February 25, 2021
Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB
The weather has been quite mysterious lately. Snow and freezing temperatures give way in just a few days’ time to warmth and birdsong.
This week I have been thinking of Spring, certainly the season of the year, but, also the poem of Gerard Manley Hopkins the priest-poet whose name is in the wind these days.
Nothing is so beautiful as spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Thrush’s eggs look little low heavens, and thrush
Through the echoing timber does so rinse and wring
The ear, it strikes like lightnings to hear him sing;
The glassy peartree leaves and blooms, they brush
The descending blue; that blue is all in a rush
With richness; the racing lambs too have fair their fling.
My brothers and sisters, there is little doubt that all of us have been living in what might rightly be described as a near-perpetual winter:
We have experienced the cold of separation here, the chill of isolation here, the bitterness of quarantine here. The winter has wound its way into our bones and frosted us with icy depth.
Of course, it is the same everywhere. We watch on our screens daily, the siren cries of ambulances and emergency vehicles that careen around the corners of our culture, cutting us off from one another. Marauders assail the very hallowed halls of power and we are left, somewhat gapped mouthed as the winter wind blows artic against our expectations.
We are stifled in our expectations, desiring, coveting warmth and freedom against the bracing storm. Even in the Church, we witness cold barren sanctuaries where the only holdout against the tumbling terror of bleak seclusion is a candle flame, bravely waving in the dark announcing something greater, something more locked in a cold metal tomb.
And yet, out of the dreaded drear of every winter comes poking spring:
Nothing is so beautiful as spring—
When weeds, in wheels, shoot long and lovely and lush;
Tonight, here in the dark, here in the middle of a wild February, something is happening:
Spring is happening, or at least teasing.
These men, whose lives wheel long and lovely and lush will like nature itself over the coming weeks and months become different men, men of God in a more seasoned way, men of service and slaves of God and the Lord Jesus Christ in urgent terms.
Who are these men? They are all of us in general and none of us in particular. They are siren sinners. They are latent liars. They are frauds. They are stars. They are criminal planets. They are clowns. They are tragedians, tried, tame, towering. They are politicians. They are salesmen. They are fighters. They are peacemakers. They are saints. They are all these things as they stand before us on this winter-spring night to make their promises. It strikes, like lightening to hear them sing.
And sing they will, they are, they must.
For they are men of song. What song do they sing?
A song that began and begins in tremors across the waters of the deep, a low note rising from the depths of the Father’s throat.
He sings a song taken up and yet confounded by babbling babel, untuned and untrained was the human race, but they couldn’t help but sing.
The song is sung in fire on a mountain, gracing itself into the mind and spirit of Moses.
It is a song taken up by kings and prophets, the Law-Song heard across expanses of fertile field and desert. A song which must be sung and cannot be resolved whether on the heights of Zion, in a temple whose floor is sung red with blood, or in the killing fields of Assyria
What song do they sing?
It is a song that lulls a lullaby from the throat of the Virgin and focuses on the straw of a manger, in the dark, with only shepherds to chorus its solitary rise.
They sing a song of imitation, that heals and preaches and loves and loves and loves across the plains of Palestine or Asia or middle America.
They sing a song that culminates on a hill, far from here and not so far. On Calvary the primal song of humankind comes to rest in a great discordant chord. The syllables of that song harken back to the Acadian start, Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani
The cross-song reaches out unto the azure sky, the descending blue all in a rush with richness.
The racing Lamb, in truth must fair his fling.
We are reminded in tonight’s promises of the poet’s adage:
We recall that our lives are all fortified, fixed and sometimes frustrated by the ubiquitous presence of the Other and the others. But also by the racing lamb
From the start it is true. In our families we are made who we are by the perpetual motion of bumping up against our parents, our brothers and sisters, our relatives. Sometimes this is good, sometimes, not so much. For all of us there must come that moment of reconciliation in which we put the past behind us or build upon its strengths to become the man or woman God intends us to become, in our own right. The Lamb races forward.
All of us are living and indeed thriving in friendships, some old, some very new that will help sustain us in the hard knocks of life. As I have said before, in a place like Saint Meinrad you make friends for life. And sometimes those friends disappoint us. Sometimes our friendships seem to be the only thing keeping us afloat and sometimes they can be harbingers of shipwreck. All of us have had both, are having both. The Lamb bleats for attention and we sometimes fail to attend.
I hope that all of us here have also had the opportunity for a little romance, innocent falling in love, experiencing even in our warm celibate hearts the fast beat of recognition of one who perhaps secretly we love, we care about, we cherish. Sometimes that goes beautifully and sometimes it becomes sad, even tragic but often necessary. The Lamb rampages.
What I am saying here is that our lives are confounded by all these relationships, good and bad, life-giving and life-threatening, loud and whispery but here is what I want to say:
Tonight, our brothers are signing a series of cold, wintry documents and in this icy action they are speaking a timeless truth. The only thing that matters, the only thing that gives life, the only thing that makes this life worth living, the only thing that undergirds our complex relationships, the only thing that gives meaning to family, the only thing that fosters friendship, the only thing at all that keeps the complex earth orbiting in its wintry sphere is what we learn in the short reading tonight.
Draw close to God and He will draw close to you.
That is what these brothers of ours are saying in the complex flow of words about to come forth from their lips on this cold-warm night of transition:
They are saying: I want to draw nearer to God. I want to be an ambassador of love. I want to be a crutch for others. I want to be a priest-poets. I want to be a challenging teacher of God’s word. I want to be a custodian of God’s sacraments. I want to be an agent of trust. I want to stand with the lonely. I want to hold the hand of the widow. I want to care for those whom society throws away. I am confident of the promise.
After this this harsh winter, I pray, my brothers that we can have spring, that you can be spring to a frozen world, in your little corner of God’s meadow.
Let me return at the last to the words of the priest-poet:
What is all this juice and all this joy?
A strain of the earth’s sweet being in the beginning
In Eden garden. Have, get, before it cloy,
Before it cloud, Christ, lord, and sour with sinning,
Innocent mind and Mayday in girl and boy,
Most, O maid’s child, thy choice and worthy the winning.
