August 23, 2020
Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

Upon this rock I will build my church,
and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

I wish today that we could zoom off to Rome

I wish today that we could stand in the midst of the baroque splendor of Saint Peter’s Basilica and trace with our eyes those magnificent gold letters which encircle the church.

Tu es Petrus
Et super hanc petram aedificabo ecclesiam meam

Here in gold letters as tall as a person is enshrined a value

A promise

A meaningful understanding of the theology of magisterium and the primacy of the teachings of the pope.

It is the cornerstone upon which that basilica, standing on the tomb of the first of the apostles, is built in theology and in fact.

Peter the rock.

But, of course, there is so much more to our fisherman friend.

Peter the rock is in the next few verses of St. Matthew’s Gospel, also Peter the Satan, Peter the stumbling block

He will be the denier before it is all over, a boundary to faith.

He will be the one who sets aside his mantle of authority, in Jesus’ name, at the testimony of a servant girl, a slave

If we could magic ourselves to Rome today we might well go outside of that huge baroque pile to a courtyard hard on the side of the church and see impressed there a star, a simple little monument that hundreds of people tread over every day.

This star marks the spot where the fisherman ended his earthly journey, crucified upside down in the circus of Nero.

Even if we could transmogrify ourselves to Rome today, we might still have difficulty measuring the irony of Peter, at once so exalted and so humbled.

Unless, of course, we readily understand a particular truth; In Jesus’ economy, strength is stirred to potency precisely in brokenness

Upon this rock I will build my church,
and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

Is that not also the case with us? In our need and in our fragility each one of us has been called here to a particular mission.

We have been called to discernment, and more than discernment.

Like Peter, we have been called to the preparation for a ministry that we cannot yet fully imagine.

We are called to a service that we cannot yet completely fathom. We are called to a mystery, the aching parameters of which we have in our minds, but that must be seen not as something accomplished but rather as something toward which we strive, fully engaged. 

Let’s be honest, Rocky was not the brightest boy in the world, but he understood one thing, even if he didn’t always live it, he understood that in Jesus there was a presence in his life that demanded total commitment, not by virtue of a will to power, but by virtue of who Jesus is. Jesus gave Peter keys of understanding because he, and only he, had the power to give those keys.

I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven.
What are those keys?

They are the keys of faith, faith drawn from the very marrow of our bones, infused into our life in the milk of our mothers. Faith that calls us to acts of heroism in the face of overwhelming cowardice, faith that enables us to mount the heights of the Zion of human expectations when we are fearful and hopeless. These keys are the keys of faith. 

And they are the keys of life. They are the keys of that life that once walked the streets of Jerusalem, a Jerusalem divided like today between the haves and have nots, between warring factions of the Sons of Abraham. Life that murmurs assent in the frosty chill of despair and warms the internal recesses of the human condition with glory and light. The keys which Jesus gives are the keys of life.

They are the keys of hope. A hope that is often hard-earned and hard-preached. Brothers and sisters we need some ray of hope in our world today. The daily headlines are filled with sickness and pain, but in a more sinister way with indifference and mendacity. Our brothers and sisters are drowning in a sea of bad news and their one lifeline, their one anchor must be the Gospel that we preach. If we can preach the Gospel and if we can do it without compromise then the message of Jesus can become that hope, but that promise is centered on us, it is centered on those here. By our call, we are its fulfillment. The hope of the world rests upon the message we are called to preach, the message we are called to live. 

These are the keys promised to Peter, promised to the Church, Faith, Life, Hope, the keys of our self-understanding.

And brothers and sisters, hell cannot prevail against this promise.

Hell cannot infect us with its sulfurous gasps, its creaking substructure of isolation, ugliness, 

Hell cannot threaten us with the sin of our forebears; casting in our path the apple core of deceit because that path has been repaved with the blood of Jesus, that path has been reformed with his life, a new path is set out for us which has nothing to do with Hell.

And so, Hell cannot engage us with its penetrating wall of fire and ice. Hell cannot touch us with the fire that can never illuminate the true way. And what way is it? Hell with its labyrinthine paths that lead to nowhere when the true path is so easy to know and see: Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! The path to those riches and wisdom and knowledge is not unknown to us. Live the life. Search for the truth. Abandon despair. Abjure the lie of godlessness. 

Hell cannot prevail if we have turned our lives over to God in Christ. Brothers and sisters we are not bound for hell. We are bound for heaven.

We are bound for heaven. We must see moment by moment its gates opening wide for us, the luster of pearl and jewels, opening for us in this Eucharist. We must see the gates of heaven opened for us in the Word of God as we proclaim it boldly and fearlessly. We are bound to pass through those gates, and even here into the bounty of an everlasting life that cannot be staunched by our lack of vision, cannot be quenched by sickness and death. 

We are made for heaven.  We want to march on its streets, streets that are made of jasper but look for the world like terrazzo hallways. And we see in those streets angels and denizens of infinity that look like our own brothers and sisters because they are our brothers and sisters, not crippled by the sulfuric belching of the earthquake of Hell, but emboldened to parade those streets by God’s command of love. 

We are created for heaven and I wish that I could unfold for you a map of that city. I wish I could lay out for you its gates, its streets, to let you know what glory, what sheer glory the Lord of Hosts has prepared for each of us. 

Those gates, those streets, that map are engrained in our DNA, inscribed in the marrow of our bones, fixed in the infinitude of our minds. 

Upon this rock I will build my church,
and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.

And we have that promise; we need only reach out for it, only reach out our hands in prayer, in friendship, in the reception of this Sacrament. Let us begin our new formation year this way. Let us be women and men of authentic outreach, beholding in each other the Lamb of God. Let us see one another with eyes of hope, as Our Lord did for the troubled and troubling Simon. Let us resolve with Christ to build our Church and to build it strong and fearless so that the Gates of Hell have no authority over this place. Let us hold those keys in our hands and feel their wondrous weight and know in them, the only key, Jesus, who is ours, who is Lord forever and ever. 

Memorial of St. Pius X
August 21, 2020
Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

Son of man, can these bones come to life?

What an image, especially for a Jewish prophet. Ezekiel pulls no punches in creating a vibrating, truly horrific scene for the people.

Nothing was more horrible to ancient Jews than the presence of one unburied body, not to mention a field of bones.

And yet here we stand with that prophet. And the question …

Son of man, can these bones come to life?

Israel in the time of Ezekiel was fading and Ezekiel’s visions were wild.

Born of a priestly family, the prophet saw spinning animals and wings and chariots and fire and tempest.

Ezekiel’s wild visions were part and parcel of his time, a time of upheaval and change for all of Israel.

It was a time of loss

It was a time of degradation

It was a time of humiliation

It was a time of religious confusion

And into that morass, into that mess stepped the wild prophet and his field of bones.

Our bones are dried up,
our hope is lost, and we are cut off.

Crazy stuff. In hearing this the people of Israel must have been mortified.

They had lost their dignity, their sense of purpose and, according to the prophet they lay exposed, not even as persons, not even as individuals, but as a mere collection of bleached, dried bones.

In Ezekiel’s’ creepy, cosmic vision the brittle bones of Israel careen out like a carpet of shame, unburied, un-mourned, unclean.

Undignified

Until God asks the question:

Son of man, can these bones come to life?

And what about us?

Can we speak any more confidently of the dignity of life in our advanced age, so far removed from the savagery of the ancient world?

Isn’t it true that the world we live in can sometimes seem like a field of bones?

Our dignity is compromised, through internal and external wrangling.

We fight within ourselves, exposing wounds like a broken femur into the putrid air of a world constantly on shameful, exhibitionist view.

Facebook bares our shame.

Twitter unveils our shallowness.

We struggle for a dialogue that we can no longer have, that we long for but can no longer undertake because a vacuous and inane culture has robbed us of depth, of confidence and of nuance.

How can we become men representing the omnipotence of God when our own potency is so compromised?

For what? What “good” things?

Pornography

Drugs

Alcohol

Hatefulness

Suspicion of others

Cynicism

We are told that these so-called freedoms are the hallmarks of fully realized persons, but those caged by them know them for what they are, fields of bones, unable to support us, cracking beneath our feet.

Son of man, can these bones come to life?

Where is life?

How can we get past this vast field of nihilism that cannot support us, cannot make us more human, cannot feed us?

Our bones are dried up,
our hope is lost, and we are cut off.

Where is prophecy? Where is the leadership that can lead us over this field of rot that we have inherited?

Is it here? Is it in this chapel today? Is there prophecy in this chapel today? Or is there nothing but the decaying bones of fear and consternation?

Well, my brothers and sisters, we would not be here if we did not believe in hope.

Ezekiel the prophet may have been a voice crying in the wilderness, but he was a voice.

God knew and expressed through the prophets that there was hope left in Israel.

Ezekiel knew, somewhere in his prophetic heart, that there was One coming who could express the law, the old law in a new way.

“You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart,
with all your soul, and with all your mind.
This is the greatest and the first commandment.
The second is like it:
You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”

This was not an innovation of the Law. It was the Law known by the prophets, known to the priests, known by the people.

There was no new Law, but there would be, there was, there is, a new Lawgiver.

Here comes One who would be able to walk across that field of bones.

Here comes One who calls out in confidence to all of humankind:

From the four winds come, O spirit,
and breathe into these slain that they may come to life.

Here is One who vows life

Here comes One who pledges answers

Here comes One whose very configuration is those fiery visions, those spinning chariots.

Here comes One cleverly disguised Himself as a screaming infant.

Here come One who looks like a twenty-year-old rabbi.

Here comes One who will hang ignobly upon a cross

Here comes One who will die a thief’s death

Here comes One who will confound that field of bones. Ezekiel’s field with a mighty shout that reverberates through the rafters of a burial cave and throws aside its petrifying stone.

Death has no power here, he calls. Death has no regency. We do not inhabit a field of bones.

O my people, I will open your graves
and have you rise from them,
and bring you back to the land of Israel.

Now brothers and sisters, are we ready to go?

Are we ready to join that rabbi in his mighty adventure?

Are we ready to do what he commands?

Love God and Him alone

Love your neighbor as yourself

Can we do it?

Can we overcome the siren call of this world’s aborted tributes?

Can we put aside the brittle bones of our preferences and our pride, calling out to us in the xylophonic tones of bones rattling in the wind?

Can we hear instead the firm if sometimes distance strains that sound like expectation?

Can we be men and women of possibility?

Can we attune our ears to promise and purpose?

Can we be people of promise, a population of purpose?

There is a life, there is a landscape beyond the field of bones.

Today, God plans to open our graves and have us rise from them.

Today, in this Sacrament of love God will bring us back to the Israel of our innocence.

Today, in this Mass as we inaugurate a vision of beauty and truth and goodness in this formation year,

In this Mass, God gives us the strength we need to be prophets of salvation for a world, maimed and sacrificed, stretched out over a field of bones.

Feast of the Transfiguration

August 6, 2020

Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

The Gospel today paints a very vivid image of the feast we are celebrating, the Transfiguration.

There is a mountaintop. There are clouds. There are old-timey Law and Prophet people.

There is shiny Jesus. There is a voice from heaven.

And, there are confused disciples, Peter, James and John. Typically, they have no clue as to what to do, so Peter comes up with a great idea: Let’s set up little houses here and just stay.

Let’s leave behind all of the stuff we have been waring with, fighting with, arguing with.

Here, on this mountaintop, we have a better situation, an unqualified, wonderful, symmetrical situation.

It is a very vivid image, a perfect bubble of perfection, until Jesus pops it.

You have to hit the road boys; you have to hit the road. There is a long way to go before we come back to this place.

Consider the text. In the Synoptic Gospels, the texts are very stable, really almost identical, even to the point of being followed by the same little passage in each of the three Gospels.

This following passage is the story of a young man who is cured of something vile, possession or something like it in First-Century parlance.

This story, this follow-up, is the road.

Now Jesus and the apostles are in the thick of it.

Consider the very famous painting by Raphael of the Transfiguration, of which we have a copy here in our chapel.

At the top is the mountaintop scene. Symmetry, bliss, billowing robes, light floating elegance.

But, at the bottom of the image, chaos

The crazed boy convulsing, the confused crowd, rowdy, un-polished, no shoes, wild.

The action centers around a cave, a cavern, a dark unknowing.

Jesus above. Chaos below. Divine above. All too human below.

And then we have the disciples, the hapless three. Their prone bodies form the bridge between the mountaintop and the cave, between the world of heaven and its inherent perfections and the stark recklessness of the world we inhabit, the world Peter, James and John inhabited.

And they, of course, are us.

Brothers and sisters, in discipleship, our prone bodies form a living bridge between the divine and the human, the perfection of the clouds and the pandemonium of the soil.

With our hands, in our minds, with our eyes, we reach for the eschaton, that vision of Christ in glory, his glory, our future glory.

And our feet remain resolutely in the mud, the mire, the filth of this world’s incaving reality.

That is who we are, searching the stars, but always on the road.

In this time of uncertainty, let us keep this image of Raphael in our mind.

Let us continue to lie prostrate before the majesty of God.

Let us also set our bare feet firmly on the road, to serve, to heal, to cast out demons, to ease the pain of all we meet.

Let us do that and we shall surely be men and women of the transfiguration, giving life to a feast that is so much more than a painting.

So much more than a painting. It is a command. It is our reason for being.