1. 31st Sunday in Ordinary Times
    October 30, 2016
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    And how could a thing remain, unless you willed it;or be preserved, had it not been called forth by you?
    Today, in the aftermath of the series of earthquakes in Italy, the question posed in the Book of Wisdom seems most prescient.
    And how could a thing remain, unless you willed it; or be preserved, had it not been called forth by you?
    We know of course that the material world is passing away. We know, at least at some level, all of the things we cherish and try so valiantly to maintain will never last. We witness the destruction of cultural heritage in places like Syria and Afghanistan.  We see our own efforts in our country to preserve the homes of presidents and other seemingly significant folks.

    We know the money that is expended every year to keep places alive, even our natural resources, our parks, our monuments.

    And yet, in spite of our efforts, there is so much that is passing away.

    Last night, the Benedictine world witnessed the destruction of the town of Norcia and the basilica that marked the birthplace of our holy patriarch, St. Benedict.

    It is a loss, but the question from Wisdom still stands:
    And how could a thing remain, unless you willed it; or be preserved, had it not been called forth by you?
    Our task in this world brothers and sisters is not to maintain physical places and objects. Our task in this world is to do the will of God.

    It is strange that that expression flows out so easily and yet can be so devastatingly difficult

    Our task is to do the will of God.

    In the Gospel today we have Zacchaeus.

    It seems, at least at face value to be a witty story of a small person who wanted to see Jesus. But of course, St. Luke has a few tricks up his sleeve. Zacchaeus’s stature would have been a much more serious issue for Jews in his time than in ours. Being small of stature was a sign of God’s disfavor for the ancient Jews, such a one was already an object of ridicule for the community.

    Furthermore, Zacchaeus has a pariah profession; he is a tax collector, an agent of the Roman authorities, and in the minds of his co-religionists, practically a Gentile.

    And so the message that this little man has the potential to proclaim is tamed, by bigotry and prejudice, by opinions already garnered, by national and ethnic boundaries.

    Zacchaeus was hated by his own people for being short and an agent of foreign authority and hated by the others for being Jewish and a tax collector.

    The universal hatred of Zacchaeus made him ripe for the picking from his tree perch by the master “orchader”, Jesus.

    Come down from that tree, little man, I have something to bring to you, to bring to your house. It is the Spirit of God.

    What do we expect today, perched as we are on the seemingly safe boughs of our so greedily guarded ideas and opinions? I wonder if in our Church today we have not gone a long way toward taming that spirit that Jesus confronted so flagrantly and so causally. We are uncomfortable with any excesses in religion, any sense of threat or God forbid insanity.  We veer from the path of extravagance until extravagance rocks us like an earthquake in our own discipleship, maybe you are feeling that today.

    You know sometimes I wonder. I wonder if in our Church we have not tried to eradicate the central mystery of faith, the unpredictability of our faith, the very core of our faith, a core wrapped in a mantle of certain wildness.

    What do we find?

    A morbid fixation on numbers and finances.

    A priesthood sometimes bereft of spirit in the mode of personal comfort, tastes, dependability.

    A sense of the need for being marketable and for being popular in order to “compete” in a volatile Church environment.

    An overwhelming boredom, a lethargy with liturgy, prayer, ministry and life.

    And yet we know, we know by faith that the Spirit is still alive in the Church. It is alive in the men and women who struggle daily through hardships almost unimaginable to us, depravations, violence and persecution descended upon them because of their faith in Jesus. Witness Zacchaeus. Witness the monks of Norcia living for the past months in tents to serve the needs of the people of their town, even unto this last affront by nature to their beloved church.

    Brothers and sisters the Spirit of God is still alive.

    That spirit is alive in a thousand humming places, in small villages and towns around the world where people gather to hear God’s word and open the floodgates of his grace in surreptitious celebrations of the Holy Mass.

    That spirit thrives in the ceaseless devotion of the helpless, the confused and the alienated who, in the hour, the moment of their greatest need turn their hearts over irrevocably to the Spirit that sustains, the Spirit that rejoices, the Spirit that alone gives life.

    That spirit is living in all of us gathered here this morning. All of us arrive at this place today confused and bewildered by life. We arrive with questions about our vocations, not matter what those vocations might be.

    We arrive with a sense of dread, but with fear of God and faith we approach the mystery of salvation and while that mystery may thrust us indeed down the rabbit hole of uncertainty, brothers and sisters we fall with confidence that in our time, in our place, in our vocations we will find ourselves, as the old song says, leaning on the everlasting arms.

    Zacchaeus fell from the tree into the arms of the savior. We fall from our expertly constructed perches into love, into wonder, into uncertainty true, but an uncertainty guaranteed by the certainty of the man who came among us as a child, in dependency and the witness of weakness

    We are held in the arms of the healer, the man of mystery and hope, who straddled the barrier between heaven and earth to bring healing in his wings to a fallen race

    We are held, like old Zac, in the arms of Christ, those arms which, in the fullness of time stretched out between heaven and earth in the everlasting sign of salvation.

    We are held, like the people of Italy today, in the arms of the savior, who after three days burst the gates of death and human destruction to rise fully alive from the ashes.

    This is our destiny brothers and sisters. This is our faith. This is our way of life

    The spirit of God is alive in us today and every day in the eloquence of the ministry to which we have been called and upon which we cast ourselves, the discipleship that gives life. The discipleship that alone can carry the burden of a world weighed down by the millstones of sin, and pain and despair, rocked by the devastating earthquakes of “the times”.
    “Today salvation has come to this house … For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.”
    We hear Jesus’s words. I wonder if they apply to us today? I wonder if they apply to the monks of Norcia, the people of that town so rocked by the deep movements of the earth? I wonder, but then my wonder turns to hope. 

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  2. Feast of the Archangels
    September 29, 2016
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson

    I will begin with a little confession.

    I have always had a morbid fear of angels.

    Molty, mealy, feathery, sweet, bright, trumpeting, sticky

    So, today’s feast comes as something of a mixed blessing.

    When I was a child my parents told me that at the end of time the angel would sound the trumpet and Jesus would come back to earth to apply justice to my backside. At least, that is the way I heard it.

    Then there was … the picture. I had this picture in my room of two children on a rickety bridge being watched over by this amazonal angel that was about 200 feet tall with a thousand foot wingspan. I could see her from my bed and if there was a storm, the lightening flashed her alive for me.

    The angel reminded me of my Aunt Louella. Like all of my father’s siblings, she was huge. Picture Hassler in a dress with a two foot beehive. Not pretty, I know. She was also loud and I found it ironic that everyone in the family called her by her nickname, which was Cricket.

    My aunt Louella was what angels were like for me. And of course we have ample support for this formidable, bellicose image from the Book of Revelation.
    War broke out in heaven;
    Michael and his angels battled against the dragon.
    The dragon and its angels fought back,
    but they did not prevail
    and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.
    This is what angels do. This is how they are. Perhaps we prefer Milton’s image from Paradise Lost:
    The sound of blustering winds, which all night long
    Had roused the sea, now with hoarse cadence lull
    Seafaring men o'erwatched, whose bark by chance
    Or pinnace, anchors in a craggy bay
    After the tempest. Such applause was heard
    As Mammon ended, and his sentence pleased,
    Advising peace: for such another field
    They dreaded worse than Hell; so much the fear
    Of thunder and the sword of Michael
    Angels are formidable. At least that’s what I have always thought.

    But there is something more. If we look into the Scriptures we also find the angels in a more domestic mode.

    Here is Raphael in friendly companionship with Tobias, walking along, encouraging, planning, plotting and winning.

    Here is Gabriel, showing up in the intimate setting of Mary’s room to announce Good News to a little girl about the most significant event in the history of the human race.

    And here is Michael. Well, perhaps we shall leave him as he is.

    The angels show us something important. They show us God’s companionship.

    They show us that we are watched over and protected

    They show us that that thousand foot wingspan guarantees that we are cared for in the storms of the night. They are God’s guarantee we are not alone.

    We know the reality of the darkness, whether that is our self-confidence, our guilt, our leftover pain of the past, our utter sense of worthlessness, our simply having no one, our loss, our illness. WE KNOW.

    But we also know that into the deepening shadows of our childhood rooms, that angel comes. Angel means messenger and a messenger is only as great as the message. What is the message?

    God knows and God cares. God knows all our secrets and our fears. God knows every wrong thing we ever did and every anonymous good. God knows how alone we can feel even in the crowdedness of busy lives. God knows what weighs upon our hearts as we lie in our beds, pulling the covers over our heads. God knows our cowering and cowardice. God knows and God cares and thus, the angel comes.

    Perhaps in a reassuring hand on our shoulder.

    Perhaps in the comforting words of a friend

    Perhaps in a listening ear

    Perhaps in a random smile on the street.

    As we cross the rickety bridges of life

    They are there with their thousand foot wingspan

    They are ascending and descending upon us

    Drawing us up into the awesome mystery of God

    A mystery unfolded for us on this altar

    A grandeur unveiled for us in this community.

    The angels we celebrate today. We know their names. But look around, there are other messengers here with other names.

    Here in this place where seraphim and cherubim unceasingly do cry
    Holy, Holy, Holy … Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

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  3. Triumph of the Holy Cross
    September 14, 2015
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

     Today we celebrate a very significant and an ancient feast.
    Today it is tempting to spend some time weaving an eloquent yarn about the triumphant discovery of the Holy Cross by Saint Helen

    It is tempting to speak about the relic of the True Cross making its ways across the scarred crusader battlefields of Holy Lands spurring on to victory the bedraggled armies of Christendom.  It is tempting

    It is tempting to try and find in our mind’s eye the golden reliquary of the True Cross, displayed in procession in the streets of Rome and taken to edge of the Jewish Ghetto as the sign of condemnation and victory. It is tempting

    It is tempting to imagine the tears and shouts of triumph that have accompanied that fragmented wood as it has traversed cathedrals and tents and huts and homes through the years. It is tempting to think of these things on this very significant and ancient feast.

    All of it is tempting, but I will not do it.

    Today as we celebrate this significant and ancient feast

    It might be useful to bring out the arsenal of readings, John 3, 16, God so loved the world, and he did. 
    It might be useful

    It might be useful to recount the great hymn of the Church of Philippi as St. Paul does in the second chapter of his letter and to hear in those familiar strophes the hopes of generations, the regrets of sinners. It might be useful

    It might be useful to remember today the beginnings of the Church’s calendar for our Eastern Rite brothers and sisters, a year that begins and ends with the cross of Christ rising above the clouded landscape of strife and warfare. It might be useful.

    It might be useful, but I will not do it.

    Instead, go on a little journey with me if you will, a little trip back in time.

    Let’s imagine that we are sitting today in a little clapboard church, the New Chapel Freewill Baptist Church nestled into a red clay hill in rural Tennessee.

    Go with me there to a sweltering Sunday morning in July 1969 where a mighty mountain of a man is preaching about redemption and where the fires of hell he is so eloquently evoking seem very real to the old ladies furiously waving their funeral home fans and their husbands, trying to be stoical are looking to get at a just right angle to feel the effects of that waving.

    Go with me to the front pew of that Christ-drenched place of worship where a Christ-besotted little boy of six is sitting with his parents. He is fat and bald and dressed in a little blue suit. He is wearing oversized spectacles the shape and thickness of Coke bottles. He has no front teeth.  His rapture at the preacher’s words is compounded by the fact that the old man is his grandfather.

    The sermon is winding to a close after an hour and a half. They have sung many songs thus far, his grandmother, just steps away from him banging away at an old upright piano.

    So far they have been leaning on the everlasting arms.

    Softly and tenderly Jesus has been calling

    They have received blessed assurance that Jesus was theirs

    They have intoned the doxology while solemnly dropping their money into the gold plate.

    Now it is time for the invitation,

    This is the time of conversion. This is a time of making decisions, a time for listening to the voice of God’s spirit speaking on your heart, a time when many of their co-religionists would drag out that perineal Baptist favorite, Just As I Am.

    But not the old man. He always preferred another song, equally familiar, equally stirring. The Old Rugged Cross.

    And so the song began, his grandmother in top form, the hoarse voices of the worshipers knowing this was the moment of truth.
    On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross, The emblem of suff’ring and shame;
    And there in the New Chapel the little boy felt that shame, that suffering.

    He felt it for the first time flush over him with awesome recognition.

    He knew at once and intimately the landscape of that hill with its cross outlined in the blood-drenched sky and he knew, perhaps deeply for the first time, the man who suffered there and who he was, that he was not a usual type person, but someone else, God himself on a hill far away.
    And I love that old cross where the Dearest and Best For a world of lost sinners was slain.
    Standing there on the front row the little boy knew about the dying of Jesus and he understood what it meant because he read, or at least looked at the pictures in his Sunday School book, but today, that dying made his face flush, a blush completely unrelated to the heat of the day. It was the heat of passion, the fire of the passion warming him from the crown of his bald head to the soles of his saddle-oxford-ed feet.

    And he in that knowing he knew something else. He knew he had to move though he knew he was too young. His grandfather was calling the sinners forward to repent and he wanted to repent, he had an irrepressible desire to repent.

    It was the triumph of the cross in his childish mind. He had to walk the aisle and so he stepped out in faith. He didn’t have far to go as the strains of that old song continued to grind forward like the locomotive engine of fate.
    So I’ll cherish the old rugged cross, Till my trophies at last I lay down;
    He was only six years old but he knew what his trophies were and where they must be laid down, laid at the altar, laid at the foot of that cross. He knew the trophies of petty little sins. He knew the trophies of childish lies. He knew their contours and outlines well. And here was the invitation.

    It was only a few steps from the front row, but it was steps away from his mother and father, steps away from all that was familiar and comfortable, steps that took that pudgy, bespectacled six-year-old from childhood to the windswept hill of Calvary.

    It was only a few steps, but steps that tripped over the bodies of those crusaders of old lying on the killing fields of history.

    It was only a few steps but steps that crossed the many ghettos of this world’s desire to categorize and constrain

    It was only a few steps but in those steps was all of humanity’s triumph and tragedy.

    It was only a few steps before he collapsed in the arms of his old grandfather, reaching out, like God almighty to catch him.

    And in that embrace he heard at last the triumph of the cross in the last strains of that old hymn
    I will cling to the old rugged cross, And exchange it someday for a crown.
    He heard it again today before the hot wind of memory blew in a different direction.

    Brothers and sisters, that crown is the triumph of the cross, that triumph is our only reason to live. 

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  4. Opening Conference for the Seminary Formation Year – 2016
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
    August 30, 2016

    At the risk of redundancy, I would like to return for a moment this evening to our text from today’s Mass, Matthew, chapter 16. It is one of the most familiar passage to us and one that runs a respected historical trajectory through our Church.
    Who do people say that I am? Who do you say that I am?
    It is an important question for us, a question that really stands at the heart of formation, no matter how we perceive that gracious event here at Saint Meinrad. It is an essential question that Christians must answer, and answer well if they are to navigate the complexities of discipleship and to see in the context of discipleship a fullness of life, a life lived in Christ and for Christ.
    Who do people say that I am?
    Peter answers correctly when he offers the miscellaneous opinions of the crowds, and miscellaneous opinions they are indeed. John the Baptist, or Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the prophets. Placing Jesus squarely within the prophetic tradition was an honest reply. By expectant Jews, Jesus could easily be placed in that context. People might well say that and offer know real challenge to the theological perspectives of Israel.

    Likewise, it is an honorable reply to a question that in Jesus’ context might have also been answered as;

    A sinner, or the Son of Beelzebub, or a charlatan. Certainly we know that from the standpoint of his co-religionists, Jesus also stood shamed in this light as well.
    Who do people say that I am?
    It is an interesting question, but the one Jesus really wishes to get to is the second:
    Who do you say that I am?
    Here we have a different persective and one which is going to cost the disciples something. The crowds may say this positive thing or offer this negative opinion, but what do you say, you who have known me and followed me for this long time?

    It is probably a good thing that Peter spoke up: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God. It is, of course, the right answer as I tried to intimate this morning. It is an easy thing to say for Peter and the others who have witnessed first hand the ministry of Jesus, a ministry of healing, reconciliation, miracles. The disciples knew, at some level, that Jesus was not just one of the Jewish prophets. They knew, at a deeper level, that he was not a demon or a charlatan. Even the disciples, however, could not have known, did not know what Jesus being the anointed one meant, not fully.

    But they would know it. They would know it in their following Jesus. They would understand it in their witnessing the passion and death of Jesus. They would appreciate it in the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, but those things were yet to come and thus, Peter’s confession is an act of faith, perhaps it will always be an act of faith.

    The scripture for us today offers another challenge, perhaps one that is more threatening because it transcends the theoretical and exegetical and touches on the core of this community and our life together.

    And here, what do we believe?

    Who do people say that Jesus is?

    Here, the response may be quite varied. He is the Prince of Peace, but does that peace mean contentment or does it mean a kind of flaccid warfare waged in the hearts of disciples who may have become immured in their own necessitated values and directives.

    He is the Lord of Lords, but does it imply a tepid and absentee lordship over a feudal holding that no one really wants?

    I wonder: Who do seminarians say that Jesus is? Do they say that he is master of their destiny, do they hold fast to him as their sure anchor in a sea of difficulty ,pain and doubt? Do they see in the blood-stained face of Jesus a model for their future ministry, or do they see him merely as the covenant sealer of their own world view? Is Jesus just a glorified democrat or republican? Is he the landlord that oversees a vocation that no one, least of all its possessor, takes seriously?

    Who do you say that Jesus is?

    And what about our faculty members?  Who do faculty members say that Jesus is?

    Is he the font of all knowledge? Is he the personal savior and Lord of our teachers? Do they profess his name and their commitment to him as their only source of pride? Or are they locked in their own ideologies and can only worship a god of their own fashioning? Do they teach the living Christ, a person with whom they are on intimate terms, or are they merely engaged with the Baals of their own worldview.

    And what about our co-workers? Who do our co-workers say that Jesus is?

    Is he the reason that they continue to work here, to devote their lives here, to get small wages here? Is Jesus palpable for them as one who is expressed in every interaction they have in this place? Are they evangelists of God’s love and true co-workers in the vineyard of the Lord, or are they merely workers, partially edified and partially scandalized by the example of Christ presented to them in us?

    And how about the monks? Certainly the monks cannot escape. Who do the monks say that Jesus is?

    On our best days we show the true love of Christ beating in hearts filled with hospitality and love and on our worst days we can be grumpy old men snapping at people and hard to get along with.

    And the rector? Surely he cannot escape either

    I know what I am, at least I think I do. I can be kind, I want to be loving, I think of myself as fair, but every once in a while, the rector will show a little barb in his so-called wit, a little acid in the treacle and for that I am very sorry. I can assure of this about myself, no one is more likely to occasionally say something stupid, and no one, I hope is more likely to lay awake at night worrying about it.

    And then of course there is Jesus second question to Saint Peter: Who do you say that I am?
    You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.
    Again the correct answer but one what even Peter himself had a difficult time living up to.

    My point with all of this is that we have many images of Jesus that haunt these halls, and perhaps more significantly haunt our lives.

    Our success in life comes from an ability to navigate our lives both as disciples and as emerging disciples, as men and women who have overwhelming gifts and as men and women who can occasionally be overwhelmed by our challenges. There are two persons in most of us, what we want and what we are and they will find harmony only in Christ.
    Who do people say that I am?
    I am a woman of Christ. I am a man of Christ. I am a follower of Christ.

    The renewal of this commitment daily, sometimes many times in the course of the day is our key to success in a place like this. It is our key to success generally as well.

    And so brothers and sisters, I am challenging you, I am challenging myself to this:

    Let us in this formation year resolve

    To be more like Christ the good shepherd who leads the sheep self-lessly and with love

    To be more like Christ the high priest, whose priesthood is also to share the victimhood of the Lamb

    To be more like Christ who came among us as one who serves and not to be served, that we might put aside our prurient needs and step into the pure light of love

    To be more like Christ as one who sacrifices but finds in the sacrifice the true meaning of life

    To be more like Christ  who loved and honored and ultimately forgave an idiot like Peter, a good indication that our own idiocy will not ultimately be our undoing.

    And if we can strive with courage and fortitude after these goals let us hope for a world in which the answer to Jesus’ question becomes clear.

    Who do people say that you are: They say you’re a Christian, and that is all they and we need to know.

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  5. Opening Mass for First Semester
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
    August 29, 2016
    Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of netherworld will not prevail against it.
    Brothers and sisters as we gather for this opening of a new formation year, we remember, as we do every year, the dedication of this chapel. This celebration offers the beautiful image of a space consecrated for service to the Lord and a beautiful understanding of our destiny, our promise that we too are consecrated for service. Like this chapel, all of us in our particular vocations are set apart for service.

    And it is fitting today that we should have before us this pivotal passage from the Gospel of Saint Matthew, the call of Saint Peter, the consecration for service of one who was destined, in his very weakness, to lead the Church and to accept a call from Jesus to engage the Master’s message

    However, it is easy for us to dismiss this passage from today’s Gospel as a fluke. After all Saint Peter’s future was not without compromise.

    We know that in the very next section of the Gospel, Jesus calls Peter, “Satan” a stumbling block to his message.

    We know that in the future Peter will deny the Lord three times in the heat of the passion, a denial that will cause him bitter regret.

    We know that Peter’s confession at the end of Saint John’s Gospel, his reconciliation likewise is not without compromise. We are told Peter’s feelings were hurt because Jesus asked him a third time if he loved him, a question that seemed apropos to the man who denied he even knew his Lord.

    Peter was a messy person. He was a braggart. He was a weak man.

    And that’s fine because he presided and presides over a messy Church, a sometimes braggart Church, an often weak Church.

    We wish that we could express the pristine quality of the Church, a perfect institution without compromise to its fabric, without stain to its reputation.

    But truly we live in a Church often smeared with controversy, with scandal, financial scandals, sexual scandals, power scandals.

    We hope that the future of our Church, a future that lies certainly in the hands of the Lord, but also in human hands, our hands, will find a more sacred path, a more sanctified way through the world, will be for others what it truly must be, a beacon of hope in an ever-darkening landscape, the landscape of the human condition

    But really we know that we are also full of contradictions, each of us, in our lives we know that tension that compromise of Peter that hears one minute the call of Jesus and in the next puts conditions on accepting that call, conditions of our own reckoning, our own construction.

    We aspire to heights of achievement, to academic success, spiritual success, pastoral success, we want to be good, and true, and kind, we really do

    But actually we find ourselves forever visited by ghosts who haunt the back rooms of our lives, ghosts with names like doubt, despair, indifference, the PAST.

    And we might give in, we might despair until, unless we realize in one shocking moment of insight and revelation that this is the faith we celebrate

    It is messy faith, a faith impinged with the barbs of imperfection, like little shells in the scrambled eggs.

    It is a human faith, divine certainly but also very human, built upon the faulty towers of our dreams and hopes, hopes and dreams that sometimes line up like soldiers on the divine battleground, but sometimes falter because they are the dreams and hopes that we wish to see, like Peter, rather than the hopes of Christ, the dreams of the savior.

    Ours is a faith infused with the quality of divinity but parading itself across the meadows of this world in borrowed uniforms, glad rags.

    Who are you? Who am I?

    We are flawed, but striving for perfection

    We are exhausted but searching for rejuvenation

    We are mediocre but always aspiring to that arête, that excellence which stands at the heart of the Church’s mission, a mission founded on the confession of Saint Peter, a mission renewed daily in this chapel, renewed today.

    We are celebrating today the renewal of this chapel, but it is also our own renewal.

    Listen again to the words of Saint Paul to the Corinthians:
    Brothers and sisters, you are God’s building and no one can lay a foundation other than the one that is here, namely Jesus Christ.
    And so we are hoping, loving, giving, desiring, fulfilling AND stumbling, faltering, cowering, but always in Christ.
    Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?
    This is the solid faith, the petrine faith we celebrate here in this community and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of netherworld will not prevail against it.

    This is the faith of our mother and fathers, those men and women who conquered bravely in the eschatological battle

    This is the faith of that countless multitude of saints; unsung, unnamed that have gone before us living lives of fortitude, of strength in the Gospel of Jesus

    This is the faith of sinners and cowards who yearn for better lives, better days, more holiness, more gratitude

    This is the faith of seminarians who know their weakness and their failures and are able to build upon the rock of those weaknesses and failures a solid understanding not only of who they are but who they must become to serve the weak, the fallowness of those yet-unseen vineyards that will comprise their fertile, evangelical fields.
    Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of netherworld will not prevail against it.
    Brothers and sisters we are drawn here to this hill to celebrate the faith of Peter, not in observance alone but in participation, to push ourselves, to challenge ourselves to greater heights of love, greater breadth of service, greater depth of learning

    Drawn here to this place to understand what God has in store for each of us, a plan that outshines the feeble offerings of a world inundated in self-loathing that masquerades as self-love.

    Drawn here to appreciate that the entirety of our lives, our futures, for generations to come depends upon our ability to answer a call that emanates daily from this chapel, from this altar upon which is presented that Sacrament we worship and adore.

    It is the cry of those oppressed for justice

    It is the plea of those deprived for life

    It is the appeal of those in need, those suffering, those multitudes of which we are of their number, who yearn for dignity, for bread, for hope

    Drawn here and standing on the promises of God, my brothers and sisters we pray:
    Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of netherworld will not prevail against it.
    How could those gates prevail?

    Today as we remember the consecration of this house we might pause to ask:

    How will my house be built?

    How will my edifice be constructed?

    Will we build houses of gentleness, love and compassion?

    Will we build temples of God’s grace, mercy and forgiveness?

    In Christ alone can this question and all of the questions of the world be answered.

    Brothers and sisters, Peter was the rock, but we are also the rock; Peter was the firm foundation upon which the hope of the world is built, the hope of our lives is constructed. And we are also that firm foundation, resting today on the confidence we have in this place, dedicated to God’s service, a place for people dedicated to God’s service.

    That is a sure hope.
    Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of netherworld will not prevail against it.
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  6. The Queenship of Mary
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
    August 22, 2016

    Blind fools, which is greater, the gold,
    or the temple that made the gold sacred?
    Today we celebrate the Queenship of Mary, the memorial day on which we remember the fulfillment of the singular promise, made to a woman, made to a maiden, made to poverty that she would gain the world with a simple syllable: Yes.

    Today throughout the world, statues of the Blessed Virgin Mary will be dolled up in robes and dented crowns and rightly venerated for her unique achievement. We honor the Queenship of Mary with gold adornments, but we are left with Jesus’ question in the Gospel.
    Blind fools, which is greater, the gold,or the temple that made the gold sacred?
    Whom do we honor today?

    Certainly, we honor Mary, the young woman of Nazareth who hearing the audacious promise of the angel, took upon herself the task of helping God work out salvation for a thankless people

    Mary, the child who had the voice to strengthen the weakened hearts of Israel, suffocating as it was in the desert of its own indifference

    Mary, the woman of joy who became the mother of sorrows as she stood helplessly yet fearlessly at the cross of her son

    Mary, the woman of prayer, the woman of abandonment, the woman of greatness who humbled herself to the opinions of the short-sighted and small-minded of the earth to be the singular vehicle of God’s wildness

    Mary, the woman who knew, who completely understood in a way no other understood the truth of what Jesus said in today’s Gospel.
    Blind fools, which is greater, the gold,
    or the temple that made the gold sacred?
    She knew because she was, she is that temple that made, that makes the gold of our humanity sacred

    She is that temple from which the Word of God came forth with healing in his wings

    She provided that temple within herself in which was nourished the Lord of the Ages.

    But in her yes, in her belief, in her acquiescence …

    We are also that Temple, we have become that Temple.

     Destroyed long ago by the forces of human pride, the temple in Jerusalem could not stand forever, but we can stand forever.

    We are that temple upon whose walls echo the strains of the world’s acclamations and its cries.

    We are that temple that daily, hourly, offers up the sacrifice, the un-bloody sacrifice that alone can offer a hand outstretched to us, breaking as we are, aimlessly in the whirlpools of life

    We are the temple from which the salvation of the Lord breaks forth like the orient on high

    We are the temple made of flesh and bone, consecrated, that temple in which the gift of God, insinuated itself into time as flesh and blood, the same flesh and blood we receive today at this altar.

    This sacrament is our wealth. This savior who made his mother queen of heaven and earth turns to us today with his inviting hand. He offers us robes in which to doll up and a crown, dented by our folly, but shining nevertheless.

    He is calling us to glory as he called her. He is calling up to approach this altar, with fear of God and faith, approach and receive that which made her queen of heaven.
    Blind fools, which is greater, the gold,or the temple that made the gold sacred?
    Blessed are those called now, called to the temple, called to be that temple, called throughout time to the supper of the Lamb.

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  7. Opening of 2016 Fall Semester Spirituality Week
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
    August 22, 2016

    I have been invited by Fr. Bede to spend a few minutes this morning reflecting on the spiritual lives of priests as we begin this spiritual formation week. There is a great deal I could say, after all that is my job and I love it. This morning however, I know we want to get started and so I will offer a few reflections on what I consider the core of priestly spirituality, the life of prayer and service.

    I am proposing that the first challenge of priestly formation today is the cultivation of a dangerous life of prayer. Saint Paul tells us in the first letter to the Thessalonians to:
    Pray without ceasing for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.
    There are three things that the Church requires of its priests. Celebration of the Eucharist, celebration of the sacraments and prayer. While we know that there is more to priesthood than these things, these are the core and, in some sense, all of the other activities of the priest should have reference to these three. There is nothing else that priests in our dioceses and religious communities are preparing for, so we should plan to give to these things our all. We should plan to give sacrificially. That must be part of our formation for we can hardly expect men to suddenly embrace a sacrificial life of prayer if that same thing has not been modeled and encouraged in the seminary.

    Here in this place, we must prepare ourselves for a life lived on our knees before God on behalf of the people we serve and will serve. Your seminary formation and your ordination prepares you for this and demands this of you, that you pray regularly, constantly before the mercy seat of God.

    As we move through the years of formation the time swiftly passes for you to be considering your commitment to a life of prayer. The time passes quickly for you to be lamenting your inability to pray, to get up in the morning. The time passes quickly for preparations. Time spent in the seminary is a time for action. You must be instructed: Pray until it hurts, not for yourself or your needs, pour out your love, your life in prayer on behalf of the Church you have promised, will promise to pray for without ceasing. Here our responsibility is hold out for you the Church’s vision. Bishops need to articulate clearly for seminarians their expectations about the Liturgy of the Hours, about devotions, about adoration. In seminaries we must be careful to stress the essentials, offering other alternatives but holding fast to the preferred forms of prayer, the Eucharist, the Liturgy of the Hours, etc. We must encourage men to have a strong devotional life, but not to see that devotional life as something inherently separate from, or, God forbid, more important than the Eucharist, the sacraments and the Liturgy of the Hours. We as seminary formators must be examples of prayer for you. We must model what we hope you will become by our commitment to prayer. In all things we must learn to be generous and to give our time to God.

    In many ways, prayer is the marker of your formation success. And it is dangerous, for us too. It requires something of us, not only our time but our souls, our lives. As a priest, primarily, I have nothing to do all day except celebrate the sacraments and serve God and I do that best on my knees. Here is what I say to you today: Wear out your knees, have knee replacements not because of too much running or running around but because of too much kneeling before the throne of the almighty, a throne mightily insinuated for us in our parish churches, in our chapels, before the tabernacle. There is the Holy of Holies our ancestors in faith worshiped before and died to preserve. There is the temple of the new covenant spoken of in the Book of Maccabees. There is the temple not made by human hands, that sanctuary of God. Give your life to God in its mighty shadow. Live a dangerous life of prayer and never look back. Never count the cost. Die in your vestments and you will have lived a most successful life.

    The other thing I think a seminary must assist new priests in cultivating is a vital vision of service in the Church.

    For the priest, this means one thing, service until death. There is nothing more beautiful in this life than to serve one another. We live to serve. It is a cheerful service. If we compete with one another, it is in service. We live it in hospitality, the desire to open my life and my home to all who come. We live it in volunteering, in doing small things with great love, in setting up the dining room, in cleaning the chapel, in preparing food, in the formal ministries we exercise and the informal ministries that are as close to us as our beating hearts.

    From a human standpoint, service until death is built on one thing, giving, giving, giving. I think about these words of St. Paul:
    For I am already being poured out like a libation,
    and the time of my departure is at hand.
    I have competed well;
    I have finished the race; I have kept the faith.
    The service we are called to is not divisive. It does not know strangers. It does not evaluate need according to creed. We do not make radical decisions about personal orthodoxy and then persecute those we find unworthy. We do not carry on heated conversations in pectore that we would be embarrassed to offer in the chapel. The life of discipleship and priestly service is the action of the Good Samaritan who sees the problem and promises to fix it, paying back all those who have helped him on his return. Service fixes us in the inn of life and it places us there with everyone, literally everyone, even those who deride, who hate our faith.

    Our lives as priests, as ministers of the Gospel present us in the inn with the poor, with the unloved and unlovely. It is, the ignorant, the pitiable, the leprous, the unacceptable, the barbed, the uncultivated. Any of us who have spent five minutes in parish life know that we are most needed by those who are in trouble, on the brink. Can you learn to love them as much as you love those with whom you share firmly fixed ideologies? One of the qualities of a delineating generation is that you make lists.

    You make lists of those who are acceptable and those who are not. This professor is acceptable, this one is not. This seminarian is orthodox and therefore okay, this one is not. Ideology that is soundly Catholic, solidly Christian is an ideology built on service.  I can preserve the purity of the faith all day, but if that rarified quality is maintained in a palace surrounded by the ditches of neglect, suspicion and even abuse, then that palace must be destroyed.

    What we must do is build a community of love. Building a community of love means going out of our way for the one whose attention warrants not one second of our time, in our mottled opinion. That must begin in the seminary, and then extend to presbyterates and parishes. Building a community of love means primarily not tearing down. It also means seeking the lost sheep.

    Seek the lost sheep. Seek the atheist. Seek the liberal or conservative. Seek the dumb bunnies. Seek the complainer. Seek the noisy. Seek the nosey. Seek the poor. I think our seminarians need to be challenged in this way: Do we even know the poor? Do we care about them at all? Are they the stray sheep, the one who got away? I can assure you we need not look far. Look to your families, your old friends, your fellow seminarians, perhaps even the rector.

    Seek the stray. Please God we need to seek the stray because that ultimately that stray sheep, brothers, is us. We are the one who got away and the Good Shepherd went looking for us and found us in our particular places. He found us in the cervices of the origami of our spitefulness.

    Perhaps that is enough for the first day. Needless to say, I will have more to offer as the year progresses. You can count on it. I will hold myself accountable and I will hold you accountable. I believe that is what charity looks like. I believe that charity expressed in prayer and service is the heart of this spirituality week.

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  8. Daily Mass Homily
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
    August 19, 2016

    We hear a singular promise from the Lord in today’s first reading:
    I will bring spirit into you that you may come to life.
    A question we might ask ourselves is this:

    How will that singular promise be fulfilled?

    Omran Daqneesh has been in the news this week in case you hadn't noticed. He was never a newsworthy item until early yesterday. Only his family had ever heard his name. He is not a pop star. He is not an Olympics champion engaged in rambunctious naughtiness. He is not Donald Trump’s newest handler.

    Omran Daqneesh is four years old and he is on the wrong side of the continuous escalating conflict in Syria. Yesterday, a picture of Omran appeared on the websites. He had been pulled from a bombed-out building in Allepo. He was wearing a tee-shirt with pictures of cartoon characters. He was bleeding badly and covered with dirt.

    In the short video, he is placed in an ambulance and sits there in shock, wiping the blood from his head and absentmindedly wiping it on the orange seat of the ambulance.

    Omran is what the news services call collateral damage. I call him a little boy caught up in a drama that people who should know better and should have better control have failed to quell.

    It is sad to say, but in so many ways for our troubled world, Omran Daqneesh is “everyboy”.

    Where is the promise of God in the life of Omran?

    I will bring spirit into you that you may come to life.

    Where is that spirit?

    Today rhetoricians speak confidently about the evils of Islam or this or that from the relative safety of their New York City penthouses or their gated Long Island estates. They haven't been on the streets of Allepo.

    We know (at least at some level) the trouble we are in.

    Our threat is not from without but from within. We have as a people, sometimes even as Church people, come to believe the myth that God is dead.

    We believe that we are called to navigate the world around us, a world of conflicting signals and conflated values, we are called to navigate that world on our own.

    We believe that we are in a precarious situation, sans trust, sans confidence, sans everything.

    And if God is dead it is certainly true. If God is dead then we are merely ghosts haunting the plains of a desolate place, the crumbling mansion of modernity.

    But, brothers and sisters, God is not dead. The Source of Life is neither dead nor does he sleep.

    What did God say?

    I will bring spirit into you that you may come to life.

    But we live in a cynical age.

    We want to preach faith, but our faith is eroding on the relentless shore of egoism and individualism

    We want to preach hope but our hope is faltering in the flailing waters of a time that cannot give assurance of the shore.

    We want to preach a bright message of love in a world enshrouded by the dark clouds of war, of political rancor, of despotism of death.

    We want to preach and so I keep going back in my mind’s eye, in my dreams, to the image of a stunned little boy named Omran Daqneesh 

    Can we preach faith, hope and love for Omran?

    Today all of you have come here to study, to be formed, and to be prepared for the great service of ministry to which you aspire.

    Today all of you, all of us have a vision of what that great service looks like, what it entails, who will be involved (or not), how it can be achieved.

    We all have a vision and yet other visions too confound us.

    Visions of explosions on the streets of Syria, of France, Belgium, England, the United States
    Visions of men and women and children, hated and ridiculed, crucified in the court of human opinion because they happened to be born in some other place.

    Visions of a wall being erected between us, among us, in our hearts, a wall that separates us from the fullness of God’s creation, even in the challenges, even in the questions.

    We learn to listen to the strains of another tune.

    A lyric of desperation

    A symphony of cacophony

    A canticle of confusion

    That is the music we have received: and yet, a great philosopher of the Twenty-first century said recently:

    Sometimes you just have to dance to the music that's playing.
    Sometimes you just have to dance to the music that's playing.Sometimes it's a waltz and sometimes it's a dirge echoing of the shattered walls of cities
    Brothers and sisters, why are we here?

    Our task here is not to beat out a tiny rhythm of disdain with the tiny bowl of a scruple spoon.

    Our task is to make the world a Christ habitable place for ourselves and for everyone else

    Our task here is to learn to sing a song of service

    Our task here is to memorize the strains of a symphony of justice

    Our task here, at Saint Meinrad, in this privileged time of formation, is to teach and to learn and to memorize and to live the promise of God

    I will bring spirit into you that you may come to life.

    It might be good to go back to our little friend for just a moment:

    Let’s go back to Omran Daqneesh 

    Let’s look at him again, sitting shocked in that orange, ambulance chair

    Let’s stand for a moment and hold Omran’s trembling hand

    What are those commandments of God?

    The first is to love God and the second is like it:

    Love your neighbor as yourself.

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  9. Daily Mass Homily
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
    March 15, 2016

    We have a great deal of lifting up and putting down in today’s readings.  I wonder if we are not reaching our limits with Lent. Jesus is becoming increasingly grumpy, the Pharisees increasingly jumpy and the conclusion, as we can seem to tell, is not going to be pretty, at least not in the short term.

    What about us?

    I was thinking about the seminary landscape last night, not the one outside which is daily transmogrifying into spring. I was thinking of our interior landscape. What do we see when we walk down the halls at Saint Meinrad?

    Saint and philosophers lurking around every corner, many of whom we cannot or will not name.

    Fish tanks which gurgle and spurt and accumulate a bit of algae. I wonder what the fish looking out at us think?

    There are boxes of stale donuts around, whose relative age is not the least deterrent to their ready consumption.

    There are rooms flung open to reveal the flagrant riots within, clothes strewn about, books hiding in the corner, unearthly scents emanating.

    And above all of this, like a seraph on a pole is the dizzying prospect of formation, of change, of transformation.

    Does it happen?

    Will it happen?

    Can it happen?

    Probably not in the state of relative stasis that we hope to find every day. But do we find it?

    Like a loudly banging door the reality of our lives is thrust upon us again today as we amble toward the end of Lent.

    What is happening deep inside, away from the fish and the donuts?

    Is their transformation?

    Are we becoming more cultivated men and women of prayer, changing day to day into revolutionary people, people intent upon changing the culture of fish tanks and stale donuts?

    Do we want a revolution; do we ardently desire to hear the voice of Jesus speaking over the pharisaical din of this world?

    Is their conversion?

    Are we women and men of daily conversion, of leaning ever more diligently in the light of Christ?

    If you throw up the serpent as your inspiration be prepared for bloodshed and poison. The bloodshed of this world’s naysayers, and poison in the cup of secularism and an over-weaning humanism.

    Are you ready, ready for the paschal mystery or are you satisfied living in your little dens of dirty clothes, listening to the gurgle of the world and munching on the stale donuts of indifference.

    Is their difference, a difference that we will palpably realize come the resurrection?

    Listen to the voice of Jesus speaking again:

    What I told you from the beginning. I have much to say about you in condemnation. But the one who sent me is true, and what I heard from him I tell the world.
    And what is that message to the world but a message of hope in the face of too much degradation.

    A message of hope in the face of greed and lies and violence and bloodshed the violence and bloodshed that will soon claim the Lord of Glory if only for a time.

    And that message of hope does not begin in Syria, or on the too-worn campaign trails of our own country, that hope begins here, in my heart. In my heart, in your hearts that serpent is lifted high and its hissing syllabation can be heard across the ruined world:

    Jesus

    Jesus


    Jesus

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  10. Deacon Promises 2016
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
    March 3, 2016

    One of the things I am very proud of at Saint Meinrad, of course, is our great tradition of both teaching and practicing homiletics. We have excellent preachers here both among the staff and among the students and that is undoubtedly the product of years of focused attention to this essential discipline in the life of the deacon, the priest, the parish, indeed, of the whole Church.

    I also know that my personal appreciation of a homily is sometimes directed toward evaluation, in other words, because of my work as a seminary formation person, I tend to listen somewhat critically to homilies and that is not always a bad thing. Occasionally however, a homily will touch something in me that is awful, in the sense of being full of awe, a chord in my heart.

    Such was the case for me this morning. As Fr. Peter was preaching, his words, his structures, his cadences suddenly transported me back to my nine year old self, sitting in the summer in a supremely hot pew at the New Chapel Free Will Baptist Church and listening to my grandfather preach. I could hear his voice. I could hear the “amens” of the congregation. I can hear the upright piano tinkling out the opening strands of “Softly and Tenderly” as my grandfather makes a plea, a plea I always felt was directed toward me. It was time for the invitation.

    He would say: I want every head bowed, and every eye closed. I want to invite you to come to the altar this morning; I want you to give your life to Jesus.

    And this morning, it was there, my body felt the heat of that Mississippi Sunday. I listened to the sweet deep drawl of my grandfather’s voice, his pleading which was not threatening or coercive. I could smell the loamy southern earth. I heard that song and I cried. I found throughout the Mass, that I couldn’t stop crying.

    Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling,
    calling for you and for me;
    see, on the portals he's waiting and watching,
    watching for you and for me.

    Come home, come home;
    ye who are weary come home;
    earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
    calling, O sinner, come home!

    Jesus is calling. Then I began to think about tonight. I began to think about our brothers here tonight who are being called, who have accepted the call they heard in their hearts perhaps many years ago. Tonight, in a definitive way, they answer that call. Jesus is calling.

    He is calling them from their families, some wonderful, others challenging

    He is calling them with their talents, some wonderful, others challenging

    He is calling them in their sin, precisely perhaps because they are sinners, sinners who need so desperately to hear the call of Christ in their lives as we all do. Sinners in the hands of a merciful God.

    They are answering a call tonight, a call of the Church to present themselves finally and definitively as servants, as slaves of Christ for his Church.

    In the promises our brothers are about to make their lives will definitively change. They are ready. Tonight they will tell the Church and the world, of which we are the ambassadors, that they are prepared to present themselves for ordination under a very rigorous set of conditions. They are telling us, in the promises they are to make that they will serve, that they will offer their minds, their bodies and their spirits tirelessly for service. There will be no holding back. Tonight our brothers pour out their lives for you. Please hold them accountable for that pouring out, make sure that that pouring out never ceases because it is not theirs to check. God gives the grace and the glory and they provide the vessels of His Love, that love poured out in service on the Cross, and from the Cross and the empty tomb in continues to ceaselessly pour forth.

    But they are also being called somewhere else, they are being called home. Home to that place in their hearts where there is red clay dirt on the hillside, and a upright piano tinkling out the strains of a tune that God has planted in their hearts. Home to that banquet over which they will eventually preside, that banquet that offers the only hope we have in a world so full of conflict. Home.

    O sinners, come home.

    But here is something more remarkable brothers and sisters, it is a call to us as well. One thing I become increasingly convinced of as a move through this life is that God is calling not these men tonight alone. God is calling each one of them.

    True, God has offered them tonight a unique altar call, a call to sign away their lives on the altar. But he is also calling to us in a unique way, every head raised, every eye open, he is calling us to build his kingdom in a world in such desperate need.

    Come home he is saying to us today and every day. Come home for this is our home, this place to which these men tonight are called to serve in a different way, but home to all of us.
    Feel tonight the warmth of God’s love, the tender sound of his voice in your heart.

    It is God’s warmth and God’s love

    If we know that, it will give our brothers tonight courage. If we do not know that, the very gravity of their acts may make them faint.

    Where do you stand tonight?

    Where did this journey begin for you?

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

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

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

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

    Or perhaps in the voice of an old grandfather who would never see his grandson ordained…


    Come home, come home;
    ye who are weary come home;
    earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling,
    calling, O sinner, come home!

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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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