January 17, 2021
Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

The image of young Samuel picking at the sleeve of the old priest Eli. You called me. No, I did not. You called me. No I did not.

I wonder what old Eli thought.

Is he mad? After all the circumstances of his birth were a bit iffy.

Is he just a little pest?

Is he engaging the ancient Jewish equivalent of butt-dialing?

It would have been tempting to think of Samuel’s voices as something earthbound, but …

Eli knew that the voice the boy heard was not his own, not a voice from culture, or people, or history, or the internet but a different voice. 

This is how God works. It should be clear to us, God calls. 

Just as he called Adam and Eve to set up housekeeping in a beautiful garden. 

Just as he called Abraham to leave his own place and settle with his fragile family somewhere else.

Just as he called Jacob to undergo the test of strength with angels.

Just as he called Moses from the absurdity of a burning bush to free his people from the death of slavery. 

Just as he called Joshua to rally the troops around the walls of Jericho until they fell in pitiful tatters.

Just as he called Samuel’s mamma as she rested on the steps of the temple in Shiloh, inebriated by the Spirit of the Lord

Just as he called that snot-nosed boy to fulfill every destiny of Israel. Samuel was priest, judge, prophet, seer, military leader. 

God calls, there is no doubt and our foundations, our ancestry, our heritage in faith depends upon that call.

Today my brothers and sisters, God is calling us, calling us in a particular way, in our time, in our place, but also calling us across the ether of eternity. 

That is the message we hear not only this week, but every day, every minute of our lives. God is calling us.

Calling us, in these troubled days and precisely through these troubled days to be messengers of hope and not division, to be heralds of joy and not more pain, to be those whose words speak peace and love and joy and goodness in the burning wake of war and hate and misery and evil.

Because he is calling us

Calling us by name as he did the apostles, calling us in our peculiar natures and our particular, parasitical pride. Those apostles were deeply troubled and troubling men, but upon hearing the call they responded immediately, abandoning families and nets and setting off on a vocation they could have never understood, and so he is calling us.

He is calling us

Calling us from ourselves, as he does every man and woman in this busy world, calling us to be servants of God and the world in the miraculous mixture of Incarnation that we have just celebrated, are celebrating. Put aside the pentobarbital of so-called justice. Put aside the lies and half-truths that contaminate our airwaves and our airways. Put aside, he says, all talk of politics and secularity and speak openly the language of Truth, the Truth that is His love. Because he is calling us. 

He is calling us

Calling us to be Christ, His only Son, the one who lived among us and did not shirk his responsibility to a world so in need of his Gospel, did not hesitate even to die on the ignoble wood of the cross for us, for our sake, that we might live and be his evangelists of peace.

He is calling us in poverty and pain as he did Samuel, and the prophets, as he did David and Solomon, as he did Peter, and James and John and all the others, even Judas. 

He is calling us … 

How will we answer that call today? Will we hear in it nothing more than a human voice, or the idle voice of so-called discernment, or a voice drowned by whatever din this world is kicking up in the news cycle today?

Or will we answer with Samuel?

Will we say, without hesitation, without compromise, “Speak Lord”

Speak Lord, speak to us today through the din of rhetoric and real violence that seems at times to engulf our world. 

Speak Lord, speak to us through the chaos of leadership that will not or cannot lead.

Speak Lord, speak to us today in the chill that engulfs our nation like a fierce blinding snow, cutting us off from one another with fences of hatred and suspicion.

Speak Lord, speak to us today in words that overwhelm the language of contagion, choking us with its fierce presence and invading even our sacred space, bedeviling us even here. 

Speak Lord, speak to us as we try to make sense of so many things that confront us together and individually.

Speak Lord, speak to us in our misery and in our confusion and in our sin. 

Speak Lord, your servant is listening. 

I pray to God we are listening.

I pray to God that we are open, we are receptive to hear his voice calling us as he called Samuel so long ago.

I pray that we can say with Samuel, with the psalmists:

Here I am Lord, I come to do your will. 

Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
January 10, 2021

A voice came from the heavens, 

“You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

Beginnings. We have had so many ceremonial beginnings in the past two months, liturgically speaking. 

Advent candles promised something exciting, something new even in their consumption. The burning down was the building up. Hope and expectation ruled houses confounded in the confusion of social and political turmoil. They burned right side up to illuminate a world turned upside down. 

Christmas came. The King arrived in splendor, a stable and a mound of hay encircled the King of the Universe. It was an inauspicious day for such an auspicious approach to the world. Christmas came to us as well, huddled for psychic warmth in the cocoon of contagion and doubt. Intonent hodie, today, today, this day, our day sing out. But, did we really feel like singing out?

We had New Year, with its sacred and secular dimming and dawning, the ancient face of Janus volte this way and that. Happy New Year. Our Lady’s Day. It was the old feast of the circumcision, a leg-crossing image, perhaps too sharp for us today, and yet it was a sharp moment, a cutting moment of history, as it was, is each year, slicing away the past and pointing toward a more generous future. We pray it will be more generous.

And then we had Epiphany. Those stubborn magi finally arrived to stoop and see a new-born king. It must have been a let-down for them, seeing the new-born king in a diaper, or what approximated a diaper in First Century Palestine. Diapered king and sceptered kings, gifts of practical uselessness, well perhaps the gold made a nice start for baby Jesus’ college fund or at least gave the Holy Family the wherewithal for an abrupt trip to Egypt 

And today the Baptism of the Lord, it all has come so hard and fast. Jesus ducks down to the banks of the Jordan where his grasshopper munching cousin is dunking people. Jesus must have come across rather Ivy League in comparison to John. 

This is what John the Baptist proclaimed: 

“One mightier than I is coming after me.

I am not worthy to stoop and loosen the thongs of his sandals.

I have baptized you with water; 

he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

Jesus’ response, somewhat silent must have been along the lines of “shut up and do your work”

This day inaugurates in floods of water the ministry of Jesus. It was only three years, but it was 1000 days of wonder, 1000 days of promise, 1000 days of prophecy fulfilled, 1000 days that monitored and sorts our days, every day of our lives as we now traipse through the world and try to make our place in it. 

This day Jesus establishes something new as he does when we come to the font, the saving waters that were made holy by the one who was baptized. 

A voice came from the heavens, 

“You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”

And so …

Beginnings

This day you were born, diving headfirst into the world with a blood- red imprint of the map of Spain on your head. At least that’s always how it looks on Call the Midwife

This day you showed up at school for the first time with riotous hair, a semi-toothless mouth and a new backpack filled with pencils and the 64 box of Crayolas with the sharpener in the back. Magenta was the best color and still is.

This day you had your first date with an awkward young lady nicknamed “Bashful” and now you knew why. Your parents took you to the circus and Bashful’s jumper got mauled by a crazed monkey and you, aged 8, considered the beauty of celibacy for the first time.

This day you had your junior prom and Bashful is back but now she is called Jillian and she looks a picture in her powder blue formal with the fake sapphire tiara and rubber bands on her braces to match the ensemble.

This day you arrived at seminary for the first time and you were met with lots of help and loads of rules, and heaps of new “friends” and pure, unadulterated fear as to whether you were, are cut out for this business of not. 

This day you were ordained a deacon or a priest, or God forbid a bishop. You lay on the floor of this cathedral or that abbey church and while the litany of saints swept over your head and body, your mind keeps rolling the same script again and again: What in God’s name am I doing? And then you remember that it is in God’s name that you are doing it and that everything will be alright. 

This day you are rolled along into the care facility, your mind has become somewhat fractured and your body, a bit more so. You don’t know these people who know you. You don’t understand the language they are speaking so fluently, or you do. You cannot see so well where you are heading and you can. 

This day you are being carried, not of your own volition, in a box, to the priests’ mound or some other place to rest forever, but you are not resting forever at all, you see it all from above as what is left of you is put in the ground, what is greatest of you is whisked into a violent vortex called beatitude, or at least its purgatorial suburb.

All of these days mean nothing, or rather they only have meaning because one day, as a screaming infant with your map of Spain erased, dressed in a way-too-long frock of someone else’s lace with a bonnet you keep trying to clutch in your fat hand, someone said these words. I baptize you …

Or perhaps you heard them older, in a fiberglass dunking pool or a lake trussed up in rubber fishing pants smoothed over by a long white choir robe. You don’t wonder that your conversion is sincere but you do wonder what will happen to your hair after you go under, nevertheless some southern potentate preacher tried to drown you and you hear above the watery depths the important words: I baptize you …

I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

I baptize you. We have many days, do have many days, good days and challenging days, but …

That was our day. That was the day when everything changed. That was the moment when angels cried out and beat their wings in triumph. That was the moment saints applauded. That was the day when we became who we truly are, the day that organized every other day of our life. That was the day when, for us, that voice was heard, whispering from heaven:

This is my beloved son, my beloved daughter with you I am so well pleased. 

Beginnings, again.  

Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
January 8, 2021

We have had a week. We are having a week. 

We have seen death. We have seen human greed and folly. We have seen mouths of every stripe spitting and fighting. We have seen power struggle. We have seen it all and we have many questions. We have many questions but ultimately there is only one question: 

Who indeed is the victor over the world

but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

That is a simple question before us today: Do we believe in Christ?

Do we believe that he existed before all time, that in his chariot of fire he stood in readiness to save us, fallen as we were fifteen minutes after our creation?

Do we believe that he stood over and supported those prophets and martyrs of the ancient covenant, the Law, holding his breath and hoping that we might be converted, we might be conformed again to the likeness of the God who breathed into us the breath of life?

Do we believe that in the fullness of time, that mighty one, that awesome one insinuated himself into the form of a tiny, poor baby so he could come to rest in a cattle shed and cry out in the injustice of a human form?

Do we believe that his tired feet trod the rough roads of Galilee to coax and convince men and women whose fallen state had robbed them of reason and who needed God but could hardly name the God they needed?

Do we believe that his rough hand, his work rubbed hand, healed the leper, raised the dead, or those so nearly dead to life with a flick of his wrist? He saved them. He healed them. 

Do we believe that this mighty God, this Prince of the Ages, this Lord of Life, this Pre-existent, metaphysical Life was thrown to the ground, was spat upon, was ridiculed, was cursed and nailed to the rough-hewn wood of a tree for you and for me, for our sake? 

Do we believe, can you believe that that bent, broken body in three days overcame the sting of death and opened for us the way to salvation, mowing down the rock of our collective tomb-building and rising from the grave?

Can we believe it? Do we believe it? Brothers and sisters, we must believe it or this world makes no sense at all, this week makes no sense at all, this suffering age of sickness and decay makes no sense at all. But … 

If we do, if we can then we have the faith and we have the power through that faith to cast down all the powers that are alien to God’s Kingdom.

The power of disease

The power of bigotry

The power of ignorance

The power of politicizing 

The power of Death, my brothers and sisters, the power of death itself is subject to the Kingdom of Christ if we can believe … 

Can we do that? Can we overcome all of that? 

It is true, we have had a week, but by God’s grace we will have another, and another, and another until he comes again. 

Where will we stand on that great day of judgement?

Who indeed is the victor over the world

but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
January 3, 2021

Behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, 

"Where is the newborn king of the Jews?

We saw his star at its rising

and have come to do him homage."

They came from far away, by the guidance of a star. It doesn’t seem very practical. If our friends at Fontinini are to be believed, they came on horse and camel and elephant. These three kings from orient were, at least that is what the song says. It is the stuff of countless Christmas stories, nativity scenes and pageants. Little ones dressed up as kings solemnly making their slow progress toward Bethlehem with their symbolic gifts. Parents snapping photos, cameras rolling. And of course, the song. 

We think of it so often in child-like verses, much as we do Christmas. 

It is such a beautiful story. Three astrologers have a vision and they set off to find a king. 

They mount their Fontinini horses and camels and elephants and off they go wearing their crowns and robes following the brilliant star of wonder, star of night, star of royal beauty bright … You know the rest.

They arrive at the scrubbed up crib in Bethlehem. Mary and Joseph must have been somewhat amazed that this crowd was showing up, yet happy about getting the loot, except perhaps for myrrh. What is a baby supposed to do with burial ointment, after all its no good for diaper rash. 

It is still a great story and it fills in the lacunae of the Christmas season neatly. Now we are done and dusted, stable, shepherds, angels and wise men. 

Behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, 

"Where is the newborn king of the Jews?

We saw his star at its rising

and have come to do him homage."

Let’s step back for a moment if we can. 

This Solemnity of Epiphany is much more complicated than gold, frankesence and myrrh.  We romanticize it with beautiful songs and statues and paintings and images, but the journey for those astrologers must have been brutal. Crossing the desert, filled with sand, filled with bandits, facing storms, facing hunger and hardship. 

So often the star must have faded from sight so that they couldn't see it at all. The star was lost in the clouds, or the smoke of war they had to encounter on their long trek. 

And yet, on they pressed. That star promised something they could not know, except to know they needed to see whatever it was.

Can you imagine how confused they were when they reached the court of Herod?

Can you imagine how confounded they must have been when they entered the outpost town of Bethlehem, even today a little bit of a dump. 

Can you imagine how completely dumbfounded they were when they bent down with their great outfits and their ridiculous retinues and presented their gifts to a red, screaming little baby, the newly born offspring of poor parents. 

Something of a letdown, perhaps?

Behold, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying, 

"Where is the newborn king of the Jews?

We saw his star at its rising

and have come to do him homage."

Brothers, that is also our world. 

How like them we are. We struggle in the world straining from darkness to shining light.

We engage the desert of addiction, even here among us, scuffling to keep sight of a goal that is constantly being dimmed by our own internal brawls.

We are blinded by the storms of self-doubt, we don’t believe that we are following the right path, even when we are, even when it is firmly set before us by a God upon whom we can always depend to help us

We are waylaid by the clouds of indifference, of pain, of sickness, or political turmoil and yet onward we must press, we must go forth, we must follow a star that we can sometimes lose sight of. 

And then we come to Bethlehem, we arrive tonight in Bethlehem, 

We saw his star at its rising

and have come to do him homage.

Everyone is huddling around the crib

And what was that crib but a little slum? What is that crib but a world, people, suffering people crying out and we realize or I hope we realize that our task as priests is to learn the path that star of Bethlehem sets out and to learn it well

We must know its contours. 

We must understand its curves

We must follow that star and we must do it without compromise because this Epiphany is the journey of life and we are called to travel it bearing gifts for the newborn king

The gold of our wealth, our talent, our persons, our energy, whatever that gold may be

The frankensence of our prayer, rising like incense above the fires and ruin of the world. 

The myrrh of our weakness and disappointments, poured out like soothing balm upon the Body of Christ. 

Can we, will we travel to Bethlehem tonight, this year?

Can we, will we help someone travel the same harsh and difficult journey from darkness to light? We are called to be the Magi of our time. 

So Tonight as we begin this new year together:

Behold, magi from the east arrived here, saying, 

"Where is the newborn king of the Jews?

We saw his star at its rising

and have come to do him homage."