its members. I desire this although I may not always achieve it. I know that I am weak, but I also know with Saint Paul that when I am weak in myself, then I am strong in Christ who came among us not only to make us strong but to give us the faith and the courage to stand up for the truth. The truth, and the truth alone will set us free. That must be our constant pursuit and if we have other pursuits those things must be put aside.  We must be men and women of endless, fatiguing service.

    Finally this evening, as I do each year, I would like to offer a challenge. If you are a veteran you have heard this spiel before. I hope you can hear it anew tonight.

    As we approach the end of the semester, I want to offer some ideas about the best way to spend your Christmas vacation. You will have almost a month to consider the things you are going to do and I would like to offer that you place foremost in your mind this idea: Do not plan to rest at all. In the coming weeks, during this “festive” time of year God has given you a unique opportunity for evangelization. Use it. Plan to offer your services in very menial ways in the parish, clean things, prepare things, fold things. Serve the early morning Masses during the week and use that opportunity to insure your Holy Hour. Pray your office faithfully. It is a good thing to learn how to pray the office well on your own. I get tired of hearing how the office is neglected during breaks. Pray!

    Use the opportunities you have this holiday to visit the forgotten, to visit shut-ins and folks in nursing homes who may have few people to be with during this season. During Christmas, plan to serve at every Mass, if that means being away from your family for a few hours, that is what it means. Try not to ask anything for yourself this Christmas. Nobody here needs anything for Christmas, least of all a new electronic gadget or a new video game. If you get gifts, plan to give most of them away. Give your money away. You say: I need money, I’m a seminarian. Neither God, nor your diocese, or the rector is going to let you starve. Practice charity. This season offers you an opportunity to practice the kind of stamina you will need to be a good priest. Read, pray, work. These are the cornerstones of priestly life and you can all do it. The work needs you. Little baby Jesus could not walk or talk. You can be his ambassador. How can we fail to accept an invitation like that? Please plan to return here in January exhausted. Know of my prayers and the prayers of the whole faculty and staff as you go out to share the Good News of Christ’s coming among us. I will be praying for you and your families every day. Our task is to keep the faith in a troubled world. If we can remain faithful to that task then there is hope and hope is what this season is about.



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  5. Saint Martin of Tours
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
    November 11, 2015

    What is St. Luke up to today? We know that in Jesus’ time, leprosy was the outcast disease par excellence. We know that nothing scared a person in the first century like the sight of a leper. We know that it was something not only incurable, but uncontrollable, it represented everything that was unknown about the world and those in it. We know that as such, the leper was a social throw away, an outcast. Who wouldn’t be thankful to be cured of such an awful disease? Now let’s dial it up a bit. For Luke’s audience, there is a twist; the one that comes back is a gentile, a Samaritan.  This is Luke’s ultimate message. Those who have received the   Word, and those who have every reason to be thankful for that gift, do not give thanks. Luke is rebuking the Jews of his time for, even though cured of something worse than leprosy, that is their sins, they cannot, they will not, give thanks. But the gentiles can. Luke gives us a little something to question …

    Who are the lepers? Who are the Gentiles, the outcasts, in our midst? Who is reaching out to us today, reaching out to us as the beggar reached out to St. Martin? Perhaps it is the sinner, the lost the man or woman in need of forgiveness but to whom we cannot seem to offer God’s mercy. We cannot offer it because, ultimately we think that the sinner doesn’t deserve it. These are the folks that traipse to confession week after week, their moral records stuck and playing the same phrases again and again. Or the ones, who will not confess their sins, cannot confess to God or priest. And we think we are better than they are because we are not this or that. But I would be willing to believe when the reckoning is made: They may be holier than we are.

    Who are the lepers, the outcasts, really?

    Are they those who don’t do things the way we do? Are they brothers and sisters whom we condemn because they don’t have the right ideals, or the right vestments, or the right whatever it is? Do they not think or act correctly in our very narrow version of the faith we profess? Perhaps when push comes to shove we will realize that they are holier than we are.

    Who are the lepers?

    Are they the refugees who stream across borders, fearing for their lives? Are they the folks that have no habitable homes because we like to do recreational drugs?  Are they the ones in headdresses who rail against the evils of the west and rant about the laxness of Christians? Are they members of the evil empire, folks from the wrong side of the Semitic tracks? Are they Muslim or Jews? Are they Baptists or Hindus? How about blacks, browns, so-called terrorists, gay people, divorced people, Vatican II people, reactionaries, our professors, our students, anyone else? I wonder what it will be like when we get to heaven and find them there, when we discover that: They were holier than we were?

    Brothers and sisters, there is a lot of challenge in this world. There are lots of shades. There are lots of forms of leprosy. I would like to claim in Christ-like fashion that I am a healer of the wounds of the world, that we are his instruments in this saving work. But I am increasingly convinced that we are not the healers of leprosy. Not at all. We are the lepers. We wallow in sins. We are frightened people. We are hampered by the persistent inability to overcome temptation. We line up week after week to confess the same stupid sins. We are incessant gossips. We are inveterate moaners and complainers. We are guides into oblivion. We can be engulfed in the disease of cynicism and hatred. We can be caught in the decay of prejudice and ideology. We can continually live into the hurts of our past, the hurts of families, of growing up. We can be wounded to the point that we must say, brothers and sisters, we must say we are not the healers of leprosy, we are the lepers. But thanks be to God we are also healed by Christ. Healed by the saints. Healed by the loving presence of each other, the God in each other. Raised up, cured.

    We are healed. Jesus has healed us. Jesus has made us new. Jesus has set us on a glorious path. Jesus has cleansed our uncleanliness with the blood of his body, a formerly unclean human body, now universally made clean by the divinity of his presence.

    Jesus has said: I don’t care what you have done or who you have been, I want to heal you. Jesus has said: The world’s way of understanding things is passed; I am making all things new. Jesus has said: Don’t live into the lies you have been told about yourself, live into my Truth and that Truth will set you free.

    He tells us so many things and he announces them with authority.

    And he only asks one thing from us for all of the many gifts he has given. He asks us to give thanks. Eucharistia. How hard is that? He asks us to offer a little healing back, to split our cloak in two. He asks us to be instruments of his love. It is all the same thing. Can we do it? Or shall we merely use this chapel, this seminary as an excuse to further our alienation? Shall we use this celebration to deepen our divisions? Shall this place just become a pit of pity for our own wanton conditions or shall we announce the healing each of us has received in Christ and offer to God the wondrous thanks this place, this celebration suggests, no, demands of us.

    Here we are and Jesus reaches out his hand to us.  Do we grasp it in faith or do we merely wander the earth as leprous men and women, suffering being outcasts? Or do we move behold, standing upright in the morning son, healed and healing.

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  6. Candidacy
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson. OSB
    November 5, 2015

    None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself.
    For if we live, we live for the Lord,
    and if we die, we die for the Lord;
    so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.
    The shepherd and the old lady

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    The two parabolic questions we have in tonight’s Gospel are somewhat perplexing, perplexing not so much as to understanding how they illustrate the point that Jesus wants to make, a point about the concern, the compassion of God. They are perplexing because from a natural point of view they are almost nonsensical. No reasonable shepherd would abandon ninety-nine sheep to search for one, from a natural point of view that erring sheep is expendable. One does not endanger the multitude for the sake of a foolish sheep. From a natural point of view it does not make sense to sweep the house for a coin. You will lose a day of work in doing so and the coin is not worth that much. One does not lose a day of work to find something that is not worth that much.

    And yet here we stand tonight confronted with this foolishness, this dilemma. What are we to make of it? Only this I think. God has a different kind of economy.

    In God’s economy, the first are last and the last first. There are no haves and have nots, all are haves and have nots. There are no parameters of success based on the almighty dollar. That is God’s economy.

    In God’s economy there are no lost, no expendable, none swept under the rug of life. There are no orphans, no widows, no neglected, none left to flounder on the sidelines of life, but all are called to action. That is God’s economy.

    In God’s economy, there are no refugees, no need for anyone to flee from their homeland, no need for homes to be broken, no need for schools to be torn apart by the violence we now witness almost every week in the news, no need for neighbors to be alienated from one another because of religion, or race. That is God’s economy.

    In God’s economy there is joy and dedication to service, no split personalities, split allegiances, split souls. There is peace in a world that needs peace, gentleness in hearts that yearn for gentleness, kindness in places where that warm sentiment seems like a thing of the past. That is God’s economy.

    We, brothers and sisters, we are a necessary part, perhaps the most necessary part of God’s economy. For …
    None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself.
    For if we live, we live for the Lord,
    and if we die, we die for the Lord;
    so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.
    And that certainly applies to our brothers tonight, our brothers who present themselves to the Church as candidates for Holy Orders. What does that candidacy entail?

    Tonight our brothers turn themselves over in a formal way to something more powerful than they have encountered before. Of course, their candidacy is merely an icon of our candidacy. They are called to serve as we are, but as leaders. They are called to give away, as we are, but as major givers. They are called to life as we are, and they bear it in their bodies, by their words and actions, on their faces.

    Tonight our brothers risk everything. They risk their futures by preparing themselves for a life of celibacy. They risk their identities by yearning to be solely caught up in Christ, and him alone, and him crucified. Our brothers are asking tonight, desiring to step out on a limb of faith, a limb of their own faith, weak as it is but also a limb of our faith, weak as it is.

    Tonight our brothers offer us a gift, they offer us themselves and who are they if not weak men, who are they if not sinful men, who are they if not errant men, men who are more than capable on most days of running away into the hills and hiding from us. They are weak, sinful, errant but also tonight willing. Are we?

    Tonight our brothers, like Moses, the prophets of old, the apostles, the early disciples, the saints down through the ages, named and unnamed, tonight our brothers are answering a call and it is a radical call, a call that cuts like a knife to the very core of their being, a beckoning call that resounds across the valleys of this world like the bleating of a lost lamb, a call that sounds like a trumpet summoning them to battle, a battle waged mostly in their own breast that asks them incessantly, whose are you, to whom do you belong? And yet it is also a sound as subtle, as silent as a coin, a single coin spinning errantly across the dusty floor of life.

    Tonight our brothers are telling us that they wish to be God’s fools. They wish to belong to Christ, they wish to be God’s exclusive property. Tonight they are turning themselves over for the use of God. Tonight they are asking us to walk with them, tentatively at first as they stagger across the landscape of their own pride, their own sin, their own selfishness, and then to walk upright in the Gospel, and then to run in service, run headlong into the fray of the human condition, a condition which our blessed Lord united himself to us forever, in his Body, in his Blood.

    O, brothers and sisters, the foolishness of God overflows in this place.

    Who else but these kind of people who present themselves tonight, who else would spend hours a day devoting themselves to prayer, and pouring out their lives on the altar of service, service to a pack of sheep that have no sense of loyalty, that do not appreciate the sacrifices they will make?

    We are God’s fools

    Who else would spend sleepless nights worrying about the salvation of souls so sloshed in sin that they can sleep the sleep of the guilty without a care in the world? We are called to care for those folks, those folks who care not a whit for the condition of their souls and who flaunt their salvific ignorance in the mirrors of their own eyes. And we do it because we are fools.

    We are God’s fools

    Who else would spend days pouring themselves out, weeping over the words of a homily that will, for the most part fall on deaf ears, who drag themselves morning after morning to the altar to witness the supreme sacrifice of the world to sleeping sentinels, who call and receive no reply to their calls echoing off the walls of the canyons of the human indifference? Only the fools.

    We are God’s fools

    And as God’s fools we seek the lost sheep, not only in the barrios and tenements of this world, but in the country clubs, in the universities, brothers and sisters in the seminaries where death still threatens with its cold, calculated breath but where, thanks be to God the rays of a brighter dawn are shining, shining through us in spite of our errant ways, shining in us and warming a world caught up in the frozenness of its own making.

    Are we committed?

    As God’s fools we have the honor, the privilege, the unsurpassed joy of the small things. We see sprigs of honesty and goodness spring up in our faces like the buds of April, even as the wild winds of winter howl outside our windows.

    Are we dedicated?

    As God’s fools we are dedicated to pursuing and pursuing and pursuing, never giving up and never losing heart, even if only one is saved, even if that one is merely me.

    Are we steadfast in our commitment and our dedication to the words of the epistle, the words of that fool St. Paul:
    None of us lives for oneself, and no one dies for oneself.
    For if we live, we live for the Lord,
    and if we die, we die for the Lord;
    so then, whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.
    We are the Lord’s

    Do you believe that? Do you truly believe that?

    If you do there is no obstacle that you cannot face.

    We are the Lord’s.

    If we truly believe that, come and announce your candidacy, indeed, your near-election.

    We are the Lord’s and thus we approach this altar of sacrifice, sober yes, but also overflowing with authentic joy, non-arrogant pride, the joy and pride that come from belonging to someone, Christ Jesus in whom we live, in whom we die, in whom we place all our hope.

    Whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.

    The shepherd and the old lady

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  7. Our recent visitation was quite a success and once again, I have every reason to be proud of the Saint Meinrad community for showing our visitators the best of what we offer. The visitation, as usual also offered me the opportunity to reflect my work as rector of the seminary and president of the other programs. How do I see my job? What do I like to do as rector?

    Certainly one of these responsibilities is programmatic vision. The program of a seminary is somewhat fixed by the ideas and ideals presented in the Program of Priestly Formation. In line with the bishops’ directives, we must fulfill a  number of stipulations given us involving your formation. Classes have to be taught, ministry must be done. All of these must be accomplished in a spirit of communal prayer.
    Likewise, the work of the rector is related to external relations. How does the seminary interact with its various publics? We must work with bishops and vocation directors. We must also intersect with trends in the local and global Church. We respond to teaching both local and practical and universal and ideal. Likewise, fundraising is a major aspect of my work as rector. We must have substantial funds to pay for the various services Saint Meinrad offers to the Church.

    Another aspect of my work as rector is teaching. This includes certainly the formal teaching I do in classrooms and the teaching that is offered in other contexts as well, through rector’s conferences, such as this one and through homilies and of course, through the daily interaction that I am privileged to have with all of you. I can truly say that the joy of my life comes through all of these, but particularly through the daily interaction that I have with you.

    Another part of the work I do is cheerleading, not only sounding the Saint Meinrad story publically, but privately helping each of you, each in your unique way, reach the maximum potential that you can reach. In other words, as father and pastor I need to help all of you, perhaps all of us to realize the heights to which we are called and to help realize those values and goals.

    Sometimes, I need to rally the troops and I hope that this evening you will see my comments in that light. I will begin my reiterating what I have said many times before: We have a good community. As I travel around to different seminaries, I am aware of the dynamics at play in different places. I know what kind of community atmosphere is inculcated in some seminaries, or perhaps I should say the lack of inculcation. I know that some seminaries operate on a system of what I refer to as “cookie-cutter” ideals, showing the world an “ideal” model of the priesthood, one usually of their own construction. That will not do for us. We must be authentic to who we are as each of you must be authentic to who you are. Making you the best man that you can be is serving the Church in a very focused way. Nevertheless, there is also a community identity that must be a part of our ethos as well. How can we achieve that ethos?

    Here is what I have to say: Brothers it is time to wake up. I think one of the disadvantages that is a part of the generation to which many of you belong and perhaps an idea that all of us can, at times, be guilty of thinking is that this is a school, merely a school. Therefore, not unlike what you experienced in your undergraduate years, you have the option of taking this part and leaving this part alone. As an undergraduate you may have undoubtedly experienced this: I have to go to class (at least most of you thought that) but aside from that my time is my own. I can do as I please. I can sleep all day. I can stay out all night. I can enjoy whatever pastime I chose to my heart’s content. Undoubtedly that was true although I suspect that such an approach to life, even for those unattached to a house of formation, may not have been entirely beneficial to the pursuit of a vocation of discipleship. But then again, perhaps you didn’t think about of care about discipleship in those days.

    Here we have a different scenario. Yes, there is an academic aspect to what we do here. Yes, you must go to class. You must read. You must take your studies seriously. However, there is a slightly different perspective about study here. You must study for yourself, not only to learn this or that aspect of the curriculum, but you must also learn to become a better man, a more informed man, a more cultured man. You must do this because you will soon, indeed, you already have, the responsibility of announcing the teachings of the holy Church to a world that desperately needs those teachings. The academic formation you receive here is intent upon making you a better person, but it is also intent upon making you a great teacher and preacher of the faith. If you are not convinced that you need the academic formation you are receiving, you can hardly be convinced that same intellectual tradition is important for the Church at large to know. Here is what I hear often: Nobody cares about the intricacies of biblical exegesis in a parish. Brothers, it is not true. You are selling the people of God short if you think they don’t care about theology and biblical studies and other aspects of what you are experiencing here. If you don’t learn here, you cannot expect of have responsibility for anyone in the Church other than the ignorant. In truth, they will not be ignorant, but what does it say when a large part of your future congregations know more about the Church’s thought and tradition that you do. You don’t know because you are a “pastor” which roughly translates, I don’t need to apply myself to study because I will show the people I care about them. If you truly care about the people, you will unveil for them the mysteries of God which you have access to in your studies, both your present and future studies, and which they will lap up.

    Another aspect of what we do here is build community. You are learning to build community. I am begging you, each of you, to take what we are doing here seriously. This is not just a school. In fact what you do outside of the classroom is as important, sometimes even more important than what you are doing in the classroom. What is your extra-curricular life like? Ask yourself this question: How much time to I waste every day playing games, watching television? Do I not think recreation is important? I do but how can recreation truly become what the word implies: re-creation, recreating myself to be a better person. Sometimes that comes through various activities. For the future priest it comes by making myself available to others. This vocation is not a job. This vocation is a way of life. The vocation of the priest is not something that is put on in the morning and removed at night. I must learn to act as a priest even when alone. I must pray, even when no one is watching. I must work, even when I would rather shirk the tasks assigned to me. Being a priest is a vocation and as such it is a responsibility. This is not only a place to learn but a place to live. This is your first assignment. The way you involve yourself here is a good indicator of the way you will be in parish life in the future.

    Ask yourself this question: What is my early morning demeanor? Are you up and ready to go? Are you at breakfast early? Are you ready to speak to people at 7:00? Are you attentive to not only the requirement to be at morning prayer but to be authentically present to the community, opening yourself to the spirit of God? As a priest, in the future much of your activity will take place early in the morning, meetings, masses, etc. Be prepared.

    Chesterton once remarked: Getting out of bed is a never ending nuisance.  Not getting out of bed is also a never ending nuisance to those who have to put up with priests who don’t show.  Part of this ideal of presence is also working through sickness. We have a great deal of sickness in this community and it may be the case that communal illness is a part of living together so closely. I wonder, however. This I do know. If you are the only priest in your parish and if there is a need to say mass or hear confessions or attend the dying, you really don’t have much of a choice but to press on. Here, I am not talking about fevers and contagious illness, bubonic plague or Legionnaires disease. Here I am talking about sniffles and little aches and pains. Men, press on. Go to the doctor if you need to, take some meds and press on. It is not fair to the people of the Church for a priest to be the victim of his own hypochondriacal tendencies. Press on. Get yourself to Mass and prayer, remain devoted to your ministry. It is needed.

    Devotion to your ministry is also an aspect of work that we must be about here in a focused way. You say: My ministry is not very meaningful. It is boring. I don’t like the supervisor. I don’t care for my ministry partners. Welcome to the Church! Success in ministry is usually, sometimes almost exclusively about what you make it to be and not about what is there when you arrive. Find new ways. Explore new paths, look for new ways of relating to that troublesome supervisor. The same is true of theological reflection. How can you take it upon yourself to make it more meaningful if you are finding it to be a grind and an interruption to the meaningful game of Zombies that you were planning for the afternoon.
    None of what I am proposing here is rocket science. It is not even really too particular to priesthood. It is called being a grown up. Ultimately I would say that being a grown up is not only realizing what your responsibilities are, but finally, definitively finding fulfillment in those responsibilities. Why? Because fulfilling my responsibilities makes me a good man and there is nothing I want to be more than a good person. That is the basis of the other vocation all of us are trying to fulfill. In other words, if I cannot be a good person, I can hardly expect to be a good priest. If I cannot be a good person, I can hardly expect to instill goodness in others, to make a good world, a world so desperately in need of God’s love and concern.

    I have recently been devotion a semester of study, as many of you know I do, to the Roosevelts. The family formed a political dynasty that many of you may take exception to today. Be that as it may, what has intrigued me about Theodore, Franklin, Eleanor and the others is not their political ideas, many of which I do not espouse. It is their sense of service. Both branches of the Roosevelt family were wealthy enough that they could easily have chosen to live lives of leisure on their various estates. They could have chosen to play games and read all day. They could have raised their children to believe in privilege about responsibility. They did not. They chose to serve and not only to serve but to devote their lives to serving their country. Theodore Roosevelt overcame a weakness in his childhood and chronic asthma, this death of his first wife and mother on the same day, he overcame these things to become a great leader, a military man, a medal of honor winner, a Nobel peace prize winner, the author of dozens of books. He did not do it to make money or to achieve fame, he did it out of a sense of pride and responsibility to his country.

    Franklin Roosevelt dragged a nation out of the depression, one might say almost by the force of his own will. He had a great compassion for people from all walks of life. He finally led his country, somewhat reluctantly into the Second World War. He was elected president four times. Likewise his wife, Eleanor, who was Theodore Roosevelt’s niece before she was Franklin’s wife, she used her position as first lady to touch the lives of thousands of Americans during the depression and during the war and after her husband’s death, at a time when she could have reasonably withdrawn from public life, she went on to become a charter member of the United Nations and wrote Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

    We know of course that the Roosevelts also had their problems. They had losses to face. They had family issues. Franklin Roosevelt could not walk, his polio as an adult prohibited his free movement. They had their own prejudices. About this there is no doubt, but likewise, there is no doubt that they devoted every ounce of their lives to service and service that was not even glorious, notable, or even seen. I think of this story of Eleanor Roosevelt. When she was touring the Pacific theater during World War II, she met a soldier in the hospital who was near death. He had a very particular request for Eleanor. He did not want his mother in Oregon to learn about his death from a telegram. Eleanor took down his information and before he died, she promised him that she would do something. She did. She traveled to Oregon and, as one mother to another, broke the news of her son’s death. She certainly didn’t have to do it, but she did.

    Enough about these old Roosevelts and their old fashioned ways. Perhaps they are out-dated. We live in a different world, but it is a world in which we are told that things are better, communication easier, we are closer, more global. Are we?


    Here is the question I want to ask us tonight: What is our commitment to this community? Is this a convenient place to live, where we have a room and mostly edible food or is this a community of faith, a place for us to grow and love and find peace? I suggest it is the latter. We are called to be men who are committed to helping, men who are committed to care for others, men who are committed to study for the intellectual good of the world, men who are stewards of the world and creation and must find ways to amplify that stewardship. Let’s see if we can find ways to do that, purposefully, centrally. Our ability to create community here is a good indicator of the future health of our parishes, religious communities and dioceses. This is the way for us to achieve blessings, but also our way of achieving salvation. 

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  8. All Saints
    YouTube video

    Since her death a few weeks ago, I have been thinking a lot about my former secretary, Mrs. Brahm. She was certainly a formidable lady and a determined one. She was very intimidating to seminarians and staff alike, but there was something else about her that she displayed in her forty years as secretary to four rectors. She was a holy woman. Certainly there was no formidable holiness about her. She went to Church. She prayed all day long at her desk. She prayed five rosaries every day for her children. She had a stack of prayer cards that she shuffled like a poker shark. She was a no nonsense Catholic and I am sure when she died, she had her paperwork in order. I am sure that she arrived at the gates of heaven and said: “Let me in” and I am equally sure that St. Peter let her in. I am doubly sure that she was found worthy, Marilyn Brahm is a saint.

    Twenty five years ago this year, my paternal grandfather, John Robinson, died aged 99. He was an interesting man who served as a part-time preacher, an engineer for the TVA, a part-time farmer and the father of 15 children. Today, perhaps any one of those jobs would be enough to stifle a man. Not so John Robinson, All of his boys and two of his girls served the US army. Two of his sons were killed in action, in Korea and Vietnam. I can truly testify, that, I almost never heard him say a word out of the pulpit. He was a great preacher and a man of authentic peace, not easy to achieve in a household such as his. I remember his pipe which he could only smoke on the porch and his forever fiddling with his pocket watch. He never raised his voice or struck one of his children as a punishment. He died in his bed after a short illness and I am sure he went right up to heaven. I am equally sure that St Peter let him in. I am doubly sure that he was found worthy, John Robinson is a saint.

    When I was in Memphis recently, I did what I like to do and stopped by the cemetery where my great Aunt Callie Elizabeth Ayers is buried. My great aunt was also a formidable person, but unlike my grandfather, she was a live wire, a pistol. She had fiery red hair which she claimed was real. It was not real. She was a pillar of the Baptist Church, taught Sunday School, played the piano and raised her five children to be God-fearing Christians. She always carried a pocket book which she kept by her side and would draw from said pocketbook a half stick of gum as a treat.   I can tell you this though now that she is gone, my great aunt also loved a little cocktail now and then. She had a puff of the cigarette now and then. She loved to play bingo and she was a ballroom dancer without equal since the retirement of Ginger Rogers. Of course no one in the church knew this, and they were undoubtedly better for it. When she died at the age of ninety, I surreptitiously secreted a bingo card into her casket, hiding it in the folds of her wedding garment.  I am sure when she arrived in heaven she held up her bingo card, claiming her jackpot prize. I am equally sure that Saint Peter let her in. I am doubly sure that she was found worthy, Callie Elizabeth Ayers is a saint.

    Back in my parish days in the early nineties, there was a lady in the parish named Betty. Betty was homeless, probably schizophrenic,and was well-known in our midtown neighborhood. According to her own narrative, Betty was a native of Louisiana. She came to Mass every day. She came to every continuing education I ever gave. I know that almost every night before I locked the church, Betty would sneak in the side door, make her way up to the choir loft and bed down for the night under the watchful care of the angels painted on the ceiling. Once Betty gave me a gift, some meat that she had found in a trash can which she thoughtfully preserved in a jar of discarded pickle juice. I had a great respect for Betty and we spent a lot of time talking and I spent a lot of time listening. She never asked for anything. She died in 1995 and was found on the street behind the Montesi  grocery store. I have no idea how old she was. We gave her full burial from the cathedral. She was colorful to say the least, but I loved her, I really did. I am sure that she arrived at the gates of heaven with the proper offering, her last secreted treasure from the Montesi dumpster. I am equally sure that Saint Peter let her in. I am doubly sure she was found worthy, Betty is a saint.
    After this I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb.
    So many nameless folks, now forgotten by us but remembered for their goodness and their simplicity and their complexity and their rascal-tude before gates of heaven.

    All Saints

    Grandmothers of sizeable proportion, faces and aprons covered with flour running out to the golden curb to welcome the babies home

    Grandfathers silent and pondering their pocket watches and their pipes ready for … whatever, for wisdom

    Aunts’ sour faces turned to smiles still clutching their patent leather purses for dear life while searching for that half stick of gum, now miraculously transformed into a whole package

    Uncles laughing and singing with loud voices amplified by the celestial atmosphere and a bit of Jack D into something more hearable than earth afforded

    Grateful mothers clutching their lost children, tired and tear stained eyes now brightened in the refined air of recognition

    Sons older than their mothers, crying out, you were gone too soon. I’m glad to see you, mommy

    Fathers bouncing babies on their knees babies they had not seen since those dark days.

    Daughters seeking forgiveness from their fathers for the sleepless nights, the care filled days of adolescence. “Daddy forgive me” escaping their lips before their fathers grasp them in a tight embrace

    Sisters welcoming their brothers with tender words and kisses on the forehead

    Brothers red-faced grasping silver spit cans falling into the arms of mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters, being brought anew into families no longer prodigal

    Little children born too soon without names and without compassion, now entangled in hundreds of arms and blankets with joy and warmth they never felt in their too brief sojourn on earth

    Classmates laughing with teachers and each learning from each what happened since those childhood days of white paste and bulletin boards and construction paper

    Kindergartners waiving violently and smiling toothlessly as they line up perfectly for the first time for an 
    Elysian field trip

    Common folks whirlwinded to heaven in the explosion of Syrian neighborhoods where fences kept out the Shia or the Suni but could not keep out the living God.   

    Neighbors tearing down fences and returning borrowed lawnmowers and cups of sugar that might never have seen home again

    Secretaries placing more papers to sign in front of your face and you realizing that you signed it already and the two of you laugh out loud.

    Cranks smiling from ear to ear and chirping, shouting, crying out: Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me!

    Messes made clean in the waters of Lethe lined up with combed hair and bright, white angel tunics

    Old ladies fishing through golden dumpsters behind the celestial Montesi grocery store

    Monks and nuns with wild hair and habits newly made whole now living forever in new digs

    New angels freshening up their new wings from the package and shaking off the feathered remnants of old ways

    Seminarians bright faced and alert at 7 o’clock in the morning, O hell, let’s say six o’clock

    Pilgrims walking mournfully to cemeteries only to realize that there is no one there. They are all gone, the graves are empty

    Priests sighing with relief that it worked, it actually worked … this salvation thing

    Old devils with polished horns and the homeless lounging in loud silk pajamas

    The clean of heart justified but not smug, never smug
    The merciful given mercy
    The peacemakers marching to silent fife and drum
    The afraid no longer quaking
    The cowardly running into battle
    The brave resting on the Rock of Ages
    The poor in spirit rich in eloquence
    The mourners dry and upright
    The meek overwhelmingly bold

    All Saints

    All Saints who from their place in heaven shine with splendor before the throne of God

    Men and women and children with halos and wings, crooked halos and matted wings, golden halos and golden wings.

    And each day as we gather in prayer, as we pause in our rooms, as we catch our reflections in the mirrors, as we take a walk in these waning days filled with browning grass and burning leaves and gentle chills, as we remember a particular smell, old perfume or gum, or grandma’s pure vanilla extract, as we hear the rushing wind, the crackling of logs on a fire, as we taste the Bud in the back of our throats and think back on that stupid costume from last night, or that three year old me dressed up like Casper the friendly ghost, as we sing a song, walk, pray.

    All Saints

    In bright array and in dark, conservative suits, in habits, in dress clothes, with hair slicked back and new breviaries, students and teachers, friends and companions, and enemies, yes, perhaps a few of those as well

    Saints, all saints in God’s eyes and in his plan.

    We strive, we gather, we propel ourselves into beatitude. We stretch out our hands to receive the Lord of Heaven in the act of communion and we are one with them, we are truly one with them.
    After this I had a vision of a great multitude, which no one could count, from every nation, race, people, and tongue. They stood before the throne and before the Lamb
    And they … we, are found worthy. 

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  9. About 35 years ago, I came into contract with a book that has literally haunted me ever since. I have read it at least a dozen times and most recently, I have been listening to the book on CD. In the early nineties, I wrote a play about it. The book is called Silence, by the Japanese Catholic author Shusaku Endo. I understand that next year it will appear as a film directed by Martin Scorsese. The book is a harrowing account of the seventeenth-century Jesuit missions to Japan. In particular, it is the brutal story of one young, naïve priest, Fr. Sebastian Rodriguez whose life in Japan, literally from the moment he hits soil, is defined by torture and chase. I would like to say that the book inspired me to become a priest, but it probably did not. In fact, the reason I seem to have been haunted by the book is that I have never adequately been able to evaluate the story of Fr. Sebastian. Is he a hero, a villain, or a naïve fool? Perhaps he is all three simultaneously. My most recent listening of the book has brought to mind several themes, however, themes I would like to spend a bit of time reflecting on this evening. All of these themes have to do with what I might term, pastoral imagination.

    When I consider the meaning of the priesthood, the first thing that comes to mind for me is that we are called to an integrative vocation, that is, we are called to building up. Building community is never easy. Community requires first and foremost a personal sacrifice on the part of those who create it. Creating community requires that we move away from our personal likes and dislikes and what we perceive as our personal needs, and view the other as primary, or rather view the others as primary, and finally to see myself as part of the others, the we. As I have noted before this is difficult to realize when the central cultural message we receive is one of self-reliance and self-preservation. In the Catholic ethos, I can only realize my truest self by giving my truest self away. The question we have to continually ask ourselves, perhaps especially in this moment of counter-cultural behavior we call Saint Meinrad, perhaps the question we need to ask is: “Am I becoming more of a member of the group?” This is an essential skill and one that all of us must learn. The legacy of the fall is a legacy of shame and isolation. We must find a way to overcome it and that is undoubtedly our first priority. We are God’s children now, all of us and realizing that vocation means that I place myself first only when I place the other first, because only in placing the other first can I truly become who I am. Lumen Gentium 10 deals with the important theme of the integration of the hierarchical priesthood and the priesthood of believers. We who are called to the hierarchical priesthood exercise that priesthood authentically only when we build up the priesthood of believers. The purpose of the hierarchical priesthood is not to realize a separate caste, much less a privileged few or even a band of brothers. The authentic exercise of my hierarchical priesthood is only realized when I have given myself away in service to you, to my brothers and sisters, to my flock. Yet how many priests do we know that devote a vast amount of time and energy protecting themselves from the people. The priesthood is not lived in a gilded cage. It is lived on the streets, in the community, in homes, in schools, in dangerous places. The rectory is only a rejuvenation spot and must never be seen as a refuge. As a priest I have no refuge and no respite. I am called to serve to exhaustion and death. We do not really care for that language and in a culture of self-preservation, it is anathema. When I think of Fr. Sebastian in Silence, here was a man who threw himself onto the shores of a hostile country and did not stop until he found a people to serve. Brothers in formation, we too have thrown ourselves onto the shores of a hostile country. We must learn to love that country, to love its people, to speak its language, not to be drawn into its silent tranquilization, but to challenge and preserve it, to strengthen it in its weakness because it deserves to be strengthened. I think of another book that has had a great deal of influence for me, The Diary of a Country Priest. In Bernano’s novel, the young, naïve priest works himself to death, not because he is being successful, in fact he is not. He works himself to death because, like his Divine Master, he is called to work himself to death.

    This leads me to a second observation about the pastoral imagination. The only thing that recreates the world is a solid life of prayer. We must work. We must work creatively. We must serve but our greatest service to the world comes primarily in our life of prayer. If our vocation is built solidly upon a relationship with God that relationship begins and ends with an intimacy with God in prayer. Prayer is the means of my maintenance not only of my relationship with God but also with myself and myself through others. A life of prayer that is fruitful and meaningful begins with a realization of the responsibility I have to pray and fulfilling that responsibility. That is piety. A life of prayer that is fruitful is also a sincere being in touch with tradition. Brothers and sisters, we must know the tradition. We must invest hours of study. We must understand the devotional tradition of the Church. We must honestly ask ourselves what our relationship is with the past. The past is a necessary part of our present but it does not refer to our present as a slavish recreation of the past. Tradition is an essential element but it is only as meaningful as it stands also on the cusp of newness. Always old, always new. This is the hallmark of any real relationship and especially our relationship with God. This is the world of prayer that we are responsible for creating and maintaining. Perhaps we might consider this tension as a question: Is prayer a thing I do or am I defined by prayer? Just as we must know the tradition, we must be defined by prayer. One of the interesting aspects of Silence is that as much as Fr. Sebastian suffers he knows he cannot lose sight of his need for prayer. The need for speaking and listening to God is necessary, yet how many people, how many of us make prayer their daily priority?

    A third observation is that certainty or the pursuit of certainty may be degrading to the vocation. What do I mean by certainty? I mean that if we are looking for answers to questions, and the answers are very specific that we are looking for, we may be on the wrong track. Deep systemic change is a fact of life. It is a biological fact. To live is to change. If there is certainty in life it is the certainty of change. Our lives as priest cannot be built upon the principle that we are going to create an ideal and force others into it. They must be built upon realizing a guiding change. One of the unfortunate traits we see in parishes today is among those priests who desire to create a pristine world, usually predicated on a kind of liturgical ideal of purity. Usually this ideal of purity is my ideal which we attempt to disguise as the Church’s ideal. My tastes are not magisterial teaching. I must never use my authentic power in the Church to lord my opinions and tastes over others. Neither must I merely acquiesce to the tastes of the people. As a priest, I am called to lead, to listen, to be sympathetic but I am also called to recognize an ideal and to help people to realize that ideal, not my ideal but the Church’s ideal. In the novel Silence, the title refers to God’s occasional silence, but is also refers to the need for the priest and the people to be silent in order to hear God’s word.  Fr. Sebastian knows in the novel that he needs to keep his own agenda in check to serve the people in terms of what they need. And of course, ultimately what do we need? We need God.

    A fourth quality of the pastoral imagination is to view the other as oneself and ourselves as the other. Much of our work as priests is spent in navigating tensions. We are called to continually adopt new circumstances and adapt ourselves to new and changing realities. Navigating the tensions around us is a skill that is necessary. Our love for the others requires us not merely to plow through the other in order to find the virtue, it is loving through the vice, loving in the sin. The deep learning of the priest, his grammar is not sorting out, but loving the other in spite of her or his flaws. If consists in caressing the flaws, of finally finding the flaws somewhat beautiful. How do we accomplish this? Let me reiterate what I have often said before. Your strength as a priest comes certainly in recognizing and accentuating your strengths. However, it comes primarily in knowing your flaws because those flaws become conduits of mercy. In the coming year, the Holy Father has called us to a year of mercy and he has already offered several concrete means of expressing this mercy. Are we men of mercy? Are we merciful toward others? Will our confessionals be oases of mercy or will they be harsh places of punishment? Do we feel mercy for our brothers here who are struggling and in need or do we judge them because they cannot or will not live up to our expectations or what we perceive to be the expectations of the Church. Perhaps a more significant question is can we receive God’s mercy ourselves? An interesting aspect of Silence is that a great deal of Fr. Sebastian’s response to the various people he serves is superficial. He notices this one’s teeth and this one’s eyes. He notices their clothing. Later he learns a new pattern, that is, he learns to appraise others in mercy. Why, because he realizes that he needs mercy as well. If we are acutely aware of our need for God’s mercy, our sinfulness, then we can only judge others accordingly. The best confessor is the one most sensitively aware of his own sin and his own reception of God’s mercy precisely through the sacrament.

    A fifth principle is that we experience our needs and the needs of others in our bodies. One of the ideals of formation is encapsulated in the Greek word, paideia or wisdom. We think of wisdom as a purely intellectual activity yet for the Greeks it was not. The Greeks understood wisdom as a property of the body as much as of the mind and soul. What is corporeal wisdom? Primarily it is taking care of ourselves, of caring for our health and our bodies. What is our diet like? Do we exercise moderately? Are we engaging in behaviors that threaten our health unnecessarily? There is something insidious about taking advantage of our relative wealth to provide opportunities for us to harm ourselves. The humanity of the priest is a bridge and it must be authentic. We come to know the people through our social skills. Are you an introvert? Good, now learn functional extroversion. Are you an extrovert, wonderful, now learn to shut up and listen to others. One of the most important ideals of wisdom is the tolerance for turbulence. We must find in the frantic nature of human life those moments of grace that speak to us in ways we need to hear desperately, and that moment is the insight that God is present. Fr. Sebastian in Silence, learns through the experience the depravation of the body how to create a space for God. All of us are half-empty, but our half emptiness is the opportunity to receive God in a substantive way.

    Finally, I think the principle of pastoral imagination requires us to understand that when God calls us, he calls us totally and he calls us immediately. Here, that requires us to hit the formation ground running. You know that I favor an approach to “discernment” that may be described as cautious. Certainly we have to be open here to listen to God’s call to us in our lives, but, are our expectations always realistic? Rather than being bogged down in the question we must move forward purposefully toward the answer. If God is calling you, it will be apparent, if not, it will also be apparent. In the meantime, move forward toward ordination. God can sort it out. So your question is not whether you are going to be a priest. Your question is how will I become the best priest possible.

    Pastoral imagination implies something quite explicitly; it implies that our major way of approaching the world is through inductivity, through thinking that is integrative and organic. Yet, for the most part, our previous education does not necessarily prepare us for this reality. We are an answer oriented people. We have been taught to the test. And yet, the pastoral imagination means our lives as priests are fraught with ambiguity. Can inductivity be taught? It must be taught. We also know this: As a staff, as a faculty we must be more explicit with you. We cannot take for granted the values that we hold and that we believe are necessary for you to hold. Likewise, our task as a faculty and staff is to form you, but in a Christian community it is also to be formed by you. We are formed by you. Holy Orders orders us to an end, but it is not the only end. Discipleship orders us to an end, a psychological end, a metaphysical telos, temporal ends. Let me turn for a moment back to my rather conflicted relationship with Silence. In the end. Fr. Sebastian apostotizes, he abandons his priesthood in the swamp of Japan. Why does he do it? He does it to save Christians who are being murdered by the Japanese because he will not apostatize. His captures tell him that he is responsible for the death of these people. It is a horrible ending, a brutal ending and it has haunted me for over thirty years. In the Holy Father’s address to the members of Congress last week a paragraph stood out for me and so I hope you will bear with me while I repeat it:

    All of us are quite aware of, and deeply worried by, the disturbing social and political situation of the world today. Our world is increasingly a place of violent conflict, hatred and brutal atrocities, committed even in the name of God and of religion. We know that no religion is immune from forms of individual delusion or ideological extremism. This means that we must be especially attentive to every type of fundamentalism, whether religious or of any other kind. A delicate balance is required to combat violence perpetrated in the name of a religion, an ideology or an economic system, while also safeguarding religious freedom, intellectual freedom and individual freedoms. But there is another temptation which we must especially guard against: the simplistic reductionism which sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners. The contemporary world, with its open wounds which affect so many of our brothers and sisters, demands that we confront every form of polarization which would divide it into these two camps. We know that in the attempt to be freed of the enemy without, we can be tempted to feed the enemy within. To imitate the hatred and violence of tyrants and murderers is the best way to take their place.  

     

     
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  10. The Lord has given me a well-trained tongue that I may learn how to speak a word to the weary that will rouse them.

    The words of the prophet Isaiah this evening are prescient, certainly for us, but also for the prophet. They are bold words, bold words indeed for a man who would soon be facing death. Yet, is that not the condition of us all?

    There is an intimacy in these words, a familiarity.

    Tonight we gather in this familiar place, with many familiar faces and a few unfamiliar ones as well to begin our new formation year. For many of us that is old news, for some of us, it is the very essence of Good News, this coming together, this amalgamation of community life a life we will forge in the coming year through prayer and study together, through formal initiation into the life of the priesthood, a life that many of our brothers are very close to indeed.

    What will we witness this year? We will witness transition. Some are arriving, some soon departing. Some will enter new ministries, others will see in their ordinations to the diaconate the culmination of those ministries received.

    Classes will be taken and from an academic point of view, there will be change and development and then, moving on.

    Books will be read, or not read. Various ministries and projects will be offered. Many folks will be met, some in positions of strength and others in weakness.

    Lives will be unraveled and reassembled in spiritual formation and counseling. Insights will be gained, or avoided.

    Tonight we begin this new adventure in so many formal ways but we also will be the respondents in the coming year to informal invitations as well.

    Friendships will be forged in unlikely places. Other relationships will fall by the wayside.

    Our tastes will be challenged. We will be called upon to seek a little more in the way of authenticity and a little less in the way of cyber-reality.

    We will fall. All of us will fall and fail in the coming year.

    And in this extended journey of informal formation we will make some important discoveries. One of these will inevitably be an uncovering of the difference between what we like and what is true.

    We will find the need, and hopefully also the courage to face realities within ourselves that, when authenticated, might be a catalyst of change for the world. This is true for our seminarians. It is also true, at least I hope it is true for our faculty and staff as well.

    A faculty and staff not immersed in the language of personal conversion can hardly be seen as useful for the stimulation of these same movements in others.

    As a faculty and staff, we are called to conversion as well, to be different today than we were yesterday, to find where the Lord God lurks, perhaps surreptitiously in our hearts as well.

    The seminary is as we know a seed bed. It is a place where folks are broken open and reconfigured. For a faculty and staff, these dynamics are the same, as they are indeed for all people of character.

    A seminary faculty and staff devoted to conversion with their seminarians is a wonder indeed and I pray we are exemplars of that wonder here at Saint Meinrad. We are all in this together. We are all in this voyage of discovery as one.

    Another discovery we will make is that the Catholic Church is a lively mess. That is not bad news, although it might sound a bit ominous. It is good news because it allows for us to be something quite essential, it allows us to be ourselves. All of us are messes.

    All of us have parts of our past and present that are not open for inspection, those things we like to keep hidden, though if we are honest with ourselves they are mostly known.

    All of us have sin in our lives, sin which sounds the ominous note of intransience, sin that tells us, most cripplingly that we can never be anything other than this sin or that sin, that we can never become saints, only awful people bound for perdition.

    All of us feel stunted or stifled caught in a web somewhat of our own fashioning and somewhat fashioned for us by a world that does not want us to change.  All of us are sinners.

    And yet all of us, in some way, in some unique way are also called.

    We are called to be witnesses of God, not only in our privileged times but at all times.

    We are called to find more in the world, more joy than video games, television and entertainment.

    We are called to breath the fresh air of Lethe’s banks and to aspire to some new horizon, some new paradise. Can we find a paradise in the billowing smoke of the Stygian shore on which we stand.

    We are called to announce the Gospel to a world that has desperate need to hear good news.

    This past summer I was traveling through the Atlanta airport on my way to Belgium.  As I made my way through the various twists and turns of the terminal, a building aptly named, I came across a large crowd that was gathering around a display that had been set up in the corridor. It was a display of robotic people. There were two robots, fashioned so realistically that they looked exactly like two young people. They walked, they talked, they served your every need. The crowds were fascinated by them. They looked so real. Of course, the reason they looked so real is because they were real. They were not robots at all, but actors advertising a new television show about robotic servants who will, I am sure in the course of the season, go wrong. And yet people looking at them were absolutely convinced that this was the next step in a technological advancement that would bring robotics into our homes, or at least into the homes of the very wealthy. The world likes to fool us, but brothers and sisters, we also like to be fooled. Increasingly in our world we are offered the invitation to not have to deal with what is real. And we accept it willingly, lovingly.

    This certainly applies in our encounters in a world full of challenges. Follow the news. This summer we had the situation of the supreme court of the United States pronouncing on the issue of same-sex marriage. What those men and women said was not real, and yet we are told that we must accept it as real. We live in a culture of relativism, a culture that says if I put on a robe and sit in an imposing chamber and speak language that many will fail to comprehend then I am speaking the truth. The Truth is not contained in trappings or formalities. The Truth is told in the very marrow of our being and yet we are told again and again not to trust these instincts which bubble at the core of our existence. And so those so-called truth tellers become nothing more than illusions, like the robots in the Atlanta airport.

    This summer we also witnessed the shame of the Church in the resignation of the archbishop of Minneapolis and one of his auxiliary bishops. We know our bishops are not perfect and they will tell us that. However, we cannot accept a minister of the Church that seeks to hide the sins of others to protect the reputation of an institution that is already compromising itself in the original sin. Power does not come from subterfuge and the ability to hide the ugly stain of failure. Power comes from honesty, the honesty that looks reality in the eye and says that this is this and not this. This is that and not that. Your formation is circumscribed by your ability to tell the truth in love, to one another certainly for fraternal correction, but also to ourselves.

    Power comes from humility from the earthy residue of lives fully lived, not lies half-told.

    Power, true power, comes from an embrace of myself, myself precisely as who I am, a broken, truly wretched individual who has never merited a thing but is nevertheless infinitely loved by the God of all ages.

    How does this apply to our work here? Brothers and sisters, that is our work here. Here we must learn the one essential truth of our ministry. We do not build castles on the foundations of a false purity. We do not stand aloof from the mystery of sin and death to serve those whose sanctity is proven and whose passport to eternal life is already assured. We do not need to serve the saints, the saints have already been served by God through grace.

    We have need for the half-hearted. We have need for those whose lives are underway. We have need for those who struggle with the same sins over and over, but struggle and do not succumb to them. We have need to those who cannot articulate their faith well, who do not know the commandments, whose theology is not rusty, it is non-existent.

    We have need for those who lie awake at night questioning, but struggling in their questioning, because so often, in our quarter or half catechized world they do not know the questions to ask.

    Brothers and sisters, our task is to help one another in our questioning, to seek the path that will save us by knowing full-well the landmarks of that path, landmarks like courage, and devotion, and fidelity, and beauty, and love, especially love.

    The half –hearted reminds us all of who we are, pilgrims on the journey, perpetual pilgrims, always in the throes of starting over. And that, of course, brings us to the portal of a new formation year.

    The Lord has given me a well-trained tongue. The words of the prophet are words that we, likewise must aspire to as we continue trying to evangelize that part of ourselves that still refuses God’s invitation.

    They are also words that offer us some insight into what this vocation costs us, because they were words spoken by a man who was about to die.
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    Labels: Rectors's Conferences 2015-2016
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Fr. Denis Robinson, OSB
Fr. Denis Robinson, OSB
Fr. Denis Robinson, OSB

Fr. Denis Robinson, OSB, is president-rector of Saint Meinrad School of Theology in St. Meinrad, IN. A Benedictine monk, he is also an assistant professor of systematic theology. A Mississippi native, Fr. Denis attended Saint Meinrad College and School of Theology, earning a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1989 and a Master of Divinity in 1993. From 1993-97, he was parochial vicar for the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Memphis, TN. He joined the Saint Meinrad monastery in August 1997. Fr. Denis also attended the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, where he received a master’s degree in theology in 2002, a licentiate in sacred theology in 2003, and doctorates in sacred theology and philosophy in 2007.

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