1. Easter Weekday

    April 28, 2020
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    The witnesses laid down their cloaks
    at the feet of a young man named Saul.

    The image of this fervent young man is associated in our collective theological minds with the proto-martyr, St. Stephen, that deacon of angelic face whose long sermon is finally punctuated by rocks.

    But Stephen’s story is also the story of that young man running a coat check at the event. And it would seem that Saul’s further association with the way, the truth and the life not only brought him a new name, but also a change of heart. He was converted and…

    Conversion, as we know, is at the heart of Jesus’ message. It was at the heart of Stephen’s message because it was at the heart of Jesus’ message.

    When were you converted for the first time?

    When did you first hear the Easter message, first experience in your heart the conversion of Saul to Paul, first know about death to life, fisherman to disciple, borrowed tomb to empty tomb?

    Perhaps it was, as it should be, at your baptism. In the purified waters of a font in a suburban parish, or in a country place where half the folks were family already and the others as near as they ought to be.

    As a little red creature struggling mightily in his mother’s arms, refusing with steadfast voice the gift of grace.

    Announcing conversion with a wail and a tiny shaking fist.

    Was it then? Was it in the waters of the font that you were changed forever, when you like Stephen, like Saul were changed forever?

    Or was it later, also like Saul, on the road…

    Was it perhaps on a cold day in winter in some little Church, praying for help, for guidance through the turbulence of life, or some crisis whose details you can only faintly recall, or in the company of some priest or sister, or in the vicissitudes of life like the apostles meandering their way through their Acts.

    Perhaps on your knees all alone in the depth of need you first knew for yourselves, like Saul the stirrings of conversion.

    Or perhaps somewhere else?

    In a schoolroom searching for answers in books that merely confused with their circumscribed characters until one day when those characters coalesced into something called Truth?

    Or at a weekend lockdown or a retreat that seemed useless until you did it.

    Or driving down a road one day and wondering where this road was supposed to take you and then forgetting.

    Or, in the withering disposition of a pack mentality, the final notes of sarcasm in a fraternity of desperation?

    Where were you, who were you when you, like Paul, like the apostles first felt the stirring of conversion, of Easter mystery compounded into Easter Joy?

    Perhaps it is yet to happen, yet to unfold in the mystagogia of this Easter season
    Here is the Easter question: When do we become Christians, disciples, apostles, something more profound, more real than cloak gatherers?

    Has it come or is it yet to come? Even for us? Is it yet to come?

    Staved off as long as we harbor all that junk that still lingers from our personal Lents
    As long as we hold on to grudges, handicaps, heartaches, sinister dreams, dishonesties that cast rocks at our neighbors, even our friends.

    As long as we cling to what we think must be right even when it has proved time and again to be wrong, very wrong.

    As long as we keep stored up in ourselves the well-rehearsed stones of indifference, ineptitude, pain, doubt, self-loathing.

    As long as we think we know the answers, as long as we are convinced only by the sound of our own voice.

    Brothers, there is one thing and one thing only that we need in this Easter season. Like old Saul, heaped round with coats, we need conversion and here…here God provides.
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  2. Dear Brothers and Sisters,

    On Sunday evening, in the Rector’s Conference, I addressed all of our seminarians, most of them by way of electronic connection. I had been thinking last week: There is so much “reaction” in our dealing with this thing that has come to dominate every aspect of our culture. It is chasing us and we have very few ideas about how it might end, how it will catch us. There are many unknowns as I have said, but is that necessarily a deterrent to positive action? More than ever I am convinced that we in the Church have to provide a way to lead people through this contagion. We have to do this by showing them in a convincing way what is important. Here at Saint Meinrad we are working toward these goals. Here is the rector’s conference from last night.

    Peace,
    FDR
    Rector’s Conference

    April 26, 2020
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    There was an interesting story in the BBC this week about what people in the United States are going to do with their stimulus checks, those 1200 dollar little gems heading their way from the government. Some were planning to save the money. Others have chosen to buy groceries. One couple was going to combine their checks and buy a gun. To each his own. The story led me to ask two questions:

    What are we doing with this chapter of our lives and where do we want to be on the other side of contagion?

    What are we going to do with this chapter of our lives?

    What are we going to do with the new insights about ourselves that we are undoubtedly discovering? There is nothing like a bit of isolation to tell us some stories about ourselves, stories that we have sometimes, perhaps often, avoided telling.

    Look in the mirror in the morning, when you first get out of bed. Ask yourself this: Who is this face I confront? Outside I am looking like my however number of years, but I am younger inside. I want to be younger inside. What are we going to do with the insight we gain from the merciless mirror every morning?

    What are we going to do with our insights about others within our contagion orbit? We are reading a lot about folks who live in abusive homes, where they are not safe, where they are not happy. We are reading about those who find isolation with others. Even when we are happy, even when we love, these days find us looking at those around us with new eyes. We can really get to know people, understand them more profoundly. This isolation, for those preparing for ministry, for those involved in ministry, this isolation offers us time and focus to really get to know people, as we ought to know them.

    What are we going to do with our extra time? When we find ourselves with nothing to do, will we choose boredom or another nap, or is this the time to branch out, to find new hobbies and new interests, read new books, and watch more challenging films? There is a world of art and music to explore. No one need ever be bored. Perhaps it’s the time to take up some new pursuit, pottery, macramé, I don’t know but DO something.

    What are we going to do with our life of prayer? We have in these days not only the time to pray but the real need to pray. We can devote time to praying for our brothers and sisters, our families, our friends, our communities. This is the hour to prayer, those who are sick, alone, in need, they need us to be ceaseless intercessors. We are not too busy for that. IF we are, our priorities are mixed up. Prayer must come first. Intercession must come first. Seeing to the spiritual needs of others, and indeed, of ourselves must come first.

    What are we going to do with God? It is time, friends, it is past time to grow closer to God. I wonder how many folks, in this crisis have turned more readily to God? Millions, I hope. We are missing Mass. We are missing the presence of one another. I wonder how many folks have lost their faith in this crisis? Few, I hope, but for many of our brothers and sisters, faith has been hanging by a thin thread for some time. What does it mean for those folks to be cut off from the Eucharist and from the care of their fellow Christians, their pastors, their bishops?

    We may think that this is a down time, from church, from the Sacraments, from community; but I would say it is a revival time.

    Our work, our task as religious, as seminary faculty and formation staff, our task is to help people do one thing, find meaning in their lives. We are meaning peddlers, meaning grabbers, meaning holders not only for ourselves but for everyone.

    I was thinking about an old Baptist song the other day that might serve us well in these days, Revive Us, Again. Here is one of the stanzas:

    Revive us again;
    Fill each heart with Thy love;
    May each soul be rekindled
    With fire from above.

    Can that be our prayer in these dark days? Can we find ways to make this the opportunity for a revival, a Great Awakening in our social order, in our Church, in our communities, in our homes?

    Revive us again! Help us Lord to understand. Help us to understand who we really are, not men and women wandering aimlessly in a haze but your Sons, your Daughters, marked with the sign of the cross and figured in the stain of His blood. Help us to understand your Word, moving powerfully through our lives, brightening our dark days and offering healing to a culture, a world sick from something so much worse than virus, a world made sick by faithlessness. Revive us again!

    Revive us again! Help us Lord, to comprehend the power of your Word, newly risen from the grave, newly risen every day and offering a sign of hope to those who suffer, to families who are in pain, to those who are abused, to those who are sick. The power of that Word had the energy, the audacity to crack the stone of that borrowed grave in Jerusalem so long ago. Revive us again!

    Revive us again! Help us Lord to appreciate beauty in the red tinged sky of dawn and the gray toned clouds of water and storm. We see you Lord in the wonders of creation, great canyons and small animals. We feel you Lord in the glorious wind, the grace-stung rain, the excellence, pure arête, of the rising spring, the longed-for summer. Revive us again!

    Revive us again! Help us Lord, to fathom the depth of that image in the mirror, the beauty of those aging lines, the creativity of those eyes. Help us to know what hope, what words of wisdom that mouth shall speak, what can be experienced in the complexity of each day. Revive us again!

    Help us to perceive, to grasp something among us more than crisis, help us to rise to glory, day-by-day. Help us. We have the need, the deepest need for revival.
    My brothers and sisters if we can lead ourselves to a realization of this need, we can do what we are called to do, lead the world to insight. We can do what we are called to do, each one of us, to lead a struggling and needy world, to doxos, to glory, to salvation.
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  3. Notes from Saint Meinrad - 4/23/2020
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    Dear Brothers and Sisters,

    Greetings from Saint Meinrad. As the weeks roll on in our new normal, all of us are trying to work out how all of this is going to end. All of us have found things to do or else we are running mad, but not the things we would normally be doing. Last night, we should have had our Black and White dinner, always a highlight of the year for me. We should be preparing final papers, working on projects, listening to homilies, failing to show up for morning prayer. I miss it. I have had to learn to webex. I now have a little camera on the top of my computer. We are mastering the art of the virtual meeting. These are all skills we have learned in a few minutes. In the staff we are talking about how the summer is going to unfold, how we will newly adapt to enrollment, what we will do if we cannot return to campus in the fall. And through it all we just don’t know. Some of our leaders are telling us to get things back to normal. Others are prevailing against that theory. What could we possibly know with such a short experience, about 8 weeks of this new normal?

    This week, some long-awaited additions to our chapel arrived. One of them (pictured above) is an image of St. Aloysius. The picture is placed in honor of the twenty-fifth anniversary of One Bread, One Cup. St. Aloysius is the patron of Catholic youth.  He died in his early twenties as a Jesuit scholastic. His tomb is in Rome. The painting honors, the quarter-century tradition of our summer youth program which has been so successful in so many ways, keeping young people involved in the Church, fostering many vocations, and helping young people to find positions of leadership in their communities around the world. So many of our OBOC alumni have gone on to do great things for the Church. It should be in our chapel where the realities of OBOC have unfolded so significantly. I am sure the patronage of St. Aloysius has overseen much of this success. This week, however, as the image went up, I was reminded of a secondary patronage that the saint had; he is the patron saint of plague victims. St. Aloysius, who was a member of the nobility, died serving victims of a plague which invaded Rome in 1591. This summer, our OBOC sessions may or may not meet for the first time in twenty-five years. St. Aloysius may be needed for his other patron’s status. My dear brothers and sisters, let’s think today about this young saint, let us pray and pray and pray.

    This prayer is from the St. Aloysius novena:

    St. Aloysius Gonzaga, you suffered from illness for many years. Despite your sufferings, you put your time to good use in prayer and holy reading. Please continue to bring my petitions before the throne of God! When you became aware that your brothers and sisters in Christ were suffering with symptoms of an infectious disease, you asked to be allowed to care for them. You did not hesitate to risk your life caring for them, out of love for God. Pray for me, that I may always seek to serve God in the suffering around me. Pray that I may never allow my own sufferings to deter me from serving God.

    Keep your heads and hearts up brothers and sisters and know how much we not only remember all of you, faculty, staff, monks, sisters, overseers, friends, but how much you are loved and missed.

    Peace,
    FDR
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  4. Notes from Saint Meinrad - 4/20/2020
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    Dear Brothers and Sisters,

    Greetings from Saint Meinrad. We now begin our fifth week of internalization, the new cloister, quarantine, however we fashion it. I am sure it is the same for many of us, lack of contact with the essential others has left us wondering what to do with our time. For myself, I watch homiletic videos, I teach my class on Thursday afternoon. I attend distant meetings. I host or go to social events in the evenings. Last night we had a bonfire. Tonight, a showing of The Help. We have three meals a day, Mass, adoration, rosary, Liturgy of the Hours, all there in a nice rotation. Of course, there are other hours of the day that need to be filled and so, like many of you, I have been cleaning my room. I must protest that my room is usually very neat and clean on the surface, but when there is the chance for deep cleaning, that becomes somewhat trickier. My philosophy is sometimes, perhaps much of the time, “put that thing in the drawer”. It is then out of sight and out of mind. So, I have been cleaning out closet and drawers and re-organizing and getting rid. This quarantine is a good opportunity for that. It’s amazing what you will find.

    I found pens. I have found all of the pens I have stolen from Karen’s desk and now I am going to return them there. These pens were never lost, they were just misplaced for a bit. Now they will find their way back. All of my drawers and my closet are not completely clear and clean. That is the joy of enclosure. Another joy is the ability to really take stock, to look at myself. For us inside, it is also a rare opportunity to get to know the others. Here at Saint Meinrad we like to think we know our seminarians well, and I believe we do. But five weeks of close and up-close living sheds new light. This one emerges as a hidden gem. This one shows true colors a bit more clearly. This one is a delight. This one has his “pill” moments. That last one is me, of course. All of us show who we are under the microscope, but that can and often is quite beautiful. I know that many of you are much more enclosed than we are here. I pray every day for families and rectories, where things may be more tense, or at least, things are beginning to be seen that may have been hidden or purposefully overlooked for a long time. I hope that all of you are finding opportunities to find your “lost pens”, however that may look in your situations. I hope and I pray that this time of enclosure offers us the opportunity to know ourselves a little better when we return to our daily lives.

    As the seminarians know, I sent out a questionnaire to try and gain some insight about them both now and for the summer. I was surprised by the comments I received, especially how many said they were praying hard to be able to return in the fall. Please God, let it be so.

    Peace,

    FDR

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  5. Divine Mercy Sunday

    April 19, 2020
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands
    and put my finger into the nail marks
    and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

    Until that night, he was nothing more than a name in a litany of names. Peter, James, John, Thomas, we know the rest.

    He was just a name in the anonymous catalogue of apostolic personages

    Or perhaps he is Thomas the doubter, reaching out his hand for the cleft side of the Risen Lord

    Thomas the naysayer, he is not risen, who can believe it, who can credit it

    Thomas the patron saint of the agnostic

    Thomas the pedant. I will not believe until I touch, I feel, I grasp.

    But it is interesting, in a way that his anonymity is not, it is interesting that his doubt yields something else …

    Acceptance, belief, resignation, all of it. Because, Thomas’ profession of faith is the most profound in the whole of the Gospel, My Lord and My God. And so our anonymous apostle becomes noteworthy as a doubter.

    Thomas … He was broken by anxiety

    Who among us is not broken by the not-knowing of our time, who of us is not broken by the foreignness, the namelessness of these days? Just a few weeks ago we are going along by with our lives, with the daily ups and downs, the grousing, the complaining, the celebrating, the rejoicing, and now? We are broken in a way not different from those anonymous apostles huddling behind the locked doors of the upper room. Thomas …

    He was broken by the pain of separation

    Who of us has not felt that pain of separation, so many of our brothers, our family members are caught in quarantines, some of our brothers and sisters are captured by abusive homes, abusive relationships, abusive internal dialogues? Who of us have not felt some separation and betrayal as from that upper room, they could have looked out on the field where Judas took his life? Thomas

    He was broken by doubt

    We have doubted. We do doubt, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. We do doubt. None of us is immune to that nagging question, does he really exist, does he really care? Is he really here for us? Can we count on God to keep his word? Did the apostles not know those doubts before the Lord came in? Scripture tells us they did. They doubted Mary. They doubted the two on the road. They doubted, they were broken by doubt

    Thomas, even with his bad reputation, he is perhaps much like us, more like us, perhaps just like us.

    In the midst of anxiety, we want peace.

    In the midst of separation, we want to be united, to be one.

    In the full, embarrassment of doubt, we want to believe, we want to be able to confidently say with Thomas when confronted by life’s pains, anxieties and fears: My Lord and My God.

    And so today, on this Mercy Sunday there is an invitation from the Lord: Reach out, reach out and touch.

    Reach out and touch, my Lord and my God in the elderly man, quarantined at home, without resources, without food, without friends. He clings to hope and he clings to want in his darkened apartment. Reach out and touch

    Reach out and touch, my Lord and my God in the child sitting alone and confused in a fly-ridden room, his mother, who knows? He has no words to cry out but he cries nevertheless and raises his fist in desperate hope that someone might grasp him, feed him, speak softly to him. Reach out and touch, Thomas

    Reach out and touch, my Lord and my God in the young parents who pray that their doors will keep them safe, that their walls will hold, that the spirit-carried demon will not get to them as they gaze down from their windows and the vacant streets of New York. Reach out and touch, Thomas

    Reach out and touch, my Lord and my God in leaders who truly seek to serve, who want to save their people more than they want to save themselves or worse, their political influence. Who wipe the sweat from their brows awake for 36 hours seeking anything, masks, ventilators, anything to tide them over? Reach out and touch, Thomas

    Reach out and touch, my Lord and my God in the doctors, the nurses, the health care workers who risk everything, risk life to save those so bitterly suffering. Here is the doctor in the tattered mask and blood-stained apron manning the emergency room, searching here, finding nothing, searching there, finding the mate to nothing. Reach out and touch, Thomas

    Reach out and touch, my Lord and my God in one another, in the powerful dismay that goes unsaid because it is not polite to doubt, to cry out in desperation if I am a seminarian. I’m supposed to be the strong one and yet I toss and turn all night in the sheer desperation of not knowing. Reach out and touch, Thomas, doubting Thomas, believing Thomas

    Remembered as you are in the anonymous catalogue of apostolic personages

    Reach out and touch. Come now, face to face, skin to skin with the power of God, the wonder of the Almighty.

    He is discovered in wounds. He is delivered in pain. He is found in brokenness.

    And this, this is our God, one who can match us pain for pain, bruise for bruise, wound for wound in the bumpy, jagged passageways of life.

    Reach out and touch this God, let him touch you. My Lord and my God.

    Here is the word, soft and gentle.

    Here is the caress, so long neglected.

    Here is the Eucharist, so long unconsumed and incarcerated in its tabernacle prison.

    Here is the Risen Lord, rising like the bright sun over the littered landscape of humanity.

    “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands
    and put my finger into the nail marks
    and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”

    We have seen, we have touched, now we must approach in love, the altar, one another, the world.
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  6. Notes from Saint Meinrad - 4/16/2020
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    Dear Brothers and Sisters,

    We are now entering the first month of our various places of shelter. If you are following the news, the “endpoint” of all of this has become something of a quagmire of politics and economics. Where will we end and when will we end. I don’t know and if everyone is honest, no one does. We have created scenarios of safety and shelter that have been more or less safe and sheltered. They have also come at a cost, for us most significantly the cost of our worship, our common prayer and our being community. It is good if we are building the domestic church, but even the best quality of domestic church does not lead to the most profound reality we can experience, the physical presence of Christ in the community’s worship. We can celebrate or attend “private” Masses, but something will always be missing, the abiding, sometimes frustrating, but always, always essential presence of the others. Where are the others? With St. John Paul II, I think we can all safely observe that we desire them beyond all measure, seeing them, being near others, all of this relates not to a Christian value only but to a human value. In isolation, our humanity is at stake. How can this be rectified?

    This week I have been perusing an old, often neglected classic, Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year, written in the early eighteenth century, it is a diary of the advance of the bubonic plague in London in 1665. In gritty detail, the story unfolds of the unseen, at the time, unnamable menace that struck the people of London and killed them in great swaths. Defoe records the challenge of the endless cry echoing through the city: “Bring out your dead”. He also cries out for the helplessness people felt in their inability to confront this menace. Of course, we are in the same place. We are absolutely looking for people to blame, this national group, this politician, this whomever. If we cannot find a way to blame someone for the event, then we must turn to blaming for the response. But what if we could do something else? What if we could try and put every bit of our effort into finding God-like responses to this new plague. None of us are in a position to make sweeping, political and social decisions, but all of us are in a place to make one life easier, or to help the anxiety and the pain of this small group, huddling for safety in this domestic church or this rectory. All of us are in a position to listen and to respond with compassion. If we begin to do this small thing and then the next small thing, we will begin to experience inside ourselves the community spoken of so eloquently by St. John Paul. We will know in that sense, our real selves in the midst of pandemic. Can the pandemic show us who we really are? Pray God, let it be so.

    It is interesting that the Great Plague of London in 1665 was only resolved by one event, the Great Fire of London, most of the center of the city was burned to the ground. It is not possible for us to think of a great fire, but there is a moment comment that we might seize.

    Acts Chapter Two:

    When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.  Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.  They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them.

    Peace,

    FDR
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  7. Notes from Saint Meinrad - 4/13/2020
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    Dear brothers and sisters,

    We have lived through the three days. We have triumphed with Christ over the powers of destruction and death. At least, I hope we have. This has been such a strange time.  I have received many emails and texts from students and others who are experiencing in these times a new sense (or lack of sense) of Church. What does it mean to be an isolated Church? I wish I knew because, as a theologian, this ideal (or lack of ideal) of Church is not only puzzling, it is alien, even abhorrent. The sight of Pope Francis in an empty St. Peter’s Basilica is not only haunting, it is genuinely frightening. How have we come this far in less than two months?

    Here at Saint Meinrad things are somewhat different. We are a faithful remnant but we have at least had the chance to gather as a remnant, to celebrate the Triduum together, to be a part of something. We have tried to share that with everyone as much as possible through cyber space as well as other less technological models. I know that we are like a family cut off, as so many are. We are together but the other essential parts of ourselves, the rest of our Saint Meinrad family is not here. It is painful. I think about Psalm 74. “We do not see our signs; There is no longer any prophet, Nor is there any among us who knows how long.” We do not know.

    I have heard from so many of you students, staff and faculty and overseers. Your words are reassuring and hopeful. Saint Meinrad will go forward because so many of us are willing it to be so. As we finish Holy Week and begin the Easter season, it also seems like a good time to take stock. I know that those here and those everywhere else are muddling through. I know you are because I know all of you. I know your character and your resilience. It doesn’t change the fact however that things are not what they could have been, what they were supposed to have been.

    I have been very nostalgic lately, wondering how the past prefigures, even guards the future. None of us are where we thought we would be. I was thinking about my childhood. (Don’t try and picture it, it is too difficult). Every year, I would go with my parents to visit my grandmother in Mississippi. Of course, for me it was the highlight of the year, not only to see grandmother, but to be in touch with all of my cousins. Every year there were so many things planned, visits to this relative or that one. I especially loved to visit my Aunt Eunice, who was not really my aunt, and had locked herself away at home for decades because a dog followed here home from town one day. This is the variety of eccentricity that only takes hold in the humidity of the south. I loved visiting Miss Celia, who was in her nineties and a piano teacher. She always wanted me to play for her and I did so very badly, but she never let on, she loved company even more than perfect piano technique. I loved visiting all of my cousins, even the rough ones, and spending the night with the “other grandparents” who, though possessed of over one hundred grandchildren, found a way to make me, on that night, seem like the only one. I loved them all.

    The greatest disappointment of these summers was if, for some unforeseen reason, our time in Mississippi was cut short. Maybe my father had to get back to Washington on an emergency, or some other reason. When this happened I thought about all of the planned things I would be missing, the cousins unvisited, the old ladies unseen. There was mourning in it, deep mourning as we made our way home and I sulked in the backseat of the car. I was cheated. That’s how I feel now. We have been cheated and there is no one to blame. A virus knows no boundaries, but I feel cheated nevertheless.
    We were cheated out of our final weeks of school, our leave-taking, our awkward, over-masculinized embraces of farewell. We were cheated of graduation, of ceremony, of those pictures taken in the canyon, of family visits. We were cheated of our banquets and our liturgies that helped us mark the end.  We were cheated of our Easter, of the most important part of the year for us. We were cheated by a soulless virus.

    As a father, I want to fix it all. I want to give all of us what we wanted and I know that is not possible, but it doesn’t change the void I feel and I know many of us here at Saint Meinrad feel.  It doesn’t change the fact that as I presided over the faithful remnant last week, I shook inside with the blind injustice of it. It doesn’t change the fact that I long for our Church to return to what it was and I don’t care about the demographic wars or the battles over the liturgy anymore. I care about you, and your families, and all of those who make a part of our varied and sometimes really insane Church. I care with a father’s heart and I must say, in spite of the joy of Easter, my heart is still broken. Sisters and brothers, we will survive. God has given us that promise as we know, but it does mean that, for us at least, the passion is somewhat prolonged and rises to the surface of this Easter Monday.

    The Lord is risen, indeed He is risen. Give us the faith risen Lord to know that we too shall rise again.

    Peace, indeed,
    FDR
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  8. Easter Vigil Mass

    April 11, 2020
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    Brothers, tonight we stand here in this familiar place in the coda of the Holy Triddum.

    We have celebrated (or not celebrated) in various places, in various forums, and in various degrees of formality the three days, our solemn pasch.

    We have celebrated (or not celebrated) in parishes that are hurting and in need of Easter but their Easter is truncated, staid.

    We have celebrated (or not celebrated) in great cathedrals and basilicas, echoing perhaps the sounds of so very few in such a vast space.

    We have celebrated (or not celebrated) in tiny chapels dotting the globe, in villages and out-of-the-way places made dignified by the presence of the faithful, so hopeful, so longing. They are longing for God, for health, for freedom, for one another.

    And of course, this night goes on. It continues and spills over into the next 50 days in the life of the Church. It spills over, even many of our brothers and sisters remained house-bound.

    It spills over as many of our brothers and sisters remain sick, in hospitals, in nursing homes, at home.

    It spills over into days haunted by that most treacherous of spirits … uncertainty.

    It spills over and we cannot contain the spill, much as we would like to use its power to relieve our world of pain and sorrow.

    It spills over tonight in the light of fire, in the dancing of a flame making its way across uncharted ground.

    It spills over into water that we have not felt on our skin for so long, the waters of rebirth, of baptism.

    It spills over, even as we search desperately for meaning in these days.
    Meaning. It is a plea and a question.
    What is the meaning of all of this?

    On Monday, in the Office of Readings we will encounter these words of Saint Augustine: “We gave him the power to die. He gives us the power to live.”

    As we moved through the celebration of Holy Week, I was struck by the awesome fitness of that simple formula. That is indeed what we have been celebrating, what we are celebrating, what, ultimately our lives are maintaining: a marvelous exchange. Even in confinement, even in quarantine.

    We gave him the power to die and he died. We offered to the Lord the gift we received from our first parents and he embraced it.

    He died in the full realization of sin, a sin he never committed.

    He died in place of our ancestors, those transgressing parents whose sin we have inherited and emulated.

    He died that the lives of those who never cared for him, never heard of him, never thought of God might be maintained.

    He died the death of a murderer, a thief, a fugitive that we might find a home authentically in heaven.

    He died the death of a beggar, but gained in that burden the gift of immortality, a priceless treasure that only a beggar could embrace.
    Immortality came to him as it does for us, not in the simple reparation of sin but in doing what we do not have to do, in sacrifice, in offering an oblation with our lives, our spirits, and our bodies.

    We gave him the power of death and he embraced it all the way to the cross, all the way to the ignoble nobility of Good Friday.

    We gave him the power of death and he picked it up and walked with it, sometimes falling, sometimes stumbling on the rough stones of the streets of Jerusalem.

    We gave him the power of death and he drank it in, he drank it down, he drank its bitter draughts to the dregs, our sin, our insolence, our disbelief, our heartache, our bitterness, our desperation, our ugliness, our desperate humanity.

    We gave him the power of death, we thrust it upon his body, his back, his brow. Our insolent humanity gave him the power to die.

    But just as much as we gave him the power to die, even the mandate to die, he gives us the power to live, or rather, we have the power to live by his courage, by his sacrifice, by his willingness to embrace what he never had to embrace.
    And so, we live revived

    We live renewed.
    We live reborn.
    We live reclaimed.
    We live reconstituted so that our old nature falls away like withered leaves to be brought to life like the buds of spring, the blooms of dogwoods.

    We live resurrected, we live in the resurrection, we live in the hope of the resurrection and there is nothing now that the specter of death can threaten us with, nothing that the fear of death and destruction can hamper us with, nothing that we cannot overcome having been washed in the blood of the Lamb and …

    Made pure in his immolation.
    Made clean in his filth.
    Made complete in his division.
    Made perfect in his degradation.
    Made whole in his brokenness.

    Brothers, in these days of celebrating the cosmic mystery of life and death, of destruction and rebirth we are convoluted. God convolutes us. He confounds our expectations and we celebrate it.

    We celebrate it in shouts of alleluia that drown the din of hesitant penitential verses.

    We celebrate it in spirits newly alive, reborn in the saving waters of new birth.

    We celebrate it in the coming among us of new deacons and new priests, new men of God whose generosity knows no bounds, whose life knows no compromises even as they arise from the humility of the earth, prostrate spirits to be recalled to the living God in acts of ordination.

    We celebrate it in small acts of preserving life by listening to, caring for our brothers and sisters here.

    We celebrate it by our presence, our simple presence, being there even with nothing to do, nothing to say.

    We celebrate it day by day, moment by moment in lives whose patterns have been traced in the blood of Christ, whose measurements are now taken in the tokens of eternity and whose outlines now startlingly take the form of a cross. The cross, the symbol of life.

    We gave him the power to die – but he gives us the power to live.

    My brothers, today and every day, we celebrate that He is risen. He is truly risen. Praise God today. Praise Him every day. Pour out your lives as a sacrifice of praise and service even as we renew the mystery of the Three Days in the work of this altar.

    Blessed are we, blessed indeed to be called on this Easter night to the supper of the Lamb.
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    Labels: Catholic Easter Vigil Holy Week Homilies Rector Seminary

  9. This is Part Six in a series of Holy Week Retreat conferences first given several years ago to the Seminary community at Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology.  An additional conference will be posted each day during Holy Week.

    Holy Week Retreat
    Holy Saturday, Saturday, April 11, 2020
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    Great Silence

    It is the theme for this day.

    We experience great silence in the wake of the cross and burial of Jesus.  We don’t know what to do with ourselves.  We wander all over town, in the ruins of Babylon, looking for chapels or less wholesome places that are familiar.  Perhaps we don’t want to be alone. When have we ever wanted to be alone?

    Last night we watched at the tomb, we offered tribute, but even in the midst of the ritual there is a kind of desperation.  Why are we here?

    The sparseness of the burial rite, our muted voices testify to this, and then there is nothing but sheer silence.

    Great silence reigns on earth today.

    On Saturday night we will gather again in a kind of bewilderment.  In parishes around the world, people will not know what to do, where to sit, where to gather.  Churches will be pitch dark.  Their doors flung open to the world. Nothing within, nothing.

    Where do I go?  How do I see to get there?  Everything that is familiar about going to Church is made strange. We are uncomfortable. 

    And so, we gather somewhere else, for community, wherever we can find it, in the yards, on the streets.  It is amazing how that sacramental presence in the Church forms us as a people, and when it is not there, how alien we feel, how alien the building feels, how much the building is like the people. 

    We gather outside, in darkness and confusion. And then, in the shadow, there is a spark, and then a flame and then a fire. It is hope and light rekindled in darkened lives.

    Then a candle is brought out.  The work of bees. It is the size of a grown person.  And it represents a grown person, it is Jesus. The dead wax is his dead body. We thrust into it his wounds, five wounds.

    Then the light of Christ rising in Glory, it moves through the people enlightening them. Slowly, slowly like conversion. It moves into the Church, transforming strangeness into home again. We become one by the light of the fire of Christ.

    Tonight, we celebrate the resurrection.  In the plunging of bodies into the font. We have been through the passion and death and now we welcome Christ back to life in new Christians.  Of course, He was never dead. We are enacting a little drama but hopefully not a pantomime.

    What we celebrate in the Triduum is not the death of Jesus, he has already died and has been raised. He is alive. He has remained alive in these three days. His business his finished.

    What we celebrate this week is the body of Christ that is us.  We recall the paschal mystery of daily living. How Christ sometimes seems to die in us and is brought to life.  How we sometimes betray him and are brought back. How our lives seem empty until they are filled with the light of Christ.  How we need one another to make sense of who we are. How much we miss God when we believe him gone.

    The paschal mystery is a reminder of the dynamics of discipleship for us and for the catechumens. And it reminds us every year of who we are.

    As seminarians and priests, it reminds us that
    We are frail men
    We are striving men
    We are sometimes desperate men
    We are boastful men
    We are hesitant men
    We are suspicious men
    We are sinful men

    And we are saved men
    We are compassionate men
    We are generous men
    We are hopeful men

    Suddenly, the dour sadness of the three days is over. We knew it would be, but somehow we have to live it. We watched as Jesus washed the feet of the twelve on Holy Thursday, we agonized with Christ in the garden, were offended by his betrayal, embarrassed by those who denied him. We stood steadfastly by him at the cross, wept as we wiped the blood from our arms, cried with his mother and friends, recoiled at the sight of his dead body, anointed him with Mary, lamented him with Joseph, buried him, guarded him, sorrowed.

    Of course, all of this is very safe from the seeming distance of 2000 years. It is easy to be with Christ in the profound but sanitized rituals of the Church.  The old song asked the poignant question. Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Well, we might have been there, but we might not have been.

    Of course, all of this is not the point. We remember the three days, but we do not live in the three days. We live in the today, today, the day of resurrection.

    Were you there when he rose from the tomb?

    Of course, we were there and we are there because in a temporal sleight of hand we are now standing at the entrance to that tomb and as we peer into its emptiness, PROMISE yawns in our faces and eradicates the heritage of garden, field and hilltop, even the hilltop of Calvary

    On Saturday the empty tomb challenges us to become people of the resurrection a people whose question is “what if”. 

    What if the three days can send Babylon howling?

    What if the miracle of the resurrection is the fulfillment of a promise made to Mary on the day when the drama of God’s life on earth began. 

    What if the angel said to her, nothing is impossible with God. 

    Now we know that is true but it has consequences for us and so we ask…

    What if we could really believe in Easter?

    What if we could let others and ourselves remain open to the gifts God wants to give us.

    What if we could have confidence in conversion?

    What if we could share our cloaks with the needy?

    What if we could give without hope of repayment?

    What if we could turn the other cheek?

    What if we could be people of hope, of the open end, of the promise, of the possible?

    What if we could really believe that nothing is impossible with God?  Nothing is impossible, God can do with anyone of us what he likes, he can change our hearts, change our lives, change our community, our seminary, remove our sins, our habits, our idiosyncrasies, our singularity.  He can take our mortal bodies and make them like his own glorified body. 

    What if?

    What if we could hope that there is more to our lives than what we see before us in the ruins of Babylon the great?

    What if we could hope for a world in which war, and hunger, and pain and sickness were but feeble memories, and beauty and truth and goodness were viable ways of living.

    What if poverty could be eradicated and cancer could be cured.

    What if the world could rise with God on this coming Easter day?

    What if?

    What if Christ was alive?

    What if?

    What if we could encourage others to be more than they think they can be?

    What if we were endless sources of inspiration?

    What if we could forgive enough to put aside the petty grudges that eat away at community living? To love our brothers and sisters in the midst of their failings and foibles because we know deep down that we are somehow connected to them through the cross. We are one because the one that gives our lives meaning is One.

    What if the body of Christ rose from the tomb today?

    What if we could forgo judgment and become a people committed to what if?

    With God the question is more important than the answer, the quandary more attractive than the quagmire. The possible more significant that the problem.

    What if we lived in a world, in a nation, in a Church, in a community of what if?

    Then our lives might be transformed and those of our neighbors might be transformed in a radiant shower of forgiveness, then we might see in others the pristineness of new snow on the dogwoods and not the slush of their accidents. We might view those around us with the urgency of coming to be.

    Brothers and sisters he has risen, and we have risen with him. We are the body of Christ, newly alive, preparing to meet the dawning day of what if…
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    Labels: Catholic Holy Saturday Holy Week Rector Retreat Seminary

  10. My dear brothers and sisters,

    Last night we cloistered community celebrated the Mass of the Lord’s Supper. We know that this was a great privilege for us, that we did it not only for ourselves but for all of you who were unable to gather for the Mass last night. We gathered for the “entombment” of Christ and we knew that so many of our brothers and sisters, our friends and family members, as well as un-named millions could not gather but knew rather isolation, sometimes desolation, sometimes more. This morning, Zach and I took a couple of Easter baskets to the Marx family in Ferdinand. Easter bunnies have a way of getting around. Today, in the wake of our memory of the passion of Christ, let us unite our sufferings to His suffering and find at least a morsel of meaning. I hope we can, and hope is as good a thing as any to be going on with.

    Peace
    FDR
    This is Part Five in a series of Holy Week Retreat conferences first given several years ago to the Seminary community at Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology.  An additional conference will be posted each day during Holy Week.
    Holy Week Retreat
    Good Friday, Friday, April 10, 2020
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    There is a crucifix in my office that is around 300 years old. It is quite beautiful and distinctive in that it represents Jesus on the cross with his arms straight above his head rather than extended out to his sides. Historically, this style has been called a “Jansenist” crucifix because the Jansenists, who were at the height of their power when this particular crucifix was carved, believed that narrow was the way to salvation. Only a few, the elect would be saved, and all the others were doomed to eternal destruction. Perhaps it can also signify the sometimes narrow image of the cross and of Good Friday.

    We know that on Good Friday, the devil has his day. It is the culmination of a great cosmic battle, waged since the days of our first parents and even before, waged among those ethereal creatures of heaven resulting in the hurling down of those lost angels.

    We know that dark story and its consequences. We know of Adam and Eve. We know of the Fall and its legacy of woe. We know of Israel’s endless struggles to fulfill the covenant. We know of the Babel created out of the chaos of human pride and selfishness. We know the story of Noah and the flood, of Abraham and Isaac. We know the endless accounts of infidelity and betrayal. Even great David, great Solomon were not immune to the congress of sin.
    It was almost as if the lesson could not be learned and indeed, it could not because there was no one to teach it.
    Not judges
    Not kings
    Not prophets

    Just as we know the stories of the Bible, we also know the evil of history, the long tradition forged of human mettle. War, destruction, greed, lust, famine, decay. We know the evil in our world, the powerful rulers who do not care about their people, of folks whose outrageous wealth makes them insensitive to the millions of hungry poor. We know of all of this. Yet we continue to be a part of the legacy of woe. 

    In our best moments, we think we can deal with evil, like Faust in the play of Christopher Marlowe or Goethe. We make deals, we try to overcome evil. We hide. All of no avail. The devil will have his day.

    On Good Friday we examine the cross for what it is. Why did God become Man? To accomplish what only God could accomplish and to pay the debt that only man owed. In the face of evil’s awful stench. We can cling to Christ, cling to his cross. worship his cross, because we know the world, we know ourselves. and in the end we know what saves and what doesn’t. Which is not to say that we do not look to countless other things to save us.

    What are those things?
    Our personalities?
    Our intellects?
    Our spiritual accomplishments?
    Our cunning?

    Or we experience the essential vacuum that is inside each of us and we try to fill that vacuum illegitimately:
    With food
    Drink
    Friends
    Sex
    Internet
    Entertainment
    Frivolity

    On Good Friday we are called to a realization: that the crucifix is a part of our Catholic landscape. We cannot, we should not escape it. We must hope in the cross. We must be open to the cross, we must see the cross as an invitation:

    This is the wood of cross on which hung the savior of the world. Come let us worship. Every year on Good Friday we venerate the cross. How do we come to the cross?
    Like the mother, cradling memories hugging those dear feet and remembering in its pierced shadows the tiny feet that first kicked straw in a manger in Bethlehem.

    Like the mother who hears in her mind’s ear angel wings, white-grey-green beating furiously an invitation
    Will you?
    Fiat
    Who knew it could lead to this?

    Like the mother who sees in the brow of her child the strickeness of people who have traversed gardens and fields and hilltops and heard thorn bushes speak with scarce more eloquence than these thorns as they strike the veins of the Eternal Word

    Like the mother whose grief speaks secret joy because she alone knows the Truth: That her Son is dying for all, for her, for his tormentors, for these thieves.

    Do we approach the cross like Joseph of Arimathea?
    There is blood in the crook of my arm
    This is the thought of Joseph of Arimathea

    His blood is in the crook of my arm
    It smells of iron, of metal
    It is strangely sticky
    And now I am unclean for the Passover

    Unclean through the blood of the only source of healing, cleanliness
    Like Joseph do we approach knowing that the old order has passed away, that the very law is passed over?
    That our sins are passed over
    Do we fear what this cross means for our future, for our past, for our lives of sin even as we embrace it, kiss it?
    Do we fear for ourselves as we approach the cross?

    Do we approach the cross like John?
    Eager to prove our worth, our steadfastness, our trust
    Or like Peter, not at all
    Or like the women full of tears for a passion that is more ours than his?
    Or like Nicodemus with his preposterous hundred pounds of tribute spices, the gift of the un-committed, the shame of the unconvinced who come to Him only under cover of darkness
    Or like ourselves
    Men and women in need of embracing its wood, seeing in its wood our featly to one who
    Though he was in the form of God…

    The cross is the necessary conduit.
    Not the end.
    Never the end.
    Sometimes we can get caught up in the very dourness of the cross that we lose sight of the larger picture.
    The cross is a conduit
    A means
    A necessary means but only a means
    What is the end?
    Joy – Real, true, eternal, lasting Joy

    The poet Emily Dickinson wrote these words.

    After great pain a formal feeling comes--
    The nerves sit ceremonious like tombs;
    The stiff Heart questions--was it He that bore?
    And yesterday--or centuries before?
    The feet, mechanical, go round
    A wooden way
    Of ground, or air, or ought,
    Regardless grown,
    A quartz contentment, like a stone.
    This is the hour of lead
    Remembered if outlived,
    As freezing persons recollect the snow--
    First chill, then stupor, then the letting go.
    What is that formal feeling?
    That with Christ we can endure anything
    With Christ we can gain access to authentic freedom
    With Christ there is authentic choice because there is choice for him and for God
    With Christ we can make sense of the world’s suffering
    With Christ we have the chance to grow up and put away our childish notions of what makes us happy and what is fulfilling
    With Christ we can open our arms authentically to embrace our brothers even as he opened his arms
    With Christ we can find meaning and usefulness for our wounds
    With Christ, and in his cross we can gain access to that which is most needed, meaning
    Our lives can have true meaning rather than merely the postmodern pastiche of meaning we try to impose on them
    In the cross we can discover what it means to be authentically human. what it means to be real men rather than the forced cartoon figures our social order imposes
    In the cross of Christ we discover the hidden fulfillment of service, of pouring out our lives

    The Cross is pain
    But after great pain …

    I will never be a biological father, but there is no one in the world that can tell me that I don’t know what it is like to be a father. I have witnessed in my life as a rector the joy and sorrow, the nightly worries, the hours of prayer, the concern, the time, the fatigue and the joy of being a true father. Did I mention the joy?

    And that is true for all priests.

    When you baptize, you realize that you are giving what is most needed the promise of eternal life.

    When you teach and preach you realize that you are offering a real service, telling the Truth, brothers always preaching the Truth, Christ alone is the truth. The world is dying for the truth, the world is starving to death for that Truth. Preach the cross of Christ and give to a starving people the true food of doctrine and moral life

    When you celebrate the Holy Mass you realize that we, as priests, have the chance to do what cannot be fathomed, to hold in our hands every time we celebrate the Holy Mass the King of the Ages. Do we know what that cosmic engagement really is? Do we know how far it surpasses human desires for food? Do we understand the universal implications of having the privilege of standing at the crossroads of heaven and earth when we stand at the altar? Do we understand our place in the world, not a place of simple service and care, but a shamanistic place? In truth we bear more resemblance to the witchdoctors of old that we do to social workers. We bear more resemblance to those priests of the Old Covenant who stood blood drenched and smoky eyed at the pits of immolation, than we do to sanitized modern pastoral agents. We connect the primitive human instinct to catch a glimpse of the divine and that connection comes through the wood of the cross. As priests we move through our daily lives We counsel, we comfort, we anoint, we bury, we do all of these essential things in power, with authority, with the true formality of perfect joy.

    I began this reflection with a little description of the crucifix in my office. I will end it in our seminary chapel. There is a crucifix in our chapel that is also a work of art. For thirty plus years I have looked upon it with a great deal of wonder and gratitude. While I admire the crucifix in my office for its historical and artistic merits, I love the crucifix in our chapel because its arms are as open as they can be. They are open wide. They welcome us and make us realize that the cross is the ultimate sign of hospitality.

    On Good Friday the devil has his day…and he loses.

    Posted by
    Labels: Catholic Good Friday Holy Week Rector Retreat Seminary
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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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