The Substance of Things Hoped For: May 2018

Closing Mass

May 11, 2018

Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

Do not be afraid. Go on speaking, and do not be silent, for I am with you.

For the past few weeks we have been in what I call the seminary downhill marathon.

There is all that packing. All those tests. All those farewell speeches and, of course, all of those homilies.

This is the end

We are now approaching the end

The end is near

All good, all meaningful, all extremely heartfelt.

And of course, they go nicely with the readings, Jesus’ farewell discourse.

I am going to the Father. The Father and I are one. I am in the Father and the Father is in me.

Blah, blah, blah

And so it goes, all of this going away and putting aside, and storing up and anticipating the end. It’s bad in English, it’s even more tedious in Greek.

Let’s be honest. Aren’t we all a little tired of the packing up scenario, whether we understanding that practically or eschatologically?

Filling up the cardboard boxes of our lives, our dreams, our realities, packing and stacking ourselves into a storage unit that may never be opened?

Basta! Finito!

Nobody can really read this convoluted discourse for weeks on end and not think: If you’re going to go, go already. Get out! I’m going to find lunch!

It is a divine cry as much as a rectoral cry.

Here’s what I want to propose:

Do not be afraid. Go on speaking, and do not be silent, for I am with you.

In other words …

Let’s just get the hell out of here and get on with life.

Let’s spend less time morbidly dwelling on the past and how miserable we are to be leaving dear old Saint Meinrad and start welcoming the new whatever it might be.

I propose we put away our elegizing and our eulogizing and boldly begin what we are called to do,

called in no uncertain terms to do, all of us, and that is: Fearlessly write the future of our Church.

Let’s stop thinking about where we have been and start thinking, start dreaming about where the Spirit of God is leading us.

Because there is no doubt that the Spirit of God is leading us today, toward tomorrow, to a new Pentecost.

The Spirit of God is coming and is already here and brothers and sisters he is writing a message on our hearts and lives that transcribes the morbidity of the present and the nostalgia of the past.

The Spirit of power

The Spirit of a world of joy

The Spirit of authority

The Spirit of enthronement

The Spirit of confidence

The Spirit of graciousness

The Spirit of courage

The Spirit of mercy

The Spirit of peace

The Spirit of charity

The Spirit of love, of love, of love

Write it in the stars, write that Spirit’s name in the stars.

O my brothers and sisters, in spite of any sadness we may know or feel

We know assuredly by faith that the Spirit is still alive in the Church. He 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.

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. We are called to go there, to be there.

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 who celebrate here today, no matter where you are from, no matter where you are going, you are called into the company of angels as we make real the promise of Jesus, behold, I am with you always, even to the ends of the world.

That spirit is alive in each of us in the eloquence of the ministry to which we have all been called and upon which we cast ourselves, like bread strewn upon the waters. The witness to that Spirit that alone can carry the burden of a world weighed down by the millstones of sin, and pain and despair, the white dragons of our collective sense of uselessness.

Do we not know how much we need the spirit? Do we not realize how hopeless our brothers and sisters can become? Even in their wealth, their style, their popularity they long for the thing that money can never give, style can never maintain, popularity can never ensure. They long for dignity. They long for meaning. They long for respect. They long for excellence, for arete. They long for, hunger for life and they long for the assurance of something greater than themselves, an assurance that hovers over them and then buoys them up in the violence of call, of cry, of rampant beating wings.

What does the Spirit say?

Do not be afraid. Go on speaking, and do not be silent, for I am with you.

That spirit, which we anticipate so keenly on the coming Day of Pentecost continues today, in this place, among us. This is the Upper Room. This is the day of Pentecost. We are the gathered number longing to hear God’s word, that comforting word, that reassuring word in our own language, the language spoken in the beating, the frantic beating after recognition of the human heart.

That spirit guides and protects us even when we don’t realize we need to be guided, refuse to accept it, even in our self-sufficiency. We know it, we know it, we know it because we need it. And that will sustain you in future days. You will be sustained in future days because you pour out your lives in service to the God who gave you that life, who is giving you that life. And my brothers and sisters, that is Good News.

We are not lamenters of the past. We are Good News for the future.

We are the new Pentecost sweeping the Church.

We are death to sin and violence to remorse.

We are the future of the world writ not in microcosm but writ large upon the sky in giant letters

Do not be afraid. Go on speaking, and do not be silent, for I am with you.

Praise God the Spirit cannot be silenced.

He is Risen and comes to us with startling revelation, like the wings of a dove shining effervescently

across the expanses of a clear summer sky.

Image Source

Feast of Phillip and James

May 3, 2018

Very Rev. Denis Robinson

If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.

It is a great promise, with an equally great promise of reward.

In the context of the liturgy today, on this feast of the apostles, we are consecrating two icons, written over the past months by Deacon Nate and Deacon Jeff.

They are images, one might say, exemplars of the apostle Peter and the monastic forerunner, St. Anthony the Great.

The writing of an icon is a complicated task. It begins with raw material that, in point of fact, is mostly trash, wood, rabbit glue, eggs, dirt, ground rock, hair, and shreds of woven cotton.

Taken alone, these elements mean very little, a roll of this, a handful of dust, but when combined with the rawest materials of all, tradition and imagination, they become holy, set apart, sanctified. Built up over time, from dark to light the image emerges, by the hand of the iconographer, by the hand of God it emerges.

And so …

Built up over more time, these icons today come to the moment of consecration. Placed on the altar, in close proximity to the Divine Mystery and then …

Another raw element, chrism is laid upon the icon by the priest, and here is the key, it must be done on the bare wood. The blessing must sink into the native stuff of the thing, its incompleteness, its nativeness, its destitution.

The blessing which comes from God at the hand of the priest, must penetrate the very heart, the core of the reality and make it set apart, needed, holy.

If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.

In our liturgy today we remember two apostles, Phillip and James

Who were they?

In the world’s eyes, no one, base persons, trash. They were from nowhere, knew few people, had no influence, fewer skills, perhaps little native intelligence. And yet they were touched by Christ, beckoned by Christ, set apart by the man of Galilee, the Lord of the Ages, for a purpose, a destiny.

And thus they were built up over time, layer upon layer from dark to light, from fishermen, and tax collectors, from sinners and sin, from woodworking, and canvas nets, in dirt and indifference, in poverty and shame, they were called.

Called to become more than the sum of their parts

Called to experience even in this world, the proximity of the Logos, the reality of the Word made flesh

Called to find themselves exposed to the splendor of the Father, the greatness of the Triune God captured in the guise of human weakness, in the stuff of this world.

Called to gain access, by design to the very throne room of heaven, the interior castle, the world behind the veil

And God anointed them, he anointed the raw wood of their primacy, their elemental natures, just as in the fullness of time, that same God took on our trash, our rawness, becoming one of us, a slave like us, so that we might become an icon of him, an imago dei, the very image of the invisible God.

How do we know this was possible, because it is possible?

If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.

My brothers and sisters, we are careening now toward the end of a formation season, finding here in this place a passage to somewhere else. For some of us it is a permanent passage, for some only a transition.

It is a good time to ask yourself why you came here.

I would suspect, I know that like the icon, like the apostles, you came here in the baseness of your lack of definition. You came here somewhat timid, perhaps afraid. You came here in sadness and in joy. You came with materials of baseness, but you placed yourselves on this altar, and learned, I hope, there is more to you than meets the eye, there is more to all of us, something that has been written for us in the heavens before the very dawn of time.

And so we are called, called to be the glue that holds persons together, holds cosmos together. Called to be the glue to a world often in danger of coming undone

And we are called to be wood, the solid foundation of everything, drawn into a purpose that extends far beyond our native intelligence, our native ontology

And we are called to be earth providing in our lives the humos, the humility that looks not to our own ends but to the ends of others, that fertile ground in which the seed of God’s word takes firm root.

And we are called to be paint, giving color to all, enlivening all, engaging all.

We are icons just as the apostles before us were.

You are icons

You have been touched by the brushes of formation as Christ laid the brush of ministry on the raw data of the apostles.

Built up over time, from dark to light, the image of the priest emerges and it becomes apparent to all who see it, that this icon, the exemplar is bound for something.

For what are you bound?

You are bound for service

You are bound of compassion

You are bound for excellence

You are bound for consecration

But to be true, to be effective, your consecration must touch the rawness that is at your core. It must touch your hurt. It must touch your shame. It must bathe and sooth the wound that is within you, that is within all of us. The wound of the apple tree, the wounds closer to home, to heart, much closer.

Brothers and sisters, as we draw nearer, ever nearer, to the final consecration, day by day, let us in our vulnerability call upon the Father, the Son, the Spirit who is coming even now into our midst.

If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.

Please God may it be so.

Image Source

The Substance of Things Hoped For

Reclaiming the Catholic Imagination

Closing Mass-Spring 2018

Feast of Philip and James