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!
