1. Priesthood Promises
    March 16, 2017
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
    I, the LORD, alone probe the mind
    and test the heart,
    To reward everyone according to his ways,
    according to the merit of his deeds.
    There is a spirit in the air tonight. A spirit of seriousness, a spirit of solemnity. Perhaps that is related to the season in which we now find ourselves. Perhaps it is related to Lent. Or perhaps it is related to the promises our brothers are about to profess. 

     Along with this spirit of seriousness there is also an ideal of justice. This stands for this and that stands for that. Promises are made. Promises are ratified in the act of ordination. Promises are kept. Promises become real in the daily blessing, the daily grind of the priesthood.

     And there is a reward these brothers can expect from their fulfillment of the promises they are about to make, a reward in service and a reward through service to an eschatological reality, a reward beyond. 

     And they have a right to expect that reward based on the promises they are about to make, because these promises are not perfunctory. They are not minor, these promises cut to the core of the human experience, they demand something of these men who are here tonight. 

     In light of that, I am interested in going back to the first part of this statement from the prophet:
    I, the LORD, alone probe the mind
    and test the heart.
    And he does test, he is testing.

     How true these words are, not only in the context in which our Lord spoke them through the prophet, but also in the context of our world today, even in the context of the celebration we observe on this night, in this unique moment and place. 

     Here tonight they and we are called to answer certain questions:

     Do any of us here tonight expect that our lives will be easier because we believe in God, because we cast all of our hopes on Christ? They will not.

     Do you expect that privilege will be offered to you because of the so-called sacrifices you are making, that in giving your life to the Church there is a showcase showdown awaiting you even in this present life? There is not.

     Do you believe that there are easier days ahead than the hell of this seminary you are currently enduring? There are not. 

     Brothers and sisters do not kid yourselves, we are not living in an age of comfort or a time of privilege, we are not conformed to the world of reward as we understand it in the popular culture around us. 

     We are living in a moment in history when the world must hear the Word of God proclaimed boldly and fearlessly, or the world must perish. We are living in a time when we in the Church must be bold and fearless or we shall perish, or worse, we shall render ourselves useless, archaic. 

     Tonight some brothers of ours are coming here to publically acknowledge what is true in their lives, finally and definitively true. They are here to acknowledge the One to whom they owe fidelity. They are here to profess what they believe. They are here to say that in a time of coercion, in a time when the vicissitudes of culture are yapping at their heels, that they are free. They are free to do what they are about to do. And it is momentous, momentous and final

     Tonight we gather to experience something radical, the reality that there is still, in our Church and in our world, something beyond the commonplace, something that transcends the everyday, that there are still men of guts and courage. 

     You are men of courage and this didn’t develop overnight, even over the years you have spent here. 

     This is something written in your bones before all ages. We can countenance vocation but God carves the vocation in our hearts. 

     This is something that has been spoken to us in countless ways

     In the childhood ways of playing at life and hearing in simple ways the voice of the Lord inviting us into his radical life. Or maybe it was through suffering more than play. 

     It is something experienced in the throes of adolescence, finding in desperate moments the strength to resist peer pressure, the fortitude to overcome what was expected for what was ideal and say: I am yours Lord. Or giving into those temptations and learning the surreptitious path of the Lord, leading back to him in the mustiness of the reconciliation room. 

     It is something we find in the fervor of conversion, eyes filled with tears on bended knees before the Blessed Sacrament, found in the piercing question: Why me? Or in the simple leaning into a vocation that has always seemed to be there. 

     It is this something that gives us the courage, the fortitude brothers and sisters to believe in our day that the God who called Moses, the God who overwhelmed Egypt, the God who uttered words of comfort through the prophets, the God who enthroned David, the God who comforted those in exile, the God of armies, the God of hosts, the God of thunder, the God who in the fullness of time insinuated himself into the womb of a poor girl, the child of conquered people, the God who became flesh, this God today is calling us. He is calling us deeply and profoundly. He is calling us, just as he did those ancestors of old to something heroic.

     Can we believe that God is calling these weak men and calling us to something heroic?

     Where do we stand? Can there be a little corner of ourselves that still seeks God unconditionally? Or is there a moment here to seize the radical?

     Brothers and sisters, the radical is within our grasp.

     Ask God for the grace to help you persevere in your vocation.

     Ask God and you will find in a world of doubt and confusion what is really important. You will find the love of all because you want to love. Love in the name of Jesus, love in the name of His holy Church. Love in the name of the misunderstood Christ. Love in the eyes of the old and the dying seized with mortal anguish at the threshold of the awesomeness of eternity, love in the sparkle of the new parent, love in the forceful embrace of little ones, in the handholding of the housebound, the trembling grasp of the grieving. Love without compromise and without cost. Love the unlovable, the stranger, the unbeliever, the prisoner, the bum, the defiant one. Love with all your hearts and you will never be lonely, never lacking in friends. His love, as you give it away, will be sufficient for you. Love with the conviction that God alone probes the mind and the heart will turn our sorrows and our sense of being outcast into gladness, into the fullness of joy, so ask Him.

     Ask him now. My brothers, your time spent at Saint Meinrad is coming to an end. In a few weeks you will leave this Hill for the last time. You will no longer have the daily support of seminary life to keep you faithful to the promises you are about to make. You will have to be sustained by humility, the humility to implore the God of time and place to be true to His word. He will give you the strength to be true to yours. 

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  2. Deacon Promises
    March 9, 2017
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB 

     It is interesting to me how the great moments of life, while often accompanied by the sturm and drang of drama, are perhaps even more often accompanied by small things, gentleness, whispers, the gesture of a hand laid on a book, a signature. 

     Such is the case tonight. Tonight these men our brothers present themselves before this community, but we in turn are standing in for the universal Church. They present themselves before this altar, they place their hands on this book of the Gospels, but all of these are here in place of universal even cosmic realities. 

     Tonight they are making their promises before God and his Church that they will be faithful to the call they have received as they move ever closer to ordination. 

     And in the midst of this momentousness, there is a simple promise in our reading tonight from the letter of St. James, an epistle from a man who earlier in the book describes himself  as a slave of God and the Lord Jesus Christ. What does this James promise in God’s name?

     Draw close to God and He will draw close to you. It is a simple assertion, but again one that has cosmic consequences. 

     Draw close to God and He will draw close to you. In making their momentous promises this evening, the lives of these men are changing for God and they are changing for good. The promises made tonight will be fulfilled over the coming weeks and months in rites of diaconal ordination carried out in places far and very near. 

     The promises made tonight will be realized in the coming years as opportunities for service. They will be realized in times of great triumph and moments of infinite tragedy. The promise made tonight will shape and mold the lives of these men by bringing them into close proximity of times of great joy and moments of blazing sorrow. These promises made tonight in the sterile light of this chapel are indelible signatures of God’s grace in a world that at times seems to be just holding on. 

     And …

     These men, whose lives change tonight will over the coming weeks and months become different men, men of God in a more focused way, men of service and slaves of God and the Lord Jesus Christ in particular terms. 

     Who are these men? They are everyone in general and no one in particular. They are sinners. They are charlatans. They are frauds. They are brilliant. They are ignorant. They are clowns. They are tragedians. They are politicians. They are salesmen. They are fighters. They are peacemakers. They are saints. They are all of these things as they stand before us to make their promises. 

     They are men of relationship and the promise in tonight's reading reaffirms a reality that, likewise in our daily commerce, we cannot forget, that all of our lives in God are circumscribed by relationships just as our natural lives are written around by relationships, many good, some not so good.

     We are reminded in tonight’s promises of the poet’s adage: No man is an island entire of himself. 
    We recall that our lives are all fortified, fixed and sometimes frustrated by the ubiquitous presence of the Other and the others. 

     From the start it is true. In our families we are made who we are by the perpetual motion of bumping up against our parents, our brothers and sisters, our relatives. Sometimes this is good, sometimes, not so much. For all of us there must come that moment of reconciliation in which we put the past behind us or build upon its strengths to become the man or woman God intends us to become, in our own right. 

     All of us are living and indeed thriving in friendships, some old, some very new that will help sustain us in the hard knocks of life. As I have said before, in a place like Saint Meinrad you make friends for life. And sometimes those friends disappoint us. Sometimes our friendships seem to be the only thing keeping us afloat and sometimes they can be harbingers of shipwreck. All of us have had both, are having both.

     I hope that all of us here have also had the opportunity for a little romance, falling in love, experiencing even in our little celibate hearts the fast beat of recognition of one who perhaps secretly we love, we care about, we cherish. Sometimes that goes beautifully and sometimes it becomes sad, even tragic. 

     What I am saying here is that our lives are confounded by all of these relationships, good and bad, life-giving and life-threatening, but here is what I want to say: 

     Tonight our brothers are signing a series of documents and in this juridical action they are speaking a timeless truth. The only thing that matters, the only thing that gives life, the only thing that makes this life worth living, the only thing that undergirds our complex relationships, the only thing that gives meaning to family, the only thing that fosters friendship, the only thing at all that keeps the complex earth orbiting in its sphere is what we learn in the short reading tonight.

     Draw close to God and He will draw close to you. That is what these brothers of ours are saying in the complex flow of words about to come forth from their lips.

     They are saying: I want to draw nearer to God. I want to be an ambassador of love. I want to be a crutch for others. I want to be a challenging teacher of God’s word. I want to be a custodian of God’s sacraments. I want to be an agent of trust. I want to stand with the lonely. I want to hold the hand of the widow. I want to care for those whom society throws away.  I am confident of the promise. 

     How can we not be? Because as much as we want God, God wants infinitely more to draw closer to us. Brothers, the promises you make in good faith tonight will not abandon you. God will not abandon you. God’s word is trustworthy. He will do it.

     So now, all that is left is your saying the words, words which change your lives forever, words that enrich our lives in the Church, words which offer stability in this passing word, words of Truth, words of infinite promise. 

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  3. Ash Wednesday Homily
    March 1, 2017
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
    Brothers and sisters:
    We are ambassadors for Christ,
    as if God were appealing through us.
    These readings again? I was looking back over the past nine years and the various homilies that I have given. They are all the same. Do this. Don’t do this. Shame on you for this. Kudos to you for that. I tried cutting and pasting. I tried to mix up the words and see what the sentences looked like. Nothing worked. Ugh.

    I wonder if we, if I, need a little bit of a fresh perspective. So, let’s go back to basics. Perhaps it would help to ask something about the quiddity of Lent, that is, its basic elements.

    What are the foci of Lent? This is an easy question to answer. The readings give us that.

    Here is the prophet again:
    Even now, says the LORD,
    return to me with your whole heart,
    with fasting, and weeping, and mourning
    So, Penance

    The word has a particular ring, a timbre that strikes the Catholic ear with a comforting alacrity. We like it. We want it. We will do it.

    That has been true throughout our history. In the early Church we had the Order of Penitents. Then the ideals of public penance. We had the hair shirts and the disciplines. We had the religious orders and their private methods. For God’s sake we had the Jansenists and still do for that matter.

    But all of that is okay, especially as we stand in the doorway of Lent. Because …

    We like penance. It is something concrete to do and, well, frankly it affirms all of the negative things we tend to think about ourselves. I am not that great so a little penance is what I deserve. My sins are so manifold, a bit of penance won’t hurt.

    We like a little fasting, a little self-denial. After all we are overfed and overfeeding. We are a corpulent people so a bit of fasting is great, especially if it makes us look hungry.

    We like a little almsgiving. Here’s a dime, congratulations. Have you received your praise for the good things you have done today?

    We like a little of this discipline, a little of that depravation.

    We like a bit of this or that. But just a bit, just a smidge, or a smudge if its Ash Wednesday.

    You know, sometime I wonder how sorry we are to lose the Alleluia. There I said it.

    The Alleluia goes away. O my these are bad times.

    Here at Saint Meinrad we used to literally bury the alleluia in the ground and then dig it up again come the resurrection.

    Beautiful ceremony. We do Lent well. Look at these rocks, these cacti, this sand. Look at that cross, this dust. Look at these lovely violent violet vestments.

    We have all of our songs. Forty Days and Forty Nights. Were you there? These forty days of Lent. We love them, belt ‘em out.

    You know, sometimes I wonder if we do Easter nearly as well as we do Lent.

    We like a bit of penance, but then I go back to this:
    Brothers and sisters:
    We are ambassadors for Christ,
    as if God were appealing through us.
    Is penance the ultimate message we ambassadors need to bear? Is it a message we need to bear for ourselves and for those around us. Or is it a message we are comfortable with because we feel a little guilty, a little convicted, a little remorseful. But only a little.

    Another focus of Lent is mood

    It is a gloomy season. It usually starts in February. We didn’t have February at all and certainly not Lent in February this year. Lent starts on the first day of March, a windy month, a month in which the Church must begin to rehearse the action of the Spirit. It is turning already into a lightening month, a dangerous month, a tornadoed month. What will Lent blow in, blow out, blow up for us?

    But, again we like our Lent to be gloomy. If I have to fast, everyone will suffer. If I have to give alms, folks will know what it cost me. If I have to do X, I am damn well getting credit for it but, let’s be honest, most of our life is really a kind of soteriological balance sheet, debits and credits that we hope in the end will provide enough on the positive side (just enough on the positive side) to let us creep into the doorway of purgatory.

    But Jesus says:
    When you fast,
    do not look gloomy like the hypocrites.
    Where is the joy in all of this? Perhaps there is none, by design.

    Another focus on Lent is helping others, identifying with the needs of the less fortunate.

    That is not too difficult given modern methods of communication.

    In a flash we can be in Syria and witness great clouds of dust rising from the violence of human folly.

    We can commute to North Korea and watch that great oaf of a leader, that charlatan continue to threaten to blow everyone up as he munches on a cinnamon bun.

    We can visit Washington, you know what, let’s not visit Washington.

    We can immerse ourselves in all of the things that are wrong, real and imagined in the world and like the dated postcard, wish we were there.

    We begin to wonder if we would be better Christians, better men and women, if only we lived in more deprived conditions, more depraved circumstances. If I could be a missionary. If I could be with the freedom fighters wherever. If I could be a hero.

    But we can’t really. And we really don’t want to and thus Lent becomes a wanting season, an asking season, but in the words of the immortal philosopher: Asking ain’t getting.

    Not that I have any great wisdom but here’s what I say: Lent must help us to become the best people we can become, where we are.

    Here’s a question we should be asking today: How can I expand to my Easter self? How can I grow to become something greater? How can this Lent offer me the opportunity to rise up at Easter a new man, a new woman?

    Maybe it’s something big. I am willing to bet it’s something small.

    Let me offer a challenge, not a penance but a challenge that can help us become more authentically who we are:

    In this season, let’s mix it up a bit. In the dining room, in the chapel, in the classroom, in our going out or staying in, let’s find some new folks to sit with, new folks to eat with, new people to anticipate with. I think in our community, especially in our community, this means finding folks of different nations, different cultures, different ethnicity to have lunch, have supper with, pray with. Maybe that would be a great focus for our Lent. Maybe that is all we need.

    There are many foci of Lent but there is only one core of Lent, the man Jesus Christ, the Son of the Living God, to him be glory and honor now and forever.

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  4. Ash Wednesday Lenten Conference
    March 1, 2017
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    Lent is here again. Mardi Gras is over. Mobilians found themselves stranded in the wild parts of the north without benefit of beads or floats, at least for the most part. We now enter into the season of Lent and we ask ourselves, how did the year fly so suddenly by? It seems like only yesterday we were making ashes of ourselves. It now has been more than a year.

    Perhaps on a spiritual note we should be asking ourselves: How am I a different person than I was one year ago? How did last Lent and Easter make me a different person? Of course that is a hard question to ask. It is interesting when you see people that are not a part of your everyday landscape, when you see family members only occasionally, once or twice a year and you notice how different they are from the last time you saw them. They never see the difference. It is too minute day by day for them to notice.

    So, perhaps today offers us a chance for us to stand back and look at ourselves. This might also be important for us to do as a community. How are we a different community this year than last year? How do we plan for this Lent and Easter to change us?

    Of course, we must begin by desiring change. Sometimes we do. I want to change this or that about myself, usually involving the losing of weight or the loosening of the bonds of whatever unproductive habit we have. I wonder if it is not more difficult for us to think about change more positively. Here is the man or woman I want to be. This is who I will myself to become. In doing that, of course, we need guidance, the guidance of our mentors, our spiritual leaders and directors, our professors perhaps; but ultimately we need guidance from others only insofar as they are speaking the words of the Spirit of God.

    My experience with the Spirit of God through the years is that he is a stern master, a kind but stern master. God requires something of us. He requires of us that we should move toward, daily move toward perfection. And of course that is what we must learn to desire for ourselves. How many of us in our private moments say: God make me a saint, but not yet. Make me holy, but only after X. Make be a man of prayer, but don’t take away my recreation time. Make me pure, but let me keep that shortcut on my phone that will show me prurience whenever I desire to see it.

    Give me Lent, but let it be like Mardi Gras. I believe all of us find ourselves in this bind at one time or another, perhaps we find ourselves there most of the time. Even in a house of formation, even in a monastery, there lurks within and among the inhabitants a desire to bypass the will of God, the purposes of Christ and exalt our own will. Sometime we can call our will the will of God. We want to draw in the refined air of sanctity and we think we know what holiness smells like, but our intake is countered by the bile that can, at times contaminate that goodness, can corrupt that righteousness.

    It is the bile, the foul odor of self, self-love, self-righteousness, self-deception, self-interest. And so we reckon that we need to die to self. And so we imagine that this penitential season will offer us the opportunity to do that if only we can give this up or give that up. But, simply losing our vices can never be the answer to the question of making ourselves holy. And of course, Lent is not a season for all times, it is only for forty days, or so we lie to ourselves. I can give up this or that for forty days and forty nights and come the day of resurrection, I will drink and smoke and do whatever else I feel compelled to give up. Jesus will rise, and so will our sinful natures.

    Here is what I say brothers and sisters. We do not need to lose something. We need to find something. But in order to find something we have to know for what we are looking.

    Seek and you will find the Gospel tells us. How can we do that?

    Seek the Lord and in that search find ways to make yourself that greater man that greater woman.

    Find the true, the noble means of conversion a conversion that touches not only the body and the habit, but the soul. Find a conversion of thinking, a conversion of values and valuation.

    Try and find in this Lent a spirit of gratitude, an understanding that the world has not been given to me as my sole prize. Find the understanding that I do not write the code of values by which this world operates, that reality has been given over to the Living God and I am merely his instrument.

    Find ways to learn to love yourself, in your authentic self, learn to love yourself more. How many of us are drawing on false ideals of the self in realizing our Lenten schemes? We believe the lies about ourselves because we learned them so young and we were so impressionable.

    Here is what I say: If your mother or father or anyone else did not love you, if they abused you, if they belittled you, if they ridiculed you. Pray for them and then send those negative thoughts about yourself learned so young, learned at the knee or over the knee, send those thoughts right back where they belong. Any thought that belittles you is from the devil. It is from hell and this Lent is a time to give that away.

    You must learn to put aside the hateful scripts that you memorized as a child. This is something to give up for Lent. You must learn to arm yourself not with the intentional or unintentional slights of others, but with the true armor of God’s mercy, his kindness, and his unfailing positive regard for you. Those of you preparing for priesthood, this is your only hope for success.

    And what does this look like? It often looks more like the cross than so-called penances. Our silly Lenten penances are often just the ratification of ugly scripts that we have been rehearsing for years. The purpose of Lent is leanness, leanness of thought and action so that we can understand and act upon the Truth. It is putting aside the fat of lies and looking Love straight in the face and saying: That is me.

    Find in yourself self-respect, the kind of self-respect that allows you to give respect to others, not making yourself small, but making others greater. Charles Dickens once commented that the true greatness of a person is measured by the degree to which they are able to make others feel great.

    Complimenting a homily by a classmate, giving praise for a job well done in class, Understanding the power of positive regard, sending a thank you note for nothing in particular, all of these cost you nothing but they make the day of the recipient, the brother or sister who needs a boost.

    Find in yourself the meaning of the Golden Mean: Do unto others as you would have them do to you, you in your complete mystery, you in God’s understanding of you.

    Find in this lent not the destitution of sackcloth and ashes but the living fountain of life which is Christ Jesus, then you will know even as you are known.

    Find out who you are and begin to live into that greater reality that greater way which the prince of peace has gathered from the byways of life into the highway of authentic human being.

    During this Lent, find a way to let your light shine, because I know it is there.

    I am thinking now about a particular painting which is a favorite of mine. It is a tiny little painting in the National Gallery of Art in London. It is by the artist Geertgen tot Sint Jans. It was painted around 1490. You have a copy of it in your hand or in your book right now.

    It is as I said a tiny little painting. It is famous because it was one of the first night time scenes in art history. Who cares?

    It is beautiful because, like all good art, it tells the truth. The world can seem a dark place. If you don’t believe it, merely do a little investigation beyond Facebook. Ask some questions, Go see some people.

    We have poverty. We have abuse. We have neglect. We have crime. We have indifference. We have selfishness. We have rebellion. We have lust. We have hatred. We have sloth. We have all of the deadly sins. We have them.

    But, by God we also have the light. Jesus is the light. It shines out from his little frame to illumine the bright eyes of the men, the women, the cattle, the sheep anything that longs to see him. Do you want to see the light? Do you want to live into Easter rather than living into the damn lie the darkness whispers, that sin insinuates?

    What can antidote these hard times this thorough darkness but the light of Christ? And that is all we need. I’m convinced that is all we need. So let us make a little pact for Lent. Hold this image close, in your breviary or on your bathroom mirror and remember the light of Christ that overwhelms the darkness of the world, overtakes the darkness of our own, pitiful, wonderful lives.

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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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