March 2, 2022
Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

Preparing for Lent

I would like to begin my conference today by reflecting a moment on the life of St. Therese of Lisieux. I want to start with a personal story. When I was in my early twenties, I had a good job working for a bank in Memphis. The job was downtown and every day I would drive from my house in midtown to the downtown area along Jackson Avenue. I knew the path well. Being a parishioner at the Cathedral parish, I never really had a reason to visit the parish on Jackson Avenue that I passed every day. It was dedicated to St. Therese of Lisieux. I never really thought about it and, in truth, I found the writings of the saint, which I had perused in my earlier years to be somewhat saccharine, or so I thought. Around the age of 23 I began to get the bug for priesthood, and I was very confused. I did not want to think about priesthood. I liked my work at the bank, and I liked my life. I was a good Catholic and I wanted, frankly, for God to leave me alone. But God would not leave me alone. He would not leave me alone at all. During this time of confusion, I became accustomed to stopping on my way home each day at the parish church of St. Therese on Jackson Avenue. Once I had started visiting, I found the church to be so welcoming and warm. I started going to afternoon Mass there. I met some old ladies which is always a sign of beatitude. The church was an oasis of peace for an increasingly troubled soul like mine. On the right side at the front was a lovely statue of the patroness and each time I visited or went to Mass, I admired it until one day I knelt in front of the statue and simply said. St. Therese, tell me what to do.

That is all I said and the next day it was announced that my spiritual director, the priest from the cathedral whom I admired so greatly was named the pastor of St. Therese parish. I decided that I had better go to the seminary and so I did. During my years of formation, I was assigned every break and every summer to work at St. Therese parish. I loved it. I loved the people there. I loved the old neighborhood. I loved the smell of the church. I said my first Mass there. I have always considered that place my spiritual home and that lady, St. Therese to be my sister, my friend.

During this season of Lent, I want to recommend that all of us might give this lady a second, or ninth look. As I have said so often about other things in other contexts, there is much more there than meets the eye. In so many ways, I see St. Therese as a kind of patroness of Lent. She has so much to offer us so let’s take advantage of it. In light of that patronage, I would like to make several suggestions for our Lenten observance this year.

You already know that I do not favor heroic Lents. I prefer Lents that are steady and sources of real and lasting conversion. I prefer to think about Lent as a kind of intensification of how our lives ought to be at all times, as the Holy Rule says:

I paraphrase: 1 The life of a seminarian ought to be a continuous Lent. 2 Since few, however, have the strength for this, we urge the entire community during these days of Lent to keep its manner of life most pure 3 and to wash away in this holy season the negligences of other times. 

The negligences of former times. Here we have something to think about. Let me raise five issues that I want to highlight for this community as we begin the annual observance for Lent. The first is house quiet. We have policies and I would say, for the most part, these policies are observed. Not at all times, however. What does it say about us, when one of our recent guests asked me why people were screaming in the hallways after a banquet one evening? I don’t know how to answer that but I do wonder if the external decorum and I might say sobriety of a community is something of a marker for its internal ideals. Are we known as a party school or worse as a drunken school? I hope not but I wonder what kind of message about Saint Meinrad guests like our friend the other day takes back to his home community about the way Saint Meinrad seminarians behave? House quiet is there for a purpose, to help you and me study and pray. So…

Prayer is another Lenten goal for us. We want to pray more, we want to do more. Or at least we say we do, but are we taking our prayer life and its cultivation seriously. The Little Flower’s words on prayer seem right to me:

For me, prayer is a surge of the heart; it is a simple look turned toward heaven, it is a cry of recognition and of love, embracing both trial and joy.

In looking at the evaluations, I believe many of us are not necessarily content with our prayer life and I think this is good. We should never be content with our prayer life because prayer instills in us a desire for God that can never be quenched. Your main work here is to cultivate and indeed yearn for a solid life of prayer that is ever-evolving. It must be so or you will be completely unable to sustain your ministry for the future. Your ministry means nothing if prayer is not its center and its fuel. I encourage you to try new ways of praying and I have asked Isaac to help us in this by introducing some devotional activities for our edification as we begin to move through Lent. Prayer must be solid in us as we advance to ordination. Can we use this Lent to correct the negligences of former times?

This is also true of adoration. Every day for at least an hour, our Lord presents himself in a privileged way to us. Is adoration the only way to encounter the Risen Lord? Certainly not. But it is an important way and one which invites the participation of the whole community. Here are some words from St. Therese:

Do you realise that Jesus is there in the tabernacle expressly for you – for you alone? He burns with the desire to come into your heart… Don’t listen to the demon; laugh at him, and go without fear to receive the Jesus of peace and love.

I recommend a few emendations to our usual practice. The first change is being there. During Lent this year, I would like for the whole community to make it a priority to be present at least for the Tuesday and Thursday afternoon adorations. When I say make it a priority I mean be there. I know some don’t get out of class until a bit after four. Be there. I want to extend this “invitation” in a particular way to our deacons who have the responsibility of showing all of us the way in very focused terms. The second change in practice I would like is trying to avoid too much external reading. Try to focus on spiritual reading or lectio or the Jesus prayer. These are some challenges that might spill over into Easter, who knows?

Another challenge I have for these days of Lent is intentionality. If you are like me, you may need to focus a bit more on your daily activities, getting things done, being economical in our engagement with one another not for the sake of brevity of encounter, but so that the daily and somewhat mundane transactions can be realized so that more meaningful encounters may take place. This is the time to really engage with our brothers and sisters here, to offer a listening ear or a consoling shoulder. This is the time for cultivating your capacity for compassion. You should have compassion. You should have the occasional gift of tears. There is a great deal of need in this place. I know that and I want us to be present for one another in a more intentional way. I want us to spend less time playing together and more time praying together, less time gossiping together and more time being present to one another in a truly meaningful way. I want us to put away needless bickering and complaining and let our speech fully honor God.

Finally, there is sacrifice. You may say that in being here, in pursuing priesthood, or religious life or even the married life that you are making a sacrifice. Let’s be honest; none of us here are suffering from any material deprivation. We all have food and shelter and clothing and I would say a great deal more, indeed a great deal more than we need. But, I don’t know that giving up material things is the way to sacrifice, it always strikes me as somewhat artificial. St. Therese said: Jesus, help me to simplify my life by learning what you want me to be and becoming that person.

I believe the real sacrifice comes from giving up my opinions about things and my need, my sometimes desperate need to be heard. Ultimately, the vocation for which we are preparing, or that we are presently living is a vocation of being a mouthpiece, but not a mouthpiece of our own minds and wills, a mouthpiece for God’s mind and God’s will, which I can assure you is probably very different from our own. God wants to use us as his instruments to heal the world. That is a truth so often unfathomed in our time. God wants us to be his healing and his love in the world. It takes some putting away in order to achieve that and perhaps we never do achieve it completely.

Again, St. Therese:

Miss no single opportunity of making some small sacrifice, here by a smiling look, there by a kindly word; always doing the smallest right and doing it all for love. A word or a smile is often enough to put fresh life in a despondent soul. Remember that nothing is small in the eyes of God. Do all that you do with love.

Finally, I would like to mention two intentions to help us focus our prayer and sacrifice this Lent. The first is that I would like all of us to consider deeply the suffering of the people of Ukraine. I want us to do more than consider it. I want us to find a concrete way to help this suffering people. I want us to uncover some missionary zeal for the people of Ukraine. Uncovering ways to assist those suffering seems like a worthy pursuit for Lent. 

Secondly, I want us to pray in a very focused way for priests. Priests are living through a time of serious trouble. Every one of us here knows that very well. There are doubts about long-lived vocations. There is the continual assault we receive in the press, in our communities, sometimes in our own families. Priests, we are told, are burning out rapidly. They are responsible for three, four, five parishes. Nothing seems to give. They, we, are doing so much and yet cannot seem to do enough. Our priests need our help. What better mission could we offer than to pray for priests.

It is interesting that the Little Flower had these two things in mind as well, mission and priests as the source of her concern and prayer. Although she passed from this world at the age of 24, she made a vow during her short life I think of her words written near the end of her life:

When I die, I will send down a shower of roses from the heavens, I will spend my heaven by doing good on earth.

More than 35 years ago now, God led me to her altar, to her feet to offer myself to the Church as a priest. I do not feel like I have accomplished very much, but I do feel that I have tried so hard to fulfill God’s will and make the Little Flower proud of me.