Ash Wednesday Rector's Conference

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.

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  1. Rector’s Conference

    April 24, 2022
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    Last week, I was particularly taken with the homily of Deacon Thayer in which he quoted Pope Francis:

    Pope Francis says that the most beautiful experience we can have is: "to belong to a people walking, journeying through history together with their Lord who walks among us. We do not walk alone. We are part of the one flock who walks together."  

    For me, it was one of those “AHA” moments, an opportunity to hear the Word of God speaking very directly and very hopefully to us, as a People of God, as the Church. We have now arrived once more in the season of Easter, for the next 43 days we will be given the singular opportunity to meditate on the mystery of the resurrection. Easter, which in the secular mind, will come and go with the rapidity of a bouncing bunny, remains for us Catholics a mystery upon which we are not only invited but required to deepen in our hearts and in our lives. Easter is a call for self-knowledge, a knowledge that we have explored already in the discipline of Lent. It is a call for self-knowledge about that more central and important corporate self of which we are most vitally a part. 

    Likewise, our formation is a kind of continuous Easter, a time of growth, development and moving toward the ever-expanding horizon that is Christ, that is God. It is a time to discern ourselves in many dimensions.

    For example … 

    It is a time to look at our temperament, about the way in which our particularities of personality either attract or repel others. There is a holiness in quiet, but if quiet is read as indifference, there is a problem. We are called to be able to meet others, sometimes covertly, but often head on. Our temperament, our resting face can call others or keep them at a distance. So often a central part of the personality of seminarians is a kind of acute introversion. Solidly relating to the internal self is essential to our lives as priests, but we must also cultivate that public personality that attracts others, draws them in and out. We must become functional extroverts without losing the calm and depth of our interior lives. 

    Likewise, our intellect. The Church has no real need of ignorant priests, as we know, but sometimes our intellect can become an obstacle. Think for a moment about conversations at table. Sometimes people at breakfast wish to engage in a scintillating conversation about the theological controversies of the Fourth Century, but sometimes they just want to talk about nonsense. Small talk, while not of a particularly intellectual nature, may be just the vehicle to attract others to a more serious mode of conversation.  Sometimes we can put others off by our over-intellectualized conversations. Can we instead learn to converse about the various types of games played with different kinds of balls in the course of seasons? I am not saying that all conversations should be inane, I am saying that we must learn to “pitch” ourselves to the audience and need and thereby raise the level of conversation through familiarity, even friendship. 

    Another dimension of ourselves is perfectionism. We all know that an unrealistic sense of perfection can damage a person. Sometimes these ideals (if that is what we want to call them) are imbedded in us in childhood. We want to please parents. We want the perfect report card. We want to always do the right thing. Therapists will tell us that this kind of thinking can sometimes lead to dire consequences in adults, perhaps, for example, in our context. of having too many unrealistic expectations of people in our parishes or in the confessional. The obverse is also true, that is, the failure to challenge ourselves to be better and the failure to inspire the best in other people. Perfection is our goal, but it is a goal in heaven which stretches only to “nearness” here on earth. Can we become humble enough to garner our own perfectionism to serve others, to not intimidate them? It is a challenge. 

    Easter is also a time to continue to look at our sinfulness, our biases, our prejudices. It is a time to allow all the ties we have to crude corporeality and harmful or useless things fall away in the glory of his new person. 

    When we examine the various goals of Easter, or look, even in a cursory way at the trials of the human condition, I would say the major problem that Christians face as individuals is the refusal to enter what Pope Francis calls, the flock of those who walk together.

    We need to be a part of the whole and not individuals tilting our little boats toward an elusive salvation. 

    We live in a Church in which we have the strongest expression of cultural involvement in the history of the world and yet our parishes, our schools and our lives are culturally dead. We live in a Church which has consistently been involved in the betterment of humanity through education and yet our school children and adults remain ignorant of the basic principles of faith. We live in a Church which has consistently been an advocate of the marginalized and a champion of the politically oppressed and in places, we are turning into an un-welcoming Church for millions of new immigrants and wayfarers. We live in a Church that has assisted the poor in every turn and we are becoming a place of closed communities which push the needy into the background. So often I fear, we have become brothers and sisters, a Church which has, in the past, held fast to its teachings in the face of incredible social pressures and yet today the stance of Catholics today on abortion, on birth control, on capital punishment and dozens of other issues is unrecognizably different from our secular neighbors. 

    As Pope Francis might say, we think of ourselves and not of others and we become less than human by that turn. 

    All these issues are problems of imagination. 

    We cannot imagine a world in which the poor and the needy are brought into communion with the ever-present others.

    And so we continue to fall into the cultural and political biases of our own place and time which contradict the values of the Gospel we are supposed to uphold.

    We cannot imagine a world in which this group and that group find a common mechanism, like communion, for gaining access to the other’s insulated vision of life. 

    And so we take some smug comfort in out isolation from the rest of preening humanity in ivory towers of academia, or wealth, or a misguided orthodoxy. 

    We cannot imagine a world in which truth is triumphant 

    And so we continue to perpetuate lies about our social environment, our neighbors and ourselves. We lie to ourselves about ourselves because we cannot imagine something different, something alive rather than dead, something open rather than closed, something meaningful rather than mundane. 

    Somehow we need to become more Easter and now we have this season of the year to help us with that goal, a horizon toward which we continue to move. But we cannot accomplish that alone, in the world of rugged individualism. We must face the world together and strive together to make this place, as much as it is possible, the Kingdom of God on earth. We reach that nearness of perfection only when we surrender our isolation for the bounty of the common journey.

    I would like to go back to the saint that I proposed at the beginning of Lent for our reflection, St. Therese of Liseux. I wonder if there is a saint in the whole of the martyrology who had as much right, by nature, to claim sanctity on the force of her personality. I believe that St. Therese struggled with personality her whole life, short though it was. I believe she struggled mightily to be less of Therese Martin and more of a Carmelite, and so she is a saint for our modern world, a saint calling us to move away from the siren call of individualism and toward Pope Francis’ ideal of a flock that journeys together. 

    I close tonight with the words of the Little Flower:

    For a long time now I have not belonged to myself; I have given myself entirely to Jesus. He is free to do with me whatever He likes.

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  2. Second Sunday of Easter

    April 24, 2022
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    Easter always makes me feel rather nostalgic because Easter is a nostalgic time, remembering childhood egg hunts and little seersucker suits.

    Remembering going to Church on sunny days, it always seemed to have been sunny.

    Remembering that fake shiny Easter basket grass that was undoubtedly carcinogenic 

    Remembering the spiral cut ham which you never realized why it was important that it was spiral cut. 

    Remembering PAAS dyed eggs whose uncertain color rubbed off on your hands and clothes

    Remembering the Easter egg hidden and not found until July. 

    Remembering lamb cake, that delectable confection of chocolate cake and white icing shaped like a lamb.

    And little girls’ bonnets, and chocolate rabbits and Reese’s Peanut butter eggs

    And yet … despite all of this sun-drenched joy there is a certain somberness in today’s Gospel. 

    Jesus, their hope and their master had been taken from them. Jesus was gone. I’m sure in the minds of those disciples they were convinced that their experiment in Messiahship had been a failure. They were not likely to see Jesus again. How could they not have been upset? I think of poor Thomas. He has received such bad press, but really is his reaction to the “Jesus crisis” presented in St. John’s Gospel so unusual? 

    Thomas was despondent that everything he had hoped for, everything he had dreamed of had been snatched away from him in the awful finality of the crucifixion. Is his reaction really so extraordinary?

    Thomas was upset that all his future plans, his expectations for the life of the world, for the life of the world to come had been taken away with the suddenness of people’s fickle responses to a mob mentality. Can we really blame him for his doubt?

    Thomas was doubtful, at least at first, that the promise of the Word Made Flesh might be made true. Is his engagement with the question of Jesus so very different from the way ours sometimes is?

    Thomas the doubter was a human person, prone to human responses and human reactions. 

    That was two thousand years ago. Now back to now. 

    In spite of the rosy glow we must ask ourselves what is the state of our faith, what is the condition of our discipleship?  Despite his doubts, Thomas’ life was transformed by the encounter he had with Christ.  He became one of the great evangelists offering the most profound confession of faith in all of the Gospels. “My Lord and my God.” Thomas profession of faith guides us as we move through these heady days of Easter, these early days of spring, this season of renewal. Thomas’ profession inspires us to be better disciples. Thomas’ profession inspires us in so many ways. 

    In the words we speak, words of peace, words of hope, words of love. That’s what Easter is.

    In the presence of the children in all of us, anticipating, dreaming, generously desiring seeking that elusive egg in the grass.

    In the sacrament we celebrate in full anticipation of being fed, of seeing our deepest dreams come true. 

    And this brothers and sisters, is Divine Mercy, 

    I am thinking now of the book of Pope Francis that came out a few years ago, The Name of God is Mercy. You know it aroused a smidgen of controversy.

    You know how it is. Like the Lord, sometimes the pope can’t catch a break. 

    The Name of God is Mercy. 

    We want to believe the worst about people. We want to revel in their problems and failures. How else would politicians thrive?

    We want to hear about the peccadillos of others, the falls from grace, the absolute need for proof. How else would gossip find fuel?

    We ardently desire to know the bad, to hope for a little failure. How else would tragedies like the war in Ukraine exist?

    Somehow the dismal makes us feel better about ourselves.

    But we are also hard on ourselves. We commit such calumny against ourselves. We are harsh in judgement with ourselves and we hold all of that within and it festers. 

    Jesus says: Open the wounds. Let the world see the failure. Here are my hands and feet, believe.

    That is mercy.

    God presents himself to us as he did to Thomas. That is mercy

    God holds himself out for us to touch. That is mercy.

    God leaps into the pure depravity of the human condition. That is mercy. 

    God insinuates himself into bread and wine to nourish us. That is mercy. 

    God lays down with the crippled soul of humanity. That is mercy.

    God allows his faultless flesh to be nailed to a cross. That is mercy.

    God hides in the earth for three days to accustom himself further to our condition. That is mercy. 

    And then he rises from the dead and destroys death and its awful stench in us.

    That is mercy. That is pure mercy, nothing but mercy. 

    Mercy pours out from the Divine Seat.

    It pours out like rays of light streaming from the heart of Christ.

    It pours out on a world so unaccustomed to Good News that it finds it incredulous

    It pours out like fresh water, the water of baptism on a people choking on the sands of a self-generated desert

    It pours out like light of Elendil to illumine the dark place of our world and our souls.

    It pours out like a rushing wind that wipes away the smoke of war, of terror,

    It pours out on you and on me. We receive his mercy.

    Like a soccer ball to the face, his mercy hurtles toward us.

    Like a heap of fake grass, his mercy covers us. 

    But here is the question of the pope: Can we also become vessels of that mercy?

    The world should not need the mercy of God to heal it from wounds inflicted by the Church and yet, sometimes it does. Has the Church become, at least in places, as much of the problem as the solution? Has our “theological method in the Church today become one of repair and not evangelization? 

    Mercy does have a place as we know. But we are the architects of that place, we are the parameters of that place, we occupy that place and we need to become heralds of the Good News, the news that the name of God is mercy. 

    Thomas became a great evangelist of the love and mercy of God, through his doubt. Can it be so with us? 

    Easter may come and go again, at least for a year but here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Blessed are we, blessed indeed, to be called to the supper of this Lamb.

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  3. Easter Tuesday

    April 19, 2022
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    St. Thomas Aquinas Chapel

    Two very distinct outfits lay neatly across the equally neat chenille bedspread in his room. One was a fake fur bunny costume complete with ears and feet (after all a real fur bunny costume would be far too expensive for the once a year it was employed) and an impeccably pressed pink seersucker suit and Easter egg bow tie. Both signaled the enthusiasm that their owner felt for the coming day of solemnity which was Easter and would be celebrated tomorrow.

    The day before Easter was an incredibly busy day for Mr. Taylor Steggs, so much so that he often reflected during his long eight years of life that he, in fact, WAS easter. It was definitely his holiday. He loved the bonnets. He loved the inauguration of seersucker season. He loved the hymns and the preaching and the thing that he loved the most was the Easter egg hunt which he prepared and oversaw for all of the children of the First Baptist Church in Oxford Mississippi. This year of course the hunters included his sister, Miss Taylor Steggs who was, in fact, able to participate in the Easter Egg Hunt upright for the first time. He was giddy with excitement and had spent the entirety of that day, now gone to after dark, dying Easter eggs to the point that he smelled like vinegar and his hands were a rainbow assortment of color. For this task he had dawned his oldest pair of trousers, now almost too small on him and a so-called tee-shirt that proclaimed the wonders of a bromide called Cutshall’s soda powders.

    Mr. Taylor Steggs was in fact doing what he never did, and that is sweating. It was hard work and he had almost two dozen eggs to finish when he realized to his dismay that he had completely run out of dye. This would never do, not if Miss Taylor Steggs was to have the full experience of a Mr. Taylor Steggs upright Easter and so he decided to go, even at this late (and dark) hour to the Piggly Wiggly and so, extricating his Red Wagon from its garage under the stairs, Mr. Taylor Steggs headed out.

    On the way to the Piggly Wiggly, Mr. Taylor Steggs passed a few well-know personages. One was Mr. Alphonsus Rabboni, who, though a transplant from New Albany had already made his name upon the Oxford folks as a grave digger. As he passed him on the street outside of the Ajax, Mr. Taylor Steggs, dragging his wagon behind him made a mental note that you can never overestimate the quality of a good gravedigger. As he rounded the corner of Blossom Street, Mr. Taylor Steggs spied some activity around the Roman Catholic temple that had recently been built in Oxford. Mr. Taylor Steggs knew nothing at all about Roman Catholics except that they had built this temple and that they were somehow related to Old Testament Jews, though Mr. Taylor Steggs did not know how, nor could he be bothered, particularly tonight to fuss with the question since he needed to get to the Piggly Wiggly, get the dye, get home and get the project done.

    When he passed by the Roman Catholic Temple, however, he became aware that something was going on. Out in front, someone had built fire. Mr. Taylor Steggs could tell it was purpose made and not an act of vengeance because it was built in a tiny BBQ grill. Around this fire were a number of people, some of whom were dressed in white robes. Mr. Taylor Steggs did not wish to speculate on the role of these white-robed people. There was also what appeared to be a big candle that some fellow wearing a Mexican poncho was punching pins into.

    Soon after the pin punching the folks starting filing into the Temple and Mr. Taylor Steggs, parking his Red Wagon under a nearby japonica followed them. By the time he got inside, everyone had lighted some small candles and the man in the poncho was singing at the top of his lungs about some lady named Exult. The only Exult Mr. Taylor Steggs knew was Exulta Beberry and she was certified crazy in Whitfield. There was a man standing at the back of the temple and Mr. Taylor Steggs embarrassingly approached him. He was embarrassed because he could see this was a kind of church and Mr. Taylor Steggs wasn’t wearing church clothes. Coming up to the man he said: “Hello, I’m Mr. Taylor Steggs.” He thought that this moniker might have impressed the gentleman but it obviously did not, there was not even a twinkle of recognition.

    “I’m Harman Duckdown” the man replied, “I’m the usher here.”

    “What’s going on”” Mr. Taylor Steggs innocently asked.

    Mr. Duckdown responded: “I can’t say I rightly know; they say it’s a mystery. I do know it goes on all night, only time of year the thing goes on all night.”

    He continued, confidently chewing on a piece of straw. “Some of these people are going to be baptized.”

    Mr. Taylor Steggs didn’t want to be rude, but he knew there was not lake or pond around here and Dr. Tangerine Hope would be in the Tupelo church for Easter.

    He went on: “Some others will get their first communion, they will get the Blessed Sacrament for the first time.”

    Mr. Taylor Steggs had no idea what a Blessed Sacrament was. Now he couldn’t help but ask. “What is a Blessed Sacrament?”

    Mr. Duckdown pondered this question for a minute, churning the piece of straw around and around in his mouth.

    Finally, he responded: “I don’t rightly know, again, it’s a mystery.”

    “Don’t you belong to this place?” Mr. Taylor Steggs innocently asked.

    “Course I do. You should know this, what’s your name, you should know this. This place thrives on mystery, it stinks with mystery, it’s practically drunk with mystery. You need to roll away the stone Mr. Taylor Steggs. That is your name isn’t it?”

    “Of course it is.” 

    And Mr. Taylor Steggs did not know whether to be insulted or amazed. And so he turned to go. He was perplexed by his encounter with the Jews in the Roman Catholic temple. He staggered and reeled as he left. He left his Red Flyer parked under the japonica bush. He didn’t go to the Piggly Wiggly. The last of the eggs would not get dyed. Artificial rabbit fur might go unworn. The promise of pink seersucker might to unfulfilled.  He didn’t know what was going to happen. But over his shoulder he could hear the baptizing start and he knew there was more going on in that Temple than either he or Mr. Duckdown would ever understand. And somehow as the full moon peeked out from behind the clouds, Mr. Taylor Steggs saw that uncertainty as promise. He saw it as hope. He saw it as salvation. 

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  4. Priesthood Promises

    March 10, 2022
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    A Great Cloud of Witnesses

    Tonight, we gather in this makeshift tent of the covenant to witness something permanent from these men whom we have known, sometimes well, sometimes regrettably little, to witness their promises as they advance, finally to the Order of Presbyter.

    I say it is a temporary space, and it is, but when we think about it, isn’t every space we occupy in this world a temporary space for we have here no lasting city.

    And perhaps, in the final analysis, the space we occupy for an event such as the one we are observing tonight is not as significant as the witnesses.

    We have here a great cloud of witnesses

    Tonight, here in this temporary, makeshift space we are surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. From their places on the walls, the former rectors of this seminary look down. In their days they witnessed thousands of signatures attached to documents of promises, first in Latin and now in English. In their days, they witnessed some triumphs, and some tragedies, the same triumphs and tragedies we witness today. Many of these men were glorious in their success – others, not so much. It remains to be seen what the legacy of the present incumbent of this venerable chair will be, how he will be judged by successive generations.

    A great cloud of witnesses

    Who else is in our midst tonight? From the corner of this tent Our Lady watches, resplendent in blue, towering over the scene, but in truth she seems more attentive to her Son than to our passing need, and that is right and just.

    A great cloud of witnesses

    Here is St. George, he is here as well, one eye on us, and one eye undoubtedly upon his Ukrainian sons and daughters, those who have thrown themselves upon his patronage, that soldier saint. He looks out on us but also upon a world, his world, smoldering on the brink of catastrophe, a landscape destined to witness the folly of human destruction in the wake of sub-human ego, and like St. George we are witnesses to that as well. 

    A cloud of witnesses

    How about our Lord, resplendent here in this temporary space on Giotto’s glorious throne. He is surrounded by angels and saints, they sing, they praise, they are in heaven. Perhaps they are too busy for us with their celestial songbooks, perhaps they inhabit a world already made perfect while we fumble here below, nevertheless, they are witnesses, He is witness.

    A cloud of witnesses

    Peter and Paul, certainly they represent the future work, the future ministry of these men gathered tonight in this temporary space. Paul has fallen down on the road to Damascus, and we can only hope, only pray that conversion and visions, the hearing of God’s voice, that all of these are the future of these men. We can only hope, only pray that they will be struck blind by God’s light over and over again as they traverse the roads of future parishes, communities, countries. We can only pray that conversion, daily conversion in the Lord, will be their lot as it was the lot of Saul.

    But there is also Peter, Peter the doubter, Peter the denier, Peter the fool who made his way home via an inverted cross. How many crosses await our brothers here? How many crosses await each of us? Thousands. That is the answer, thousands and thousands. Crosses of the flesh, crucifixions of the emotions, daily deaths of the spirit. That too is right and just.

    Peter and Paul form also a chorus, that great cloud of witnesses.

    And are there more than these? Certainly, there are. The Church triumphant also casts its enteral gaze upon these men, upon these promises. Who is gathered here tonight? Mothers and Fathers whose lives gave out before this day could be seen. Undoubtedly, they were taken too soon and yet tonight they open the doors and windows of this chapel, your mother is here, your father is here as well as grandparents who totter up to the banks of the river to smile with pride through old tear strained eyes. This is the day they longed for, they hoped for, they prayed and pray for. This Church triumphant gives a witness and it cares, and I know that fathers and mothers and grandparents and so many others are signaling to the saints to step over and hear their son, their grandson say what is on his heart as he promises to be a priest. Tonight, they call out to their celestial friends: Come here and see my son, my grand baby. I am so proud of him. 

    Oh, my brothers and sisters, these are a great cloud of witnesses

    But I wonder, I wonder if the only witnesses needed are already gathered in this room, the Church militant, our simple selves? 

    Here are brothers who have walked with you, laughed with you, prayed with you, prayed for you. Here are brothers who are solid in their commitment to Christ and to Christ in you. Here are brothers who will stand the test of time, who will be with you even in future struggles, in late night calls, in weeping and in screaming at the injustice of the world, but likewise in laughter and joy. There may well be brothers in this room tonight that on some future night will be holding your hand, your wrinkled spotted hand as you hear the words spoken: Well done good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your Master.

    That is a great cloud of witnesses

    And there are sisters here, women who will form your lives now and in memory, women who have hopefully taught you the power of the feminine genius, who will support you and strengthen you, cry with you, rejoice with you. Coworkers in the vineyard of the Lord, but who is working for whom may certainly be an object of speculation.

    Here are fathers, priests, formators, teachers who you may never know how much they love you, have devoted hours of prayer for you, worried about you, wept for you.

    A great cloud of witnesses

    And here you are. We know you. I know you. I know what your bravado is hiding. I know the secret hurts in your heart. I know the fears you face in coming into your own as priests. I know that your elegant vestments and golden vessels may be curtains that you hope will hide your weaknesses, but brothers, remember my words, your only strength is embracing your weakness, embracing the cross of Jesus.

    My brothers, tonight you make promises that cannot be undone by the powers of this world, by the enemy of humankind, even by your own folly and so I invite you now, evaporate into this great cloud of witnesses. In these sterile juridical words, be taken up into the cloud of unknowing, unknowing and fully known… even in a temporary space. 

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  5. Ash Wednesday

    March 2, 2022
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return

    As you all know, I can become incredibly obsessed with some things, even mundane things like television shows and movies. My recent cinematic obsession is Belfast, a film about the troubles of the Irish city in the late 1960’s. The film focuses on the little boy named Buddy and the experiences of his family during these troubled times. Perhaps I was moved by it because he is roughly my age though his experiences in war-torn Belfast in no way mirror my childhood in suburbia.

    As violence and bloodshed overwhelm Buddy, his family, and his neighborhood in Belfast, the real story is unfolded for us, that life can be normal, in fact always is normal, even in the midst of turmoil. Buddy is a kid, he wants to fight. He has a trashcan lid he uses for a shield and a wooden sword he made from an old vegetable box.

    There is so much symbolism there: Lost and found, this is the theme of Belfast, what is lost and what is found in every life, in every place, in every time.

    When we think of loss, when we think of suffering, sometimes we need to stand back a little bit. In Lent, we look for symbolic losses, but I wonder if that is what is needed.

    Here is what I say brothers and sisters. We do not need to lose something. We need to find something. But in order to find something we have to know for what we are looking.

    Seek and you will find the Gospel tells us. How can we do that?

    Seek the Lord and in that search find ways to make yourself that greater man or that greater woman.

    Find the true, the noble means of conversion, a conversion that touches not only the body and the habit, but the soul. Find a conversion of thinking, a conversion of values and valuation.

    Try and find in this Lent a spirit of gratitude, an understanding that the world has not been given to me as my sole prize. Find the understanding that I do not write the code of values by which this world operates, that reality has been given over to the Living God and I am merely his instrument.

    Find ways to learn to love yourself, in your authentic self, learn to love yourself more. How many of us are drawing on false ideals of the self in realizing our Lenten schemes? We believe the lies about ourselves because we learned them so young and we were so impressionable.

    Here is what I say:

    How many ugly scripts are you rehearsing in your mind today and every day? How many lies were you told as a kid and now relive every single waking moment and sometimes in your dreams? How many of us had parents that may have tried hard, may have tried hard but ended up hurting us by abuse, or more probably neglect? How many of us suffered loss, death, divorce, separation, alienation?

    Somehow, my brothers and sisters, we must learn to put aside the hateful scripts that we memorized as a child. This is something to give up for Lent. You must learn to arm yourself not with the intentional or unintentional slights of others, but with the true armor of God’s mercy, his kindness, and his unfailing positive regard for you. Those of you preparing for priesthood, this is your only hope for success.

    And what does this look like? It often looks more like the cross than so-called penances. Our silly Lenten penances are often just the ratification of ugly scripts that we have been rehearsing for years. The purpose of Lent is leanness, leanness of thought and action so that we can understand and act upon the Truth. It is putting aside the fat of lies and looking Love straight in the face and saying: That is me. I deserve that.

    It doesn’t matter if I have had trouble in school.

    It doesn’t matter if I wore thick glasses at a ridiculously young age.

    It doesn’t matter if I was slow and ridiculed

    It doesn’t matter if I was a nerd and ridiculed

    It doesn’t matter if I was too smart and ridiculed

    It doesn’t matter if I struggle with porn

    It doesn’t matter if I struggle with the bottle

    It doesn’t matter if I struggle with sexual identity

    What matters is that I struggle and never give up.

    Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return

    But first …

    Find in yourself self-respect, the kind of self-respect that allows you to give respect to others, not making yourself small, but making others greater. As a great author once said: Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.

    There is letting go and there is re-grasping because:

    Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return

    What can we do?

    Give something:

    Your comments in class today were really good.

    Your witness in the chapel is very positive.

    Your little homily in the house meeting really meant something to me.

    Understanding the power of positive regard, sending a thank you note for nothing in particular, all of these cost you nothing but they make the day of the recipient, the brother or sister who needs a boost.

    Find in yourself the meaning of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do to you, you in your complete mystery, you in God’s understanding of you.

    Find in this lent not the destitution of sackcloth and ashes but the living fountain of life, which is Christ Jesus, then you will know even as you are known. 

    Find out who you are and begin to live into that greater reality that greater way which the prince of peace has gathered from the byways of life into the highway of authentic human being.

    Be like Buddy, the little fellow in Belfast who wanted to fight for his people, his parents, his brother, his grandparents, his friends, even if it only men arming himself with a trashcan lid and a wooden sword.

    During this Lent, find a way to let your light shine, because I know it is there.

    Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return

    Just not yet …

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  6. Ash Wednesday Rector's Conference

    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.

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  7. Deacon Promises

    February 24, 2022
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    This you have been called to do, so you may receive a blessing as your inheritance.

    My brothers and sisters, our gathering this evening speaks volumes about the ideal of vocation. What are we called to do?

    The project of realizing a vocation is the true human project, no matter if that vocation is understood as being in the Church, in married life, in the world, wherever and however it may be.

    We are all called to live a certain reality, that is the reality of our lives in Christ, our lives with God, but also the reality of our lives as real human persons.

    So often I think we neglect that true humanity or we believe that it has no purposeful role in our beautifully imagined vocation. 

    Our humanity is seldom a part of our well-rehearsed scenario of perfection, and let’s be honest, our humanity is messy.

    Our past is compromised, compromised by the inadequacies of our parent and our own failures, our sins, our neglect of self

    Our present is confused by the ignoble intercession of what we want to be and what we are, between the ideals of the priesthood and our personal sin. 

    Our future is obscure because we do not know that path we will follow or that we will be compelled to follow as though both that path and the compulsion were not of our own choosing. 

    We do all kinds of things, have all sorts of feelings and suffer all kinds of self-imposed indignities. It makes these ridiculous words of St. Peter somewhat challenging

    This you have been called to do, so you may receive a blessing as your inheritance.

    When we step back from the ideals we create, we discover something meaningful, our world, like our lives is full of imperfection and compromise and confusion and obscurity.

    Sometimes it seems to me like Jesus is running a kind of soteriological used car lot. And not the good kind either with the wonderful polished up cars and slick interiors.

    Not the shiny used car lots, not CarMax or Carvana with their incredible ads and the fashion models who deliver your new vehicle to your door.

    Jesus doesn’t operate a CarMax.

    Jesus runs the kind of used car lot that has a bunch of junkers. 

    The disciples are sort of like used cars. Junkers. This one is an old Edsel, that frankly never ran that well and now might need to be propped up on blocks.

    This one gets going fine but then just decides to stop running halfway to the hospital.

    This one is a Pinto that looks great in the front, but blows up if you hit it in the rear.

    This one has a leaky window.

    This one has windshield wipers that only work if it isn’t raining.

    Junk, weirdos, problems. Mistakes? I think not. 

    The apostles were old junkers, but Jesus saw something in them. He saw potential. He saw one good run. He saw perfecting rather than perfection. Jesus is your salesman but …

    You too are preparing to run a soteriological used car lot. 

    You will have a few shiny models, some really dependable models that will be there every time the Church’s garage doors open. 

    But also some old junkers, I would say mostly old junkers, mostly wrecks. And tonight you resolve for yourself to be a used car salesman

    This you have been called to do, so you may receive a blessing as your inheritance.

    When you think about the used car lots that will be your parishes over the next 50 years …

    Here you will find old beat up models, and some that are shiny on the outside but rusty on the inside. 

    Here is Winny the faithful old lady who loves to be in the sacristy mostly because she doesn’t want to be at home with her alcoholic husband

    Here is the Smith family, who struggle day and night to make ends meet for their kids to get a good parochial school education and keep up appearances

    Here is Max who has tried every kind of drug at the age of 16 and can’t keep himself running yet, now his parents are intervening and you are there to help.

    Here is Abner, he’s five and has Down’s Syndrome, in spite of Safe and Sacred he cannot help but run up and grab you around your knees. 

    And here you are in the midst of all of it. Here you are, here. Here you are offering all of these old junkers a new lease on life. Because that is your vocation my brothers, soteriological used car salesmen and … 

    Tonight your promises are a new lease on life because guess what, you are old junkers too

    You are broken by your sins

    But God will make you shine again

    Your internal combustion engine always seems to need attention

    But God will make you run and not grow weary

    You are up on blocks and headed for the junk yard

    But God will make you YOU, because he will make you like himself

    This you have been called to do, so you may receive a blessing as your inheritance.

    Tonight God is standing by to perfect your promises.

    And I can say this: I have presided over this used car lot for fourteen years. I love a used car, no matter how ratty. 

    I love a used car and I love you. 

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  8. St. Scholastica


    February 10, 2022
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.”

    Scraps, crumbs, leftovers. 

    It is odd how images get into your head or how scenes from the past get randomly reconstructed in your mind by some word spoken or something seen. 

    Last weekend when Fr. Jim offered us the very compelling image of the man in India gathering the grains of rice from the muddy road, my mind immediately went back to my eight- or nine-year-old self. I was reminded about how I would sit on my grandmother’s front porch (with drinks and snacks of course) and watch every year as the huge lumbering cotton trucks made their slow, swaying way down Main Street to the big cotton gin. 

    These trucks were piled very high, really filled to overflowing. Soon their burdens would be distributed, and they would go back for more of the fluffy stuff for the next round of ginning. 

    Because the cotton was so light and the trucks were so full, as they made their way down the street, the boles of cotton would fly off of the truck like summer snow. They went everywhere, in the trees, in the ditches, onto lawns, into bushes, some of it even settling at the feet of the children watching from the front porches (with drinks and snacks of course).

    The summer snow storm created joy in my grandmother’s neighborhood every year, but the real entertainment came from the pickers.

    The pickers were men and women, some old, some young, some really old, and some really young who followed behind the trucks and ran to catch the fleeing boles and stuff them into the long cotton bags that hung from their shoulders. Some of the really old and really young could barely keep up and hardly handle the bags as they became heavier and heavier. 

    Their task was to pick up the crumbs of cotton that had escaped. They were able to keep it and sell it, not in truck sized loads, but in smaller loads, a little money. A little money for a lot of work. 

    I loved the sight of the pickers racing and grasping, of thoroughly gathering and storing. I loved the sight of the bags growing in girth as the old and young slogged along Main Street in search of scraps. 

    “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.”

    I used to believe, in fact, in the past, I preached about those trucks laden with plenty and I saw them, in the innocence of my youth as a symbol of God’s love. Perhaps they are. 

    I saw them as a vision of the great eschaton in which all of us are gathered into the cotton gin of the four last things and we will be judged. I am certain we shall. 

    Somehow, I liked that idea of all of us boles going side-by-side to the reckoning, the final ginning. God’s truck was big. Jesus was the driver. We are all going together. 

    Now, however, something has changed in my vision. Perhaps it is wisdom or more likely, the onset of senility. Now I see Jesus, and hence the disciple, the priest, the minister as less of a truck driver and more of a picker. Because, ultimately, I believe that is our calling. 

    “Lord, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.”

    So often we think our ministry is driving the truck, gather us in. But I want us to think about running along the road, chasing the boles that are getting away. That is God’s way. Let nothing go unaccounted for. 

    I remember in my seminary days, back before the Council of Constance. When I was the Master of Ceremonies, we used to have what was jestingly referred to as the “crumb brigade”. These were erstwhile seminarians who would, completely un-invited come to the sacristy after Mass to clean the vessels and gather up the crumbs. I suppose in my ignorant youth I watched this with some degree of amusement. 

    As I grew older, I came to know that there was something biblical there. Let no morsel of the Body of Christ go unaccounted for. There is no particle so small that it does not deserve our attention, because it has already gained God’s attention. 

    I wonder brothers and sisters, are we willing to trudge the roads in search of treasure caught up in the wind?

    There may not be much reward in it, but it must be satisfying because it is our salvation. 

    Crumbs, scraps, leftovers. Us.

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  9. Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time

    February 13, 2022
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    Blessed are the … 

    If you google the words “beatitudes poster” you will get several thousand hits, one more beautiful than the other, I dare say. Some are ‘protestant beatitudes” some are “catholic beatitudes” and some are just generic beatitudes. Some have pretty landscapes, some dancing children and others, happy old people. None are particularly threatening, at least of the couple of hundred I perused. I wonder though, how meaningful they are. The beatitudes, the ten commandments, footprints in the sand. These and more are all religious poster ware, presented to us for meaning but in some ways remaining more fixed to the wall than cemented in our hearts. 

    But they are meaningful, or at least we say they are. 

    The beatitudes, especially as they are unfolded for us in St. Luke’s Gospel are encouraging, encouraging if you wish to see a vision of perfection, a way in which the Church can understand itself in light of Jesus’ teaching. 

    They are encouraging if you have attained a certain level of, well, beatitude and you are currently floating on a seraphic cloud amidst the chanting of disembodied little angels. 

    They are encouraging for the point no percent of people who are presently crossing the final frontier, the Lethy of this purgatorial existence we call life. 

    For these they are encouraging. 

    But they may also be somewhat discouraging, discouraging to us poor mortals who attempt to slouch by every day in our faltering will to fulfill God’s commandments, even here, even in this oasis of holiness and, well, beatitude. 

    They may be discoursing to those of us who constantly miss the mark, try as we will to be the best monks we can be, the most perfect Christians we can be, the finest examples of personal pulchritude we can be. Or perhaps not really try at all.

    They may be discouraging to the hypersensitive soul just beginning the purgatorial ramble in this life. 

    The truth of the matter is this: We want to be good but we somehow continually, struggle and fail.

    And it is our fault of course. 

    My mother is quite the sage, particularly as she gets older and more reflective. But her sayings over the years have always stuck with me. Undoubtedly my favorite is one of her most famous: “Don’t blame the Cheetos if your fingers turn orange.” Truer Gospel words were never spoken. Jesus’ delivery of the Sermon on the Plain is a call to action, a call, like that of all of the disciples who have gone before, to obey the Law, yet Jesus offers us something more human, more profound than the stony tablets of the Decalogue. 

    The Law of Israel is not repealed, after all the Ten Commandments are a poster too. But Jesus is offering us in the beatitudes something more, more than a set of statutes encased in a traveling ark.

    In the beatitudes, He offers us a vision of love and peace, of goodness and kindness, of welcome. And Jesus refuses to allow responsibility to be passed to any other agent for the lack of will in the human person. 

    Undoubtedly my sage mother is right and we might see similar instances of Jesus’ concern today:

    If the internet is offensive to you, who logged on? If you drink too much, who opened the bottle?

    If you eat too much, who bought the case of Velveeta shells and cheese at Sam’s?

    If you are offended by the program on Netflix, who paid for the subscription?

    And yet in the midst of all of these concerns, we must also find the beauty, that fertile field of hope and joy.

    Perhaps we need a few of St. Luke’s woes to guide us to a more fertile field

    The morality of inanimate objects, of various kinds of entertainment, the debilitating slime of the social drain trap, nothing can be blamed for our poor judgment, our lack of will, our sinfulness. Nothing can be blamed but ourselves. And this is the story of the human condition. 

    The conflagration of sin, and it is a conflagration no matter what you may have heard, the conflagration of sin begins with a spark, a taste, a peek, a thimbleful, a bite of the otherwise innocuous apple.

    All of it true However,  Jesus message is clear: There is also something blessed in this world, something that can lead us somewhere.

    We find that blessedness in everyday beatitudes. We find it in simple gestures, in words of encouragement (even when we are a bit down). We find it in the spark that leads to a warming fire of love, a taste of happiness in a bit of banana bread, a peek of heaven in the afternoon slumber of a beloved confrere by the window in the calefactory. We find it in a thimbleful of courage needed just at this one moment, or in the juiciness of the apple, yes even there.

    Or in bread and wine?

    Take and eat, Take and drink …

    Do this in memory of me.

    Don’t blame the Cheetos if our fingers turn orange.

    True words, but why not enjoy the Cheetos as well.

    Undoubtedly there is room for judgement in our lives but … 

    Perhaps it is time to stretch out our hands to a different God, the true God who alone offers that bit of beatitude we need so much today. 

    Perhaps it would be an exercise in futility but I wonder if it would not be grand if we googled the words beatitude poster and found a mirror. 

    Posted by
    Labels: Catholic Rector Seminary

  10. Feast of the Presentation - Candlemas

    February 2, 2022
    Very Rev. Denis Robinson, OSB

    There is a wonderful quote by the American literary critic, Barbara Johnson. 

    "Faith is seeing light with your heart when all your eyes see is darkness."

    How appropriate for our feast today. 

    When we look at our ancestors in faith, their eyes saw only darkness. 

    From the sin of Adam, the time of our first parents, in shame the light had been cut off from the world. Wandering in the darkness of the outer Eden, they groped the ragged ground for meaning, they became lost in incomplete relationships, they cursed themselves, they became enslaved, they denied the prophets, they refuted the Law, they sold one another into exile. 

    So it was, there was nothing but the grave Sheol of the grave that overwhelmed them, wallowing in the memory of creation, but lost, blind to its truth. 

    This is the legacy of St. Luke’s Gospel, a Judaism old and lost. Zachariah the ancient priest, Elizabeth, his barren wife, Simeon the doddering old man, Anna the widow. They were losing, but they were holding on, hoping that the light extinguished so long ago by their own folly might be restored to them. 

    "Faith is seeing light with your heart when all your eyes see is darkness."

    And so they haunted the temple, that monument of Herod’s victory and his down fall, they wandered its cold precincts filling their old lungs with the daily stench of burning animals, fractured dreams and hopelessness.

    They felt their ways along the walls of its precincts, its wailing walls hoping to pick up some gossip, some shred of good news.

    They knew the darkness, knew it intimately in their ancient bones, felt it keen as wind winding across the desert at night, understood it like the loss that had already circumscribed their withering lives.

    And then, one day it happened. They appeared, the poor couple from Nazareth, money spent, aching feet for the presentation of their (her) little boy in the Temple, the fulfillment of the Law’s strict code. The teenage mother, the older stepfather and the fat baby, known as Jesus waving his dimpled hands in the air as the whole precinct teemed with action. 

    Who were they? They were nothing in the world’s eyes, nothing, lowly peasants for whom these isolated visits to the temple were the highpoints of otherwise drear existences. 

    Mary the mother clutching a candle that she prayed the futile traversals of the temple’s stampeding worshippers would not extinguish.

    Joseph, the shield, the protector

    And the ever conscious baby, did he know that all of this activity was ultimately about him?

    It was then that the old man and the old woman spotted them in the chaos, from the depths of their souls they spotted them, from the longing in their hearts they caught hold of them, from the rolling tide of history they grasped them. 

    Israel, raw with darkness, tottering on extinction saw in its last moment that flame, that flickering glow of light that looked for the world like a child’s eyes, a baby’s eyes. 

    From the soul of those eyes shone the light of nations, from his eyes he communicated in a moment to those old folks the history of a people, a shabby people rising to meet God face to face once again, from those eyes the pools of darkness swirled and then were illuminated by the light of Mary’s little candle.

    "Faith is seeing light with your heart when all your eyes see is darkness."

    From the depths it trembled, as the smoke consumed the pigeons, the poor boy’s offering. The little fire quaked. It might so easily have been lost, but it was not lost. 

    Its flame was passed along. Passed over Simeon and Anna to fishermen, anxious to hear a word of Good News in the midst of their nets.

    Passed along to tax collectors lost in the morass of their ill begotten greed.

    Given to political pot boilers and doubters and traitors

    And there was more beyond the ragged twelve. The light passed to sinners, to Gentiles, to adulterers, the unclean, to politicians, to sorcerers, to hermits, monks, nuns, sisters, brothers, mothers, fathers. It passed on and on.

    The light passed down the litany of saints and sinners, holding on, tentatively as flame passed to an unlit column of wax, the work of bees.

    It made its way into the halls of power, into house churches, into basilicas, monasteries, humble homes.

    It burned its way through the pages of history, a history of ravaging wind that might have stifled it but for its divine temperament. 

    It burned its way across the threadbare landscape of human history until he touched the lives of those who continued to cling together in the shadows of darkness and shiver in the cold of indifference.

    It burned its way over the fields of folly cultivated even in our day with the plowshares of men’s ignorance

    It burned and it eradicated bigotry, racism, sexism and all the other isms that plague the human heart.

    It burned and lightened lives controlled by the horrific darkness of addiction.

    It burned and touched the molting draperies of turmoil, sending their shards flying aimlessly in the air.

    It burned down the corridors of culture and comes to us today.

    That flame which wavered in the Temple, that fire which is the very Son of God is here brothers and sisters and now it is a conflagration. It consumes us. It tears at our mantles of indifference that false armor we have composed for ourselves.

    It touches us, it opens our hearts, our skin and makes us vulnerable. It wounds us, flays us, but it makes us warmer in a cold world. It gives us light when vision fails.

    It passes its brilliance over lives shut off from the hermeneutic of salvation. 

    It is Christ the light. It is ours today. It surrounds us as it surrounds this altar, drawing us ever nearer to the source of light and tearing away our blindness, our stumbling ineptitude, our spiritual darkness.

    Simeon and Anna finally saw him in the Temple. That same temple is opened for us now. That same revelation. It is the temple of our hearts, the revelation of our deepest desire.

    "Faith is seeing light with your heart when all your eyes see is darkness."

    Posted by
    Labels: Catholic Homilies Rector 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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