Opening Homily, Second Semester
Tuesday of the Third Week of Ordinary Time
Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
January 26, 2016


This evening, in the opening of this new semester, we are caught up in the whirlwind of two saints thrown together by a hurricane named Paul.

Timothy and Titus fall hard upon the conversion of St. Paul, the man of Tarsus wasted no time in taking prisoners for the Gospel, men drawn from every society and walk of life to serve the Master on the road. In many ways, it is not unlike our own community.

Who were these men? Aside from their being evangelists for the Gospel we know little about them. Timothy was a Jewish convert, Titus, a Gentile. They were the recipients of letters blown in by the hurricane and perhaps we can say little about them personally except that:

They are actors caught up in the perilous drama of the early Church.

Tonight, we are caught up in our own drama, the drama of a new semester, of a new year. Many of us, like Timothy and Titus have traveled the world since our last ingathering. Like them, we have seen and experienced many things.

We come from a variety of places, from a multiplicity of generations and cultural backgrounds. Like Timothy and Titus we are brought here, brought together in the Gospel in ways we may never have found ourselves, left to our own devices in the world.

And we know things don’t we?

We know the situation of the Church around us. We know its challenges. We understand, at least at some level its struggles, the reconfiguration of dioceses, the moving away from old places of worship.

We know the nostalgia that touches the hem of the Church’s garment. We feel its weave and warp between our hands as we look at the faces of the men and women whose lives are being changed in our towns, our neighborhoods.

But there is more isn’t there?

We see the persecution of the Church at the hands of extremists around the world. The desperate desire to hold on to ageless traditions as the world explodes around us, the thousands who are left to die because they do not profess the proper creed, do not worship in the correct way.

We witness the conditions of our co-religionists, of men, women and children who are caught up in the evils of intolerance and rejection of the Word.

We participate in the steady flow of news which comes to us while at the same time caught up in the dramas of the Church in our own place.

We know the flaws and the faults that break us asunder and we might rightly ask:

What is at the core of this drama?

Is it not in the small things? Yes, the small things too.

In bleary eyed children reluctantly preparing for school in the morning

In the faces of teachers ready to meet eager new learners on the first day

In the tireless wonder of parents settling down on the sofa hand-in-hand in the evening after the day’s work is finally done.

In the tear-stained faces of those mourning the loss of a father, a mother, no matter what age taken too soon.

Listen again to the words of Saint Paul:

For this reason I left you in Crete

so that you might set right what remains to be done

and appoint presbyters in every town, as I directed you.

The vision is there. It is given us in the text. From our places we are called to teach the Good News to every person, in every land not only with words but with the greater witness of our lives and yet there is a hesitance, a timidity in our evangelizing spirit.

Who is to blame?

We can blame the world and all of its temptations. We can claim that we are victims of a media culture, of an economy of acquisition. We can charge the world around us with corrupting our Gospel spirits. Or…

We can blame technology or politics. We can claim we have been seduced into complacency by gaming and Facebook or by the empty and senseless political rhetoric that inundates us day and night.

We can try and forge a new world based on our likes and dislikes

But brothers and sisters, like our saints today, it is not enough for us to disdain the world.

Because the people of God whom we are called to serve are in the world. We must ask ourselves this:
Does my reliance on technology draw me closer to the poor and marginalized? Or does it merely continue to replicate the cultural patterns of the well-off that may or may not serve the message of Christ?

Does my fixation on the material make me more open to the suffering children in the world? Or does  it merely make me a hypocrite, claiming to follow the message of the Gospel and yet failing to live up to the more radical elements of that call, aspects of that call that propelled men like Timothy and Titus into the whirlwind.

We must ask…

Does my compulsion for peace open my heart to the needs of those who are suffering in war-torn places? Or am I happy with the isolationism bred by smallness of heart and soul.

Can we ask the harder questions?

What is it like to be a refugee wandering the earth with no one to take you in?

What is it like to be five years old and an orphan with no place to go?

What is it like to be old and sick, knowing that you will die on the road?

Who are these people that call out to us from the pages of the news? Who are these people?

Listen again to the words of Jesus:

Here are my mother and my brothers and sisters. 

We are called to be the progenitors of a new world

We are called to forge a new way for ourselves and those whom we serve

Our world longs now for something. We long for something.

We long for something that like the world we cannot fully describe nor understand

We long to be caught up in the ageless saga of the living God

And that is also the drama that is playing itself out in our midst today:

There is a compulsion in our spirits that places us in the maelstrom of that hurricane in the world.

There is a need in our souls, wrought in us through the waters of baptism to take on the current of this world’s flowing river and channel it into the dark places of history.

There is a desire in us, sometimes deep in us, to be more than we think we can be, to offer more than we reckon we can give, to be more than merely puppets in the hands of the manipulative public service announcement we call life

There is a need to set right what remains to be done. And brothers and sisters it comes here tonight. It comes here to challenge us to night. The Word of God carried forward in the hands of those Jews and Gentiles of old is handed off to us tonight like a baton in a race. Are you willing to take it up?

Are you willing to follow in the steps of Timothy and Titus and that maverick Paul?

Are you ready to follow in the footsteps of Christ the Lord, those steps that lead inevitably, irrevocably to the Hill of Calvary?

If you are ready, then …

Forward we go, forward we move.

Toward a new semester certainly, a new semester with all of its attendant challenges and rewards and there will be both.

Toward a more radical sense of our vocation, and that will come, that must come as we move forward.

Toward heaven, that great eschatological maelstrom where all questions will be resolved and all personalities brought to fulfillment in the Father’s reflection as we are tossed gently in the arms of a loving God in the presence of the saints.

This evening, in the opening of this new semester, we are caught up in the whirlwind of many saints thrown together by a hurricane named Jesus.


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